I am still trying, to this day, to figure out what Rob was thinking while putting that Cap art out. Like, how he thought basic anatomy could possibly work that way, lol.

Basically he's being viewed from two perspectives at the same time.  If you look at it for too long it will drive you mad.  The human mind was not built to contemplate such things.

Captain Cthulu

I am still trying, to this day, to figure out what Rob was thinking while putting that Cap art out. Like, how he thought basic anatomy could possibly work that way, lol.

OMG, Yes! I am not a fan of the mats. At all! I think the launch mat was pretty decent and generic enough but the actual hero specific ones leave much to be desired, especially seeing what they can do via the other LCG mats they have released (Arkham and LoTR mats are amazing!!). 

I really have to agree with you. There are certain cards that look pretty solid but others that just give me the "WTF?!" face when trying to think about who decided that was the best picture to utilize. The only thing I can think of is that Marvel is giving them access to only a limited pool of images "approved" by them. Maybe due to artist rights/royalties or what have you. But using Google Images, I can make a better art deck for any hero in about 20 minutes, lol

Rob Liefeld might actually be an eldritch being, it's the only way I can think of to explain how he gets anatomy so wrong AND was that successful in comics.

I am still trying, to this day, to figure out what Rob was thinking while putting that Cap art out. Like, how he thought basic anatomy could possibly work that way, lol.

I didn't like the art on the playmats either... until I saw them in person, especially She-Hulk. Now that Hulk playmat...? I don't think there's anything that will change my mind there. Since Disney owns Marvel I guess they're trying to cross promote "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" with that playmat. 

In some LOTR LCG big multiplayer games, they have the players broken down into smaller groups and each group is facing a different "stage" that at the end of the round, all interact depending on the status/advancement. So you are heavily invested in your pod but also interested in the others because their performance indirectly (or sometimes directly) affects your future progress.

I thought 4-player was tedious, I can't imagine 8 or 10 players. There'd have to be a real twist to make it not a slog.

True enough - but you won't see additional restrictions on group comp.  While many people do show up with multiple decks, not everyone does and it's not a requirement.  "I'm playing Daisy so need to find 3 other people who aren't playing Daisy" is a far cry from "Every group needs to have Black Panther in it".

They've been clear on the last stream that there is no such thing as a 'cycle' for this game, even though Caleb did acknowledge that it's hard not to think of a 'thematic' series of releases as one. But this still means there is no such expectation to have here, in terms of how many heroes, packs and whatnot, until they decide to change theme or setting.

I mean a scenario where there's exactly one of each released hero would be the obvious choice. Like a proper "All the Avengers" scenario.

Just the way it should be. Customers should not have to rely on pre-ordering to get the products they want, often where your money is taken weeks/ months in advance of supply. That's not customer service and doesn't help the FLGS in getting sales in store either.

Unless you think the Story Box is going to come out on the 31st, then it will already be out when GenCon starts.
My hope is that they have some kind of GenCon event planned like they do for Arkham.

@Danwarr  You have to take into consideration L5R as a whole. The game was built on the previous premise that the community would have somewhat of a say in how the game progresses. No other CCG or LCG has that. Roles is a way to implement that interaction without it pulling the game way out of whack. As for the "segments of the card pool" you reference being locked out of, that equates to what, less than a handful of cards per clan? I don't think 2-3 cards on the shelf until an applicable role is selected breaks the game. They can be incentive for the hatamotos to choose said role when the time rolls around. There has to be benefits and consequences for being able to impact the game's direction. You get access to some cards and lose access to others. A chunk of the draw of L5R was that you could impact the game. By removing the role locks, there really is no direct impact and boon for achieving hatamoto status. And you can't compare this to other LCGs because it wasn't designed to be like those other LCGs. FFG wanted to keep what made L5R special as best they could and I think they were able to do that, mostly. 

@Danwarr  I could have an unpopular opinion but I don't see that small of a card pool locked an issue. It makes the role selection process have that much more meaning and impact. You still have access to 90% of the cards with a rotating 10%, depending on role selection. 
In the end though, I think we are stuck on opposite sides of the fence here, lol. At least the new multi-role process seems to somewhat bridge the gap. 

In a sense yes.
"Winner of this tournament will get access to this awesome new sword!" or "Pick which clan gets to take home this awesome personality", or even "The new Clan SH is Shadowland centric, because the a-hole that won was using Shadowlands cards, yaaay!".
I remember how Phoenix pretty much got the lion's share of the winnings during the 4 Winds saga by getting 2 out of 4 of Toturi's children in Clan. I even remember how Dragon went full on Borg and got a ton of personalities from other clans, that the original clan couldn't play with, all because of some storyline prizes.
Back then Experienced versions of personalities were a thing, and getting an XP version of a beloved character was something everyone looked forward to. Imagine the look on the Crane player's face when Doji Reju jumped ship to Dragon due to some random dude winning a Tourney?
Those kinds of choices locked out cards for the entirety of an Edition. The fact that the Dev Team wants to give a Nod to tournament "story" choices without setting things in stone is a nice gesture IMO..
 

@Danwarr  You have to take into consideration L5R as a whole. The game was built on the previous premise that the community would have somewhat of a say in how the game progresses. No other CCG or LCG has that. Roles is a way to implement that interaction without it pulling the game way out of whack. As for the "segments of the card pool" you reference being locked out of, that equates to what, less than a handful of cards per clan? I don't think 2-3 cards on the shelf until an applicable role is selected breaks the game. They can be incentive for the hatamotos to choose said role when the time rolls around. There has to be benefits and consequences for being able to impact the game's direction. You get access to some cards and lose access to others. A chunk of the draw of L5R was that you could impact the game. By removing the role locks, there really is no direct impact and boon for achieving hatamoto status. And you can't compare this to other LCGs because it wasn't designed to be like those other LCGs. FFG wanted to keep what made L5R special as best they could and I think they were able to do that, mostly. 

Given that the Role choice is chosen by the top of Clan at Worlds, a tournament held in Roseville, Minnesota during November which can make it difficult to impossible for any international players to attend, the "Top Dog" isn't actually making the choice. Just the person who happens to go to a special tournament at the right time of the year. Giving that person such a commanding level of control for a clan's deck construction for the whole year is just very strange. At least the second Role post GenCon is based on votes by Hatamotos at Kotei level events.
While fans of the old game might be ok with bounties and bribes, that sort of thing is also alienating to new players. L5R already has a bit of population problem, especially in the US with groups being extremely separated. Add in the restrictive deck construction requirements to a system were Old5R players are seemingly comfortable with just putting up even more money just to be able to play the deck you want and that's a definitive recipe to remaining niche.
Given that FFG LCGs appear to have a 6 year lifespan, just based on ANR, GoT 1.0, and CoC, to what benefit is it to lock people out of segments of the card pool for 1/6th of the game's life? Having to wait until November of next year for a clan to MAYBE get a useful Role to be able to use strong in Clan cards seems asinine. For example, the is almost no guarantee that Unicorn is ever going to be able to use Unleash the Djinn ever under the current system. Doesn't that strike you as a bit ridiculous?

I am firmly in the Pro-locked roles camp. It helps retain a little bit of the player involvement from the CCG days without pulling the game into a really weird angle. Players now have a choice in a selective story decision (that may or may NOT develop in a timely manner.....) and a direction on how their clan will play out in the next year. I also think 1 year rotation is the sweet spot. 6 months I feel would be too quick of a turn around but anything beyond a year would be too long. Having it at GC each year kind of gives it a nice annual event that carries serious weight. 
I also like how when the roles change, you will go back to cards that you may initially have brushed off and now they might be game changers under your new role. I think what they really need to do (and was mentioned somewhere a few times in the past 6 pages of this thread) is to put out some new strongholds. I think the variety of deck flavors can really be brought out there. But we do need to give the game time. Star Wars LCG took a bit to really get a strong variety.

Back in my day, we used to offer up Bounties and Bribes to get a desired Storyline prize picked.
We would pool up our rares and such and would make callouts like "The Top Phoenix player that chooses X as a prize will get this Bounty"
This generation needs to level up their Diplomacy skill IMO
Communities discussing what Roles to pic, and then making sure their Top Dog picks said role, seems more like a Feature not a Bug (at least looking at it from the Old School perspective of an entire clan deciding which Storyline Prizes to pick).

Forget the roles, could we get 6 in 6 weeks? The 6 being the other 6 Clan packs we're missing.

Or that FFG isn't foolish enough to think that they can create a perfect game. 
As someone who likes to push the boundaries of deck creativity I would love to have all the roles unlocked. However I believe role locking is a good design move because it prevents the meta from getting completely solved as each new set comes out.  As the roles change so does the meta game and thus we are not left with only the restricted list and new cards to "fix" things.  
Role locking gives players the opportunity to influence the meta game to some extent and gives us another layer of oversight.  For example, if the community felt strongly enough that they didn't want to see Crab win an Earth role then they could start a coup to make sure whichever clan picks before them at worlds takes seeker it earth and locks them out of the option of running any "earth matters" type cards.  It just takes the community to come together to do it...... Instead of complaining about changing the rules so the games is how some people want it.