28 minutes ago, Hordeoverseer said:

Man, I hope they aren't doing 1 of Neutral Provinces now. It hurts my multiple decks (first world problems). I guess we get a greater quantity of cards.

I agree, but they did 1x of the neutral provinces in CotE so I don't have much hope.

2 hours ago, Mirith said:

You can have disguised conflict characters. I believe they mentioned them. I expect to see a number of "Disguised Shinobi" or "Disguised <Scorpion Mon>"

My thinking is if we start to see a proliferation of Disguised conflict characters in decks then that will greatly speed up the game since we'll have more characters participating in more conflicts earlier in the game considering how much fate it's potentially saving you. Maybe not a bad thing considering game length is a complaint against the game currently I think. Also it will weaken bow effects and boost the utility of lower cost characters. Both good things for the game I think.

I'm overall positive on it right now after giving it some thought. We'll see how it actually plays out when it hits the table though. I think I would have liked it if it was "experienced" instead of "Disguised" since there is thematic baggage associated with the mechanic now.

1 hour ago, Hordeoverseer said:

I just kind of wish that they didn't name it Disguise , it reeks of sneakiness that bushi and etc from half the Clans likely won't do. Kind of wished it was called promotion or ascension or something, like a hero emerges from the rank and file, proving themselves to be worth of glory and recognition. You know, samurai doing fantasy samurai stuff in a fantasy samurai game.

I don't think there is anything dishonorable about not wandering around with your full titles and honors all the time. "I'm just a humble wanderer/yojimbo/whatever. Oh no it's actually Famous Samurai Badass who is going to wreck us!" is a pretty common trope. Pride is not actually one of the bushido virtues regardless of what Lions think.

2 hours ago, Hordeoverseer said:

I'll wait and see where Disguise takes us, but I feel it's likely a power creep to make bow actions less relevant, which will in turn may see more bow actions distributed openly. We might even see Mirumoto's Fury being taken off the restricted list, who knows.

I just kind of wish that they didn't name it Disguise , it reeks of sneakiness that bushi and etc from half the Clans likely won't do. Kind of wished it was called promotion or ascension or something, like a hero emerges from the rank and file, proving themselves to be worth of glory and recognition. You know, samurai doing fantasy samurai stuff in a fantasy samurai game.

I agree with these sentiments to an extent.

The primary issue with this mechanic, as others identified, is that it allows one to replace a bowed character with a more powerful unbowed character. If it weren't for that singular issue then there really wouldn't be any power creep involved with paying extra fate to give a boost and a different ability to a card in a conflict.

And it is a bit weird that Lion is the first card we see this mechanic on.

But, that being said, as much as clans really pride themself on the particular image upheld by their most iconic family, I have also always felt that all clans likely have all sorts of tools at their disposal.

I would think that there is not a single clan that is entirely without heavy infantry, cavalry, scouts, archers, assassins/saboteurs, diplomats, scholars, magistrates, governors, architects, artisans, etc., etc.

It just happens that they are more iconic and have more clout in some clans than others. But each clan is functionally a self-sufficient nation within the overall empire and if it feels silly to say that an entire self-sufficient nation and its military absolutely would not have any individuals trained in a particular skillset, then somewhere within each clan must be someone who has that skillset. Even if it is not what the clan most celebrates, you got to figure that may have just fallen into that gap because they happened to be better at it than their peers and weren't as good at whatever the clan more favors as those peers.

I am looking forward to disguising in a character with a non-unique army character. "I disguised myself as an entire army, and they didn't know it was only one person. HA!"

Anyone have a link or the text for Shinjo Kyora?

10 minutes ago, HirumaShigure said:

Anyone have a link or the text for Shinjo Kyora?

Here you go.

14 minutes ago, HirumaShigure said:

Anyone have a link or the text for Shinjo Kyora?

I got this off the Scottish L5R Facebook group.

ETA: Pesky Mantis shinobi.

So... isn't the Disguised mechanic like a mix between the old Experienced and Ninjutsu mechanics?

On 2/15/2019 at 7:53 PM, Mon no Oni said:

So... isn't the Disguised mechanic like a mix between the old Experienced and Ninjutsu mechanics?

Basically, yes.

I don't think there's an issue with Sotorii having the Crown Prince trait. Even after his brother becomes Emperor he'll still be heir apparent until Daisetsu puts a bun in Shahai's oven.

On 2/15/2019 at 6:53 PM, Mon no Oni said:

So... isn't the Disguised mechanic like a mix between the old Experienced and Ninjutsu mechanics?

More like Emerge than Ninjutsu, but still Very interesting space.

Unfortunate that there are only 8 Disguise characters in the the entire cycle.

1 hour ago, Danwarr said:

Unfortunate that there are only 8 Disguise characters in the the entire cycle.

Probably not a bad idea. If the mechanic skews the game in unexpected ways, it limits the impact only having two characters available per deck that uses it.

I wonder if the 8th character will be the Grey Crane triggering from the Ronin trait. With a different reason for going Ronin than the original story of course.

59 minutes ago, GM81 Protocol Droid said:

Probably not a bad idea. If the mechanic skews the game in unexpected ways, it limits the impact only having two characters available per deck that uses it.

I wonder if the 8th character will be the Grey Crane triggering from the Ronin trait. With a different reason for going Ronin than the original story of course.

Way to early for the Grey Crane. I would expect it will be a Ronin of some sort, likely reflecting the group that has been presenting themselves as working for both the Lion and Crane to stir up trouble in that conflict.

1 hour ago, GM81 Protocol Droid said:

Probably not a bad idea. If the mechanic skews the game in unexpected ways, it limits the impact only having two characters available per deck that uses it.

I wonder if the 8th character will be the Grey Crane triggering from the Ronin trait. With a different reason for going Ronin than the original story of course.

That is way too few. It's not even a mechanic at that point. It will just be as irrelevant as Composure.

17 hours ago, GM81 Protocol Droid said:

Probably not a bad idea. If the mechanic skews the game in unexpected ways, it limits the impact only having two characters available per deck that uses it.

I wonder if the 8th character will be the Grey Crane triggering from the Ronin trait. With a different reason for going Ronin than the original story of course.

It would probably have been more exciting to have at least 2 Disguise characters per clan, one at 3 and 4 fate respectively.

The cycle is going to have 120+ cards, roughly half of which are going to be characters, so the new hype keyword is only going to be on about 13% of all of the characters in the entire cycle. While the mechanism definitely seems exciting, it just isn't doesn't seem exposed enough.

Compare it to MTG where they release new keywords every set on a large number of cards. Ravnica even has 1 for every guild with plenty of representation in that guild's card pool.

I feel that's probably one of the things that oL5R did wrong in its last cycle leading up to the 20 Festivals. Some keywords only existed for one set and worst still, some Clans had a sensei surrounding that keyword (Spider Honour, I believe) and then it got nearly zero support afterwards. Here's also hoping that composure isn't a one-off too.

Brand new shiny mechanics and keywords are cool but too much of them bog down an already hard-to-teach and harder-to-master game.

Yeah, keywords that had actual mechanical effects was something that was negative in the old version of the game and it kind of sucks to see the new game barreling down the same route.

There are now maybe 4-6 keyword effects in the game now that everyone is just supposed to just "know"-- meanwhile the majority of keywords we see still have no inherent effect. That doesn't really feel like good game design to me, both the fact that any beginner to the game is going to need a little clarification sheet sitting by them that explains which keywords matter on their own without needing an additional card to trigger off of it and what those effects are.

Probably one of the worst in the old game was "Naval", which was a keyword that only mattered if every single character in the army had the keyword (meaning that basically every single Mantis Clan card HAD to be printed with the keyword and probably no card outside of the Mantis Clan was ever printed with it) and if they all did well... I think the most common version was that you got the first round, but I feel like it changed a couple times.

And that, in addition to that, basically all Mantis cards were ALSO printed with ranged attacks meaning there was 2 different keyword traits that appeared universally on a single clan's personality cards.

I suppose the original version of that was "cavalry", but at least the cavalry trait did something on its own and even though 95% of the cards ever printed with that trait were in Unicorn, other clans would occasionally have a character with that trait because a character with that trait on its own did something.

But in this version of the game, the Cavalry trait doesn't do anything and now we are getting a bunch of traits that do have an in-game effect that is not printed on the card.

@TheHobgoblyn In the LCG, there is a distinction between keywords, which always have associated rules text (like Covert), and traits, which never do (like Cavalry). They are separated (different lines) and have different formatting (normal type vs bold italic). Disguised is a keyword (with a variable parameter), not a trait. And it always works the same way (unlike Composure, for which the effect must be printed on the card).