16 hours ago, Swordbreaker said:

Now that we've got an idea on how the game will expand, what would you like to see in the clan packs?

Crab: There are pretty much ways to incentivize winning on defense but not so much helping you defend.

Crane: Solid ways to win by honor run. Crane is with Lion in the best position to achieve such victory. Put together with a bit more dueling could be nice

Dragon: More duels!, and more monks and more tatoos. Oh yeah, and just because the name reminds me about it but what about bringing the elemental dragons back?

Lion: I'd lilke to see other options available than " I'm getting that many more guys than you and stomp over your face as fast as I can". For the moment I see only this play stile available and feels a bit boring. I might be a bit subjective on this since Lion is my least favorite clan.

Phoenix: Well they had pretty much coming up for them recently so I think we are pretty good

Scorpion: NINJAS!!! Yes I know ninjas don't exist. Shinobis and duels! Military scorpion is missing in this game.

Unicorn: Not enough cavalry choices to work with the core box stronghold. More battle maidens! I also feel that bit more economy options would bump a bit their power level up and bring them to a more reasonable level to compete against the other clans.

Neutral: Now that we had a bunch of imperial dudes what about bringing up some minor clans / creatures as neutrals: Nagas, Nezumis, Ronins. As a whole factions these would not be a good ideas, but as neutral characters, maybe with some incentive for some clans to play them to reflect their preferences ( reduced influnce or fate cost)

I think the problem with Clan Packs from the FFG perspective is there is less incentive for most people to buy them. If the packs are spread apart by months or more, they affect the meta more heavily encouraging players outside of the clan to purchase the counters. In a weekly rush model like the Imperial Cycle, many would skip over most clan packs knowing that their own power cards would soon arrive instead.

I would have preferred a clan pack rush cycle myself, but I get the $$$ reasons FFG did not do that. Seasonal clan pack releases sound believable, and even if I am last that is a livable time frame for me.

I am curious what other side cost characters there will be. I don't necessarily see a mythic creature for every clan, but there have been some good ideas in this thread.

I would like to see more samurai/bushi for Scorpion. They used to be a competent militar clan. No ninjas please.

Battle Maidens. Battle Maidens that do stuff while opposed. Interesting stuff.

Re: "Seven Clans in Seven Weeks"

How about Seven Clans in Seven Seconds?

Release them all, at the same time. Let us buy the ones we want, when we want. Wanna drop the $140 for all seven at once? Go nuts! Can only afford one pack every couple weeks? That's fine! I'd feel LESS obligated to grab all of them as quickly as possible this way, I think.

2 hours ago, GM81 Protocol Droid said:

I think the problem with Clan Packs from the FFG perspective is there is less incentive for most people to buy them. If the packs are spread apart by months or more, they affect the meta more heavily encouraging players outside of the clan to purchase the counters. In a weekly rush model like the Imperial Cycle, many would skip over most clan packs knowing that their own power cards would soon arrive instead.

I would have preferred a clan pack rush cycle myself, but I get the $$$ reasons FFG did not do that. Seasonal clan pack releases sound believable, and even if I am last that is a livable time frame for me.

I am curious what other side cost characters there will be. I don't necessarily see a mythic creature for every clan, but there have been some good ideas in this thread.

Ultimately, that may be the reason. It's an intentional choice motivated by profit, which at the end of the day FFG is a for-profit company. We'll see if short term profit gains will be worth shaking up the cash cow.

4 minutes ago, twinstarbmc said:

Re: "Seven Clans in Seven Weeks"

How about Seven Clans in Seven Seconds?

Release them all, at the same time. Let us buy the ones we want, when we want. Wanna drop the $140 for all seven at once? Go nuts! Can only afford one pack every couple weeks? That's fine! I'd feel LESS obligated to grab all of them as quickly as possible this way, I think.

As a retailer this is less appealing, the need to stock all at once would be a strain when you have to pay for everything up front and than make your money back on individual sales. Its an easy way to end up with dead stock on the shelf for the clans that are less represented in your area (case in point my local shop still has 2 of his original Cab and 1 Unicorn play mats from his initial order, he's restocked the others multiple times but no one locally is buying those two).

I'm going to assume that if the clan packs are released more than a month apart, that we can expect regular dynasty packs to be released concurrently with them as well. Given the significantly smaller size of the clan packs vs. the traditional deluxe boxes, and the likelihood of having evenly distributed cards in the concurrent dynasty packs, on top of the fact that the clan packs offer hard counters to the themed clan in the pack, I don't think we'll have too much to worry about.

TL;DR Don't worry, Lion will keep getting OP cards and Unicorn will still suck.

Releases on releases? That'd be wild.

Phoenix with spells and wizards rather than glory boosting, wasn’t a huge step away from their standard theme, so the other clans could do the same.

Lion could be about honouring and honour running whilst winning mil.

Dragon focus on duelling.

Honouring and stat buffs for politics for crane.

Dirty politics and tricks for scorpion, maybe a focus on milling decks or such.

Crab, corruption and working with or against the shadowlands.

Unicorn focus on conflict control, slowing down and speeding up the game.

Ideas for Crab themes or cards:

• More berserkers, scouts, skirmishers, ambushers, etc. (Hida/Haruma families)
• More Kuni shugenja
• More Yasuki traders and courtiers (economic engine cards, with the potential for Mantis splashing someday)
• More holdings and Kaiu cards that interact with them
• Siege engines
• Characters tainted by the shadowlands
• An event or attachment that lets you accuse an enemy of being tainted

For Crab:

More interesting Conflict characters.

With their reliance or theme of holdings they need more in their conflict deck to make up for their taken dynasty spots. Right now we have 2 costers and a 1 cost...how bout some 3,4,5 cost conflict guys to free up some dynasty play.

I really hope the first Deluxe Expansion is a shadowlands expansion. It doesn't even have to be it's own clan just send corruption throughout all the existing clans...I think this would be very interesting.

I'd really like to see all seven Clan packs out by June (do clan releases based on winter court results...weakest clan gets first release, winning clan gets last release), then release a Deluxe expansion during the summer and then a new cycle during 3rd and the 4th quarter (or another 6 in 6 weeks release in quarter 4). It's a bit faster than monthly releases but not wholly unreasonable. They could actually keep this release schedule consistent and I think the player base would be fairly happy. It would coincide well with the major tournament schedule while allowing the meta to change reasonably.

I wonder if we will get a Minor Clan pack at some point? That'd be a great way to get the minor clans into the game in one shot, even without a Mantis expansion, which I personally see coming.

It might be interesting to introduce minor clans (other than Mantis) as conflict splash and dynasty neutral cards at first. Many of the minor clans have some sort of service they provide to the empire at large or major clans in specific, either out of circumstance or purpose in their founding. Their more limited resources have given some of the minor clans a very mercenary reputation. Being more choices for alliances rather than complete new factions might make for interesting play.

1 hour ago, GM81 Protocol Droid said:

It might be interesting to introduce minor clans (other than Mantis) as conflict splash and dynasty neutral cards at first. Many of the minor clans have some sort of service they provide to the empire at large or major clans in specific, either out of circumstance or purpose in their founding. Their more limited resources have given some of the minor clans a very mercenary reputation. Being more choices for alliances rather than complete new factions might make for interesting play.

I like this idea. It provides a lot of potential variety without quite the combinatoric explosion that having 8+ full factions would lead to. The really cool part is you could print a bunch of Mantis conflict deck cards with influence costs now, and then later if/when Mantis finally becomes a great clan, you introduce a Mantis stronghold and dynasty cards, while leveraging the conflict cards that already exist. That could cut down on the problems late-to-the-table factions always seem to have (e.g. Scum in X-Wing playing catch-up for years).

I would love to see the cuddly side to the Scorpion come out. While they are a very sneaky and dangerous clan, they also happen to be rather excellent hosts, with cooks especially being their gimmick, and while being "Friends" with a Scorpion is a terrible place to be, being friends with a Scorpion pretty much guarantees things will mysteriously turn up your way and there will be a large contingent of people very willing to publicly go to bat for you.

Crane obviously need duels to be more viable, and also need "value" honor plays. Right now there aren't any cards that just give you honor incidentally in any amount worth talking about while also just being good cards. Honor as a victory condition is going to need some way to get the conflict cards you need in hand without bidding high or breaking the game by making honor uninteractive (which the crane already have) and that aren't a dead card if you are not going to win by honor off them. Dishonor as a victory condition works because it chokes your opponent out and you can start or stop at any time based on your opponent's actions. Honor doesn't have the same benefit, it doesn't intrinsically limit your opponent's options and the value honor alone gives you has anti-synergy with an honor victory. So honor cards need to be things like undervalue characters or events that aren't quite strong enough to otherwise justify their cost. In that scenario you could play these cards to try to reach an honor victory, while not totally throwing the next few turns of the game.

Unicorn need the "fairness" theme. They are famous for their intermediaries and diplomats, and are the third most commercially focused clan, so having Unicorn be the faction that is willing to give to get would be nice.

Dragon need "immortal" characters, IE a lot of characters that conditionally will not lose fate but are otherwise understatted. Likely in terms of their rings. Dragon having attachments they recycle is weird and out of theme for them and fits more with the Phoenix, who really should be the recursion faction.

Phoenix Shiba need to be a thing, very balanced statline Bushi who work well together.

The main thing is that each clan pack should reflect the major themes going on in each clan, and try to support all of them. Clan packs should be where you go to get the staples for your clan and be, if not a one stop shop, be where you get started not just as a clan loyalist, but as a family loyalist (Daidoji, Kakita, basically all the god **** crab AND dragon families, shiba, and the Kitsune and Tsuruchi families of the Mantis all have many players and fans who more strongly identify with the family than clan) as well. A clan pack should be enough to at least solidly theme your deck as a family of a clan.

On a related note, each clan pack should have at least one stronghold for each of the families of a clan, with the exception obviously of Crab who have a ton of families. Obviously families can have more strongholds, and they may well have some in sets before the pack, but if the clan pack has your favorite family's stronghold, enough characters to solidly set up half of your characters as strongly themed towards your family, and 2-3 conflict cards for your family I think they would make people happy.

27 minutes ago, dezzmont said:

The main thing is that each clan pack should reflect the major themes going on in each clan, and try to support all of them. Clan packs should be where you go to get the staples for your clan and be, if not a one stop shop, be where you get started not just as a clan loyalist, but as a family loyalist (Daidoji, Kakita, basically all the god **** crab AND dragon families, shiba, and the Kitsune and Tsuruchi families of the Mantis all have many players and fans who more strongly identify with the family than clan) as well. A clan pack should be enough to at least solidly theme your deck as a family of a clan.

I agree with this. With such a heavy emphasis on spells for the Phoenix clan pack (at least, it seemed like to me?) it almost feels like there will need to be more clan packs later to help fill them out. Maybe we'll get some deluxe packs that help further other families from each clan. Right now it feels like you get the Phoenix clan pack if you go the shugenja route, but if you wanted something else like monks or Shiba peacekeepers, look elsewhere, which doesn't really feel much like a clan pack. I suppose it's too early to really judge the contents, but I'm worried they will be too focused.

Then again, I'm mostly just salty about clan packs in general.

That's probably a fair assessment, there's supposed to be a spell for each element and a bunch of shugenja, according to the description. Plus the new stronghold is built for spell efficiency. Then again, one of those shugenja is also arguably one of our best Phoenix monks so far, so go figure.

I like dezzmont's idea, I can see a Matsu themed clan pack for the Lion featuring beastmasters, cheap military and etc, as well as a Kitsu pack with more ancestor cards to let you play even more characters from your discard pile. Maybe an Akodo commander pack and an Ikoma political pack as well, which makes for 4+ years of solid but different releases for the Lion and can keep people buying for awhile.

Dunno, it's true that it looks like families are "specialisation" and could flavour a thematic deck, but the essence of a clan is the complementarity of the families field, and that should stay what we compose with to deckbuild. I'm happy to have a couple of Daidoji in a crane deck as a military backup/threat with tricks, but a full Daidoji deck could be uninteresting as only relying on Daidoji tricks, without exploiting the Crane pol might.

4 hours ago, Nitenman said:

Dunno, it's true that it looks like families are "specialisation" and could flavour a thematic deck, but the essence of a clan is the complementarity of the families field, and that should stay what we compose with to deckbuild. I'm happy to have a couple of Daidoji in a crane deck as a military backup/threat with tricks, but a full Daidoji deck could be uninteresting as only relying on Daidoji tricks, without exploiting the Crane pol might.

I don't think it's meant to be solely specialized decks, but instead you have the basic theme of the the Crane, in your example, and from there, you get 4 clan packs, one on Pol, one on Duel, one on Spells and one on Mil that you can use to personalize your deck further. You might like to run spells, so the Asahina pack would give you a strong magic flavor to throw into your Crane deck, especially if those spells have a political or honor theme to them, where a Daidoji pack would make Crane military viable.

I think the "focus" might be a bit broader.

Phoenix pack focus on spells

Crab on defense

Crane on dueling

Dragon on attachments

Lion on offense

Scorpion on card draw

Unicorn on Events maybe

On 24/12/2017 at 4:10 AM, AradonTemplar said:

Right now it feels like you get the Phoenix clan pack if you go the shugenja route, but if you wanted something else like monks or Shiba peacekeepers, look elsewhere, which doesn't really feel much like a clan pack.

The Phoenix pack isn't called "Phoenix Mix". It should be possible, with time*, to get different Clan packs focusing in different sides of each Clan.

Meanwhile, we may get some of the missing/desired pieces in regular packs.

* loooooooong time

A monk focused Dragon pack, and a shinobi focused Scorpion pack. Dragon monk really need more support. But not nearly as much as it seems Unicorn needs a little boost. I have seen more Uni splash than actual Unicorn decks.

4 hours ago, Chupacabra52 said:

A monk focused Dragon pack, and a shinobi focused Scorpion pack. Dragon monk really need more support. But not nearly as much as it seems Unicorn needs a little boost. I have seen more Uni splash than actual Unicorn decks.

I think a Unicorn pack can only help them, hopefully it will be a heavy Calvary pack.