A) Because that's the way FFG can sell the most amount of core sets/cycle packs to a single player who wants to build more than one deck

B) Because FFG thinks it's a good idea that every faction should be able to put some powerful, universal threats/answers in their deck...(which naturally leads to less meta diversity but FFG isn't capable of realising that)

I would go with B. The first one makes no sense, since you can buy singles on various online shops.

1 minute ago, IsawaAitoru said:

I would go with B. The first one makes no sense, since you can buy singles on various online shops.

Can you provide me with a link?

Just search on ebay. There could be better choices, but I don't know them.

Three core sets gets you two full playsets of every Neutral. It's up to the individual if they want to buy multiple copies of Dynasty/Clan Packs, but as you can only actually play one deck at a time, there's nothing wrong with hastily scribbled proxies.

Because the game is only a core set and 1 expansion cycle old and needs to have a certain amount of staples (evergreen cards) that all clans will have access to so that there is a very easy to identify baseline of the game designers can work from when moving forward and we start having to deal with set rotations.

Your expectations seem very high to want a a game that sets itself apart from other games, recaptures the feel of Old5R, provides a minimum of 7 perfectly well balanced play options that have no overlap amongst them while costing you $40. Name me one CCG, LCG, TCG that pulls this off.

Also:

A re you for real?

B reasonable.

or

C yourself out.

6 minutes ago, Ishi Tonu said:

Because the game is only a core set and 1 expansion cycle old and needs to have a certain amount of staples (evergreen cards) that all clans will have access to so that there is a very easy to identify baseline of the game designers can work from when moving forward and we start having to deal with set rotations.

Your expectations seem very high to want a a game that sets itself apart from other games, recaptures the feel of Old5R, provides a minimum of 7 perfectly well balanced play options that have no overlap amongst them while costing you $40. Name me one CCG, LCG, TCG that pulls this off.

Also:

A re you for real?

B reasonable.

or

C yourself out.

At this speed the community is declining, I wouldn't be surprised if this game won't see its first rotation.

Why does it need neutral cards to set itself apart from other games? These card slots could have been easily replaced with faction conflict cards (which you could splash and which would help tremendously to shape the identity of the factions). And why should neutral cards help identifiying the baseline, all they probably do is dillute the baseline of the game, especially if they are stronger than equal costed faction cards.

You don't know my expectations and I didn't say any of the stuff you list there.

I find the relative abundance of decent neutral cards refreshing. It reduces (although doesn't eliminate) that rock-paper-scissors effect that you get when all the decent counters are in-faction only. I think back to Conquest, when Tyranids were seriously disadvantaged in the big elites meta because all the control cards were in-faction and Tyranids couldn't ally with anyone, meaning that if your Warlord ended up at the same planet as a Possessed then it was effectively game over.

Maybe it reduces the diversity within decks, but it actually increases the diversity of the range of decks that are competitive. For example by being able to run Court Games in my Crab or Unicorn decks I actually have a half-chance of not being completely white-washed by Crane or Scorpion in Political conflicts. Banzai brings similar benefits to more Politically-orientated clans. Otherwise its just a race to each other's Stronghold over 3 turns.

Another way of looking at it is to consider attachment hate, of which the only neutral option (Miya Mystic) is terrible - which led to Dragon being the default go-to splash for most Clans for the first few months of the game, which is hardly a good advert for deck diversity.

1 hour ago, Bunsenbrenner said:

At this speed the community is declining, I wouldn't be surprised if this game won't see its first rotation.

Has a single LCG reached rotation yet?

I'm not seeing the declining community either - Koteis are drawing incredible numbers, and official store-level OP has only just begun. While I would definitely like to see more information regarding product releases and future OP plans, the community is healthy and growing.

After countless games I honestly don't think that neutral cards are OP. A lot of card games take the aproach that there are different factions with distinct strenghs and weaknesses and neutral cards are there to shore up a weakness of factions that either doesn't have another way of obtaining that effect or wants more of it. Therefore those neutral cards are designed weaker than the in-faction cards.

L5R on the other hand designed the neutral cards to be your bread and butter cards. You play a midrange deck with characters sticking to the board-> You get +2 str. Equipment for 0 fate. You play a lot of Courtiers-> You get a powerfull controling tool etc. Are those tools better than Miromoto's Fury, Let Go, Pathfinder's Blade, Reprieve, Against the Waves etc.? I don't think so.

37 minutes ago, Hinomura said:

Has a single LCG reached rotation yet?

Netrunner recently did (it's currently in its 8th cycle*). The next-oldest is Star Wars, which is in its 6th cycle. Then come AGoT 2nd edition** (4th cycle) and L5R (1st cycle finished).

* The core set was replaced just before that, ditching some cards and integrating some cards from the soon-to-be-rotated-out cycles (Netrunner was designed without rotation in mind).
** AGoT was rebooted entirely because the 1st edition cardpool had gone far beyond rotation.

8 minutes ago, Khudzlin said:

The next-oldest is Star Wars, which is in its 6th cycle.

6th and final as FFG announced it's last cycle.

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2018/1/10/promise-of-power-1/

@kempy I didn't keep up to date. Though I'm not really surprised, since I don't see players anymore. However, Netrunner is still alive post-rotation, even if they stopped translating it in French (the French players I know buy English cards).

3 hours ago, Hinomura said:

Has a single LCG reached rotation yet?

I'm not seeing the declining community either - Koteis are drawing incredible numbers, and official store-level OP has only just begun. While I would definitely like to see more information regarding product releases and future OP plans, the community is healthy and growing.

Every game I've ever played has these people in the online community. The sky is always falling and the game will be dead by next month. At least L5R has fewer of the "I'm quitting, pay attention to me" posts than most games.

Thanks @kempy, I hadn't bought any since the end of the Rogue Squadron cycle. It's a good game, hope to pick up what I'm missing on the cheap later down the road.

1 hour ago, HirumaShigure said:

Thanks @kempy, I hadn't bought any since the end of the Rogue Squadron cycle. It's a good game, hope to pick up what I'm missing on the cheap later down the road.

I really suggest to buy last cycle as fast as possible. FFG print last cycles in really small numbers and it will be not available soon. That fe. happened to Conquest.

Neutral cards represent as well Rokugan's common culture, tools available to all.

1 hour ago, Nitenman said:

Neutral cards represent as well Rokugan's common culture, tools available to all.

This. The game designers have used the neutral cards, however overpowered they may or may not be, to establish both a gameplay and motif baseline. They are in the core to represent the cultural, military, and political tactics used to gain power by all clans in Rokugan.

2 hours ago, kempy said:

I really suggest to buy last cycle as fast as possible. FFG print last cycles in really small numbers and it will be not available soon. That fe. happened to Conquest.

Conquest was a special case, because FFG lost the license. For comparison, look to Call of Cthulhu, Invasion or AGoT 1st edition. I don't know about the first two (except that CoC didn't even have cycles at the end, only boxes), but plenty of people bought AGoT 1st edition's final cycle.

17 minutes ago, Khudzlin said:

Conquest was a special case, because FFG lost the license. For comparison, look to Call of Cthulhu, Invasion or AGoT 1st edition. I don't know about the first two (except that CoC didn't even have cycles at the end, only boxes), but plenty of people bought AGoT 1st edition's final cycle.

Maybe it's just Warhammer thing because final product of Warhammer: Invasion named Hidden Kingdoms (Deluxe) also was hard to find few months after game stopped.

Having strong neutral cards in the Core set is pretty obviously a benefit to balance the game; it guarantees that everyone has access to certain tools while limiting the amount of cards needed. Yes, they could be replaced with in faction cards, but this would leave a lot of holes - the Core Set has 14 neutral conflict cards, so add two extra cards to each clan and see how it goes. It almost certainly wouldn't be as balanced as it is was.

The idea is that the neutrals will then fade out of use over time - look at AGOT, which had numerous power neutral cards that were included in most decks, but have slowly been replaced (but still being playable in the right decks). Now, I'd agree that the power level on neutral cards was probably too high in the Core Set, but literally every card game ever will have balance issues starting out. And the fact that many of those cards are no longer auto-include by the end of the first cycle sort of indicates that it wasn't that big an issue.