I know it's not traditional, but is there any interest or thoughts on multi-clan cards? Magic have cards that require 2 or more types of mana (in addition to generic mana payable with any type).

Such things in this game would be characters who could be played in either clan's dynasty deck (say Isawa Kaede who is Phoenix by birth, but has married Toturi (Lion)). If it were a conflict card it could be splashed along with either clan, but it would be free for either clan.

For example, Mountain Armor a 1-cost +1MIL/+0POL with insert made-up text would be a Dragon/Phoenix attachment. Either clan could add it to their deck without paying influence, but would cost X-Influence for a Lion player who splashed either Dragon or Phoenix.

In the old CCG the personalities (characters in the LCG) could generally be played by any clan, regardless of their actual clan affiliation. They just had to meet honor requirements and pay an out of clan tax. I always though it was a pretty neat thing since you could see experienced versions of personalties change clan over time.

Since the FFG design is so different from the old game they would have to approach it differently. I don't mind the dual clan cards. I wouldn't mind seeing a stronghold that lets a clan or faction use conflict cards from a could clans instead of the normal one. Just as long as they don't make some sort of generic clan that can just borrow from everyone at once. That type of design always ends up with balance issues.

I'd be fine with cross clan cards and borrowing as long as it's done well. My guess is that we may see some sort of generic factions that allow you to include some characters from other clans in your dynasty deck of they had an appropriate trait like Monk or Scout or Berzerker ........Imperial maybe.

Maybe they do it via new role cards?

If it does happen, I doubt it will be very soon. We still need Mantis and Shadowlands to come out plus all the clan expansions. Its probably 2 years away or more before they feel they need to dabble in cross clan stuff.

What I'd expect to see is in clan conflict personalities and cards that offer a benefit if being played as splash in another clan (so for example a Unicorn character with +1 political if you control a Crane card). We sort of saw that idea already with Gaijin customs where it really works best in Unicorn Splash decks rather than full Unicorn decks (although if you are splashing a lot of out of Clan conflict personalities it can have its uses in Unicorn).

47 minutes ago, Schmoozies said:

What I'd expect to see is in clan conflict personalities and cards that offer a benefit if being played as splash in another clan (so for example a Unicorn character with +1 political if you control a Crane card). We sort of saw that idea already with Gaijin customs where it really works best in Unicorn Splash decks rather than full Unicorn decks (although if you are splashing a lot of out of Clan conflict personalities it can have its uses in Unicorn).

Conquest, one of FFG's other LCGs, had a similar thing actually. There were some cards that were better as allies.

Aside from that, the RR actually mentions the possibility of a card having multiple Clan affiliations.

Personally one of few pet peeves with the original L5R (post Emerald), was the gradual loss of pure Clan identity and loyalty. Too many powerful and cheap cost Clan personalities that everyone could play as long as their nerf'd honor tax or gold condition was met was quite boring game play-wise. With the Imperial aka 1st edition, it was much harder to "splash" in multiple out of Clan personalities into your 'main' Clan due to lower amount of efficient gold holdings, lower amount of Clan personalities that just your Stronghold gold could pay for and having to meet a minimum honor to bring into play. Later as the LCG progressed more and more low cost gold holdings were created and suddenly everyone could jam in the best gold cost holdings and bring in as many powerful personalities from any Clan that weren't Loyal (a mechanic that certain cards were only Loyal under a single Clan in term of paying to bring into play).

So for example a "Lion" Military Rush just prior to Ivory (somewhat) was basically cheap high Strength Lion personalities and any of the other cheap Clan personality with the best Strength for gold value. It was like a rainbow of cheap Clan peeps smashing 1-2 provinces or more per battle in non-mirror matches. Sure made for very quick best of 3 matches yet technically there was no side-boarding option as with Magic the Gathering (tm) to "rebuild" your deck in between matches to try to slow down the snowballing.

With the Imperial Edition, honor truly mattered on bringing in certain personalities. One had to have the minimum honor in their honor pool to even bring in their Clan Champion or similar Loyal cards on to the board. Granted this had to be modified because being dishonored or such during the match and not able to bring in your big cost personalities or play other 'need honor > or < than X' cards was not fun. Yet it made the L5R player truly feel that 'Honor Matters'.

The nice thing I like about L5R LCG is the influence system, and limits on what kind of cards one can splash. And so far, Clan Stronghold honor or your the amount of honor in your current honor pool doesn't matter for bringing in your personalities.

The issue with multi-faction cards in any game is the question of balancing. In this L5R LCG, technically each Clan has the ability to splash in any low influence Conflict card of any other faction as long as its fits within their Clan influence pool as well as their Elemental Ring role alignment. If there were clear lines of which Clans could each Clan could splash than one ends up with the system as mentioned above used in WH40K Conquest LCG which never got to build up its card pool yet I will note the shared Factions had similar cards to each other. The other L5R LCG current game design issue that limits more that 2 Clans teaming up, you would have to design more generic or similar cards for every clan to splash.

I expect that we will see dual Clan cards before we see either a Mantis Clan faction or Shadowlands faction. I still expect that if we do see a Shadowlands faction, it is going to be as a "Support of" role which impacts deck construction rules.

Akodo (nee Isawa) Kaede is an excellent example. If we see a new version of Kaede (provided her marriage does not get annulled by Imperial decree after her husband gets made into a ronin, or something similar), she will likely be either dual Clan or a Lion Dynasty character with the trait "This character may be included in Phoenix decks". Honestly, I would expect to see such characters possibly starting as early as the Dynasty Cycle after the Scorpion Clan box.

I think multiclan cards would be cool, I do think if we see them they will be significantly down the road and have to be carefully thought out before release.

There were a few dual clan cards in old5r. I can see it eventually happening but not for quite some time. The game needs to finish building the current clans up before introducing cross clan cards. I think there would need to also be a story element to push for this to happen as well.

Yes, very cool if the theoretical dual clan characters could be on the dynasty side rather than conflict. With hostages being very common, it's only natural that characters could have their personal philosophies shaped by their foster families. One of my all time favorites, Hida Sozen could have had Dragon and Crab duality, since he was originally a Mirumoto. Also Doji Reju of Crane, then Dragon, then Crane.

Don't hold your breath. There were multi-affiliated cards in AGoT 1st edition, and there haven't been any in the games FFG published since. There might be different versions of unique cards with different affiliations (like Jon Snow or Ser Barristan Selmy in AGoT). The rule about multiple affiliations is there to cover cards like the Clan Seals.

God I hope not. It’d make a total mess of the binder system I’m using ?

Also Kaneka was dual clan.

I want game balanced preserved over story.

I feel it's entirely possible to tell great stories while keeping game balance.

The tradition of dual-faction characters actually goes back a long time. Doji Chomei was Crane Clan and Yoritomo's Alliance in Time of the Void which was about 2 years after the game released and 18 or so before it ended.

Actually, checking, Mirumoto Hitomi in Battle for Beiden Pass was Dragon Clan and Toturi's Army, which was almost a year earlier.

I still think the easiest thing to do, would be to make cards that reward you for taking them out of Clan.

Chomei gave you a 3 gold discount for attaching Mantis followers.

I like the idea of characters who reduce the cost of attaching followers (or maybe weapons) to them. I believe we have attachments that can move themselves from character to character, and there is a Scorpion card that moves an attachment from an opposing character to their character, but I don't think we have any events or abilities that can move attachments freely. If that is the case, then this could be an interesting ability to explore:

Quote

Honorable Leader

Bushi. Commander.

Action: During the Conflict phase attach 1 Follower to this character, paying all costs, but reducing its Fate cost by 1 (to a minimum of 0). This action cannot be taken during a conflict.

3 hours ago, Bayushi Shunsuke said:

Ahhrg! She could be dicey. Although, that’s still two actions for however much (I wouldn’t expect more than 1) fate reduction.

I think that we will get at least dynasty cards that can be played by anyone that plays the Support card of the clan.

Maybe they make another clan role that allows you to add X amonunt of dynasty cards from another clan to your deck.

So for the 1st run of the clan packs we get the support role that ups the influence amount for a particular clan. Then for the 2nd run of clan packs we get the "alliance" role that allows you to play a certain number of non-unique dynasty characters from that clan.