Lets simplify the effects of Policy Debate and look only at the result of the choices that the challenged player has.

There are 4 probable results:

1. Lose honor and give it to the challenger in order to look at their hand and discard a card from it.
2. Lose honor and give it to the challenger.
3. Challenger looks at your hand and discards a card from it.
4. Challenger loses honor and gives it to you to look at your hand and discard a card from it.

In a vacuum these are fairly reasonable choices, but the environment allows the challenger to easily limit the results.

The simple act of the challenger having 4 more political than the target limits the result to 2 and 3 and 5 or more political limits the result to 3. Getting a 4+ greater political is incredibly easy; you just need a personality with a political of 3 and attach one of 3 attachments (a total of 6 that can be in a deck) with a +2 political and target a character with a political of 0 or 1.

Even if the challenger doesn't limit the results, the current environment makes losing even 2 honor very damaging to the extent that letting the challenger look at your hand and discard a card from it is better for you than losing the honor in order to look at their hand and discard a card from it.

Ok, I think I get what you're saying here. That's an interesting perspective. I'll have to take some time and consider it. I'm still leaning towards it being a design flaw as the design of the cards is what sets the environment.

Thanks

I’m gonna martyr myself on the internet for the sake of fun. All you armchair whizzes are going to think me silly and lacking in strategic competency, but that’s ok. To cross reference the competitive vs fun thread, I’m a hybrid, and despite being a halfway decent player, I’m also an emotional player too. Which means I make decisions not only based on the absolute-best outcome for me, but game state, opponent, and funnzies.

The reason I’m posting this in the duels thread is that I continue to think that duels are pretty dynamic, and that they add a lot of flavor to game, currently. Yes, even Policy Debate, though it is a bugger. Maybe it’s just me, and the people I play with, but it’s another interesting wrinkle in an already wrinkly game (that’s a compliment I think).

Anyway, the other night, I lost to honor for the second time ever. First was to lion months ago and I just hadn’t seen it yet, so I got blindsided. This time was to Phoenix, and it boiled down to a Policy Debate.

OK, so I was Crab (this is where the martyring comes in), but every once in a while I have to kick ‘em into high gear if I’m feeling back-footed, which I was. Played slow and steady (like we Crab do) first turn, and felt pretty good, until a Prodigy of the Waves slapped around my Witchhunter and broke two provinces. There were some play mistakes involved, but they happen. And the Prodigy is bonkers. Plus it turns out a fate-stripped, straightened Witchunter still bows to Ring of Water as easy as any ol spud.

Bottom line, I was a little worried going into turn two. What did I do? Bid high! Cards bro! What did he do? Bid low! WotC bro! Uh oh, ok. Now I see his ace in the hole. Early pressure with alternate track option. Being the halfway decent player I am, I brake a bit (now with a full mit of cards, his hand fully exhausted), and settle into the Crab groove of dishonor bleed and big scary stuff sticking around for ever. It starts to look peachy for me, or if not peachy, darn winnable. But his honor is floating in the high teens, and I’m not cocky. Any number of things could fuss me up: Policy Debate, Display of Power (the airs and fires), Against the Waves for surprise Rings, etc etc.

I’m playing pretty diligently and gaining traction. You’d probably say that I had the superior board position, and if I’d waited patiently (like we Crab are supposed to do) I’d have been fine. Blah blah blah. Remember that bit about me being an emotional player?

So he attacks into me with a Masashiro and Student, both at 2P, contesting the P fire ring. I’ve got a spyglass-wielding crisis breaker, a Satoshi, and a Guardian ready and willing. Oh and a Talisman in hand (should have played it prior to conflict, but didn’t want to telegraph, and was hoping to bait him into attacking, so that I could pull him over to pilgrimage or some such).

This is turning into a really long story, but bear with me. It does have something to do with duels, I swear.

Anyway, he attacks, I’ve got some good cards in hand (4-5) and he’s down to two. I lose my mind running down countless rabbit holes of potential outcomes in 35 seconds flat, ultimately settling on assigning my Crisis Breaker and Guardian. Basically, I think I can crush him no matter what with all the boost I’ve got and battle manipulation. Then of course CB can go in for round two! I assign and draw my spyglass card, which is Rebuild. Now I’ve got a handful of super awesome cards, which all combo beautifully, and I’m most concerned about...guess what...PD! But also in the back of my mind there’s assassination, and Court Games, etc etc. I decide to bump my CB with the Guardian thinking that’s the most liable to get fussed with. Even though rebuild is in my hand, this is a complicated game, amiright? Well, not surprisingly and kinda surprisingly his first action is to drop the dreaded PD, challenging my Guardian with his Masashiro. It’s only 2 to 1. Now I’m scratching my head and thinking, darn dawg, maybe I can win this! But he’s close in honor (18), how much can I risk? Did I mention that he had two fate banked?

Well now you know. I let my emotions get the best of me. I was too attached to all the cool cards in my hand, and too confident in my superior position, to consider that the last two cards in his hand were PD and WotC! The whole attack was an elaborate (and desperate) bluff to sucker me into a winnable duel, and punish me for it. I bid 5, he bid 1 - 8 honor for the win. Best loss I’ve ever had! Period!

The point of this story, besides making a fool of myself, is to say that duels can be dynamic - for some players, in some circumstances, for some win conditions. My memory is fuzzy from the old days, but I think the bidding mechanic and general stat spread of cards/bonuses currently makes for a lot of duel interactivity (relatively speaking), which is as good or better than it ever was. It’s not perfect, but I’m always a proponent of tweaking the environment through new cards rather than errata or rules overhauls.

That’s it. Move along.

I won a game by honor the other day against Unicorn thanks to PD. He was down to three honor, we were in a POL conflict disputing the Air ring and I PD’ed my opponent with my 5 POL vs his 4 POL (intentionally, there were better targets for an auto-win).

He decides to risk it, bid 3, I bid 1, he won. Down to one honor, he stripped my best card from hand. He won the conflict (thanks to that), but was unable to win Fire to honor his dishonored Miya Satoshi. Fate phase, I win.

Now, I know some of you are thinking that he screw it bidding 3, but it was a lot involved in that bid, psychologically speaking, and I also risked it. Should he had a good card, enough to won that last conflict, he could’ve won the game entirely.

On 2/5/2018 at 7:24 PM, Tetsuro said:

Take it from someone who tried very hard to 'fix' dueling for years in the CCG, there's not really a way to do it that will satisfy even a plurality of players.

About 99% of the time, 'fixes' players suggest for dueling boiled down to making it 'more fair', which meant more random and less reliable.

Of course, if dueling is an unreliable strategy, then players (outside of niche flavor players) will never even explore it, instead opting for other, more efficient ways to win consistently.

Far too often, 'make dueling more fair' means 'I want to be able to beat dueling decks at dueling without having to dedicate any card space to dealing with dueling.'

Quoted for truth.

PD is fine. Dueling is a gamble, and if you want to fold (ie: bid 1) every time someone plays the duel, that's your call. Maybe it's the right call, maybe not. That's how gambling works.
But the key part about dueling? I'm not throwing down a duel that I don't intend to get something out of. This idea that the defender should have a fair shot at winning is kinda nonsense (kinda like "the customer is always right;" technically true from a certain perspective, but also gtfo with that nonsense! lol).

Edit - Forgot to add: And the reason that PD does let you select the card rather than making it random? Because there is a chance it will backfire, and if the payoff isn't good enough, then there's no reason to risk that backfire (ie: no one will ever use duels).

1 hour ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

But the key part about dueling? I'm not throwing down a duel that I don't intend to get something out of. This idea that the defender should have a fair shot at winning is kinda nonsense (kinda like "the customer is always right;" technically true from a certain perspective, but also gtfo with that nonsense! lol).

That is true of any card, and if it is not you should reexamine why you are including that card.

The thing about dueling is that, in both old L5R and new L5R, it implicitly suggests meaningful ability for both players to interact with the mechanic. Dueling's troubles come about when various situations lead interaction either being denied or rendered meaningless. Feeling like you should have a meaningful interaction and knowing that you don't leads to NPEs.

3 hours ago, Ultimatecalibur said:

That is true of any card, and if it is not you should reexamine why you are including that card.

The thing about dueling is that, in both old L5R and new L5R, it implicitly suggests meaningful ability for both players to interact with the mechanic. Dueling's troubles come about when various situations lead interaction either being denied or rendered meaningless. Feeling like you should have a meaningful interaction and knowing that you don't leads to NPEs.

The CCG did have cards like Kharmic Strike (assuming you had the card in your hand during a duel and that you had a chance to focus). I expect that eventually we'll start seeing more anti-dueling cards, or cards that can react to duels to help out against bully-dueling. The problem is, as you said, trying to make it a meaningful interaction. If every duel is a bully-duel, then why bother with dials at all? If every duel's a toss-up, why would anyone try dueling (outside of a niche, chaos-driven deck). It'll take time, but eventually the card pool will allow for cards to counter bully-dueling somewhat without breaking dueling completely.

Perhaps one such card could be:

Below One's Station

Reaction: Play when an opponent wins a duel by 4 or more. Take 1 Honor from that opponent.

3 hours ago, Ultimatecalibur said:

The thing about dueling is that, in both old L5R and new L5R, it implicitly suggests meaningful ability for both players to interact with the mechanic.

The game promises an interaction. "Meaningful" is your word. I don't recall ever receiving any such promise from either game's rules on dueling.

On 2/9/2018 at 3:44 PM, Ishi Tonu said:

I'm not advocating for dueling to be changed. It's fine

The problem is that Policy Debate shouldn't even be a duel. It should have a real cost attached to it.

Scorpion and Crane, and to a lesser extent any of the clans that can reliably splash their key cards are at a clear advantage at this point in the metagame. Dragon splash is good, but, only goes so far and does nothing when it comes to a counterspell battle.

Telling someone to just build a better deck and rattle off cards that CAN do something, don't really give you the whole story. It doesn't explain the counterspell war you need to win. It doesn't explain running enough attachments to bait out Calling in Favors and Let Go, before trying to get a Finger of Jade or Above Question. How to deal with getting your character hit with Cloud the Mind, but, not run the Scorpion or Crane splash that gives you the fighting change at dealing with Scorpion.

I thought you might have some insight that we might have missed and you weren't just throwing out an obligatory and unnecessary "git gud" response.

My mistake.

If that is how you took my response then communication about this topic may be falling on deaf ears (or blind eyes).

Most of what I have been reading is that Policy Debate is too Strong because it is 0 cost and is a duel. I just completely disagree.

Whether or not you want to take other peoples responses as "obligatory and unnecessary "git gud" response" doesn't change the fact that there are cards that can stop it, and to be fair you actually asked for them here: "Then for the good of the community, please share with us lesser skilled players how you would neutralize Policy Debate, especially when played by Scorpion that runs counters to both events and attachments........".

All I can ascertain from your response is that you don't want to build your deck to have an answer for strong cards in the current environment. How can anyone even debate that?

People don't really think that anytime players have a hard time playing around some card that it should receive an errata or bad? Or maybe players really think that they can make decks that have an answer for everything?

11 hours ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

The game promises an interaction. "Meaningful" is your word. I don't recall ever receiving any such promise from either game's rules on dueling.

No promises of meaningful interaction, but implicit (implied though not plainly expressed) suggestions (ideas put forward for consideration) that both players interactions while dueling would be meaningful due to the ability for both players to interact with the subsystem. When players learn that their interactions can be expected to be made meaningless when they expect them to be meaningful they develop cognitive dissonance; this leads to NPEs.

I truly believe you (and others who agree with your stance here) are simply reading far too deeply into what you think dueling *should* be rather than what it explicitly is.

If a player thinks they deserve a roughly 50/50 shot at stealing my played card's effect, I honestly don't know what to tell them, but it's certainly not worth debate, IMO.

Instead, one should always assume that they will be at a disadvantage when a duel action is used against them. The alternative is simply "remove dueling, and every action just does what it's supposed to, no chance at all of turning it around."
Maybe that's better design, but it's also more boring design.

8 minutes ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

I truly believe you (and others who agree with your stance here) are simply reading far too deeply into what you think dueling *should* be rather than what it explicitly is.

Dueling in oldL5R were methods of increasing player interaction when playing certain cards by having the resulting effects of the card determined by playing a minigame.

Dueling in newL5R is a method of increasing player interaction when playing certain cards by having the resulting effects determined by both players bidding honor.

Those are what Dueling explicitly was/is.

1 hour ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

If a player thinks they deserve a roughly 50/50 shot at stealing my played card's effect, I honestly don't know what to tell them, but it's certainly not worth debate, IMO.

You are misunderstanding Tsubaki. Having a 50%/50% chance of stealing the card effect is not what I mean by having "meaningful interaction" in a duel.

2 hours ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

Instead, one should always assume that they will be at a disadvantage when a duel action is used against them.

Magnitude of the disadvantage is important. There is a world difference between "Option A will give me negative effect X 100% but give me a 50% chance of positive effect Y; option B will cost me Z but has a 50% chance of negating effect X. Which option do I want to risk?" and "Option A will give me negative effect X; Options B will give me negative effect X and negative effect Z. Option A is the only viable option, no choice there."

15 hours ago, Silverfox13 said:

If that is how you took my response then communication about this topic may be falling on deaf ears (or blind eyes).

Most of what I have been reading is that Policy Debate is too Strong because it is 0 cost and is a duel. I just completely disagree.

Whether or not you want to take other peoples responses as "obligatory and unnecessary "git gud" response" doesn't change the fact that there are cards that can stop it, and to be fair you actually asked for them here: "Then for the good of the community, please share with us lesser skilled players how you would neutralize Policy Debate, especially when played by Scorpion that runs counters to both events and attachments........".

All I can ascertain from your response is that you don't want to build your deck to have an answer for strong cards in the current environment. How can anyone even debate that?

People don't really think that anytime players have a hard time playing around some card that it should receive an errata or bad? Or maybe players really think that they can make decks that have an answer for everything?

To be fair, claiming that Finger of Jade, or Above Question, trumps PD is kinda silly. If I have 2 characters with low fate, I need 2 finger of jade... Not efficient at all.

2 hours ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

I truly believe you (and others who agree with your stance here) are simply reading far too deeply into what you think dueling *should* be rather than what it explicitly is.

If a player thinks they deserve a roughly 50/50 shot at stealing my played card's effect, I honestly don't know what to tell them, but it's certainly not worth debate, IMO.

Instead, one should always assume that they will be at a disadvantage when a duel action is used against them. The alternative is simply "remove dueling, and every action just does what it's supposed to, no chance at all of turning it around."
Maybe that's better design, but it's also more boring design.

I think a lot of people would have been happy with: "Defender chooses the target of PD." It still would be a strong card. It still would be included in deck that are really strong at Political. Players who play it could set-up situations where they can bully duel etc. But it might not be in every single deck 3 times... Only problem with this, is that it would strengthen Scorpion at the top of the food chain, and should we really strengthen the one clan with a positive win rate against every clan in the last Kotei?

1 hour ago, Seawhale said:

I think a lot of people would have been happy with: "Defender chooses the target of PD." It still would be a strong card. It still would be included in deck that are really strong at Political.

And it would totally kill any chance of seeing it in any other deck besides Scorpion and Crane.
And even then, it'd be an iffy include.

Dueling in this game is all about bullying lower-stated characters. It doesn't matter if we're talking about PD, or Duelist Training, or Mirumoto Raitsugu, or any other duel they print.
If you lose control of the ability to do that, it becomes a useless tactic.

6 hours ago, Seawhale said:

To be fair, claiming that Finger of Jade, or Above Question, trumps PD is kinda silly. If I have 2 characters with low fate, I need 2 finger of jade... Not efficient at all.

To be fair, I never claimed that every card I listed would have potential in every deck, but it would definitely be silly to dismiss either of these cards potential to help out a deck.

So I am guessing that you find it more efficient for your opponent to duel you and get rid of a card, and that is fine, again, doesn't make dueling broken.

8 hours ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

And it would totally kill any chance of seeing it in any other deck besides Scorpion and Crane.
And even then, it'd be an iffy include.

Dueling in this game is all about bullying lower-stated characters. It doesn't matter if we're talking about PD, or Duelist Training, or Mirumoto Raitsugu, or any other duel they print.
If you lose control of the ability to do that, it becomes a useless tactic.

And yet, many other duel cards for which the defender choose who is targeted make it in plenty of decks. It's really not that hard to set up a situation where you can use your duel if the need arise. Gosh, some often used duels are printed on dynasty characters, they are extremely telegraphed and people find way to use them. How would having a duel from hand not be easier to set up?

The problem with PD is not that it is strong. It is that it is strong, requires no set-up and no cost. Give it at least one of these three (require set-up, cost or is weaker) and no one would care about it.

I don't really care about PD like many people who commented here. I don't want to see it changed, and I'm happy to play it in every single one of my decks but some Lion. However, anyone claiming that a card that almost universally does make it in every single deck is not problematic doesn't understand what deckbuilding means. There is no deckbuilding if 95% of the cards that go in a deck are auto include because they are stronger than the rest of the card pool. Deckbuilding is fun and innovative when there is a big pool of cards that do different things and that are all viable. PD is problematic, in my mind, because it limits deckbuilding (you are shooting yourself in the foot if you don't include it in 95% of decks).

That's probably the thing. PD isn't maybe designed to make it into every deck.

it's a duel, but from the "lore" pov it isn't like raitsugu's, kaezin's or a duellist training who are military Skill action. It's a political bully tool, flavourwise at home with strong political clans like scorpion and crane and mechanic wise it capitalizes on discard ability so good for scorpion honor pressure and bid actions and can combo with the kakita blade for extra honor and political skill. Eventually, it might make it in a Dragon pol/mil deck splashing crane for duelling and benefit of discard ability from kitsuki.

Funny though it's the only neutral duel card. If duelling is that important for Rokugan, where is neutral "show me your stance"?

it's so the only duel card that everyone can play. Is it strong? Indubitably. Should everyone play it? Maybe Not if they aren't politicaly inclined or somehow have a duel theme or discard theme strategy.

PD isn't just about picking opponents best card. Imagine winning a Earth pol conflict, in which you won a PD then play spies at court. Add there a kitsuki investigator and you just ripped the hand of your opponent.

Those are strong game tools available to all (apart from Kitsuki) but so are charge, banzai or assassination. Does everyone runs them? Depends on your strategy or even the flavour of your deck.

Might be from a roleplayer and GM pov but I see no flavor in playing PD in military decks. I'm less about clan loyalty than Rokugan loyalty.

now why does many play it, if it doesn't add up to a strategy, I don't know.

it's strong in itself, but it's a mean, not an end.

6 hours ago, Seawhale said:

And yet, many other duel cards for which the defender choose who is targeted make it in plenty of decks.

Such as ?

The only duel action that let the opponent choose the defender is Kaezin... Enough said. :'(

2 hours ago, MrMenthe said:

Such as ?

The only duel action that let the opponent choose the defender is Kaezin... Enough said. :'(

My bad, I thought the defender choosed with ragamuffin (Mirumoto Raitsugu). Goes to show I don't play Dragon and no Dragon players in the local meta...

I still think that if it was still not tied to political conflict it would be playable.

10 hours ago, Seawhale said:

The problem with PD is not that it is strong. It is that it is strong, requires no set-up and no cost.

Simply not true.

There are two "costs" to playing PD. One is that, as a duel, you usually aren't guaranteed to win (the vast majority of playable characters have stats within a couple points of one another) without potentially risking a variable amount of Honor, and the other is that the characters on the field will determine when you can/should actually play PD (if everyone across from you has similar Political scores as what you're showing, it's incredibly risky to drop a PD, which is in and of itself a play restriction).

11 minutes ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

Simply not true.

There are two "costs" to playing PD. One is that, as a duel, you usually aren't guaranteed to win (the vast majority of playable characters have stats within a couple points of one another) without potentially risking a variable amount of Honor, and the other is that the characters on the field will determine when you can/should actually play PD (if everyone across from you has similar Political scores as what you're showing, it's incredibly risky to drop a PD, which is in and of itself a play restriction).

I'd say more that it requires the set-up of getting a character into a conflict with an enemy character with at least 2 less political skill to use effectively and it has the cost of a card from hand.

3 minutes ago, shineyorkboy said:

I'd say more that it requires the set-up of getting a character into a conflict with an enemy character with at least 2 less political skill to use effectively and it has the cost of a card from hand.

So then do you bid 4 and make it a sure thing, probably losing a bunch of honor (as a cost) to win the duel?
Or do you bid 1, assuming your opponent will do the same, and risk having your opponent win?

A lot of people talking about PD are ignoring the realities of the bid (most of which just assuming you have a 5+ Pol lead guaranteed) and you really really can't do that and accurately judge the cost of the card.

1 hour ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

So then do you bid 4 and make it a sure thing, probably losing a bunch of honor (as a cost) to win the duel?
Or do you bid 1, assuming your opponent will do the same, and risk having your opponent win?

A lot of people talking about PD are ignoring the realities of the bid (most of which just assuming you have a 5+ Pol lead guaranteed) and you really really can't do that and accurately judge the cost of the card.

Well I play Dishonor so it's kind of a win/win. Either I see their hand and get rid of a card or they put me three honor closer to my win condition. Though in my experience and based on conventional wisdom people tend to bid 1. Especially against PD since if you're willing to lose the honor anyway you may as well just draw more cards next turn.

I think the concern with the 5+ skill is that almost all of those characters are Scorpions and Cranes. Though I'd point out that those are all 5+ fate uniques. I mean if your opponent has a Shoju or a Kachiko on the field potentially getting hit with a PD is probably the least of your concerns.

I also play some dishonor. A couple more thoughts then:

Do you drop a PD early on, when you feel comfortable you can win the duel but their honor isn't low enough yet to worry them? Is pulling a few points of honor worth letting your opponent see your hand and take your best card from you? In my experience, it's not. You save PD for late-game when they can't afford to bid up the duel. Seems like a pretty significant play limitation.

I've been rather unimpressed by Dishonor's card draw (at least from a Scorpion pov). I want to always bid low when I can and that tends to severely limit my hand, which can pretty easily be crippled by a lost PD. Is the few honor gained from the loss worth not being able to clinch the game in the next couple rounds? Probably not. Opinions may vary.

6 hours ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

Is the few honor gained from the loss worth not being able to clinch the game in the next couple rounds? Probably not. Opinions may vary.

Entirely depends on the situation, which is why I like the LCG dueling mechanic.

Dueling lets you play mind games now, which hasn't been true in L5R since the CCG changed it's dueling rules at the beginning of Lotus waaaaaaaaaaay back in 2005.

You can fake people out by throwing a duel where you are only 1 up, bid 1, and wait for your opponent to throw their honor at you. Sure, you lose the duel, bit if you are playing an honor/dishonor deck your card lost to PD was just reworded to "Action: Your opponent gives you X honor." which in many cases is better than whatever they take.

Also, if you bid 2 instead of 1 you will completely throw off your opponent's math and possibly end up tying the duel

Edit: And if you have Bayushi Manipulator out, you can do both!