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 We have a league and an IRC channel! Legend of the Five Rings (L5R) was created by Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG) in 1995. In 1997, it was purchased by Wizards of the Coast. In 2000, Hasbro ditched it, and AEG bought the rights back. L5R is one of the most successful CCGs, proven by it still being around after 15+ years. It owes this, in part, to having a good storyline (as far as CCGs go at least) that can be changed by the players through tournaments, and a lot of options for different play styles. L5R is fun for me because it has a lot of depth in play, and usually pretty good art and story. It is cheap to get into, with rare singles in high demand typically not more than $10 online, with most cards much lower, and people are usually very willing to trade away stuff from clans they aren't interested in. The tournament support is good, with lots of prizes and free stuff, along with big tournaments letting you have some influence on the story. The Story As of right now, a big war has just ended, and the new Empress (Iweko I, selected through a tournament and endorsed by Heaven and Hell, basically) has decided to distract everyone by allowing the usually isolationist Empire to expand. The background information is lengthy, to say the least. A lot of things have happened, and some things (mostly minor) have been decided through people winning storyline tournaments. If you are really interested in who was where during the Scorpion Clan Coup, you can probably start digging at http://l5r.wikia.com. The Game Current rules and errata and such can always be found at http://rules.l5r.com. Each player has two separate decks, the green-backed fate deck, and the black-backed dynasty deck, each of at least 40 cards. Each player also has a Stronghold, representing the faction they are playing, and in older editions, possibly a sensei or wind card, which sort of modifies that stronghold. Players lay four dynasty cards face down in their "provinces", to be flipped over and replaced each turn. They take 6 Fate cards in their hand. They attack and do other limited actions, if possible, then purchase things from those provinces, followed by drawing a card and ending the turn. How to Win Military Destroying your opponent's last province by attacking (or other ways) wins you the game. Honor Starting your turn with 40 family honor wins you the game. You can gain honor by destroying your opponent's cards during battle resolution, buying personalities that are a part of your clan, or through other actions. Dishonor Reducing your opponent to -20 family honor wins you the game at the start of your next turn. Typically this is done through specific card effects. Enlightenment You win if you get all five elemental rings into play. This can be difficult, as they are unique (1 of each per deck) and have conditions that can be hard to meet. Other Certain events create win conditions, like playing or using all of the black scrolls, or getting all of the walls of the capital city in play, or doing a bunch of elemental actions. Types of Cards
The Current Arc The Bug Since Jade Edition, cards have been marked with a "bug" to show what arc they are legal for. Circled are the Emperor (lower left), Celestial (lower right), and Eternity (upper right) bugs.  Emperor Edition The current arc, Emperor, includes cards from the two previous sets (Before the Dawn and Second City), as well as sets to come until the next edition comes out. Some rules have been overhauled as a part of Emperor Edition, as is done every base set. Because of delays in getting Emperor Edition out, proxied cards from the set are currently legal for tournament play. The "Kolat Edition" cards can found here. Other Formats If you aren't interested in playing in tournaments or with people or anything, there are a few alternate rulesets. Multiplayer exists, aside from War of Honor which is pretty what people play in multiplayer from what I've seen. Legacy used to be called Open, and is for old people with lots of old cards. Because of the rules changing each edition and cards being reprinted and errated, Legacy format is a huge mess. 4/6 started off as some kind of cross between a joke and a deckbuilding exercise, but apparently gets played at tournaments. You get 4 Dynasty and 6 Fate cards, that's all. Dagon fucked around with this message at Feb 7, 2012 around 08:33 |
| # ? Jan 18, 2012 01:14 |
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| # ? May 21, 2013 06:02 |
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Current Clans In Emperor Edition, there are 9 clans, plus strongholds allowing people to play as Ronin and Shadowlands. Each of the 9 clans has 4 Themes, which are sort of suggestions for how that clan could be played.
Legacy Clans Other factions have come and gone, but are still legal in Legacy play. Some of them even still get current personalities.
Playing Online There are 3 programs to play against people online with, Egg of Pan Ku, The Game, and Gempukku, all of which can be downloaded at http://kamisasori.net/. I am only familiar with Egg of Pan Ku, but I believe that all three work the same way, just as a tabletop, not enforcing rules. Go here for Tao Jones' help setting up EoPK. Dagon fucked around with this message at Apr 12, 2012 around 14:26 |
| # ? Jan 18, 2012 01:15 |
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Edit: Who cares about my lovely deck, we have a League!pre:Player Round 1/2 Round 3 Round 4 Total
2/5-2/18 2/19-2/25 2/26-3/3
SRF 5
Chouzan 2
barifanx
A Fancy Bloke
vanPart
Dagon 2
Tao Jones 6
Colon V 1
Chouzan: ladyisis (gtalk) barifanx: ??? A Fancy Bloke: ??? vanPart: ??? (IRC) Dagon: uejini (gtalk/PMs/IRC) Tao Jones: sa.taojones (gtalk/IRC) Colon V: IRC if you can't get a hold of league people, try joining #l5r on synirc. The Mibbit client is easy if you don't have an irc client installed. Playing League Games You can also use this thread or PMs or whatever your favored communication method is to schedule games against other players. Games can be played using Egg, Gempukku, or whatever method you prefer. Each round, all players have at least a week to play 4 games against 4 different people. You may only play each player once per round and you can only play 4 league games per round (unless it is a catch up game, explained below). Each League game is best 2 out of 3. League games are Emperor format (Emperor Edition, Second City, and Before the Dawn sets are legal). One and only one of the players involved must post the result in this thread, including both players forum names and in the format: {Winner's SA username} #-# {Loser's SA username}. For example, if Player A defeats Player B 2-1, the post should read: Player A 2 - 1 Player B. Please agree with your opponent on who will post the match results in the thread and only post the results of each match once. Post a new reply each time you report scores. It is each player's responsibility to ensure the accuracy of match reports submitted which name you as a player. For each game won in a match, you get one point to your score. So if you lose 1-2 you still get one point for the match. The maximum points a player can earn per week is 8.5. The Catch Up Rule Starting on Saturday each week, any player that has not played his or her four games for the week can play against players who have already played their four games for the round. For the player who still needs the game, this match scores as normal. For the player who already has 4 games played for the week, this match counts as a "bonus match." Bonus matches are worth 0.5 points for a match win (i.e. 2/3 games won). While you may only receive bonus credit once per week, you are encouraged to play as many bonus matches as is necessary to help everyone catch up. You may still only play a player once for each week even if it’s a catch up game. When posting the result of a catch up match, it must specify who was the player that played it as a bonus match. The half point for the bonus match is an incentive for the player with 4 games played to take the catch up game seriously, and not give it away just because he or she has nothing to lose. Note that by itself the half point works as a tie breaker. The Finals After four rounds, the leaders in points will be matched up in a tournament bracket to determine an overall winner. Said winner will get a bunch of old rares and otherwise worthless, but cool, cards in the mail from me. Dagon fucked around with this message at Feb 20, 2012 around 16:54 |
| # ? Jan 18, 2012 01:18 |
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Are any of the cards with the old backs legal at all? I have a bunch from before the switch, and they're really cool cards (like the void dragon, who is awesome). I understand I could use these in Legacy, but is there any overlap with current sets (like in MTG, you can use any printed version of the card)?
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| # ? Jan 18, 2012 02:16 |
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God I fucking love Diablo 3 gold, it even paid for this shitty title
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What a Judas posted:Are any of the cards with the old backs legal at all? I have a bunch from before the switch, and they're really cool cards (like the void dragon, who is awesome). I understand I could use these in Legacy, but is there any overlap with current sets (like in MTG, you can use any printed version of the card)? Some of the older cards are being reprinted in Emperor (due out sometime this month), and so some of the old back cards may be legal. Some people will prefer all the 'backs' in your deck be the same, so you can't count cards. Generally, an open group won't mind too much, but for a tournament, you'd probably want sleeves (that you can't see through). Until Emperor edition is released, they're letting people proxy some cards (found on the l5r.com site, called Kolat Edition). So, it's somewhat easy to try out right now... The printed versions do sometimes change, such as the Rings (which have gone through a lot of changes). The most recent printing is considered 'legal', so if you play an older ring, you need to be sure to use it as the most recent printing would be played. For example, if you have an old Ring of Void that said to put it into play when you have no other cards in your hand, you'd have to remember that it now goes into play after you've done 4 strategy card abilities. If you don't care too much for tournament or playing live, there's always online play. Dagon and I use Egg of P'anku, which is decent enough. Since singles are pretty cheap usually, you can test decks online, buy singles you need to make the deck, and then play live... Edit: I'll probably post in awhile on Unicorn and Mantis clans, since those are the clans I play. The strengths, weaknesses, etc.
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| # ? Jan 18, 2012 02:31 |
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If any of you guys who play online wouldn't mind giving me an intro game sometime, that would be great. I haven't played in a very long time, so I'm definitely super-rusty.
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| # ? Jan 18, 2012 02:35 |
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What a Judas posted:Are any of the cards with the old backs legal at all? I have a bunch from before the switch, and they're really cool cards (like the void dragon, who is awesome). I understand I could use these in Legacy, but is there any overlap with current sets (like in MTG, you can use any printed version of the card)? What Chouzan said, basically. There usually isn't much reprinted from way older sets, except for clan holdings of course. EE is reprinting Imperial Gift, which is nice. Here's somewhere listing all of the reprintings in EE, including "soul of" personalities: http://homeofthecraneclan.com/index.php?topic=4502.0 As far as an intro game, we can probably arrange something. Egg of Pan Ku allows spectators, so you can watch a game of ours if you'd like, or we can play. Dagon fucked around with this message at Jan 18, 2012 around 02:55 |
| # ? Jan 18, 2012 02:51 |
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This game seems pretty interesting, its a shame there isn't a LFR Online because I'd love to play this but I don't know anywhere where I can play Magic in paper, much less LFR, that said, I always appreciated the idea of having storylines affected by people playing, such as that classic moment where a entire clan was wiped out because everyone played a overpowered card that was a corruption spell or something like that, that's something I wish Magic The Gathering would do, so cool. 
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| # ? Jan 18, 2012 03:40 |
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Unicorn Clan (why you should play preeeety purple ponies) Cavalry. Of all the clans, Unicorn has the most cavalry personalities. Other clans have a few, and there are items or abilities that can give someone cavalry, but it's not too common. In open, cavalry isn't quite as good, as there are cards that allow for the destruction of cavalry personalities. In Emperor, there aren't any such cards (that I've seen). When a player attacks, the assignment of troops goes: Attacking Infantry, Defending Infantry, Attacking Cavalry, Defending Cavalry. That means a Unicorn player can declare an attack, wait while the Defender assigns their infantry, and then decide what/where to assign (or not to assign at all). It's very easy to take an early province or two with cavalry. You can pick and choose your battles to avoid nasty confrontations. Of course, once you've picked off enough provinces, it gives the Defender less to try to protect and forces you to deal with nasty things. Honestly, people I play against tend to ignore my taking their first province or two, while building up personalities for when I'm forced to actually deal with defenders. Other downsides: Unicorn people can be quite expensive, but the strongholds make a lot of gold. If, for some reason, you don't get a lot of gold holdings, you can be severely limited in what you can do. Some of the personalities, especially Battle Maidens (see below) can have high honor requirements, so going up against a dishonor deck can be tricky. An entire unit (this means followers) has to have cavalry in order to be assigned as such. So, all followers should have the cavalry keyword, or you lose the best thing Unicorns have. Paragons of Bushido (Battle Maidens: now all Paragons!) This is what I play. Aside from being cavalry, Battle Maidens are all Paragons, as of Emperor Edition. There's several strategy cards that use either BM or Paragon keywords. Both BMs and Paragons have high honor, so the cards tend to focus on honor - bow someone with less personal honor, give yourself a force bonus equal to your personal honor, ranged attack equal to your personal honor, and so on and so forth. BM cards also boost each other and/or move around (all your attacking BMs have +1 force). BM/Paragon cards (personalities and strategies) usually also give you honor. This means that you can pick most of your battles, gain a ton of honor, and win those battles. Battle Maidens are extremely easy to 'switch' victory conditions with, since they're quite strong both in honor gain and military. Edit: For what it's worth, I haven't yet lost with BMs to Dagon... Nobody help him figure out how to beat Unicorn. Shugenja Military The upside of Unicorn shugenja is that you get a caster with cavalry, so you can easily avoid personalities that you can't handle (whether because they're too strong, your spells can't target them, or whatever). They also seem a lot stronger than other shugenjas, as they have higher force. The downsides are that you will have to deal with tough personalities eventually, since this is a military deck. Spells are somewhat dubious, in my mind, as they might bow your shugenja (negating the higher force that they might get) and they cost gold that could be spent on followers/items.There's also no back up plan, in case you go up against a better military deck, and since many of the shugenja's abilities rely on dead personalities, you'll be at a disadvantage if you can't kill off a few of their people. Tactician Military Tacticians are nice because you have a built in ability to give every tactician a force bonus. The biggest downside is you can only make use of the Tactician ability once for each personality. There are strategy cards that have 'tactical actions', which means you'll have to choose between those actions, or the force bonus. I haven't really looked at this theme too much because, well, if you want to play tacticians, play a Lion deck... "Military" I tried a demo deck of this theme... It's 'stuff'. The demo deck came with strategies that focus on how many followers you have, allowing you to bow/send people with fewer followers home. But... You can have followers with ANY of the other decks and use those strategies. So. Don't play this theme, it's a theme that any of the other themes can use. Seriously, I just stuck the strategies that were useful into my BM/Paragon deck. Chouzan fucked around with this message at Jan 18, 2012 around 03:47 |
| # ? Jan 18, 2012 03:40 |
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Glad to see this got its own thread. I'm just getting back in to the game after a long absence and am really enjoying the changes so far. Have a few decks I'm tinkering with that I'll post here in the next few days for feedback.
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| # ? Jan 18, 2012 04:02 |
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SGRaaize posted:This game seems pretty interesting, its a shame there isn't a LFR Online because I'd love to play this but I don't know anywhere where I can play Magic in paper, much less LFR, that said, I always appreciated the idea of having storylines affected by people playing, such as that classic moment where a entire clan was wiped out because everyone played a overpowered card that was a corruption spell or something like that, that's something I wish Magic The Gathering would do, so cool. There is online play, but no online tournaments that I've ever heard about. There may have been a few, but not anything official. If you just want to play, you can probably find people willing through the Kamiasori site. I think we'd be willing to set up a game sometime this week for people to watch. If you or Judas want, we could probably play something Emperor legal tomorrow (Wednesday).
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| # ? Jan 18, 2012 04:03 |
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Well, I meant online play in the literal sense, not the table top thing where you have to check the rules yourself and they aren't enforced.
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| # ? Jan 18, 2012 04:04 |
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I don't have much to add yet, but thanks for posting this thread. I got interested in L5R about a year ago, but couldn't really decide on a clan I wanted to focus on. I only played a couple games and decided I'd hold off and start new when this edition is released. I have it narrowed down to checking out Crab, Lion, and Mantis, so hopefully people with more experience on any of those come post!
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| # ? Jan 18, 2012 13:39 |
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L5R is a game I haven't really had the time/money to get invested in, but it's something I wistfully watch from afar, wishing that games I played were that cool. The thing I really appreciate about L5R is its strong oral tradition. You don't really go to a website to learn about Rokugani history, you have to find an L5R player who was there and get him to tell you the what happened way back when. Talking about L5R lore is more like discussing old D&D war stories, except the party is several hundred thousand people who were totally there for the time that the Seven Thunders fought Fu Leng. The only stories I know myself are from that time, actually. The Day of Thunder, the first really big storyline and tournament, when Fu Leng, the crazy evil, wrathful god at the heart of the Shadowlands finally stole enough power to revive himself in the body of the frail Emperor and had his heart set on revenge against Rokugan. The only thing standing in his way was the Seven Thunders, seven total badasses who were descended from the original heads of their clans (The Dragons had Togashi who I am pretty sure was just the actual original guy now that I think about it). I can't really do justice to the actual in-story events because I have a really hard time keeping the names straight, but I can try to share the stories that were shared with me about the actual tournament. Some really cool things happened at that tournament. Before the proceedings got underway, the designers called for the followers of each clan. They called for the followers of the Lion, and the rafters shook from their war cries. They called for the followers of the Crane, and the rafters again shook from their war cries. They called for each clan in turn, and in turn a mighty roar came from the followers of that clan. Finally, they came to call for the followers of Yoritomo's Alliance, which would one day become the Mantis. Something you have to understand, was that the Alliance had only been out for like one set and was honestly kind of lame at the time. Nobody seriously played them, and nobody seriously brought a Yoritomo's Alliance deck to something like the Day of Thunder. It would be like bringing your Thallid deck to a Magic Pro Tour, it was a waste of your time. So when the designers called for the followers of Yoritomo's Alliance, there was deep, empty silence. Then. A single player stood on top of his chair, raised his arms, and screamed "YORITOMO!!" with the soul of an entire clan. The entire stadium then erupted with a roar of approval that made the previous eleven seem like the whisper of a frail baby. (The player that had to eliminate that Yoritomo later said it was one of the hardest things he had ever had to do.) When the riotous cheers died down, the designers showed the players twelve sealed envelopes, each with a clan symbol on them. They explained that each one contained a possible future for the Empire, and that as each clan was eliminated their envelope would be destroyed, forever preventing that future from happening. "What happens if this one, the Envelope of Fu Leng's Army, becomes open you ask?" They smiled. "Why, a thousand years of darkness descends on Rokugan under the rule of the dark god Fu Leng, of course." (The cheers as this envelope was later destroyed rivalled that for Yoritomo's hero.) I'm not sure how to fit these next two stories in, so I'm just going to tell them because literary cohesion is hard. The judges were looking for two Dragon players to report their matches but couldn't find them anywhere. Turns out they had wandered off into the stone bleachers next to the stadium to have their match instead of the approved tables in the actual stadium space. When they were asked why in the world they were all the way up there, they merely shrugged. "We Dragons settle our differences in the mountains." Nowhere near as strange as the two Naga players though. They simply began playing units, and at the end of the fifth turn they totaled up their Force and the one with the lower total conceded. When asked why they did so, the victor answered in a flat, chilling tone, "Conflict is a human trait." Anyway, each envelope was destroyed in turn, until there were only two players left, a Lion and a Crane. They had their match, and told something to the lead story designer. He stood up on stage to announce which future had been chosen for Rokugan, and proceeded to shred the Crane envelope. The victorious roar from the Lion was cut short however, as he then shredded the Lion envelope. Shocked silence. The lead story designer then explained that the two players asked to not fight one another, they asked to combine forces against Fu Leng. With tears in his eyes, he began charting a new future for the Empire, where childhood friends Toturi and Doji Hoturi, Lion and Crane Thunders respectively, defeated the dark god at the cost of Hoturi's life. As Fu Leng had possessed the old Emperor, it was decided that a new course was needed. The hero Toturi became Toturi I, Emperor of Rokugan. L5R, man. L5R. EscortMission fucked around with this message at Jan 18, 2012 around 15:29 |
| # ? Jan 18, 2012 15:12 |
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Man, this makes me want to get back into this. I had a black scrolls deck and Scorpion dishonor deck full of courtesans and ninja, such good times. Sadly it is no longer played locally....maybe I'll snag a box of starters and a box of boosters and just give them out to the regulars, see if I can drum up some interest. It really is a great game.
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| # ? Jan 18, 2012 16:13 |
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Frohike999 posted:I have it narrowed down to checking out Crab, Lion, and Mantis, so hopefully people with more experience on any of those come post! I can offer advice on Lion and Mantis, probably not as good as Chouzan's Unicorn stuff, but as she said, she pretty consistently kicks my rear end. She can probably say something about Mantis too. Lion's strength, to me, has always been that it can be very reactive. Tactician provides both a dump for metagame cards and an unexpected force bonus, and most of your people have 3-4 personal honor, so making the switch to honor when things go sour or your opponent turtles is easy. I usually play with a lot of movement strategies, so getting early force to undefended provinces should be easy. Personalities are generally cheap, although they have to be, since their strongholds only make 3 gold, have average force for their price, but get a free trait or ability thrown in, be it tactician or paragon or a bonus when attacking. In recent sets, personalities have been trending upwards in price, but with the free holdings, this doesn't bother Lion too much. Students of Akodo (Eternal Victory Dojo, Tacticians) Tacticians is probably the core Lion thing. You have 4 tacticians in EE that can be purchased for Stronghold+Border Keep, and plenty of other personalities in a similar price range that have decent force and abilities. Focus and White Shore Plain are back, so finding cards to power your tacticians is easy. There are plenty of cheap, powerful followers to include, both for force and anti-ranged attack and other destruction meta. Items are easy too, A Simple Yari, Sasumata, Satoshi's Dual Warfans, and Clan Standard (if you are playing lots of followers) are cheap and powerful. I like strongholds with traits, rather than actions, so EVD letting you include 4 copies each of 2 strategies is pretty sweet. The Reaction is good too, since you'll probably be using Tactician all the time. Ancestral Reverance (Halls of Memory, Ancestor Honor) Lion Shugenjas have always been pretty crappy, but I tried building this deck, and it was actually interesting. The basic idea seems to be get shugenja that create ancestors, and then defend with those ancestors while you gain honor with them and use actions that destroy them to do stuff and also get you honor. The stronghold is all traits, which I like, and it lets you keep your squishy shugenja home while you defend with ancestors that you really aren't attached to, since you get honor when they die. Paragons of Bushido (Shamate Keep, Paragon Military/Honor) If tacticians is Lion's core thing, then paragons runs a very close second. You have 5 paragons that are stronghold+2 cheap, so, like tactician, combining those with other people with similar abilities gives you a solid base for personalities. Most people will have lower personal honor than your paragons, so the send home (with an honor gain) on the stronghold will always be useful. Otherwise, this plays pretty much like the tactician theme, except you will have different support in your fate cards. Shadow of the Pride (The Golden Plains, Scout Military) Scouts just don't work for me in Lion. The personalities for this just don't have the cool abilities that the other themes do, and scout decks seem very reliant on fate cards, meaning you are going to have to give up space for recon actions which don't generally give you force, so your lower force personalities that don't have useful abilities are going to find it harder to win battles. Your scouts also have lower personal honor than your tacticians and paragons, so honor will be harder. The stronghold is sort of a nod to the Lion strongholds of old, which really messed with terrains. It creates a "blank" terrain as a reaction to engaging which you can swap out later, so you can prevent the defender from dropping a terrain as their first action and screwing you. Problem is, there aren't that many immediate terrains in EE. Flooded Pass, Hasty Fortifications, Shiotome Plains, and Killing Grounds spring to mind, but even then, you'll probably be packing some other form of terrain destruction. Lion in EE, to me, works best by taking two of the military themes and combining them. Tacticians+Paragons is probably the safest bet, out of whichever of those two strongholds you like best. Scouts, Heroes, or Deathseekers could be added to flavor, but I'd pick them for their abilities, and try not to dedicate any of my fate cards to actions that trigger off of those traits. Lion's two cavalry people are of note too - one is cheap, the other expensive, both are reprints of old cards and should be easy to find. As evidenced by the Unicorn post, cavalry is pretty awesome.
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| # ? Jan 18, 2012 17:05 |
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Sorry to double post, but I thought that was getting a little long and wanted to split it up for the Mantis. Spirits of the Forest (Kyuden Kitsune xp, Shugenja Honor) I don't have much experience with this. It should play like the Lion ancestor deck, except after creating their spirit personality when they enter play, your personalities sort of suck. They are all earth, though, which has some good defensive spells. So this should work like the Lion theme, except instead of using throwaway ancestors to power defensive actions, you have useful spirits and defensive spells. Ohsuki needs mentioned here, because of combos with bringing her back into play after she dies and copying her ability and such, those sparrows really add up to a big honor gain. Tsuruchi's Legion (Koshin Keep, Ranged Attack Military) This is what I'm playing right now (see 3rd post). Despite not liking scouts in their Lion theme, I like them here, probably because of ranged attacks and the stronghold ability. Being able to stack ranged attacks at a battle until someone is dead, or even if I don't have enough there, getting to make them reduce force, has been big in the games I've played with it. Mantis gets plenty of scouts with recon abilities, and your personalities that aren't scouts usually have pretty good force. Quite a few guys have Naval too, which is like getting a limited sneak attack all the time. Economic Warfare (Kalani's Landing, Control Military) The stronghold doesn't pay for attachments, but that really doesn't matter much, because you'll be playing a bunch of people that make gold too. It does straighten all the time, so it is always there for open or battle actions on the other player's turn. The reaction reduces the cost of cards, which seems a little weird at first, but it is for all of the actions (and some ranged attacks) that target based on gold cost, which seem made for this deck. I haven't tried this deck, but I did try a similar theme with the Crab Economic Warfare, and it seemed good, but a little tough. You have all these things to mess with people's gold production and send home and destroy cheap(er) people, but the personalities that you have to do that with seem a little weak. Mantis might do it better than Crab, since they probably have pirates and stuff instead of wimpy Yasuki Merchants. Children of Thunder (Suitengu's Torch, Shugenja Military) I tried something like this in Celestial Edition, and it worked pretty well. A lot of Mantis' cheap people are thunder shugenja, and there are a lot of good thunder spells that cause bowing, send homes, and ranged attacks, so there should be a lot of synergy with the stronghold. Like the scout deck, I would think this would work well with support for generic Mantis naval personalities and other high force personalities.
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| # ? Jan 18, 2012 17:26 |
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EscortMission posted:L5R is a game I haven't really had the time/money to get invested in, but it's something I wistfully watch from afar, wishing that games I played were that cool. These are the stories that have always made me want to play L5R. Do things like this still happen at these big tournaments?
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| # ? Jan 18, 2012 17:31 |
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Not really, that was kind of one off thing when. AEG was close to bankruptcy and wasn't sure if the game would continue. The players still get some control over things but it's more tournament reporting of what percentage faction won.
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| # ? Jan 18, 2012 17:55 |
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Unfortunately, these days its more things like "you get an item named after you" and "name a hill that your clan claims in the Ivory Kingdoms" which might get mentioned in some of the fiction or flavor text. Big tournaments sometimes determine things like what clan the Emerald Champion will be from and that sort of thing, but even then, it usually isn't individuals, but the overall placement of that clan. Edit: For example: quote:The Sanctified Ones Edit2: Even last year's GenCon was meh, in comparison to past storyline events: http://www.l5r.com/gencon-2011-events/ Dagon fucked around with this message at Jan 18, 2012 around 18:15 |
| # ? Jan 18, 2012 18:03 |
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I think a better story was the tourney at the end of The Hidden Emperor Arc. This tournament was somewhat unique in that it was Open format (what's now legacy). The winner of the tournament was using the original Phoenix Stronghold. Now the first Pheonix stronghold had an ability that allowed it to bring out Shugenja at a huge discount, at the cost of giving the Shugenja the Shadowlands Trait. During the Clan War arc, Phoenix players abused the gently caress out of this ability, which resulted in nearly their entire clan getting destroyed at the story arc's end. This player built his deck around a strategy that wouldn't need to use this ability. And he avoided using it the entire tournament...until the finals. His opponent was a Shadowlands player, so if he won it would result in a Bad Ending for the story arc. The match begins, and the Pheonix player finds himself in the position of bringing out the Air Dragon (a 7F Cavalry personality whose a literal god in the storyline) on turn two...but only if he uses his Stronghold's Shadowlands ability. After getting assurances from the writers that the Phoenix won't get poo poo-canned for a single use of this ability, he bites the bullet and and plays a corrupted Air Dragon on turn 2. The Phoenix player goes on to win. The Empire is saved. But the Air Dragon getting tainted becomes part of the storyline. He's now the Shadow Dragon, and is probably tied for the most dangerous antagonists in the game.
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| # ? Jan 18, 2012 18:24 |
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SirPhoebos posted:I think a better story was the tourney at the end of The Hidden Emperor Arc. This tournament was somewhat unique in that it was Open format (what's now legacy). The winner of the tournament was using the original Phoenix Stronghold. Now the first Pheonix stronghold had an ability that allowed it to bring out Shugenja at a huge discount, at the cost of giving the Shugenja the Shadowlands Trait. During the Clan War arc, Phoenix players abused the gently caress out of this ability, which resulted in nearly their entire clan getting destroyed at the story arc's end. This player built his deck around a strategy that wouldn't need to use this ability. And he avoided using it the entire tournament...until the finals. His opponent was a Shadowlands player, so if he won it would result in a Bad Ending for the story arc. I really, really wish this kind of thing happened these days. In this game, MTG, or any, really.
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| # ? Jan 18, 2012 19:17 |
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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:AEG was close to bankruptcy AEG is always close to bankruptcy (shh, don't tell them people know). The megagame sounds a lot less exciting for drawing people in, but it was a prety awesome thing to be a part of, for the first one at least. Private, password protected clan sites, shady dealings, betrayals, it was fun stuff. I haven't actively followed the story since Iweko became Empress, though. And there are rewards besides "name a hill," but most of the storyline rewards for the game's history haven't been huge. I've nabbed one and left my mark on the game, though I'd certainly like more 
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| # ? Jan 18, 2012 19:25 |
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bairfanx posted:The megagame sounds a lot less exciting for drawing people in, but it was a prety awesome thing to be a part of, for the first one at least. Private, password protected clan sites, shady dealings, betrayals, it was fun stuff. I have a hard time believing this. This sort of clan unity and player participation could be a brilliant marketing tool in the right hands. People, nerds especially, always want to be part of something bigger.
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| # ? Jan 18, 2012 19:30 |
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What a Judas posted:I really, really wish this kind of thing happened these days. In this game, MTG, or any, really. This sounds like an amazing gimmick for a game. Magic really has nothing like it - the closest thing would be letting tournament winners design cards for the game, and they stopped doing even that. So, if I get into this game, what's deckbuilding like? Do I mix and match cards from any clans, or are there rules about which cards I'm allowed to have? Also, what's a good way to figure out if there are tournaments for the game in my area?
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| # ? Jan 18, 2012 19:31 |
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Chamale posted:This sounds like an amazing gimmick for a game. Magic really has nothing like it - the closest thing would be letting tournament winners design cards for the game, and they stopped doing even that. So, if I get into this game, what's deckbuilding like? Do I mix and match cards from any clans, or are there rules about which cards I'm allowed to have? The AEG Events forum (http://www.alderac.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=164) is probably your best bet. It's mainly focused on the larger stuff, so you might want to consult your LGSs to see if they've got anything going on. Also, I'd be willing to walk some folks through a few games online. I'm not to big into the game anymore (not enough money), but I've been playing for a while. If anyone's interested, send me a PM.
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| # ? Jan 18, 2012 19:36 |
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Chamale posted:So, if I get into this game, what's deckbuilding like? Do I mix and match cards from any clans, or are there rules about which cards I'm allowed to have? You are allowed to have most anything in your deck (3 copies), the exceptions being Unique cards, which are 1 per, and Loyal cards, which will only enter play for people playing their clan. In general, however, you will want to be playing only your own clan's people, unless something is really good. If someone is in your clan, you can gain honor when they come into play, or pay less for them, or pay more for them and ignore their honor requirements. Those options aren't available for out of clan people.
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| # ? Jan 18, 2012 19:42 |
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Are there any good websites with deck lists, strategy articles, tournament reports similar to channelfireball, starcity, etc for MTG ?
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| # ? Jan 18, 2012 20:06 |
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Chamale posted:This sounds like an amazing gimmick for a game. Magic really has nothing like it - the closest thing would be letting tournament winners design cards for the game, and they stopped doing even that. So, if I get into this game, what's deckbuilding like? Do I mix and match cards from any clans, or are there rules about which cards I'm allowed to have? Try hitting up L5R.com, and search for a Stronghold Store near your location. If their a Stronghold store, they've run tournaments in the past, and might be about to do so again.
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| # ? Jan 18, 2012 20:16 |
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What a Judas posted:I really, really wish this kind of thing happened these days. In this game, MTG, or any, really. The only MtG story I know of that matches up to this at all is the 2002 Ohio Valley Regionals, wherein a player in a 688-player tournament won a game with Noted Bad Card Mortal Combat, stood up, and yelled "MOOOOORTAL COMBAAAAT!" in triumph. Easily the highlight of that tournament.
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| # ? Jan 18, 2012 20:24 |
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Mantis: The Advantages of Going Green Mantis is, overall, a fairly balanced clan, wherein you can do a bit of everything. Aside from the four 'themes', it's also possible to do Magistrate Dishonor and, if you're playing open or cavalry naval (for sneak attack AND hand picking your battles) if you play legacy/open. Emperor edition hasn't done anything with these themes, but I'm interested to see what they do with Magistrates, as they've released quite a few Magistrate strategies to go with other clans' themes. Spirits of the Forest (Kyuden Kitsune xp, Shugenja Honor) I have toyed around with this, and, as Dagon said, the personalities do suck on their own. I just looked at the personalities again and realized most of their abilities target attacking enemy personalities, which makes this theme tough and tricky to get going. I'm not really sure what it's strength is... The downside to that is that this theme isn't really a fast "attack out of the gate" style deck. So it relies, somewhat, on you being able to fend off stronger military/honor decks for those first turns while you try to get the right spells and personalities. Mantis doesn't usually have any problem producing gold, so the key would be building your decks so as to minimize the chances you'll have to wait several turns for a certain item/follower/spell. The other downside is that Mantis personalities aren't terribly honorable (they are, after all, a clan of green pirates) and it's tough trying to out honor the military/honor themes, like Unicorn and Lion. Tsuruchi's Legion (Koshin Keep, Ranged Attack Military) My favorite has always been the ranged attacks, which used to normally require bowing the personality performing the attack. In the last few releases, however, more personalities are getting ranged attacks that don't bow, or bow and move home. The stronghold also allows you to chip away at force and allow you to take additional ranged attacks at a target until they die or you run out of ranged attacks. This is a HUGE improvement for Mantis. Without this stronghold, ranged attack military is pretty much a race to get off as many ranged attacks as possible, while your opponent sends home people with unused ranged attacks. You could somewhat anticipate who would be bowed or sent home, but there was way to much chance that a single bad choice could completely gently caress you over. Add in naval, which means you always get to shoot first (and use your stronghold ability to immediately beat down their nastiest person), and this theme is pretty drat strong. The disadvantages are that there are a few cards that allow people to reduce or redirect ranged attacks, including a free armor that reduces all attacks by 2. If it's redirected, depending on the wording, you might only be able to use the stronghold ability on the redirected personality. Also, followers are pretty common in most all decks and a lot of followers will eat up your ranged attacks before you can even think about killing off personalities. Economic Warfare (Kalani's Landing, Control Military) I'd really love to see a working version of this theme, because my attempt fell flat on its face. The biggest disadvantage was no built in victory condition. If your focus is on loving up the other side's gold production, you aren't necessarily advancing yourself towards winning. In my case, I ended up in a rather drawn out stale-mate before eventually losing because there was too much gold production for me to block. I don't know if this failed due to my own ineptitude with the economic warfare theme, or if testing it against a Lion deck, with relatively cheap personalities, was a bad idea. It seems as though this theme could work extremely well as a combined cock-block and zerg rush (the personalities are weak). With your stronghold straightening every phase, it's easy to get a jump on the zerg rush aspect and pay for actions. A few of the personalities in this theme are Magistrates, so with that in mind, I'm really curious if you could switch this to an Economic/Dishonor deck... It would rely on actions/events to dishonor, so I'm really curious to see if future releases do anything with dishonor. Children of Thunder (Suitengu's Torch, Shugenja Military) This is really just a variation on the ranged attack military theme to me. Mantis shugenja are mainly thunder or earth, and thunder leans towards ranged attacks and bowing, so I see this as a bit pointless, really. I think it'd be better to throw these thunder shugenja into the ranged military deck to enjoy Koshin Keep's delicious ability with the higher ranged attacks of thunder spells while your scouts provide enough force to take the province. Chouzan fucked around with this message at Jan 19, 2012 around 06:58 |
| # ? Jan 18, 2012 23:50 |
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accordingtojosh posted:Are there any good websites with deck lists, strategy articles, tournament reports similar to channelfireball, starcity, etc for MTG ? Pretty much each clan has a fan-supported forum. Some have frontpages for articles and new card teasers. I visit crabclan.net but I can't think of the url for any of the other clans' sites off the top of my head. I was originally going to steer you away from them, as they're universally kind-of horrible and circle-jerky, but I can only imagine the MtG community being even worse. So... knock yourself out I guess. http://homeofthecraneclan.com/ http://www.thedragonclan.com http://www.spiderclan.com the other clans and factions should have similar sites, you get the idea. kolat edit: I've got a decklist for yasuki dishonor put together, anybody care to critique it here? Shithead Deluxe fucked around with this message at Jan 19, 2012 around 07:17 |
| # ? Jan 19, 2012 07:14 |
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It seems really strange to me, as a Magic player, that people seem to identify so strongly with specific clans. Is there an in-game reason for this, or is it just sort of the social aspect of the game?
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| # ? Jan 19, 2012 09:30 |
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Mornacale posted:It seems really strange to me, as a Magic player, that people seem to identify so strongly with specific clans. Is there an in-game reason for this, or is it just sort of the social aspect of the game? It's part of the culture that AEG cultivated back in the day where playing your faction well in tournaments actually got you really nice rewards in the card game itself. I don't know how much it really matters to newer players since that's kinda gone away.
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| # ? Jan 19, 2012 10:12 |
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Mornacale posted:It seems really strange to me, as a Magic player, that people seem to identify so strongly with specific clans. Is there an in-game reason for this, or is it just sort of the social aspect of the game? When you buy a starter deck, you're buying the such-and-such clan starter, in most cases you've got all such-and-such clan guys in your deck, there's usually cards that are themed around your clan and give you a mechanical bonus if you're using them on a guy from that clan, and so on, so there's more of an in-game cohesion than in Magic, where split colors are often viable. (There's times when multi-clan decks have been good, but they're usually quite rare.) At least when I played (Diamond through early Samurai), the game was pretty good about representing different clans through different styles of play. It's hard to explain specifically, but playing Scorpion military was very different than playing Lion military, both of those were different than Crab military, and so on. In flavor terms, the clans stand for fairly distinct and identifiable principles, like the Dragon are philosophers, the Phoenix are scholars, the Lion are noble warriors, the Crab are dirty-job-but-someone-has-to-do-it guys, the Scorpion are Jack Nicholson's character in A Few Good Men, and so on, and so usually people can find that there's some clan that appeals to them and they identify with.
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| # ? Jan 19, 2012 10:42 |
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Shithead Deluxe posted:http://www.thedragonclan.com There was a time that this site housed a ton of great decks and players. They never post anymore and drat near everything there is garbage. 
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| # ? Jan 19, 2012 15:39 |
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Shithead Deluxe posted:kolat edit: I've got a decklist for yasuki dishonor put together, anybody care to critique it here? I tried making one and it seemed fun, but not my thing. Post it!
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| # ? Jan 19, 2012 15:51 |
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bairfanx posted:There was a time that this site housed a ton of great decks and players. They never post anymore and drat near everything there is garbage. Pretty much every clan forum is like that now, it seems. Like the mantis board when people tried telling the regulars that the free monkey was a good card.
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| # ? Jan 19, 2012 16:13 |
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I wasn't around for any of the really wacky storyline alterations or anything, but I love the weird we-love-our-fandom gimmicks AEG still tries. I saw a flyer for something called the Imperial Gift at my LFGS, and asked the owner how I got ahold of it, and whether I had to buy anything for it like most Magic promos. "The nature of the Imperial Gift," he said sagely as he handed his last copy to me, "is that it is a gift." God bless you weird Dragon Clan game store owner, god bless you. Turns out the Imperial Gift is an entire free playset. You have three copies of everything that's legal to have copies of, and one copy of everything that isn't. So, I guess that's a good start, both in the "hey you have cards" sense and the "hey whenever you're ready, we try to take care of our fandom." Hell maybe I'll start playing anyway. The very concept of Kolat Edition is frankly mindblowing. Wait, wait these nine decks from your new edition are literally free, and tournament legal?  I used to have an old Shinsei deck and really liked the whole Enlightenment victory theme. Is Enlightenment still viable, or do I have to play the game for real?
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| # ? Jan 19, 2012 18:02 |
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| # ? May 21, 2013 06:02 |
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EscortMission posted:I used to have an old Shinsei deck and really liked the whole Enlightenment victory theme. Is Enlightenment still viable, or do I have to play the game for real? Enlightenment has gotten easier, I think. Ring of Fire triggers off of a battle in which you destroy a province or enemy units in resolution now, so no more trying to squeeze in dueling to an already crowded deck. There are still a few cards that let you go get a ring from your deck or discard.
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| # ? Jan 19, 2012 18:07 |
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