Legend of the Five Rings: Ivory Edition!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Legend of the Five Rings: Ivory Edition!

PrinnySquadron: Dec 8, 2009

Welcome to the new thread L5R CCG Thread! With the release of Ivory Edition, it seemed look a good time to get a new thread going.

Setting Overview:

Legend of the Five Rings is set in the empire of Rokugan; basically, imagine Feudal Japan. Lots of Samurai, honour, courtly intrigue and gods.
The main focus is the Great Clans(which I'll cover in more detail later); the Crab, Scorpion, Lion, Phoenix, Crane, Spider, Mantis, Dragon and Unicorn. Usually whatever conflict has caused tension between them, or whatever outside threat is throwing Rokugan into disarray at that point in time.
L5R's backstory is pretty extensive and you can a more extensive overviewhere

Why should I play L5R?

-It has a really cool setting
-A lot of Clans to choose from to fit your playstyle
-Chance to have an effect on the story due to tournament prizes.
-Battles are very interactive with a lot of decisions to make, in my opinion.

Ivory Edition Story:
After Pan'ku has been defeated and the followers of Fudo have been chased down, some semblance of peace has returned to Rokugan. However, some conflict is brewing: the matter of the Imperial Heirs, over which Clan opinions are extremely divided. The Second City is also not resting easy with the return of the Governess, Otomo Suikihime and the threat of the Yodatai still lurks in the background, even with the defeat of Legulus' forces.

Now the Clans are preparing for this worst(while also hassling the other clans they don't like)

Whats changed in Ivory?

-Strongholds are double-sided, and which side you use depends on if you are going first or second

-Senseis are back

-There is no longer a Cavalry Assignment phase to combat. It is now an Absent Engage action that you can do once per turn to move a Cavalry Personality to the battle.

-Some actions got keyworded: Absent(can be done without you having a Personality at the Battle) and Home(can be done even if the Personality performing it is not at the battle)

-Gold can be pooled now, rather than being wasted if you bow a Holding for too much when buying something

-Celestials are gone, replaced with Fortifications.

-Enlightenment is an instant-win, Dishonour victory is not; the person below -20 has a turn to get back above -20 but will still lose if they are under at the end of their turn.
-If you don't meet the Honor Requirement on a Personality, you can no longer pay 2 more gold to buy them anyway. HOWEVER, If another player's card has caused you an honour loss this game, you can ignore Honour Requirements.

-Clan Discount no longer exists.

-Ranged Attacks can now combined with other cards Ranged Attacks, as long as they are in the same unit.

-Events no longer enter play when revealed; you now choose when to play them.

-Equipping is now an Open action.

Current Sets :

The current sets that are Legal for play in Ivory edition tournaments are:

Coils of Madness:

Pan'kus madness takes hold in the Colonies, causing it to descend into riots. Also Fudoists!

This was a Direct-to-Player set; you could buy a tin containing a playset of each card. Still available on AEGs webstore. Also comes in 7-card boosters that can contain full-bleed cards or foils.

Gates of Chaos:
The Clans band together to try and stop the surge and insane samurai and defeat Pan'ku. Has a great deal of Fallen guys and a lot less Fudo cards.

Aftermath:

Pan'ku is defeated! The Heirs are here! It's time to now go after the Fudoists because they probably caused this, or something! Jade Pearl Inn is introduced and promptly skyrockets in price.

Ivory Edition:

Things settle down into a wary peace while the clans rebuild and figure out what their next move is, especially concerning the colonies. Renyui's dog token finally gets a name(It's Kiba)

Has nice starter deck tins and some of the starters have some good cards in them(Spider has Productive Mime and New Cavalry Tactics for example). Foils are also way shinier.

A Matter of Honor:

Learn to Play set about a demon wandering into Lion Clan lands and the Lion getting pissed at the Crab for not catching it beforehand. Contains a Lion deck and Crab deck. Haven't check the deck lists but should be a good way to learn the game as they're both military-focused.

NOTE: Exotic Farmlands and Well-Defended Farm are banned in Ivory.

Upcoming Stuff

Sets that set to release this year are:

The Coming Storm:
Things heat up between the clans and tensions between the Second City Governess and Iweko Seiken increase
Will be released around the end of May, becoming tournament legal at the the start of June.

Siege: Heart of Darkness.

Co-op raid deck! Beat up some snakes. Won't have any new Ivory-lega cards in it.
Release date: TBA

A Line in the Sand:

The next expansion after The Coming Storm. More clan conflict.
Release date:TBA

Overview of clans:

There are 9 Great Clans, each with their own focus.

Crab:

Guardians of the Wall that overlooks the shadowlands. Stoic, rough sorts. have a courtier Family in the Yasuki.

Stronghold:

Sensei:

Clan Champion:

Scorpion:

Lies and Deceit! And Ninjas. Mostly Courtiers and Yojimbo at the moment. Good at dishonouring people.

Stronghold:

Sensei:

Clan Champion:

Spider:

The newest Great Clan. Shadowlands tainted samurai, Monks and now Courtiers! Their courtiers aren't very popular though.

Stronghold:

Sensei:

Clan Champion:

Crane:

Fancy courtier-types and duelists. Also field a formidable Scout army.

Stronghold:

Note this has been Errated to say "until the end of the phase"
Sensei:

Note that this ahs been errated to only target Scouts.
Clan Champion:

Dragon:

Monks! All about being elightened, but also have Detective Samurai(Kitsuki) and Kensai.

Stronghold:

Sensei:

Clan Champion:

Mantis:

Sea-faring types, big on ranged attacks, big on Thunder.

Stronghold:

Sensei:

Clan Champion:

Unicorn:

Horse riders with some shugenjas and a small selection of courtiers. Focus on moving people in with Cavalry.

Stronghold:

Sensei:

Clan Champion:

Phoenix:

Mostly Shugenja(spellcasters) and Yojimbo. Has some monks/Henshin.

Stronghold:

Sensei:

Clan Champion:

Lion:

The most honorable samurai! Usually rely on their personal honour for bonuses, with some terrian and shugenja focuses in other areas.

Stronghold:

Sensei:

Clan Champion:

Types of Cards

Here's a quick overview of the different card types in L5R.

Personality:

1. Honor Requirement: Your Family Honour needs to be equal or above this before you can recruit the Personality
2. Gold Cost. How you you need to pay to recruit the Personality.
3. Personal Honour: how much you gain if you Proclaim the Personality as he enters play.
4. The Personality's force, matters for battles, melee/ranged attacks.
5. The Personalities Chi. If this ever becomes 0, the Personality immediately dies.

Event:

Enters play from the province when the ability is played; becomes discarded after the effect resolves.

Holdings:

Enters play bowed: these are usually your gold-producers. Sometimes have a trait(as above) or an ability

Items:

Pay gold to attach these to Personalities. Ivory introduced Two-Handed and One-Handed keywords so a Personality can only ever equip one Two-Handed Weapon, even if they are a Kensai.

Spells:

Can only equip t Shugenja. They do things, much like items that usually rely on the Shugenja.

Followers:

Attach to Personalities and contribute force like Personalities.

Strategy:

Bread and butter of your dynasty deck. They have abilities your can play. Focus Value(the number at the bottom) only matters for duels and some activated abilites/strategies.
Terrains are a type of strategy that get put into play as part of their ability.

Fortifaction:

Attach to Provinces, much like regions did except you have to pay for them.

Senseis: These cards start in play, much like the Stronghold. They modify your strongholds stats. See above for examples!

PrinnySquadron fucked around with this message at 10:28 on Apr 17, 2015

# ¿ Apr 24, 2014 14:53

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 00:10

PrinnySquadron: Dec 8, 2009

Reserving this second post for useful links and promos and stuff.

Spookyelectric posted:

I don't know how many are still watching this thread, but I thought I'd let you guys know:

We're now looking for more people to join the Story Team. Just me, Brian, and Shawn are not going to be nearly enough for Ivory Edition. In case it wasn't clear, Story Team writes the weekly fictions (now bi-weekly, during Ivory Edition), resolve tournament prizes, write any other official fictions like those going in rulebooks and the Herald, flavor text, and so forth. We're basically in charge of 70% of all canon. Sometimes we get input on things like card themes and tournament story prizes, but not usually. You also get considered to write for the RPG, which is one of my personal favorite parts of the job. There's no money, but AEG sends you free playsets of each L5R expansion and base set. You also get all the promos and sometimes some bonus stuff. They pay you in merchandise, basically. Oh, and sometimes they'll pay for your hotel room and badge at GenCon, which is pretty sweet.

If you know the setting pretty well, or you're willing to learn, and if you can write decently and want to try out, you can enter by submitting a 2000 to 3000 word short story to l5rstoryteam@gmail.com. It doesn't have to be set in the contemporary version of Rokugan, but it needs to be in some part of the canonical timeline. Details should be on L5R's website. If you are selected you'll enter the second round of choices. I'm not sure how many members are going to be brought on in the end, but if I'm guessing I'd say probably two will ultimately be invited to join.

In all honesty, being on the Story Team has it's ups and downs. It's been a very eye-opening experience for me. But I'm glad I worked up the courage to try out and it can be very rewarding to see or hear people chatting about your work. You also get to see a side of the industry that is invisible to a lot of people, for better or for worse. I've made a lot of good friends and contacts through this work and I encourage any aspiring writer to give it a shot.

Useful Links

Kolat Informant Usually very update on new products and promos. Keeps a spoiler checklist for when Spoiler Season starts. Also has a podcast, The Oni's Eye.

Strange Assembly: http://www.strangeassembly.com/ Previews, Kotei Reports and decklists. Also has a Podcast.

L5R.com The main website! Obvious.

Clan Sites:

Dojo of Lies: Scorpion Clan Website

Shinden Fu Leng: Spider Clan Forums.

Home of the Crane Clan: Crane Clan Forums

Gisei Toshi: Phoenix Clan Forums

The Dragon Clan: Dragon Clan Forums

The Swift Sword : Lion Clan Forums

Crab Clan Catastrophe: Crab Clan Forums

Unicorn Clan Forums

The Kobune Port and The Mantis Clan: The Mantis Clan have two forums, for whatever reason.

PrinnySquadron fucked around with this message at 16:00 on Apr 24, 2014

# ¿ Apr 24, 2014 14:53

PrinnySquadron: Dec 8, 2009

Oh, right. I'll fix that. Dunno why I assumed it wouldn't.

Big Deck seems cool, and I really want to make a Scorpion Ninja one since I bought a full-bleed Path of False Hope. Nobody in my group really plays the format unfortunately.

I'm a pretty new player though, so what are some cool ninja cards to look out for?

EDIT: I'm probably getting the "No Ivory-legal" cards things from Magic where multiplier sets don't have new standard-legal cards in them.

PrinnySquadron fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Apr 24, 2014

# ¿ Apr 24, 2014 22:02

PrinnySquadron: Dec 8, 2009

You can run Dishonour out of Crane and Scorpion: I prefer Scorpion due to the Stronghold having a pretty great ability for it and Nitoshi allows two activations of it. Some people have tried running Dishonour out of Mantis but I'm not sure how good it actually is.

Honour is probably still Crane(maybe Phoenix?) since boosting your honour production from holdings is great. The honour deck got hit the hardest by the errata to be honest.

The Mantis starter is kind of worth getting just for the Jade Pearl inn, to be honest.

Corbeau posted:

They went back to the good Walking the Way artwork. I approve.

So, when's this game becoming an ECG?

Nowhere in the foreseeable future, as far as I can tell.

# ¿ Apr 25, 2014 09:07

PrinnySquadron: Dec 8, 2009

Something I forgot from the OP: Promos for Coming Storm draft tournaments at launch:

For Each player taking part:

For the winner of the draft:

# ¿ Apr 25, 2014 14:19

PrinnySquadron: Dec 8, 2009

Veyrall posted:

So...I've actually been kinda interested in l5r for a minute now, and I occasionally go on these lore binges, but I don't always completely understand the context. What's with this Fudo guy and why is was everybody so angry-faced about him and his religion?

Teachings are controversial for being "gently caress it, do what you want" which isn't the Done Thing in Rokugan, essentially. It;s seens as discarding the Virtues of Bushido and is kind of taking some of the blame for the mess in the Second City.

# ¿ Apr 25, 2014 19:02

PrinnySquadron: Dec 8, 2009

Todays batch of Spoilers:

From the Spider Forums:

From the main website:

# ¿ Apr 28, 2014 09:01

PrinnySquadron: Dec 8, 2009

El Estrago Bonito posted:

You should probably note that while the 2 player learn to play set is good and full of nice cards, some of them have now been banned because of ashigaru related shenanigans.

Good idea, I'll edit it in. They're allowed if the deck remains exactly as-is, correct?

# ¿ Apr 28, 2014 13:38

PrinnySquadron: Dec 8, 2009

# ¿ Apr 30, 2014 09:10

PrinnySquadron: Dec 8, 2009

Unicorn Previews:

# ¿ May 5, 2014 20:58

PrinnySquadron: Dec 8, 2009

I love the art for the Seeds of the Void one :allears:

# ¿ May 7, 2014 15:37

PrinnySquadron: Dec 8, 2009

Scorpion spoilers are up: I'll edit them into this post ina bit.

EDIT:

PrinnySquadron fucked around with this message at 09:01 on May 12, 2014

# ¿ May 12, 2014 08:55

PrinnySquadron: Dec 8, 2009

Military you can probably get cheaper alternatives to replace rares; the only big hit might be Family Dojo and New Cavalry Tactics.

Dishonour you can probably forget about getting on the cheap because 3x Brilliant Cascade and 3x Exquisite Silk Works are basically mandatory.

# ¿ May 16, 2014 21:34

PrinnySquadron: Dec 8, 2009

I'm really debating whether to go to the Sheffield Kotei. I'm going up to Sheffield anyway but I'm wondering how much of the field is going to be dishonour.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2014 09:26

PrinnySquadron: Dec 8, 2009

BJPaskoff posted:

I haven't played this game since before the Olympic Committee made them change the card backs, and I don't even think I fully understood it back then. Those were the Wild West days of CCGs, who could focus on just one? I'd love to try again, but don't know if any stores on Long Island run events for it anymore.

Are any of the old cards worth anything? Surely there's some "Vintage"-like format for the game?

There's "Legacy" but it's not tournament-supported I believe and barely anyone plays it.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2014 16:19

PrinnySquadron: Dec 8, 2009

Going to the Sheffield Kotei with this (with some edits). Friend came up with it, and it will almost certainly fold hard to dishonour but I don't careeee. I'm kind of sick of playing dishonour anyway:
The Shadowed Estate of the Scorpion

Dynasty(42)
Personalities(20)
3 Shosuro Sadao
3 Bayushi Jin-e
1 Bayushi Nitoshi Experienced
3 Shosuro Keiichi
3 Shosuro Tagiso
1 Soshi Kodanshi Experienced
3 Bayushi Amorie
3 Ninube Shiho

Holding/Event(22)
2 Into The Wastes
1 The Emerald Dojo
3 Colonial Temple
3 Famous Bazaar
3 Geisha House
1 Temple Of Tengen
1 Bamboo Harvesters Experienced
3 Fudoist Temple
2 Heavy Infantry Dojo
3 Nexus Of Lies

Fate(42)
Attachments(11)
2 Untested Blade
3 Shinobi Vassal
3 Red Hunger's Fang
2 Blessed Sword
1 Maddened Horde

Strategy(31)
3 Unsanctioned Strike
2 Planted Evidence
1 A Game Of Dice
2 Deliberations
2 Knowledge And Power
2 Unexpected Discovery
3 Strike As The Earth
3 Inspired Devotion
3 Back To The Front
2 Advance Warning
3 Sneak Attack
2 Discretionary Valor
1 Ring Of Air
1 Ring Of Water
1 Creating Order

# ¿ Jun 11, 2014 16:12

PrinnySquadron: Dec 8, 2009

Whole of Twenty Festivals is up on the Oracle now. Nooooot entirely big on the scorpion sensei.

wargames posted:

The current story is who will be the next emperor right, do we know who that is going to be?

It's Seiken

PrinnySquadron fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Feb 21, 2015

# ¿ Feb 20, 2015 23:45

PrinnySquadron: Dec 8, 2009

It's pretty bad and Spider players are pretty glum about it. Can't say I blame them, the dishonour matchup already seemed pretty bad.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2015 12:20

PrinnySquadron: Dec 8, 2009

App. the 3 starting gold scheme is alright with geisha houses? Can anyone confirm this? Its the biggest thing putting me off the Aroru sensei.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2015 23:36

PrinnySquadron: Dec 8, 2009

The main site is now Super Spooky. poo poo's goin' real bad!

# ¿ Apr 15, 2015 23:54

PrinnySquadron: Dec 8, 2009

They haven't really explained it yet(presumably they'll put up some more fiction closer to the release of Onyx), but the new Emperor is not a fan of the Spider and the promises his mother, the previous Empress, made with them : presumably at some point, he will break the promises made with them that causes Kanpeki to go "Well, gently caress you too then!" and declare war on the Empire.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2015 07:10

PrinnySquadron: Dec 8, 2009

The Crab voting choices went up yesterday and I'm pretty sure it's a no brainer what option a majority of the Crab will vote for.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2015 09:49

PrinnySquadron: Dec 8, 2009

Option 2 is currently winning the poll on the Crab Forums: The "Deal with the Shadows" option had a lonely one vote.

I'm interested to see how Unicorn, Dragon and Mantis go: Lion and Scorpion will probably end up being Team gently caress The Spider and I have no idea about Crane and Phoenix.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2015 22:23

PrinnySquadron: Dec 8, 2009

Hector's art still owns.

Crab Previews:
http://www.l5r.com/2015/05/18/thunderous-acclaim-clan-glimpse-crab/
http://www.crabclan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=9614

# ¿ May 18, 2015 22:04

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 00:10

PrinnySquadron: Dec 8, 2009

It's been fantastic! They guy that does a lot of spider stuff(like The Twisted One and Touch of The Night) nails that stuff.

# ¿ May 19, 2015 15:19

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