Yeah, I might concede that point. Personally, I enjoy a few stand-out cards, especially among role-locked cards that make each matchup lean towards certain pivot plays. It's rewarding if you can anticipate those sorts of things, but it can lead to some frustrating matches sometimes. But I disagree that L5R is broken because of these stronger cards.

On 7/26/2018 at 10:56 PM, AradonTemplar said:

I seem to recall being pretty 'meh' overall with the whole Scorpion role sabotage thing too (wasn't that a dragon hatamoto that time, too?), so I guess it'd be self consistent for me to shrug and ignore this as well. However, I feel like there's at least one significant difference here, in that at Winter Court, the strongest performing clan gets first pick. With the elemental points, the clan with the least desirable role gets first pick. Sabotaging the best-performing clan feels completely different from sabotaging a clan with one of the weakest roles already. Thanks for nothing, I guess? It's a little disappointing that water role's a lot better now that a few decent water cards have been spoiled. We were stuck with it for a year, but you guys get eight months of bow and ready effects.

I always thought Phoenix was supposed to be the clan of "I know what's best for everyone," but I guess Dragon's trying to take that role too.

If you felt 'meh' about the whole scorpion debacle, then you should also feel indiferrent about this, no exceptions. Sabotaging the best performing clan and sabotaging the worst performing clan is of no consequence, it's still sabotage, period.

At the very least I can respect the Dragon's choice (if they really chose it) because if that's the case, they incurred a heavy burden for the entire clan as a whole to pull it off, unlike the scorpion one where someone just decided to sacrifice a made up title to possibly screw a whole clan over.

I also can't help but giggle at the fact that people's indifference to this kind of malicious attitude from before has now encouraged a whole group (not just one person now) of people to 'police' another clan. I look forward to see the escalation that could happen.

I think the player interaction with role selection/blocking is great. I hope Phoenix players remember this slight and return the favor should the opportunity arise.

I want to see new clan rivalries emerge and watch a while new generation of nerds get to play act as samurai at war...... Immersion is part of the fun, as long as people remember it's just a game.

44 minutes ago, Shosuro Teri said:

If you felt 'meh' about the whole scorpion debacle, then you should also feel indiferrent about this, no exceptions. Sabotaging the best performing clan and sabotaging the worst performing clan is of no consequence, it's still sabotage, period.

At the very least I can respect the Dragon's choice (if they really chose it) because if that's the case, they incurred a heavy burden for the entire clan as a whole to pull it off, unlike the scorpion one where someone just decided to sacrifice a made up title to possibly screw a whole clan over.

I also can't help but giggle at the fact that people's indifference to this kind of malicious attitude from before has now encouraged a whole group (not just one person now) of people to 'police' another clan. I look forward to see the escalation that could happen.

Sure there's a difference. The scorpion sabotage was intended to disrupt a system where the best performing players are given their choice, while this time they were seeking to disrupt a system that brought up the least-desirable role. It's the difference between challenging a worthy opponent and picking on a weaker character.

Which I guess is in theme with Raitsugu, maybe he's the one calling the shots here.

6 minutes ago, AradonTemplar said:

Sure there's a difference. The scorpion sabotage was intended to disrupt a system where the best performing players are given their choice, while this time they were seeking to disrupt a system that brought up the least-desirable role. It's the difference between challenging a worthy opponent and picking on a weaker character.

Which I guess is in theme with Raitsugu, maybe he's the one calling the shots here.

All this served to do is lower the position where Phoenix would pick, and frankly odds were always going to be that Unicorn and at least 1 other clan were going to pick before them so there was little chance they would have gotten their first pick Seeker of Void anyway.

That's fine, it's the intent that counts! I never really expected to get Seeker of Void again, odds of someone just hate-drafting it before we got our pick were pretty high, not to mention it's a pretty crazy-good role on its own.

8 hours ago, AradonTemplar said:

Sure there's a difference. The scorpion sabotage was intended to disrupt a system where the best performing players are given their choice, while this time they were seeking to disrupt a system that brought up the least-desirable role. It's the difference between challenging a worthy opponent and picking on a weaker character.

Which I guess is in theme with Raitsugu, maybe he's the one calling the shots here.

Nope. Still sounds like sabotage to me, and usually I don't try to go around screwing people's chances of doing good in anything just for me to get ahead (regardless of whether 'ahead' means 1st place or 2nd to last place). I don't do that, but maybe that's just me.

The difference you should take note here is that Dragon will suffer for this choice. This is what self-sacrificing looks like. People (not just 1 person) decided to bite the bullet and take one for rokugan, rather than one person playing a different clan to make the choice for them. That's just spite.

Although, according to some information here, Dragon made that choice blindly so this could very well be a troll move that bit them back in the behind when FFG decided to fix a leaking sink by putting a bucket (which coincidentally has a leak as well) underneath it.

Yeah, their 'sacrifice' was that they would be *forced* to play Seeker of Fire at Winter Court, until FFG screwed *them* over too. To keep things in perspective though, they didn't intend to screw over Phoenix's permanent pick either, just the Winter Court one. I don't think either case was right, but I do think there's difference. Dragon will probably end up more unhappy than Phoenix, unless they can collectively move their vote at Gencon.

Does anybody have an idea about how they’re gonna handle the Toshi Ranbo card? I don’t know if it has been announced somewhere...

I mean, it’s a neutral card, or they’ll make it an in-clan card? If it’s neutral, what stops the other clans for using it?

Will it come out in a pack, or will be handled individually, as store prize, in the next OP kit?

Still remains to be seen. Most likely it stays neutral and can only used by Scorpion in sanctioned play like how Roles work.

Or they modify its colours when it is released, but that is a lot less likely.

It will almost definitely be released in a normal pack.

I'm at least intrigued at how this will be reflected in the story arcs or how is it relevant that X Clan has Toshi Ranbo.

As for the card I don't expect it will see much play in Scorpion at least until the clan pack where we might see new options for that kind of deck.