1 minute ago, Robin Graves said:

Didn't the bad guys almost win, back in the 90's? If memory serves me well it was some Lion dude against a shadowlands player and he just managed a win. Otherwise they would have made years of darkness set with fallen clans and everything.

See this is why I don't like the Lion, they blow my buzz.

I don't know that it was so much the "bad guys winning" as it was the players trying to purposely do ridiculous stuff to push the limits with the story and design teams.

FFG seems to have this under a little more control so it shouldn't get too crazy. But, you best believe I'll be doing everything I can to corrupt something along the way.

As a loyal Crab Clan player for many years including RPG's, and also a FFG loyal customer. I think 1 pack per week just spoilt the game for me.

I have a good job that pays well, however the whole point of an LCG over a CCG , is that it isn't down to whom ever has the most money gets the better deck. People at my local shop have said they might as well give up now after only buying one core set, planned on buying another core set each month to make 3 in total.

This is a ludicrous decision by FFG and I hope it bites them in the backside. One pack per week is definitely going to put people off.

On another note.

Why only a world championship?

There should be regional champions in each country. Then area/state champions. Then country champions. Then world champions.

I would love to compete at high level but cannot afford to travel to America.

Just now, Ishi Tonu said:

I don't know that it was so much the "bad guys winning" as it was the players trying to purposely do ridiculous stuff to push the limits with the story and design teams.

FFG seems to have this under a little more control so it shouldn't get too crazy. But, you best believe I'll be doing everything I can to corrupt something along the way.

If you can bring back the Spider, do so! The sons of Daigotsu shall rise again!

18 minutes ago, Robin Graves said:

The sons of Daigotsu shall rise again!

Well I guess the Shadowlands are to the south so that fits.

1 hour ago, Robin Graves said:

What I'm wondering is what happens after those six weeks. How long do we have to wait for the release of the next cycle? Will it be six weeks frenzy, long months of wait followed by another six weeks of frenzy? Or will they go back to teh standard (continuous) monthly LCG releases?

I'm guessing players will have time to digest the new cards and FFG will review sales and event data and then choose a direction from there.

I'm honestly failing to see a problem here. I've been a competitive l5r player for over a decade.

Any competitive players will get the cards they need for their deck. Price is rarely a deterrent for us. I used to buy easily $400+ in booster boxes and about 120 in starters, and still not get every card I needed. If then have to find and either trade or purchase the cards I was missing. This was very common in the competitive scene.

Now, we only have to spend $120 on 3 cores, and $72 on the expansions and we get every card. Thats a huge savings for competitive players.

For the casual players, buy them at your leisure. Trade for cards you want with other casual players to help one another save money. Pick the packs that help you the most.

This casual approach is how we played the game of thrones 1st edition lcg. We had a lot of fun and didn't have to spend a lot to enjoy our games.

This change is only really bothering people who want to be competitive but still somewhat casual. I can tell you, l5r doesn't really do that well. The players in this game are rabid fanatics. We have payed to travel the world to win a story character or affect the story. It's both feet in for competitive l5r.

****, and here I thought we shelled out all the cash to go drinking with our L5R-buddies, not to play competitively.

Jokes aside, I do agree with your post, SideshowLucifer. If you want to be competitive, but have a budget, pool resources with other players, trade where needed with other players who are on a budget. Carefully consider the purchase of each pack, if it is a pack that is nescessary for your clan or not.

It's hard to be competitive AND casual in card games, and L5R is one where it's all in due to its devoted community. Though I'd note that this community is, in my own experience, welcoming and friendly to players who don't have all the cards and will trade or give away cards if they can. Despite not winning anything in my first tournament in the CCG days (thus not winning any boosters or anything), I was given a lot of cards by experienced players that would help me make a better deck.

Very true. We did drink a whole lot until they pitting dragon against scorpion, then it got nasty.

Most of us are willing to help others out a lot. Most of us play no more than 2 clans but are loyal to a single clan. As the feel of the clans develop more, we will settle and have plenty of spare cards.

3 minutes ago, Togashi Ayame said:

****, and here I thought we shelled out all the cash to go drinking with our L5R-buddies, not to play competitively.

Jokes aside, I do agree with your post, SideshowLucifer. If you want to be competitive, but have a budget, pool resources with other players, trade where needed with other players who are on a budget. Carefully consider the purchase of each pack, if it is a pack that is nescessary for your clan or not.

It's hard to be competitive AND casual in card games, and L5R is one where it's all in due to its devoted community. Though I'd note that this community is, in my own experience, welcoming and friendly to players who don't have all the cards and will trade or give away cards if they can. Despite not winning anything in my first tournament in the CCG days (thus not winning any boosters or anything), I was given a lot of cards by experienced players that would help me make a better deck.

Yeah, I've had people spilt the cores for various clans and pool together cards when needed. It's an easy way to go about the dynasty packs too.

This was really surprising!

Did FFG mention anything about their release schedule before? Are Deluxe Expansions mentioned for this game?

I know a lot of CCG (and to some extend LCG) players complained about the LCG format and wanted to see bigger expansions and less releases a year so the meta could be established and stabilized for Kotei season.

Do you think that FFG might be looking into it? We know that FFG developes each cycle at once and they just group the cards in small chapter packs for their distribution. If this special event is a success, how do you guys would feel about them repeating it for future cycles?

If they release the cycles in 6 weeks, the preview season could be 2 month long, the released number of cards would be big enough to shake the meta completelly and then we would have 3 months for the it to stabilize. Isn't that better than the current motnhly release schedule that makes planning for the big tournaments harder, as the meta has less time to be established?

Well, they've certainly succeeded in generating some unanticipated hype. No "resting on laurels" here. I think we're dealing with some savvy businessmen/women, folks. Which bodes well for the game. Within reason. #cautiousoptimist

You guys are so lucky you can get the whole cycle in a relative short time. If it happened for Arkham horror lcg i would be celebrating.

What i think is that perhaps the packs instead of being evenly mixed between the clans, it is focused on 1-2 clans. To avoid too much imbalance, they decided to release the first cycle this way.

7 hours ago, Koriume said:

Yes. But that is not the point. I invested more than money on it. I created a local group of 12 players, teached the game to 3 different people and organized along with a retailed a launch event. Now I receive news that mean that probably this game is not going to be for me.

Dramatic? no... I just trusted ffg policy, that appealed me both in investment and in schedule.. Now I trust less.

But that is all personal, and is not my point here. My point is that, fairly, customers should be able to expect this kind of news are public before the launch of the product.

If you put that much effort into this game i literally cannot see how this news ruins the game for you.

I invite you to ask your friends and family to get you these for christmas and have a great 2018.

Or buy them once a month anyway. Imagine that they released them early for those that want them, but aren't forcing you to buy all or nothing.

I bought triple core sets to start with because it seems there is a lot of depth in this game, it almost feels like a board game with cards. There also seems to be a high ceiling for one to hone his skills because the mechanics are quite nuanced. I might hold off to start buying the dynasty packs until I know for sure how much more I want to invest in the game. I am never the less very excited about the aggressive early release schedule because it means I will be facing different decks all the time, giving me a better game experience than with a core only meta. Sure, I might be at a slight disadvantage with a smaller card pool if I decide to wait regarding the dynasty packs, but Im sure something competitively viable will come out of triple cores, at least it wont be what everyone is playing (because some people will buy all the extra packs and make different decks for me to play against:)

Quite happy about the decision. I think the main motivation (but I only played CCGs before from FFG, so I may be wrong) is that even 3 cores offer almost zero deck-building possibilities, due to the high number of factions in the game and the Dynasty deck-building rules (this being the biggest issue and afaik something happening only in L5R). Looking at your deck for months only to decide if put 2 or 3 copies of a card is not that much fun, especially for loyal players that are going to play mostly with one clan in the competitive scenario.

While LCGs have survived so far with the "trickle" release plan, this is the biggest complaint I heard from their playerbase, how the meta took 6 month or more o shape and how the incremental flavour of this change would dilute the impact anyway.

I would have still preferred the release of a deluxe box instead of this 6-weeks-6-packs model, as I'm pretty sure my shop will not receive all of them in time and I'll go to Madrid without the full card-pool... Not that it would have made any difference on my poor tournament results anyway

Hm.

You definitely will not have to buy every pack to make a competitive deck for Worlds, and most of the people will not go to worlds.

They physically cant maintain this rhythm, FFG has difficulties producing all their games in sufficient numbers and inside release windows, so there must be a pause before new cycles.

This injection of cards is very very good for meta out of the core set, just wish they spoiled more.

15$ a week is still not that much really, but again, you dont have to buy every pack, if some cards are essential you can buy those packs or maybe even trade them.

There is a problem of intimidating players and steeping the entrance for new players.

Overall, im inclined towards this being a good decision.

****, I used to spend $15/week drafting M:tG. $15/week is a good budget for a hobby.

40 minutes ago, Dovla said:

Hm.

You definitely will not have to buy every pack to make a competitive deck for Worlds, and most of the people will not go to worlds.

They physically cant maintain this rhythm, FFG has difficulties producing all their games in sufficient numbers and inside release windows, so there must be a pause before new cycles.

This injection of cards is very very good for meta out of the core set, just wish they spoiled more.

15$ a week is still not that much really, but again, you dont have to buy every pack, if some cards are essential you can buy those packs or maybe even trade them.

There is a problem of intimidating players and steeping the entrance for new players.

Overall, im inclined towards this being a good decision.

It's been 'confirmed' among the show owner set that this injection is applicable to the first release and that we shouldn't expect this to become the norm.

That said, I wouldn't be remotely surprised if for this game, given it's history, they tried experimenting with an approach that goes for a best of both worlds deal, where we get a flurry of packs every x months or so, and quicker rotations. I for one would be extremely pleased with that.

Personally i'm pro this decision. I played during the launch of WH:I, Netrunner, Conquest, Agot2 and Star Wars and the slow trickle of cards was a bit annoying. Especially if you had been active prelaunch and was proxying decks before the final product was even released. For me the fun part of deck construction in Agot2 began when the second cycle and second deluxe was released (and some factons are still a bit lacking imho, I mainly play multiplayer though and falling back from the nearly 2000 card pool in Agot1 to 200 at launch of Agot2 was a bit depressing)

Although I would have been happy with 2 packs/every month during the first 3 months instead of all 6 in 6 weeks to easen the financial burden for some players.

Now, you don't have to buy all the cards immediatly. Proxying for casual play and borrowing for tournaments are options if you would like to spread the cost a bit. The kingsroads I printed when Agot2 began are still being used till this day.

In addition I'm quite happy with the core set itself. Only wandering samurai should not have been a 3-off.

Another advantage of the rapid release of the first set is that a 3rd core set isn't completly necessary for a variety in deck construcion in 2 months time.

It could have been handled better by FFG though and I understand the sentiment of some who would feel "backstabbed" by only announcing this after the release.

This is a very intresting approach.

It apes the release of a CCG set. A number of weeks where players are still hunting for cards and experimenting with new decks.

For the players that want to game each week this will be a huge boon.

For casuals they can check out coverage of the trends and pick up packs that make decks that interest them. If they don't game much more than 1-3 a month there will not be much pressure to buy everything

it still puts a lot of stress on the distribution system and store offering 6 different product skus.

I think this is an important test and a bold move.

i still want to see them try doing a pack with one copy each of 60 new cards. Players would just buy 1-3 packs like the core set but there a 0 wasted cards. I feel that would encourage more trading and drafting.

You know, I'll just give them the benefit of the doubt. A lot of people one these FFG are all doom and gloom the moment things change, especially when it's an IP they love. Take a look at the L5R RPG beta, and there's people who are calling it the worst thing ever because of things like custom dice (without even giving it a fair chance). Yes, 6 packs in 6 weeks can be a bit of a drain on your wallet, and if this turns out to be something they're going to do every 2-3 months, then yes, for some it might not be feasible to keep up. But we know nothing about their plans, other than that they're going to try out this new distribution model. So can we please just not assume the worst all the time, and actually give it some time to see what happens and then judge for yourself whether or not this is a good thing? I swear, it's just like the Phoenix going crazy over Meishodo... give the thing a try before you start shaking your fists!

I'm guessing this is a one time thing. Nothing to lose one's mind over.

3 hours ago, SideshowLucifer said:

I'm guessing this is a one time thing. Nothing to lose one's mind over.

I agree. Nothing they said made it sound like this is going to be the norm for the entire run of the game. It's just that when all you have are the cores, a monthly release of new cards would seem agonizingly slow. Once the card pool is a little deeper, the standard, monthly pace won't be so bad.

15 hours ago, RandomJC said:

You know what this is? Day 1 DOC, why weren't these cards included in the core if they were going to be released so soon?

Well, you can only fit so many cards in a box without driving up the cost, so...

Just now, JJ48 said:

Well, you can only fit so many cards in a box without driving up the cost, so...

pfft. You seen the inside of those boxes? So much space to just shove cards in.

Total ripoff cash grab bs.

4 minutes ago, RandomJC said:

pfft. You seen the inside of those boxes? So much space to just shove cards in.

Total ripoff cash grab bs.

So you want them to add six expansions worth of cards to the core, and still expect them to sell for the same price?

(Also, out of curiosity, what did you mean by "DOC"?)