1 hour ago, Schmoozies said:

Except that Scorpion is very infrequently bothering to go for Stronghold break (especially against Phoenix where their control does an excellent job of limiting their ability to get their engine running.

Personally I would put KM in the back row against Scorp, flipping the conflict stops them from winning the conflict, not just breaking. I've used Captive Audience against Scorpion defensively more times than I can count. Sending home Bayushi Liars bowed for nothing is strong no matter what winning strategy a Scorp is pursuing. Having SoV wouldn't magically "solve" the poor win rate against Scorp, but I'm fairly certain it would help in that matchup.

And it also helps against ring farming, because you can hand them a less desirable ring instead, if they're intent on winning. Plus you know, extra fate early in the game can swing things back around.

28 minutes ago, Casanunda said:

Personally I would put KM in the back row against Scorp, flipping the conflict stops them from winning the conflict, not just breaking. I've used Captive Audience against Scorpion defensively more times than I can count. Sending home Bayushi Liars bowed for nothing is strong no matter what winning strategy a Scorp is pursuing. Having SoV wouldn't magically "solve" the poor win rate against Scorp, but I'm fairly certain it would help in that matchup.

The problem there is you only catch them once then they never go near it again

31 minutes ago, Schmoozies said:

The problem there is you only catch them once then they never go near it again

That is why we need both Shameful and KM on the row. At some point they need to choose between the two.

2 minutes ago, HamHamJ2 said:

That is why we need both Shameful and KM on the row. At some point they need to choose between the two.

If you are running Meditations that will be Scorpions target of choice as they can keep throwing fateless bodies against it.

57 minutes ago, Schmoozies said:

If you are running Meditations that will be Scorpions target of choice as they can keep throwing fateless bodies against it.

Like any other clan... Meditations is a good surprise for discarding characters someone invested both fate and tactic in but as soon as it is revealed it makes a good "fateless bodies" farming/break province.

I always thought about Meditations as a fifth province I dont have a better option for (if playing as a Scorpion).

1 hour ago, Schmoozies said:

If you are running Meditations that will be Scorpions target of choice as they can keep throwing fateless bodies against it.

If Scorpion tries to farm me into dishonor I will break their Stronghold. Or at least win on tie breakers.

2 minutes ago, HamHamJ2 said:

If Scorpion tries to farm me into dishonor I will break their Stronghold. Or at least win on tie breakers.

You say that but tournament results would seem to indicate otherwise

33 minutes ago, Schmoozies said:

You say that but tournament results would seem to indicate otherwise

Currently I lose to Scorpion on breaks because their province row is impossible to attack and mine sucks.

Me too

6 hours ago, HamHamJ2 said:

Currently I lose to Scorpion on breaks because their province row is impossible to attack and mine sucks.

Provinces are probably the most broken part about L5R, especially in combination with the role locks we have right now.

6 hours ago, Ignithas said:

Provinces are probably the most broken part about L5R, especially in combination with the role locks we have right now.

Oh, for the days of OL5R, when all provinces were the same and determined by your stronghold. And when someone broke one of your provinces, it was gone and you had 1 fewer places to spawn your warriors and economy.

Also, is the operative word "broken", or "most"? I don't view it as broken, but if we're discussing the most broken thing in a tight, well oiled machine, I may concede your point.

On 7/25/2018 at 9:29 PM, deraforia said:

Sounds more like the sort of shenanigans I would expect from the Scorpion, not the Dragon.

Dragon and Scorpion have a long standing unspoken alliance or at the very least "understanding"

Our Champion being quasi omniscient pretty much lets the Scorpion do whatever because "Fate"

... well, at least in the O5R, in this timeline I just think Dragon players are doing it because of momentum, lol

Anyway, I think we need to give the Dev and Story team the benefit of the doubt, if Phoenix does in fact get locked out of their preferred role because of Dragon involvement, I'm sure they will come up with something cool for the players to enjoy because of it.

7 hours ago, El_Ganso said:

Dragon and Scorpion have a long standing unspoken alliance or at the very least "understanding"

Our Champion being quasi omniscient pretty much lets the Scorpion do whatever because "Fate"

... well, at least in the O5R, in this timeline I just think Dragon players are doing it because of momentum, lol

Anyway, I think we need to give the Dev and Story team the benefit of the doubt, if Phoenix does in fact get locked out of their preferred role because of Dragon involvement, I'm sure they will come up with something cool for the players to enjoy because of it.

I was going to say as a Dragon I want to see Phoenix fall because they are religious extremists that want us to murder people for their hippy religion. But after the latest story insert being about how the Perfect Land sect goes "Wait, the Dragon are mobilizing but it isn't to wipe us out, they are going to let us practice our faith in peace?_ they decide to attack.

On 7/27/2018 at 3:57 PM, Duciris said:

Oh, for the days of OL5R, when all provinces were the same and determined by your stronghold. And when someone broke one of your provinces, it was gone and you had 1 fewer places to spawn your warriors and economy. 

I pretty much played old L5R casually, because whenever I had the desire to start competitive, the game was degenerated beyond believe. I don't think that comparing FFG L5R with AEG L5R means much, because the bar was set pretty low in terms of balancing.

On 7/27/2018 at 3:57 PM, Duciris said:

Also, is the operative word "broken", or "most"?

FFG did some design mistakes that other games learned from the hard way and having free ridicoulus haymaker effects is the biggest one. A lot of cards and effects are balanced around players bidding ~3 and putting 1-2 fate on characters. While Feast or Famine is only strong if it only moves one fate, Restoration of Balance if people don't try to draw 5 all the time and Shameful Display if characters only stay 1-3 turns on the board, they are certainly not balanced around the optimal strategy. And especially against the dragon row most clans get into a "damned if you do and damned if you don't scenario", in which you either play optimally and risk blowout situation through the provinces or play around the provinces and lose because of the tempo and value you are giving up. This leads to Dragon being T1, because their current province row is broken and Crab and Scorpion tournament viable, because they can play around the provinces without losing too much efficiency.

Other notable design mistakes are balancing way too powerful effects with either "Limit 1 per deck" or with underpowered dynasty cards, having denial effects that you often can't play around, Hawk Tattoo and janky cards that could easily enable degenerated combo decks and will probably only work in said decks.

On 7/27/2018 at 3:57 PM, Duciris said:

I don't view it as broken, but if we're discussing the most broken thing in a tight, well oiled machine, I may concede your point.

I've never bought that argument. Bidding 3 or 2 puts you down a couple cards turn one but it puts you up the same in honor which can be a tiebreaker or be spent for more cards or payments later on. It is clearly superior to bidding 5 and taking a 25% chance of just losing the game.

Complaining about Restoration being a blow-out is like complaining about Secret Cache and Kuroi Mori, or Way of the Crab, or a dozen other cards that turn the game on its head. It's called learning the matchup and respecting your opponent's strengths. Yeah, you have to slow down and play around it, so you'd better be leveraging your own clan's strengths to fight back. Unicorn kind of had it rough with this one, because their province didn't really pan out to be as impactful as it could have been, if it were... good.

1 hour ago, HamHamJ2 said:

I've never bought that argument. Bidding 3 or 2 puts you down a couple cards turn one but it puts you up the same in honor which can be a tiebreaker or be spent for more cards or payments later on. It is clearly superior to bidding 5 and taking a 25% chance of just losing the game.

But bidding 5 can give you an advantage earlier in the game which you can leverage into a more powerful board position on the next turn. Also gives you a higher chance of finding the cards you need.

9 hours ago, HamHamJ2 said:

I've never bought that argument. Bidding 3 or 2 puts you down a couple cards turn one but it puts you up the same in honor which can be a tiebreaker or be spent for more cards or payments later on. It is clearly superior to bidding 5 and taking a 25% chance of just losing the game. 

Drawing cards wins game and drawing only 3 or 2 can easily starve you on answers. The only clan that can reliably bid 3 is Crab, because they 1. have dishonor as a viable strategy and 2. have ways to generate value/tempo when honor is low with cards like Watch Commander and Spyglasses.

9 hours ago, AradonTemplar said:

Complaining about Restoration being a blow-out is like complaining about Secret Cache and Kuroi Mori, or Way of the Crab, or a dozen other cards that turn the game on its head. It's called learning the matchup and respecting your opponent's strengths. Yeah, you have to slow down and play around it, so you'd better be leveraging your own clan's strengths to fight back. Unicorn kind of had it rough with this one, because their province didn't really pan out to be as impactful as it could have been, if it were... good.

Secret Cache is not a blow out province and it is easier to play around Way of the Crab without losing too much value/tempo. Kuroi Mori is certainly a problem, because against Clans with lopsided stats it often prevents them from winning the game, which leads to slow playing as a necessary strategy (Worlds). Drawing less cards early will set you behind and if you don't find RoB first turn leads to a rabbit hole in which you lose even more tempo/value or leads to a 50/50 to outright lose the game if you decide to pursue the conquest victory. If Dragon will be Keeper and decides to play Talisman of the Sun, the 50/50 option will often not be available to you.

15 hours ago, Ignithas said:

I pretty much played L5R casually, because whenever I had the desire to start competitive, the game was degenerated beyond believe.

Bad luck.

4 minutes ago, kempy said:

Bad luck.

Something went wrong with formating, changed it to old L5r.

35 minutes ago, Ignithas said:

Something went wrong with formating, changed it to old L5r.

Still bad luck. You just try to convince people that game was unbalanced for 20 years ("the bar was set pretty low in terms of balancing.") because you "tried" to be competetive at few points in time. Nonsense.

5 hours ago, Ignithas said:

Drawing cards wins game and drawing only 3 or 2 can easily starve you on answers. The only clan that can reliably bid 3 is Crab, because they 1. have dishonor as a viable strategy and 2. have ways to generate value/tempo when honor is low with cards like Watch Commander and Spyglasses.

Secret Cache is not a blow out province and it is easier to play around Way of the Crab without losing too much value/tempo. Kuroi Mori is certainly a problem, because against Clans with lopsided stats it often prevents them from winning the game, which leads to slow playing as a necessary strategy (Worlds). Drawing less cards early will set you behind and if you don't find RoB first turn leads to a rabbit hole in which you lose even more tempo/value or leads to a 50/50 to outright lose the game if you decide to pursue the conquest victory. If Dragon will be Keeper and decides to play Talisman of the Sun, the 50/50 option will often not be available to you.

Well, if your heart is set on drawing 5, then you can find other ways to play around it. Could play Pathfinder Blades, or Iuchi Wayfinders (or Cautious Scouts), or just play more cards that can be played before conflicts. Or just pass your first conflict, and use your hand to defend. Even getting 3 cards out of your opening 9 is fine. Losing 1-2 cards on a bad flip is not gamebreaking, so if you can manage to play out 3 cards before you start poking their provinces, you've successfully bid 5 and still played around resto.

And I think I'd disagree about Secret Cache. It does a lot of work, especially if they can fetch a card that will keep the province unbroken. It's the gift that keeps on giving!

On ‎7‎/‎27‎/‎2018 at 5:00 PM, El_Ganso said:

Dragon and Scorpion have a long standing unspoken alliance or at the very least "understanding"

Our Champion being quasi omniscient pretty much lets the Scorpion do whatever because "Fate"

... well, at least in the O5R, in this timeline I just think Dragon players are doing it because of momentum, lol

I used to play Dragon in the old one, but I've only started playing in the new one, so I had no input in the Dragon's choice of role.

That said from a purely flavour and story point of view, I like it and it's very apt. In terms of the flavour Water is the ring of adaptability, and that is key to Dragons (e.g. the flexibility of attachments and the conflict monks) as well as the individualism and "shapeless" and undefined way to enlightenment. Together with Void it seems to be the ring that best defines Dragons -- way better than Fire, imho. Plus in east Asian culture, the dragon is a symbol of water: some dragons controlled the rain, others lived under the sea, etc. It'd be a bit like a clan named after the greek Poseidon having a Fire role -- kind of weird.

In terms of the story, doing stuff that may seem weird, stupid, or even self-harming for some further purpose is very much on brand with Dragons. It's not the same as Scorpions: they usually do subterfuge and sneeky stuff for personal gain. Dragons instead because Togashi has one of his premonitions and knows that in the long run it's the right choice, even if at present it makes no sense. I wouldn't be surprised to see a story where the Dragons left a minor clan to get slaughtered because Togashi can see the big picture: that tension is one of the best (and very few) interesting story points in the old Dragons -- sort of how in the west Christians struggle with accepting how God could let something horrible happen.

So yeah, while I do not agree with sabotaging other players' games, Dragons self-harming to penalise the Phoenix could be very easy to justify -- especially with maho cards reappearing (and we all know how much Phoenix like POWER!!!)

On July 28, 2018 at 7:08 PM, AradonTemplar said:

Complaining about Restoration being a blow-out is like complaining about Secret Cache and Kuroi Mori, or Way of the Crab, or a dozen other cards that turn the game on its head. It's called learning the matchup and respecting your opponent's strengths. Yeah, you have to slow down and play around it, so you'd better be leveraging your own clan's strengths to fight back. Unicorn kind of had it rough with this one, because their province didn't really pan out to be as impactful as it could have been, if it were... good.

But complaining about all the cards that "turn the game on its head," is a valid argument, though. I would personally rather the difference between the best cards and the worst cards be relatively small, instead of each deck having a bunch of okay cards and a couple that stand head and shoulders above the rest.

I do think that L5R isn't nearly as bad in this respect as some other games, but there's still room for improvement.