post for 2 July 2002

Well, this is it. My last post for a week. At about 9:30 tomorrow morning I leave for Ohio and the Origins Game Convention. I want to take one last moment here to thank, again, all the TOs at the Kotei I've had the honor of visiting, and give a proactive wave to everyone I expect to see at the con. Safe travels on the road to Otosan Uchi!

L5R Experience Questions and Comments

My first thoughts on the decks after a couple of test games are that they are fairly well balanced against each other. They have a number of staple cards for each faction but few very complicated cards. Overall impression is that they are great for new players, old hands will not be rushing out to buy them by the bucket load, as with past Learn to Play sets where there were power card rares fixed to make them attractive to older players.

That's on purpose. This isn't a retail product; we don't WANT pros grabbing these by the cartload and taking them out of the hands of potential new players. We make zero profit and gain fewer new fans. We in the gaming industry refer to that as a "Lose-Lose Scenario".

The second is the one Doji Nagori in the Crane deck who apparently has a huge misprint as he has 4C instead of 1C, which I would love to see become a real change but I cannot imagine it being so. So what do we do with him - play him as written for the L5RExp games and ignore him at all other times or play him as having on 1C?

Learn-to-play sets don't count for the MRP rule. Play him as written when teaching the game with the L5R Experience decks. He's still 1C in real games.

post for 1 July 2002

Any reason why it couldn't at least have been made unique? There were two other Unique Scorpions in that set already -- Experienced ones, in fact, so we couldn't take the trait off >them. We don't go above two Uniques when there are only five >Personalities to a clan.

Not true. An Oni's Fury gave Unicorn Shinjo Huang & Moto Zhijuan as its' non-uniques. As uniques, there was Moto Chagatai xp., Moto Vordu xp., and Iuchi Lixue. I only remember this b/c I was rather disappointed in its' offerings personality-wise for Unicorn.

And that's why we don't do it any more.

Oracle of the Void

Ok I allways assumed that you used the ocacle's second ability to draw until you had 5 cards in your hand. However on reading it

Oracle of the Void 10 Retainer Unique Elemental Limited: Bow the Oracle of the Void and pay 1 Gold to either draw a card or discard a card from your hand. Show the card to the other players. Elemental Reaction: At any time during your End Phase, if you have fewer than five cards in your hand, bow the Oracle of the Void to draw cards until you have five in your hand. Lose 2 Honor for each card drawn, a loss that no player can change.

It seems to me that you could use its reaction before drawing to draw to 5 cards and then have your regular draw which would take you to 6.

It seems that way to me too.

post for 1 July 2002

Many people find this to be displeasing.

They've had since Gold Edition released to make their displeasure known. It's a little silly waiting until now to get upset, unless they're just learning now that Winds are used in all tournament formats...and responsibility for that rests with whoever taught them how to play, since all the rulebooks back to Gold list the Historic Favor rules as optional.

If you want to play friendly games or even run tournaments with the old Favor, go ahead. You're allowed. The Open tournament we're running at Origins, however, will use the current, standard rules.

As a designer-type fellow, Jeff, I truly cannot see how you would condone the subversion of one of the fundamental rules of the game, without the aid of any play-testing whatsoever.

I didn't. It was done with that aid.

post for 1 July 2002

Okay Jeff, I understand this ruling totally from a balance standpoint, but what's the reasoning behind it? Just designer intent?

P. 33. The Keyword Rule is not used when a class of cards is created by a definition rather than a trait. That, and a little bit of intent, yes.

post for 1 July 2002

Can you focus in a duel if your personality is bowed?

Absolutely. Focusing is not an action.

Question to jeff

this question relates to the Ninja/only attach to ninja cards.

I see that the only attach to ninja cards were mostly designed before the ninja faction came out, and therefore the ninja trait did not was really useful despite the existence of the ninja stronghold "holding".

But indeed a card that only attaches to ninja is very like a "ninja" card.

Any game that's not completely abstract to begin with is going to accumulate little illogical interactions like this as it ages. It's unavoidable. The rulebook would grow to unusable thickness if we tried to eliminate every single one.