L5R Path Forward?

By Gamesontables, in Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game

Posted at

This is not a doom & gloom topic. I'm just trying to get a sense of what sense (if any) folks can make out of where FFG is headed with L5R:LCG at this point.

The "Scrying the Future" article ( https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2019/9/6/scry-the-future/ ) really left me with a lot of doubts about competitive LCGs and how FFG intends to respond.

It sounds like, they're working through a few main questions:

  • Do we want to continue the format for competitive LCGs or is it primarily well suited for episodic cooperative games?
  • How do we address the barriers to entry cost and retail stock sufficiency?
  • Related to the last question, in what ways can we address set rotation as a part of competitive LCGs?

Elsewhere on these boards it was mentioned that the FFG Live seemed to indicate that a revised core for L5R might be the plans. The system is, by competitive LCG standards, pretty early in its cycle run so it makes great sense to take a break once the current cycle is done and refit the game at a natural break with a splashy relaunch of such a revised core set alongside new OP rules/prize support/stories.

As it stands, FFG has the following products on their publicly accessible websites:

  • Justice for Satsume (just released)
  • Children of Heaven (on the boat)
  • Emperor's Legion (on the boat)
  • Defenders of Rokugon (in development)
  • Shoju's Duty (in development)
  • A Champion's Foresight (in development)

That would close out the Inheritance Cycle (3rd cycle) and leave only Dragon clan without a clan pack.

There's some sense to starting a new "era" of L5R following these releases and the introduction of a new revised core.

The rotation structure could be:

  • Revised Core
  • 3 Cycles
  • 1 Deluxe
  • 7 Clan

Release the cycles every 6 months so it's an 18 month steady-stream rotation of content with clan packs dropping prior to official story moments for the clan pack that's about to drop. The mid-cycle big release maybe after clan pack 3 drops is the deluxe that contains cards that have been errata'd and that need introduction to balance the game (if any) in addition to fresh content for each clan prior to qualifiers with enough time to norm new decks. Revised cores could be the GenCon release and they might mark "Seasons in the Game" so that they're NOT required on an annual basis but only when changes to the meta require such an evolution.

You could then support two separate formats for the game as well. The current "season" and a legacy mode so that players who have been with the game, or enjoy all the crazy old card combos, can still take advantage of a significantly deep pool of cards.

What are your thoughts on how Navaro's challenges outlined in the last AMA article, the FFG Live content, and the production schedule might be spun in such a way that L5R gets the love it deserves in a more sustainable way for fans, stores, and FFG?

Posted at
3 hours ago, Gamesontables said:

This is not a doom & gloom topic. I'm just trying to get a sense of what sense (if any) folks can make out of where FFG is headed with L5R:LCG at this point.

The "Scrying the Future" article ( https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2019/9/6/scry-the-future/ ) really left me with a lot of doubts about competitive LCGs and how FFG intends to respond.

It sounds like, they're working through a few main questions:

  • Do we want to continue the format for competitive LCGs or is it primarily well suited for episodic cooperative games?
  • How do we address the barriers to entry cost and retail stock sufficiency?
  • Related to the last question, in what ways can we address set rotation as a part of competitive LCGs?

Elsewhere on these boards it was mentioned that the FFG Live seemed to indicate that a revised core for L5R might be the plans. The system is, by competitive LCG standards, pretty early in its cycle run so it makes great sense to take a break once the current cycle is done and refit the game at a natural break with a splashy relaunch of such a revised core set alongside new OP rules/prize support/stories.

As it stands, FFG has the following products on their publicly accessible websites:

  • Justice for Satsume (just released)
  • Children of Heaven (on the boat)
  • Emperor's Legion (on the boat)
  • Defenders of Rokugon (in development)
  • Shoju's Duty (in development)
  • A Champion's Foresight (in development)

That would close out the Inheritance Cycle (3rd cycle) and leave only Dragon clan without a clan pack.

There's some sense to starting a new "era" of L5R following these releases and the introduction of a new revised core.

The rotation structure could be:

  • Revised Core
  • 3 Cycles
  • 1 Deluxe
  • 7 Clan

Release the cycles every 6 months so it's an 18 month steady-stream rotation of content with clan packs dropping prior to official story moments for the clan pack that's about to drop. The mid-cycle big release maybe after clan pack 3 drops is the deluxe that contains cards that have been errata'd and that need introduction to balance the game (if any) in addition to fresh content for each clan prior to qualifiers with enough time to norm new decks. Revised cores could be the GenCon release and they might mark "Seasons in the Game" so that they're NOT required on an annual basis but only when changes to the meta require such an evolution.

You could then support two separate formats for the game as well. The current "season" and a legacy mode so that players who have been with the game, or enjoy all the crazy old card combos, can still take advantage of a significantly deep pool of cards.

What are your thoughts on how Navaro's challenges outlined in the last AMA article, the FFG Live content, and the production schedule might be spun in such a way that L5R gets the love it deserves in a more sustainable way for fans, stores, and FFG?

They've already confirmed that rotation will happen at the beginning of Cycle 5 and the 2 oldest sets will cycle out at that time, after that with the beginning of the release of the odd number cycles they will rotate out the two oldest sets so that we have an active card pool of the most current core set, 2-4 cycles, the most current clan pack for each faction and the assorted deluxe boxes which will rotate on their own schedule essentially from the sounds of it on a case by case basis.

I wouldn't expect revised core until just before the start of cycle 5 at this point as the ideal plan would be take some of the key cards from the rotating cycles and reprint them in core while you cycle out some of the problem core cards that are acting as an anchor on design and reprint your errata's if needed.

After that you likely can leave the core untouched for a while and use clan packs and Deluxe boxes to "rescue" staple cards from rotation if you feel its necessary.

Going forward once we have revised core I would expect them to fall into a roughly two year rotation cycle that includes 2-3 pack cycles, a 1-2 Deluxe boxes and likely 3-4 clan packs.

Posted at

Awesome. Not sure how I missed that or why the responses from Navaro were so pensive about the LCG format then! It sounds like he could have very well just reiterated this plan because it's solid.

While I'm sure there are people who will grump about set rotation, I'm not one of them and would rather see a healthy game than one that languishes. I entered AGoT after cycle 6 and it was HORRIBLE trying to track down expansion packs via ebay, coolstuffinc, my FLGS, and random hobby shops around the country.

Revised core makes good sense to kick off the new competitive play rotating cycles format.

I'm a fan of whatever they can do to reinvigorate the local clubs and game scene with these changes! Thanks for the clarifications.

Posted at
On 9/9/2019 at 10:03 PM, Gamesontables said:

Awesome. Not sure how I missed that or why the responses from Navaro were so pensive about the LCG format then! It sounds like he could have very well just reiterated this plan because it's solid.

As I understood the LCG format has the problems requiring stores to buy and keep in stock a great number of SKU (right at this moment, if I'm not mistaken, there are 21 individuals SKUs). It is a big commitment for a store to stock AND display all this product. When we get to the apex of the rotation this will be 33 (6*4 cycle packs + 7 clan packs + core set + Children of the Empire)... you could fill a complete wall with just this. Also, entering into the game gets increasingly expensive. Now, this would still be cheaper than a traditional card game, but this is still a matter of perception. You get an interested customer, you tell him he has to buy over 30 individual products.... you immediately lose that customer. It's way easier to tell him (and less shelf-room intensive, too) to tell him he needs to buy boosters from these 6-7 MTG SKUs. So LCGs have objective advantages, but also very real, objective disadvantages. That one (as I do) may think that the pros outweight the cons do not make the disadvantages less real.

He said something to the effect that they'd think to make a pause to AGOT, then they would continue to release the game in a new format. I interpreted this to be maybe something like Children of the Empire, instead (for reference, Children of the Empire was roughly the equivalent of 4 cycle packs).

Edited by Mon no Oni
Adjusting calculations
Posted at

I think they'll likely stick to the current rotation schedule at least through the end of cycle 5...maybe drop another premium box or two and a revised core set sometime next year. If they do move away from pack cycles for competitive LCGs, that's when I would expect to see it happen. At that point you have 3 full "good" cycles active, a revised core to consolidate and/or rebalance what's worth keeping from the original core and first two cycles, and a couple premium boxes. I could see releasing maybe 3 premium boxes and a couple new clan packs per year. The original issue of "clans with a clan pack have more new cards" wouldn't be as significant since each new clan pack would rotate out the clan's previous clan pack anyways.

That's of course assuming FFG doesn't decide to innovate on a much higher level and change the game completely...the fact they've created the "living card game" and "unique deck game" models in the first place is proof enough they're not afraid of doing that sort of thing.