Oracle of the Void #l5r

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLapVifoLoCmQR_TxfrwWTtiZv4N1CViGW

Well, it depends™.

There were times when Corrupt Crab ruled for a while. Or Crane Rocket Honour.

Lion was a problem for a good while, though, both when the game was 30/30 (which it was for several years), and when it shifted to 40/40.

i never played clan wars. even watching those videos i had to check oracle for some cards. 😉

I played a lot of Clan Wars. It was really fun, and really broken.

Also .. is broken the right term? Or completely unbalanced?

For consistency, yeah, Crane and Lion. For random good draw, almost any Clan, with enough corrupt gold.

Yeah, unbalanced is a good word. The game was heavily unbalanced through Clan Wars and Jade Arc, often changing every set release.

Yeah. Occasionally they'd get a great start and steamroll, but, usually, not that good. At least Cavalry working the old way helped.

The Power Cards™ also made such a huge difference.

I played through Clan Wars without being able to afford a Clan Sword, or Wedge, or Shinsei's Shrine. Or even Avoid Fates and Inheritance.

Mmhmm. There was a popular honour runner based around that idea, actually. Just dump the Swords into play as quickly as possible.

I couldn't take it to local tournaments... The pitchforks came out.

Yeah. I really miss the pre-netdeck era.

People playing wildly unviable theme decks.

Ohh yeah the corrupt gold scheme! All the tainted and corrupted decks had an impact on card keywords for a while lol

Yeah, that, too.

It was a neat story mechanic, to be honest.

A lot of it was, and there was so, so much winging.

Since the original story was supposed to end with Time of the Void and the Second Day of Thunder at GC '97.

But then the game was so popular that they scrambled to continue it. And we got SCC1-3 and Rolling Thunder, and that whole mess, before Jade came out and "reset" things a bit.

Second Day was amazing. Another fav of mine was First Day with the Dawn of the Empire set & the Kami.

Any former TOs here? Can you suggest an offline Swiss pairing program that can accommodate late entry players without ruining previous pairings? I used Kickertool in the Josephine Cup and late entries caused.some pairings to be deleted.

https://youtu.be/qQmr76cwsZQ https://youtu.be/nKXvnh3pxAU

I haven't played old border enough to be able to offer advice, despite the fact that I love the style so much. I never played in those days in any kind of meta environment.

My experience is that the game was much better later on, but also, the power level increase was such that older cards frequently just didn't make the cut.

There are rules for a variant called War Of Honor that I would recommend adapting to multiplayer.

Players have four tracks they use to actually win.

On a given turn, if you gain 8 honor, you advance one on the honor track. Cause 8 points of dishonor, advance one on the dishonor track. Take a province, advance on the military track. Put a ring into play by it's own text, advance on the enlightenment track.

If anyone advances 5 times on any one track, that player wins. You can only advance once per track per turn. Player elimination is still a thing.

There was a whole map thing with it too, but you really don't need that.

Kinda funny how much reading I've done about this without yet having played a single game lol

So that was when I played the game the most.

From around TotV until a few sets after Gold, though my fondest memories are all during the Clan Wars and Jade arcs.

Your cardpool will really matter.

Those two ars were really unbalanced, with tons and tons of broken cards that had to be MRPed.

Even casually you're bound to run into individual cards or easy combos that are way unbalanced.

I would not recommend importing the Sensei, because they drastically alter the game. And you need the meta and other Sensei-based card interactions to make them work well, anyway.

They may be fun once or twice, but pretty soon everyone will figure out which ones make for the best meta, and they'll wreck the enjoyment.

A lot of things are way more balanced if you have a good card pool. For example, Iris Festival is uber strong against Shadowlands, but there's There Is No Hope, as well as Avoid Fate. And you really need Iris Festival in some cases, because Shadowlands and corrupt gold-based decks were really strong back then.

Likewise, having the Clan Swords is huge.

And Shinsei's Shrines.

Thing is, there's a ton of them. You remove a tier of them, and then the next tier rises up.

The best option is to have a cardpool full of the broken cards, so everyone has a good mix. It then helps balance out the field, and make it less random.

Some cards define entire clans or methods of winning. As in, Shinsei's Shrine is almost key in lots of Honour Runners.

To the point where if you don't have it or it's banned, it'll make it much harder to win via Honour Victory.

Ones to consider removing, though, are Inheritance, because it's just such a ridiculous boost.

Phoenix could do it. Occasionally Lion, but without Shrines. Unicorn once Hidden Emperor hit.

basically black lotus

Yeah, playing Clan Wars is like playing early MtG, maybe up to around 3rd or 4th plus busted expansions.

Yeah. And the Clan Swords were absolutely Power 9.

Evil Portents. Shinsei's Shrine. Wedge, though it's kinda overrated.

Thing is, back then, a whole ton of cards were uber powerful, because of other game rules. For example, only Samurai could seppuku for the longest time. No Courtier or Shugenja. So that Shame was the bomb. Especially since there was no blood money rule or way to ignore HRs without a special card effect.

So an early Breach or similar could win the game on turn 2.

If you have a sufficiently large playgroup, you'll be able to get into a good rock-paper-scissors kind of place.

Scorpion beats all military, but Shadowlands beats Scorpion, but military beats Shadowlands, but... etc.

Well. That's kind of a thing. Dragon was super hard to play back then. They mostly didn't do so great, unless they had a really good draw.

Basically rig duels to be won. Slowly.

Crane did the Honour Running better. And often the basic dueling better. Other Clans did the military better. And the Dishonour better.

Not really.

The theme and cardbase were difficult. You can't really fix them, or most other Clans, with just a new future-box. It won't have the supporting cards to make it work, most of the time.

For a good balance, I would recommend starting with two mil, or a mil and honour, then expanding. So something like Crane and Lion, add Shadowlands or Scorpion, add Unicorn, add the left-over from the previous choice, and then branch out if there's more players available.

Also, watch out for The Dark Path of Shadow.

It's either a dud, or absurdly difficult to beat with anything out there.

I played it for years.

Back then Abandoning the Fortunes was the main way for it to win.

interesting

So the Event, plus another 10-20 Events, 3x Bayushi Aramoro, 3x Ninja Shapeshifter, 3x Ninja Stronghold, and a pile of PKill/Dishonour.

It was horribly strong.

Lots of rulings back and forth would take it from Tier 1 to Tier 3 and back.

At the end, Storms of War, and Winter Warfare, were the only effective ways to beat it.

Otherwise the PKill/Dishonour base was too strong, since nothing else could prevent its send-home effect.

I recommend not including it.

It made the game really far more annoying than it had to be, and very non-interactive. Especially with Rise from the Ashes, which came out in the same set.

People hated it, and with good reason. It's like playing against a Mono Blue opponent with a fist full of Counterspells all the time. (And Force of Will. And Mana Drain. And...)

Plus some decks would line up three Evil Portents and "Portents Bomb" the game, killing everything with 3C or less at once.

Here's the thing. Back then (read: mid-to-late 90s), L5R was known as "the game for nice players" or "the game without MtG assholes", partly because the players really were nicer, less competitive, and just generally didn't play asshole decks.

That drastically changed in the early early 2000s once Internet access became wide-spread, and half the players at the local tourneys would bring a netdeck and mop the floor with people playing more casually.

Do you have decklists for that time period?

kind of excited to try it without knowing too much honestly

Gotcha. Yeah, that'll tell you very very little.

Fair. I hope you enjoy!

If at some point there's interest in pre-made decks, hit me up, I have probably a few dozen.

Cool. Hope you and the playgroup enjoy!

Yeah. They had strong themes, but not enough to fully push one into winning territory.

in later arcs did they end up with a more cohesive strategy? if so, what types of things were they good at?

in Celestial there were Fire monks

And there was Gunnar deck type every arc (enlightenment) 😉

in late Emperor he had solid military/enlightenment switch deck

It was a work of art

here's Gunnars deck from late Emperor Legality: Emperor

Monastery of New Thought

Border Keep Bamboo Harvesters

1 Wisdom Gained (Emperor) 1 Imperial Gift (Emperor) 1 Formal Apology 1 Expansion 1 Jurojin's Blessing 1 Togashi's Guidance - exp

1 The Seekers' Temple 3 Temple of Harmony (WoH) 1 Traveling Peddler 3 Gold Mine (Emperor) 3 Small Farm 3 Merchant Outpost 3 Togashi Meiyu 3 Togashi Torazu 3 Togashi Kasuru (TSE) 3 Togashi Korimi (Emperor) 3 Togashi Hiroto 1 Togashi Korimi - exp2 3 Togashi Noritada 1 Togashi Mitsu - inexp

3 Introspection 3 The Sincerity of the Dragon 2 Ambush (Emperor) 3 Sneak Attack (Emperor) 3 Breath of the Heavens 1 Creating Order (FL) 3 Deadly Discipline 3 Engulfing Flames 2 Grappling the Snake 3 A Warrior's Wisdom 2 Martial Instruction 1 Ancient Feud 3 Strength in the Earth 1 Celestial Sword of the Dragon - exp 3 Satoshi's Dual Warfans 1 Ring of Earth (Emperor) 1 Ring of Air (Emperor) 1 Ring of Fire (Emperor) 1 Ring of Water (Emperor) 1 Ring of the Void (Emperor)

1. senseis were introduced after DJH. they do open up interesting builds. 2. Some of the most iconic and strongest strongholds in the game were printed during Clan Wars through HE/DJH arc . Eternal Halls IMHO is best played with the errata if you don't have a dedicated honor running player. 3. Rise from the Ashes. It basically reads "your opponent skips his turn". 4. fun depending on the factions. not fun for honor running/dishonor/enlightenment since they usually get taken out due to the nature of their win conditions.

some clans to look out for in your custom format: Unicorn, Ninja, Phoenix. HE-DJH basically powered up some of the weaker clans in Clan Wars though some would say way too much (Phoenix pre-errata and Unicorn).

Toturi's army became decent same as Naga.

The Palace of Otousan Uchi became Tier 1 in various parts of DJH/Jade arc.

CTB (Corrupt Toturi Blitz) was a thing.

They had ample cheap folks, free Toku (several versions), free or cheaper Followers and repeatable card draw from them... and (often) starting with the Favour was huge. Card draw or prevent an Honour Loss from an Oni, etc.

Naga got a huge boost, but was always Tier 2.

They were just a turn slower.

Have you ever played diplomacy?

No I haven't

It's essentially diplomacy, but you determine battles by ccg matches. You can play it with your own decks, etc.

It's fun if you have a decent sized group that loves l5r.

I have a group that like board games, but not necessarily L5R, and was wondering if it would be a good fit for them

I definitely consider it as an extension of l5r with board game elements

Gotcha. Thanks for the info

Yeah. I even TOed WoH tourney at Kotei. Its good multiplayer system. As boxed set i played it only once with original decks. It worked well. Other games we played with our constructed decks.

In my Dropbox (alternate formats / woh /) theres also fanmade "updated" rulebook that eg tries to fit whole system into Ivory environment as original victory requirements are too heavy for this arc. Also theres cool rule about speeding up two first turns.