The Gencon Environment

Posted on July 16, 2011 by Bayushi Akai

Obviously it can be impossible to say what exactly will be the decks to beat at Gencon, but we can certainly make educated guesses about what are the top decks in each Clan. It’s important to remember that because of Clan diversity in L5R, people are more likely to play subpar decks in a major event than in other CCGs. As someone who has done this (Ninjastrates!!!), I totally understand and support the reasons people do this, but it can lead to some strange matchups that you could never have planned for.

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Great Clans RPG Previews

Posted on July 3, 2011 by Bayushi Akai

Those of you interested in the L5R 4E RPG and the upcoming Great Clans book should check out The Celestial Agonies, which has regular previews of the new mechanics and schools in the book.

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Gold vs Cards: Border Keep & Bamboo Harvesters Comparisons

Posted on July 3, 2011 by Bayushi Akai

With all of Forgotten Legacy finally previewed, it’s time to get planning for Gencon and the other events occurring before the release of Second City. As a Clan that routinely goes second, for us two of the most important FL cards are Border Keep XP and Bamboo Harvesters XP. The goal of this article is to help you decide which one fits your deck. Be warned- as much as my usual articles are based on pure opinion, this one is dramatically about what I believe, with zero facts to support it.

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Mental Meta: Cognitive Thinking by Rory Heffernan

Posted on May 24, 2011 by Bayushi Akai

When people see the word ‘meta’ they too often think it just applies to the card choices you can make for your deck. This series will instead look at ways by which you can improve the way you think about the game in an attempt to get an advantage over your opponent.

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Tempo Basics

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Bayushi Akai

The concept of tempo is one commonly seen in CCGs, though it has its origins in Chess. At its most basic it’s the idea that the player taking the more efficient actions is in a better position to win the game. In Chess, this can be seen by a player making a single move that forces his opponent to make a number of moves to counteract- in that period of time the first player gains the freedom to implement whatever plans he wants.

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Website Updates

Posted on May 18, 2011 by Bayushi Akai

This is just a quick post to highlight the two recent additions to the Frontpage, found in the bar at the top of the screen.

Acronyms + Shorthand is a list of commonly used L5R phrases, which will hopefully be of use to new players try to get a handle on the various jargon used in decklists and tournament reports. If there’s anything you feel I missed, feel free to drop by the Forum and point them out to me

Set Overviews contains a card by card review of Before the Dawn, and will be updated with each new set that is released. It is currently written primarily from the point of the view of the CE environment, though it will be updated to EE once we know how that will look.

Don’t forget that if there’s any topic you’d like to see an article on, let us know on the Forum and I’ll see about getting something done up.

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Emerald Empire Review: Scorpion by Matt Tyler

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Bayushi Akai

I just got my hands on a copy of Emerald Empire from the 4th Edition L5R RPG line. Let me tell you, it is worth the price of admission, and tickets are going to sell fast. What one might think to be just a rehash of material already covered (and thus not worth picking up) I can tell you that having glimpsed through it when first getting it and only reading headers with “Scorpion” I found myself discovering all sorts of useful information even I did not know before. I figured I was about done at one point and realised I was only half way through.

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Stone of Remembrance

Posted on April 27, 2011 by Bayushi Akai

 

Although most of you will have already seen this, I wanted to post it up here in case anybody missed it, and as a way of showing the great amount of respect I have for AEG. The L5R Community is incredibly charitable, with many Honour Events decided by food drives, and it’s great to once again see AEG working with the Community to help those in need.

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Playing to a plan by Ken Curran

Posted on April 25, 2011 by Bayushi Akai
The idea of playing to a plan sounds so obvious but what does it actually mean? 

It’s a problem that players of all cards games can suffer from, and one that often separates the best from the good. I’ve lost count of the amount of games I’ve played and watched where both players were just throwing stuff at the other in the hope that something will stick and they’ll come out on top. This is a fundamental error in any tactical game.
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Ninja (Fate)

Posted on April 19, 2011 by Bayushi Akai
This is part 2 of my entirely biased write-up on Ninja cards. Part 1 can be found here.

Ninja are blessed and cursed by access to a large subset of cards specifically for them. Their Action Phase cards tend to be control focused, whilst their Battle cards are heavily based around movement and killing, which are a potent combination. In return they lose access to a large amount of “generic” actions that tend to be limited to Samurai. As the arc has progressed this has become less and less of an issue, and Ninja have developed their own unique style.

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