Hi All,

Let me just say up front, as an avid OldL5R player, how great it is to see a lively community built around this game again! I’ve been enjoying the FFG take on Rokugan immensely, despite the demise of the Mantis, but have encountered a few issues frequently enough in my gaming group to want to adopt some house rules. The major concerns my group and I have are based around honor and card draw. Specifically, no one in my group ever wins/loses by honor and players frequently end up with 10+ Conflict cards in hand.

Thus, I’ve drafted the following rules to try and mimic both the honor/dishonor victories and manageable hand sizes I miss from OldL5R and would like to get input on them. Primarily, I’m looking for opinions on balance or playability of these rules, but feel free to comment on your preferences too if you absolutely love/hate them!

L5R HOUSE RULES

• Draw Phase - each player has a default honor bid of two which cannot be modified except by card abilities.

• Proclaim - once per turn, you may pay one additional fate when putting a character into play from a province in order to gain honor equal to that character’s personal honor.

• Air Ring - replace the current rules with, "after winning a conflict as the attacker you may choose to either 1) gain honor equal to the personal honor of a character you control, or 2) cause an opponent to lose honor equal to the personal honor of a character they control."

• Honor - if a player has 30 or more honor in their pool, that player immediately wins.

I’ve found that the following changes tend to result in Conflict hands that are on average 4-5 cards rather than 10+ and to make honor a significantly more important resource.

Fair warning that I’ve exclusively tested these rules with a Dragon and Phoenix deck only. I’m planning to try them out in a Scorpion deck this coming week in casual play. However, any comments or advice would be welcome!

Thanks! -IsawaBoyen

First, a personal rule of thumb: never house rule a game you've played with only one group of friends and/or less than about 50 times. You almost certainly have, as a group, completely missed certain strategy possibilities and therefore are about to house rule something that isn't actually broken. You risk forever limiting your understanding of the game and missing out on play with other parts of the community who don't use your house rules.

19 hours ago, IsawaBoyen said:

The major concerns my group and I have are based around honor and card draw. Specifically, no one in my group ever wins/loses by honor and players frequently end up with 10+ Conflict cards in hand.

Currently, winning via 25 honor is very rare in the game as a whole, because there aren't enough cards that support honor gain. That will change as expansions come out. We've already seen some previews of very strong honor gain cards. Winning via dishonoring your opponent is actually pretty common, though, so I'm surprised you haven't encountered it yet.

What are people bidding on their honor dials each round? If both players are bidding very high, consistently, then not much honor is trading hands. There's no point in having a huge hand if you don't have the fate to spend on all those cards. Bidding low against an opponent who bids high lets you steal a ton of honor.

Are players going for the Air ring and stealing honor? Or going for the Fire ring and dishonoring opponents?

Next time you play, make a Crab deck. Include Watch Commander, Intimidating Hida, and Levy. Bid 1 for card draw every round, unless you see an opportunity to break their stronghold by bidding high. Go for Earth and Air rings whenever you can to gain card advantage and steal honor. Use Fire ring to dishonor their characters. When you attack, don't invest 100% in breaking a province - sometimes you just want to poke to win a ring effect. Use Shrewd Yasuki and other such cards to draw cards despite bidding low. You'll have a very good chance of winning via dishonor.

As for your specific house rule ideas:

19 hours ago, IsawaBoyen said:

Draw Phase - each player has a default honor bid of two which cannot be modified except by card abilities.

Dear kami no. This removes one of the most interesting and subtle aspects of the game. Knowing when to bid low and when to bid high is a key strategic aspect of the game.

19 hours ago, IsawaBoyen said:

Proclaim - once per turn, you may pay one additional fate when putting a character into play from a province in order to gain honor equal to that character’s personal honor.

• Air Ring - replace the current rules with, "after winning a conflict as the attacker you may choose to either 1) gain honor equal to the personal honor of a character you control, or 2) cause an opponent to lose honor equal to the personal honor of a character they control."

These will make winning via honor gain much much easier for certain clans, particularly Phoenix or Crane. Remember, Phoenix has characters with 3 and 4 glory available. Comboing these rules with certain cards coming in the next couple of expansions could lead to gaining 10+ honor in a single round.

19 hours ago, IsawaBoyen said:

I’ve drafted the following rules to try and mimic both the honor/dishonor victories and manageable hand sizes I miss from OldL5R

In my experience, NewL5R does have manageable hand sizes. I rarely have more than 9 cards in hand, and that's usually only at the start of a game where I bid high. More commonly, I have 3 to 6 cards in hand, depending on what clan I'm playing and how things have been going.

Also, the designers of the game have specifically said they don't want honor/dishonor victories to be too easy. One of the complaints about OldL5R was that some clans played almost solitaire, just gaining honor and ignoring the other player except to defend. NewL5R is trying to avoid that. Honor and dishonor victories can happen in NewL5R, but they require playing the long game and winning conflicts. When I play Crab and win by dishonoring my opponent, it takes a long time. I have to weather their initial aggro and slowly build resource advantages over time. Eventually, the pressure breaks them. But it's not fast or automatic, and I think that's a good thing.

I would not recommend any changes to actual rules of play or game mechanics. The more you play your way, the less experience you have playing the correct way. Future cards are not designed with your rules in mind. If any of you play outside your group you're likely going to run into problems keeping the real rules and your rules separate.

Ultimately you can do whatever you want to in casual play, but, I would keep house rules confined to expanding deck building guidelines only. Smaller/bigger deck sizes, ignoring competitive clan roles, or combining cards from multiple clans in your dynasty deck can mix things up quite a bit without changing rules of play.

Do you guys have 10+ cards because of draw or because you stay with dead cards in hand?

Also, the gain honor equal to personal honor is a bit too much, particularly because it privileges clan like phoenix, crane and lion. I do play these clans, and yet I would find that unbalanced. In old5r, honor goal was 40. In new5r, 25 only.

Hi All,

Thanks for the thoughtful replies!

I can definitely see the advantages of gaming the Honor Dial system, but functionally that just doesn't seem to be an important aspect of the game for us. Most players consistently bid only one or two honor and I myself never bid more than 1. Rarely, someone will start with a bid of 4, but after the 3 honor exchange, the high bids end. Final honor scores tend to be something like 20 to 4; close, but not enough for a win in either direction. While the core rules aren't *broken* in any sense, our style of play really seems to make honor a meaningless resource.

Our high Conflict card count in hand tends to be a result of both 1) no fate left to pay for Conflict cards (i.e. expensive personalities on the board), and 2) the Ancestral Dragon cards returning after being discarded. Generally an honored clan champion with a fan/katana is all we've found to be necessary to break provinces and win; the remaining conflict cards are really only useful to stop probing attacks which, admittedly, we rarely initiate. (That's likely a hold-over from the dread of losing a conflict in Old5r, haha).

EdgeOfDreams, the Air ring tends to only be selected when it's stacked with Fate. IMO, its honor loss ability is functionally duplicated by Fire (dishonor a personality and then discard them from no fate) which has the added bonus of also reducing the personalities' stats should they stick around for another turn or two. I'll follow your suggestion with the Crab deck though to see if, with a bit more Conflict and Dynasty support of dishonor, I can force that victory condition.

47 minutes ago, IsawaBoyen said:

our style of play

That's the key thing I'm trying to point out here. Before you change the rules, change how you play. You may find that by changing how you play, the game actually becomes more fun, more balanced, and more interesting.

Has your group tried playing all seven clans? It's possible that you just don't have anyone playing the clans that are best at winning via (dis)honor (in my opinion, those are Crab and Scorpion for dishonor, and Crane and Lion for honor).

Are players always putting full resources into breaking provinces? An honor/dishonor win often comes from intentionally not bothering to spend resources on breaking, and getting wins just for ring effects.

Try playing a game where you intentionally play as differently as possible from what you've gotten used to. Try buying mostly cheap characters and saving fate for the conflict phase. Try different clans. Try probing conflicts just to force your opponent to defend (losing an attack is really no big deal in this game, but forcing them to defend costs them resources, or if they don't defend they lose honor - you should see at least 3 conflicts declared most rounds, and sometimes 4). Try picking the Air ring more often (it's not the same as Fire, because Fire only removes an honor from the enemy, while Air actually takes it from them AND gives it to you).

Hi EdgeOfDreams,

Thanks for all your great advice. I'm following you on changing our playstyle and will definitely give it a shot. I guess in the end it will depend for us on whether it's easier/more fun to change our playstyle and/or preferred clans rather than adjusting the rules.

Thanks!

I'm curious, what are the clans your group plays?

I am curious as to how big your group is, we have around 12 people playing so far and no one has ever mentioned or run into the problems you seem to be.

We’re a group of six - one Crane, two Dragon, one Phoenix (me), and two Unicorn.

3 hours ago, IsawaBoyen said:

Hi All,

Thanks for the thoughtful replies!

I can definitely see the advantages of gaming the Honor Dial system, but functionally that just doesn't seem to be an important aspect of the game for us. Most players consistently bid only one or two honor and I myself never bid more than 1. Rarely, someone will start with a bid of 4, but after the 3 honor exchange, the high bids end. Final honor scores tend to be something like 20 to 4; close, but not enough for a win in either direction. While the core rules aren't *broken* in any sense, our style of play really seems to make honor a meaningless resource.

Our high Conflict card count in hand tends to be a result of both 1) no fate left to pay for Conflict cards (i.e. expensive personalities on the board), and 2) the Ancestral Dragon cards returning after being discarded. Generally an honored clan champion with a fan/katana is all we've found to be necessary to break provinces and win; the remaining conflict cards are really only useful to stop probing attacks which, admittedly, we rarely initiate. (That's likely a hold-over from the dread of losing a conflict in Old5r, haha).

EdgeOfDreams, the Air ring tends to only be selected when it's stacked with Fate. IMO, its honor loss ability is functionally duplicated by Fire (dishonor a personality and then discard them from no fate) which has the added bonus of also reducing the personalities' stats should they stick around for another turn or two. I'll follow your suggestion with the Crab deck though to see if, with a bit more Conflict and Dynasty support of dishonor, I can force that victory condition.

Only bidding 1-2 and having a hand of 10+ cards with no fate left to play them...

Try this - build your deck with like 50% cards with 0 cost. Load up on those neutral cards. 3x banzai, 3x fine katana, 3x ornate fan, 3x for shame, 3x court games, ect. Just load up on those freebie cards! Then add in a few cards that cost 1-2 and MAYBE a set of cards that cost more than that... but really keep that conflict cost LOW! Drawing cards is meaningless if you can't play them, and in this game there is rarely fate to spare...

This won't help you gain honor or dishonor victories - but thats okay. What this will fix is sitting there with massive hands and nothing to play. Once you're playing those handfuls of cards then we can come back and look at honor.

Using only the 3x Core Sets for a card collection I would say only Lion has a chance to genuinely play for honor victory. Crane and Phoenix are more likely to run into dishonor first simply for the lack of supporting cards, and the number of game-mechanics which perform both functions. That said - through the next few weeks the Imperial Cycle is going to complete with 6 sets in 6 weeks... By the end of this cycle we are going to see honor stand out as a real victory condition for Lion, Crane, Phoenix, and Dragon at least.

Are you guys using Assassination and Banzai?

You're not forgetting to lose honour for unopposed or anything?

It seems weird that you're never encountering dishonour situations. With the present card-pool honour tends to leak out of the game, more than it leaks in. I've had games where *both* players are on the verge of a dishonour loss (typically these involve Scorpion though).

Regarding rings, you can always take fire and air on separate challenges (Earth also feeds into dishonour by encouraging higher bidding to compensate).

If you're finding that you're bidding low, but have large hands full of cards you can't play due to no fate, might I suggest using more 0 cost cards? You'll quickly find that having more cards in hand is very useful at that point, I imagine, and might be more inclined to bid high in certain situations, or simply find you are consistently beating your opponents who then start bidding higher or using different cards to compensate, which will shift your playgroup's meta.

I agree that playing Crab (or Scorpion) will make you see honour in a new light. You can then always go back to Phoenix and apply what you've learned there, too. Phoenix ring shenanigans means they can often apply honour pressure on top of stronghold breaking pressure.

Banzai, yes, but no one uses Assassination. The number of targets tends to be slim as most characters we play are in the 4 fate range ( I run 3 x Tsukune, Kaede, Mystic, and Atsuko for example). In addition, however useful the card may be, I personally find Assassination thematically problematic as a Phoenix player, haha.

I agree that we may not be optimizing the fate cost distribution of our decks. The current emphasis has been very heavy on characters and less so on Events in our games. The Dragon players do generally use more Conflict cards than the rest of us, but Kitsuki’s Method And Ancestral Daisho never really leave their hands. Similarly, while For Shame and Court Games come up, they tend to be in a "you play one, now I play one" fashion which leads to very minor shifts in relative force totals. (They do however prevent province breaks.)

As for dishonor, we really don’t see honor move around that much. In the last game I played against Dragon, he broke my SH on turn four and I gained a total of six honor from card draw over the game and another two from the Fire ring honor. I lost one from Fire dishonor and another two from unopposed. Thus, my net change was +5. My opponent lost the six from draw, obviously, but also gained two from Air. Thus a net result of -4 for him. These aren’t nothing, but they didn’t really feel impactful on the game state at any point and I’d say that’s pretty typical of our conflicts. While I am glad that you can’t rocket to 40 honor anymore, I guess we feel that it should be a bit more feasible to win by honor when consistently bidding one during the game. Haha

Honor victory is a bit out of reach for most decks right now, simply because most game-elements that give honor equally give dishonor, and the goalpost for a dishonor win is closer (10-0 is easier than 12-25)

Once the Imperial Cycle is complete honor will be a LOT stronger than it is now - so don't get too bothered with its current state. It will be completely different in a few weeks, literally.

I would recommend checking the cost of your conflict deck - you may find you can dominate your field by switching to a more efficient conflict deck. If you're playing Phoenix you might want to check out some Phoenix Dishonor leaning decks too... It might change your mind about the honor resource. You might not be racing for honor victory, but your opponent will feel crippled by your ability to dishonor them.

Also - don't be too scared of assassination, either for or against you. When I bring out a Blackmail Artist I sometimes load up +2 fate just begging my opponent to assassinate him. They think they are taking out a high priority target (2 fate) but they are really giving me 3 turns of his effect right up front... I no longer need to wait 3 turns and win 3 POL conflicts, they are simply giving up the honor right away. Similarly when my opponent drops an Ishiken Initiate to come back for a 4th conflict I think its easily worth the 3 honor to take her out and save my province...

I think some people play too scared of Assassination. Its a great card for some decks, and sometimes being assassinated isn't actually so bad.

4 hours ago, IsawaBoyen said:

Hi EdgeOfDreams,

Thanks for all your great advice. I'm following you on changing our playstyle and will definitely give it a shot. I guess in the end it will depend for us on whether it's easier/more fun to change our playstyle and/or preferred clans rather than adjusting the rules.

Thanks!

I can already tell you that changing your playstyle will be harder. Learning and growing is always harder than pretending you're already good enough and blaming the game for not being what you think it should be. Insert Principal Skinner meme here: "Maybe I'm not good enough at this game yet? No, it's the rules that are wrong!"

In the long run, choosing to experiment, change your perspective, and discover the strategies you've been missing will not only help you have more fun, it will make you a better player at EVERY game you play, both now and in the future, not just L5R.

More specific advice:

Play lower cost characters! Having 3 or 4 or more characters on the board at once massively opens up your options. More characters means more conflicts you can engage in per round, which means more chances to win rings for effects.

If you want to win via honor, bidding 1 every round is merely the start of your strategy, not the whole thing.

Also, yeah, just what I suspected - no one in your group is playing the dishonor factions, Crab and Scorpion. Give those a try.

That’s what I feared; the chance of us adopting the house rules and avoiding the trouble will likely be high. Haha

And I might give Scorpion a go just to see what a dishonor victory looks like, but I’ve already had to bid farewell to the Moshi, I won’t be abandoning the Isawa so easily. ?

4 hours ago, EdgeOfDreams said:

I can already tell you that changing your playstyle will be harder. Learning and growing is always harder than pretending you're already good enough and blaming the game for not being what you think it should be.

Yes to this 100%. From the sounds of it, your really missing out on a lot of the intricacies of the game by not having a scorpion or crab player in your group. It's a whole new ballgame when your opponent is actively dishonouring your characters and stealing honour from you.

On a more practical note, I understand that you guys may just play for fun but if any of your members entered in a kotei or tournament at another gaming shop, they would be left at a serious disadvantage because they have been learning how to play your game and not THE game.

If your playgroup are focusing on playing single high cost characters and 1+ cost events, plus don't tend to "attack" honour, there are a few weaknesses that can be exploited. (Which in turn might cause them to shift playstyles.)

1) Do look at that cost curve, for both dynasty and conflict. Being able to load up on katanas, ornate fans etc. will win conflicts against players who can't afford to play anything into the conflict as they don't have the equivalent 0s in their deck. In terms of dynasty, the big characters are great for sure, and win games, but going slightly wider will give you multiple attacks/defence.

2) Use cards that punish single character playstyles. Admit Defeat, Mirumoto's Fury and other bow effects (not sure what clan you are splashing into Phoenix atm). Kill effects, debuffs, dishonour etc.

3) If nobody is going after honour, make use of that and bid a bit higher from time to time (typically early on as you get the choice of cards for a longer period of time, though beware of Dragon's Restroration of Balance province, and now Disdainful Remark from Crane). If you've also cheapened your cost curve you will now be stronger in conflicts than your opponent. For example, you mention above that your stronghold got broken and your net honour was +5 - perhaps bidding higher and "using" that honour to gain cards might have helped you save your stronghold.

In general I think more efficient curves will probably naturally lead to a shift in playstyle. It's not that anyone will set out for a dishonour victory, but rather you will probably find, at first, that players who bid higher win more due to the card advantage (which at the moment is being nullified by your cost curves). Then, what will happen next is, due to bidding high, some players will find themselves low on honour and the opponent will switch strategies and attempt to dishonour them. Then , hopefully, your group will find a middle ground where the relationship between honour, bidding, and card advantage becomes a really cool part of the game. Good luck!

Is there any decent theorycrafting around what sort of cost curves we should be looking at? My Meta is pretty small (friends, basically) and made up of people who migrated from Game of Thrones V2 to Arkham Horror and L5R (which is a win for FFG, I guess!). Generally I've always built my Dynasty decks with as many low cost (2 or less) characters as I can pack in, 3 copies of my champion and then taking 2 copies of 3-4 cost characters I like.

This is sound AGOT logic, and generally quite sound card game logic because you don't want to be in a position where you can't afford to put anything out, especially in something like L5R where your characters are constantly inching closer to leaving the board. But it occurs to me that the L5R economic model might actually work differently as it's mostly fixed. I'm not waiting to get economy cards out in order to afford my expensive stuff, generally the only reason to hang back is because putting out a single big character means that as soon as they involve themselves in a conflict they get sat down, sent home, or attachmented into oblivion.

It's actually quite a different mental exercise with this game, I'm finding.

I had what I felt was a good opening with Scorpion over the weekend, starting by playing out just 1 Fate dudes and hoarding my Fate for Turn 2 when I could really kick off. Even then it was a bit hairy as my opponent almost broke a province on the first turn! But I'm aware that if I HAD just played out a single more expensive character, I would definitely had a province broken as I wouldn't have been able to put a body in each conflict.

8 hours ago, IsawaBoyen said:

That’s what I feared; the chance of us adopting the house rules and avoiding the trouble will likely be high. Haha

And I might give Scorpion a go just to see what a dishonor victory looks like, but I’ve already had to bid farewell to the Moshi, I won’t be abandoning the Isawa so easily. ?

It sounds like you have already made up your mind on what your group will play as for rules. Like everyone else here I strongly suggest you and your group take a look at your decks and trim out high cost little output cards as those sound like they are hurting your gaming experience. Are you in an area that has other L5R players? Or are you and your group the only ones who play? If there are other groups playing I would suggest to contact them ands play against them, everyone has a unique play style as well as a different level of skill. You will not get better at the game by playing the same 5 people over and over again. As it was said earlier, if you stick with your rules and any of you want to go to tournaments down the road it, you are all at a massive disadvantage and will potentially be disqualified for not playing by the game rules. My philosophy of gaming is if you have to change the rules of a game to play, you probably should not be playing that game to begin with.

I agree with cforfar - if you can find any other players it might be good just to experience another play-style. There's also online platforms like jigoku, octgn, tts. Personally I don't like online much, but it might be worth dipping in just to see people use honour and bidding in a different way - or even watch a video of a game from Worlds or something. Might be a strategic eye-opener.

I third the motion to find other players if at all possible, the more experienced the better. We are lucky in my local shop to have two or three people who are experienced gamers, long time L5Rers and have put a LOT of time in to build skill in playing the new game. It means that all of the rest of us need to adapt, learn and grow in order to stay in the game.

I got my *** whooped by Scorpion dishonour in the final of our shop tournament at the weekend, it was not a very fun game at all but it was a major eye opener as to the experience difference between us and the need for me to learn and build a strategy as to how to play against a purely dishonour deck. I equate it to playing chess with someone who is far better than you, they will beat you again and again but it is through that process that you learn how to not make silly mistakes and punish your opponent for theirs.

1 hour ago, Akodo Tetsuo said:

I third the motion to find other players if at all possible, the more experienced the better. We are lucky in my local shop to have two or three people who are experienced gamers, long time L5Rers and have put a LOT of time in to build skill in playing the new game. It means that all of the rest of us need to adapt, learn and grow in order to stay in the game.

I got my *** whooped by Scorpion dishonour in the final of our shop tournament at the weekend, it was not a very fun game at all but it was a major eye opener as to the experience difference between us and the need for me to learn and build a strategy as to how to play against a purely dishonour deck. I equate it to playing chess with someone who is far better than you, they will beat you again and again but it is through that process that you learn how to not make silly mistakes and punish your opponent for theirs.

Agreed. The best opportunity for learning, IMHO, comes when you're winning about 40-45% of your games. It means that you're playing against people who are good enough to challenge you and teach you, but not so far above your level that you're left stunned and wondering, "What just happened?"