New5R is a interesting game were resources management is one of the main points of winning. And for many players fate is the most important resource in the game, so the cards that can generate fate advantage have lot of value.

Theres many cards that do this like Charge, Reprieve, FGG, Ambush, Reserves, Good Omen, etc... But Iron mines really seems totally unbalanced to me.

Lets look at some of the cards that can generate a lot of value:

Charge: up to 4 Restrictions: MIL conflict only Cost: 1 conflict card, 1 fate Counters: All clans can have access

Good Omen: unlimited value due to attachments possibilities Restrictions: Lower Bid Cost: 1 conflict card Counters: All clans can have access

Stand Your Ground: unlimited value Restrictions: Char must be honored Costs: 1 conflict card, 1 honor (honored status) Counters: All clans can have access

Reprieve: unlimited value Restrictions: none Cost: 1 conflict card, 1 fate Counters: All clans can have access

For Greater Glory: unlimited value Restrictions: Break the Province, Bushi Cost: 1 conflict card, 1 fate Counters: All clans can have access

Togashi Kazue: unlimited value Restrictions: both chars participating Cost: 1 conflict card, 3 fates Counters: All clans can have access

Vanguard Warrior: unlimited value Restrictions: Have another character Cost: 2 fates Counters: All clans can have access

And so we have..

Iron Mine: unlimited value Restrictions: none Cost: a province slot Counters: 1 card restricted to Earth role

Some people can say you can simply break Iron mines but the truth is 1- most times is easier to crab defend than other clans to break since defense is the crab strenght and 2 - you can Rebuild iron mines after the conflict phase. Too cheap too easy, being able to save a 3-5 cost character with several attachments like watch commander or multiple spyglasses. I think it crashes the economic system of the game.

Maybe RL is not enought for this one and it needed a nerf like: Discard all character attachments. Or at least some restrictions to be balanced with the other fate generating options.

What do you think?

2 minutes ago, L5RBr said:

you can Rebuild iron mines on broken provinces anyway

No, you can't. Rebuild can only replace the card in an unbroken province.

1 minute ago, Khudzlin said:

No, you can't. Rebuild can only replace the card in an unbroken province.

OK I'll fix that but, anyway you can rebuild after the conflict phase.

1 hour ago, L5RBr said:

New5R is a interesting game were resources management is one of the main points of winning. And for many players fate is the most important resource in the game, so the cards that can generate fate advantage have lot of value.

Theres many cards that do this like Charge, Reprieve, FGG, Ambush, Reserves, Good Omen, etc... But Iron mines really seems totally unbalanced to me.

Lets look at some of the cards that can generate a lot of value:

Charge: up to 4 Restrictions: MIL conflict only Cost: 1 conflict card, 1 fate Counters: All clans can have access

Good Omen: unlimited value due to attachments possibilities Restrictions: Lower Bid Cost: 1 conflict card Counters: All clans can have access

Stand Your Ground: unlimited value Restrictions: Char must be honored Costs: 1 conflict card, 1 honor (honored status) Counters: All clans can have access

Reprieve: unlimited value Restrictions: none Cost: 1 conflict card, 1 fate Counters: All clans can have access

For Greater Glory: unlimited value Restrictions: Break the Province, Bushi Cost: 1 conflict card, 1 fate Counters: All clans can have access

Togashi Kazue: unlimited value Restrictions: both chars participating Cost: 1 conflict card, 3 fates Counters: All clans can have access

Vanguard Warrior: unlimited value Restrictions: Have another character Cost: 2 fates Counters: All clans can have access

And so we have..

Iron Mine: unlimited value Restrictions: none Cost: a province slot Counters: 1 card restricted to Earth role

Some people can say you can simply break Iron mines but the truth is 1- most times is easier to crab defend than other clans to break since defense is the crab strenght and 2 - you can Rebuild iron mines after the conflict phase. Too cheap too easy, being able to save a 3-5 cost character with several attachments like watch commander or multiple spyglasses. I think it crashes the economic system of the game.

Maybe RL is not enought for this one and it needed a nerf like: Discard all character attachments. Or at least some restrictions to be balanced with the other fate generating options.

What do you think?

So a couple of flaws you have there. The most obvious is Vanguard is Crab only since its a dynasty character. You also appear to be minimizing the fact that Iron Mine is your restricted card thus limiting your access to other powerful cards (in crabs case Charge being the most obvious, but with the right build you could also leverage Policy Debate to good effect in order to cripple your opponents hand as part of your dishonor strategy).

There is no question that Iron Mine is a great card, and yes since it is a Crab only card it is easy to look at it and curse them for their easy access to it. Frankly to me the only interaction that makes it almost too good is the Rebuild one and if you were to add Rebuild to the restricted list that would likely be enough to rein in the perceived imbalance that it causes as now you have to either defend it or use it the turn it comes up in your province.

It seems balanced to me

Iron mine is just one card in a huge pool. Problem is inter-clan balance in general.

It's a very good thing there's certain clan loyalty in this game. Why? Cause inter-clan balance is not great. Check the Kotei winners. Crab leads with 7, then Scorp has 6, then I believe Dragon won 2. Lion won Worlds (ages ago with only Core). So basically its Crab and Scorpion, and Dragon somewhat behind. If this was Magic the gathering, everyone would be playing Crab and Scorp (and it would be the right thing to do, cause you want to play a good deck) and the meta would be horrendus. Imagine going to a tournament and having 80-90% of the players settled in Crab and Scorp.

Doesnt look great that the previews in the current cycle dont seem aimed at helping restore the balance. Unicorn and Phoenix are getting some nice tools, but Lion didnt get anything very interesting and Crane's cards in this cycle have been laughable (so far). To add "insult to injury" (pun intended) Scorpion is getting some very interesting cards (maze, soshi daimyo, etc), and so is Dragon (master alchemist f.e.). In my dwindling L5R group (from my local game store) we argue @ which way is FFG going with the game.

Cards are never going to be erratad in a way that fundamentally changes what they say. Any "nerf" to Iron Mine would come in the form of additional Crab cards on the restricted list, like Reprieve.

FFG acknowledges that Iron mine is overly efficient, as that was the explanation for why it is on the restricted list in the announcement article.

5 hours ago, Shosur0 said:

Iron mine is just one card in a huge pool. Problem is inter-clan balance in general.

It's a very good thing there's certain clan loyalty in this game. Why? Cause inter-clan balance is not great. Check the Kotei winners. Crab leads with 7, then Scorp has 6, then I believe Dragon won 2. Lion won Worlds (ages ago with only Core). So basically its Crab and Scorpion, and Dragon somewhat behind. If this was Magic the gathering, everyone would be playing Crab and Scorp (and it would be the right thing to do, cause you want to play a good deck) and the meta would be horrendus. Imagine going to a tournament and having 80-90% of the players settled in Crab and Scorp.

Doesnt look great that the previews in the current cycle dont seem aimed at helping restore the balance. Unicorn and Phoenix are getting some nice tools, but Lion didnt get anything very interesting and Crane's cards in this cycle have been laughable (so far). To add "insult to injury" (pun intended) Scorpion is getting some very interesting cards (maze, soshi daimyo, etc), and so is Dragon (master alchemist f.e.). In my dwindling L5R group (from my local game store) we argue @ which way is FFG going with the game.

Kotei wins matter less than Top 8 Finishes. The Top 8 single elimination bracket can sort of be a bit of a crap-shoot.

That being said, Top 8 Finishes since Pax Unplugged by Clan (so every Kotei since Worlds up to 7/10/2018; 14 events and 112 Top 8 Positions)

For reference, clan representation in Top 8s should be around 16 appearances or 14% of total Top 8s

Scorpion: 34 = 30%
Dragon: 20 = 18%
Crab: 20 = 18%
Crane: 15 = 13%
Lion: 11 = 10%
Phoenix: 10 = 9%
Unicorn: 2 = 2%

Ignoring anything that happens in the Discord League or Cups, in paper L5R Scorpion is clearly way above curve having been represented in 30% of Top 8s. Dragon and Crab are slightly above curve, with Crane being about right. Lion and Phoenix are just below and Unicorn is basically non-existent.

FFG says they are monitoring things like this, but without more hard data like information from Jigoku etc I think they are going to have a harder time balancing things.

9 minutes ago, Danwarr said:

Kotei wins matter less than Top 8 Finishes. The Top 8 single elimination bracket can sort of be a bit of a crap-shoot.

That being said, Top 8 Finishes since Pax Unplugged by Clan (so every Kotei since Worlds up to 7/10/2018; 14 events and 112 Top 8 Positions)

For reference, clan representation in Top 8s should be around 16 appearances or 14% of total Top 8s

Scorpion: 34 = 30%
Dragon: 20 = 18%
Crab: 20 = 18%
Crane: 15 = 13%
Lion: 11 = 10%
Phoenix: 10 = 9%
Unicorn: 2 = 2%

Ignoring anything that happens in the Discord League or Cups, in paper L5R Scorpion is clearly way above curve having been represented in 30% of Top 8s. Dragon and Crab are slightly above curve, with Crane being about right. Lion and Phoenix are just below and Unicorn is basically non-existent.

FFG says they are monitoring things like this, but without more hard data like information from Jigoku etc I think they are going to have a harder time balancing things.

i certainly hope they are monitoring the discrepancies in performance but i do worry about steps being taken to address them. In some cases I'm seeing a lot of baby with the bathwater responses (Charge is too good and the restricted list addressed it for Clans like Phoenix and Crab that were getting mileage out of it due to efficient recursion abilities, but we need to appear to be hammering all factions equally so lets throw the under performing Lion under the bus by making them choose between it and For Greater Glory).

The fact that the power of the Scorpion deck slipped by them and seems to be catching them completely off guard to me speaks to the state of the design and play test team and I hope is resulting in some serious discussion behind closed doors. The issue is that the damage is already done as the cards that made them and to a lesser extent Crab so dominant are already out there and frankly they need to start addressing that now rather then waiting till the next cycle to address them. Frankly the fact that they've ignored the need for some form of semi efficient neutral attachment control (yes I know Miya Mystic is a thing but the fact that it is a Dynasty card leaving you with no real way to control when its ability may be useful outside of Lion Spirtcaller tricks makes it of only middling usefulness) and some way to counter the rampant Dishonor tech that is skewing the play environment in favor of Scorpion and Crab is badly needed now and frankly unless there is something spectacular hidden in the tail end of the Elemental cycle I don't know that the competitive game can limp along at this pace without a drastic fix.

1 hour ago, Schmoozies said:

i certainly hope they are monitoring the discrepancies in performance but i do worry about steps being taken to address them. In some cases I'm seeing a lot of baby with the bathwater responses (Charge is too good and the restricted list addressed it for Clans like Phoenix and Crab that were getting mileage out of it due to efficient recursion abilities, but we need to appear to be hammering all factions equally so lets throw the under performing Lion under the bus by making them choose between it and For Greater Glory).

The fact that the power of the Scorpion deck slipped by them and seems to be catching them completely off guard to me speaks to the state of the design and play test team and I hope is resulting in some serious discussion behind closed doors. The issue is that the damage is already done as the cards that made them and to a lesser extent Crab so dominant are already out there and frankly they need to start addressing that now rather then waiting till the next cycle to address them. Frankly the fact that they've ignored the need for some form of semi efficient neutral attachment control (yes I know Miya Mystic is a thing but the fact that it is a Dynasty card leaving you with no real way to control when its ability may be useful outside of Lion Spirtcaller tricks makes it of only middling usefulness) and some way to counter the rampant Dishonor tech that is skewing the play environment in favor of Scorpion and Crab is badly needed now and frankly unless there is something spectacular hidden in the tail end of the Elemental cycle I don't know that the competitive game can limp along at this pace without a drastic fix.

Crane is definitely going to have much stronger play against both Dishonor and being Dishonored by the end of the Elemental cycle, but other than that I definitely agree that total Dishonor tech outweighs Honor tech which is compounded with a bid 5 meta. If you aren't drawing cards and your opponent is, more likely than not you are not winning games. It's just that simple.

I also think a lot of the success of both Crab and Scorpion is that they punish mediocre or poor play very well. While L5R does have semi-decent comeback mechanisms, especially in the form of the Fate system, both of those Clans somewhat subvert it in different ways and it can be difficult for players to play into those clans "correctly". So while Scorpion is definitely over-represented in Top 8s, I don't believe it's as bad as it looks.

Finally, I do think there is an issue with second player advantage and passing Fate that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. A second player who passes 1st in T1 and T2 can easily have a four Fate advantage over the first player, and that's not even counting potential Seeker Fate. Fate is extremely valuable and being able to generate more than half a turn's worth of Fate advantage simply by winning a coin flip is a pretty big deal. That isn't to say that 1st player Keepers are DoA, but they are starting pretty far behind when it comes to the game's most important resource.

Hopefully they can address some of these things going forward, but it definitely wont be until Cycle 3 at the earliest. Elemental and Underhand have been tested and printed in an incomplete Imperial meta that has seen some dramatic shifts in how people play the game compared to 8 months ago.

2 hours ago, Danwarr said:

Kotei wins matter less than Top 8 Finishes. The Top 8 single elimination bracket can sort of be a bit of a crap-shoot.

That being said, Top 8 Finishes since Pax Unplugged by Clan (so every Kotei since Worlds up to 7/10/2018; 14 events and 112 Top 8 Positions)

For reference, clan representation in Top 8s should be around 16 appearances or 14% of total Top 8s

Scorpion: 34 = 30%
Dragon: 20 = 18%
Crab: 20 = 18%
Crane: 15 = 13%
Lion: 11 = 10%
Phoenix: 10 = 9%
Unicorn: 2 = 2%

Ignoring anything that happens in the Discord League or Cups, in paper L5R Scorpion is clearly way above curve having been represented in 30% of Top 8s. Dragon and Crab are slightly above curve, with Crane being about right. Lion and Phoenix are just below and Unicorn is basically non-existent.

FFG says they are monitoring things like this, but without more hard data like information from Jigoku etc I think they are going to have a harder time balancing things.

Sorry but I disagree. In a balanced enviroment % should be closer. Not only that but the clan challenger mechanic (rescuing players from all clans and giving them a chance to get in the top 16) should also help smooth % in the top 8 as you state. And there... you see it doesnt. Those clans are rescued and yet they dont get to the top 8 as much as the "star" clans.

Im not an expert game designer. But there are problems. F.e. no neutral attachment control makes it that outside of Dragon and Scorp you either splash those or are at severe disadvantage. Ive been in the receiving end of a Kuni Witch hunter that just gets some Spyglasses and starts eating Kaiu Envoys turn after turn, staying in the field seemingly forever due to Reprieve, Iron Mine, berseker, etc. and It doesnt feel great. Some clans just have outright better dynasty characters and better combos/strategies. Strong character abilities make Cloud the Mind almost a must (not sure, we could check, but I doubt there's a Kotei winner that doesnt pack 3x of CtM) so if your clan shugenja are crap, then you are at severe disadvantate. Etc, etc.

This is not a problem if you are going to be playing multiplayer with your friends in the living room. But If your intent is to make this a competitive asymmetric strategy card game, balance is important and has to be addressed.

4 hours ago, Shosur0 said:

Iron mine is just one card in a huge pool.

Let’s not go crazy.

1 minute ago, Shosur0 said:

Sorry but I disagree. In a balanced enviroment % should be closer. Not only that but the clan challenger mechanic (rescuing players from all clans and giving them a chance to get in the top 16) should also help smooth % in the top 8 as you state. And there... you see it doesnt. Those clans are rescued and yet they dont get to the top 8 as much as the "star" clans.

That was his point the results show that the game is currently in an unbalanced format. Now part of that will be the better players gravitating to the stronger perceived deck types early on which then drags results in the favor of those clans as they win more thus further enforcing to general player base that those are the clans to win with so they jump over there creating an almost echo chamber effect of what needs to be played to win. But honestly the issue is that they dropped the ball on what was meant to be the natural predator of the stall honor drain decks. They should be struggling to handle Blitz as they can't keep enough actions in hand to offset the multiple attackers that they are subjected to. Sadly the early design didn't leave enough options for Blitz (Lion had a prototype build that worked well in single core but were so far behind the curve after Imperial Cycle that they started falling off the radar and Unicorn never had a chance to get started) where as Scorpion and Crab just kept getting better and better options that fueled their sub-themes with each expansion which again just reinforced to the players that you need to be playing these clans to succeed.

What is needed is more cards that punish players for dishonorable play. Some kill actions for dishonored characters would go a long way, coupled with real benefits for being more honorable rather than just the slow decline that the game lends itself to now.

27 minutes ago, Shosur0 said:

Sorry but I disagree. In a balanced enviroment % should be closer. Not only that but the clan challenger mechanic (rescuing players from all clans and giving them a chance to get in the top 16) should also help smooth % in the top 8 as you state. And there... you see it doesnt. Those clans are rescued and yet they dont get to the top 8 as much as the "star" clans.

Im not an expert game designer. But there are problems. F.e. no neutral attachment control makes it that outside of Dragon and Scorp you either splash those or are at severe disadvantage. Ive been in the receiving end of a Kuni Witch hunter that just gets some Spyglasses and starts eating Kaiu Envoys turn after turn, staying in the field seemingly forever due to Reprieve, Iron Mine, berseker, etc. and It doesnt feel great. Some clans just have outright better dynasty characters and better combos/strategies.

Disagreeing about what? I presented that information to support the idea there is current competitive unbalance. However, I don't believe the game is as unbalanced as Kotei results tend to show. Discord league results have been a bit more balanced with respect to clan results: Discord League Spreadsheet.

31 minutes ago, Danwarr said:

Disagreeing about what? I presented that information to support the idea there is current competitive unbalance. However, I don't believe the game is as unbalanced as Kotei results tend to show. Discord league results have been a bit more balanced with respect to clan results: Discord League Spreadsheet.

Niten Master Need a Nerf?

1 hour ago, Schmoozies said:

That was his point the results show that the game is currently in an unbalanced format. Now part of that will be the better players gravitating to the stronger perceived deck types early on which then drags results in the favor of those clans as they win more thus further enforcing to general player base that those are the clans to win with so they jump over there creating an almost echo chamber effect of what needs to be played to win. But honestly the issue is that they dropped the ball on what was meant to be the natural predator of the stall honor drain decks. They should be struggling to handle Blitz as they can't keep enough actions in hand to offset the multiple attackers that they are subjected to.  Sadly the early design didn't leave enough options for Blitz (Lion had a prototype build that worked well in single core but were so far behind the curve after Imperial Cycle that they started falling off the radar and Unicorn never had a chance to get started) where as Scorpion and Crab just kept getting better and better options that fueled their sub-themes with each expansion which again just reinforced to the players that you need to be playing these clans to succeed.

What is needed is more cards that punish players for dishonorable play. Some kill actions for dishonored characters would go a long way, coupled with real benefits for being more honorable rather than just the slow decline that the game lends itself to now.

Bolding mine. I think that those decks do have a hard time against blitz decks, but everyone for the most part always bids 5. Even a Lion blitz bids 5 so the deck that burns 1-2 cards per conflict will almost always have enough to keep going. If the blitz deck would bid 1 for the first two turns, they would drain the always bid 5 players. Those ultra control decks running 6 cancels, 6 attachment hate, 4 character hate are not going to be breaking too many provinces each turn.

IMO I think the correct thing to do is incentivizing low bids. With all the cancels and control element punishing will only make for more negative play experiences.

Think about Way of the Chrysanthemum, but instead of trading any honor you can bow a character, or you gain fate instead of honor, take fate from rings, or you can honor a character, play something from your discard...Something like that.

Another possible idea is something like an action where you gain fate for hand size difference (if I have 4 you have 9...I gain five fate). In a lot of our games people have 13-14 cards in hand. That could be a massive swing.

5 minutes ago, Danwarr said:

Disagreeing about what? I presented that information to support the idea there is current competitive unbalance. However, I don't believe the game is as unbalanced as Kotei results tend to show. Discord league results have been a bit more balanced with respect to clan results: Discord League Spreadsheet.

Even then, based on the Season 7 stats, it still tells a picture with Scorpion having positive match up against all but two clans. One of those, Lion, being one of the least represented due to poor match-up against the two of the most common clans and struggling against the lowest tier deck due to functionality overlap. While the other, Dragon, has poor match-ups against the most common faction and a strong match-up with the second most common faction to balance out but is mid-tier against most of the other. They also have the advantage of Mindsdesire boosting their numbers with his consistently good performance

If you remove the Unicorn match-up which due to the disproportionate advantage it gives most clans the overall percentages break down more like this.

Crab - 53%
Crane - 51%
Dragon - 52%
Lion - 48%
Phoenix - 41%
Scorpion - 57%
Unicorn - 12%

This shows a more accurate picture as discounting the super favorable match for most clans results in most of the clans being fairly close to the median (within 3% points) with the exception of the Scorpion who are 7% ahead of the curve and Phoenix who are well behind the curve, but that could be put down to how much the Scorpion match-up punishes them and their old box.

13 minutes ago, Tomello said:

Bolding mine. I think that those decks do have a hard time against blitz decks, but everyone for the most part always bids 5. Even a Lion blitz bids 5 so the deck that burns 1-2 cards per conflict will almost always have enough to keep going. If the blitz deck would bid 1 for the first two turns, they would drain the always bid 5 players. Those ultra control decks running 6 cancels, 6 attachment hate, 4 character hate are not going to be breaking too many provinces each turn.

IMO I think the correct thing to do is incentivizing low bids. With all the cancels and control element punishing will only make for more negative play experiences.

Think about Way of the Chrysanthemum, but instead of trading any honor you can bow a character, or you gain fate instead of honor, take fate from rings, or you can honor a character, play something from your discard...Something like that.

The problem with the bid 1 is that Scorpion have all the tools to drag your honor total down even when you are stealing it with their honor total. If the Lion had a better pool of Dynasty characters it would be fine to say that they are fine with a bid of 1. But Lion actually have a below par force to cost ratio for most of their characters and were meant to compensate for their reliance on honor tricks and mass board state with certain clutch characters who provide blanket boosts for the rest of the board. Sadly they are too reliant on outside of conflict effect cards like For Greater Glory to keep their board state and when you are giving up a significant resource advantage to an opponent (have to normally concede the first pass fate to most opponents, plus the need to spend on your Dynasty characters to maintain board state and the weaker Keeper Economy) coupled with the superior action control in a Scorpion deck (easy access to Clouds, Fate Worse, action cancellation, etc.) and the general drag that dishonor can cause on your already middling stat line for most characters it makes the Scorpion match much harder for Lion if you aren't matching them card for card in conflict.

Against Crab its even worse since their characters are pretty much stat for stat better than ours in a natural state so if we can't honor up before the fight we are already on the back foot. Add on that their box offsets the advantage we can gain from ours and their superior capability to maintain a board state with multiple ways to recycle characters into multiple conflicts and the match up is a nightmare with out card support.

Yes if we see more cards that punish your opponent for having a higher bid that may change the meta, but until that happens the Wide Lion bid 1 deck is dead in the water.

1 hour ago, Danwarr said:

Disagreeing about what? I presented that information to support the idea there is current competitive unbalance. However, I don't believe the game is as unbalanced as Kotei results tend to show. Discord league results have been a bit more balanced with respect to clan results: Discord League Spreadsheet.

Sorry I misunderstood.

4 hours ago, Danwarr said:

Ignoring anything that happens in the Discord League or Cups, in paper L5R Scorpion is clearly way above curve having been represented in 30% of Top 8s. Dragon and Crab are slightly above curve, with Crane being about right. Lion and Phoenix are just below and Unicorn is basically non-existent.

When you said "slightly above the curve" and "just below" I understood that everything was more or less ok. Could be that english is not my native tongue.

Though I do disagree in that I think the game is as unbalanced as Kotei results show. But if you need a bigger sample (lets say 10 more koteis being dominated by Scorp and Crab) we just need to wait.

4 minutes ago, Shosur0 said:

Though I do disagree in that I think the game is as unbalanced as Kotei results show. But if you need a bigger sample (lets say 10 more koteis being dominated by Scorp and Crab) we just need to wait.

The problem is that at this point we are at the end of the Imperial Cycle and Houston will be the first Kotei with the Elemental Cycle so it's going to skew comparisons.

While I would agree that Scorpion has done well above average at Kotei's, Crab honestly has been right around expected. It's just that Crab players have managed to do well in the elimination rounds. I think one even came up all the way through the Challenger phase which was somewhat unexpected.

Within Discord circles, Dragon/Crab is pretty much considered to be the "best deck" so their lack of Kotei wins has been surprising. However, that is mostly due in part to having a middling Crab match-up, so Crab players actually probably have an easier time once they get to the single elimination rounds compared to Swiss because they can reasonably beat Dragon, Lion, Phoenix, and Unicorn while having a decent Scorpion match up.

50 minutes ago, Tomello said:

Bolding mine. I think that those decks do have a hard time against blitz decks, but everyone for the most part always bids 5. Even a Lion blitz bids 5 so the deck that burns 1-2 cards per conflict will almost always have enough to keep going. If the blitz deck would bid 1 for the first two turns, they would drain the always bid 5 players. Those ultra control decks running 6 cancels, 6 attachment hate, 4 character hate are not going to be breaking too many provinces each turn.

IMO I think the correct thing to do is incentivizing low bids. With all the cancels and control element punishing will only make for more negative play experiences.

Think about Way of the Chrysanthemum, but instead of trading any honor you can bow a character, or you gain fate instead of honor, take fate from rings, or you can honor a character, play something from your discard...Something like that.

Another possible idea is something like an action where you gain fate for hand size difference (if I have 4 you have 9...I gain five fate). In a lot of our games people have 13-14 cards in hand. That could be a massive swing.

The problem with Bid 1 is that you pretty much have to follow up Bid 1 T1 with Bid 1 T2 or else that T1 honor transfer didn't really do anything. So you're pretty much down 4 cards the entire game. Combine that with all your opponent having to do is win 1 Air ring and basically the pressure is completely off.

As for the control decks being unable to break Provinces each turn, it's much easier than you think given that they can create unopposed or 0 skill situations quite easily. Getting to 3 or 4 skill is trivial when your opponent doesn't have cards in the fight.

10 minutes ago, Schmoozies said:

The problem with the bid 1 is that Scorpion have all the tools to drag your honor total down even when you are stealing it with their honor total. If the Lion had a better pool of Dynasty characters it would be fine to say that they are fine with a bid of 1. But Lion actually have a below par force to cost ratio for most of their characters and were meant to compensate for their reliance on honor tricks and mass board state with certain clutch characters who provide blanket boosts for the rest of the board. Sadly they are too reliant on outside of conflict effect cards like For Greater Glory to keep their board state and when you are giving up a significant resource advantage to an opponent (have to normally concede the first pass fate to most opponents, plus the need to spend on your Dynasty characters to maintain board state and the weaker Keeper Economy) coupled with the superior action control in a Scorpion deck (easy access to Clouds, Fate Worse, action cancellation, etc.) and the general drag that dishonor can cause on your already middling stat line for most characters it makes the Scorpion match much harder for Lion if you aren't matching them card for card in conflict.

Against Crab its even worse since their characters are pretty much stat for stat better than ours in a natural state so if we can't honor up before the fight we are already on the back foot. Add on that their box offsets the advantage we can gain from ours and their superior capability to maintain a board state with multiple ways to recycle characters into multiple conflicts and the match up is a nightmare with out card support.

Yes if we see more cards that punish your opponent for having a higher bid that may change the meta, but until that happens the Wide Lion bid 1 deck is dead in the water.

What? How does Scorpion get your honor from 15 (bid 1 to their 5 and after their SH) to a place where you need to worry (6-7 v. Scorpion) in one turn? I am not saying go for an honor win, that would be crazy talk. That puts their honor at 6. Assuming they don't gain honor, they can't probably get away with bidding 5 again. The reason a Scorpion player can drain you ultra fast in an always bid 5 environment is because they have more honor to spend. They can almost always get exactly 1 lower than you to keep their SH on.

Did someone do the math on that below par stat to cost? That would be an interesting read. More goes into it than raw stats, some abilities are better in some ways than others.

I think your suggestion to punish isn't going to make the game better. Incentivizing low is the way to make it work. The draw phase already punishes bidding high. Punishing more won't stop people always bidding high, it will just make that punish card an auto-include in every deck...whoever gets the most wins. Scorpion will still bid high, run that punish card AND run cancels for yours.

24 minutes ago, Schmoozies said:

Even then, based on the Season 7 stats, it still tells a picture with Scorpion having positive match up against all but two clans. One of those, Lion, being one of the least represented due to poor match-up against the two of the most common clans and struggling against the lowest tier deck due to functionality overlap. While the other, Dragon, has poor match-ups against the most common faction and a strong match-up with the second most common faction to balance out but is mid-tier against most of the other. They also have the advantage of Mindsdesire boosting their numbers with his consistently good performance

If you remove the Unicorn match-up which due to the disproportionate advantage it gives most clans the overall percentages break down more like this.

Crab - 53%
Crane - 51%
Dragon - 52%
Lion - 48%
Phoenix - 41%
Scorpion - 57%
Unicorn - 12%

This shows a more accurate picture as discounting the super favorable match for most clans results in most of the clans being fairly close to the median (within 3% points) with the exception of the Scorpion who are 7% ahead of the curve and Phoenix who are well behind the curve, but that could be put down to how much the Scorpion match-up punishes them and their old box.

While Scorpion are definitely ahead in group play, if you look at Cup appearances they have been less represented in the Top 8 from Season 4 on. Though, for Discord Cup it might be better to look at Top 16s given they start with a Round of 64, excluding play in games.

Discord Cup Top 16s by Clan (Cups 2 - 6; 80 spots)

Balanced representation would be ~9 for 11.4%

Crab 10 - 12.5%
Crane 16 - 20%
Dragon 14 - 17.5%
Lion 9 - 11.25%
Phoenix 10 12.5%
Scorpion 21 - 26.25%
Unicorn 0 - 0%

So here we have Scorpion still very much ahead of curve, but less than Kotei results. Crane makes a huge jump and Dragon sees a slight uptick. Lion, Phoenix, and Crab are all right around where they should be. Essentially, Scorpion is eating most of Unicorn's share.

10 minutes ago, Danwarr said:

Essentially, Scorpion is eating most of Unicorn's share.

So basically Scorpion is doing this to the Unicorn

21 minutes ago, Danwarr said:

The problem with Bid 1 is that you pretty much have to follow up Bid 1 T1 with Bid 1 T2 or else that T1 honor transfer didn't really do anything. So you're pretty much down 4 cards the entire game. Combine that with all your opponent having to do is win 1 Air ring and basically the pressure is completely off.

As for the control decks being unable to break Provinces each turn, it's much easier than you think given that they can create unopposed or 0 skill situations quite easily. Getting to 3 or 4 skill is trivial when your opponent doesn't have cards in the fight.

I know you are a committed to maintaining the pressure if you bid 1 turn one. (which is why no one does it) Typically I drop to 3 in that scenario and most players flinch and go up to 4. Which in a Scorpion match up really ends up being a 2 honor swing. Then they are really screwed.

I am not a big believer in consistently getting god draws (or else we would see triple Yurt honor wins all the time). The situation in which you manage to defend two conflicts with wins and break two provinces on the attack are not going to happen as frequently as you may think. You may be able to win one on defense, maybe take a province of your own, lose one on defense but keep the province, and then win one on offense and not break the province. That would be a realistic GREAT turn where you bid 5 they bid 1. Though being at 6 honor would make it hard to maintain that pace. That is also not getting into the unrealistic scenario in which you can have a massive board state AND have fate left for high impact actions. You typically have to choose one or the other.