whoa pal
don’t put decks in my mouth
I think it would be a terrible thing if a card game had “make players pick a faction and stick to it” as a design goal, personally.
3 Likes
Agreed. In my experience clan loyalty was always more a result of tournament structure / prize support than game design.
3 Likes
clan loyalty in my experience was due to storyline, but also a side effect of not being able to chase every rare card. u just focused on your niche sticking to clan u liked most. this was a good thing and created a diversified game for everyone.
no need to take that personally. u exactly now what i mean by ‘neh is (or was) everywhere’.
I disagree, strongly. First and foremost, it rankles me that theoretically there are X hundred cards released in a set, but realistically I can only afford to care about a couple dozen of them; for any given player, only ~30% of the card pool ‘exists’ (except you still have to face the other 70% in your opponents’ decks). One of the biggest selling points of the LCG model, to me, is that I’m free to experiment with any deck, any faction, any archetype, and it won’t cost me anything. That’s how you get a diversified game for everyone: players are free to switch their decks up and do what suits them or what they find interesting. If everybody switches to Crane Clan Duelist decks, people are also free to switch to whatever has a better match-up against them. Hooray for metagames! On the other hand, if I’m stuck with my stodgy Lion military deck because I can’t afford to chase rares and switch my decks up, what happens when my match-up versus Crane Clan Duelists is abysmal, and those decks pop up everywhere? I’m just going to lose a lot and…be OK with it? I don’t understand why anybody would think fewer options for players was a good thing.
Secondly, it doesn’t strike me as a profitable thing for FFG, either. If you’re stuck with your faction, then you don’t have any incentive to buy products which contain good or interesting cards for other factions. There’s no reason to ever buy the Dragon Clan deluxe if I’m a Lion guy. However, in the LCG model, even if I’ve never played Dragon before, if there are some cool Personalities that make me want to try an Enlightenment deck, I’m free to pick the Dragon deluxe up and build a deck and try it out. Taking Netrunner as an example, I would guess that the number of players who buy all/most products is far greater than those that buy the Core Set, “their” faction’s deluxe, and only the data packs which provide strong cards for “their” faction.
3 Likes
I am that player, but switching factions even one time (HB → NBN and Shaper → Criminal) was really nice and ended up making me buy most of the pool. Still haven’t bought Mala Tempora, though! Take that, RP.
And by the end of every arc everyone was playing out of faction cards out of Unicorn anyway.
1 Like
i get what u mean and i understand your point of view. for me however its not the selling point of l5r, its different game in that aspect.
im playing l5r and i know plenty of guys thinking like me. we are worried that limited card pool in ffg starter will make game shallow and unenjoyable. i know completionists exist but im not one of them. in that one game i strongly prefer to be loyal to my faction and that defines l5r for me and my playgroup. there is many ways to play inside one faction: im mantis guy and i may play military blitz, tacticians control, regular military with archery flavor, some thunder/earth oriented shugenja military/honor, zoo honor, kensai and few other ways. all inside one clan! there is 9 clans and few minors. this is diversity im talking about.
metagame is important, but lcg may create environments where many guys netdeck and u may face 4 neh like decks during 5 swiss rounds. on kotei i rarely face same clan twice, not saying same way. its just different kind of gaming. more relaxed and story oriented.
i hope that once game will be released there will be starter box for every clan, small packs will make some themes common for everyone like ‘ashigaru’ or ‘shugenja’ and when they will release extensions for clans again 9 boxes will be dropped at once. im not interested in buying spider or crane cards as i’ll never play them.
even if ure underdog with your clan at the moment, there is always top clan prize waiting for you at koteis.
take any game on the planet, your arguments are valid. not here tho. its rokugan and i serve the mantis. utz!
2 Likes
I would be really surprised if this were the case. Maybe it will be! But every other LCG FFG has ever released leads me to believe otherwise. I would expect one Core Set, not 9. In fact, I would actually be surprised if there wind up being 9 deluxes, one for each clan. With that many factions, I would guess that FFG would look more at Doomtown’s big boxes, and release cards for all factions based around some theme or story event. Like if the Shadowlands are a thematic focus of a big box, you’d have cards that flesh out each clan’s reaction to what’s going on there – Crab Clan guys, sure, but also maybe things like Phoenix shugenja who study the Shadowlands specifically to try to fight it, or maybe some corrupt courtiers who have started to fall to darkness back home. But that’s all speculation, of course.
omg this video is amazing
I would be surprised if ffg did this. Quite frankly, they want you to buy as much as possible, dropping 9 deluxes at once sounds incredible bad for business. Ffs, they hope everyone buys three core sets of there current LCGs.
Overall, I think Clan/faction loyalty is one aspect where the CCG-model have the upper hand over the LCG-model, since it has scarcity builtin to the model itself.
1 Like
it may be reverted. usually u dont need so many clan related stuff, so small boxes for clans and big boxes for general themes. i know its not perfect, but sounds better for business now 
Doing some thread necro, any one got any links to further information about this? Iv done some digging myself but im not a reddit-er and dont really frequent BGG so im assuming im missing out.
Put it mildly im VERY HYPED about this. I think the netrunner model where deluxe editions focus on 2-3 clans at a time is likely to be what FFG put out, but instead of expanding on clans present in the core set it will introduce new clans entirely. I expect with the various win conditions present in the CCG version of L5R that you would see things like crab (military win), crane (honour win), phoenix (enlightenment) and scorpion (dishonor win) being present in the core.
there is nothing more other than original announcement.
oh, if they dont put mantis into core, i wont buy
1 Like
Don’t like the standard FFG model for L5R tbh. The game was a lot about loyalty to your chosen clan. Very few players had more than one clan during their involvment in the game and I think that was a huge selling point for the game. It was more about faction allegiance than playing the best current deck.
2 Likes
I think that’s absolutely possible with FFG’s model. I haven’t played Game of Thrones myself, but I know people who approach it in that exact way. We’ll see what happens. I’m super excited for this either way.
1 Like
Valid concern, but you don’t know what ffg wil do, yet.
Even with access to all the cards, you can still have your preferred clan, no one will force you to play the other factions if you don’t want to,. Phoenix will always be my boys!
2 Likes
Fair enough, i guess i was abit hopeful thinking maybe there was any more information on it.