The Swift Sword

Hi,
My name is Wayne, and I am lead on the playtest team that designed and tested the starter decks for Emperor Edition, and will be continuing with the expansion starters.
I am looking to each clan's player base to let me know what they think of their deck. Also, if there are any flaws in my design process, I'd like to iron them out.
From the outset, I will say that I will read all posts, but will only take on constructive criticism. So, I ask, please give me something useful to reflect upon.
This should help me create better starter decks in the future.

Some things to remember:
- These decks are Learn to Play. Thus they are lacking some key cards, or are packing cards that some would consider sub-optimal. This was intentional, to keep them as basic as possible. The less text, the better.
- They weren't designed with the competitive player in mind. They were designed for a new player to get the feel of their clan/theme, while remaining balanced against the other decks.
- As such, the addition of the three boosters for a Sealed event was never considered, and could easily throw the balance out.
- The theme for each clan was chosen to best represent said clan to a new player.
- The card pool available was restricted to commons and uncommons from EE, SC, and BtD. Brand new cards (such as Gold and Steel) were to not be used, unless absolutely required.
- Random traits not belonging to your clan were not included, to reduce the number of keywords required to be learnt. For example, no one-off Cavalry guy outside of Unicorn/Phoenix.

I open the floor to the Lion Clan, and will endeavour to check every couple of days to answer any questions or concerns you may have, if any.

Was there a reason for this stipulation given new players probably won't find old cards any easier as they haven't played with them.

Overall good job I enjoyed playing with the Lion starter, paragons and scouts gave a decent mix and gave me a switch option to force an opponent into attacking (I had 2 Block supply lines, heart of rokugan and attachments in hand so I was not going to attack).

I also found this interesting. I would figure that a new player would benefit from being able to get new cards from a starter deck, since they would probably be able to get copies of reprints from others, especially in a big playgroup.

The deck itself definitely felt more focused. I would have initially enjoyed getting my third copy of Kitsu Tamasine in the starter (only two copies out of almost 2.5 boxes), but in the end I'm glad it wasn't just shoehorned in. It was definitely nice to open up a Lion starter without a random Magistrate or Ninja card stuck in there. And even though I played the deck out of TGP, I felt like I could have easily played it out of SK.

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I don't usually play legacy L5R... but when I do... I play BigDeck!

Go BIG, my friends.

I really enjoyed my sealed deck event, although I found the deck to be somewhat of too much "scoutish". Maybe including more than one tactician would have given me a better lion feeling. The three boosters were a fantastic idea, and the boxes are great.

Overall, you guys made a wonderful job !

With those restrictions in mind obviously there wasn't much wiggle room, but I didn't like that the two themes present were scouts and paragons, making half the personalities low honor and half high, which puts Doseis' 3 HR higher requirement into the extremely frustrating category. And only 2 personalities with battle actions, one of which was a 2-of(bringing it to 6 with champ) I think including the uncommon and common tacticians instead would've made for a less conflicting deck.

(saddest sealed moment, turn 2 i buy pride, the 4g scout, and dosei, and my scorp oppoent buys the 9g ninja and the 7g open force pump guy)

I do have serious reservations about its availability.

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Swift Sword Forum Rules

i'm torn on the starter. while tactician has basically been the lion theme forever, not exposing new players to a trait with rulebook effects right off the bat is also probably a good idea.

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RUN KEPPO IN YOUR SCOUT DECK!

We managed a release event with 9 folks putting all the clan boxes out there. Additionally we decided to play the decks with the additional boosters and rares in the packs and drop the decks to 30:30 minimum, most people played closer to 40:40 anyway. We decided this would help people thin their deck down to one theme or the other as most had 2. I know this is not how you intended the decks to be used, but it worked out great. All the decks were put on a level ground and it was a fun little 3 round tournament, 8 man swiss.

The scout theme is probably the easiest theme to introduce Lion with at the moment. Additionally it helps new players buy what they want as I believe lion has a more complicated gold scheme than most when it comes to good production. Since the scouts are mostly boxable this isn't an issue they are introduced too. Since I bought the entire starter deck display I noticed that all the fate deck had a large number of cards in common, which helps the new players recognize cards they are playing as well.

Overall these starter decks are a vast improvement over the ones from CE, and I look forward to new ones.

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Currently Playing
Lion Ancestor Honor

In my opinion, it was for marketing reasons. AEG needs to sell product.
However, in actual fact none of the new cards (G&S or Hidden Defenses for example) were necessary in any of the nine decks. They all worked fine (my opinion) without.

Wasn't fully intentional to allow the switching, but some defence was required, especially in a near-all military field.

Focus was definitely a major goal.
We toyed around with the idea of splashing in all themes, to show them all off, especially once it was decided to include all strongholds. However, there was no real way to make the deck functional doing this. It was difficult enough trying to balance two themes.

The deck may have flowed better out of SK, probably just due to the battle action, but it was designed to be out of TGP.

I would hope it felt scoutish, considering it was primarily focused on Scouts.
And while I'd love to take credit for everything about the starter, my team and I were only responsible for the 40/40 deck.

Unfortunately, we could only work with what we were given. Looking at all the Lion peeps, there is an overall lack of battle actions, especially on the common and uncommon ones, which were all that were available to us.
Since the deck had to heavily rely on its Date hand, this is why we chose not to include Tacticians.
Scouts were chosen over Paragons because they had alot more available strategies. I think Paragons, and Tacticians, only have one non-rare card each.

To me, Dosei brought the added benefit of learning about honour requirements, something which Lion players should learn sooner rather than later. This was not why he was included, just a side thought. He oas just a cheap, blank Paragon.

?????
Even assuming this is am auto correct failure, one line comments like this do not make good feedback.

Personally, I would have loved to make the theme work, as it's an obvious drawcard, but it just wasn't viable, as explained above.

I think Domotai is actually talking about Gold & Steel availability, which is something we have a concern over in our play group as well

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Matsu Kurisu
--- inexperienced pussy cat ---
Top Lion, 4th Overall Kotei Auckland 2013,
Top Lion PacRim 2012,
6th Overall Kotei Melbourne 2011,
Top Lion, 3rd Overall Kotei Auckland 2009,
Top Lion Dallas/Fortworth Kotei 2009,
1st Overall Kotei Wellington 2008 (Lion), Sportsman 2008
Top Lion Mercenary (Mantis), 4th Overall Kotei Wellington 2006 & 2005
Goto http://www.l5rsearch.com for card info