The way the duel were described when I first read the rulebook- it looked interesting, kind of exciting, kind of simple. It came with a cost... were you going to lose honor to get that win, or was your opponent going to risk it all? What was going to happen?

Now that I've seen it in practice the past few months, I couldn't possibly be more disappointed and dismayed. There's no tension, there's no beauty to it- it' just... pump guy ridiculously, make your opponent bid absolutely nothing, and win- no muss, no fuss, no beauty, no tension- just... meh. The dueling clans dominate, sure- but that's ALL they do. They don't risk anything, they don't build any tension anymore... there's no focus, focus, wait for the strike... what's going to be revealed in those focus cards? Will there be a secret edge beyond the value of the card? What's going to happen? It's jut empty... empty, shallow, and meaningless.

As was always the case with duels in all versions of the game...

A duel can be any two of the following:
-Tense, risky affairs where both sides might win.
-Balanced cards that don't single-handedly overwrite the state of the game.
-Playable cards that are worth including in your deck compared to other cards.

A duel that's tense and balanced is not going to be playable, because the risk taken is much too high for a reward that's not that much higher than other action cards. A duel that's tense and playable is going to need very large rewards so that they're worth the risk you're taking. And a duel that's balanced and playable is going to have to be pretty low risk so it compares to other actions that offer slightly smaller rewards.

Duels that are tense, balanced AND playable essentially don't exist.

L5R has virtually never had any version of dueling that did not utterly come across as a one-sided beatdown... frankly, more of an out-and-out assassination that one inexplicably gained honor rather than lost honor for. If there was even a single year in which the meta allowed it to be anything but that, it would be the only year it ever was within the 25 year history of the game.

Dueling is generally a stupid concept and both the card game, the fiction, and the RPG are worse for it being ever recognized as a legitimate thing for which one should be praised. And, in fact, the RPG side of things has repeatedly made efforts over the 20 year history so that challenging people to duels that they could not possibly win for no other reason than you want to kill them to advance your own agenda is not an acceptable thing to do and will not turn out automatically in your favor. And, within the fiction, it obviously never rises to being an actual thing unless it specifically advances rather than detracts from the story.

But-- within the card game? Yeah-- its always been a stupid mechanic that effectively allows you to assassinate people and gain honor rather than lose honor for doing so despite having the exact same game effect and nothing else. The whole idea of the subgame has never really been a thing except in very edge circumstances.

Tense balanced and playable should be the core of the game. Who wants to play games where the outcome is predetermined. Playing against Crane is like being forced to watch someone play a game of solitaire.

Dueling in CCG was working very well when two dueling deck were fighting. Order of Focus effects and a bit of excitement because some most deadly duel actions were 2 or even 1 Focus Value so there was chance to get screwed becasue of them. In other matchups duels were just as standard Limited or Battle actions - just instant effect as challenged player was instantly striking unless he played some Focus Effect based duel meta.

Imho most tense duel cards were these with interesting choices like Impromptu Duel.

Normally it was duel deck vs non duel deck,, and boy those were boring match!

4 hours ago, Hannibal_pjv said:

Normally it was duel deck vs non duel deck,, and boy those were boring match!

Very much this. Dueling has always been an all or nothing exercise, either you tuned your deck to duel and weren't starting a duel unless you absolutely knew you were going to win, or you were the poor soul on the receiving end of that pain.

Yeah-- so long as you were dueling someone that you had a 5 chi advantage over, there was hardly anything your opponent could do about you out-and-out assassinating their characters and gaining honor for it aside. If you happened to do duelist vs. duelist, fine-- but then Crane was the only one who really did dueling. Maybe there would be an odd Phoenix or Scorpion deck that would pull it out, but if you weren't-- it was just entirely one-sided. Crane issuing duels that effectively could not be refused to personalities that had absolutely no possible chance against them and well.... from a purely in-lore perspective, would not have accepted nor have been expected to accept-- in fact, within RPG terms, the Crane would be losing honor for trying to force noncombatants into duels to the death over absolutely nothing.

It was all in all a dumb mechanic that was doubly dumb for having its own little subgame within a game even though the contests were virtually always far too lopsided for there to really be any stakes.

I have far more respect for cards that out and out stated that they assassinate personalities such as Kolat Assassin because they come with a cost and cause you to lose honor. But dueling cards were assassination cards that were free and brought you closer to an honor victory while also eliminating personalities that could threaten your provinces-- I suppose, in one way, they were more interactive than the whole "send you home" but only in a way that came across as taunting and unfair.

This may have been after I got out of O5R, but my experiences were always more positive. Dueling gave dueling decks an edge, but it wasn't as impossible as it is now. Or maybe after Lotus edition, I don't know... I dropped out of the game when people started taking three provinces on the first turn during Lotus. Maybe it's because I care more about the storyline and the narrative ability of the game rather than the "Game" aspect. If the game aspect becomes so cut-throat and "efficient" that it negates the narrative effect and actual fun and excitement, then it's not the game for me. It's one of the many reasons I don't like Magic or a majority of other CCG's. Why bother?

I was running a Phoenix deck that would win every duel it played (and some my opponent did) back in days of Gold edition - even against enemies with equal or 1 higher chi. It was hyper-focussed on killing people with reusable Facing your Devils and used Witch Hunt to prevent counterspells. Duelling has only ever been like you described in more casual decks. Which I also had. I find the current duelling to be rather similar in intensity - if you're playing in any way competitively, they're ways to carry out effects you want; if you're playing with fun decks, they can be tense and swingy but aren't as frequently there.

3 hours ago, redcapjack said:

This may have been after I got out of O5R, but my experiences were always more positive. Dueling gave dueling decks an edge, but it wasn't as impossible as it is now. Or maybe after Lotus edition, I don't know... I dropped out of the game when people started taking three provinces on the first turn during Lotus. Maybe it's because I care more about the storyline and the narrative ability of the game rather than the "Game" aspect. If the game aspect becomes so cut-throat and "efficient" that it negates the narrative effect and actual fun and excitement, then it's not the game for me. It's one of the many reasons I don't like Magic or a majority of other CCG's. Why bother?

How impossible it was for non-dueling decks to win duels often depended very much on how easy it was to increase the chi of your characters.

Early editions had things like Kyuden Tonbo and Blood Swords which was probably when it was most oppressive. There were ways of giving characters unreasonably high chi in other editions too. Maybe there was an edition where it was nearly impossible to get any card about 4 or 5 chi without paying so much for it that you weren't going to kill enough cards to make that investment back, but... it was just never the norm.

And, really, if a deck is built to win duels then it would be sort of odd if any deck not built to win them was functionally able to compete. It would mean that any cards that would give you an edge didn't really give one a particularly meaningful edge.

At some point game allowed to focus from hand so you could fizzle duel with specific focus effect. In late game they introduced Discipline keyword (playing card from discard), so maximum focusing to die could make card advantage.

Scorpion dueling in middle editions was about chi penalties and redirection, then killing op guys with their own duelists.

Since Lotus Dragon dueling was one of the main themes in this Clan. Later in Ivory even Lion and Spider got their dueling themes and their own Duelist Personalities.

At the beginning of edition dueling was always a compromise as there werent enough playable 4fv cards so you had to fill your deck with mediocre stuff.

At the end of edition was full of high chi Uniques or accessible chi boosting items in all clans, so nearly everyone could play dueling, including Shadowlands.

As i said before, duel against non duel deck was standard battle action played instantly as with Celestial they even removed requirement of making mandatory focus pool, you could just strike without puting your hand on the table and drawing focus pool.

I did not like the Lotus twist of removing the cost of dueling with cards from the hand.

I've always disliked DUelling in L5R, be it in the CCG or the LCG. It's a game in the game, and I really think none of the two games really needed it.

At least, in SKirmish, it is more interesting, as even if you're 7 skill ahead, you only get a +1 to your bid. And honor swings are fare more deadly in Skirmish.