Legend of the Five Rings General: FFG LCG Edition

I'm hoping they'll orient each dynasty pack towards a family, so I can just get one and have a Kitsuki deck.

But Shoju was always faithful to his waifu

The core box is going to have a deck per clan. How do you think the later releases are going to go? I honestly assumed it would be less than one deck per but give everyone something new to entice people who play any clan to buy everything possible.

...

Well, and Hoturi was always a dude. Your point?

It isn't like he and his wife suddenly traded which one was the horribly ugly one under the mask or something.

I'm guessing all the later releases will have something for every clan, just to keep them all competitive. I guess I'm really hoping that each clan's part of each release will be themed around families, schools, or whatever instead of of being a generic cross-section of the clan.

We're probably just getting clan decks to start with. Family focuses come later.

I'd give it a year or so before we have multiple genuinely different archetypes for most clans. I could see Yasuki dishonour only really being introduced as a part of a Crab-focused deluxe box, for example. Seven clans is a lot to make cards for.

It's going to follow the LCG model. Once a month a pack with 60 cards (3 copies of 20 new cards) is released. This will have cards for all clans Every few months (6-ish) they will release a premium box, that has more cards and is more focused; likely on one clan, or a story event that features two clans.

Alright I've never L5R's in my life but the new game looks dank.

What clan should I mindlessly pledge myself to and why? I understand tribalism is a large part of this game's history.

Crab. Pinch pinch.

What's cool about being a crab? What do I get to be proud of?

What fantasy Japan trope fits you?

Lion - Honor in battle (total dicks). Most Samurai
Crane - Art and martial dueling are equal pursuits
Scorpion - Secret (sort of) left hand spies of the Empire. Ninjas and geishas
Crab - Fuck no you can't get past us, demons! Give 'em the tetsubo.
Unicorn - Matriarchal horse-riding gaijin
Dragon - Monks and dragon people
Phoenix - Power at the possible cost of your soul

Possible future faction options:

Shadowlands: The bad stuff, oni.
Mantis - Thunder Pirates
Nezumi - Ratfolk
Naga - Lizardfolk

How much is this pack going to cost? I am thinking of getting into a card game for the first time ever here, but don't have a ton of discretionary income to drop the cost of a new computer game or something once per month.

First box should be around $40 and let you make a starter deck for each of the 7 great clans.

Please also note that the Scorpion aren't just ninjas, they have a strong court and a few martial traditions too and the Unicorn are only matriarchs in the Utaku family. The ruling Shinjo (and in the AEG canon, later on the Moto) were usually just oldest child inherits.

Though the present Shinjo champion is a grill, that's probably their attempt to diversify the champions than a statement on the clan.

And the monthly ones? I can save up for a high one time entry cost pretty well but if I get into it I'll want to be able to keep an updated deck going to my FLGS. What do Netrunner monthly pack costs look like?

Being more pragmatic than most. A wide variety of surly clanmates. Holding the wall against literal actual hell. Heavy armor and heavier weapons. Burly heavies. Sneaky scouts. Scary shugenja. Clever engineers. Jew-like merchants. Ghostbusters once the Falcon clan rejoins. More minor clan spinoffs than any three other clans combined.

Hmm... Yes I see and what is the cute girl ratio like?

Bare in mind this is very important.

All clans have them, Unicorn and Lion have two families that are hard/soft matriarchal respectively so they have more cute warrior girls than average due to that.

$120 to get started (3 copies of core set at $40, look I can explain why this isn't as bad as it seems, but the short version is this is how they do it, just commit to the concept)

Monthly packs are $15
Deluxe packs are $30
Monthly packs will rotate out after 3ish years.
Core and deluxe will never rotate out.

Packs are never random, if you check the database(once it exists) you'll know what's in a given pack.

You are dude in a heavy-ass armor wielding a big-ass mace. That's all. Awesomeness in simplicity. You aren't turning every story into some moral lesson, you aren't fainting from the smell for blood, you aren't too smart for your own good, and you are not a shadow/horse obsessed weirdo. You are just a brawny dude who hits things and feels good because of it. You are as complex as a brick and completely obvious to it. No depth, no restrains, no nothing, just hitting stuff and being hit until Emma-O comes for you.

So the best long term investment is just the core (or cores) you get and then the deluxe packs? If I just get the core would that be okay for casual play or is it 'technically' playable but not really? Because I'm going to try and get one core and use it to goad a friend into taking the plunge with me. I think he'd like the Lion and Crab and since I really was interested in playing Unicorn, Crane or Dragon I don't mind parting with those.

Personally I liked Mantis the best, and they aren't in core (and the fact that Dragon is green instead of yellow keeps throwing me off).

Next is a tie between Dragons for kung-fu and Phoenix for awesome Shugenja.

Crab is boss Their old clan champion had an ability that the first time you killed him each turn, he didn't die. The other Clan champion pick anyone weaker than him and killed them.

I always wanted to like Unicorn, but I got into the game shortly after Cavalry had been OP, so AEG had nerfed them into the ground.

You want the small packs too. They are going to be important to the meta. Don't worry about the rotating thing. It only matters in competitive play and happens rarely enough that it doesn't hurt the wallet the way it can in Magic.

Basically if you get in at the start you pay a $120 start up with a $15 monthly fee and occasional $30 splurge. And to be clear, this is to own every card in the game. You feel like trying a new clan out? Meta shifts and you need to change tactics? Wanna build a deck to show your friend how to play? No problem, you already have the cards.

The Dragon clan has always had green as one of their colors.

Sure, but this is like literally Mantis green.

People tend to forget that the Dragon is the original Green Clan. They were "Mantis Green" well before it became a thing.

This is AEG Mantis

Their clothes were green, but their border has always been yellow.

This seems far busier than
What was the old game like? How did it flow? What do all those numbers mean?

After closely examining the image, answer the following questions correctly.

>Why is the Lion lying on top of the Dragon?

>Why is the Crab groping the Unicorn's thighs?

>Who's the bland lady dressed in green in the back?

>Where are the Scorpion's hands?

>Why do none of them look Asian?

>What is the Spider even wearing on her legs?

>Is the Phoenix's back okay?

>Why does the Crane look a little autistic?

A single core alone is technically playable with a friend or something. You can just buy that for 40 bux, see if the game's fun and then commit. But don't expect to be able to do any deckbuilding out of that.

If you want to get into it casually, you can just buy 2-3 cores, maybe a monthly pack every now and then, and deluxes if they focus on the clan you happen to like.

Yeah FFG cleaned up the cards. Downside, way more tokens.

The old game was all about timing. When you lost a battle, all your dudes there died. So over commiting was game losing. It tended to hinge on a really important battle, and tended to be an arms race.

FFG has stated that this is the thing they want to remove, making a game that has the feel of the world, but not necessarily the previous game. The games are pretty different, and should be treated as separate entities.

Top left - Force - Military strength. Basically the same as the Military skill in the new game.
Top Right - Chi - Used in dueling certain other cards.
Center Left - Honor Requirement - How much honor you had to have before you could recruit them
Center Center - Gold cost - how much gold the unit costs
Center Right - Personal Honor - how much honor you gained if you bought them (can only gain honor this way once per turn)

Then the bottom stamps are just edition and set stuff.

That's still a fair bit up front that I'd rather not pay with my hourly job money, but I guess it is months to go and it is easy to set aside a few bucks in cash at a time.

L5R has a huge built in fan base already (I mean I've been playing the RPG for almost a decade now), so what was the game store scene like before AEG sold the franchise? I've got a pretty big combined comic/game place near me but I usually use them for my comic needs. I tend to go digital for RPGs so don't really know what a decent crowd for game days looks like. Their MtG day usually falls on new comic day and has like 6-10 people after lunch though, usually.

>Who's the bland lady dressed in green in the back?
A peasant.

>Why do none of them look Asian?
Not all asains have gorilla face

>>Why is the Lion lying on top of the Dragon?
To show her dominance

>>Why is the Crab groping the Unicorn's thighs?
Symbolizing the unity of their clans after Hida O-Ushi married one of their own who then taught them the secrets of effective cavalry.

>>Who's the bland lady dressed in green in the back?
A really boring Mantis

>>Where are the Scorpion's hands?
Hiding the knife

>>Why do none of them look Asian?
Artist shittery

>>What is the Spider even wearing on her legs?
Awesome spider web pattern leggings.

>>Is the Phoenix's back okay?
No

>>Why does the Crane look a little autistic?
Inbreeding in the kuge for a millenium, mostly. The fact Kakita and his sister were both perfectionists and probably on the spectrum at the very beginning didn't help.

>A peasant

We are not amused.

Bugposter go.

Due to the nature of the core set giving you extra cards, you can probably get away with buying only one core set and buying singles to fill out the rest.

>Why do none of them look Asian?

I think the Rokugani people are supposed to me more like mixed asian/caucasian (like pic related) rather than straight asian.

Where does one buy LCG singles from?

I was honestly just thinking about this. Given how L5R tends to attract single clan loyalty, even with the presence of all clans being out of the core box some people might just sell the clan cards they don't intend to use to recoup some cost.

What are the odds someone might buy three sets for competetive play, but since they only play Crab or something sell the other clan cards from the core for a bit of money back?

>Why is the Lion lying on top of the Dragon?
Because the shot is weirdly framed, so they can't spread out.

>Why is the Crab groping the Unicorn's thighs?
Why is that a problem? They're whores.

>Who's the bland lady dressed in green in the back?
Mantis
>Where are the Scorpion's hands?
Behind her back like a good "submissive"

>Why do none of them look Asian?
It's L5R

>What is the Spider even wearing on her legs?
Asymmetrical fishnets. Comon, be honest, you were just trying to come up with a question for each girl.

>Is the Phoenix's back okay?
Has a girl never posed for you? It'll hurt if she holds it for more than a minute, but arching your back is generally seen as sexy.

>Why does the Crane look a little autistic?
Yeah, I think it's the forehead?

Team Covenant did it for netrunner, so odds are they'll do it for l5r. Of course that really only works if there's more than 1 copy of cards people actually want per core set. Who knows how it'll shake out?

Depends on the clan. Unicorn is sort of Mongul inspired.

You don't for the most part. Team covenant sells a number of Faction packs, but they sell out quickly. There is no randomization, so there no real singles market.

More likely two people will go in on a set together. The problem is, a large portion of the action cards are probably going to be neutral.

...

>Why is the Lion lying on top of the Dragon?
My paladin wants to redeem a succubus
>Why is the Crab groping the Unicorn's thighs?
Elf slave wat do
>Who's the bland lady dressed in green in the back?
Have you tried not playing DnD?
>Where are the Scorpion's hands?
Something something black people
>Why do none of them look Asian?
Something something cis people
>What is the Spider even wearing on her legs?
I miss Quest threads
>Is the Phoenix's back okay?
New Sisters of Battle when?
>Why does the Crane look a little autistic?
4u

Those of you who know how FFG handles factions in their card games, assuming they don't change anything to fit with the fervant factionalism of L5R players (which they might) what do we expect the way the game represents different clans and gets cards into hands look like?

Could you maybe phrase that question without using a long, run-on sentence?

You lost me on the Phoenix one.

Sorry.

The core set is going to have cards for all factions in it. Will the monthly expansions have stuff for everyone or will it be themed around a few factions at a go? Or will the themes be more 'this month we're doing something for the court players out there'? L5R has some serious clan identity stuff with players so I was thinking that people who only want to play clan X are going to have to deal with having giant stacks of cards for clans Y, Z, and U as well. I am preemptively trying to figure out if there's some kind of aftermarket possibility for building single clan decks.

...

Sorry, was running out of shit that Veeky Forums says every day.

In netrunner at least, the expansions contain 20 new cards printed at 3 copies each. There were 7 factions to netrunner, but as an asymmetrical game it had 9 types of cards. The 3 Runner factions, the 4 Corp factions, and the 2 "neutral" factions (one corp, one runner). Typically at least one card for each of these groups is printed, but sometimes they focus more one a single faction during a specific pack, and at least once a faction had no new cards released in a pack.

With all that said, there will likely be some kind of system that allows you to use other clan's cards in your deck. This was called influence in netrunner, and basically every deck is built with their influence maxed out, because there's no real reason not to. You're going to want to keep the cards of factions you don't play because they could be nice additions to your deck.

>In netrunner at least, the expansions contain 20 new cards printed at 3 copies each. There were 7 factions to netrunner, but as an asymmetrical game it had 9 types of cards. The 3 Runner factions, the 4 Corp factions, and the 2 "neutral" factions (one corp, one runner).

So you'd get about two new cards per Clan per expansion unless it is a 'this month we're doing Crane' seem like a reasonable guess? I mean before they start adding minor clans or other factions.

It's reasonable to assume that as a baseline, though don't put stock into it.

That's not too bad. How long do you think it'll take for the first deluxe set? I figure the deluxe boxes are where the story will be moved. The monthlies might come packages with a few stories themed around what's in there, but I figure that the major thrusts will be in the nice boxes.

If I had to guess based on netrunner's release schedule? Core launched, then after a month or so it was 6 months of data packs (expansions). Then a month after that they released the first deluxe box featuring only Shaper and Haas-Bioroid cards. So there's no telling exactly what the Deluxe boxes will shape up to be... except we know they're intended to be stand-alone games in addition to being expansion packs. So 1 clan vs 1 clan seems likely to me.

>except we know they're intended to be stand-alone games in addition to being expansion packs
>So 1 clan vs 1 clan seems likely to me.

So like one full deck per each of the included factions maybe? That sounds pretty tight to me actually. Might be where we'll get more fleshing out mechanically the clans to the fluff. Like one might be a court focused box focusing on Crane and Scorpion or something?

I'm just trying to grok how this is going to go mostly, I'm not at all used to this LCG release cycle thing.

...

...

...

I want to see some distraction ninjas.

They don't usually do decks outside of the core set more like a bunch of new options for 1 or 2 factions.

Or a new faction when they do that. First deluxe is almost assuredly going to make shadowlands a faction.

>shadowlands a faction.
That would be retarded with how they set up the new game.

>Ninjas

Nonsense. There is no such thing, the Emperor declared it to be so and the Scorpion helped him make it happen! They wouldn't lie to the Emperor would they?

>tfw no unicorn clan bf
Can't wait to make a cavalry rush deck with breakthrough to provide enough pressure to close out games really quick and have anti-aggro autists scream at me

I can't actually imagine a way for a Shadowlands faction to work in the LCG. The honour mechanics simply don't make sense for them.

They can't reasonably dishonour themselves out, so why not just draw 5 cards every turn? Why not just bet max on every duel? And they'd just be an auto-win against dishonour decks.

I recognise that the old CCG shared some of these problems, but let's face it, that shit was busted as fuck and FFG likes to actually keep their games (somewhat) balanced and avoid auto-winning matchups.

It seems much more sensible to just print neutral shadowlands cards.

Hey man, if you can put a deck together that lets you turn one or two do the three province and stronghold break thing more power to you.

Probably have special 'eat your honor rather than fate' to play them rules or something.

Crab/Lion/Unicorn - Strong girls who dont need no man (less populous in Crab, Lion and Unicorn pretty strong elements).
Scorpion/Crane - Kawaii as fuck court girls
Phoenix - Priestess girls
Dragon - Toss up. Could be strong samurai girls, could be bald tattooed monk girls.

It's going to fuck me up that this art used to belong to a stronghold hold and now it's on a person

>Crab
>Strong girls who dont need no man

Clearly you haven't been introduced to the Crab's breeding program

I sure hope I can. I love taking people by surprise with really fast decks. Just comes down to how powerful doing both your conflicts in a row is

Gotta say folks I think Crane my win out, I am a bit of a ponce at heart.

I'm one of the people considering taking the dive into the cards for the first time after years of the RPG since the LCG format looks simpler to assemble decent decks with. I'm not even sure what style I'd like to play more, just know which clans I like.

Luckily my three favorite clans all sit on the corners of the court/war/magic spectrum so depending on which I like more I have an easy pick to go with.

Good man. Now learn what Crane's rivalries and ancestral enemies are and swear your vengeance on the people who play those clans IRL.

Double luckily for you you get a starter deck for every single clan too.

That's fine, Crane are rad as shit. People hate them because they got some awful wankery back in 2e which soured a ton of people and because Crab are one of the most popular clans around this board and the Crab don't think much of the Crane. Too soft, no appreciation for what they do, etc.

>Tfw you realise you will genuinley encounter autismos who don't like you because you're unicorn clan
Oh boy can't wait for that

But, I should go on, the hype is legit. They are the best artists, best duelists, and have a solid military family. Some Crane may be stuck up, and those are the worst, but there's a lot of interesting flavors inside them. You can have radical courtiers as much as duelists as much as Daidoji Iron Warriors.

...

>oh cool a proper eastern style rpg system, let me take a look at the sett-
>biggest cities in the empire have 10k population
Aaaaaaaaand dropped. Why is Rokugan stuck around 4000 BC socially speaking?

I ignore that, it makes zero sense given how dense the population is narratively stated to be and with the actual numbers we got for clans in 2e. Which may or may not be really accurate to anything but even the 'tiny' dragon had a million+ population.

Remember game fluff writers often don't know the first thing about demographics.

I love the dualist aspects and the honour wank; I may try Unicorn as well because CAVALRY but I've never really enjoyed aggro play. Looking forward to my time with the game.

If you drop setting based on pop. numbers you are going to be disappointed very often.

Captcha just asked me to identify the type of sign wtf?