We quietly released our next set, Starless Nights, on Jigoku and EmeraldDB last week (and already fixed some bugs on the former as well as some cards). Today, we’ve got a commentary by our designers about this new set. Enjoy!
Here we sit with another set pushed towards the finish line (but not there yet, more on this later).
So, the larger meta intention of Starless Nights was to try and work from the feedback of the set prior (Shadows of Doubt), where a fairly common point made was “there is a little too little to work cross faction in this set. It is all their own little boxes”. And that was a fair assessment. I had decided to focus on Berserkers in Crab, making the Monk deck have more bones in Dragon, I wanted a new engine in Lion (who had, with some right, felt they had no new direction for ages), and so on and so forth. It was a set I felt the game needed to flesh out in many regards, but the critique that it was lacking somewhat in cohesion was very much valid, I felt.
So I set out to focus somewhat in this set. Not in every sense, but I wanted some overarching idea, and I settled on some of the unsung heroes of every campaign. The Scouts, the irregular forces, and in the setting of Rokugan, also the Shinobi, as I feel these two themes have some common lines. So this is where we began. Crab, Crane, Lion, Scorpion and Unicorn all have this bit in their DNA, so fitting them into this overarching idea was easy from a flavour standpoint. Without further ado, we split the clans between each other to have some main direction for each of us, and on we went.
This also left us with two clans, Dragon and Phoenix, to be able to vent ideas that did not quite work in this vein, so we could avoid a bit of tunnelvision and let the brains breathe a bit.
And people might not yet see the big picture of “what do you mean, I got no scouts, did I?”, but we did at least begin there!
The Crab
In this game, the Crab has been the clan that focuses on defense and a long grindy game. The Crab Clan can also go the opposite direction and play some very fast games with their Berserker gameplay. In Starless Nights, we looked to give both Emerald Legacy Strongholds some support, as well as explore what the Scout trait means for the Crab.
We start out with Crab receiving two new holdings, Advance Fortifications and Collapsible Tunnels. These both give the Crab some strong options in the long game, either boosting your defenders stats or stealing a honor with Advance Fortifications depending if your opponent is brave enough to attack into said fortifications. Collapsible Tunnels can help in the late game by boosting the province strength, as well curb your opponent’s early aggression by sacrificing it to bow a character of base military strength 2 or lower. Holdings traditionally have been weak by usually needing to be in the attacked province, but some of the utility of the Scout trait in Crab is manipulating what is in the province. Hiruma Hajime and Kaiu Scout bring such utility to the clan. Hajime can move a holding to aid in your defense, or turn opponents holdings facedown. Kaiu Scout can provide you with a sudden flip mid conflict of a surprise holding or help you purchase more characters in the Dynasty Phase. Another card we added was Hiruma’s Eyes. The Hiruma have always been excellent scouts and this card exemplifies it. This utility card can help you exploit the opponent’s large force or bring that power to your side while defending.
The name Starless Skies made me think about dark and stormy nights, and so I wanted to focus on Shinobi and shadowy/sneaky tactics for both Crane and Scorpion. I wanted to continue to emphasize the themes of the Shinobi that have been present throughout the Emerald Legacy design set: a focus on resource denial rather than gain, dishonor tokens and honor loss, making characters weaker, entering play during the conflict phase, and injuring characters.
Zarzuckett
The Crane
For Crane, this gave us a chance to move away from support for their powerful existing decks and provide additional tools for Mioko’s Song. The vision for Mioko’s Song is a Crane deck that plays differently to House of Leaves; instead of presenting consistent, inevitable large threats that demand answers, you run more lean, with wider boards of weaker characters that scrape out victories while disrupting your opponent’s game state with effects like Illusionary Terrain and Exemplary Negotiator. Unfortunately, this style of gameplay is less efficient than playing proactive large characters, and so Daidōji Hiroteru was given to provide a strong, build-around economy card. It is a powerful effect, and we will be keeping an eye on him.
The Dragon
For Dragon, we decided to more widen their bases a bit, and one thing I felt they lacked in the Emerald Legacy pool was a heavy hitter monk, which when this is written, was unleashed with far too much leash to move on. Rest assured, we are already finding a way for Laughing Thunder to be a heavy hitter, but not going full Francis Ngannou on everyone all the time. I also noted Dragon needed a little more option to make their weapon side work, so I sorted out a slightly different, in clan Fine Katana for for them in the Gift of the Ningyo, widened their bushi base with a workhorse unique and tried all in all to open up their cardbase for a few more decks to grow.
The Lion
At Lion I looked at with a bit of worry, as with Dragon last set, the cards they would lose with the desired cycling of the Inheritance cycle were a little bothersome for us with the direction I wanted to pick with the former set. So in a way, I needed to find a way to plug the gaps I was looking at, and still make somewhat of a focus felt. So I decided to look at how Lion use their scouts and their frame around their fighting forces, and worked from there. The Mapmaker Apprentice and the Forward Patrol are reconnaissance themed, and I also tried to incorporate a Berserker, for two clans had asked after the last set if they could not get some more chance to dip into the splash pool of the berserker cards Crab got with the last set. Therefore, Lion did get a lynchpin Berserker (though they are not meant to have a full theme of it, just a subtheme, just as we hope for Unicorn later. Berserkers are still foremost a Crab thing), in Akodo Tadakatsu.
The Phoenix
Phoenix, who are not known for their scouting shenanigans, or really anything apart from magic and quiet competence, I decided to instead look at it the way Phoenix would. Instead of choosing the place to fight and taking all time to keep a lookout and goad opponents to their chosen ground, why not just use their skills in the element of Earth to shape their fields? That is what I tell myself at least, as I focused on the Earth keyword for the Phoenix. It has turned out to be both a blessing and a curse to have Phoenix as the playground for elemental affinity, because some elements have gotten more focus than others throughout this trip, and that is fair. But I keep to my plan of giving Phoenix plenty of things to mix and match and play with affinity with expanding their Earth repertoire here.
The Scorpion
For Scorpion, the set focused on Poisons. A big downside of poisons is how costly it is when they leave play, which can discourage you from putting them on anything but the biggest characters. The goal of Bayushi Gichin and A Plague of Yokai was to offset this innate cost of playing poisons, and the introduction of A Poisoned Banquet pushes the idea that it’s ok to have your poisons leave play. The Scorpion set was also focused on pushing more usage out of interesting but underplayed cards, like Spiderweb Passage and I Can Swim. Since we were rotating out the Inheritance cycle, I wanted to keep Disguised alive, and Scorpion felt like the perfect clan to do that. Both uniques in this cycle are Disguised Shadow, which is a pattern that will likely persist going forward within the Scorpion. We are well aware that the poison did get a fair bit overtuned in the first launch, so expect a slight move back from that position too.
The Unicorn
For Unicorn in Starless Nights, we looked to expand on the two play styles laid out in the Emerald Legacy Core Set, a go wide, swarm strategy and the high glory, honor Battle Maidens.
The Unicorn are known to be a clan that focuses on attacking with large overwhelming numbers. Moto Zealot embodies itself as a leader in these conflicts where you outnumber your opponent. He also has the Berserker trait to open up a little temptation of splashing. Aiding in this endeavor is the Beastmaster Shinjo Sora, who can call forth even more characters to outnumber the opponent. A Loyal Warhound can aid outnumbering or it can be used as an attachment to protect your Scout characters from province effects.
The other part of the clan we focused on was the high glory characters Unicorn has. Unicorn received a few 2 Glory characters this set, Utaku Prodigy is one of particular note. Her ability allows you to double up on honor status tokens when you would gain honor. This can help you fight against dishonor or help get you over the threshold of the last few honor to win by honor. Purveyor of Rarities lets the Unicorn turn any card advantage they have into extra resources in terms of a small stat boost and fate or a larger stat boost depending on what type of card they choose to discard. Shinjo Oyuun fits in both camps. A harpoon that can turn the tide. You can force an over commit on your opponents side or bring in reinforcements with their ability. Last is Paths not Taken, a defensive tool for Unicorn. We looked to bolster a conquest honor switch deck with the second half of the cards given and are eager to see if these tools can allow the honorable Battle Maidens such a path to victory.
Closing words
So, what else do we have. Well, for clarity, when this document is written, we have just released the cards, and see what happens. We have set up a new watchlist (which turned a lot longer than I first thought, but then again, when you design cards, you often find spaces they fit that you want them to fit, and forget and miss interactions that are absolutely not what you were looking for.), and will try to see how this impacts the restricted list and banlist in first.
We will also try to hotfix some stuff as soon as we decide how to do it, so expect some minor, one-two-three card tweaks at a time rather than a big block, but you never know. Thank you all for being on this journey, and please do reach out to me if you have ideas, favourite things you think should be saved for flavour or playstyle, help us refine ideas. We want to make a good game with the playerbase, and while not all feedback works and not all visions work together, it is very important to me at least to try and listen to you, even if I might not always choose the paths and ideas you feel are the best.
Sincerely,
Rob (who does not want to spring a surprise amount of DMs on the others)
as well as Zarzuckett, Shadow, and Hida Amoro.
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