The spider previews

The monks got a nice bumb, and got a cheap naval personality. But the biggest thing was the courtiers. I hope someone plays them, they look amazing

How crippling is the -1 gold production on Kuroko Sensei? It looks pretty crippling.

I found it to not be as crippling as I originally thought it would be as enlightenment. All it did was force me to start looking as different holdings. And also spider personalities are cheap unlike my dragon! But I think there is a strong build there and as the gold is shown from this set, we should have a much clearer idea of ivory 2 gold scheme. As the ivory 1 scheme is based on jpi and productive mines.

Huh, interesting. Now that I'm in town you guys should show me the ropes.

I think that the courtier theme is "cute".  That's about it.  The problem with the theme is that it is so specific to spider, that other clans can't really dip into it.  This is bad design because:

1. This means that design will have to print specific cards for spider courtiers, depending on how strong they are.  Meaning if the design doesn't predict game balance properly, it is entirely possible for spider courtiers to be too weak (and have no other ways of being creative to fix the problem, since they are roped in to the theme).
   
2. This also means that other clans who want to get their courtier ball rolling can't realistically dip into spider cards.  So this means that their cardpool is more limited.  For example:  A crab deck can run any cards that require "samurai" that a lion deck can.  A Mantis deck can run any cards that require "shugenja" that a phoenix deck can.  But a Unicorn deck cannot run the cards that require "courtier" that the spider can, and vice versa.  This means that a subset of courtier cards will be "locked out" from other clans, and thus courtier decks become much more marginalized.
   
3. It is being implemented 2 expansions deep into the first block of the Ivory arc.  This means that they have been quite literally spinning their wheels doing nothing since Ivory 1 dropped, and now the theme has to play "catch-up" to other themes that have seen support since day one.  To compare, the unicorn Ide theme also hasn't had a sensei yet (but will also get one this set) so you would think they are in the same boat.  But they are not, as the Ide personalities have been being printed since day one, and their theme (economic manipulation to gain honor) isn't tied to some sort of janky counter-counting mechanic that is just being released this set.  In fact, the Ide can already use a lot of the economic cards currently used by Yasuki.  THIS is good design.  The spider courtier theme is just... yuck.
   

That being said, I like the new monk they got.. the one that can do range 6's?  Yeah he's neat.  Expensive, but neat.

Thrakov, we are meeting for play testing for Gencon mostly at this point. We don't have a set schedule though, but we would welcome you

Sleep, you may have more insight then I do, but is clout going to be a spider only thing? It can easily translate into other clans. Also all Kensia are expensive  

The monks are pretty bad imo. The 4g conq naval personality has a 0 Hr. That means she won't see play becuase you would need to give up shiho and corrupt gold.
Yasi requires too large an investment to be any good. He has really bad synergy with weapons, since you wouldn't be ablr to use any of thier abilities in order to fuel his ability. Not only that but he needs 2 weapons to get a any real mileage out of his ability since most weapons are 2f. At that point he is 14-16g for 8f and a range 4-6... you'd be better of just running dark naga and nitoshi.

I won't even get started on Susumu.