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Hellvlad

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Posts posted by Hellvlad

  1. Posted

    I searched the last 5 pages without finding anything so sorry for asking if it was asked already. Is there a reason why the last 2 AH Mythos packs were out of stock in Europe even before their release date? Even Amazon UK have no stocks. In the meantime the last dynasty pack for L5R is available without any problems. IS FFG having supplying issues? Thanks for any insight.

  2. Posted

    On 5/22/2019 at 1:50 AM, everythingbagels said:

     

    I don't think I suggested FFG was obligated to issue updated cards and I am sorry if I seemed to imply it. My point was them doing it simply for the sake of our benefit, aka doing their customers a solid. As I've stated, I understand they can do as they please. But I think a company's actions matter more in a smaller community such as this one, with me assuming that they can afford to turn customers away less than a game with a larger following. Also, just to restate, yes I agree keeping the game balanced is healthy, my concern is the method.

    Happy to see the kind of discussion I envisioned finally take off, thanks to everyone for their input. 

     

    Both sides of the argument are a bit polarized to my opinion. No, FFG has no obligation to reprint errated cards and give them away. Would it be a nice and consumer friendly practice? Definitively yes, and I don't think we will be many to complain if they did. Will it happen? in a LCG, it's highly unlikely.

     

    On 5/18/2019 at 6:49 AM, Kani Kantai said:

     

    I believe FFG could afford to offer free card reprints for L5R - although I’m not sure why they should be forced to pay that cost.

     

     

    Heck They would sell an update pack with the errated cards updated, I would be happy to buy it. As long as it's reasonable and does not become a habit every 2 months :D

     

     

     

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  3. Posted

    Personally the theme does not speak to me so much, but well tastes and colors...

    The mechanics however didn't made me rise an eyebrow. I never clicked with  LOTR LCG due to it's core concept and effect: it's not really playing it's just building the right deck for the right scenario. AH LCG brought the campaign dimension with cards that "leveled up" and strict deckbuilding rules allowing you to have your deck evolve and increase in power during the length of the campaign. This made the the whole coop experience way better as you didn't had a one size fits all deck that was perfect to handle all the 8 scenarios of a campaign.

    Now here the coop and AI mechanics are not so different from what has been seen in the past. Reminds me of LOTR, reminds me of Arkham, reminds me of Heroes of Terrinoth, reminds me of Aeon's End, reminds me of Legendary: Marvel... that's too many games that, even if all have their little differences, share too much mechanics in common to justify an added interest.

    If you want to get your hand on your first coop card game, and you like Marvel, and you prefer the LCG idea to an in game deck building like Dominion, well, this one sound fun, but for any hobbyist with a average-sized  games library, this is just redundant.

  4. Posted

    The LCG model appealed to a different type of population than the CCG. Before the LCG model was made, card players had not much choice. Now they have. THe LCG model has shown its flaws however and it can be understandable a publisher wants to no longer go full in. It will be just a matter of profitability in the end.

    I hope they will keep it rolling. This is the only model I'll accept when it comes to an evolving card game.

  5. Posted · Edited by Hellvlad

    Your assessment is correct: Early and Late game are favoring the runner.

    By ANR standards, there are 3 phases to the game:

    - Early game: The Corp didn't protected all it's servers. It favors the Runner, who can get "free" runs, on unprotected servers and allows him to pressure the Corp economically by forcing it to rez as much ICE as possible

    - Mid Game: The Corps has ICEd all it's servers and runner's does not have his full rig on the table ( Missing critical Icebreakers or essential economy cards or console) This favors the Corp as there will be servers the runner can just not access. This is where the corp will try to score as much agendas as possible and win the game

    -Late game: The runner has his full rig and in some rare cases is barely interested in drawing anymore. Favors the Runner side again. The longer the game will go the better the Runner's chances to win.

     

    The whole's Corp strategy is to make the early game phase a short as possible and the Middle game phase as long as possible. How? Economy denial, tag punishment, damage, rig destruction etc...

    Playing the Corps requires usually more planning than playing the runner when you are a new player because you have to take ownership of the flow of the game, and that's something you need to learn. If you let the runner do whatever he wants and just try to defend yourself passively by placing one piece of ICE after another, you will lose. And this is why pieces of ICE and Upgrades that have effect that cannot be shut down by just paying a bunch of credits are powerful. These will hit the runner way harder in late game than a regular credit tax.

    I think the easiest Corp to pick to work on that is Jinteki, due to the multiple trabs and bluff aspect. In the end, all corps have tools to scare the Runner, but Jinteki has the biggest ones. The Runner must be scared to run. The fact he has an option in the turn structure just before accessing the cards in a server to Jack out is telling something. Get him fall on an Obokata Protocol, or he gets his share of Snare! . He will start to be very careful before running, which means he will take longer to prepare, and in turn leave you more space to score your agendas. It's all about offering the runner to choose between 2 bad choices.

  6. Posted · Edited by Hellvlad

    "This option has been a widely requested feature"

    Yeah, like it was expected from the beginning, as a core concept of the game

    "and I’m happy to provide it to you"

    ... after my dear Editor which I have a contract with, lashed at me for the poor performance of my game and the avalanche of bad reviews.

     

    "Although many groups will undoubtedly prefer the game’s original rules, this variant is ideal for groups that want a team-oriented experience. It works great with new players, families, or just about anyone who likes cooperative games. "

    Translated by " you, ignorants, don't understand the superiority of my original design, here take that hasty build rules fix else I might lose my contract with this editor.

     

    This will at best made people who regret having bought this not regret it so much anymore. I hardly see how this will make sales after the failure this game made. When most board game reviewers on youtube took the time to bash this game, it means it has serious issues anyway. The market is filled to the brim with better ones.

     

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  7. Posted

    1 hour ago, Mangod said:

    Well, the Mantis partially derive their claim to legitimacy from being descendants of Hida; more specifically, their clan was founded by Kaimetsu-Uo, the son of Osano-Wo the Fortune  of Fire and Thunder, and grandson of the Kami Hida and the Dragon of Thunder.

    Arguably, the Dragon of Thunder would render the Crab- and Mantis Clans MORE divine than the other Great Clans, since the Mantis are descended from two Gods, while the others are descended from just one.

    Am I missing something here by saying that this would make Mantis rather a Crab clan family rather than a distinct great clan? Originating from a Kami's grandson is not as originating from Hida himself. My understanding is that the 9 great Kamis, the children of Lady Sun and lord Moon are at the highest of the celestial order after their parents.

  8. Posted

    I understand that Mantis loyalists are eager to see their clan back as it was in O5R but the whole claim of Yoritomo for the Mantis being a great clan on itself makes little sense if we look at what defined a great clan at it's foundation: a kami. Unless I have a lack of understanding of the lore, there is not another Kami directly responsible for the creation of the Mantis clan. And Yoritomo is an exceptional human, but certainly not a Kami at the same level of Hantei or any of the 9.

    As we have seen some families change allegiance from a clan to another ( Yasuki, Yogo...)  why not simply include the Yoritomo familiy in one of the 7 already existing clans? It makes little sense to me that no Great clan has any family dedicated managing a fleet, while Phoenix, Crane and Crab have access to coastal territory. It would be not such a big shock to me if the current Mantis was absorbed by Crab to help with the supplies required for the Kaiu wall, or the Crane to help with the crisis the currently face due to the Tsunami. Phoenix would be an odd choice for sure, but at least it would make more sense they will be able to handle Orochis if they will be brought back. And heck, as sneaky bastards get along, I don't think Scorpion would mind having them under his banner either.

    Having your family accepted into a great clan is by far the biggest honor a family daimiyo could hope for. Becoming a great clan on the other hand is technically not possible.

  10. Posted

    On 11/23/2018 at 8:09 AM, Magnus Grendel said:

    That's an interesting point. I'm sure someone with more of a metalogical background might be able to explain why.

    I'm sure there's some sort of underlying reason for the mass appeal of fantastical settings (Game of Thrones) versus period settings with non-real characters (Jane Austen) versus historical settings heavily populated with real characters (Rome/Last Kingdom/Vikings)

    Are said real characters doing (roughly) what they did in real life - as a fictionalised version of history with maybe the odd character (admittedly often the 'lead role') dropped in to pad out the plot or get expositioned at (Last Kingdom/Rome fashion) - or are they real people but doing stuff that's not even vaguely what actually happened?

     

     

    On 11/24/2018 at 3:54 PM, TheHobgoblyn said:

    In general, Japanese people seem quite thrilled whenever someone from abroad does anything with an idea they can say originated in their country.

     

    But translating the thing... that would be a major hurdle. And things like the minor clans having animals as family names or some of the families having clearly personal names as family names would be... odd. It would make the setting seem more comical than intended, in the very least. Now, no matter how much drama one tries to inject into it, you may as well consider the setting to have all the gravitas it would have if you were doing it in the Zootopia setting with furries.

    It's why I argued that those things shouldn't carry over to the new setting-- but, obviously no one making the decisions cares even a little bit how ridiculous aspects of the setting sound to someone used to speaking Japanese. Just carbon copy exactly what was there before, every last nonsensical bad idea just in case there is 1 person who liked it.

    At this point, just about the only way to translate the names in the setting, both clan and personal, would be to do it via katakana.

     

    Even so, I imagine that fans of Japanese stuff likely to end up in Japan one way or another eventually.

     

    On 11/22/2018 at 3:54 PM, Magnus Grendel said:

    That said, Game of Thrones has picked up a big European audience, despite some serious issues when compared to anything resembling actual historical politics and warfare and medieval-ised names that are mostly manglings of actual names (Geoffry/Joffrey and Edward/Eddard, for example).

     

    Just an idea that seems pretty obvious to me about why L5R doesn't get to be a big thing in Japan VS GoT being a big one in Europe. GoT has been created by an Occidental mind. George R R Martin is embedded in the Occidental culture, shares the language and has the right feeling for how everything should sound, look like and react. There is not such big disconnection from American and British culture ( and I say British specifically and not European in general because the way usually Americans depict French, Germans, or Italians for example is ridiculous). So for an European audience, there is nothing odd and getting into the universe is natural, no matter how fictional or how much it's inspired from reality.

    Another example of a successful setting despite cultural disconnection that I can give is the 7th Sea RPG, which was sometimes really off the rails when it came to portray the nations of Thea, all largely inspired by diverse European nations. What kept the whole thing together and allowed the game to be successful is that each European country is very different and to the eyes of a french for example, the way the Eisen ( fictional Germany) was depicted was not strikingly odd. Each player group only made fixes in the game lore for his own country and went on full with the rest. This is however not possible with Rokugan as all is mixed up and the great clans are not each specifically inspired by a distinct nation.

    L5R has been also created from an occidental point of view and I can only imagine how weird it will look to a Japanese audience. I mentally facepalm each time I see what is supposed to be an European / American character representation in a manga / anime/ Japanese video game. ("Asuka Soryu Langley" supposed to be German in Evangelion... Yeah sure 😝) I can only imagine it will be the same once you try to explain the lore of L5R to a Japanese native speaker. So the whole name issue TheHobgoblyn mentions right here, yeah I totally get it. It would get some interest as an exotic oddity at best. 

    And when it comes with the mix between Chinese and Japanese culture, I'm honestly not even sure how it would be perceived given the history between those 2 countries (actually if anyone knows, I would be interested to know!) .

     

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  12. Posted

    A few thinks I'd like to point out also here

    - Coop games are loosing interest rather fast if they are easy because beating the system over and over without struggle will result in loss of interest. The story and scenario can keep you interested, but honestly if you only play for that, it's better to stick with the original books, the original narrative will be far superior. A coop game needs to be difficult in order to remain relevant. And in order to achieve that, some deigns can look as unfair and sucking up the fun out of the game itself. This is where game design is important. If you feel constantly cheated by a coop game, it could be an indicator that this said game could have been designed better.

    But there is a second point that needs to be mentioned when it comes to Arkham specifically:

    - It's is embedded with the Cthulhu Mythos. Did you had a shot at Call of Cthulhu pen and paper RPG? This is the only RPG I know of, where in preparation of a session you don't create one character, but at least 3 to have replacements for the ones you will lose during the campaign. The game is brutal and very punishing because this is how the Cthulhu universe works: You mere human are barely an insect near this near-eternal all mighty entities, and only starting to comprehend them will lead you to madness. The stakes are highly against you from the beginning. I think the Arkham LCG convey that feeling pretty well and the sometimes openly unfair difficulty is an integral part of the theme. If my guardian was able to maw his way through 3-4 ghouls gun-blazing and be fully successful without any long term repercussion, it would be an issue. I would feel being in Supernatural or Buffy rather then in Arkham.

     

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  13. Posted

    On 11/5/2018 at 1:59 PM, zoziano said:

    I don't know card names yet at all or what many of the terms mean. We will not be doing tournaments. Just casual play. So what exactly does "cycle out" mean? Just no longer tourney legal? Or never again ever in print?

     

    Cycle out refers to tournament legal cards indeed. However, the last cycle (Kitara) has been designed with the fact in mind that the Genesys and Spinn cycle were no longer tournament legal and the interactions between cards from Kitara with the ones of these 2 first cycles were not play-tested. This is also the case for some cards included into the original core set (not the revised one). You might run into some issues if you mix them up

  14. Posted

    If you are on a limited budget and don't intend buying everything that came out,  I personally feel the deluxe expansions would be the best choice. The 4 first ones were giving you focus on each faction with new ID's and expending significantly your deck-building and strategy options (as there are only 3 runner factions, the 4the deluxe expansion (Data and Destiny) gave you 3 mini faction on the runner side: Adam, Apex and Sunny, that got support on later releases and got some very unique mechanics). Finally the last deluxe expansion Reign and Reverie, is catering to everyone and is a small box full of boons for absolutely every faction. It's totally worth it if you can still get your hands on it.

    If you have more budget after that, look for the Terminal Directive box, the cards are nice and the campaign brings some interesting take on the game.

    When it comes to Datapacks, it's more complicated as it really depends on what build you want to focus on. The last cycle (Kitara) was really nice

  15. Posted

    15 hours ago, Grapefruity said:

    The cost for all the l5r cards is $340.

    This is going to look really intimidating to the vast majority of people coming to this hobby. You are really ignoring my points here I feel.

    Anyway, without going over them again, here's an example for you:If the cost to be able to play one clan to it's fullest potential was only the 120 for the base game, and then 220/8 x2 (the cost for the rest of the clans where 220 is the value of the remaining cards, 8 is the number of clans assuming neutral as a clan for a quick estimate.) then that is 120 + 55 = 175. That's already nearly halved the entry fee and that's without even splitting up the core box. And who's to say I wouldn't go ahead and buy cards for other clans and spend just as much in the end?

    You'd get way more players coming into the game like this I think. But nevermind, you're right, let's turn them all away because they aren't "choosing the right hobby". Anyhow I've said my piece, so I won't say any more, make of it what you will.

     

    I think you misread why I was trying to say.

    I agree with you card games are expensive. The problem is the available potential market for it. We are a core of players interested by it but it's not as mainstream as MTG who build on a decades long legacy or hearthstone, full digital and user friendly, accessible from anywhere, attracting people with a free to play economy model.

    I would be the first one to be happy with the solution you outline. Who wouldn't want to see his hobby cost less?

    Reality of the market however makes that FFG has chosen this way to commercialize the product for a good reason. And it's in their interest, not in our's the consumers. I don't necessarily agree with them, but I understand. I'm not trying to defend the business model, because as you say, 340$ to get into a card game is a huge cost. As I mentioned when I got into ANR, it took me years of monthly dedicated budget to get back on track and buy all the cards previously released during 3 years., and I only did it because Netrunner had a special place in my hart. I would have been delighted if other option would have been there ot avoid such a money sink.

    So I totally get your point, and ideally, I'm on your  side. But realistically? it's not going to happen. Not only because people are ready to spend money on how the offer is now, but because there is little chance and editor like FFG wil take such a huge risk for one of their product given the player base they expect.

     

  16. Posted

    The cost of L5R?

    This game just came out  a year ago. Getting on board was easy. Finance management to get ANR was way more complicated as I jumped on it 3 years after release. But for L5R, if paying 120€ every 6 month looks expensive for you, I think you are not choosing the right hobby. You will have hard time finding really cheaper offers given the card volumes.

     

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  18. Posted

    Seeing the success of Gwent from Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk being in production by CDPR, I would not be surprised if WOTC plans to release a digital version of Netrunner to go with the game. These things happening now seem to be too much of a coincidence, and it would make sense business-wise. But there was nothing announced hinting this so this is pure speculation.

  19. Posted

    In the times of the Lotus edition, old 5R was structured without an influence system. The conflict (former fate) deck was made up with mostly unaligned action cards and even if you could very well play out-of-clan personalities you would pay them more to bring them up to the table. As a result, it was quite unusual to see someone pulling a card out of faction.

    I don't think LCGs could attract way more people than they currently do. LCGs is a niche product and people really interested in these kind of games will drop the money. Most of us were groomed by CCGs in the past 2 decades and LCGs in comparison look way cheaper. I agree it's still a huge entry cost, but getting rid of the frustration CCGs bringing with the sealed booster packs is worth it into many's opinion.

    I've seen this influence system being mostly used into FFG's LCGs because they want to make sure every single card will be relevant to you, regardless of what you chose to play. This way, any product released will be relevant to you. They have a limited consumer base, they made sure it will stay loyal as much as possible and buy every single product. From a business perceptive it's perfectly understandable. Look at A:NR: the game is fully asymmetric and none of the cards used by the Corp player have any use for the Runner. You are interested in only playing the corp? Well, you still need to buy all the packs, and if you wanted to get into official tournaments, you better got yourself a runner deck as well. This decision was clearly deliberate to max out the sales and avoid imbalances into the community with a majority of players playing only one side of the game.

    Now all context put aside, I agree with you that it would be nice to have a game with factions that stay true to themselves and do not blend. But realistically, unless a game will be a MAJOR hit, like MTG level of hit, going this path is unwise business-wise in my opinion.

  20. Posted

    2 hours ago, Hellvlad said:

    So yes I could try to look for people ready to exchange parts and bits of components between them, but I really don;t have neither the time or the energy to do so because real life and my hobby time being limited. This is exactly where this model fails for me. And I'm not really convinced that his plus sides are making up for this.. For me at least

     

    39 minutes ago, Radix2309 said:

    Or you can get a new version, and if you don't like it, trade with someone else. There will be other similarly dissatisfied people, or those who have just played enough with their current version and want something new.

     

     

    Yeah thanks for reading...

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  22. Posted

    Truly my problem here is the following (because the game it self, outside the unique stuff looks great):

    Let's say I buy the game, love it play the heck out of it and want bring some novelty into it, so I can keep playing. On a traditional format, this is what expansions would be for.

    Here however, my option would  be to buy a new game box. 60€. And this is where the "gambling" starts. By design as each box is unique, I WILL have some new components. But how many? If I'm lucky, the new box could be 100% different, and in that case be a fantastic addition to what I already have,. But it could go the other way and see myself burning 60€ for maybe 1 extra character and 2 new items.

    So yes I could try to look for people ready to exhange parts and bits of components between them, but I really don;t have neither the time or the energy to do so because real life and my hobby time being limited. This is exactly where this model fails for me. And I'm not really convinced that his plus sides are making up for this.. For me at least

  23. Posted · Edited by Hellvlad

    On 9/4/2018 at 1:10 AM, Grapefruity said:

    Yeah. I've been looking into LCGs and it seems to me they'd be far better off with a business model that had eight clans and sold two full decks from two random (but known to the buyer) clans with tokens as a starter, then sold clan decks seperately. Or sell tokens and rulebooks seperately from decks entirely. Then if they also made mini expansions clan specific, I think you'd be looking at a healthy player base.

    I suppose they think they would be sacrificing profits, because players would not have to buy a ton of stuff, but these days physical card games have to compete with online card games if they want to stay relevant. I guess FFG decided they would rather have a small player base that spends a lot on cards. I think that approach will likely backfire, and they will lose even that niche group of consumers.

    Your suggestions here requires a change in the way the LCGs are currently designed. You cannot separate clans/ factions so abruptly. There is influence allowing you to use out of faction cards in most LCGs and this is not just for minor tinkering, but actual core deck mechanics will come from there. So even if you segregate cards by factions and sell them separately, players will still need to buy all of them.

    To my opinion, the online card games have taken away from the hobby the most casual players in average. The remaining core will be people who enjoy specifically the physical support. People who like to collect, who are completionnists and have pleasure to play with actual cards, interacting with a real human being in real life rather than clicking on stuff behind a screen. This is the same thing that happened to pen and paper RPGs , abandoned by so many player who found it easier to get their fix from a MMORPG, on their computer.

    Board-gaming is a niche hobby, and LCGs are only getting a small fraction of boardgamers interested anyway. Like it or not, LCGs are made for a niche audience and the variety of available hobbies has developed so much since the 90's you will see less and less people drawn to it. Starting from there, it seems natural to me that FFG as an editor will balance their business model with this in mind.

     

    And on a separated note, to answer the topic, in the northern part of the Republic of Ireland, I know 2 players for ANR and 2 for L5R. That would be my wife and myself. Closest FLGS is in Dublin  more than 1h driving away. Not really an option to be a place to go to multiple times per month

  25. Posted

    3 hours ago, Suzume Tomonori said:

    I’ve never played Net Runner so forgice my ignorance, but is the Terminal Directive expansion still played competitively against another player? Does it have an option for solo / co-operative play or does it just add a campaign aspect to the normal game experience?

    Terminal directive was a sort of legacy campaign applied to ANR, making you have multiple matches against the same opponent ( between 6 up to 13 if my memory is correct) . The outcome of each game was advancing the story-line and unlocking new cards that could be used only in the campaign context or modifying these cards with stickers. After a certain number of games won one of the 2 factions ( either corp or runner) was reaching the conclusion of the narrative campaign and was instructed it won.

    Even if it was designed as a legacy game with stickers and instructions to rip stuff apart, you could easily accommodate the whole thing to be able to replay it as much as you liked. but it relied entirely on 2 players. no more and no solo possibility.

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