commence excitement?
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/legend-of-the-five-rings-the-card-game/
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HYPE! Looks like something I’ll get excited about and probably not buy because I don’t have time/money for 2 LCGS. Will play if it ever comes out on OCTGN though, like I do AGOT 2
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dear lord 2017.
do we really need to know about this now?
I’ve never played L5R so I can’t really comment on the game itself, but I find the announcement of another LCG a little worrying. Our local meta lost a few players to Doomtown and I suspect will lose a few more to AGOT 2nd ed. I know FFG has acknowledged the market can only support so many of these games, but I hope there aren’t too many more in the near future.
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Noooo, I can’t buy any more cards. Please. Stop. I love good card games too much. I thought I had avoided delving into the rich world and intricate strategies of Lo5R because of the CCG release model and small playerbase.
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I’m willing to bet they announced now since the CCG isn’t going to announce any more cycles. Better to announce really far ahead of the launch date and hope to retain some of the fan base than have all of the existing players worried about why nothing has been announced for the future.
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Also, notably similar strategy with Game of Thrones, though this is 2 years out, so wow.
Ugh… never played, but have always been intrigued. Much like GoT, a reboot was going to be the only way I ever got into it… which apparently is now a decision I’ll have to make. 
Ditto… the world-building, flavor, and fluff that go into these games is just SO good. All the IPs that FFG LCGs have are fantastic, but there’s only so many things you can be a true “fanboy” of, at least enough for passionate players to keep up with the release schedule that a well-supported LCG needs to have while at the same time being worth the one night per week that more casual players manage to carve out of their schedule. A game like SWLCG is so intriguing to me, I’m willing to look past some delayed release dates and weak gameplay just based on the IP alone, but only for so long. At some point it’s got to be a challenging and fluid game environment if it’s ever going to be worth more than one game night per month.
Likewise, there’s only so much talent at FFG that can keep pumping out the fantastic material they have been. ANR, mechanically, is their strongest game by far, but with the (arguably) weakest (that is to say, least popular) IP. What makes Netrunner such a fantastic game is the depth that you can get into it. It’s got the room for both casual and super-advanced play, its balanced enough for the meta to control the competitive directions, rather than a single archetype being obviously stronger than the rest and everyone else teching against it. At least at first glance, I’m not seeing any of their other LCGs that have come close (possibly AGoT1). Since the profit-model on LCGs is driven by capturing new players (rather than keeping players who have already “bought-in”), I can see it would be EXTREMELY tempting for FFG to push their talent towards different games and away from Netrunner, which would be a huge disappointment.
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SO MUCH HYPE. I’ve been saying for years now that L5R needs to relaunch as an LCG. 
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SO EXCITED!
I’m really interested to see how FFG fixes some of the games inherent problems. Also I really hope they keep the storyline aspect.
same
totally unfamiliar with L5R but I will definitely be getting into if it has interesting mechanics and many strategies. didn’t end up getting into AGOT because it is very generic mechanics and strat wise
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Can you, or someone else experienced with the CCG, give a basic rundown of what some of the major issues or points of improvement are?
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Snowballing:
The military (or most common) path to victory involves destroying the other player’s provinces. The problem is that provinces are also how you see new cards and bring in new units/resources. Each player starts with 4, so the first player to take a province now can bring out 4 new units a turn compared to the opponent’s 3. 4 v 3 isn’t too bad, but 3 v 2 and 2 v 1 are much worse. This gives a big advantage to the player that plays first.
Honour/Dishonour:
Two of the other victory conditions (l5r has 4) are in direct conflict with each other. To win by honour you need to start your turn at 40 honour (a player stat like MtG’s life that goes up and down). You also lose if you start your turn at -20 honour. So a game between an honour deck and a dishonour deck ends up feeling like an extremely frustrating game of tug of war. Imagine in MtG a deck that does nothing but healing/prevention deck vs a nothing but direct damage deck.
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You can force dishonor on an opponent? How does that work, thematically?
Also, what is the fourth victory condition?
Enlightenment: get all 5 Ring cards into play. The Rings are supposed to each have unique and somewhat hard-to-engineer requirements to play, but that’s been true only to varying degrees throughout the game’s lifetime. It’s a goofy win condition because it’s completely orthagonal to the rest of the game’s win/lose axes and, crucially, it doesn’t seem (to me, anyway) to be something your opponent can really tech against or oppose. (Disclaimer: I haven’t played since, Samurai Edition.)
Thematically it’s done through political actions. One of the ideas is that the Imperial Court is just as, if not more important than the armies. So you can courtier characters go to court and expose/cause scandals, blackmail, steal secrets, etc… You can run an operation of brothels and drinking houses and then shame your opponent for having his vassals attend such establishments.
I didn’t know whether or not to list Enlightenment as another inherent problem. But typically throughout the game’s history it’s been either a gimick deck or over powered (for the reasons Brodie mentioned). There are counter cards (typically those that interrupt reactions or long chains of actions) but like Netrunner there is no side boarding so meta-cards tend to be of the silver-bullet type.
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I feel like the system desperately needs a serious overhaul, but changes I think are probably best (if not necessary) for the health of the game would alienate the long-term players and cause a lot of outrage. For example, I think enlightenment should be cut entirely as a victory condition, because it’s like this weird side game that many decks don’t bother to engage with very much – but that goofy jankiness is exactly what draws a lot of people to build enlightenment decks. I sympathize – I built a goofy janky Door to Nothingness deck back when I played Magic – but ultimately I think it’s detrimental to the overall system to have to balance around this weird clumsy vestigial limb of a wincon.
(If it were up to me, I’d like to see Rings being kind of like Shards are/wanted to be in A:NR – some neat, flavorful ways to augment certain decks. Maybe you’d have some Personalities who get a benefit if you’ve got a Ring in play, representing their spiritual/enlightened nature. But certainly not a “win the game!” condition.)
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I wonder if this is the Secret Project™ that Lukas got pulled from Netrunner and assigned to…
(gosh I hope so)
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Nah, that was Runebound Second Edition.
Such a disappointing game. It’s basically Talisman with a better map.
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