Hello All,

So after a lot of thought and bouncing ideas off others who play L5R I have come to the conclusion that the Restricted List in its current form is a problem. The main issue is that the current RL punishes clans for the actions of others. But for the sake of transparency I will state that I mostly play scorpion and this does affect my views on how the game is played so take that at what you will. Anyway I look forward to hearing what others have to say about this.

First and foremost I (and many many many others) feel that Tadaka (dynasty) needs to be banned. I have yet to encounter a single person at a tournament that says Tadaka is fair or fun. Every card game has some power cards that turn out to be way too powerful. It is important for the health of the game that such cards are noted quickly and remedied. But Tadaka's issue is more than it is just powerful, he is a massive negative play experience that can literally win games by himself by making it nearly impossible for your opponent to play anything. Any card (and yes this includes Guest of Honor) that prevents your opponent from doing something without a price to be paid is bad design. I feel like I should be providing examples but honestly I feel like after a year of players having to deal with him few can argue he is well designed. Now to be fair I fully understand that the current top tier Phoenix deck probably will hit very hard by his banning but I don't think too many people will complain when I hear stories of how the Phoenix v Phoenix matchup is "a race to draw Tadaka and keep his effect on." I will say I am very bias on this but I also feel Guest of Honor should be banned just because it effect is similar to Tadaka's but that probably is just the scorpion player in me and may not be warranted but it is the only crane card on the RL.

Second, each clan needs to have its own RL. The Restricted List punishes all clans for the problems of the others. Pathfinders blade is only on the RL because Niten Master exists. In most others clans pathfinders blade is not part of some crazy combo it is just a +1 mil for 0 cost with a cool effect. For greater glory is only a problems in Lion and probably Unicorn. Against the Waves was only a problem in Phoenix which is why they took it off so that other clans could use it (still don't think I have seen any other clan use it but details). Mirimoto's fury was put on the list because every single clan was running it with Let Go (honestly I would say that makes it a contender for being Banned but that is a different discussion). Rebuild is only a problem in Crab because of the focus they have on holdings. If you narrow down the RL so that each Clan has their own list, you can free up some of the cards that never see play anymore because in an attempt to limit the problematic combos you also effectively soft banned other cards. The RL is supposed to make players choose. However, as it turns out it resulted mostly in the soft ban of most of the RL. Most clans have an option between 2 maybe 3 cards. For scorpion the choice is Forged Edict or Fate Worse than Death. For Dragon they just mostly dropped Niten and Mirimoto's for Void fist and called it a day. Crane usually run Guest of Honor. I should note I am not trying to solve the RL problem of clans just picking the better or two options. I am trying to free up some of the card pool for clans that would otherwise never look at something. No Scorpion is going to choose Pathfinders blade over Forged Edict or Fate Worse than Death. No Dragon is going to pick Rebuild over Void Fist. No Crab is going to pick Policy Debate over just about anything else on the list. It therefore makes little sense in my mind that these cards should be banned from those clans.

You can make the argument that giving each clan there own RL would make it a lot more difficult for players to remember what is and is not on the RL. I would say but you don't need to RL 16 cards for each clan. Most clans only really choose between 2 or 3 cards. Now it is possible that if at such a time each Clan does need to have 16 cards on their personal RLs I would say that something went horribly wrong in the card design process. However, based on how the last few packs have been I don't really see that as being the case. I trust FFG figured out what should and should not be printed.

Anyway interested in hearing feed back.

Thanks,

Randre

Almost everyone I've spoken to in recent months, including a lot of people that play Scorpion, think the game right now is the most balanced and enjoyable environment we've seen for the LCG. A large part of that is due to the Restricted List pulling Scorpion back into the pack. I'd say the RL is working as intended right now, and the game feels more vibrant and healthy as a result of that.

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For greater glory is only a problems in Lion and probably Unicorn.

It isn't a problem in Lion and is a major problem in Unicorn due to their swarm based tactics. Lion would love to have it back as currently we have to run Charge! In order to help push for a good game state.

Semantics.

Making separate RL's for each clan likely increases the number of cards that are restricted and you have to deal with a neutral RL as well.

It's fine as long as it keeps getting reviewed to see if cards need to be added or are ok to come off, as the cardpool grows.

Phoenix could have DoP and Cb5F on the RL now but the elemental roles and two clan packs are about to shake things up. I think we could see another RL update before gen con or shortly after....and that's fine.

We will have to see some massively environment warping/defining cards for a card to actually be banned. It has, at least from my observations, always been something that FFG has avoided at nearly all costs.

Theres not much sense in printing cards if they will be banned. Personally I do think dynasty tadaka is op, but Im not so sure if to the point of being banned. Him being in the rl is ok imo.

What I do think is that the phoenox stronghold that lrts ypu cast from graveyard is too powerfil. 6 copies of against the wave and supernatural storm is too much, and its strength will only.grow with time. Perphaps thats the card that shpuld be in rl

2 hours ago, RafaelNN said:

Theres not much sense in printing cards if they will be banned. Personally I do think dynasty tadaka is op, but Im not so sure if to the point of being banned. Him being in the rl is ok imo.

What I do think is that the phoenox stronghold that lrts ypu cast from graveyard is too powerfil. 6 copies of against the wave and supernatural storm is too much, and its strength will only.grow with time. Perphaps thats the card that shpuld be in rl

The only issue with that is the point of RL is to give deck building options, do I take choice X or Y. When one of those choices is a structural requirement of the game (your stronghold which most deck archetypes are built around) you take that choice essentially away. True you have the core stronghold, but its design does not actually do anything for a shugenja deck, and honestly is more a detriment to that deck them help.

I realize that. I was hoping to see more strongholds in the game, kinda like how in netrunner you had tons of identities. I was hoping one stronghold per cycle when the game was new. Then it wouldnt be such a big problem.

I think if they wanted to hard nerf Phoenix, they would probably put Supernatural Storm and Embrace the Void on the RL along with dynasty Tadaka. Supernatural Storm I feel was designed with some idea that Phoenix players would play a mixture of primary traits (shugenja, courtier, bushi) rather than cram a deck full of shugenja to abuse this one spell...I think it was a bit short-sighted, especially at 0 fate cost. Embrace the Void just helps to enable a lot of Phoenix fate-heavy combos and typically gives enough refund on fate to incentivize continuing to use Consumed By Five Fires.

I'm holding out hope that with the apparent increase in 1x cards in the Inheritance cycle, we'll see some additional strongholds released so that by the end of this year each clan will have 3 strongholds to choose from.

Speaking of which, we are going to have a new RL announced next Monday, to take into effect on May 6th.

I just hope it doesn't ruin the deck I've been preparing for the Seattle Kotei. I'm pretty sure it will be safe, because it's pretty jank, but, I would be pretty bent if something important ended up on the RL. I'd hate to see the months of testing get flushed.

6 hours ago, Ishi Tonu said:

I just hope it doesn't ruin the deck I've been preparing for the Seattle Kotei. I'm pretty sure it will be safe, because it's pretty jank, but, I would be pretty bent if something important ended up on the RL. I'd hate to see the months of testing get flushed.

Well, I'm pretty sure if you ask FFG nicely, they won't touch the cards in your deck. Or maybe they don't care and they'll do whatever they want.

With them, you never know.

I knew it was a risk starting my testing so early this time. At least this time I'll have some good options for Unicorn if the deck I want to play gets nailed.

Speaking of the art used in that announcement, has anyone tried that Crane attachment to success?

17 hours ago, FriendofYoda said:

Speaking of the art used in that announcement, has anyone tried that Crane attachment to success?

Not to success.

I've used mirror's gaze twice and not in a competitive setting. It was fun to see but it took a lot of set up, you needed to stop attachment removal, have a valid target for both the attachment and to copy the opponents event against, and hope they willing walk into it's effect because it is so telegraphed.

Adding ConsumedByFiveFires to the list would help with Phx - or perhaps DoP. He is the best 5 cost in the game but I dont think he deserves to be banned.

Well, Tadaka got nerfed a bit, which is fine.

Thoughts on the (IMO heavy-handed) nerfs to Dragon and Scorpion?

All the nerfs seem appropriate. The scorpion stronghold was simply better than any other option. And restoration was an unavoidable horror.

Mall the nerfs have the effect of allowing those cards to be played around using strategy. Rather than creating problems by existing.

"Don't bid high against Dragon until you see Restoration" is not unavoidable horror. It's also a totally viable work-around using strategy.

Now it's simply, "if you see Restoration, don't commit to it, bounce home, and ignore it until you are attacking with a hand of 4." Or, "go ahead and attack Restoration with a full hand - you'll have to burn cards to break it anyway so by the time you win it won't have any affect on you anyway."
ie: It's binder fodder now.

1 hour ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

"Don't bid high against Dragon until you see Restoration" is not unavoidable horror. It's also a totally viable work-around using strategy.

Now it's simply, "if you see Restoration, don't commit to it, bounce home, and ignore it until you are attacking with a hand of 4." Or, "go ahead and attack Restoration with a full hand - you'll have to burn cards to break it anyway so by the time you win it won't have any affect on you anyway."
ie: It's binder fodder now.

As opposed to well I didn't hit Resto on Turn 1 so now I have to keep bidding low, giving you card advantage or crank my bid to keep up on cards and end up pitching most of them when I do hit it. Lion does fine with Art of War and Dragon will with Resto as well.

I understand the change with Restoration of Balance but from a certain point of view I remain utterly flabbergasted that they added a province that once inspired such fear to the list of Shinjo Ambusher's hapless victims.

5 hours ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

Thoughts on the (IMO heavy-handed) nerfs to Dragon and Scorpion?

I’m somewhat happy that the SH for Scorpion was ‘rebalanced’ with this change, though it still remains a tough SH and continues to provide options for Scorpion players. A welcomed change imo, dropping the effectiveness down a bit. (SH is still superior than 3-4 others currently)

Restoration was severely hit, imo, but it’s still useable. One must realize that there are a ton of other provinces to choose from, with additional provinces coming out with each pack. Not too disconcerting. (I do play Dragon as my main Clan, not competitively)

I was a little surprised to see Scorpion on there again. I think the errata to CotOH is long overdue and hopefully this will allow some of the Scorpion cards to come off the RL.

The errata to Resto is also long overdo. I'm actually somewhat surprised that Ancient Master didn't hit the RL too.

Good to see Crane not getting overlooked since they have been flying under the radar for a long time and are likely to become the clan with the next tier 0 deck, once their clan pack drops.

The change to "set" a stat rules seems to make UtD much less valuable, but, Unicorn also loses their fire role so that doesn't really matter much.

40 minutes ago, Ishi Tonu said:

The change to "set" a stat rules seems to make UtD much less valuable, but, Unicorn also loses their fire role so that doesn't really matter much.

I don't see how it makes it that much less valuable. UtD still "wins" in the end. The ruling is just that you're allowed to play the cards that modify skills still (previously had been ruled that they couldn't be played because they didn't alter the game state).