I thought I was quite good at this game, maybe not so much!

Had two games with a big character getting sacrificed by that evil province, then one losing Shoju to noble sacrifice.

Had a number of turns where I had Kachiko and Yojimbo in my had and the fate ready to go, only for them to be discarded by Policy Debate.

The last game I had a sequence of events cancelled by Crane Censure/Voice of Honour/Guest of Honour. Then lost a game against Phoenix with them switching the ring element and bring in a load of Initiates to completely change the board state.

Feeling a bit helpless at the moment, haven't been able to get anything going. Guess I need to get back to the drawing board and figure out how to handle these big threats.

It will get better.

A Scorpion who was victimized by Policy Debate? Christmas really did come early this year, eh?

But on a serious note, everyone has their struggles. In fact, I had a game against Scorpion just the other day where Kachiko got on the board with 2 fate (Scorpion Dynasty phase first action pass for the fate ftw!), attacked politically, court games'd herself up to a 6/9 and just wrecked a province with me having virtually no answer to it for the next 3 rounds (he had a dupe!).

The important thing is that you learn something from each loss you have

That aside, Policy Debate is a very very powerful card and, in my opinion, shouldn't have been printed. If you aren't running 3, you need to be, so that you can go right back at them with it. Complete information in a game that relies on partial information is a pretty absurd design strategy for a 0 cost neutral event. Especially when there are clans (like Scorpion) with characters that have 6 to 7 political strength (literally impossible to lose a Policy Debate when challenging a 1 political character like a Keeper initiate).

I agree. I really dont like cards that lets your opponent 'see' your fate hand let alone to discard from it. Along with 'Feast or famine' which I also really dislike..

I, personally, think that Policy Debate should have let the challanged player pick his target among participating characters. Would only be a minor nerf, but would give you options to play around it.

As it was printed, it seems absurdly strong.

It is printed too early in the games' life. The first expansion in this game gives us basically Thoughtseize. I don't know who or what let that through but its a pretty dominating part of the meta. I'm finding that the player that pops it first usually wins out in the end, being able to trade a card in hand for your opponent's best card WHILE looking at their hand for perfect info is stupidly powerful and neuters the bluff that L5R really thrives on.

2 hours ago, Joe From Cincinnati said:

That aside, Policy Debate is a very very powerful card and, in my opinion, shouldn't have been printed. If you aren't running 3, you need to be, so that you can go right back at them with it. Complete information in a game that relies on partial information is a pretty absurd design strategy for a 0 cost neutral event. Especially when there are clans (like Scorpion) with characters that have 6 to 7 political strength (literally impossible to lose a Policy Debate when challenging a 1 political character like a Keeper initiate).

Not always an option for every clan. As Lion where most of my characters have a 1 Political and my highest are normally 3's (Yes Ujiaki has a 5 but he's new and the only really high Political in the deck) before I can honor them, its not as great a choice. I wish I had a military equivalent (Scouting Mission or some such) but will have to abide by Crane and Scorpion just mangling my hand with impunity.

Think is with PD, it’s not really a duel because you always play it when you can’t lose. So I may as well bid one on the off chance my opponent makes a silly mistake and doesn’t bid one too.

Or if I want to set up I Can Swim, but it would be discarded anyway.

2 hours ago, Joe From Cincinnati said:

That aside, Policy Debate is a very very powerful card and, in my opinion, shouldn't have been printed. If you aren't running 3, you need to be, so that you can go right back at them with it. Complete information in a game that relies on partial information is a pretty absurd design strategy for a 0 cost neutral event. Especially when there are clans (like Scorpion) with characters that have 6 to 7 political strength (literally impossible to lose a Policy Debate when challenging a 1 political character like a Keeper initiate).

Yeah, I have to agree, I'm really not a fan of this card, it's too easy to play and gives Pol-based clans far too much of a boost. The amount of non-interactive "dangerous" cards just went up, too, with A Fate Worse Than Death. As much as the card has a high fate cost, there really is no way to play around the card apart from playing Finger of Jade, and I'm not a fan of powerful cards like that. Noble Sacrifice, I Can Swim, etc. I can live with because they're conditional and can be played around, but AFWTD is a pretty negative play experience, IMO.

8 minutes ago, Casanunda said:

Yeah, I have to agree, I'm really not a fan of this card, it's too easy to play and gives Pol-based clans far too much of a boost. The amount of non-interactive "dangerous" cards just went up, too, with A Fate Worse Than Death. As much as the card has a high fate cost, there really is no way to play around the card apart from playing Finger of Jade, and I'm not a fan of powerful cards like that. Noble Sacrifice, I Can Swim, etc. I can live with because they're conditional and can be played around, but AFWTD is a pretty negative play experience, IMO.

Voice of Honor? Censure?

3 minutes ago, Waywardpaladin said:

Voice of Honor? Censure?

Well, you can counter any event with those, those aren't intrinsic conditions on the card that can be played around. Again, compare to Noble Sacrifice and I Can Swim. I generally find the argument of "play counterspells" to be too meta-defining and restrictive. As the card pool increases, there simply becomes too many things to counter and you're left with no deck to build.

Well, you mentioned Jade so that is spending a card to counter a card.

Aside from the removal of a Fate, Fate Worse Than Death is a fairly temporary setback, and costly. Things like Ready for Battle get rid of the worse part, the bow portion. I'd rather get hit by Fate than Pit Trap or something assuming it wasn't the last crucial battle of the game.

2 minutes ago, Waywardpaladin said:

Well, you mentioned Jade so that is spending a card to counter a card.

Aside from the removal of a Fate, Fate Worse Than Death is a fairly temporary setback, and costly. Things like Ready for Battle get rid of the worse part, the bow portion. I'd rather get hit by Fate than Pit Trap or something assuming it wasn't the last crucial battle of the game.

I'd say the text box blanked for the Turn is a pretty hefty effect as well (unless your a native stat monster who was already honored you aren't getting as much use out of the character after that).

5 hours ago, ayedubbleyoo said:

I thought I was quite good at this game, maybe not so much!

Had two games with a big character getting sacrificed by that evil province, then one losing Shoju to noble sacrifice.

Had a number of turns where I had Kachiko and Yojimbo in my had and the fate ready to go, only for them to be discarded by Policy Debate.

The last game I had a sequence of events cancelled by Crane Censure/Voice of Honour/Guest of Honour. Then lost a game against Phoenix with them switching the ring element and bring in a load of Initiates to completely change the board state.

Feeling a bit helpless at the moment, haven't been able to get anything going. Guess I need to get back to the drawing board and figure out how to handle these big threats.

Bad games just happen, it is part of the randomness of cards games. I have however been finding that this is not the case most of the time as even having an okay start or even a poor start does not end the game. L5R seems to be relatively well balanced when it comes this.

17 minutes ago, Casanunda said:

Yeah, I have to agree, I'm really not a fan of this card, it's too easy to play and gives Pol-based clans far too much of a boost. The amount of non-interactive "dangerous" cards just went up, too, with A Fate Worse Than Death. As much as the card has a high fate cost, there really is no way to play around the card apart from playing Finger of Jade, and I'm not a fan of powerful cards like that. Noble Sacrifice, I Can Swim, etc. I can live with because they're conditional and can be played around, but AFWTD is a pretty negative play experience, IMO.

There are only a couple cards in the game I fully disagree with so far. Political Debate is one such card and as other have said, probably should not have been printed (at least not this early in). Lions Pride Brawler is another one, while she has to be attacking (when is she not?) it is a free bow this character effect (without her bowing herself) every turn she is out. There is not limit to what she can hit, which is absurd. As long as Lion goes first in the conflict for attacking in turn 1 of a game and she is out the second player pretty much has to have cards in their hand to deal with her, or play more than 1 good character for round and choose not to defend the first attack to even have a shot at winning a conflict that round. I find that this card is probably my most NPE of this entire game as most everything else I have been able to deal with or play around.

As for A Fate Worse Than Death, I think this card is extremely powerful even for the fate cost, it could have easily been a 5 fate cost (similar to Phoenix's 5 cost event) card for the ability. While it does not out right kill a character, in most cases it has the same effect as such.

I feel what people call NPE varies from person to person depending on the clan/deck you are playing with.

Completely agree @cforfar, it's a very balanced game. Just a bad run.

I fear that policy debate might escape scrutiny because it's neutral. The "balancing factor" is that anyone can run it, so it's "fine". I think it should still be considered a problem card in the game, especially when every deck is seen running 3x...

4 minutes ago, Hordeoverseer said:

I fear that policy debate might escape scrutiny because it's neutral. The "balancing factor" is that anyone can run it, so it's "fine". I think it should still be considered a problem card in the game, especially when every deck is seen running 3x...

Tell that to my Lion deck where the vast majority of my characters are only Political 1 or 2. They may get higher if I honor them but that doesn't get them to the easy win category. My best bets are an honored Toturi, Eiji or Ujiaki that are all in the 6-7 range. That's three characters out of my deck and requires me to honor them first.

5 minutes ago, Schmoozies said:

Tell that to my Lion deck where the vast majority of my characters are only Political 1 or 2. They may get higher if I honor them but that doesn't get them to the easy win category. My best bets are an honored Toturi, Eiji or Ujiaki that are all in the 6-7 range. That's three characters out of my deck and requires me to honor them first.

The guy who won Madrid Kotei run it as 3 of in Crab. Pretty sure Lions political is better than Crab.

Quotes are for sarcasm. I play Crab and we aren't big on political either, less so than Lion. As worded however, it allowed you to reach for low hanging fruit to make it effective. A Crane thinks it's the bees knees to attack you with a scout? Bam, Policy Debate! Scary Manipulator at your door step? Policy Debate! Lose or give me honour.

2 minutes ago, BordOne said:

The guy who won Madrid Kotei run it as 3 of in Crab. Pretty sure Lions political is better than Crab.

But he was also running Honor pressure with Watch Commanders and other tricks so that you can limit their ability to bid high making you low Political a little more forgiving. Lion don't have as many options to run that way. Its good I agree just not an auto 3 include in every deck.

7 minutes ago, Schmoozies said:

But he was also running Honor pressure with Watch Commanders and other tricks so that you can limit their ability to bid high making you low Political a little more forgiving. Lion don't have as many options to run that way. Its good I agree just not an auto 3 include in every deck.

You shouldn't initiate it if you don't have 4 - 5 strength advantage either way. Just put fan on Historian/Eiji/General, pick on a weakling and you are good to go.

Still a two to three card combo in an already tight for space Conflict deck where I generally draw less cards than my opponent so hard to set up. As I've said even with most of the Lion character base being 1-2 political jumping to 3-4 if you honor them, outside of Eiji or the Champion level characters its not reliable enough even with my being able to pick the target to warrant the extra space in my decks. Nope its a 1 or 2 of for me at best.

Its funny because the MOMENT I decide to switch off of the POL heavy Scorpion dishonor deck to try out a more aggro dropbears style thing I get hit by Policy Debate in 3 of the 4 games I played this weekend, each time resulting in a crippling defeat by removing my dropbears. I'm definitely going back to the high-POL style Scorp focusing on choking an opponent's honor to gain victory.

The biggest problem with this card is that the opponent doesn't pick who gets targeted by it... This means you have to watch your lowest POL characters in any conflict... Even Scorp, Crane, and Phoenix have characters you can target to make this an easy win. This is a horribly over-powered! It should cost at least 2 fate OR allow the opponent to choose their participating character for the powerful effect it gives.

Finger of Jade is not a counter because the opponent chooses the target, and you're not likely to preemptively drop finger of jade on some low power character, and if you do that's a fate and a card wasted anyway, and they STILL have the policy debate to play...

The only counter to this card is to cancel it. Fortunately for me Scorp has the easiest event cancel, but even though my clan has it better than most this is still a horrible card. Too many cards are requiring X card to counter it which does not bode well for the game. The limit 1 per deck cards are also a bit disturbing for the same reasons.

It is not fun to play a game where winning or losing is reduced to whether you drew a card first, or whether you were lucky enough to have the counter. Cards like this don't allow tactical decisions, they are no-brainer shot guns.

And ppl were worried about Backhanded Compliment... PAH what a joke.

ps - I'm running 3 of these in every deck I make. Unless you're running a Lion deck that plans on bidding just 1 and not relying on the hand anyway... you will also want to run 3 of these in every deck you make. We aren't going to see the end of this card any time soon...

pps - We have to deal with the card whether we feel it is OP or not. Consider including Contingency Plan in your deck to counter this. A surprise 6 bid might help you tie to cancel the duel, or steal it. The honor cost is super high for this but it might be what wins or loses the game... You gotta challenge this duel. If they bid just 1 when they actually need a bid of 3-4 to really secure the duel you can surprise them and steal it from them. Contingency Plan can help reduce your bid too if they low-balled you, so the card works both ways.

Challenge this once, then bank Way of the Chrysanthemum for their 2nd one where they DO bid 5 to force it, and you can clean up +10 honor lol maybe you steal the game.

The card is horrible - but this pps is just what we can do with the cards we're given. We have to play it through, these cards are not going to be nerfed or errata at least for the foreseeable future. Unless we're willing to walk away from the game we just gotta do what we can do.

ppps - FFG - make too many more crazy cards like this and I will walk away from the game. I don't enjoy swingy games like YuGiOh where games are won or lost based on who drew the right power combo of 1-off card first. I've gone for 15 years without playing L5R between gold edition and now, I'm only back because its a new start. I love L5R and Scorpion Clan, but I own all the RPG books I need to satisfy my love of the game without buying a single thing you release! Don't just bank on the IP, keep this game great!

7 hours ago, Schmoozies said:

Still a two to three card combo in an already tight for space Conflict deck where I generally draw less cards than my opponent so hard to set up. As I've said even with most of the Lion character base being 1-2 political jumping to 3-4 if you honor them, outside of Eiji or the Champion level characters its not reliable enough even with my being able to pick the target to warrant the extra space in my decks. Nope its a 1 or 2 of for me at best.

I've been running 3x Policy Debate in Lion to test it out...

I will no longer play Lion without 3x Policy Debate (or basically ANY deck in ANY clan for that matter).

Of all the cards in the game, I dislike Policy Debate the most; the ability to easily discard the perfect counter to your clan for 0 fate, getting to choose both targets, and no courtier needed is frankly, busted.

5 minutes ago, Pop_Up_Window said:

I've been running 3x Policy Debate in Lion to test it out...

I will no longer play Lion without 3x Policy Debate (or basically ANY deck in ANY clan for that matter).

Of all the cards in the game, I dislike Policy Debate the most; the ability to easily discard the perfect counter to your clan for 0 fate, getting to choose both targets, and no courtier needed is frankly, busted.

Yeah - people may think Lion and Crab don't have a lot of political guys, so they think they can't use this... but you pick both targets! Both Crab and Lion have some characters with decent POL, and every clan has some characters with 0 POL... I'm sure the situation will present its self at some point lol

Lion and Crab are probably best suited to actually bid up to 5 to win this too since they both draw more conservatively. Lion naturally gains some honor, but I don't think Crab would die if they dropped a few points to see their opponent's hand AND choose a discard from it.