Legend of the Five Rings General: Stupid Sexy Yogo Edition

Welcome back to /L5R/, samurai of Veeky Forums. Its been a few weeks since our last general which was full of gen con tournament watching and bitching about overpowered Dragon decks, but there's simply been no news or anything to talk about since then.

That changes today with the next fiction from FFG, focusing on the Scorpion and Dragon clans: fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2017/9/6/in-the-garden-of-lies/

Other than this, this is the place to talk the upcoming LCG, RPG of any edition (Even 2e if you want, you monsters!), the old CCG, or just story.

Discussion question: Since the full core's contents are now 100% known with the Gencon prerelease of the game, has anyone been playing with proxies or on TTS? How have you been enjoying so far?

First for the most canon and best clan, the Bee.

So is Yogo Hiroue going to bone the less than attractive Dragon woman because he has a fetish for people who are masters of their arts? I think so. He isn't going to do it this time, as he notes this is going to take a while for him to work his Scorpion seduction charms on her, but I think they're going to fuck in the end.

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Yogo Hiroue must be a complete chad considering the whole Yogo's Curse thing.

Eh, the curse only fires once. After they've completely fucked whatever they love, they're safe to handle.

He probably figures that as long as he treats humans like objects to socially toy with he'll never fall in love and thus never trigger the curse.

The edgelord Yogo method of dealing with their curse, if you will. I bet his extended seduction of a Dragon who doesn't want to be seduced by his usual tricks trips him up and fucks him over though.

>edgelord Yogo method
I mean, tbf, the curse itself is pretty edgy; is there a means of handling it that *doesn't* make a Yogo an edgelord?

Not really. You either love nothing or tank the loss. The only other solution is to induce worthless love in your children so that they end up betraying a favorite toy and that is pretty fucked up because the curse going off like that means that it was really the one thing they will ever have the most love for in their whole life, which means you pavlovian conditioned them halfway to sociopathy.

haven't played this game in forever, is the empire fighting the not!romans or not!hindis yet?

Calling it now: there will be a hatamoto vote for which clan starts a coup. Looks like they're setting it up so that most or any clan could start it.

Unicorn could escalate over other clans disrespecting them and their magic. The Dragon religion plot is setting them up to be the Ikko-Ikki, down to a referential name for the sect. Phoenix will do it to fix some problem that they think the empire is causing with the elements. Scorpion are Scorpion.

Guessing the other clans will get fiction that sets up motives for them, too. Or they might leave some conservatives like the Crane or Lion as designated loyalists.

Wait, so....
1)Be stoically cold, uncaring, and alone.
2)Fall in love, and accept that you will destroy them
3)Train sociopaths.
How are those NOT edgy?

I just said that there is not really a non-edgy way around it. It's a curse that really works.
The secret fourth option is to git gud at magic and simply remove it, but they've been trying that ever since the curse first befell them to no avail.

Different company owns it, they've reset to before the coup and it's turning out differently already. They did mention multiple gaijin as having been historical issues, so they might actually happen this time. Hopefully not though.

The Crab already had a reason. In the old fiction, the only reason Kisada didn't pull a coup was that Shoju got to it first. They had to delay and tried it later on when he kicked off the clan wars by invading the rest of the empire.

Ah, right, I fail at reading.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the Yogo, and the rest of the clan. But the Scorpion in general certainly wear the 90s proudly on the sleeves of their kimonos.

Fair warning, trying to intentionally trigger your curse just makes it worse.

Buddy of mine is looking to get into the LCG and I'm curious about it. Anyone know how it stacks up to Netrunner, BattleCON or Magic?

Is there a tldr for the ccg somewhere?

In that method, you deal with your own curse however you do, but try to force your kids to trigger early and inconsequentially. If successful, this results in a curse-free sociopath who hates your guts and will never love anyone or anything as much as they loved that doll that they accidentally threw in a river when they were 6 years old.
There is no good way around the curse, but there are ways to deal with it.

The LCG and the CCG are unrelated to each other. The CCG is dead and the LCG has only been prereleased to people who were at gencon for now.

I would if I could get away with running Jade empire in a l5r campaign without the players noticing. Or how long it would take to realize.

Admittedly, I think in the proper John Wick-style 'fuck everyone for choosing to exist', the doll going into the river will somehow trigger a plague.
Wait, wait, no - it washes downriver, and is found by a fisherman. He takes it home, and gives it to his youngest daughter. Later on, there's a fire, and the youngest daughter runs back into the house to get her doll, prompting both mother and father to run in after her. The house then collapses, killing all three; the remaining child, in his bitterness, will grow up to form a Bloodspeaker cult that the Yogo child, will have to face in adulthood. And at the end, when they defeat the cultists, and see the charred doll placed in a place of love and affection on a blasphemous altar, they will realize that all of this is their fault.

>Netrunner
I've only played Netrunner casually, not competitively, but in comparison L5R feels a little bit shallower but much more approachable. Netrunner is, compared to other card games, pretty much completely unique and that certainly turns some people off from it, while L5R is at its heart a dude-smasher game. Put dudes on board, turn them sideways, eventually win; it's a formula people understand and can get into.

In the end, I'd say Netrunner is perhaps a little deeper, but L5R is a lot more accessible.

>BattleCON
I love BattleCON, it's still my favorite board game to date, but as much as I love BattleCON I will still be playing L5R over it simply because L5R will have an actual community to play with. I've spent months of my life trying to get a BattleCON community going at my FLGS and it just never happened, whereas already, just counting people who got core sets at GenCon, the L5R community in my city is bigger than my BattleCON community ever got.

In the end they're very different games. BattleCON is pure skill, L5R is a mix of skill and luck. But as much as I love BattleCON, playing with others is better than sitting in a store by myself.

>Magic
L5R and Magic are both dude-smasher games, so there is that, but the economy in L5R is flat and not luck dependent and there are orders of magnitude more decision points when playing L5R than in Magic. Most Magic decks functionally play themselves, but even the simplest L5R deck has around a dozen meaningful decision points per round which actually really matter. Additionally, the fate system in L5R means that board states never get huge or out of control.

Magic will, of course, have more players. I don't think I need to convince you of that. And then there's the distribution differences, of course. But as a game, I do think L5R is much more skill intensive and interesting to play than Magic ever could be.

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I don't get it

I want that man to fug me

Ah that's much less obtuse than I was expecting it to be.

Hunky men with scars are c u t e

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Anyone else really surprised on the crane/lion champ rulings. They were kind of the least interesting clan champs and now they're probably the worst

Were those rulings or just the interpretations of RAW which the writers didn't even notice like idiots? Because it is clear what the intent is, but they fucked it up in wording.

>Discussion question: Since the full core's contents are now 100% known with the Gencon prerelease of the game, has anyone been playing with proxies or on TTS? How have you been enjoying so far?
Played my first 8 or so games on TTS so far, loving this game but the card pool feels really shallow with just the core set, can't wait for a few of the expansions to get released and open things up a bit more.

Design wise this is one of the most brilliant games I've played. The mechanics are relatively simple and easy to grasp but the amount of decisions gives the game INCREDIBLE depth. I think it's going to take even the best players a long while to master this game.

The lead Dev of the game was asked he said they worked RAW, so it's official triggering it on the defense helps your enemy

Yes, the Bee. Aye. Dee. Gee. Eee. Argh.

>The only other solution is to induce worthless love in your children
Trying to trigger the curse just makes it worse. It's unbreakable and not something you can fuck around with. The Yogo in question is precisely aware when they've triggered the curse, but the rest of the clan has to rely on their word that it's done and they're ok to be given more duties and freedom.

They fucked that up hard, unless you argue that the enemy losing a defensive action means the ring and its effect pass to you.

>tfw they will flip around the Yogo Curse
>instead of betraying your loved one, your loved one will betray you

Then there is no fucking reason for Yogo to leave the Phoenix, you nimrod. He was going to sepukku but Bayushi talked him into leaving the Phoenix with the argument that since Yogo doesn't love the Scorpion, Bayushi doesn't have to fear his betrayal. Then that idiot Junzo forgot that shit and had the biggest man-crush on Shoju and fucked everything up.

Man, if the bestest healer of my time would be up to betray me, I would run for my life like there is no tomorrow. Then grow crazy paranoid and end up with the local edgy assholes.

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I've always wanted to run an L5R game and I think I'm going to take the plunge next weekend. It's going to be set pre-SCC, and all the players are going to all be from the Dragon Clan. Which edition of the RPG would you recommend? Any general advice for running an L5R game?

4th edition.
Don't let players murderhobo. It's just not the right kind of setting for it. Combat is lethal as fuck and there really isn't much in the way of dungeons to crawl, aside from the tunnels under the Kaiu Wall. Social situations should matter.

Have there been any typhoons in Rokugan?

I don't think so. At the very least, they've never been a major problem. Frankly even if there were, it'd shrek the Mantis, Crane, and Crab, but not a whole lot of anyone else.

If I dredge my memories, I remember that Otosan Uchi was flattened by an earthquake once in the AEG era and a tsunami has inundated the Crane in the FFG era. Aside from the odd blizzard, weather phenomena are somewhat rare.

My group really likes roleplaying so I think they'll be fine. Is it possible for members of one clan to serve a lord from another, or should I just have them all make Dragons? Would Dragonfly characters be appropriate? What books from 4e should I get?

>Is it possible for members of one clan to serve a lord from another
Not really, but debts are taken very seriously, and so it's possible in all but official paperwork. Almost all Dragons is what you should be aiming for. Dragonfly is practically Dragon anyway, so they'd be appropriate.
>What books from 4e should I get?
Uhh... All of them? Emerald Empire, Great Clans, the Book of [Element] series, Strongholds of the Empire, Secrets otE (For Dragonfly), Imperial Histories 1 & 2 (For specific details of the era you're in), Sword and Fan, Imperial Archives, and the Atlas of Rokugan are all generally applicable. Enemies of the Empire has stuff on all the non-humans and Ronin.
Absolute minimum is Core and Emerald Empire, imo.
There's also the Way of the Dragon from 1e that's still applicable lorewise.

>Is it possible for members of one clan to serve a lord from another, or should I just have them all make Dragons?

Totally. Make them take the Hostage or maybe the Obligation disadvantage. Both can tie the character to another clan in a totally honorable way.

I would recomend checking out the "Hidden Emperor Era" in Imperial Histories, 4th edition. You can do an all dragon campaign of them slowly finding out the clan is being corrupted by nothingness, and then its up to them to either try and purge from inside or try and get outside the clan in order to rally help.

>Is it possible for members of one clan to serve a lord from another
This is generally why the common campaign is for all the PCs to serve the emerald magistrates - you bypass the question of serving a daimyo for serving the empire.

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Ok, so I didn't manage to get a copy of this at Gencon, but I've played some games.

I've decided I want to try and build an honor based deck with Phoenix, and I'm curious how well it can work.

Isawa Mori Seidō
Keeper of Void

Province
Air Fertile Fields
Earth Ancestral Lands
Fire Meditations on the Tao
Void Kuroi Mori
Water Elemental Fury

Dynasty Deck (40)
Character (35)
2x Asako Diplomat
2x Isawa Atsuko
2x Isawa Masahiro
3x Meddling Mediator
3x Naive Student
2x Radiant Orator
2x Serene Warrior
3x Shiba Peacemaker
3x Shiba Tsukune
3x Shiba Yōjimbō
3x Solemn Scholar
3x Miya Mystic
2x Fearsome Mystic
2x Adept of the Waves
Holding (5)
3x Forgotten Library
2x Imperial Storehouse

Conflict Deck (43)
Event (33)
3x Against the Waves
3x Contingency Plan
3x Court Games
3x Display of Power
3x For Shame!
3x Know the World
3x Way of the Phoenix
3x Voice of Honor ///// /
2x Noble Sacrifice ////
1x Outwit
3x Good Omen
Attachment (3)
3x Ornate Fan
Character (7)
3x Steward of Law ///
2x Ishiken Initiate
2x Seeker of Knowledge

Phoenix Role is Seeker of Void, not Keeper. If you plan on playing in tournaments or with a group that follows the organized play, you need to use the official Role.

Not running Shameful Display in Phoenix is fucking crazy, doubly so if you're going for an Honor deck.

I don't understand why you have so many 2-ofs in the Dynasty deck. You should be running 3x Diplomat, 3x Orator, 3x Adept of the Waves.

I consider Imperial Storehouse a waste of a card, you're probably better off replacing those with Favorable Grounds instead.

Good Omen is a shit card and if you're putting dishonor pressure on your opponent it will be utterly dead from turn 3 onwards because both of you will be bidding 1 every single turn.

You're running zero military buff cards but also not running any Pacifism??

Ishiken Initiate is garbage.

Seeker of Knowledge should be a 3of if you're going for Honor/Dishonor victory.

2/5 do better.

Don't you talk shit about a man so badass that only a horse could kill him!!

Good morning user-sans

>don't understand why you have so many 2-ofs in the Dynasty deck

He could be playing irl with friends and two cores is what he's got preordered or he and another guy have or will have 1 each

>Don't let players murderhobo. It's just not the right kind of setting for it.

It is not the right kind of system for it. Setting-wise, it is fine, there are two whole Clans worth of murderhobos out there.

>Crab
>Murderhobos

u wot m8

I've also got no clue who the other clan you could be referring to is. The only people who function as murderhobos in L5R are, well, the literal murder hobos: ronin.

>the tunnels under the Kaiu Wall
If anyone really thinks there's nowhere in Rokugan to have adventures, or that the murder tunnels under The Wall is a good location to wander around, then they need to rethink their position.

>and there really isn't much in the way of dungeons to crawl
There are ruins of ancient civilisations, if you're after dungeons to crawl. Otherwise, you have bandits, criminals, ronin otokodate, bloodspeakers, etc. to hunt.

>Social situations should matter
Even at ronin social grades, it does, but most of the people you'll be dealing with (merchants, ronin, bandits, etc) are only as stuffy as the Emperor's court every other time.

Maybe Mantis?

I'm new enough to not know a lot of this shit, so thank you.

And I'd like to deck to be all two of, since yea, I've only got two core sets coming and I don't think I'm going to get a third. I'm going to try, but we'll have to see.

>And I'd like to deck to be all two of, since yea, I've only got two core sets coming and I don't think I'm going to get a third.
Ah, well you had a number of cards there listed as 3ofs so I was (am) confused, then.

It's because it was late and I'm an idiot.

Isawa Mori Seidō
Seeker of Void

Air Fertile Fields
Earth Ancestral Lands
Void Shameful Display
Void Kuroi Mori
Water Elemental Fury

Dynasty Deck (40)
Character (35)
2x Asako Diplomat
2x Isawa Atsuko
2x Isawa Masahiro
2x Meddling Mediator
2x Naive Student
2x Radiant Orator
2x Serene Warrior
2x Shiba Peacemaker
2x Shiba Tsukune
2x Shiba Yōjimbō
2x Solemn Scholar
3x Miya Mystic
2x Fearsome Mystic
2x Adept of the Waves
3x Seeker Initiate
1x Seppun Guardsman
2x Otomo Courtier
Holding (5)
2x Forgotten Library
3x Favorable Ground

Conflict Deck (40)
Event (20)
2x Against the Waves
3x Contingency Plan
3x Court Games
2x Display of Power
3x For Shame!
2x Know the World
2x Way of the Phoenix
2x Voice of Honor ////
1x Outwit
Attachment (14)
3x Ornate Fan
2x Pacifism
2x Grasp of Earth
3x Cloud the Mind
2x Above Question ////
2x Magnificent Kimono
Character (6)
2x Steward of Law //
2x Ishiken Initiate
2x Seeker of Knowledge

Looks much better. Still some things I would change but that can come down to personal taste, I'm not going to tell you this deck is wrong necessarily.

Don't run contingency plan, it's terrible.

You should have three katanas and three banzais. You need a reason not to run those cards and currently there is not a good one.

Rout is better than Outwit for Phoenix. You have about the same quantity of courtiers and bushi, but your courtiers cap out at ~4 pol while your bushi frequently hit 7-8 mil. It's definitely mot a three of, though.

Ishiken Initiate is a bad card. Most of the time she is thoroughly mediocre.

Crane splash is not so hot; you don't actually have enough honor effects to justify Voice of Honor. Try splashing Dragon for some combination of Let Go, Mirumoto's Fury and Tattooed Wanderer. All three of those cards are 9/10 or better and very worth splashing.

Once the game drops and I can actually really figure it out I'll be able to make more informed decisions. Thanks for the help, though.

>Don't run contingency plan, it's terrible.
It can be worth the slot if you're building for dishonor victory. Although I feel like the only viable way to do that is splashing Crab for Watch Commander.

It's fine for dishonor, sure, but Phoenix isn't a dishonor deck, and even Crab dishonor doesn't care to run contingency plan. Scorpion do sometimes run it, though.

Phoenix is one of the best Clans at a Dishonor strategy though?

I don't think that's the most optimal way to run them right now, but if you want to run them that way they're very capable of it.

>Phoenix is one of the best Clans at a Dishonor strategy though?
Not by a long shot. They may be above average at it but it takes a serious amount of focus to actually dishonor someone out and the Phoenix don't come close to that, especially for a two core deck that is going to be even more unreliable.

They can easily compete with Crab for second best Dishonor Clan after Scorp, especially with the right splash.

>doji-ue, the Phoenix ambassador has gifted you a majestic kimono!
"By the Fortunes, no!"

To be fair in this setting getting a lavish gift from a political opponent is at least 60% likely to be a good reason to shout in despair.

Yeah, it's probably lavish and comfortable, but the colors slightly clash with the rest of your delegation, and the pattern kinda looks like an imitation of what the Crane diplomat is wearing, and it also happens to be good enough to clear up an old obligation unless you want to seem greedy in public by stating otherwise.

But if you rock it you increase your own glory and set a new fashion trend!

Shit hearing you say that BattleCon is your favorite board game makes me want to finally crack my box open. I bought it a while back, but haven't been able to convince anyone to play with me.

For everyone who has a local meta being built in anticipation for the release of the LCG; is there a specific clan dominance in your area? My personal meta is rather wide-spread, we have at least one player for each clan, with Lion being the only one left out.

Scorpion seems to be the most popular faction overall, but of course local metas may vary.

Scorpion will probably be the most popular for a while. Lot of old players wanting to jump on Shoju's train (even though it might not even happen this time around) and a lot of new players jumping on what they hear about the most (pre-scorpion coup is literally what people call this era, even with no proof that it will happen again).
There are probably a fair number of new players who go for them because, at face value, Scorpion are very edgy and "cool".

Doesn't hurt that competitively they're also a top Clan.

The Scorpion popularity is making my inner tier hipster freak out and start brewing Unicorn lists.

And that's fine, it is your decision as an adult to molest those horses.

That definitely seems to be the general case for my local meta right now; but I think things will start to even out once people actually get to buy the core set.

I'm personally going to be trying Crab and Dragon since they appeal to me the most; I'm leaning more towards Crabs at the moment. I haven't gotten the chance to play either yet, and I like the flavor for both of them

Yeah, I wanted to do crane originally, but scorpion seem to almost be "crane, but better" with respect to control etc.

I'm considering Phoenix, but there was a dude last night talking about how Scorpion absolutely ruins Phoenix.

Should I be worried, since Scorpion seems so popular, or was he just talking shit?

The meta is still very young, but at least right now I'll be honest -- there does not appear to be a deck that beats Scorpion. Maybe that changes in the future but they literally are considered to have favorable MU's across the entire board at the moment. Lion probably have the best shot, and they're at best 45/55.

Maybe scorpion are just the pubstompy faction and the meta is still young but right this very moment I don't see the pain train stopping at all.

Well, that's disheartening.

How bad is it? I don't feel like getting stomped every game.

>I don't feel like getting stomped every game.

Have you tried playing Scorpion then?

I think "Scorpion ruins Phoenix" is more of a theorycraft than an actual experience. The logic being that Phoenix has high glory as a theme, and Scorpion has dishonor. Scorpion does have dishonor, but not too much of it. Mostly their Way of the Scorpion card.

In general, though Scorpion is very strong, and CAN make two of your cards into 0/0s. But if you watch out for that I don't think Scorpion vs Phoenix is LUDICROUSLY Scorpion sided or anything.

Core Set deck:

Deck Clan: Phoenix

Total Cards: (85)

Total Conflict: (40) Total Dynasty: (40)

Total Influence: (10/10)

Stronghold:
1x Isawa Mori Seidō (Core Set #5)

Role:
1x Seeker of Void (Core Set #218B)

Province: (5)
Air (0/1) Earth (1/1) Fire (1/1) Void (2/2) Water (1/1)
1x Elemental Fury (Core Set #16)
1x Kuroi Mori (Core Set #12)
1x Shameful Display (Core Set #24)
1x Meditations on the Tao (Core Set #20)
1x Entrenched Position (Core Set #17)

Character [Dynasty]: (44)
3x Seeker Initiate (Core Set #126)
3x Meddling Mediator (Core Set #86)
3x Solemn Scholar (Core Set #83)
3x Shiba Yōjimbō (Core Set #89)
3x Shiba Tsukune (Core Set #93)
3x Shiba Peacemaker (Core Set #82)
3x Serene Warrior (Core Set #88)
3x Naive Student (Core Set #81)
3x Isawa Atsuko (Core Set #92)
2x Fearsome Mystic (Core Set #91)
3x Adept of the Waves (Core Set #84)
2x Asako Diplomat (Core Set #85)

Character [Conflict]: (10/10)
3x Tattooed Wanderer (Core Set #149)
2x Togashi Kazue (Core Set #150)
3x Ishiken Initiate (Core Set #170)
2x Seeker of Knowledge (Core Set #171)


Attachment: (12)
3x Grasp of Earth (Core Set #173)
3x Magnificent Kimono (Core Set #172)
3x Pacifism (Core Set #174)
3x Cloud the Mind (Core Set #202)

Event: (18)
3x Way of the Phoenix (Core Set #176)
3x Supernatural Storm (Core Set #175)
2x Know the World (Core Set #178)
2x Display of Power (Core Set #179)
2x Against the Waves (Core Set #177)
3x Court Games (Core Set #206)
3x Good Omen (Core Set #208)

Holding: (6)
3x Forgotten Library (Core Set #94)
3x Imperial Storehouse (Core Set #129)

>50 dynasty cards
Uh. You're a bit fat there. Holdings go in your dynasty deck, btw, and legal deck sizes are 40 to 45 cards.

I would definitely recommend cutting down to 40 dynasty cards. Seeker Initiates, Serene Warriors and 1-2 copies of Storehouses are easy cuts.

So is this thread for the card game, the tabletop RPG, or both?

What addition introduce the thousand years of darkness?

All of it at once, and yet none at once. We are the void that defines the cup.

>Art being differentiated from music
>What the fuck does chastity have to do with any of this

It took me a moment to realize your were talking about drinking vessels and sport tournaments/trophies