Been a while since the last blog, things have been insanely busy at L5R HQ. Thought I'd pop in now for a short look at what we have coming up this year!
The Heaven's Will
As you likely already saw on TCGPlayer's news, The Heaven's Will expansion will release this summer. This expansion features the tumultuous events of the war between the Obsidian and Jade Dragons and the Moon and Sun. Of course, it's not only grand cosmic war, the trials and tribulations of the samurai on the ground takes center stage as the Race for the Throne reaches the final stage.
Samurai Championships
The four qualifiers in the US, Europe, Australia, and South America start this summer. 32 players will move to the November final in Los Angeles to duke it out in a tournament that will count as an entire leg in the Race for the Throne. But they won't be alone, as a global storyline event at all Dojo Days participating stores will take place that same day, allowing every player to support their Clan in the final push! For more info, visit http://www.l5r.com/samurai-championships/
L5R RPG 3rd Edition Revised
The L5R Third Edition RPG is updated with more information, more story, and improved rules with this 2nd reprinting of the Third Edition rules. For those who have been looking for a copy of the corebook, this is a great time to pick up the game!
In the L5R RPG, you can roleplay all of the great clans from the CCG, as well as many minor clans that make appearances in the CCG, but don't have the influence to affect the major storyline. There are many additional sourcebooks, including information on the Shadowlands, each Clan, Dueling, Magic, Creatures, and much more!
The Legend of the Five Rings RPG uses it's own "Roll and Keep(tm)" System, in which you have stats that allow you to roll a certain number of dice and keep another number out of them for your total. It is a very lethal and unforgiving system in combat, but then again, you are swinging extra long razor blades at each other!
Legend of the Burning Sands
The LBS RPG will release this summer, bringing with it the strange lands north of the Emerald Empire of L5R. From gypsie caravans to mighty empires of pyramids and parthenon, the people of the Burning Sands will have a major impact on the lives of those in the Emerald Empire in the times to come.
And much more, including a board game and graphic novel! I'll be back here on TCGPlayer soon with more!
The Emerald and Jade Champions special set first introduced the keyword Kensai to L5R. More Kensai have since appeared in Honor's Veil, and Words and Deeds will bring in even more. Kensai may be familiar to those who play the L5R RPG as a special Lion Clan school known as the "sword-saints", those so proficient with the katana that it almost seems magical what they can make the weapon do.
However, in the CCG the term is used in more general terms, implying a character who is a true master of a weapon, be it a katana, yari, or any number of other implements.
Kensai is also used to distinguish a master of weapon combat vs Duelist, which represents a master of single duels.
So what strategies will the Kensai bring? Clearly Item cards, and weapons in particular will be a strong part of the decks that use Kensai. Several cards already play up the theme, such as Mirumoto Narumi exp who draws additional cards when she attaches weapons, Yarijutsu which uses your weapons to outright kill other characters, and Brisk Economy which reduces the cost of items and gives additional card draw if attaching to Kensai.
Of all the Clans currently in the game, the Dragon Clan has the closest shot at a Kensai-themed deck as of now. While it wouldn't be the entire deck due to the lack of cards, it has nowhere to go but up from here.
There are many ways to approach it. One could use the weapons as Chi bonuses to win more duels, or attempt a faster military approach. The deck can use the weapons for sheer force bonus or try to apply additional cards for more mileage out of the weapons.
Below is a selections of cards of a deck that could be built now focusing on the Kensai. While it may not be quite optimal for massive tournament beatdowns, it does have feet to stand on. Cards in the list are links so you can see the ability and what it can contribute to the deck.
Stronghold:
Morning Frost Castle (Dragon Clan) - With the force pump of your weapons, the ability of the stronghold can threaten enemy provinces quickly.
Dynasty Deck
Mirumoto Narumi exp - Kensai, and draws cards when attaching weapons. Attach a weapon, transfer it to someone else, draw, and repeat next turn.
Mirumoto Satobe - Kensai, and provides a lot of force for your stronghold ability, even more when paired with a massive weapon like an Iron Tetsubo.
Mirumoto Jairuzu - Not a Kensai, but his ability works well with the stronghold, and can power through provinces when accepting a force bonus from a Kensai with a weapon.
Supply Outpost - Excellent holding for quickly equipping your Samurai for battle.
Seikitsu Mountains - This region allows you to pull your samurai out of harms way. With your stronghold ability allowing you to pump several samurai up to province-crushing force, you can threaten at multiple provinces. If the opponent chooses to defend against one of your samurai, you can use this region to pull him out to safety, while your other samurai take the undefended provinces.
Fate Deck
Yarijustu - One of the most powerful weapon based actions in the game, this allows you to kill even the largest of enemies with a single action.
Tsi Blade - Easily one of the best weapons in the game, a low cost and card draw built in.
Rapid Deployment - Remember the trick with Seikitsu Mountains earlier? This allows for much the same thing, but rather than sending home your threatened attackers, you pull them into another battle. This can also be used to crush an enemy army with overwhelming force should they choose to defend at a single province after you assign your spread of attackers.
Skilled Quartermaster - With the many weapons and items used in a Kensai deck, this card can take out a lot of enemies. Using expensive and strong items like Ceremonial Armor make it even more effective.
Brisk Economy - Characters like Mirumoto Satobe can use this action to attach Tsi Blade for free, and gain card draw in the process. Best of all this is an Open action which means it can be played on the opponent's turn, possibly causing them to rethink an attack.
So as you can see there is definitely a lot building for the Kensai in L5R. The Dragon Clan won't be the only Clan to have Kensai, though currently they are showing the most. To build a full deck you'd need several non-Kensai samurai, and non-item related actions. However, there is plenty of synergy in general out there for item-related military decks, and some battle actions are useful enough to be in any deck, thus allowing for completion of this deck without much difficulty.
We think players are going to enjoy the new "sword-saint" decks, and we expect to see more of them in the summer tournaments.
Now we turn our eyes away from the noble Clans of the Empire, and to the Spider. The Spider "Clan" is the public face of the Shadowlands. Made up of humans, and those who can pass for humans, the Spider work in the dark corners of the Empire. They bolster their numbers with samurai of low morals, and remove any who come too close to learning their dark secret. However, there is also the other side of the Spider. Many tell tales of this strange group calling themselves the Spider, who rescue villages from bandits, and do a great service for the Empire. Perhaps they should be let in to the Empire...
Needless to say the Spider are pure evil. They are not out to save the Empire, they are out to rule or destroy. The taint of the Shadowlands burns in their blood and they wish nothing more than to invite others to the torture of Jigoku, the realm of evil. Their decks run with the raw power of the Shadowlands, many of their samurai have very high Force to gold ratio, and they often have abilities that hinder their opponents or outright stop their strategies.
Currently two Spider decks appear most often in the field. Both tend to be run out of the Spiders Lair stronghold, whose ability to essentially ignore the loss of provinces allows the Spider to continue unhindered throughout the whole of a game. Spider's Lair players can even choose to simply ignore threats and focus on their own win, a powerful ability.
The first deck is a basic dueling deck. The Spider have many personalities with significantly high Chi. Augmented with some items like the Blade of Hubris or Blade of Guile, and the Spider can often guarantee a win in any duel except possibly against characters of the Crane and Dragon Clans. In the end, the deck wins via military, using the personality kill of the duels to clear the path.
Alternately, several successful Spider decks early this Kotei season have been straight up military decks. The ability to ignore honor losses from actions gives the Spider Clan full use of the tactics that most suit them: Ambush, Dastardly Tactics, Hired Killer and more that noble samurai would never consider using. The Spider also use several out of Clan characters, which also fits with their "subvert the weak-willed" aspect.
Below is the top Spider deck from the Dublin, Ireland Kotei.
Stronghold: The Spider's Lair
Dynasty: 40
Holdings: 17
1x Seat of Power 2x Private Trader 3x Shinomen Marsh 3x Secluded Waystation 2x Family Library 2x Secluded Village 1x Shrine to Fukurokujin 1x Shrine to Bishamon 1x The Khan 1x Daigotsu Kanpeki
Dastardly Tactics gives enemy armies major problems as the Spider are more often than not at 0 or lower honor, which will reduce their most powerful unit to 0F. Gunso Shiraki then takes out the other units which attempt to make up for the loss of Force with bonuses. All around, there is a lot of punishment for other armies. Where this deck has to fight harder is against honor, which requires early attacks. Desperate Wager can win the game, but it is an incredible risk against decks designed to stall your attack.
There are several new Spider deck archetypes on the horizon as well. Their monks, an evil sect that believes in disharmony of the Elements, have the ability to field a deck that may soon rival that of the Dragon Clan monks. And, for those of you who assume the Spider can always find a use for the samurai they kill... you won't be disappointed in the upcoming expansions...
I'm taking a break from discussing the Clans to talk about the Kotei Season. This is L5R's regional tournament season and a great time for new players to experience L5R for the first time.
The full list of Kotei Events can be found on the L5R.com site. Everyone who attends a Kotei event receives a lot of cool prize support, and you have the chance to earn points in the Race for the Throne for your Clan. From points for costuming and theme decks, to even farthest traveled and best sportsman, there are a lot of ways to help your Clan. Of course the spotlight is on the military points, by winning the tournament.
When you win a Kotei this season, you'll be able to choose from a list of possible story effects for your Clan as well as pre-qualifying into the major events at Gen Con, the L5R European Championships, GenCon Australia, and the South American Championships. The full list of possibly story line choices you can make can be found here. If you pick one of these, you can rest assured that your Clan will have gained power towards taking the Imperial Throne, and you may even see a card with your name on it in the future! Previous Kotei seasons have resulted in many cards, some of them with funny backstories. Take for instance Banzai Cry.
Before the start of rounds at some L5R events, the players will rise to their feet and shout "Utz! BANZAI!" as loud as they can. It's quite a tradition at GenCon and other major tournaments. Anyway, at this particular Kotei, the tournament was taking place at a Convention Center which was also hosting a business conference. The continual shouts of "Banzai!" ringing down the hallways often caused more than one suit to jump as they passed by. We of course couldn't let that go without a card to memorialize it.
Another fun card from the Kotei was the Tuftuf Sake House.
TufTuf was the name of a popular nightspot frequented by attendees of the Belgian Kotei in 2007. Apparently it was the source of much... antics, so we felt it was only fitting that the Lost samurai of the Shadowlands would have their own take on TufTuf. Note the ogre Kayomasa enjoying some sake in the front alongside his tainted bretheren.
And, not to give the L5R crowd a bad reputation as being... well... lushes. But you have to watch this video. This was the official top 8 round between a Dragon Clan and Lion Clan player at the Atlanta Kotei in 2007. Sanctioned as part of the event at the request of the players (and yes, we had to leave the tournament and drive down to a Japanese restaurant for this).
We hope that you'll join us at the Kotei. Yes, we do play cards there... but we make sure we have a heck of a lot of fun in other ways as well!
This blog was written by Mark Wootton, L5R Lead Developer and our only true Crane on the staff it seems. He looks at the Crane Clan. The Crane are masters of court and the spoken word. Their artisans develop masterpieces and their courtiers are owed favors across the Empire. Their political prowess is unmatched in the Empire, and their duelists' blades are as deadly as their courtiers' words.
Playing Crane in the current environment is an interesting but worthwhile challenge. Crane has a number of viable options at its disposal – and whilst each has its weakness, each has a match-up versus some of the key decks that works pretty well.
Crane now presents players with three strongholds to consider their strategy:
Shizuka Toshi – Speed Honour.
Generally Shizuka Toshi decks focus most oftheir energy on speeding the honour gain process. The key Dynasty cards are Governor’s Court, Naoharu, Doji Ayano, Doji Nagori, Kakita Noriko and usually Doji Doukuhito for some measure of battle control. Doukuhito more than almost anyother Dynasty resource that Crane have, provides the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” conundrum for the other player when using the Shizuka Toshi action.
The Fate deck is focussed on honour gain inboth the action phase and battle, particularly using the game state either created by Shizuka Toshi or from other factors in the game (i.e. being dishonoured or bowed). Fast honour gain cards like Test of Etiquette, Peaceful Discourse and Unexpected News drive the engine forward. The speed of the deck is its main defence against military attack, but that is not enough on its own.
Players can focus on a combination of action and battle phase. Impromptu Duel can be used for either a quick honour gain from the refusal, some element of control over the other player’s personality or potentially larger gains bowing Noriko after a sacrificial personality has lost the duel. Other preventative defence can be provided by Power of Innocence, Imperial Summons and Scouring the Village. The battle Phase uses all of the standard tactics – mainly of delay – Block Supply Lines, Outer Walls, Refugees and Flash of Steel and perhaps with some dishonour punishing cards to support Doukuhito – such as Unexpected Betrayal, Hunting the Prophet or Insolence Punished.
A lot of this depends on the match up and this style of deck does have issues with some other decks. It relies on blinding speed and is probably as fast as any honour deck in the environment.
Mountain Shadow Dojo - The Military Option
Crane, by design, struggles with any straightforward military deck. It has to use tricks and alternatives. In reality most of its decks will probably be as much about switch as straight out attack – but Mountain Shadow Dojo comes pretty close to providing Crane with that military option. Not only that but it provides a pretty strong defence against military. Having said that, it is fair to say that this box does not provide the faster pace of honour gain of Shizuka Toshi nor the absolute versatility of Kyuden Kotei.
This is one of the Daidoji strongholds and represents the favoured hit and run tactics of the Daidoji. It is designed to play out the combination of Iron Warriors and elite Scout units, who know their home ground so well that they make attacking the Crane a risky business.
The decks out of this box come ready to fight. The stronghold’s ability is easily supported by Daidoji Akagi and Daidoji Naoshige, whilst Daidoji Yaichiro benefits well from using the action. Outside that the options are several. The deck, like most Crane decks, can use duels effectively such as Warrior Challenge and First and Final Strike - if you are going for the defensive honour option. This can be supported by a range of other battle actions – The Crane’s Strength, The Fortune’s Smile, Rout and other cards that deal with attacking units in a more permanent way. A mixture of the key Daidoji personalities with the more typical dueling and honour support personalities – such as Kakita Hideo, Kakita Noriko and Doji Ayano together with some key Duelist personalities can provide a reasonably fast honour deck that is really tough to attack. It is however very vulnerable to other speed-based honour decks like Shizuka Toshi or Dragon Ring Honour – both of which are simply faster. There are now answers to those decks that can slow them down – Unfortunate Incident and Hidden Scandal – but at the cost of some meta-game slots.
The stronghold has some potency on the attack and personalities like Daidoji Gempachi add some beef. The key card in providing the mobility that is needed for taking provinces is Ideal Conditions– with both personality and follower cards that possess the Scout keyword. The key to this deck is mobility, mobility and mobility and anything that augments that approach will work well – and there are some good options out there that can be considered.
On the fate side the military deck relies on followers – Untested Scouts and Cartographers are a natural fit together with the usual suspects of Brothers in Arms and Wandering Budoka. Obviously with this line up Peasant Vengeance becomes a staple battle control card.
Either style of deck can use the powerful Stay Your Blade in military and honour form, giving card access that the Shizuka Toshi honour rocket lacks.
Kyuden Kotei – the Versatile Stronghold
This stronghold is clearly the most generally versatile of the three Samurai legal Crane strongholds. Its two great strengths are:
Unrivalled gold production, together with;
A reaction that has a great synergy with a number of Cranes themes – duels and use of focus values.
First the gold production. Crane in simple terms has easier access to 3G cost holdings than any other Clan. Added to that is an easier fit with 7G personalities than most Clans and the improved economy is complete. This effectively means the stronghold has some advantages in boththe militaristic and passive honour builds.
However, my favourite at the moment is a slow roll Magistrate deck. The deck can turn to solid honour gains against military whilst posing a credible threat to other players’ provinces.
The deck seeks to play duelling with maximised out focus values using the Magistrate theme with Scouring the Village and Restoring Order.
I use out of clan personalities like Bayushi Saya and Yoritomo Kazuma to go with Doji Doukuhito and Doji Hakuseki.
This allows the use of Kakita Komachi, who has the potential to be a real star with this stronghold’s reaction, bowing out one personality a turn for defensive purposes and (effectively) two when considering the attacking option. Using the reaction to support her bowing option, as well as the dueling function has proven to be effective. Nagori and Naoharu of course also find their way into the deck for purposes of potential card draw and disruption.
I think that the joy of this box is versatility and it can undoubtedly provide options that the other strongholds cannot. I think that the full potential of this box is yet to be explored and we shall see what comes from it. Whilst she is strong the Komachi ability has its limitations and Unicorn Temple of Death is a hard match-up – but that is also true of the Shizuka Toshi builds. I do however, have a sneaking suspicion that players will develop some very strong options out of this stronghold as time goes on.
In many ways I am having more fun with the different choices that Crane is providing right now than I have for a while as it is a Clan that has a variety of ways of utilising its traditional themes of -politics, dueling and the tactics of the Daidoji.
So I'm starting my look at the Clans of L5R with the Lion Clan? Why the Lion? The Lion embody the most basic elements of what it is to be a samurai. For the Lion, there is no greater glory than to fight for your Emperor, and no greater honor than to die in his name. The Lion are all about war. War is what makes a samurai, gives him purpose, and the Lion do it better than anyone else.
In the CCG this translates into various aggressive deck-styles, tempered with some ability to switch to an honor victory in a pinch. The most common Lion deck these days is run out of The Hall of Ancestors.
This stronghold allows the Lion to commune with their fallen ancestors and learn their strategies. In game you copy the ability of a dead Lion Clan personality and use it to great effect. The real benefit of this stronghold is that no personality purchase is ever wasted. Assume you spent a significant amount of gold on a powerful character. Then immediately your dishonorable dog of an opponent sends Hired Killers after them. For most decks that would be a very depressing moment. For The Hall of Ancestors however, things are far from over, as that characters ability will still benefit you even on your inexpensive rank-and-file samurai.
Lion also benefits from a plethora of "Tactician" actions. These actions are most useable out of Lion, as the Akodo family breeds the greatest Tacticians in the Empire (and thus has the Tactician trait on more cards than anyone else). These cards allow for rearrangement of your troops after battle assignment, movement of yourself or the enemies troops during battle, as well as just simple Force bonuses to win the battle. The Lion also have an arsenal of what we call "harpoon" actions. These actions target characters at home or at another battlefield, and bring them in to face your Lions in glorious battle. That pansy Crane courtier might have thought he was safe staying out of the battle, ready to mess with your samurai politically during his next turn... think again.
The Lion have also been blessed with a large number of inexpensive samurai with very good battle actions. Matsu Robun stands out among them. For only 6 Gold, he provides the Tactician trait, which the Lion will make great use of, as well as a straightforward Battle ability of destroying attachments. With many followers out there that have massive Force, such as Ogre Warriors, and the persistent threat of Peasant Vengeance, quickly dispatching a rival samurai's troops can be very important.
So what would a look at Clan be without a decklist. This is the current deck the Lion players have been hashing over for the Kotei season. Will it be the one to win? Possibly, but there are also very strong decks coming out of the Vigilance Keep stronghold as well, given it's ability to switch to an honor victory in a bad situation.
3x Wandering Budoka 3x Sparrow Clan Aide 3x Brothers in Arms 1x Brothers in Arms XP 3x Superior Strategist 2x Unshakable 3x Peasant Vengeance 2x Ruthless Advance 1x Flanking Action 1x A Lion's Roar 1x Rout 1x Furious Assault 1x Refugees 1x Justly Earned Victory 1x Draw Your Blade 1x Stay Your Blade 2x Ordered Retreat 1x Rapid Deployment 1x Courage 1x Three-stone River 1x Circle of Steel 3x Few Against Many 3x Imperial Summons
Design Notes (from Marty Lund, L5R Rules Team): Nariyumi really helps add consistency to a lot of plays in this deck. Rout gives you a low-cost alternative to Ruthless Advance if you just need to remove a pesky Item or Spell and don't have Robun at the battlefield. The send-home on Rout and Refugees isn't bad either - as Test of Courage keeps them from targeting their Personality for any follow-up Actions even if it keeps that at the battlefield. I think the mix of send-home, bowing, and destruction is about right - heavy on the destruction and light on the bowing.
Legend of the Five Rings is a CCG like no other. The communities that have grown up around the Clan system are unlike any other game on the market. In this game, you can be a part of something larger than yourself.
Well this is my first blog post here on TCGPlayer, so I should probably introduce myself. My name is Todd Rowland and I'm the Brand Manager of Legend of the Five Rings. What that means basically is that I'm in charge of the L5R CCG, RPG, and all other promotions, events, and such related to L5R. So why am I taking time to post here? Because I love the game and I want you to play.
As Angelo's great review the other day pointed out, L5R is a CCG veteran. It is currently in its 13th year of production, second only to Magic in longevity at this point. What sets L5R apart from the crowd is the ability you have to tell your story via the game, and cause the game to change due to that. One thing you may notice on L5R cards is that a number of them have something written along the side such as "Test of the Emerald Champion 2007 - Eugene White". This is because that card, which happens to be Shosuro Jimen, exists because Eugene White defeated all other opponents at GenCon 2007 for the World Championship an chose that Shosuro Jimen should be the new Emerald Champion. The Emerald Champion is the personal bodyguard of the Emperor himself, so it was a major political gain for the Scorpion Clan, and Eugene is a Scorpion through and through.
Notice how I said that? Eugene IS a Scorpion, not Eugene plays the Scorpion. L5R is a game all about community. Players truly are members of their Clan, and the teamwork that has grown out of those loyalties has resulted in fantastic player efforts. Whereas in other games, when you play its you against every other player in the world, but when you join L5R and decide "I'm a Lion", you have the entire Lion playerbase behind you, helping you with your decks and strategy because they know that when any Lion wins, they all benefit in the card game and story.
I've run into players who played in the early years, may have been away from the game for 8 or more years who to this day still say "I'm a Crab."
How this dedication translates to the game are in storyline events. L5R has regular storyline events where players can affect the story of the game. For instance, there was a recent storyline about the descendant of a great tactician hoping to continue his ancestor's work on the methods of war. The storyline event would determine which Clan that Sun Doru, the descendant, would study with first. As it turns out the Scorpion Clan won the event, and Sun Doru appeared as a Scorpion Clan personality in the expansion Honor's Veil. His abilities are quite powerful as well, enough that other Clans are considering running him in their decks and paying loyalty penalties (an in-game cost effect for using characters outside your Clan), despite him being Scorpion.
Over the next few weeks I'll provide a look at the various Clans and what they and their members have accomplished over the years in L5R.
2x Family Library 
