17 minutes ago, Saibot said:

It does not necessarily need to be everything about punishing Bid 5. Rewarding lower bids*, higher Honor or smaller hands are all options.

Technically all of these already exist (Good Omen, many Lion cards, Disdainful Remark), but we have not reached a critical mass yet. Also many of the lower bid rewards only really become valuable later in the game when often times both players have already regressed to Bid 1. Keeping your roided out characters around with Good Omen sounds decent on paper but rarely works out in praxis. More cards that give a great edge for a low bid right from the start would be good.

One of the key fundamentals of card games is that card advantage is king. Card draw effects are somewhat weaker in L5R compared to say MTG where you are limited to 1 draw a turn outside of spending resources, but the basic concept is the same. If you have more cards than your opponent, it's easier to dictate the outcomes you want. Bidding 5 T1 is almost always the "correct" choice right now outside of a handful of niche situations due to how critical T1 of the game can be. Additionally, some higher level games just have both players bidding 5 for almost the entirety of the game because the honor gain/loss can be fairly irrelevant without a way to close the door. Players can also just swing Air maybe once in a game and pretty much shut down a dishonor strategy almost entirely.

There need to be stronger effects for not only attempting to draw fewer cards than your opponent, but more ways to supplement low bid card draw, as well as maybe more cards along the lines of Steadfast Samurai which help maintain board presence.

I'm milling over a 3-bid option where I can start to apply honor pressure early on while trying to fend off the card advantage of my opponent. Maybe going to 5 after 1-2 turns to burst or continue to bid down if I was able to dishonor my opponent enough to continue to pressure. The idea is to drive my opponent's bid lower, so I can play Maze / I Can Swim more reliably. If I Bid 5 always and my opponent does as well, I won't ever get the chance.

It feels like a half measure, but the extra honor I gather in early turns can power up Assassinate and my own dishonered characters. And don't mind burning through my honor and going lower than my opponent.

I don't know, but I like that this cycle tries to break the bid locks.

14 minutes ago, Soshi Saibankan said:

I'm milling over a 3-bid option where I can start to apply honor pressure early on while trying to fend off the card advantage of my opponent. Maybe going to 5 after 1-2 turns to burst or continue to bid down if I was able to dishonor my opponent enough to continue to pressure. The idea is to drive my opponent's bid lower, so I can play Maze / I Can Swim more reliably. If I Bid 5 always and my opponent does as well, I won't ever get the chance.

It feels like a half measure, but the extra honor I gather in early turns can power up Assassinate and my own dishonered characters. And don't mind burning through my honor and going lower than my opponent.

I don't know, but I like that this cycle tries to break the bid locks.

With Scorpion you can always try that, although you run the risk of turning your box off if you don't pull other dishonor tech to keep you in the neighborhood of your opponent.

Another way to encourage lower bids is to have more expensive but more powerful conflict cards. If you can only afford one or two cards anyway there is no reason to draw more, but if each card is as strong as two zero cost cards you can keep up. But the abundance of free cancels pushes against this also.

Maybe eventually you can have a shadowlands maho deck that bids low to get honor to fuel it's honor losing cards?

21 minutes ago, Soshi Saibankan said:

I'm milling over a 3-bid option where I can start to apply honor pressure early on while trying to fend off the card advantage of my opponent. Maybe going to 5 after 1-2 turns to burst or continue to bid down if I was able to dishonor my opponent enough to continue to pressure. The idea is to drive my opponent's bid lower, so I can play Maze / I Can Swim more reliably. If I Bid 5 always and my opponent does as well, I won't ever get the chance.

It feels like a half measure, but the extra honor I gather in early turns can power up Assassinate and my own dishonered characters. And don't mind burning through my honor and going lower than my opponent.

I don't know, but I like that this cycle tries to break the bid locks.

Running into the same issue, everyone bids 5 regularly. I took out I Can Swim for a while because I would never get to play it. I am starting to toy with a 3-4 bid turn one, with my eye on the earth ring early. Then dropping to 2-3. You find a way to get your honor down, Assassinate is my best friend. Most decks run enough meaningful characters at a 2 cost or lower, if I have it and have more 7 or more honor...I will play it.

The drawback is that I try to run a deck that can switch to dishonor if the situation is right. You need cards to ensure that kid of vicotry

11 minutes ago, HamHamJ2 said:

Another way to encourage lower bids is to have more expensive but more powerful conflict cards. If you can only afford one or two cards anyway there is no reason to draw more, but if each card is as strong as two zero cost cards you can keep up. But the abundance of free cancels pushes against this also.

Maybe eventually you can have a shadowlands maho deck that bids low to get honor to fuel it's honor losing cards?

The other issue is that you need something to take those cards away from the bid 5 player. So likely an honor requirement or a dial mechanic, and when you do that you run the risk of them becoming dead cards in the late game once the inevitable we can both only afford to bid 1 or risk dishonoring out/wasting the honor advantage I've gained comes up; and or, unusable early game before you can establish your honor lead.

18 minutes ago, Tomello said:

Running into the same issue, everyone bids 5 regularly. I took out I Can Swim for a while because I would never get to play it. I am starting to toy with a 3-4 bid turn one, with my eye on the earth ring early. Then dropping to 2-3. You find a way to get your honor down, Assassinate is my best friend. Most decks run enough meaningful characters at a 2 cost or lower, if I have it and have more 7 or more honor...I will play it.

The drawback is that I try to run a deck that can switch to dishonor if the situation is right. You need cards to ensure that kid of vicotry

Yes exactly, I think Scorpion has a lot of Dishonor character cards to switch to that strategy. I like to get to a point where half my conflict has 'Dishonor' effects because it helps to win conflicts as well as further my dishonor pressure.

Shame we don't get to play Mark of Shame ^^

26 minutes ago, HamHamJ2 said:

Another way to encourage lower bids is to have more expensive but more powerful conflict cards. If you can only afford one or two cards anyway there is no reason to draw more, but if each card is as strong as two zero cost cards you can keep up. But the abundance of free cancels pushes against this also.

Maybe eventually you can have a shadowlands maho deck that bids low to get honor to fuel it's honor losing cards?

The downside is that you might draw your expensive cards and end up being able to play 1-2 cards of your hand. Even when I'm running AFWTD and Ambush, I like to bid high to have more versatility / options. I like to have as many For Shame! and Forged Edicts as possible ^^ Although with Favored Niece you can bid a bit lower and mill out duplicates. I currently run 2x Consumed By Five Fives but I probably wouldn't without the Niece.