The Legend of the Five Rings: A Review of Card Games
The Legend of the Five Rings: A Review of Card Games
All the great clans of the Rokugan remain loyal to the emperor. However, they are not immune to petty quarrels as they fight for a favor.
In this mythical samurai world, it is your job to get to the top. Check out the full Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game Review below.
- ENTER THE LIVING WORLD OF ROKUGAN: The Emerald Empire ...
- GAME OF HONOR AND CONFLICT LIVE CARDS: Join the great clans, ...
- STRATEGY: Your conflicts will decide the future of Rokugan, ...
Short overview The legend of the five rings: a card game
The Legend of the Five Rings: A card game is a two player live card game but can only be played with a basic game.
Set in a fictional samurai land, you and your opponent take control of one of the seven clans and you have to fight each other for military or political supremacy. If you use cards from your hand, you must be the first player to take the opponent's fortress. Watch your manners. For if you act too dishonestly, you will shame your clan and, what is even more shameful, lose the game.
Variations and extensions
As a live card game, there are many extensions The Legend of the Five Rings: A card game and will continue to be so until the series ends.
Clan war
One of the most important is Clan War, released this year, which is a big expansion of the box that adds 234 cards to the game. Interestingly, it also introduces the ability to involve up to six players instead of the usual two.
- THIS IS AN EXTENSION FOR THE LEGEND OF FIVE RINGS: A CARD GAME: ...
- GAME OF HONOR AND CONFLICT LIVE CARDS: Join the great clans, ...
- STRATEGY: Your conflicts will decide the future of Rokugan, ...
Children of the Empire
Children of the Empire is another “premium expansion”. Like his brother and sister, he adds 234 cards to the game, this time focusing on creating the imperial theme of the original. There are no major upheavals in terms of game mechanics, just a bunch of new cards that add extra color.
Otherwise, there are many smaller extensions, usually divided into 60-card dynasty packages and 78-card clan packages that focus on creating specific clans.
Unpacking The Legend of the Five Rings: A Card Game
The Legend of the Five Rings: The card game is in a nice box that includes:
- 7 fortresses
- 117 Dynastic Charts
- 98 Conflict Cards
- 17 provincial maps
- 20 status tokens
- 40 fatal tokens
- 50 tokens of honor
- 5 rings
- 1 first player token
- 2 Time dials
- 1 Imperial Favor Card
- 5 deposit cards
- 2 Reference cards
First of all, it should be noted how wonderful works of art and design are. The box itself starts things off well. However, each card and character comes to life with some great graphics. Real care and pride obviously came to everyone.
In terms of quality, everything is really well done. The cards are thick and the chips are nice and easy to squeeze out.
About the policy is also fantastic. Not just how it looks, but also how it reads. It’s time consuming, but it didn’t seem unnecessary to me. I loved how, to teach you the rules, it allows you to run the first round perfectly. As I went through this, I was more than happy with how he played, and I was left with very few questions about how things work because of his extensive style.
You don’t actually get all that much in a box. But there’s plenty of room to add new cards you buy as you develop the game.
How to play The Legend of the Five Rings: A card game
The goal of the game
You can win the game in three ways. First by capturing the fortress of the enemy. This is done by first defeating three of the four non-fortress provinces and then defeating their own province.
Other ways to win are through honor. Actions in the game can increase or decrease your honor. If you reach 25 honor, you automatically win. If your opponent reaches zero, you win.
Setup
The policy is a handy starting deck for your first game (although they are random). In future games, however, players will have to choose their clan and create a custom deck .
First, build your dynasty and conflict decks as described, and place them on the table. Then take five provincial cards and one card. Secretly place one of the provincial cards face down over the deck of the dynasty, and place the card face up on top. The remaining four provinces are placed face down in a line between the decks of the dynasty and the conflict, and at the top a map of the dynasty.
Then take the number of honor tokens displayed on your fort and four conflict cards to fill your starting hand.
Phases
In each round there is a Legend of the Five Rings: A five-phase card game.
1. Dynasty
This stage is when you need to choose the characters who will participate in this round. To do this, turn the maps in your provinces and place them in your active area. Note that you will also have to pay the cost for each card played using Fate, the game's currency. You can play any number of characters if you can afford them.
At this stage, you can also pay one extra fortune to keep these characters active in future rounds. Failure to do so will be discarded at the end of the round.
2. Draw
In this round, players secretly offer the honor they want to sacrifice to get extra cards. Players choose a number between one and five. When he reveals your offers, the player with the highest number gives the other player honor tokens that match the difference between the two offers.
In return, the player with the highest bid takes additional conflict cards equal to the number of their bid.
3. Conflict
Now to the action. Players declare conflict with each other at the same time, with a maximum of two conflicts per player. For this, the attacker decides whether to trigger a military or political conflict, along with the type of ring (this is the reward at the end of the conflict and gives the owner special power at that time).
They then choose from their hand the character they want to trigger. Each character has a military and political skill level - these will be used to measure the winner at the end of the conflict. The attacker also identifies the province for the attack. If the province is not yet revealed, it overturns and its effects are resolved. In response, the defender chooses the character he wants to defend.
The goal of the conflict is to achieve the highest overall skill level for the type of conflict that has occurred. During the conflict, players take turns using actions from their cards and cards. The measures take different forms, some of which will increase or decrease the skill level. They can also choose to add new maps from their hands, such as special items or additional characters, to increase the scope of their campaigns and overall skill level.
The conflict ends when both players decide to pass. To solve it, add up the remaining skill levels of your active characters. Whoever has the highest overall skill level wins and resolves the disputed ring effect.
Finally, if you win the conflict for a sum higher than the power of the province, it becomes a breakdown.
4. Fate
After the conflict, remove the characters from the game that have no destiny left, and remove one token with those that have a destiny.
5. combined
The cards can be discarded, restored and the game reset for the next round.
As the game progresses ...
The rounds continue as described above until one player manages to smash the opponent’s three provinces and then progress to successfully smashing the fortress. When this is achieved, they win! Of course, this ensures that no side on this path reaches Honor Victory.
Your first game The Legend of the Five Rings: A Card Game
For my first game The Legend of the Five Rings: A Card Game, I highly recommend that you follow the step-by-step example from the rules. It is written beautifully and will immediately dictate the path of your clan to victory.
However, a few strategic things need to be considered. For example, despite all these honorable conversations, I advise against focusing on this as a winning tactic. Almost all games will end with smashing the opponent's fortress. The role of the honor system is largely a protection that prevents players from abusing certain functions.
Even when it comes to the draw phase, choose who you will wisely invest your extra fortune into. Some characters cost more than others, but keeping any character in the game costs only one fate. Perhaps it would make more sense to pay Destiny to keep the more expensive and therefore more effective signs active.
Finally, follow your opponent carefully. One of the reasons the Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game is so good is that you can do a lot to not forget despite your enemy. So if you ever think that there is not much you can do to improve your current situation, think about how you can negatively affect your opponent’s situation.
Advantages disadvantages
Advantages:
- Fantastic game mechanics
- Extremely tactful
- An in-depth samurai theme
- Great works of art
Weaknesses:
- Insufficient number of cards in the base game
Multiple mechanics in each phase The Legend of the Five Rings: The card game has been masterfully crafted and created a wonderful strategy game. For example, the drawing phase, in which you choose how honorably you will act. It’s a simple bidding system, but the way you decide to bid isn’t that simple. After all, you may not want to give up on new cards, but do you have to stop your opponent from doing so? And can you really risk sacrificing honor? It’s exciting, it fits the theme perfectly and it’s really easy to learn.
The same can be said when paying extra fortunes to keep the characters in the game for extra rounds. It seemed like you were paying them to stay longer and fight for you. This is a great strategy to incorporate, so think of several plants in advance. With so much mechanics, there are plenty of opportunities to decide and customize the game board to your advantage at every stage.
There is little coincidence as to when different maps and effects of the province appear during the game when it is first attacked, but there are many opportunities to manage. Overall, Legend of Five Rings: The Card Game can be a beast of strategic endeavor.
The topic was also a big win for me. You can be incredibly involved in taking on the role of a clan warrior. You had to manage the various personalities at your disposal, maintain control of your military power, take political moves against the enemy, while maintaining your personal honor. It is up to you what type of clan leader you want to be.
The thematic side of the game is resoundingly supported by a fantastic cast of clans and characters to choose from. The rules give a detailed description of each one, and the artwork in the book and on each card only further supports this.
If there is one drawback, because so many clans are involved, the amount of cards available for each in the base game is relatively small, resulting in limited options for building decks. For those looking to buy just the basic game, it might be better if there was an option to reduce the number of clans involved in exchange for increasing the rest. However, this is not the way the game is designed. Instead, if you enjoy the game and want to build it, there are many options for this with multiplayer extensions out there.
TL; DR
The Legend of the Five Rings: A card game is a competitive two-player samurai game in which players fight to destroy an opponent's fortress.
The theme is fantastically presented both in terms of design and features. Players have a lot to decide if they want to effectively manage their clan’s military success, political power, and honorary status. With the innovative and brilliantly designed mechanics that make up each round, this is a super-strategic game full of intrigue.
Conclusion: a verdict?
The Legend of the Five Rings: The card game combines a number of brilliantly designed mechanics that create an appealing and exciting thought of a two player competitive game. As any good clan leader knows, war needs to be won more than just military power, and this game connects this brilliantly, which means you’ll have to make a number of tactical decisions along the way.
Fans of the Japanese samurai theme in particular will be more than pleased, as Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game wonderfully enlivens the experience with great graphics and clever mechanics.
Perhaps there would be more cards in the base playing field to complete the experience. Fortunately, as a live card game, we have 28 extensions that can satisfy anyone who craves more, which greatly increases repeatability.
- ENTER THE LIVING WORLD OF ROKUGAN: The Emerald Empire ...
- GAME OF HONOR AND CONFLICT LIVE CARDS: Join the great clans, ...
- STRATEGY: Your conflicts will decide the future of Rokugan, ...
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