1 hour ago, Ishi Tonu said:

I'm not sure what prompted this particular one. I seem to recall one person saying they thought dishonor was NPE in general, during a different thread about BC, and then this thread popped up and now here we are.

I started this thread in response to learning that there was someone basically campaigning to keep Scorpion from getting a Keeper role because they were just so absolutely completely sure that BC in Scorpion would ruin everything for new players. It had nothing to do with Hinomura's actual choice, and I've been pretty clear that I agree with the decision of Seeker of Void and all the reasoning behind that choice that you can find on dojooflies, the FB group, here, etc.

I've been playing Scorpion since Samurai Edition of the CCG, which basically means I've seen people complaining about Dishonor for 10 years, almost nonstop. It's always been baseless, IMO, as the only time Dishonor was truly NPE was waaaay back in the early days of Breach of Etiquette without a Blood Money rule, and that problem was solved long before I joined the game.
In my experience, the only time in the CCG that the player base was largely okay with Dishonor was when it wasn't competitive. I remember Bayushi Saya making more people angry than Chagatai xp4, and that's ridiculous.

So when the LCG dropped it's very first "solid Dishonor card" and the response was an immediate chicken little, I saw the last 10 years trying to repeat themselves going forward and I wanted to do my part to nip that nonsense in the bud.
And as you said, now here we are.

5 minutes ago, Soshi Nimue said:

[comment about throwing scorpion under a bus ^]

And you don't see the complete contradiction here?

Was gonna post something about this. Ninja'd.

5 hours ago, Soshi Nimue said:

[comment about throwing scorpion under a bus ^]

And you don't see the complete contradiction here?

Dedicating a pick to someone is not the same as the reason for the pick.

Nope, I absolutely don't.

People in the real world matter a whole lot more than pretty much anything else. What Brad tried to do was worthy of respect and admiration, and he undertook this course of action knowing he would get heat for it. He also surrendered his Hatamoto position to even be in with a chance of making the Role pick. He fell one game short in a field of hundreds. That's just bloody awesome.

My Role selection was never based on his conclusions. It was certainly cool that our picks aligned (and as an aside, Brad was definitely considering a trolly pick initially, but was talked round), but these were two independent situations.

Still not sure why people would think I'd sabotage the Clan I've played at the three biggest L5R LCG events, but I'm sure it makes sense to someone.

I don't think it is fair to say you were trying to sabotage the clan, and you've gotten a lot of undeserved flak.
But I also wouldn't agree that respect and admiration are due to claims that the sky is close to falling.

Brad never claimed the sky was failing - that's an overreaction that can be attributed to others. His sole concern was that Scorpion with Backhanded Compliment (and to an extent Disdainful Remark) would be an unpleasant and grinding experience. He didn't want to face it, and he didn't want others to face it.

That's it. That's the extent of his complaint. He didn't make any denouncement of dishonour as a victory condition. He didn't make any grand predictions about how the environment would play out. He simply thought that the combination of Scorpion and BC would be unfun, and he took what steps he could to influence that, using the rules and framework that FFG laid out.

There is no witch-hunt against dishonour as a victory condition.

15 minutes ago, Hinomura said:

Brad never claimed the sky was failing - that's an overreaction that can be attributed to others. His sole concern was that Scorpion with Backhanded Compliment (and to an extent Disdainful Remark) would be an unpleasant and grinding experience. He didn't want to face it, and he didn't want others to face it.

That's it. That's the extent of his complaint. He didn't make any denouncement of dishonour as a victory condition. He didn't make any grand predictions about how the environment would play out. He simply thought that the combination of Scorpion and BC would be unfun, and he took what steps he could to influence that, using the rules and framework that FFG laid out.

There is no witch-hunt against dishonour as a victory condition.

On 11/4/2017 at 11:01 PM, kiramode said:

Josh Johnson was also going to go seeker. Brad has been hardcore campaigning against Backhanded Compliment for a long time. The moment the cards got spoiled I got a call at like 8am from him talking about how the game is doomed.

Make no mistake, the guy cares about the game and legitimately believes Backhanded Compliment is bad for the game. If it were just limit 1 per turn it wouldn't be so bad.

....

I think it's mostly a question of perception. People always consider the military victory as the "main" victory condition. For them, you play your cards to go punch that stronghold the opponent has and see it fall. And getting cut short by an unexpected dishonor victory can be frustrating. But this comes to my opinion of a bad understanding of the game, and in consequence bad deck building and bad decisions during the game.

Let me share you a small story, it's the first game with this new L5R LCG I played. We played together with my wife. She has 0 history with L5R and had no specific expectations. I used to play Old5R since Lotus, but haven't taken out my remaining cards in years. We didn't knew a lot what to expect from the game play for each clan, and she asked me to pick what could match the best for her. As she has a quite defensive play stile and likes brute force, I made her a Crab deck. As for me, I picked Scorpion obviously (Now that I now a bit better the cards, I realise it was a terrible match up for her). we played out of 3 core sets, discovering the card interactions , and after a few turns, 3 of my provinces are broken, 2 on her side, my clan champion is still not here and on her end, Hida Kisada is about to make his entrance. She tried to keep up with the honor as much as she could but between my stronghold and the last 2 characters I dishonored on her side, she was down to 1 honor.

Arrives the new turn, she brings out Hida Kisada during the dynasty phase, along with a berserker if I recall well. She plays a way of the crab sacrificing a hiruma scout and forces me to get rid of one of the few guys I had on my side. I don't recall what I had on the table, but I was outnumbered and clearly about to get wrecked. That would be the last turn for sure.

And I realize I have a contingency plan in hand. Arrives the draw phase, obviously she bets 1, so do I, and play contingency plan. I draw 0 cards, she has to give me the last honor point and loses by dishonor, right before she gets the chance to launch the final epic attack on my stronghold that would have sealed her victory.

This resulted in basically playing a card saying " you lost" with no option to counter it for her. She knew she was very thigh in honor and she expected to be really in great danger, but losing at the draw phase was not something she imagined.

Even as a scorpion, I must say I felt dirty here. And such victory had really a bitter taste because it lacked any "panache"

In a competitive environment, someone falling down to 1 honor and exposing himself like this would just deserve his defeat. This NPE would happen mostly for new players, and I think it's a necessary path to understand why honor is such a vital resource in this game.

My only wish for dishonor is to have some way to make it more epic. The more interactive and the more options there are to fight for this victory condition, the better will it be perceived. And from there dishonor could become something fun to fight for.

FFG! please make Dishonor fun again !

I think the control elements are far more NPE than the dishonor burn itself. Dishonor how to use several tricks to keep itself afloat and not lose the game while making sure you lose the game, it doesn't do that with brute force but a good amount of tricks. Those tricks included nullifying effective characters and making sure your characters do nothing. While they aren't intending to smash your stronghold, they are still winning the game. It's that lack of connection in intent that makes it feel NPE since you're not even playing the same game, and the tricks.

To be clear: Brad calling me to say the game is doomed wasn't about the competitive landscape. It was about how players were going to quit after getting burned down on honor with very little way to interact with it. It's not interactive and is a serious NPE for players that aren't prepared for it.

Nobody wants to see people quit the game over an unfun deck.

13 minutes ago, Soshi Nimue said:

....

I like how you bold one section but ignore the next paragraph where it's mentioned that Brad just has a problem with BC. So what if he overreacted when the cards were first previewed? He'd definitely calmed down by the time he got to Worlds.

Ultimately, it matters not what you or anyone else thinks his or my motivation was. I hope you still play Scorpion, and I hope you both enjoy it and have success with it. Because honestly, it's easy to have a forum name related to the clan and claim some kind of moral high ground, but we're the guys out there getting results.

I thinks we all need to reread the recently released fiction, "The Stories We Tell", meditate on the meaning of the story, and go back to bidding not 5 every turn.

45 minutes ago, Hinomura said:

I like how you bold one section but ignore the next paragraph where it's mentioned that Brad just has a problem with BC. So what if he overreacted when the cards were first previewed? He'd definitely calmed down by the time he got to Worlds.

Ultimately, it matters not what you or anyone else thinks his or my motivation was. I hope you still play Scorpion, and I hope you both enjoy it and have success with it. Because honestly, it's easy to have a forum name related to the clan and claim some kind of moral high ground, but we're the guys out there getting results.

-1 for missing the perfect mic drop opportunity.

There's footage of the Role selection ceremony online. That was my mic drop moment there

7 minutes ago, Hinomura said:

There's footage of the Role selection ceremony online. That was my mic drop moment there

And GenCon......and......

Keep this up you could land a gig as the next Verizon guy.

2 hours ago, Hellvlad said:

I think it's mostly a question of perception. People always consider the military victory as the "main" victory condition. For them, you play your cards to go punch that stronghold the opponent has and see it fall. And getting cut short by an unexpected dishonor victory can be frustrating. But this comes to my opinion of a bad understanding of the game, and in consequence bad deck building and bad decisions during the game.

Let me share you a small story, it's the first game with this new L5R LCG I played. We played together with my wife. She has 0 history with L5R and had no specific expectations. I used to play Old5R since Lotus, but haven't taken out my remaining cards in years. We didn't knew a lot what to expect from the game play for each clan, and she asked me to pick what could match the best for her. As she has a quite defensive play stile and likes brute force, I made her a Crab deck. As for me, I picked Scorpion obviously (Now that I now a bit better the cards, I realise it was a terrible match up for her). we played out of 3 core sets, discovering the card interactions , and after a few turns, 3 of my provinces are broken, 2 on her side, my clan champion is still not here and on her end, Hida Kisada is about to make his entrance. She tried to keep up with the honor as much as she could but between my stronghold and the last 2 characters I dishonored on her side, she was down to 1 honor.

Arrives the new turn, she brings out Hida Kisada during the dynasty phase, along with a berserker if I recall well. She plays a way of the crab sacrificing a hiruma scout and forces me to get rid of one of the few guys I had on my side. I don't recall what I had on the table, but I was outnumbered and clearly about to get wrecked. That would be the last turn for sure.

And I realize I have a contingency plan in hand. Arrives the draw phase, obviously she bets 1, so do I, and play contingency plan. I draw 0 cards, she has to give me the last honor point and loses by dishonor, right before she gets the chance to launch the final epic attack on my stronghold that would have sealed her victory.

This resulted in basically playing a card saying " you lost" with no option to counter it for her. She knew she was very thigh in honor and she expected to be really in great danger, but losing at the draw phase was not something she imagined.

Even as a scorpion, I must say I felt dirty here. And such victory had really a bitter taste because it lacked any "panache"

In a competitive environment, someone falling down to 1 honor and exposing himself like this would just deserve his defeat. This NPE would happen mostly for new players, and I think it's a necessary path to understand why honor is such a vital resource in this game.

My only wish for dishonor is to have some way to make it more epic. The more interactive and the more options there are to fight for this victory condition, the better will it be perceived. And from there dishonor could become something fun to fight for.

FFG! please make Dishonor fun again !

I do think FFG has done a good job already in making dishonor a bit better than it was in the CCG. The dishonor decks I played in the CCG tended to be very much about avoiding battles and interaction. Also, because of the way the game was structured, some clans had enough honor to make dishonor strategies effective against them, while not being able to gain enough honor to fight back against dishonor without devoting your deck specifically to that. This tended to mean that either your deck was strong against dishonor decks and you just rolled over them, or else your deck was weak to dishonor decks and was absolutely helpless against them. Neither scenario was particularly fun.

At least in the LCG, honor-for-cards is built into the mechanics, so every clan has at least a little control (no more "all my guys have 0 personal honor"), and conflicts are much more important, even to honor/dishonor clans. Hopefully FFG will continue working to make honor/dishonor more viable without removing the interaction, which was really the main NPE in the CCG.

(Incidentally, what is this "mic drop" thing people keep mentioning?)

On 11/5/2017 at 11:16 PM, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

For more than a decade, people have complained that anything that isn't pure "bushido brawl" (ie: smashing face via military, or now mil/pol I suppose) is bad for the game and unfun inherently. Dishonor has taken the brunt of the hate, in my experience, but Honor has had it's fair share too.
I was reaaally hoping this nonsense would die with the CCG. Unfortunately it doesn't seem so.

Stop. Just... just stop. This dead horse needs a break from the beatings.

There is more than one victory condition in this game. If you don't plan for that, you're going to have a bad time. It's not the victory condition's fault, it's your fault.
Build your deck appropriately, or expect to get destroyed by play-styles you *decided* to ignore.

NPE c'mon snowflakes, the multiple ways to win are part of what makes this game Great!

Sour grapes should go play checkers!

8 hours ago, Ishi Tonu said:

-1 for missing the perfect mic drop opportunity.

What mic drop opportunity? The paragraph following does nothing to contradict the bolded sentence, in fact it enforces it. Further he may have become less emotional, but he became no less determined and fixed in his judgement as he went through with his plan to throw away his hatamoto and play Scorpion just to sabotage them.

As for the mic drop during the ceremony ... You mean the one where you're wearing the Spider mon and dedicating your decision to Brad who tried to sabotage Scorpion?

Sure, you come back now and say "Oh I'm a total Scorpion player and this was the strong choice I wanted" yet looking back... Spider mon... Dedicated to the saboteur... that sure wasn't the tune you were whistling then...

You know nothing Jon Snow

Going in a different direction - can people suggest reliable ways for Dishonor to get over the last hump of "1 honor" without being the same kind of "NPE" that Backhanded (and to a lesser extent, Contingency Plan) are being considered?

Keyword: Reliable (something Ring effects and Dishonored status discards are not).

45 minutes ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

Going in a different direction - can people suggest reliable ways for Dishonor to get over the last hump of "1 honor" without being the same kind of "NPE" that Backhanded (and to a lesser extent, Contingency Plan) are being considered?

Keyword: Reliable (something Ring effects and Dishonored status discards are not).

The most reliable way right now is dishonoring characters that will be discarded at the end of the turn. I personally don't think that a strict dishonor strategy is competitive right now.

5 hours ago, Soshi Nimue said:

What mic drop opportunity? The paragraph following does nothing to contradict the bolded sentence, in fact it enforces it. Further he may have become less emotional, but he became no less determined and fixed in his judgement as he went through with his plan to throw away his hatamoto and play Scorpion just to sabotage them.

As for the mic drop during the ceremony ... You mean the one where you're wearing the Spider mon and dedicating your decision to Brad who tried to sabotage Scorpion?

Sure, you come back now and say "Oh I'm a total Scorpion player and this was the strong choice I wanted" yet looking back... Spider mon... Dedicated to the saboteur... that sure wasn't the tune you were whistling then...

I already suspected English wasn't your first language, but now it looks like it's pushed into distant third by your ability to speak total bollocks.

I saw a guy over the weekend wearing a Vikings jersey. Do you think maybe an invasion is coming?

In case it's not obvious: we're not magical Samurai, and Rokugan isn't real. The ONLY determination of what makes a 'Scorpion player' is 'someone who plays in a tournament as Scorpion'. The unarguable fact is that in the LCG, you're a much less successful Scorpion player than Brad or I. And for all your bleating, you're stuck with the choice I earned for the next twelve months.

Have fun.

On 11/7/2017 at 3:41 PM, Ishi Tonu said:

WotCh is a card that you can play around in game, of you know what to look for. You can't do that with BC.

I disagree with this statement. You very much CAN play around BC, and you can play around it easier than you can WotCH. The thing with WotCH is its a neutral card. It can literally be in any or every deck. You will never know if its in the deck or not, unless you happen to know the exact contents of the deck you are playing. With BC, you only have to worry about it if you are playing against that particular role, and only then if they are splashing scorpion.

I think the real problem shouldn't be considering a playstyle an NPE and for the most part an individual card either. Mechanically, honor is a resource which is harder to gain but has a significant downside if you spend it all. The thing is that attacking it doesn't force the opponent to not play the game while watching the attacker play. It still requires interactivity. To be honest, the bid for cards can cause the most issues and that is purely gambling and there is skill to it.

Now I realize the examples where a player felt there was nothing they could do but, that could have happened through challenges as well, just with a different set of cards drawn. If that were the case, then we may as well just say losing is an NPE and be done with it. And while at least someone out there tried to make us think there are winners and those who get participation prizes, losing gives us an experience that we can examine and figure out if our choice was good or bad; informed or naive. It allows the development of other skills necessary to succeeding at your goal, i.e. winning.

L5R old and new has been about the game within the game, I think even moreso in the new version as it does an exceptional job of not allowing a vice grip on controlling your opponent. The downward spiral can now be mitigated. it is, however, an exercise of patience and observation.

To be honest, between the Crane and Scorpion Keeper events, I can see a really unfun deck forming that would be mad grindy, a real groaner for people to sit down across from, and probably something that would make tournament play a pain in the backside on account of everything going to time forever.

Also, if people want to play that deck then they totally can. I would recommend they do so to just get it out of their system, and be greatful that the tournament play will be a better thing for Scorpion being Seeker.