Well put by the Ronin and I do not think there is anything to add. I may lurk in here again but I do not see any point in posting anything else until someone proves that the existing rule either globally alters the game in a negative way or creates a persistent state of NFE. Changing an existing rule should require indisputable evidence that there is something wrong. Therefore the burden of proof lies 100% on those who want to change the existing rule.

15 hours ago, Ishi Tonu said:

I stand by my opinion that the bowing when sent home is necessary.

Characters with a (-) in a skill are generally above average in the other skill. Allowing a player to build aggressively towards one skill without any real downside would be bad for the game. Imagine I send my 3 charaters with a dash skill into a Province where the conflict gets changed to the other skill and they went home unbowed. That means I can attack at will into Provinces with conflict switch effects because there is no real downside. Or I could even use that trick to my advantage to eject my whole army from a losing battle. Attack political with all my (-) military guys, you defend with your political and look to be in the lead. So I Captive Audience to eject all my guys when I see I'm going to lose. Your guys get bowed, ring fizzles which I could have just picked one I didn't want you to get on offense any ways. You are likely not in a position to attack back, I win the favor and essentially time walk the turn to get a better position and lost nothing.

While the game certainly encourages attacking, it cannot allow people to attack without consequence as that artificially creates board states and gameplay that were purposely left out of design.

The rules on bowing after conflict would need to be changed and in doing so could lead to another loophole to be exploited. The dash skill value is the most "elegant" solution. You cannot be dueled to your dash stat or have it switched/modified in exchange you are prone to conflict type switching effects. I believe it's a fair trade.

I'll gladly just submit this as my agree to disagree post now to save 8+ pages of nonsense and I don't hold any grudges against anyone that disagrees with me past or future...........even though they are wrong.

OK, this is the first valid argument I see here, it's a good point.

Still you are wasting a good card and loosing 1 honor, and you can't attack with those guys again in the same turn, so seems a just cost to only (maybe) getting the favor that turn.

18 hours ago, agarrett said:

One practical effect is to encourage balanced forces. In world, samurai are supposed to be great on both the battlefield and court, at least in theory. Having these 'switch the battle type' cards, some repeatable and some not, says that the old-style L5R deck that tries to overpower in one area while ignoring weaknesses in others is no longer the best way to go - it might or might not even be viable. Now, there has been a big change. Old5R decks would concentrate on one victory condition, while now we're talking about one stat. Nevertheless, the high-military, just-enough-politics-to-defend, deck (or vice versa) will face severe weaknesses against decks that are set up to swap conflict types. I suspect that's deliberate.

OK, so lets eliminate the other Clans, we just need Dragon Players..

Crane and Scorpion are supposed to focus on Political, as Lion and Unicorn in Military, if all clans needs to be balanced, all games will look the same, just changing some mechanics from one clan to another.. When you focus in one skill you open your defenses against the other, its a fair trade. But I understand your point and fell the same about the core set, this seems to be the intention of devs, maybe this is the true reason of dash characters having this huge drawback, forcing players to build "equilibrate (boring) decks"..

Conflict flipping is only stupidly strong against 2 clans, Unicorn on military and Scorpion on political as their personality bases are heavily leaned to one conflict over the other. The other five factions, especially Dragon and Phoenix, can fight either conflict.

If you are worried about the (-) character getting sent home bowed then buy another character. Using that character and understanding the risk that character has is part of deck building and player skill.

Your choice of Clan, characters, and other cards all should be done understanding the risks available. If those conflicts always hose you, then build the deck to play around them.

3 hours ago, TheItsyBitsySpider said:

Conflict flipping is only stupidly strong against 2 clans, Unicorn on military and Scorpion on political as their personality bases are heavily leaned to one conflict over the other. The other five factions, especially Dragon and Phoenix, can fight either conflict.

If you are worried about the (-) character getting sent home bowed then buy another character. Using that character and understanding the risk that character has is part of deck building and player skill.

Your choice of Clan, characters, and other cards all should be done understanding the risks available. If those conflicts always hose you, then build the deck to play around them.

No one is saying they have to be able to buy these characters mindlessly. No one is saying having them sent home is a problem. The only question is if bowing feels like too much on top of being sent home.

1 minute ago, shosuko said:

No one is saying they have to be able to buy these characters mindlessly. No one is saying having them sent home is a problem. The only question is if bowing feels like too much on top of being sent home.

It adds to the inherent risk of using them. I think the rest of us don't see this as a problem.

2 minutes ago, Mirith said:

It adds to the inherent risk of using them. I think the rest of us don't see this as a problem.

I don't know if I'd go quite that far. At least for myself, I kind of flag this as a potential problem and something to watch for. But at least for now, it looks like a reasonable balance and something I have to keep strongly in mind during deck construction.

By the way, I'd seen some people saying this was a pointless discussion since there aren't really any rules questions or changes. At least for me, this discussion of deck design and rules implications - and a little side of game design - has been very useful and illuminating. Sure, we're not looking at a change, but just thinking about the rules like this can be very helpful. So thanks for bringing it up.

50 minutes ago, Mirith said:

It adds to the inherent risk of using them. I think the rest of us don't see this as a problem.

I honestly don't think that I, or L5Rbr really see this as a problem either. Not a big one, and not right now, at least... As he said in the opening post -

Quote

we always have to find something to complain about, so I want to talk about something

I think Ishi Tonu had a point that it could basically be giving up the favor to send so many characters home un-bowed... but then - that is the same issue Rout and Out-wit have, and neither of them send someone home bowed. You can say its a risk of playing a dash character - but that doesn't mean we can't evaluate whether the risk of bringing a dash character is too great. If it is too great, then the cards become less useful.

Right now there is a neutral province, and 2 clan cards that can flip conflict type. Right now we are playing with just the core set... As the card pool expands to include more dash characters, and more conflict swap cards (I fully expect the Scorpion to get one soon-ish) it could become a problem. That is what we're thinking about...

Mountain meet molehill.

looks perfectly reasonable to me. If you don't like it then you can easily not play them. Or go for water ring when you suspect this might happen or use clan actions to counter I.e crane can mitigate with cautios scout, other clans have other methods like unbow orrrr use your first conflict to scout with a throwaway unit until you find it.

options, options everywhere and not a rules change needed...