Hello all.

I am new to competitive play and wanted to find out if there are any good locations to learn terminology for a lot of the decks people post about playing against? Example - naked lion - I guess this means a lion military deck with no attachments? There are a lot of decks listed that just use acronyms.

Sorry there are no play groups here, so I have to study what I can online and travel for tourneys if I want to see competitive play.

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Yes, naked lions means exactly that. Though in my playgroup we also use it when talking about http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hySoCSoH-g8 (Disclaimer: Click at your own risk!)

Usually the acronyms will refer to the name of the stronghold the deck uses. For instance in Scorpion HMD (Hidden Moon Dojo) SSK (Seven Stings Keep) PoCS (Palace of Crimson Shadows) and FoBS (Fortress of Blackened Sight). This will be followed generally by the victory condition(s), the main strategy and/or the kind of personalities it uses. There's no comprehensive list for this since anyone can break out a SSK shugenja/magistrates dishonor bleeder/enlightenment switch (or any other crazy idea) at any time. Some of the game terms will sound alien to you at first but it's nigh impossible to give you a complete list since it would take hours to write! You'll grow accustomed to the slang, in time. Until then, tournament reports will make you feel you're reading a text in another language.

Enjoy the game, and see if you can tric... I mean convince some friends to join you in the game, since L5R is a complex game and lots of testing are needed until you can dominate the tactics.

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Where do you find these videos! lol. Very odd yet strangely amusing.

Welcome to L5R. Hopefully, you can get your friends playing as well.

You can also try the online resources to play that there are. The Game is the first to pop in my head, it can also help you to get your deck going before actually getting the cards (since its complicated to get them if no one else plays in your area) go to http://www.kamisasori.net/ and download them.
I believe there was a list of people that connected and played online with the game in Kuroiban...before the fall that is, so it would be nice if we can start the same topic here.

Good luck and have fun

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"I knew you will come back for me"
Crimson Legion

Definitely.

If I can get one of the online players up and running I'd be very happy to play some games.

I'm moving away from my nearest play group and so will need to find somewhere new.

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Kolat...

I'm a bit out of the loop as well, but in the past I found that the more you interact with the community the more you start to pick things up. You'll also run across decklists that will offer some clarification. Usually, if there's some kind of deck running around with an interesting name you don't understand, poke around a place where that clan's players hang out and read some of their arguments about the deck type.

My wife and I are also in the position of having no playgroup, so any organization of online players would be welcome and appreciated. On The Home of the Crane, I've seen mention of The Egg as an option. When I played before I would occasionally practice using Gempukku or The Game.

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Michael Beeson
Crane Clan Governor • Courtier

I'll work up a list.

If there's any terms people are confused about, post them here and I'll include them.

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Jon Butler
Scorpion Clan • Samurai • Final Student • Vigilant

"I would sooner our clan be numbered less than a hundred than suffer traitors in our midst"
Shosuro Yudoka

Thanks for all of the responses. I will try checking out the online options available. I'm sure it will give me good practice

If we can get an online play group together that would be fantastic! If I have time later this afternoon I will post the deck build I was working on and see if anyone has any pointers.

Mamoru - thanks for the explanation on scorpion decks. I am assuming a lot of the acronyms used for other clans are also based on stronghold and win condition with some exceptions.

Akai - I'm glad you put this site together. I had some difficulties in the past with gaining access to Kuroiban, so wasn't able to participate in forms.

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An introduction to playstyles. This is not by far a comprehensive list.

Military can use several styles.

Blitz: It is based on buying personalities fast and sometimes increasing their force to break provinces early, before the defender has any chance to oppose and defend. If it is successful, the game will be over soon. If it isn't, it loses punch in the middle of the game. Lion and some Phoenix can use this strategy, but also Scorpion Ninja.

Swarm: It is based on buying/creating many cheap personalities and flooding the board with them so you can't control them all. Spider Zombies Breeder is the most popular deck of this type nowadays, though Spider Goblins had its time of glory. Naked Lions could also swarm the board.

Big units: This deck bases on buying high force personalities, and/or attaching them things until they become scary. Other units on the board will be there to protect them, but in general they focus on threatening provinces with single units. Control decks can be their bane. Crab is the master of this tactic.

There are also several more mid-game military decks, but these are divided between the personalities they use. Commanders, kensai, magistrates, ninja, duelists, yojimbo, paragons, shugenja... Each has their own capabilities and weaknesses, but in general they base on building average-sized units, keeping board control and taking (then keeping) soon the initiative in the exchange of provinces.

Honor:

Honor decks are styled upon the speed of their gains. You have Honor Bombs (gains a lot in one turn, usually by means of a combo), Honor Rocket (lots of gains divided upon several turns, but may cross as early as the Bomb), Turbo Honor (not so fast as the Rocket decktype) or Honor Crawler (slow gains, but defends provinces successfully to buy the time it needs to cross).

Dishonor:

Similar to Honor, you have Dishonor Bombs (lots of losses in a single turn to finish the opponent), Dishonor Bleeder (lots of recurrent losses). Bleeder can work through Presenceless Defence (with actions like Outer Walls or Settling the Homeless that don't require to assign defenders), PK (stands for Personality Kill, controlling the board through killing peeps and causing losses if they die dishonored), Defensive (assigning peeps to battle and causing losses while they defend the provinces), Control (denying your opponent the chances of attacking, or applying extra costs on their attacks, Dishonor PK could also be considered a variant of this) or Military Switch (Seven Stings Keep decks work this way, breaking provinces to cause the losses and thus putting the opponent in double jeopardy)

Enlightenment:

Enlightenment is invariably a combo deck that must include either shugenja or monks, and duels. Unless they rely on a quite specific combo, they can't really be divided in subgroups.

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Wow, this was really helpful. Thanks again Mamoru.

Was not aware of all of the naming conventions for the Dishonor theme... wonder what my dishonor deck would fall under.

I will have a head start on learning names and grouping them based on stronghold, speed, attachments etc.

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Its easy:
->You dishonor via:
-->little dishonor every turn until you win= bleeder
-->big chunks of dishonor every few turns= bomb

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"I knew you will come back for me"
Crimson Legion

There's now a page dedicated to the various Acronyms and Nicknames used in L5R. As usual, let me know if there's anything major I missed.

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Jon Butler
Scorpion Clan • Samurai • Final Student • Vigilant

"I would sooner our clan be numbered less than a hundred than suffer traitors in our midst"
Shosuro Yudoka

Excellent addition.

Things might be worth adding?
Bottom / Bottom-out - decrease an opponent's honour to -20 (opposite of cross)
Drop - put into play esp. rings and attachments
Tempo - I don't have an easy definiton for this.

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Cheers for the suggestions, I added the first two.

Tempo is something I originally considered, but I think it's something that deserves a longer entry than I'd like to have here.

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Jon Butler
Scorpion Clan • Samurai • Final Student • Vigilant

"I would sooner our clan be numbered less than a hundred than suffer traitors in our midst"
Shosuro Yudoka

Thanks Akai!

Now the only thing I need to do is start a play group

Hopefully, with the start of EE I maybe able to get a few friends to pick it up.

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