Am I the only one wishing for art sleeves in the example of Warhammer Conquest? They were beautiful. Using some of the amazing art from this game for each clan to showcase decks would be great. Instead we get the exact same thing that is already on the back of the cards. Ugh. https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2014/10/6/know-no-fear/

28 minutes ago, Eisenmerc said:

Am I the only one wishing for art sleeves in the example of Warhammer Conquest? They were beautiful. Using some of the amazing art from this game for each clan to showcase decks would be great. Instead we get the exact same thing that is already on the back of the cards. Ugh. https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2014/10/6/know-no-fear/

Except as was mentioned elsewhere that means at least 14 SKU's that need to be set up and that retailers are likely never going to order for fear of Dead Stock, plus you really are only as unique as everyother player of your clan with faction sleeves. It would honestly mean, more often then not, that they would end up as Online only orders for most. On the other hand this will likely be something that a store may be willing to stock (with the exception of the Province ones which I think will be a hard sell for most players).

1 hour ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

Whayhey, I have 45 spare province sleeves!

Don't forget about your stronghold and role card!

48 minutes ago, Eisenmerc said:

Am I the only one wishing for art sleeves in the example of Warhammer Conquest? They were beautiful. Using some of the amazing art from this game for each clan to showcase decks would be great. Instead we get the exact same thing that is already on the back of the cards. Ugh. https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2014/10/6/know-no-fear/

I'd prefer clan mons or The Way of... art. Also, they never released Tyranid art sleeves (or Necrons, I guess).

10 minutes ago, Schmoozies said:

Except as was mentioned elsewhere that means at least 14 SKU's that need to be set up and that retailers are likely never going to order for fear of Dead Stock, plus you really are only as unique as everyother player of your clan with faction sleeves. It would honestly mean, more often then not, that they would end up as Online only orders for most. On the other hand this will likely be something that a store may be willing to stock (with the exception of the Province ones which I think will be a hard sell for most players).

Right. The SKUs L5S08-L5S14 are playmats and L5S15-L5S17 are the new sleeves.

I still want a 100 count sleeve pack that contains 46-46-8 that are each the normal backer with your clan mon in-place of the 5 rings for Conflict & Dynasty while the other 8 feature the Province backer with clan mon.

---

Why aren't the sleeves on the L5R:LCG page?

4 minutes ago, Duciris said:

Why aren't the sleeves on the L5R:LCG page?

They are currently up as pre-orders under Fantasy Flight Supply. May be a bit before they get the web store updated.

Upcoming product announcement will be a use for the other 43-45 sleeves with the province back. You heard it here first.

1 hour ago, Duciris said:

I still want a 100 count sleeve pack that contains 46-46-8 that are each the normal backer with your clan mon in-place of the 5 rings for Conflict & Dynasty while the other 8 feature the Province backer with clan mon.

That would be amazing!

30 minutes ago, BCumming said:

Upcoming product announcement will be a use for the other 43-45 sleeves with the province back. You heard it here first.

It would be an easier stock than separate conflict and dynasty packs as you are only talking about 7 SKU's now rather than 14. Only question would be price points as depending on how many retailers need to order (can they order individually or must it be by the case) and relative popularity of clans could still make and break the option.

3 hours ago, BCumming said:

Upcoming product announcement will be a use for the other 43-45 sleeves with the province back. You heard it here first.

L5R Memory Game, featuring textless full arts of all your favorite L5R LCG provinces alongside sneak previews of yet to be released provinces!

ADD: Also integrates into your L5R LCG. experience as a subgame initiated in a yet to be released Scorpion card that will have an alt art card playset included in the memory game pack.

On ‎9‎/‎5‎/‎2018 at 7:13 AM, Duciris said:

KeyForge!

While my response is not directed at you Diciris, I pulled your quote because at least you answered the question without trying to dance around it.

I am also very intrigued by Keyforge. At this stage of my life I am somewhat of a casually competitive person. I was fine with the CCG model and will probably be fine with the UCG model since I tend to get good value from my cards by playing mostly casually and then showing up with some cheap jank that overperforms, allowing me to get more from my investment which is generally way less than most of my opponents.

For the greater part of the last decade+ I've been playing standard magic with commons only decks which are cheaper than the cost of my card sleeves. For the last 5 years, I've played magic for free because I have a friend that just gifts me a playset of commons from each new expansion, and only used my store credit from winning to play paid events. While comparatively most of the local players I go up against haven't had any significant successes to justify the thousands of dollars they have spent over the same period of time.

Asking for a lower entry point into L5R would certainly appeal to the casually competitive player. On the surface I tend to agree, however, introducing such a product into an already established LCG distribution model is probably a bad idea. It will artifically create rarity and change the dynamics of the secondary market leading to those with means buying up the core sets and parting it out which results in increased costs for all.

FFG isn't a game that rewards players for halfassin it in competitive play. If you want to play competitively for cheaper, you can do it for under full price......it's just not reasonable to expect the same results as someone who does have all the cards and invested more. True for any competitive game, including Keyforge.

You might be one of the lucky players to get an extremely powerful deck. And the result would be that you have the cheapest investment into a competitive game so far......however the odds on this happening are rather low, like less than winning the lottery while being struck by lighting, underwater. The reality for someone wanting to be true my competitive in this game will be.much higher than the cost of one deck. And that's not even considering what the cost becomes if FFG decides that all/some major OP events require you to purchase a brand new deck and play with that instead of, or in addition your own deck? If I'm playing 1 event every other week that requires me to pay $10 to enter, then I'll have spent nearly as much as L5r and be nowhere near having anything close to a complete set it even a deck guarantees of being "good." I won't even have all the possible house combinations at that cost.

Everyone wants more for less, most of the time, but, at least try to be reasonable with what you ask for.

I'm already spending 5 dollars a week on L5R tournaments so honestly that doesn't seem crazy. On the other hand I like draft for the drafting and sealed for the deck building, not for playing with a random deck and Keyforge doesn't provide either of those.

Assuming that Clan Packs offer a second playstyle for its clan, what are we expecting from those unreleased?

Dragon: I expect expanding the Mirumoto & Duelist direction. Crane and neutral duels & duelists have been added over the first two cycles. Dragon sits in the corner wondering, 'why not them?' I do not expect to see any cards that will support their Monk playstyle.

This is not me saying, "Dragon doesn't get any good cards." I'm not that stupid. I'm just speculating. In fact, because the Monk pool is so good, that's part of my reasoning why we won't see any in their Clan Pack.

While I agree duelist stuff would be a new direction for the dragon clan, I doubt they'll go in that direction with the clan pack. Primarily because the voltron stuff that's been out primary schtick since the core is the mirumoto stuff in this iteration of the game. And while I would love duel stuff, I expect to expand in an entirely new direction, if expanding outwardly instead of upwardly is in fact the way they go with all of the clan packs. As such, I think it would be cool to go with the kitsuki stuff, and have a hand control dishonor deck. This could also include some duel stuff, as kitsuki courtiers also being duelists historically fits, and courtiers having duelists around for protection thematically fits, so that could be a cool way to go.

Alternatively, we could see an agasha focus, and that would both expand outwardly, and give us cool, useful stuff for both our existing deck types. My only real issue with an agasha focus is we have a crap ton of good shugenja already, but only one spell, that is garbage, and doesn't even require a shugenja anyway. I wouldn't mind getting a bunch of new spells and stuff, but I don't think we need any more shugenja.

Honestly, people talk about us needing a monk SH for monks to be really good, however, I am of the opinion that the current SH, with it's attachment focus, is still very useful just generically. It is good in the voltron deck, it is good in the monk deck, it would be good in an agasha deck with a bunch of spell attachments (which is sort of the direction I could most easily see an agasha deck going, considering two of our shugenja already have an attachment focus, and they are a family of magical swordsmiths, essentially, with the other portions of the family being alchemists, which could also do attachment based spells), and I could see some decent attachments for the kitsuki build I envision as well. As such, I would propose another generally good SH that works well with all (or most) of our builds as well, but for different reasons. I think something like Tetsu Kama Mura from Old5r would be very good, and synergize with a lot of stuff. It would make the existing monk build significantly more consistent (talking full monks, not the monk hybrid that is popular right now), while it would be a step down for the voltron build, it would still fit pretty well, just not as well, for the kitsuki build it would probably be better, and it would go with the hand control theme I envision, for the agasha stuff I'm picturing it would also be decent, but probably not as good as the current SH would be.

If the clan pack goes with a monk theme, I'd like to see something like TKM. If it goes with a kitsuki theme, I'd like to see something like "reaction: when you draw a card outside of the draw phase, bow this stronghold - your opponent must choose and discard a card from their hand." If it goes with an agasha theme, I'd like to see something like "action: choose an attachment from your discard pile and bow this stronghold - put it in your hand." or maybe instead of back to the hand, return it to the deck then shuffle, or something. Any of those three ideas would be useful in a variety of builds, promote more diversity from deck to deck, and be relatively thematic.

9 hours ago, Duciris said:

Assuming that Clan Packs offer a second playstyle for its clan, what are we expecting from those unreleased?

Dragon: I expect expanding the Mirumoto & Duelist direction. Crane and neutral duels & duelists have been added over the first two cycles. Dragon sits in the corner wondering, 'why not them?' I do not expect to see any cards that will support their Monk playstyle.

This is not me saying, "Dragon doesn't get any good cards." I'm not that stupid. I'm just speculating. In fact, because the Monk pool is so good, that's part of my reasoning why we won't see any in their Clan Pack.

I think they are going for the monk subtheme for the Dragon (as their seal suggests) which has been expanded a lot more than duelists for Crane. In fact there are only 3 duelists in Crane atm (Challenger, Kaezin and Tengu, which only the first being a staple; Kaezin is sad and the Tengu we have yet to see). How many monks does dragon have? Also, give me Raitsugu's dueling action. He's the best duelist (as in... more relevant dueling action) in the game atm. Dueling related cards have also been hit and miss, like "Insult to Injury" which is terribad. So dueling isnt in a great spot at the moment, even for Crane.

14 hours ago, Shosur0 said:

I think they are going for the monk subtheme for the Dragon (as their seal suggests) which has been expanded a lot more than duelists for Crane. In fact there are only 3 duelists in Crane atm (Challenger, Kaezin and Tengu, which only the first being a staple; Kaezin is sad and the Tengu we have yet to see). How many monks does dragon have? Also, give me Raitsugu's dueling action. He's the best duelist (as in... more relevant dueling action) in the game atm. Dueling related cards have also been hit and miss, like "Insult to Injury" which is terribad. So dueling isnt in a great spot at the moment, even for Crane.

It's a bit more than just a subtheme.

We have 8 monks in our dynasty deck, plus all 3 of our conflict characters are monks as well. Add the seal, and everybody can be a monk!

Right now, we don't have a lot of control over honor. We want to dig deep into our decks because that's where our attachments (and thus power) lay. Our opponent's don't want to dig deeply because we have Restoration of Balance, and until that is identified it's risky to dig. We have the SoF which lets us hold 2 fire provinces, so they have to either find it or find 2 other fire provinces to eliminate it. It's an amazing boon & bane of a card.

I'd like to see a duelist/honor direction for the Clan Pack. It would offer us a different path. I think Raitsugu is amazing, and I don't foresee any duel ability that will top it. I just miss the dueling direction we had in OL5R. If we could pursue an honor path/prevent a dishonor loss at the cost of tempo, that could be well worth pursuing.

I wouldn't count on the seal having anything to do with clan pack content. DotV barely supported any scholar interaction for Phoenix, elemental cycle is only just barely making scholar a thing (mostly because of bustling academy) and even then it's questionable as a theme.

@Shosur0 And now Scorpion are getting duelists.

19 minutes ago, Duciris said:

@Shosur0 And now Scorpion are getting duelists.

Because, as is, Scorpion has just too soft of a deck against all other decks.... so, they need new tools to use in their matches that will help them win games..... ?

32 minutes ago, Duciris said:

@Shosur0 And now Scorpion are getting duelists.

Pikachu, I choose YOU!

Oops, wrong game.

On 8/27/2018 at 5:40 AM, Ersatz Nihilist said:

I think you're pretty much bang on here. I'm already at the point where I wouldn't try and get any of my friends to play L5R - it's just a next to impossible sell. "What do I need?" Well, you'll really need to spend at least £60 on Core Sets, preferably £90. Then there's £120 worth of packs. And the Phoenix pack if you want to play them, so... just north of 200 quid? Probably?

It never flies - honestly I've found recruitment impossible once you get past one cycle. Nobody I know really likes the feeling of being only partially geared up in the face of somebody who's got everything at their disposal, but the investment is just way too much. I love the LCG structure but only if you get in on the ground floor and ride the elevator all the way to the top. Thrones V2 fell out of fashion where I am after the second cycle (a lot of our regular players never got over the feeling that FF has ripped them off by introducing a second edition), so now even if I wanted to get back in, It's about 2 cycles and a bunch of deluxes to get up to speed.

But then I've got the collector gene, perhaps I could get by if I just picked up a core and a deluxe pack?

What's the alternative? Super aggressive Rotation? I'd actually be cool with that, but again, I know a lot of people who just look at you slack jawed and say "What? I won't be able to use the cards I bought? With my money? **** THAT".

I can't believe people are complaining about the LCG being too costly.

It only is so if you buy every card printed-- and, you know what happens if you do that? You have every card printed!! Which means you can make decks of all the different clans.

You want to compare that to the CCG model? You are basically required to buy box and box, spending up to 4x what you would on the LCG and you are often guaranteed NOT to have all the cards you need that could win against anyone at your local tournament.

Any booster pack is going to be half commons and have 1 rare in the entire pack. And an entire box will have 1 or 2 super rares. And if you are a serious player, then half or more of your deck better be rares or super rares, because those commons, outside of the base economy ones that allow a deck to function in the first place (and even then, sometimes there are superior uncommon and rare versions of them) are intentionally designed to be unusable landfill trash to be filler for draft and then either enter a box and be forever forgotten about or dropped right in the trash.

And any time you buy a booster, you don't really even know which rare card (the only usable card in the whole pack!) you are even going to get. You are spending $8 for to get 1 of a random assortment of 20-30 possible cards, and you really need to get a whole playset of that rare if you want to be good to go.

And, yes, back in the day I bought my cards mainly off L5RSearch.com (which means my LGS hardly ever got any money out of me) because I couldn't afford to buy booster boxes and hope for the best. But, really, given that they were making a profit off breaking down boxes and buying cards off players to sell to players and everything was being shipped all the way from Australia (if I recall correctly), I don't know how much was really saved through doing it that way.

But given there were generally 10 factions at any given time and I never collected or played more than 1 or 2, that means that 80-90% of even the rares I could have pulled would have been worthless to me.

And let's be clear-- Starter Decks for CCG L5R only guaranteed that one was getting a particular stronghold and maybe a couple other key cards. The rest of the deck was entirely random. You had to buy 10x the amount that was in a starter deck just to have a random assortment of cards that belonged to the same clan, and even then you were likely to have more of the common ones than you could even legally put in a deck.

I am pretty sure I have spent more on a single card than this game sells whole packs where I get to know what I am getting from them and get a whole playset.

So, no, especially when account for inflation, things were not cheaper back then. You are in no way, shape or form being scammed by the LCG model. It in fact removes all of the shadiness, scam and unfairness in competitive play that exists naturally with the CCG model. And the company is taking a drastic loss in order to provide this! If they really wanted to milk the consumers, they would return to the CCG random pack model with only 1 copy of a rare from an assortment of 7 and you really need a whole playset of that card or the deck would massively under-perform. But they aren't asking you to purchase an average of 21 packs in order to get your playset-- you just need to purchase 1.

And if you want to make things even cheaper for yourself, then use an online deck editor to put together the deck you want to play and buy only the packs that contain those cards. You can skip over the packs that don't have any cards you want to use.

Which, by the way, is why these clan packs might actually flat out kill this game. They are probably only going to sell 20% of any given clan pack as they were selling of the previous packs before. They are already taking a steep loss over how much cardboard they could push if they were doing a CCG model, but to actually print up a whole expansion and tell the players "Oh, if you don't play clan X, you can just skip this"... the packs might sell so badly that they'll actually be losing money on printing them.

And the players are still complaining that this game is too costly? You can't be serious!!

The thing you are overlooking is that if you have purchased 3 cores and 1 of each additional pack, you actually own enough product for 3 players to have all the base cards they need plus all the cards from 2 entire clans with 1 person getting 3 entire clans.

So even your initial assessment isn't what each player needs to buy, it is what a group of 3 people need to buy-- assuming that between those 3 people you can agree on which 2 clans each person gets.

If you are getting other people started on the game, with your initial product purchase, you can sell 2/3rds of it off (possibly even more!) to others who are interested in playing other clans.

=======================

Oh, and as for what is going to come after the Clans?

I am quite sure it is the Shadowlands expansion box. It was accidentally leaked in an article back before the core sets launched. The first major expansion was always planned to be Shadowlands, and initially it was going to be the second thing released for the game. But I think ultimately they realized that it would be better to build up the 7 main factions before releasing a faction that breaks all the game rules.

The thing about expanding with the Shadowlands (as opposed to the Mantis Clan which is obviously also planned eventually) is that, if done correctly, it allows all clans to get all corrupt. Neutral (or maybe even clan aligned!) cards that offer the Faustian bargain of what seems like quick, easy power, but with great long-term cost.

It was a major component of the old game which was thematically strong and unique, when done as well as it ever was (and, really, it was never done perfectly, let's be clear on that) it really gripped and engaged the community. Are you going to corrupt your clan to cut some corners for what may be a mechanical advantage and turn your faction into the villains, or are you going to play the "right way" and remain the heroes? And, of course, there will likely be cards to really punish people for using Shadowlands cards, so it will be a gamble when using them. But since those cards likely won't have much effect against a clean opponent, it is a gamble to run those cards too.

Of course, if someone has an in with the playtesters and says "that's not what we are playtesting" (so much for NDAs), I don't really have a counter for that. But given that when the game launched it was stated quite clearly that the first major expansion was going to be Shadowlands and that still hasn't come out, it seems very likely that it will be that.

@TheHobgoblyn In the future, if possible, can you please keep your posts under 4-5 pages long? My age and patience are working against me when I attempt to start and finish reading long posts. ?

Ramble forthcoming...

It's unfortunately hard to please everyone. I've got people from the OL5R complaining that they don't want to be spending extra money to get things from other Clans ("if I'm a strict Scorpion player, what would I do with this Crab/Crane/etc fat that I'm getting in my packs"). Dude, like what have you been getting in your OL5R packs?! But, I suppose trading exists. On a less cornered case, I think I ran into a two-core player at an event once who was shaking his head that he had to buy ANOTHER core (never mind 2 cycles and 1 Phoenix) to start the game. Tight rotations aren't going to help either player, admittedly they corner cases in themselves admittedly, bad example.

TLDR

However, it's something I lament in all games I play. Casual formats, reduced collections, or non-competitive prizing structure were some answers I've gathered in the past. Starter decks and/or Championship decks are probably the best idea imho, allowing players to hit the ground running with a full deck.

Since 10/10 is the announce date for whatever new product. I'm still thinking it's something that will be casual focused. So if it is a story campaign thing, it'll allow for PvE play, and a faster victory objective.

I wouldn't be surprised if you could bring that new faster victory objective into the base game as a new format.

honestly hope its just that. new product with casual focus and faster victory which could be implemented in the base game.

Please let it be a Deluxe box with plenty of Mantis cards...

Well, it looks like my guess was completely backwards. I guess FFG doesn't want to thrust the Shadowlands so central into the story so early.

Still, I do think that the idea of introducing Shadowlands cards for every faction the way they made the Crab Shadowlands Berserker would be a good way to bring them into the picture. A card that has a lot of upfront power, but with a significant cost or trade-off.

10 hours ago, Ser Nakata said:

Please let it be a Deluxe box with plenty of Mantis cards...

The box might actually have some Mantis, but it looks like it will be a primarily Imperial-themed box. I am very surprised. There are so fewer of us Imperial fans than there are Mantis or Shadowlands fans. And I am guessing there will only be one box like this each year, so it may not be until 2020 or 2021 until Mantis Clan gets its chance to shine.