1 hour ago, SideshowLucifer said:

Oh I think it's much more impactful. It's existence alone will change how people bid. This hurts me since I want people to bid high.

I see how you can get there, and you may very well be right. The reason I come down on the side of BC being more impactful is because it is a card you have to account for as you decide on what deck to play. 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. So if there ends up being no card to counter BC outside of the Crane and Scorpion "counterspells" you are shaping your whole deck on its abilty to handle that one card. Nobody is going to pack counterspells or force a crane or scorpion splash just to deal with WotCh, because they don't have to.

While WotCh might possibly see more widespread inclusion into decks, it doesn't have as big of an impact on the meta game because it's a situational and completely telegraphed effect. It does have power in its bluff ability but when you're in the final rounds and decklists are known you lose that unless you're actually running it and at which point it's a suspect card to be including to begin with. BC is just straight up good no matter how you slice it.

To me a card is more impactful on the meta if people are building their deck to handle it, not because the card being played in high numbers.

I guess BC just doesn't seem to bad to me because there are so many ways to play around it.

I tend to bleed my opponent's hand dry. I can always Air Ring to get my honor back, or use Fire Ring to honor a guy will be leaving.

I can see how brutal it could be with the perfect hand of 3 copies and 3 levies, I'm just not sure how often that perfect storm would happen.

Seperatly played, they aren't bad and can be mitigated. It's when you have enough of them at once that the dishonor bomb could be problematic.

10 hours ago, SideshowLucifer said:

Yeah but then Crab is stuck with Scorpion splash, which is not really good.

Why? If your goal is to build towards the Dishonor win condition, how is Scorpion a bad splash?
Calling In Favors, Fiery Madness, I Can Swim, and Unassuming Yojimbo all seem to be solid splashes without unreasonable targeting requirements for Crab (and if, in the future, Crab can front enough Courtiers, you can add Forged Edict to the list).

All but fiery madness really don't help crab in how they play honestly.

Crab has big military, affect cancels, and sacrifice abilities. Most of their dishonor comes from running people out of cards from hand since they can almost always bid lower and still maintain hand advantage.

The scorpion splash does nothing to help with that, and in fact, actually goes against those strengths.

The far better choice is unicorn which reinforces hand advantage and allows you to flip political to military where your strongest.

I just can't see anything in scorpion worth giving that up for.

On 11/6/2017 at 7:29 AM, Doji Meshou said:

ETA: it's also uncontested acceleration; as a Scorpion player, there's no reason not to sit on your Backhanded Compliments until your opponent hits 3-or-fewer Honor and immediately Dishonor them out. The only counterplay is artificially keeping your Honor at 4+ at all times or saving a bunch of Voice of Honors/Forged Edicts.

So if you are playing against a keeper scorpion, you need to be more careful about your honor and bid lower. What is artificial about that? That is just how games work. This game right now NEEDS more potential punishment for aggressive bidding. Bidding is only fun if there are risks to dropping low. It makes people prioritize the air ring more. All things considered, it increases the interactivity of the game, not decreases it. 5 bids all day every day are boring as anything, so dishonor/honor victories need to be a threat to make bidding interactive and interesting.

If the duel thread lasted so long with 1000 Vs 1, imagine how far this will go....

56 minutes ago, Eugene Earnshaw said:

So if you are playing against a keeper scorpion, you need to be more careful about your honor and bid lower. What is artificial about that? That is just how games work. This game right now NEEDS more potential punishment for aggressive bidding. Bidding is only fun if there are risks to dropping low. It makes people prioritize the air ring more. All things considered, it increases the interactivity of the game, not decreases it. 5 bids all day every day are boring as anything, so dishonor/honor victories need to be a threat to make bidding interactive and interesting.

I think part of the problem is many people (myself included), haven't really figured out proper bidding strategy. As the game grows, people will learn how to manage this effect, and the complaints should lessen.

I do agree that should be more of a trade-off for aggressive bidding, and I expect it will come sooner rather than later. For instance, in other LCGs I have played, there are cards that can penalize players for having too many cards in their hand. Cards that give you benefits or your opponent penalties based on the number of cards in your opponents' hand would be rather useful in making excessive card draw a double-edged sword.

I personally love what they've done with Dishonor in the game. In Old5R, it was definitely NPE; usually non-interactive, and would drag games out forever when playing against an honor deck. FFG has done dishonor right this time. It feels like you're on a knife's edge when you get into honor trouble, which is exactly how it should feel.

I don't see how dishonor is NPE in this game - even with BC. If a Scorpion player has BC in their hand and you are above the range of being honored out, then they have dead cards in their hand. If they bid higher to draw cards to make up for the dead BC then they are giving you back the honor that BC could have taken. If they don't bid high then they won't have precious events to use to win the game with. Scorpion aren't strong for what's on their cards as much as what is in their hands.

If you feel you need to counter dishonor (or simply want to play an honor deck yourself) then Way of the Chrysanthemum has as much effect as BC does. A single well timed use of WotC can counter a deck's worth of BC. Sure it costs 2 fate but you only need 1. I think this is also a card that will push out some honor victories.

On 11/6/2017 at 10:55 AM, Ishi Tonu said:

Name one card that all clans can play reliably to gain honor or stop BC from causing honor loss.

Censure

1 hour ago, Krashwire said:

Censure

Gotta love dat preview cycle.

8 hours ago, Krashwire said:

Censure

Almost

I have been thinking about it and ya all know what? BC and dishonor both are not npe. The fact that there is a clan completly immune to dishonor victory, that doesnt ever need to worry about secondary win cons is xd

I'm no scared. I'm just gonna hide in my yurt

It's such a shame though that this discussion occurred after proper clan roles were chosen. I feel like a much more grounded discussion would have been a better basis in restricting a clan from using BC than a knee-jerk "the sky is falling" reaction.

Alas, that's the consequence of giving this amount of control to any one player.

Normally I try to avoid beating a dead horse, but then that's this whole thread in a nutshell. The players involved in the decision (yes, plural) have already stated multiple times that the role choice for scorpion was made with other reasons in mind than "BC IS NPE OMG". The choice wasn't made to handicap the clan.

Zesu gets it. There's a thread over on the Dojo of Lies discussing Role selection, there was one on Loyalty of the Scorpion, and I discussed things with Scorpion players at the event and at home.

The Role selection was an informed decision made with the best interests of the Scorpion Clan in mind. It certainly wasn't an attempt to neuter Dishonour...that's my preferred play style, and I'm good at.

Mechanics and cards actually have less of an effect on an NPE than player conduct, both at events and online. It's not been particularly enjoyable being the target of some of the insults thrown around over the last few days, and that's certainly done more to make me question whether I should be playing Scorpion going forward than any mechanics ever could.

Having played against Scorpion since new roles chosen it was most certainly the correct choice , it's definitely a better option than possibly getting 1 or 3 cards in a 40-45 card deck. The Backhanded Compliment card is just okay, everyone is making a mountain out of a molehill on that card and frankly I'm tired of it. Being able to field the two current void provinces and forcing your opponent into having to attack at least one of them is more brutal than I think the complaining Scorpion players have realized and is present EVERY game. Also the additional fate when those provinces are just flipped means you have the fate to play cards on the defense you might not have had before.

I think a lot of these threads blurred together and were started before all the facts were out. 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 have my opinions about BC, but, in general I don't feel that dishonor, or honor or province destruction, are NPE in this new version of L5R. As much as I enjoyed the CCG, and I mostly look back on it with pleasant memories, the old game was full of NPE and a lot of it had to do with the design. The initial unique rule, original events, honor requirements, allowing combat and non-combat phases, rules of presence, etc. All these things combined for a game that encouraged people to find the best deck that had the least amount of interaction with their opponent. Sure you sit across the table from someone and 'bowed the table' to them but there wasn't the same back and forth interaction we get from the new game.

But that was kind of the way design was 20 years ago. The design of the LCG promotes interaction in all phases of the game. When a card seems to be out of whack with the overall design of the game, I think some concern is appropriate. As much as I loved the old CCG, the new game is far superior imo, and I really don't want there to be a repeat of past mistakes.

I love this game. I've enjoyed every single one of my victories (no matter how few they may be) and my losses (no matter how abundant). The same could not be said for the old CCG. A few months into the old CCG we already had games that ended in 2-3 turns in which one person never got to play a personality (character in the new game). I never want to see something like that happen with this game.

20 minutes ago, Frentier said:

Having played against Scorpion since new roles chosen it was most certainly the correct choice , it's definitely a better option than possibly getting 1 or 3 cards in a 40-45 card deck. The Backhanded Compliment card is just okay........

Have you played a game as keeper with Scorpion with BC? Cuz if not.....

I would point out that a Keeper role for Scorpion would not only mean the inclusion of BC but also the inclusion of Disdainful Remark. This creates a deck that is very solid on defense, can push your opponents honor down at will and has a ton of counterspell back up. I'm pretty sure that is the specific deck that was the concern. BC is the stand out card because of the way it functions.

When you look to MTG for example it's not always the blatant "power card" that warps the environment and ends up banned. Preordain and Ponder for example have no impact on an opponents life total, but the amount of deck/hand sculpting they offer led them to get banned in some formats.

As Ishi Tonu said, the CCG was entirely full of situations where people could either lock you out of all actions, or achieve victory in a way you couldn't stop — what you might call NPE's.

If you were dishonoured below your honour requirements, you couldn't do anything. If Events destroyed all of your provinces on turn 1 and 2, you couldn't do anything. If your opponent had a multiple-duel/turn Toshimoko with a clan sword, you couldn't keep cards in play. Ninjas took all your good stuff and bowed the rest. Honor victory clans could race to the top just on holdings alone. Alternate victory conditions (Rings, but especially Death of Onnotangu) just happened and you had no real influence on them. There were, of course, counters to everything: dishonour was a good counter for honour, poisoned weapons or kharmic strikes could shut down duels and so on, but a deck of counters couldn't win either.

The LCG isn't like that, so far. People can't empty your hand with duels. People can't prevent you playing characters with dishonour. People can't destroy your provinces to prevent your gold production. There are (so far) no play from hand instant-win alternate victory cards. In general your ability to take actions is not affected by your opponent's closeness to victory (except that low-honour makes it hard to play cards with honour loss as a cost). This is a good thing.

And yet people still feel that dishonour is, de facto, an NPE. Is that just a holdover from the CCG? To me it seems more likely that people are just experiencing the classic victim-of-a-control-deck feeling, where it always seems like you are powerless when they are winning. Anyone who plays control, of course, knows that they are always a whisker away from losing control of everything all the time

The only thing that does concern me is how keen FFG seem to be on action cancellation, text box blanking, send-home and bow effects, etc. Done well you get an exciting back and forth play where you can risk everything on high-power effects that might be cancelled. Done poorly everyone just feels like they can't do anything without it being cancelled, and it just comes down to what's on the board every time. Not yet sure which.

1 hour ago, Hinomura said:

T he Role selection was an informed decision made with the best interests of the Scorpion Clan in mind. It certainly wasn't an attempt to neuter Dishonour...that's my preferred play style, and I'm good at.

I don't show my face around Dojo of Lies often (fun as it is to post on a Scorpion forum with a Doji username) but I seem to remember reading the thread about potentially picking Seeker of Void as soon as we found out about roles and the associated provinces.

Am I incorrect? I feel like the choice was discussed and largely agreed with before anyone knew Backhanded Compliment was even a thing, barring maybe playtesters.

On 11/8/2017 at 6:31 PM, L5RBr said:

If the duel thread lasted so long with 1000 Vs 1, imagine how far this will go....

Duelling still isn't a strength of the crane clan ...

You're mostly correct, dude - Jon posts after the cards have been revealed and states he thought Seeker of Void was still the right call, and goes into considerable detail why he thought that. I very much agreed with his logic and reasoning.

On 11/4/2017 at 10:55 PM, Hinomura said:

I dedicated the pick to Brad Emon. His reasoning behind not wanting Keeper was a genuine desire to keep the game fun and thriving, and Backhand had the potential to really destroy people's will to play.

Brad was totally willing to embrace being a villain to make this happen, and I have nothing but respect for that.

If there are Scorpion players who aren't willing to be villains, then this may not be the clan for you.

If people wanted a different choice, they had the opportunity to beat out Brad and myself. We finished first and second placed Scorpions at Worlds. I reckon we earned the right to make this choice.

[comment about throwing scorpion under a bus ^]

2 hours ago, Hinomura said:

Zesu gets it. There's a thread over on the Dojo of Lies discussing Role selection, there was one on Loyalty of the Scorpion, and I discussed things with Scorpion players at the event and at home.

The Role selection was an informed decision made with the best interests of the Scorpion Clan in mind. It certainly wasn't an attempt to neuter Dishonour...that's my preferred play style, and I'm good at.

Mechanics and cards actually have less of an effect on an NPE than player conduct, both at events and online. It's not been particularly enjoyable being the target of some of the insults thrown around over the last few days, and that's certainly done more to make me question whether I should be playing Scorpion going forward than any mechanics ever could.

And you don't see the complete contradiction here?