Part 1 - Evaluating Costs and Power Levels.

New players, even after playing only a few games, are able to look at a group of cards and pick out the strongest. These judgments will be the same as those formed by expert players. Why is it that certain cards are obviously better than others? Is there a way to express this relationship without referring to such non-specific terms as "broken?"
Everyone can look at a card and give a rough estimate of its strength. Top players can go further than that, putting it in a ladder with the exact cards above and below it on the power curve. But few people actually think about how they actually make these judgments. Here, we'll define a precise system of explaining costs, and based on those costs, be better able to compare relative power level of cards.

First off, the basics of Cost. There are five ways in which a card has costs. These costs are Gold, Advantage, Tempo, Opportunity, and Knowledge. Every cost in the game can be expressed in one of these five categories. Every card in the game has a cost value for each of these five categories. The definitions are coming up, but try to keep an open mind. Most likely, you haven't thought some of these costs as being costs before now.

Gold Cost:
The one cost that everyone thinks of, and the one that is the easiest to explain. Gold cost is the amount of gold you pay for a card. There it is, simple, elegant, and right in front of you, on every card in the game. Gold cost is also one of the easiest ways to compare relative power levels of different cards; if two cards have the same (or nearly the same) effect, the one with the lower gold cost is almost always a more efficient, and therefore better, card. Gold costs in the current format range from zero to twenty, with a couple of oddities (such as Geisha Assassin or Hired Killer) that can sometimes exceed that upper limit. That's twenty-one different points of reference on gold cost (or about 5% intervals, for you mathematically-minded people). That many points are enough for players to make very fine judgments when comparing relative values. The other costs generally have fewer specific points of reference, so Gold cost remains one of the best ways of differentiating the power level of different cards.
So, how do we apply this very simple cost to a power level comparison? Here's an example of a power level comparison based solely on gold cost - Mirumoto Gonkuro is a personality with two force, four chi, and some traits which are not relevant for this exercise. Nagisa is a personality with two force, four chi, and some traits which are not relevant for this exercise. The difference between these two personalities is that Gonkuro costs 5 gold, while Nagisa costs 2 gold. Provided that these two cards did indeed have no rules text on them, there would be no reason for a player to play with Gonkuro and not with Nagisa. Nagisa is a more powerful card.

Advantage:
So, how do you compare two cards that have the same gold cost and almost the same effects? This is where the other types of costs start coming in, with Advantage being the most important. Advantage is a cost that many players don't think about, or don't even realize is a cost. The players that do talk about it tend to talk about it in terms of a goal (and tie it into the theory of Card Advantage. Similar name, completely different stuff. We'll talk about Card Advantage in a later article). Dead wrong, in both cases. In short, Advantage is the cost of giving up a card itself to play it. Occasionally, this cost also includes additional discarded cards. Unlike Gold costs (and like other types of costs), Advantage runs into both positive and negative numbers. For example, Impromptu Duel is a card that has zero gold cost. However, it has an Advantage cost of 1; that is, after you've played Impromptu Duel, you're down one card from your hand. Most cards in L5R have an Advantage cost of 1. Some cards, such as Unexpected Find or Agasha Seruma, have an Advantage cost of 0. Some cards, such as Meeting the Keepers, have a negative advantage cost; when you play these cards, you wind up with more cards to than you started with.

Gold Cost and Advantage Cost combined form the core of the balance of the game. These two costs keep the overall power level of an environment steady, and provide an easily examined basis for comparing new cards to old cards. These costs are also very, very necessary. Imagine, if you will, a game without Gold Costs. In this world, players tend to run nothing but Clan Champions and Big Oni, as they'll beat anyone else in a fight. It costs the same amount of gold to Hired Killer Daigotsu as to do it to Tawagoto, so everyone runs a large amount of PK. In short, players gravitate towards cards that we recognize as being balanced with a high gold cost, and games often come down to whoever draws the biggest or hardest to kill Unique first. Now imagine a world without Advantage costs. In this world, players have access to their entire decks all the time. Aside from being an entirely different type of game, where deck construction becomes much more important and games are usually won before players sit down, design space is also restricted; as players are guaranteed to every card they want every game. The power level of any one card in lowered dramatically, since players can count on seeing that card all the time. Unique stops meaning anything. In short, Chaos (or YuGiOh...either way).

Tempo:
Now we're starting to get into nebulous territory. Tempo (not Tempo cost) can be best defined by the speed at which the game is played. Aggressive, military style decks tend to play at a fast, or low, Tempo, while Control style decks tend to play at a slower, or higher, Tempo. Tempo cost is the effect than any card has on the tempo of your game when you play it. Any action that forfeits a current threat to your opponent for increased long-term development has a positive Tempo cost. For example, holdings usually have positive tempo costs. A holding is seldom a threat to your opponent, and will seldom directly advance your own win condition. However, it will provide more gold over the course of the game, and make your mid to late game more effective. Any action that forfeits future development for an immediate threat has a negative tempo cost. For example, Personalities usually have negative tempo costs. A personality does not increase the rate at which you play more cards or produce gold. However, a personality presents a threat to the opponent, and requires that the opponent answer that threat or eventually lose the game. Remember that both of these examples are just that - examples. There are holdings which present a threat (such as Kabuki Theatre Troupe), and as such have a negative tempo cost, just as there are personalities that do not present a threat (Yoritomo Yashinko), and therefore have a positive tempo cost.
In general, your Tempo total compared to your opponent's is a good gauge of the flow of the game. The player with a lower Tempo total tends to be the one who is winning the game, at least at the moment. Think of Tempo as a timeline; your current Tempo total represents where on that timeline (or what turn of the game) you can reasonably expect to win, or at the least attain maximum efficiency for your deck. A military blitz deck that wins on turn 4 needs to spend the first turns of the game playing personalities rather than holdings (lowering the tempo total), and offensive battle actions rather than reactive or defensive actions (further lowering the Tempo total). A control deck that wins after exhausting the opponent's options needs to spend the first turns of the game playing holdings rather than personalities (increasing the tempo total), and playing reactive (cards like Hired Killer) and defensive (cards like Refugees) actions (further increasing the Tempo total).

Opportunity:
Also called the Kitchen Sink cost. Opportunity costs are any miscellaneous costs that aren't covered by Gold, Advantage, or Tempo. Honor is a good example of an opportunity cost - it isn't Gold, Advantage, or Tempo, but every player still has a limited supply of it. Losing honor removes the option to play certain cards, just as gaining honor increasing your options. Any card that causes an honor loss, therefore, will have a positive Opportunity cost, while any card that gains honor will have a Negative Opportunity cost. To separate this Opportunity cost from other types, we'll refer to it specifically as Opportunity:Honor.
Restrictions on when or how to play a can also sometimes fall into this category. While a restriction against playing a card in the first X turns of a game would affect the Tempo cost of the card, a restriction of what cards you control would fall under the Opportunity category. Any cards with "Target a ..." have this cost in them. Whether you need to target a Samurai, Shugenja, or Pig Farmer, the cost of playing that card is increased because you must also ply with Pig Farmers in your deck. This restricts not only your choices for deck building (Man, I'd love to run Chitik, but Pig Farmer is more important) but also the speed at which you can play the card, since you need to have first played the Pig Farmer. Spells have this Opportunity cost built in, as do Tactical actions, Raid Actions, and so on. Some followers and personalities have this cost as well, in the form Honor Requirements, attachment restrictions, or the Loyal trait. This specific Opportunity cost is Opportunity:Restriction.
Any card with the text "As an additional cost, ..." has an Opportunity cost. This ones kind of obvious; it's got the word cost right there in front of you. This cost can be pretty much anything, and so can sometimes fall into Advantage (Discard a card), Tempo (You may not play any more actions this phase), or Gold. If you can't readily place a cost into any other category, then it gets put into Opportunity:Design.
Another important factor of Opportunity costs is the continued narrowing of choices as more cards are played. This is Opportunity costs as some of you may already be familiar with them, but for those unfamiliar with the concept: You have 4 gold available. You have 2 cards, both of which cost 4. By picking one of these cards to play, you are denying yourself the ability to play the other. In order to accurately judge the cost of one card, you need to also judge the potential benefits from every other possible play. Daunting though, isn't it? Fortunately, this aspect of Opportunity costs is so broad that it's next to impossible to apply it to a specific card. We'll bring it up later, when discussing relative power levels during game play, but for now we'll leave it at this.

Knowledge:
The final type of cost. Knowledge is another cost that few players realize is actually a cost. It depends heavily on current game state, making it a relative cost (rather than absolute, like Gold is). Because of this, the Knowledge cost of a card is seldom factored into the balancing of the other costs; cards with very similar effects and other costs may have wildly different Knowledge costs.
The idea behind Knowledge costs is that each action you take gives your opponent more information; that information will, over the course of the game, improve your opponent's game play. For example, buying an obviously duel-oriented personality, such as Doji Saori, gives your opponent the information that you'll likely be issuing duels. This lets them change their style of play accordingly, whether it is searching for a copy of Bear Returns or digging up Ryokan's Sword. Trading in unwanted cards to Well-Laid Plans or Mark of Oblivion, playing an apparently inferior card over a visible superior card, or making desperation plays (risking everything on one specific card showing up) are all plays with high Knowledge costs. Certain actions can have a high Knowledge cost without even being part of the game; sweating, swearing or verbally bemoaning your bad luck are all examples of this.

So, with these five costs laid out in front of you, you now have a clear way to represent exactly how much each card will cost, in a precise and technical manner. No more arguments based on subjective opinions, and no more rough impressions.

But how do we take these five definitions and apply them to power level comparisons? There is a simple guiding statement; of two cards that do the same thing, the one with a lesser overall cost is better. That means that if there are two cards, both personalities, both 4F/4C and blank text boxes, the one that costs less gold will be more powerful. Between two fate cards, both of which cost the same amount of gold and have the same effect, the one with "Draw a Card" tacked on is stronger.
We start running into problems with this exercise when we start mixing types of costs. Is paying an extra 4 gold worth the "Draw a Card" clause? Is revealing your hand worth that 1 gold discount? In order to answer these sorts of questions, we need to establish a set of base relationships between different types of costs. For example, in Magic the Gathering, a card that has a "Draw a Card" clause added on is called a cantrip. Cantrips, on average, cost two more mana (the base gold point) than the same effect without the cantrip. That means that, in Magic, one card is approximately equivalent to two mana. Following that baseline, you would be able to understand that paying three extra mana for a card is overpaying, and paying one extra mana for a card is underpaying.
L5R is a bit more complicated than Magic. We'll have problems defining relationships between the types of costs because of the presence of two decks; each cost save gold has a different value, depending on whether we're talking Fate or Dynasty cards. As such, we're going to end up having two sets of relationships, one for each deck, and a few rules of thumb for dealing with inter-deck comparisons.

Next: Defining relative values of costs. Exploring differences between Dynasty and Fate costs. Plus, punch and pie.

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