I played a game last week as Phoenix, wherein I won a Ring, played Display of Power to steal the opponent's Ring, won a second Ring, and then ended up triggering Tsukune's ability for the final two Ring effects, meaning I managed to get all five Ring effects in one turn!

I joked about it being an "enlightenment victory", but actually, I hope they never bring that back as a victory condition. It wasn't exactly easy, but it didn't seem too terribly difficult, either (and even if they made it that you had to claim all five Rings, I have to imagine people would end up finding ways to do that too reliably, too). The game is great where it is, with primary victory conditions being beating your opponents in court or in battle, with Honor/Dishonor being boundaries, and Rings being an important part of each conflict!

You know, given the recent threads discussing the possibility of Honor victories and how close a player can get to winning through Honor in the shortest amount of turns, I too don’t think that an Enlightenment victory should be in the offering.

Just my thoughts.

I don't mind fragile honor rocket decks that are based on a combination of blind luck and poor play from your opponent.

I would not like to see an alt win con that is relatively easy to pull off during normal play of one clan.

If enlightenment happens I hope it's something far more difficult than claiming all 5 rings. I don't think this game really needs it. The 5 Rings are already integral to the game in a way the old game could never capture and the competing resources of fate and honor make for a very engaging design that balanced the 3 primary win conditions much better than the old game.

As cool as an enlightenment victory was in 1995, the old game eventually killed that and turned it into a joke. If enlightenment is brought back like it was originally and near impossible to pull off I wouldn't mind that at all. I sure as neck don't want to see enlightenment brought back as what it ended up being by the end of the CCG.

We'll see. The conflict & ring mechanics that anchor the new system weren't in the original in any such form. Some people (not the OP) have commented about actually claiming the five rings as an enlightenment victory. I think that's just a significant military/political victory. Enlightenment victories (of which I loathed, because I had no viable defense against) were performing a gambit outside of the other forms of play. I think, with the way the new system works, all back and forth, defending against an enlightenment gambit could be more doable.

If Enlightenment victory is going to be a thing, I'd rather see it based off claiming all five Rings as opposed to using five ring effects. Otherwise it's limited to a Phoenix victory condition powered by Tsukune.

I don't think we need a basic enlightenment victory win condition.

But I think we could definitely use more cards which interact with the rings to help with honor/dishonor/stronghold wins.

6 minutes ago, BCumming said:

If Enlightenment victory is going to be a thing, I'd rather see it based off claiming all five Rings as opposed to using five ring effects. Otherwise it's limited to a Phoenix victory condition powered by Tsukune.

And Isawa Kaede. Put Kaede and Seeker of Knowlege in a Fire ring conflict as an attacker, and if you win that conflict, you get to resolve three ring effects as per Kaede’s ability. Now just use Tsukune for the other two (if they haven’t been claimed)

Although you’ll need a lot of fate to have this three characters in the board at the same time.

I'd rather have it be unrelated to the Ring tokens, or if then only loosely based on them.

So this is the game designer in me speaking:

At some point add a complete new feature to the game with its own tokens: Elemental Enlightenment Tokens (think honor/dishonor tokens). If a character performs a difficult task (condition) you may place such a token on him with various effects based on the element. Which element is either bound to the condition itself or maybe by the ring you just claimed [I like this more. A player going for an Enlightenment victory would have to go after all the rings even when another claimed ring effect would be more advantageous for him]. There's only one EET for each element. After a character with an EET leaves play (no fate only? doesn't count if assassinated?), no other character belonging to that player may be enlighted by this element until the end of the game. So there should be two sets of EET, one for each player. The EET is placed on the stronghold and not discarded. Once a player has collected all five tokens on his stronghold he wins the game.

Don't be too harsh. Just a really uncooked idea.

I would rather see the concept of enlightened be a status token like Honored and Dishonored rather than a win condition.


Maybe it would give you the character an ability similar to Way of the dragon.

Something like:

“You may trigger each of the enlightened characters' printed trigger abilities an additional time each round (or specified period)”

No stat modification or anything like that.

I dont wanna see enlightenment , solely because they already put the rings into the game so beautifuly that i dont think it is needed. With that said if they did some type of 5 unaligned guys that once you claimed a ring and did an affect you can search your deck for them, and they couldnt be used in combat (because that would be like a super Keeper lol) and if you control all 5 you win, with some type ability to lose them maybe. At that point tho i feel it would be super hard to balance. I already feel the role cards can easily become unbalanced and then which ever clan gets that role could have a huge power sing. But having another win con, and having to splash new cards for each clan to be able to compete for that win con would be very hard.

I could see an enlightenment victory in a future cycle, but not anytime soon. It would probably be a set of cards that come into play as a reaction to you performing some activity that is related to the concept of each ring (not necessarily just winning the ring). The best part about this is by putting it in a cycle, it will eventually rotate out of tournament play (allowing them to add it back in later if it works well).

Enlightenment victory will definitely be through a card. Let’s not forget that in the Rules Reference, under Winning, there’s a point that says:

◊ Some card abilities can introduce additional victory conditions to the game. Such a condition immediately ends the game if it is met .

So it has to be a victory condition that can be achieved with the actual elements within the game. They’re not gonna add a new victory condition to the game outside a card, or new tokens or mechanics.

Perhaps a new universal role card for enlightenment.

I think that Claiming all 5 rings in the same turn would be a more likely condition than carrying out the effects of all 5 rings.

Enlightenment: 1 Fate. Attachment, Philosophy. You can only play this immediately after claiming your 5th Ring this turn - attach this to your Stronghold. You have +1M and +1P in all Conflicts in which you have a participating character.

or...

Enlightenment: 0 Fate. Attachment, Philosophy. You can only play this immediately after claiming your 5th Ring this turn - attach this to your Stronghold. This stronghold has +1 Fate production.

Wording needs work, but you get the idea.

18 hours ago, feydruatha said:

I would rather see the concept of enlightened be a status token like Honored and Dishonored rather than a win condition.


Maybe it would give you the character an ability similar to Way of the dragon.

Something like:

“You may trigger each of the enlightened characters' printed trigger abilities an additional time each round (or specified period)”

No stat modification or anything like that.

That's a neat idea. It could even have a ''dark'' side similar to honor/dishonor.

My take:

Enlightened

Interupt: When this character leaves play, put a fate from your supply on another character.

and

Misled

Forced Interupt: When this character leaves play, take a fate from a character you control (if able), and put it back on your supply.

Rokugan is politics, warfare and spirituality. Removing enlightenment kind of stole the heart from l5r. I would approve of it coming back in some form

The hardest balance to find with design of an enlightenment victory is that it should be achievable by any clan.

3 minutes ago, Nitenman said:

The hardest balance to find with design of an enlightenment victory is that it should be achievable by any clan.

Not necessarily. Not all win conditions need to be approachable by every clan equally. Scorpion decks will almost never win via honoring, and most clans will have a difficult time of it. Lion and Phoenix are probably better set to pursue an honor victory than most other clans. Similarly, Crab and Lion clans can't participate well in the political side of conflicts and Crane and Scorpion are weak militarily. It's fine for clans to have strengths and weaknesses, including not being able to pursue one of the win conditions effectively, as long as it's competitive on another win condition.

23 minutes ago, Nitenman said:

The hardest balance to find with design of an enlightenment victory is that it should be achievable by any clan.

16 minutes ago, AradonTemplar said:

Not necessarily. Not all win conditions need to be approachable by every clan equally. Scorpion decks will almost never win via honoring, and most clans will have a difficult time of it. Lion and Phoenix are probably better set to pursue an honor victory than most other clans. Similarly, Crab and Lion clans can't participate well in the political side of conflicts and Crane and Scorpion are weak militarily. It's fine for clans to have strengths and weaknesses, including not being able to pursue one of the win conditions effectively, as long as it's competitive on another win condition.

It is not that every clan should be able to Enlighten equally, but that it should be achievable . I achieved a Dishonor victory with my Unicorn deck. Is it supposed to do that? Oh heck no. But it did. Every single clan can achieve a Stronghold-breaking victory. So yes, I agree that, if there were to be an Enlightenment victory, every clan should be able to do it. Perhaps not all equally. But potentially.

That was my point. Of course in previous CCG dragon and phenix had sometimes an easier focus on enlightenment, but if a crab was putting his back into it, he could achieve it too. Achievable is key here.