I think roles are a bit of grey area since it's not really reasonable to expect everyone who buys a Core to check online for the official ones. I mean is there even anything in the Core box the says there are Clan specific roles and where to look them up?

Although if you want to get technical the Learn To Play document say the deck construction rules are only for sanctioned tournaments. So if you're going to follow them anyway you might as well use the proper role. Otherwise, sky's the limit; use 2 Strongholds and 3 roles with a conflict deck of twenty cards and a dynasty deck of 53.

6 hours ago, shineyorkboy said:

I find it odd that this dichotomy exists. It's not like you look at the NFL or NBA or whatever and say those guys are playing the game wrong.

Fundamentally there's no difference in how you play a game of baseball in the World Series or chess in the World Championship vs pick up games in your local park. All that's different is the skill level of the players.

What I see being described as casual seem like either gimmicky variants or self imposed handicaps. Like playing basketball while wearing a catchers mitt or playing chess and only ever moving all your pieces one square at a time. Not to say that can't be fun in a novel sort of way, but I think it's weird to say playing the game as intended can't be fun just because it doesn't do that.

I agree with Tabris2k. There's no right or wrong, better or worse, but there is a difference in attitude, motivation, etc. I think the competitive player tends to get more enjoyment out of winning, intellectual stimulation, and the mechanical components of card interaction. They tend to look for the best combination of cards and in-game sequences, which is fun for them. I think the casual players tends to get more enjoyment out of creative freedom, silly combos, and friendly player-to-player interaction. They tend to chafe at "needing" to include the best cards, and like to fool around instead. These are just over-simplified observations unique to my experience. As a hybrid, I can relate to both.

Then there's lore and clan loyalty. Is a dedicated Unicorn player handicapping himself/herself? Well, kinda. But you can be a competitive player who chooses to bring Unicorn to tourneys, and give it your darndest. That's fun for some people.

2 hours ago, shineyorkboy said:

I think roles are a bit of grey area since it's not really reasonable to expect everyone who buys a Core to check online for the official ones. I mean is there even anything in the Core box the says there are Clan specific roles and where to look them up?

Although if you want to get technical the Learn To Play document say the deck construction rules are only for sanctioned tournaments. So if you're going to follow them anyway you might as well use the proper role. Otherwise, sky's the limit; use 2 Strongholds and 3 roles with a conflict deck of twenty cards and a dynasty deck of 53.

I'm pretty sure the "for sanctioned tournaments" bit is referring primarily to the 40-45 card limit, since with a single core the decks are 30/30. As long as both players agreed to it, though, I don't see why you couldn't build decks like that. I would point out, however, that all the rules seem to assume that each player has exactly 1 Stronghold, and 0-1 Role cards, so you'd have to come up with some house rules for what it even means, for gameplay, to have multiple Strongholds or Roles.

Contrast with which Roles may be selected, which isn't even touched upon in the Learn to Play document, and in the Rules Reference only has a bullet point stating, "In sanctioned tournament play, role card eligibility for each clan is determined by the Clan Roles webpage." For deckbuilding in general, the tournament rules are the only guidelines given. For Roles specifically, we're given plenty about a single, optional role being allowed, with the tournament rules being reiterated as being just for sanctioned tournaments. Of course, all this is rather moot anyway, as a casual group can set up whatever rules they want, so even if deckbuilding and specific roles went hand-in-hand, they could simply say, "We have deckbuilding rules that are an awful lot like tournament rules, except where Roles are concerned."

As for why someone would not choose the specified Roles, it goes back to the purpose of casual play in the first place. I play casually because I like to try out different decks that may or may not be too powerful, but that have fun card interactions. Why should I deny my Phoenix and Crab decks Pathfinder's Blade or keep my Crane and Dragon Keeper cards in a binder, just because some tournament winner decided that a different Role worked best for his deck in sanctioned tournaments?

7 hours ago, shineyorkboy said:

I find it odd that this dichotomy exists. It's not like you look at the NFL or NBA or whatever and say those guys are playing the game wrong.

Fundamentally there's no difference in how you play a game of baseball in the World Series or chess in the World Championship vs pick up games in your local park. All that's different is the skill level of the players.

What I see being described as casual seem like either gimmicky variants or self imposed handicaps. Like playing basketball while wearing a catchers mitt or playing chess and only ever moving all your pieces one square at a time. Not to say that can't be fun in a novel sort of way, but I think it's weird to say playing the game as intended can't be fun just because it doesn't do that.

There's no sense comparing sports like basketball or chess with card games. The premise of sports is equality of conditions, in chess you have exactly the same pieces so off course the game resumes to skills. Some people say Poker is a sport but this is just a marketing strategy, as any card game with different cards between players is a game of skill and not a sport.

Anyway I think you misunderstood. It's not about casual players and competitive players, It's about deckbuilding. Taking Lion for example, I never see a player running the Matriarch. Off course there's better cards to place in her place and I would not include she in my deck for a championship. But independent of my skill level as a player I can choose her in my casual deck to make a woman's army with brawler and the magistrate just for fun.

I agree with what kempy said that most players want to win. Indeed if you play jigoku a lot you already noticed that almost every players run pratically the same decks. In this kind of environment you are discouraged to build casual decks, but to play against your friends it can be nice.

The gameplay with a deck focused in meta like running Dragon splash is completely different than choosing a Phoenix splash for example, even if it is not so effective as Dragon for your Clan.

No one is saying competitive play is not fun, but there's a difference between have fun and just for fun.

Some players just have fun if they win, I think this is sad, poor unicorns if everyone thought like them .

1 hour ago, L5RBr said:

There's no sense comparing sports like basketball or chess with card games. The premise of sports is equality of conditions, in chess you have exactly the same pieces so off course the game resumes to skills. Some people say Poker is a sport but this is just a marketing strategy, as any card game with different cards between players is a game of skill and not a sport.

I'm pretty sure sports are games of skill. I don't think the professionals would get paid as much as they do if anyone off the street could do the job.

Regardless I think there's lots of room for comparison. Using football there's do I build my team around passing or running, do I blitz or focus on covering the runners, etc.; which translate into lots of the strategic and tactical decision you face in L5R.

1 hour ago, L5RBr said:

Anyway I think you misunderstood. It's not about casual players and competitive players, It's about deckbuilding. Taking Lion for example, I never see a player running the Matriarch. Off course there's better cards to place in her place and I would not include she in my deck for a championship. But independent of my skill level as a player I can choose her in my casual deck to make a woman's army with brawler and the magistrate just for fun.

I'm also talking about deck building. When you play a game against someone you naturally will do your best to win. That's regardless of whether it's a board game, ball game, card game, or whatever. Nobody goes into a game with the mindset of 'I'm going to intentionally be bad at this', at the very least it's 'I'm bad at this now, but I'm going to work to improve at it' which includes getting better a deck building.

If you recognize a card as being sup par and you run it anyway you are intentionally handicapping yourself. It's like the chess example I gave, you can choose to only move your pieces one square at a time but you're denying yourself the full strategic options available to you.

2 hours ago, L5RBr said:

The gameplay with a deck focused in meta like running Dragon splash is completely different than choosing a Phoenix splash for example, even if it is not so effective as Dragon for your Clan.

When it comes to choosing a Clan to splash I'm generally of the opinion of, eh do whatever. I think it's less important what Clan you splash than what cards from that Clan you choose and how well they fit in with your overall strategic design.

Back in Core I quickly became dismissive of Dragon as being strategically uninspired and now that the conventional wisdom has shifted to Unicorn I'm still very meh. Although my deck wouldn't really work without splashing Scorpion, but it's work reasonably well for me so far so I'll be sticking with it for the foreseeable future.

Before this strays too far off topic, I think it's important to note that we all need to be honest as possible with ourselves and our opponents about our motivations for playing.

This is pretty easy to do with your local playgroup. You generally know them all well enough and got together to play the game for similar reasons.

Online, I think, is were we get into trouble with this gray area of what is competitive/casual.

Some people think that because there is no time limit on the game, or they flip-flopped two cards from the last Kotei winning deck and are "trying something new", or they are just in a less competitive mood that day, that they are playing casually. I think we need to be very careful when doing that. You run the risk of creating a bad experience for someone else by doing this and it can eventually lead to players feeling like they have cause to quit. While I think that would be an overreaction, it can happen. Only you know why you play but if you are not as upfront as possible about it, especially when playing with strangers on the internet, you are potentially impacting your opportunities to play in the future. Why should you care if some random person gets upset that you rolled over him in the casual queue when you were playing the latest "top crab" list for the first time? Because the game thrives on participation and people participate for different reasons. If you alienate a portion of the player base you might find it more difficult to play the game. Be an ambassador of the game whenever possible.

I would also caution the players that are less focused on competitive play, to at least be aware of the competitive meta game and prepare your deck to be able to handle typical cards within the competitive meta game. The information is out there. If I can find it, being as technologically inept as I am, you can too. You don't have to copy the lists, but, you should at least make yourself aware of them. If you don't want to take the time to learn and understand them, you have nobody to blame but yourself if your "Wandering Ronin Rulz" deck gets stomped. And keep in mind that just because someone shows up with what appears to be a top tier deck, doesn't mean they are ultra competitive. Don't get salty if you lose. It's not difficult to say thanks for the game and then hop into another one. If you want to get better, see if they will talk with you about your deck and play. Just understand that you might get some blunt criticism from time to time.

But...Wandering Ronin RULZ!

I tried using Stone of Sorrow, but most games don't seem to take that long. So while I think creating novel situations is "fun", the game encourages me to just strip things down to its most efficient.

I think the game supporting multiple strategies in fun, this "throw together Court Games, Banzai, and these auto-includes" isn't.

Maybe that will change now that I hear several clans are playing more defensively and drawing out the game, but the tournament time clocks are tight enough as it is.

3 hours ago, Waywardpaladin said:

I tried using Stone of Sorrow, but most games don't seem to take that long. So while I think creating novel situations is "fun", the game encourages me to just strip things down to its most efficient.

I think the game supporting multiple strategies in fun, this "throw together Court Games, Banzai, and these auto-includes" isn't.

Maybe that will change now that I hear several clans are playing more defensively and drawing out the game, but the tournament time clocks are tight enough as it is.

Is it the game that encourages you to strip things down, or is it your opponents? Or is it your own desire to win? I think these are important questions for every player to ask themselves. I like Ishi Tonu's suggestion to "be an ambassador of the game whenever possible."

15 hours ago, Hinomura said:

But...Wandering Ronin RULZ!

I got a Scorpion player to concede to my Wandering Ronin. I'm not going to lie........ It was extremely gratifiying.

Now I just play him in live games so I can see the look on my opponents face when I run him out there with 3 fate on him.

On ‎06‎.‎02‎.‎2018 at 12:22 PM, Hinomura said:

I usually have three or four decks built at any one time, mostly from whatever deck list has caught my eye online recently. Right now, I have the top four Scorpion/Lion deck from Cork, Balthis's Crane deck from PAX, Travis's weenie-ish Phoenix deck, and a Dragon/Crab derived from Ben Fox's Cork list.

I don't think there's a hugely pronounced difference between competitive and casual, but that might very well be down to how I play competitively - I try and be friendly and laid-back, no matter how how the stakes. If I'm playing someone in a casual setting, I'll usually ask if they have a preference for which deck they'd like to play against, and I'm also fine with running someone else's deck to offer them feedback on it.

Are there any informations about Ben Fox's Dragon deck on the internet?

The Imperial Advisor did a Meta Check article on the Cork Kotei that includes links to every deck that made the cut.

On 2/5/2018 at 3:10 PM, twinstarbmc said:

I don't think anyone does. Which... is kindof a shame. It'd be nice to get casual once in a while, and not feel like I have to dedicate hours to studying deck builds and card interactions , memorizing the entire card pool, building and tweaking and re-tweaking decks.... It's a game, for crying out loud.

I only play this game for fun. IMO if you are playing a game and not having fun, then there is no point to playing the game.

1 hour ago, Titanium Mage said:

I only play this game for fun. IMO if you are playing a game and not having fun, then there is no point to playing the game.

Everybody plays this game for fun. What differs is what everybody perceive as fun. Deckbuilding is no too much fun to me, but it could be to others...

It ain't no fuuuuuuun

Without Talisman of the Sun

Guess who's back in the mollygrubbin house with a fat sack of taint for your mollygrubbin mouth.

Ashigaru recognize and hatamoto do to but id advise you not to trust that Fu.

For competitive play I'm loyal to my Dragons and have been playing with Crab splash. The AFWTD Scorpion hasn't made it to my local meta yet, if it does I may try Crane splash.

For casual I play any clan other than Dragon. It gives me a break and also gives me a better understanding of my enemies.

When "that guy" shows up to your casual game night with his netdeck and a "competitive" attitude.

This is one of those universal discussions in an card game, there's never going to be an answer. I suppose "casual" is where you don't play an "A" deck but you can still play your "A" game, which unfortunately can't be turned off once you reach a certain knowledge depth about a game. Certain things should be allowed like take-backs, no timed games and general table talk.

Also, no smirking and going "oh, you're playing that?"

44 minutes ago, Hordeoverseer said:

Also, no smirking and going "oh, you're playing that?"

So why is it that in a casual game when someone's about to attack Restoration of Balance with a hand of 12 cards and I say, "You don't want to go there," I'm being helpful and sportsmanlike, but in a competitive game I'm playing mind games?

Not a serious question.