Just now, cforfar said:

Exactly my thoughts as well. Since Aramoro is a heavy military character as well as Yunako (5/2, 4/2 respectively) province bashing is going to be more of an option to us when this hits stores.

And they already have the best strength/fate ratio...

I do feel like it would have been better for Unicorn or Crane to receive the next pack, but I am not terribly worried about it. As a Lion player Kage is solid and I will likely drop Miya Satoshi for him. Probably drop my Imperial Storehouses as well, which I have gone back and forth on. Locking the game into a dynasty struggle works for me.

The Scorpion dishonor control deck will probably still receive a few nice toys in the pack, but I don't see it being crazy. Scorpion are already running out of room for cards as is.

With the new stronghold I could some interesting plays. Defend at Shameful Display to honor and dishonor both the Scorpion player's characters, especially if the dishonor loving shinobi is available. Then ready to go on the attack. Shutting down their ability to dishonor their characters, or just outright eliminating them will be key in fighting this deck. On the plus side, playing KB instead of CotOH reduces their ability to put dishonor pressure on an opponent. This is more towards enabling conflict wins and province breaks. It will be interesting to see how the two strongholds compare in actual play.

My hope is the meta at the end of the Elemental Cycle will be less lopsided, so I am still hopeful that Scorpion being in the clan packs isn't terrible for the game.

1 minute ago, psychie said:

The 9 influence is really not much of a hit when you have most of the best tech in the game in clan, and the 9 honor really isn't much of an issue for them, especially when having six or less makes the ready action better. Yeah they'll have to adjust to not dishonor themselves out, but after that adjustment happens (and really, it's not much of an adjustment, it's only one less honor than before) they still have the best stronghold in the game, the most annoying conflict deck in the game, etc. Honestly, their conflict deck is so annoying that I don't even enjoy playing against them when I win, they are just unfun to play against and this makes the problem worse.

9 honor is much more of an issue because you can not steal your opponents honor anymore. The fact that these cards will allow more variation in the Scorpion decks is a good thing. We will hopefully not see the same FroTop deck over and over again, a deck I personally can not stand because of how boring it is. I love my Scorpion Phoenix deck focused on Shugenja and people who I play say it is fun to play against as well. We also have an entire cycle before this hits as well, so who knows what will happen by then.

Aramoro has the same stats as Juro with a better ability and for 4 fate. Unbelievable.

Why do they think movement is so great?

I think people who think this stronghold is incredibly strong forget that 9 honor is pretty low, if you can't steal 1 honor a turn it is much easier to dishonor a clan that needs to dishonor itself to achieve some of its best tricks. Attachment control (dishonor), event cancel (dishonor) etc. While I won't know until I face the new stronghold, I really don't feel that this new stronghold will replace the current one. Getting 1 more card each turn, or being practically immune to dishonor is pretty awesome...

Yeah, my thoughts on the new stronghold is that you can afford to bid very low against them, and the scorpion player will soon find themselves out of ways to draw cards as well as unable to continue dishonoring their characters for Forged Edicts and Calling in Favors. Their conflict deck is probably their greatest strength, so I don't see them giving up their original stronghold for the new one.

4 minutes ago, psychie said:

The 9 influence is really not much of a hit when you have most of the best tech in the game in clan, and the 9 honor really isn't much of an issue for them, especially when having six or less makes the ready action better. Yeah they'll have to adjust to not dishonor themselves out, but after that adjustment happens (and really, it's not much of an adjustment, it's only one less honor than before) they still have the best stronghold in the game, the most annoying conflict deck in the game, etc. Honestly, their conflict deck is so annoying that I don't even enjoy playing against them when I win, they are just unfun to play against and this makes the problem worse.

Honor is actually a much bigger deal than before as the new stronghold has no way to recoup the lost honor and Scorpion players can't just default bid 5 to develop their hand advantage.........and use all those annoying conflict cards.

I can understand it when people are upset that Scorpion get something good when they are already at the top, but, to call the new scorpion stronghold better than their core stronghold and super busted, without considering the adjustments that will have to be made to play this new stronghold seems like a kneejerk reaction to me.

You simply cannot run the same old scorpion deck off this new stronghold and expect to "win more." Part of what makes the scorpion core stronghold so good is that it allows scorpion to almost always bid high and access more of those strong conflict cards, because they can steal an honor if their opponent bids low, which cripples the gap in honor twofold. It keeps the Scorpion player away from losing on honor and prevents their opponent from leveraging their high honor as a real win condition. If you bid 5 with this new stronghold, and your opponent bid's 1, you're going into your first conflict at 5 honor instead of 7. Since your stronghold also has the condition of the character being dishonored, you have to risk further honor loss to get max value from your stronghold. One lost Air ring or unopposed battle, could put you within Backhanded Compliment range of losing on turn 1.

Lets wait for all the cards to be out along with the elemental cycle before we start down the rabbit hole.

Agreed... the new stronghold might seem good on paper, but if your opponent has any dishonor pressure at all it looks like a one way ticket to a dishonor loss. I expect the existing stronghold to be the better choice in the vast majority of real-world situations.

On the flip side, both Kage and Aramoro are pretty great however.

Thaddok

Yeah 9 starting honor can be a big deal especially now that they lose their repeatable gain 1 honor to aggressively bid. That is a real strong repeatable action, but I'm guessing you are gonna see a lot of Air conflicts from Scorpions playing this stronghold. Not sure this plays into the big hand small board playstyle.

The stronghold may not be better than the old one, but I don't think it is worse. And having both a busted control deck and a busted Voltron aggro deck probably translates to more Kotei wins.

I do like the stronghold but the whole pump looks like a trap for certain players. The unbowing is interesting enough of a bonus to play around with the card.

Love that Aramoro is in the pack but his art is a bit too silly.

The fact that Kage is present in the pack is just icing on the cake.

A free ready-a-character seems very good, to be fair, which means that the stronghold will probably show up in a very different style of deck, using more aggressive attacks. Bid 5 turn one, and start breaking provinces very quickly. The trick, like with that other Shinobi we saw a while back, is that you have to dishonor your own characters, which isn't always easy. Aramoro turn 1 though is a pretty aggressive start, so I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a new type of Scorpion deck that pushes both political and military. They have pretty good stat lines for their cost, usually.

2 minutes ago, AradonTemplar said:

A free ready-a-character seems very good, to be fair, which means that the stronghold will probably show up in a very different style of deck, using more aggressive attacks. Bid 5 turn one, and start breaking provinces very quickly. The trick, like with that other Shinobi we saw a while back, is that you have to dishonor your own characters, which isn't always easy. Aramoro turn 1 though is a pretty aggressive start, so I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a new type of Scorpion deck that pushes both political and military. They have pretty good stat lines for their cost, usually.

This is Scorpion deck that I wouldn't mind playing as it's aggressive and pretty much all in to win quick..........because a high bid right out of the gate and dishonor for effect cards to get the stronghold online are going to push this thing dangerously close to an honor loss.

You know, balanced

1 minute ago, psychie said:

The 9 influence is really not much of a hit when you have most of the best tech in the game in clan, and the 9 honor really isn't much of an issue for them, especially when having six or less makes the ready action better. Yeah they'll have to adjust to not dishonor themselves out, but after that adjustment happens (and really, it's not much of an adjustment, it's only one less honor than before) they still have the best stronghold in the game, the most annoying conflict deck in the game, etc. Honestly, their conflict deck is so annoying that I don't even enjoy playing against them when I win, they are just unfun to play against and this makes the problem worse.

As the card pool expands, there will be more viable splash options to consider for Scorpion. With 9 you could'nt go for the classic 3 Fury 2 Let Gos. I think it's relevant. Maybe less now, but still relevant.

Well at least it makes it easy to decide what clan to play. ?

Hopefully people will learn that you should be playing Scorpion Clan ?

Those saying that they have only just realized that Scorpion were very powerful , mmm no it was obvious since the core set so they knew way before the game was released even if the most basic testing ?

Those that are saying that Scorpion will now be weaker because somehow competitive players can now choose to play a weaker deck, and so will do ?

Very cool artwork though and very very very COOL to see Aramoro

Very cool to have a estimated release date as well

Nice a Novella is coming out as well

?

35 minutes ago, badgerlord1969 said:

Well at least it makes it easy to decide what clan to play. ?

Hopefully people will learn that you should be playing Scorpion Clan ?

Those saying that they have only just realized that Scorpion were very powerful , mmm no it was obvious since the core set so they knew way before the game was released even if the most basic testing ?

Those that are saying that Scorpion will now be weaker because somehow competitive players can now choose to play a weaker deck, and so will do ?

Very cool artwork though and very very very COOL to see Aramoro

Very cool to have a estimated release date as well

Nice a Novella is coming out as well

?

The idea is to launch the pack in order to "widen" Scorpion players deck options and change the game that way instead of releasing a different clan pack. I am honestly not sure if it will help, the RL was definitely the way to go for nerfing things instead. As far as I can tell the cards revealed so far do not really help the current Scorpion deck archetype. It will be interesting to see the next few Kotei's. Also, we will have the full elemental cycle before this even comes out so who knows what will happen.

4 minutes ago, cforfar said:

The idea is to launch the pack in order to "widen" Scorpion players deck options and change the game that way instead of releasing a different clan pack. I am honestly not sure if it will help, the RL was definitely the way to go for nerfing things instead. As far as I can tell the cards revealed so far do not really help the current Scorpion deck archetype. It will be interesting to see the next few Kotei's. Also, we will have the full elemental cycle before this even comes out so who knows what will happen.

In casual play it may help a little, but honestly for competitive play it will only make the existing arch-type stronger as they will simply stick with the current stronghold and slot in whatever tricks are in the pack that help it out.

I can understand that the packs are being tied to Novella release and sadly that does mean that the decision as to which to release as probably the first 3 has already been made and set in stone due to publishing deadlines. But it also means that we probably have another full year of Scorpion dominance to look forward to before there is a real chance to see some change.

1 minute ago, Schmoozies said:

In casual play it may help a little, but honestly for competitive play it will only make the existing arch-type stronger as they will simply stick with the current stronghold and slot in whatever tricks are in the pack that help it out.

I can understand that the packs are being tied to Novella release and sadly that does mean that the decision as to which to release as probably the first 3 has already been made and set in stone due to publishing deadlines. But it also means that we probably have another full year of Scorpion dominance to look forward to before there is a real chance to see some change.

I am hoping that all the new cards are not going to help the current deck and only create a different type of play style. I am honestly hoping that Scorpion gets crap to mediocre cards in the next cycle (though that 1/1 Shinobi seems to say otherwise) to allow more clans to evolve to catch up. I have a feeling that if the next cycle does not do anything to change the meta we may actually see a drastic decrease in the player base (for reals this time). Brad Andres said on stream that they took the feed back from the community on how poor Unicorn is to add better cards for them in the next cycle. Shono is a good start and even Dispatch is basically a surprise Favourable Grounds which in my book is a decent card that is basically only playable by Unicorn despite having an influence cost.

31 minutes ago, cforfar said:

The idea is to launch the pack in order to "widen" Scorpion players deck options and change the game that way instead of releasing a different clan pack. I am honestly not sure if it will help, the RL was definitely the way to go for nerfing things instead. As far as I can tell the cards revealed so far do not really help the current Scorpion deck archetype. It will be interesting to see the next few Kotei's. Also, we will have the full elemental cycle before this even comes out so who knows what will happen.

I think you'll have Scorpion players who like the shinobi/military theme that will switch, and others who want a challenge. Will most Scorpion players stay with the current style of play, I'd say probably, but if balance is a goal of the developers, more cards like Kage can help. I have no problem with a currently dominant deck, but one style can't stay dominant throughout the life of the game, and that's what we've seen through year 1. The third cycle is where I think we'll see a big shift in the meta landscape and someone else will topple Scorpion.

If Dispatch cost 0 to activate like Favorable Grounds does, maybe it'd be playable. Shono looks good, but if Dispatch is an indication of 'good' unicorn cards, it still doesn't even the gap.

Order of the clan packs does seem to be based on the story arcs they have planned, since they coincide with the novellas. Unfortunate that it seems poorly timed right now, but I don't think there is a fair way to slowly release packs that contain way more cards for one clan than all the others. These should have been either done all at once, or story-based instead of clan-based. This style of release doesn't make sense at all for a factionized card game.

The coolest thing Emperor Edition did for Old5R, was that it gave each clan 4 strongholds out of the box. This was huge, as no clan had ever had more than 1 legal stronghold before. Some clans (my knowledge gets fuzzy here) never even had a different stronghold. And Emperor Edition came out 17 years after the game launched. Each stronghold played differently, and each clan could then build decks with at least a second (not secondary, second) win condition. Previously, clans were fairly predictable. Each clan still moved and grew in their given two directions. It changed the game.

The two non-core strongholds we've seen do the exact same thing. You can't take a deck built for one stronghold, switch that stronghold, and still have a good deck. I like that.

I'm just going to go ahead and say that Scorpion will not win worlds this year.

3 minutes ago, Ishi Tonu said:

I'm just going to go ahead and say that Scorpion will not win worlds this year.

We don't know about Worlds, due to the full Elemental Cycle being out and legal by that time. The Scorpion Clan Pack may not be legal (being released in October might mean early October, in which case legal, or late October, in which case illegal). That is potentially a massive different environment between then and now. The real question is, barring magic bullets, what tools are needed to stop the current Scorpion dominance?

Given the lead time required not just to design cards, commission art, get them print-ready, get them printed, etc. but also the lead time required to write a 30K word novella, get it edited, etc. I can guarantee you that the decision for the second "Clan Pack" to be Scorpion was made a LONG time ago. In fact, it's safe to say that the order of release of all of the various "Clan Packs" was made a LONG time ago, without much opportunity for change (except maybe for the very last two or three.)

24 minutes ago, sndwurks said:

We don't know about Worlds, due to the full Elemental Cycle being out and legal by that time. The Scorpion Clan Pack may not be legal (being released in October might mean early October, in which case legal, or late October, in which case illegal). That is potentially a massive different environment between then and now. The real question is, barring magic bullets, what tools are needed to stop the current Scorpion dominance?

The Scissors of Fu Leng.