[LCG] Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game (Fantasy Flight Games)

Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game

Decided to start a thread for this since I know several people from the FoH Boards have played the game in the past. A year and a half ago, Alderac Entertainment Ground sold the IP for Legend of the Five Rings and Legend of the Burning Sands to Fantasy Flight Games.

Fantasy Flight Games has made the official reveal of their Living Card Game reboot of the Legend of the Five Rings franchise today. The rules have seen a considerable overhaul, and the story is going to be a re-imagining starting with the Pre-Clan War era.

Game releases at GenCon in August, with wider release in the months following.

Company plans to support it with the same tournament system used for the other LCGs, but with an additional layer of 8 major "kotei" tournaments across the world each year.

The major difference between Legend of the Five Rings and other Card Games is that the game has an Ongoing "Interactive" story, meaning you, as a player, can interact with and influence the direction of the game's story by doing well in events. Your actions will be reflected in the storyline, and, usually in the form of cards printed later depicting the events in question.

Oh, I definitely hate the LCG model. But unfortunately, much like MMOs, the "I'm too broke to have adult hobbies" crowd screams the loudest.

Hopefully the ongoing storyline will be something that's able to keep engagement levels up. Something a bit more immediate to compete for than a throne-shaped air freshener

Played in the Thursday event at GenCon, went 4-1, losing last round to the sheer randomness of singleton 30/30 decks Was a lot of fun, even if they really shouldn't have allowed people to "play out the turn" at time. I will admit to having a big dumb grin on my face hearing 700+ players do the banzai shouts for the first time in decades. Didn't have a ticket for Friday, so I went to go cruise the boardgame demos.

We got confirmation that the game releases October 5th, so a 6 week wait until general availability. Core sets are selling for stupid amounts right now, considering how quickly they'll be readily available. So are the gencon promos; already got an offer of $200 for my Spot-Glossed Phoenix Stronghold, but I'm a sentimental sort so will likely hold onto it.

A bit of a rocky first set of tournaments, but that's what I'm used to from FFG by now, and they've never run events this large before, on top of their pre-existing bumbling.

Was nice to finally be able to talk with people about the game at the con, since NDA had been keeping me from discussing basically anything. Now I can just claim all my thoughts were formed after playing at GC

A lot of games going really slow as people learn how to play. This game probably has one of the largest differentials between new/bad player Time-to-Play and experienced/competitive player Time-to-Play. 15-40m vs 80-120m is a massive gap.

The Thursday tournament probably shouldn't have had achievement prizes at it. It was trying to serve two masters, and sending super mixed signals doing so. If it's going to be a fun learn-to-play event, then just give out participation prizes for playing each round, don't make those prizes based on winning. And most certainly don't put a worlds-invite in the Undefeated Slot. Saw several new players getting treated shitty by people lusting for promos/hatamoto status, at what was essentially supposed to be a prerelease/extended demo.

Ended up lending my core set to a guy on Friday who couldn't get one from the FFG booth due to sell-out, so that he could have a deck for the friday tournament; now that I see the secondary market value of core sets I'm pleasantly surprised I got my cards back!

Looking forward to never playing 1-core L5R again, and getting to play real games with 3-core soon.