Interesting in getting into the L5R LCG but after reading the rules and watching some games played I have some concerns about what I would call the "engine" of the game. Basically, I see the engine as being what drives interaction between the players in a game and leads it to its ultimate end.

In MTG, all it takes is for one player to put out a 1/1 creature and keep attacking their opponent, which forces the opponent to respond to this with their own creatures/spells, and back and forth it goes. Also, the fact that unspent mana doesn't accumulate between turns incentivizes players to make the most of their turns by playing cards.

In Netrunner, the corp is forced to draw each turn and will lose if they run out of cards, so right off the bat they are forced to work to score their agendas. Also, if the corp just stalls and doesn't play anything, the runner has a clear easy path to victory by running the centrals for agendas. So the corp is going to ice up their centrals, which causes the runner to build up for icebreakers, and the corp wants to build remotes to score agendas, back and forth like this until one player wins out.

But in L5R I don't really see any mechanics that drive the game forward or force player interaction. What's to stop a player from not playing any characters/attachments to save up fate, bidding lots of honor to gain a bunch of cards (no hand limit), let one or two of their own provinces break but then have so many cards and resources to win every conflict thereafter? I understand that this could be seen as a legit strategy but to me it makes for uninteresting gameplay in a card game. Now if the defender doesn't oppose a conflict they lose one honor, but that doesn't seem like enough to dissuade stalling.

Also, it doesn't feel like attacking is incentivized enough. If I'm making an attack, I don't know what cards my opponent has and so it's really hard to tell if I'm in a favorable position to win or not, as from what I understand the attachments / events one has in hand can swing a conflict by a lot. Making matters worse, if I lose, I give my opponent the ring which helps them get the imperial favor.

Could a possible lack of forced player interaction be part of the reason why games of L5R tend to be rather lengthy compared to others?

I would love to get your opinions on this and get some input from the devs and people who play the game. What am I missing? Otherwise, L5R seems to bring a lot of unique mechanics to the table and I really like the artwork, but these concerns with the gameplay make me hesitant to jump the gun.

On 7/15/2018 at 12:50 AM, Goosetopher said:

What's to stop a player from not playing any characters/attachments to save up fate, bidding lots of honor to gain a bunch of cards (no hand limit), let one or two of their own provinces break but then have so many cards and resources to win every conflict thereafter? I understand that this could be seen as a legit strategy but to me it makes for uninteresting gameplay in a card game.

Let's imagine the first two turns in your scenario. I spend my first turn buying two characters, you horde your fate. I take two of your provinces. One turn in, I'm 50% of the way to winning. So what do you do on your second turn? Hope you flip 2-3 HUGE characters you can spend all that fate on? And if you don't get them? It just puts me even more ahead, if not taking your stronghold on Turn 2. If you do not act, you do not win.

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Also, it doesn't feel like attacking is incentivized enough. If I'm making an attack, I don't know what cards my opponent has and so it's really hard to tell if I'm in a favorable position to win or not, as from what I understand the attachments / events one has in hand can swing a conflict by a lot. Making matters worse, if I lose, I give my opponent the ring which helps them get the imperial favor.

Most of the actions you can take in the game can only be taken during a conflict. So if you want to use your cards, you have to fight it out. Most (>50%) of the decks are designed to break the Stronghold. You can't do that if you don't declare conflicts. As for not knowing what cards are in my hand, how is that different from literally any other ccg/tcg/lcg?

The entire game has this back-and-forth feel that's really nice. Each turn you alternate actions, and even from one turn to the next you'll find yourself in a poor position, then a good one, and so on.

So, if you feel that "sit back and wait" is a legit approach, I challenge you to give it a shot and see how it performs. I assure you, it will not be pretty.

On 7/15/2018 at 12:50 AM, Goosetopher said:

But in L5R I don't really see any mechanics that drive the game forward or force player interaction. What's to stop a player from not playing any characters/attachments to save up fate, bidding lots of honor to gain a bunch of cards (no hand limit), let one or two of their own provinces break but then have so many cards and resources to win every conflict thereafter? I understand that this could be seen as a legit strategy but to me it makes for uninteresting gameplay in a card game. Now if the defender doesn't oppose a conflict they lose one honor, but that doesn't seem like enough to dissuade stalling.

This scenario also ignores the potential honor lose scenario (you lose if you fall to 0 honor). Assuming an average honor score of 11 for your start if you play no characters in your first Dynasty phase to build fate advantage and then bid 5 for maximum hand size you could be down to 7 honor after bid phase if your opponent bids 1. Follow that with the honor loses during conflict phase for undefended conflicts (1 point each) and the potential lose from Air ring and you are now potentially at 4 honor and down 2 provinces. You may have been able to play cards to mitigate the loses but most of the cards that will let you outright stop a conflict with no bodies are also going to have a cost to them, either Assassination netting you a further -3 honor and leaving you almost dead or things like court games and Fury (which is limiting your choices via restricted list so further locks you into a specific build). Once you are down around 4 honor things start to get a little tighter as you are now restricting your ability to draw cards and need to see the right characters coming up in Dynasty to offset your reduced draw potential in conflict cards. Now even if you aren't down the honor from card draw if your opponent also bid 5 you have to deal with the fact that they likely have as many tricks to deal with your conflict tricks as you do.

Don't get me wrong there are archetypes that do play this strategy (Scorpion or Crane are very good at pass first and rely on your conflict deck to hold off the turn 1 onslaught) but they are still very interactive as you are using your hand to mitigate your character disadvantage. The best analogy would be blue control versus white weeny rush. You are relying on your counters and stalls to slow the tide until you can maneuver them into position for your own kill cards to come online.

Twinstarbmc and Schmoozies are correct, I have never seen any game of L5R played the way you described as it would basically cost you the game. Now, Scorpion and Crane are really good at only buying a single dynasty character the first round, passing, and saving their fate for round 2. The shear amount of conflict characters in the conflict decks of these two clans allow them to do this. As a MtG player for 14 years I feel confident that while playing L5R I have had so much more player interaction with this game than MtG. I found lot of MtG was just watching your opponent do their things then you do yours and whoever had the better deck would win. Lets also not forget the economy in MtG (i.e mana) is pretty random, in L5R you have a fixed economy every turn which you need to carefully think about what you buy with it. Sure hoarding fate is something that can happen, but if you do not buy characters and conflict cards, you are not winning the game.

I sort of feel like this might be a troll post.

But if it isn't, as pointed out, if you don't interact with your opponent, you lose. This game enforces interaction better than almost any other game I've seen. I'm not sure if you played the old CCG, but there were definitely decks where one player's goal was basically to shut down and prevent interaction between each other. This game does not do that.

Ring effects incentivize attacking, quite strongly in fact. If you don't bother interacting T1 you're getting UO Earth and Fired, which will put you down 2 cards, 2 honor, and gives your opponent around +2/+2 on a guy who is sticking around. In exchange you banked 15 fate going into round 2, to your opponent's 8ish, but you're at a significant disadvantage on board so you actually aren't up that much fate, a lot is going to go to equalizing the board vs your opponent's honored, fated 3+ drop.

Board-lite strategies do work (see many Scorpions), but they also start interacting on T1.

3 minutes ago, GoblinGuide said:

Ring effects incentivize attacking, quite strongly in fact. If you don't bother interacting T1 you're getting UO Earth and Fired, which will put you down 2 cards, 2 honor, and gives your opponent around +2/+2 on a guy who is sticking around. In exchange you banked 15 fate going into round 2, to your opponent's 8ish, but you're at a significant disadvantage on board so you actually aren't up that much fate, a lot is going to go to equalizing the board vs your opponent's honored, fated 3+ drop.

Board-lite strategies do work (see many Scorpions), but they also start interacting on T1.

Its even worse if its the new Lion box who could be looking at having run 3 conflicts on you so add an Air loss to that total and may have taken 3 provinces costing you 4 honor on the turn, and they have favor going into turn 2.

15 minutes ago, GoblinGuide said:

Ring effects incentivize attacking, quite strongly in fact. If you don't bother interacting T1 you're getting UO Earth and Fired, which will put you down 2 cards, 2 honor, and gives your opponent around +2/+2 on a guy who is sticking around. In exchange you banked 15 fate going into round 2, to your opponent's 8ish, but you're at a significant disadvantage on board so you actually aren't up that much fate, a lot is going to go to equalizing the board vs your opponent's honored, fated 3+ drop.

Board-lite strategies do work (see many Scorpions), but they also start interacting on T1.

If you don't put down a character wouldn't they do Air instead of Fire since there is no one to dishonour?

4 minutes ago, Radix2309 said:

If you don't put down a character wouldn't they do Air instead of Fire since there is no one to dishonour?

You honor your own character for the stat bump going into turn 2

3 minutes ago, Radix2309 said:

If you don't put down a character wouldn't they do Air instead of Fire since there is no one to dishonour?

Depends on what character they played. If the character has a decent glory stat and will stick around for a turn, they like take fire to make sure the character is bigger on turn two and can threaten another break

Nah, they'd just honor up one of their fated guys to cement their board advantage going into next turn. Air is only really a consideration if they open Kudaka, or are planning on low bidding next turn to start dishonor pressuring.

As others are pointing out, there are several incentives to get into the game and interact with the other player. The biggest one is the advantage of claiming rings, which requires you to attack to trigger their effect. If you let your opponent do all the attacking, they will generate extra advantage against whatever you do when you do decide to act. Also, the best way to build up a large board position isn't to play 14 fate at once, but to play a couple characters each turn with fate on them. This maximizes your effective power over multiple turns. You can do one big burst of 14 fate in one turn if you want, but you probably won't reach the efficiency of two moderate turns, even if your province flips work out for you and you don't get screwed with 3-4 small dudes. Furthermore, starting turn two, attacking generates you fate from rings that haven't been claimed (of which there will be at least three if you don't attack on your first turn), putting you even further behind on your economy. And lastly, not defending a province will cost you an honor each time, which translates into cards later down the road.

Now, you could probably at least try to build a deck that focuses on big characters and spending fate only every other turn, but you're not going to be able to do it without playing strong control cards (that interact with your opponent) like Mirumoto's Fury, to deflect their early turns. This sort of deck would be like a control deck in magic that plays relatively few creatures and finds other ways to negate their opponent's attack. As far as I can tell, we don't have the cards for this sort of build yet, and trying to do so would be very risky if the dice don't fall your way.

I could see passing turn 1 to have a lot to invest on turn 2 going ok if you're really lucky and can deflect some of your opponent's T1, because it means you can start building a larger board state by putting more fate on dudes, but keep in mind that you're giving up probably 2 ring effects, 2 honor, and some provinces. You'll need an ideal conflict hand turn 1 to deflect their turn, and then an ideal dynasty flip turn 2 to get back into the game. If either of those go wrong, you're going to be too far behind to catch up, even with a strong economy.

In summary, there are a lot of reasons to get in there and attack:

1. Ring effects only benefit if you attack.

2. Fate accumulates on rings, and if you don't get in there, it's free money to the opponent.

3. Building a board state over 2-3 turns is more efficient than bursting in one turn.

4. Losing honor for not defending

I suppose you could run a Waning Hostilities deck?

Tower, phenix, for the big guys, the send home, being able to do multiple conflicts, coup the honor loss, play waning on economy turn, splash Dragon for let go and fury, if you favor it over against the waves.

run on strong earth and water shugenja, add shiba guys for support, yojimbo, chikai protector Tetsu if you feel like.

Another issue is that in Magic you can stall stall stall then do 20 damage in one turn with one big creature or spell.

But it doesn't matter if you drop a 20 skill Yoritomo if they still have all their provinces. In other words, to win on conquest you must win at least 4 conflicts as the attacker.

15 minutes ago, HamHamJ2 said:

Another issue is that in Magic you can stall stall stall then do 20 damage in one turn with one big creature or spell.

But it doesn't matter if you drop a 20 skill Yoritomo if they still have all their provinces. In other words, to win on conquest you must win at least 4 conflicts as the attacker.

Or just make sure you're ahead on honor and have the favor when time is called ......

And yes I would kick my own a$$ for doing something like this, if someone else didn't do it for me.

1 hour ago, Ishi Tonu said:

Or just make sure you're ahead on honor and have the favor when time is called ......

And yes I would kick my own a$$ for doing something like this, if someone else didn't do it for me.

Mod wins put you far behind people with a full win. If I did the math right being undefeated with all Mod wins will get you to Magistrate but not to Daimyo.

I find the game to have a tremendous amount of interaction. An L5R game is all about incremental advantages, and you generate them not only from your own actions, but by preventing your opponents. Every decision can matter, and that is more likely the cause of people going to time that someone holding back and building up resources.

Also, the core premise is flawed- players are no more encouraged to interact in Magic than they are in L5R, and just like in a lot of card games (including L5R) creatures will commonly simply run past each other to attack successfully until that no longer becomes a viable strategy for one player and they are forced to defend. Having to spend mana and play cards doesn't encourage interacting, it just encourages playing cards.

If you want I'll sell ya my collection I'm getting out of this game.

Thanks everyone for dispelling my concerns I had with the game. Went ahead and got 3 core sets so I'm excited to give this a shot, sounds like there's actually plenty of player interaction