I guess I'm asking the question because I got to play my first game today and I was really surprised.

It's not as complex as I was lead to believe.

When I told someone I was skipping L5R at GenCon for Star Wars because of how complex it was they responded, "That's like saying you think a marathon is too hard so you're gonna sign up for a triathlon."

At the time I didn't quite understand what they were saying, but now I do.

Star Wars trained me for L5R.

It also goes to show how few reviewers of L5R have any experience with the Star Wars LCG. And that's a shame.

I just thought I'd throw this up for any Star Wars players who were concerned about the much talked about complexity of the Legend of the Five Rings LCG.

It has nothing on Star Wars!

L5R is a lot easier in LCG format than it was in CCG format. To be fair, Star Wars isn't all that complex, or at least it wasn't when I played.

2 hours ago, qwertyuiop said:

L5R is a lot easier in LCG format than it was in CCG format. To be fair, Star Wars isn't all that complex, or at least it wasn't when I played.

The Star Wars mechanics aren't complex. The decision tree gets very complex. Especially since every card has at least 2 functions with edge battles.

I think that SW LCG, played at the highest level, is intensely complex. That is one of the things that I enjoyed about it.

On 9/17/2017 at 0:55 PM, dbmeboy said:

The Star Wars mechanics aren't complex. The decision tree gets very complex. Especially since every card has at least 2 functions with edge battles.

I don't know your experience, but anyone our playgroup has tried to teach the game, their eyes start to glaze over after a certain point. I think it's one of the reasons the game is hard to sell to new players.

The decision tree is complex because the mechanics make it so.

L5R, by comparison, is far easier to teach.

Anecdotally, recently we had a Magic player who wanted nothing to do with Star Wars after the first game. "I'd rather play three Magic games at the same time," he said. But he got L5R fairly quickly.

My experience has mostly been that Star Wars is easier to get playing (albeit poorly). Contrasted to L5R where the analysis paralysis built into the dual conflict type and ring selection (plus the alternating actions instead of single player turns) seems to really slow people down. I know that our L5R release event had people taking 3+ hours to get through their initial games (and that was with me already basically knowing the rules and trying to help move games along). I've never seen Star Wars take near that long when learning.

Don't get me wrong, I like both games. I just feel like Star Wars has its complexity a little more buried (you can get the gist and play poorly pretty quickly) while L5R has the complexity much more apparent (you immediately realize how complex it is and still play poorly, but spend a lot of time trying to play well instead). If that makes sense.

6 hours ago, dbmeboy said:

Don't get me wrong, I like both games. I just feel like Star Wars has its complexity a little more buried (you can get the gist and play poorly pretty quickly) while L5R has the complexity much more apparent (you immediately realize how complex it is and still play poorly, but spend a lot of time trying to play well instead). If that makes sense.

That's a good way of putting it - I played L5R for the first time last night, and I felt this way too. About the only thing that saved me from freezing up was not caring that much about whether the play I was making was the best or not - I just did whatever didn't seem outright horrible for me.

Star wars Lcg still has the best IMHO deckbuilding system. It keeps deck a Little bit more balanced between new and old players. Ofcourse old player will handle his deck better.

l5r is normal deck building game where players who Are not good deck builders Are definitely going to get their *** kicked.

i like both games. But think that SW is more board gamer, new arrived friendly. Where l5r give experinced card players more room to flex their muscles. And the Lcg version of l5r is so much better than old ccg that it is definitely a very good game with really interesting new Gaming concepts. No need for whalar morgulis because character will leave the game automatically. So it solves so Many problems that other games including SW with snowball effect suffer that it is a worth of trying out purely for that reason. A good example how to make a good competative card game. There Are balance flaws in l5r but the game system more than make for it.