I was against Clan-specific roles from the start. With only 1 stronghold for each Clan, it reduces deckbuilding options when they most need to be open.
@Schmoozies The problem is that Feast or Famine is overpowered. The solution is not to reserve it to 2 clans, but to balance it against the other provinces.
Edited by Khudzlin8 minutes ago, Khudzlin said:I was against Clan-specific roles from the start. With only 1 stronghold for each Clan, it reduces deckbuilding options when they most need to be open.
@Schmoozies The problem is that Feast or Famine is overpowered. The solution is not to reserve it to 2 clans, but to balance it against the other provinces.
No doubt Feast was a mistake as soon as it saw print, but its just the most extreme example as there will always be optimal province line ups or cards that end up dictating decisions. If Feast didn't exist most decks would be on Seeker of Void to run both Shameful and Pilgrimage. Powerful cards will dictate what competitive builds will be and that is why the restrictions exist to rein in that power. If you are just playing with your buddies at home or in the store you can always agree to play without the role restrictions as they are only a tournament restriction, but they are sadly needed in the competitive environment as a restriction on certain power cards, and lets not forget that the way the role selections are currently set you only have the ideal role for a year, than you have to switch up as you can't keep the same role twice in a row. So yes you could in theory bounce between Keeper and Seeker of an element, but the decks would build differently due to province restrictions and changed economy (along with Keeper/Seeker locked cards). It really is a good tool to keep the tournament scene from stagnating too much
Yeah we'd see the meta evolve to 1-3 roles being actually competitive at a given time. I like the idea of the roles; that when you know the cards you can adjust your playstyle / deckbuilding to try to answer what the other clan's roles locked options are. This cycle wants to push roles to matter even more, but I feel the next ones will have less of them (or go back to more seeker / keeper locks).
I don't like buying a pack with just one card in it that I can play though... (or ever if say Scorpion never pick a certain elemental role). Of course you get neutrals / splashable cards, but still.
Bear in mind that L5R is the first LCG with this kind of tournament restriction.
3 minutes ago, Khudzlin said:
Bear in mind that L5R is the first LCG with this kind of tournament restriction.
This is true, but I think it’s largely because FFG used the experience gained in games like Netrunner to make the decision. I think clan locks can help keep a lot of cards off the restricted list in theory.
Early days yet. I’m enjoying the game and I look forward to seeing the shape of it after a couple of more cycles.
2 minutes ago, Soshi Saibankan said:Yeah we'd see the meta evolve to 1-3 roles being actually competitive at a given time. I like the idea of the roles; that when you know the cards you can adjust your playstyle / deckbuilding to try to answer what the other clan's roles locked options are. This cycle wants to push roles to matter even more, but I feel the next ones will have less of them (or go back to more seeker / keeper locks).
I don't like buying a pack with just one card in it that I can play though... (or ever if say Scorpion never pick a certain elemental role). Of course you get neutrals / splashable cards, but still.
The only role locks I'm not a fan of are the ones on Clan specific Dynasty cards as you are completely blocking them to a single build type (whether Keeper for clan or worse Element for clan) but as conflict they are still viable, they just become splash options for other clans rather than the main clan.
It will also be somewhat mitigated when we see second roles become a thing later this year as smart play will be to try and angle for seeker or keeper role counter to your current role and than just switch between elements while leaving the Keeper Seeker options open.
I have nothing against role-locked cards. Even role-locked dynasty cards wouldn't be a problem at all if role choice was free.
36 minutes ago, Soshi Saibankan said:Yeah we'd see the meta evolve to 1-3 roles being actually competitive at a given time. I like the idea of the roles; that when you know the cards you can adjust your playstyle / deckbuilding to try to answer what the other clan's roles locked options are. This cycle wants to push roles to matter even more, but I feel the next ones will have less of them (or go back to more seeker / keeper locks).
I don't like buying a pack with just one card in it that I can play though... (or ever if say Scorpion never pick a certain elemental role). Of course you get neutrals / splashable cards, but still.
Instead we have a meta where only 1-3 clans are competative, in large part because they were lucky enough to get the best roles.
1 hour ago, Schmoozies said:The issue with this is that it leads to far too many decks and their province rows looking exactly the same, I mean do you honestly think given the choice anyone would be passing up Feast or Famine right now. Only question would be do you take Seeker economy or Keeper for character recursion and Talisman splash.
Frankly, I'd rather run Seeker of Void or an Air role to gain access to either double Void provinces or some of the air role locked cards. And I know I'm not the only one in Phoenix who feels that way. There might be a lot of people who initially run Feast or Famine, but that just means people learn to deal with it in the meta and it becomes less useful, and the meta shifts accordingly to different strategies.
I can't see any choice beating Seeker of Void for Phoenix. Shameful Display + Kuroi Mori, plus extra fate when they flip up, way too good. There'd have to be a heck of a card restricted to another role to convince me that card's better than Kuroi Mori.
11 minutes ago, AradonTemplar said:I can't see any choice beating Seeker of Void for Phoenix. Shameful Display + Kuroi Mori, plus extra fate when they flip up, way too good. There'd have to be a heck of a card restricted to another role to convince me that card's better than Kuroi Mori.
There will always be corner cases where that is the case, and as I mentioned in another comment if Feast or Famine wasn't a thing Seeker of Void would likely have been the default for most decks for the Shameful/Pilgrimage combo, and yes Phoenix having a solid Void province does make it more tempting for them over Fire for Feast, but where most clans don't have that super Void Province Fire opens up the Feast, Meditations, Shameful/Pilgrimage, Air for preferred card or fate draw and Rally under the box option that would likely become very attractive for many competitive decks. Once the meta adjust to Feast being everywhere the next most likely would be the Seeker Void rows for most decks as it can be equally punishing.
2 hours ago, Schmoozies said:The issue with this is that it leads to far too many decks and their province rows looking exactly the same, I mean do you honestly think given the choice anyone would be passing up Feast or Famine right now. Only question would be do you take Seeker economy or Keeper for character recursion and Talisman splash.
Ah, right, that must be why Dragon and Lion have been dominating the Kotei scene. ?
1 minute ago, shineyorkboy said:Ah, right, that must be why Dragon and Lion have been dominating the Kotei scene. ?
Dragon I have very little answer for as really I would have expected them to be doing much better than they are given all the advantages they currently have, but apparently Crab and Scorpion's dishonor switch double pressure game is just stronger than Dragon Voltron smash at the moment.
Lion on the other hand has so many fundamental flaws with their design and how dependent they are on two characters hitting (and frankly greater access to Feast would only aggravate that problem further) when they need them that its no surprise that once we got past the initial core set environment and people got a better feel for the game meta they fell off the radar.
Honestly I'm more scared of Crane or Scorpion getting access to feast as their Harpoon options will make dragging bodies into it to force a break that much easier.
That'll be the first 5-cost Neutral, then. And also a bit of controversy - they're calling Yoritomo a Champion. In the old continuity, only Great Clans had Champions; Minor Clans had Daimyo, IIRC.
We actually have an almost full spoiler for pack 4. Just missing the Phoenix conflict card, and the details of that Crab Province and Scorpion Holding they mention.
3 minutes ago, Tonbo Karasu said:That'll be the first 5-cost Neutral, then. And also a bit of controversy - they're calling Yoritomo a Champion. In the old continuity, only Great Clans had Champions; Minor Clans had Daimyo, IIRC.
We actually have an almost full spoiler for pack 4. Just missing the Phoenix conflict card, and the details of that Crab Province and Scorpion Holding they mention.
Even in the old game First Version of him in the Crimson and Jade set had him as Mantis Clan Champion.
4 minutes ago, Schmoozies said:Even in the old game First Version of him in the Crimson and Jade set had him as Mantis Clan Champion.
I stand corrected! That must have been an RPG thing. or my imagination, I suppose.
2 minutes ago, Tonbo Karasu said:I stand corrected! That must have been an RPG thing. or my imagination, I suppose.
It was controversial even back then because story-wise, Mantis was not a official Clan recognized by the Emperor at that Era.
Just now, sector3600 said:It was controversial even back then because story-wise, Mantis was not a official Clan recognized by the Emperor at that Era.
I wouldn't call it controversial, as when the card came out the story background on what constituted a champion was still somewhat vague. At that point all Champion really indicated was that the character was the titular head of Clan or what ever their Champion tag linked with (Qamar had released in the Shadowlands set and was Naga Champion, and Toshimoko was Emerald Champion after a story reward). The whole status of Minor Clans versus great Clans was introduced with Yoritomo and the lead up to the Alliance and the was really flushed out once we started seeing RPG material post Time of the Void.
15 minutes ago, Schmoozies said:I wouldn't call it controversial, as when the card came out the story background on what constituted a champion was still somewhat vague. At that point all Champion really indicated was that the character was the titular head of Clan or what ever their Champion tag linked with (Qamar had released in the Shadowlands set and was Naga Champion, and Toshimoko was Emerald Champion after a story reward). The whole status of Minor Clans versus great Clans was introduced with Yoritomo and the lead up to the Alliance and the was really flushed out once we started seeing RPG material post Time of the Void.
Yes, but Game-wise Naga was a Clan-like from the very beginning Pre-Imperial Edition - they had a faction design coloring!
5 minutes ago, sector3600 said:Yes, but Game-wise Naga was a Clan-like from the very beginning Pre-Imperial Edition - they had a faction design coloring!
But they were not a recognized clan by the Emperor, the same can be said for the Scorpion who came out as a faction in the same expansion and had been outlawed by Imperial decree. The main difference is that Naga and Scorpion were early design clans and were being worked on at the same time as the main clans.
The faction less coloration was actually appropriate for the later set factions as they were all meant to be used in conjunction with the other clans to plug wholes in design and in many cases were recycling existing characters to get them up to card parity with the older factions (have to remember that Tsuruchi, Wakiza, Kemmei and several of the other early Alliance personalities predated the Alliance Stronghold by several sets). Plus Mantis and the other colourless factions were on their own distinct colors by the time the next core set came out.
Clan in early L5R CCG wasn't about the story as much as how these factions existed.
Naga was the only non-Imperial Faction besides Scorpion to have non-Unaligned faction/Clan coloring because game-wise they were going to be Clan-like factions. The Naga weren't a clan as much as they were a known but hidden faction that wasn't a Major house yet one can point to their strong ties to Dragon whom had a Naga infused personality as one of their key personalities.
Scorpion was still a Clan in spirit, during the Clan Wars Era of the first CCG arc they got their Stronghold like the Naga did in Shadowlands. (Physically within 8 months of the Imperial Edition core release) .
Once these color-oriented and non-aligned Clans got a Stronghold they were more Clan-like and thus became a Clan for for playing sake but it wasn't really declared in the story besides Scorpion, Mantis as key examples that was a Clan recognized by the Emperor.
Edited by sector3600
1 hour ago, sector3600 said:Clan in early L5R CCG wasn't about the story as much as how these factions existed.
Naga was the only non-Imperial Faction besides Scorpion to have non-Unaligned faction/Clan coloring because game-wise they were going to be Clan-like factions. The Naga weren't a clan as much as they were a known but hidden faction that wasn't a Major house yet one can point to their strong ties to Dragon whom had a Naga infused personality as one of their key personalities.
Scorpion was still a Clan in spirit, during the Clan Wars Era of the first CCG arc they got their Stronghold like the Naga did in Shadowlands. (Physically within 8 months of the Imperial Edition core release) .
Once these color-oriented and non-aligned Clans got a Stronghold they were more Clan-like and thus became a Clan for for playing sake but it wasn't really declared in the story besides Scorpion, Mantis as key examples that was a Clan recognized by the Emperor.
Naga were a far from known but hidden faction. They were a myth that had spread through the empire based on ruins found in the Shinomen Mori adn the occasional sighting of the odd guardian who remained awake to protect their sleeping brethren. Yes Mirumoto Daini established a strong connection to the Naga through his relationship with the Mara, but that was again a much later development mainly dovetailing out of the Totruri's army/Dragon Alliance story. The difference between unaligned and aligned personalities had potential impact on game play for things like swearing fealty effects so the fact that Toturis Army, Monk, Yoritomo's Alliance and Shadowlands Horde all being neutral (and again a large part of that is that they were all designed to incorporate existing neutral characters with appropriate traits to bring a late addition faction up to card parity sooner) was a design decision as much as anything else.
Saying Scorpion or Naga were a clan in spirit on preview goes completely counter to your earlier statement that Yoritomo having the Champion trait since they weren't a great clan and is disproved by the fact that there were plenty of other non-great clan factions that also had Champions. The ground work for the Mantis was laid well in advance just like the Scorpion and Naga were by the inclusion of a Mantis aligned personality in the Anvil of Despair set and the followers going as far back as Forbidden Knowledge and Shadowlands set. There was also story mention of them in sets leading up to their release, most notably working as mercenaries for the Crane when the False Hoturi was rampaging across Crane lands.
It also disregards that the Mantis, Monk, Toturi's Army and Horde were all given boxes in their respective sets and the Minor clans were all recognized as clans by the emperor, they were just of less importance than the great clans being far more limited in scope as to the lands they managed and the influence they were able to exert due to the manpower they had under their direct control.
9 hours ago, HamHamJ2 said:Instead we have a meta where only 1-3 clans are competative, in large part because they were lucky enough to get the best roles.
I think that's because there wasn't enough good role-locked options / provinces. Of course I don't hope for more Feast or Famines, but still after the cycle I think it won't be as obvious as Fire / Void Seekers. Let's be honest, apart for provinces I don't think there's good Void-only cards (yet).
It would be sweet justice if the Mantis Character from the Scorpion pack is Aramasu.
21 minutes ago, Coyote Walks said:It would be sweet justice if the Mantis Character from the Scorpion pack is Aramasu.
I would love that since he was one of my favorite underused characters, but its a little early for that unfortuantely (he had his Gempuku while being fostered in the Mantis in the old story so should still be a toddler at this point).