Basically as the title.

Always looking for good multi player card games for our group, and wondered if this is multi player or 2 player only.

Cheers

mufferz

There hasn't been any word yet on what changes will be made to the game. L5R historically has had a multi player variant but is at it's core a 2 player.

The FFG version is going to be released in 2017 at Gencon.

It's not even out, and won't be for over a year.

The original L5R CCG technically could be played multiplayer but some of the basic mechanics of the game were not well suited for that. I would say it was a bad multiplayer experience and no one should buy it for that purpose.

This is one of the things a lot of L5R fans are hoping is fixed with the new edition coming out a little over a year from now.

Literally all we know is: https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/legend-of-the-five-rings-the-card-game/

So the answer to your question is maybe.

The original L5R CCG technically could be played multiplayer but some of the basic mechanics of the game were not well suited for that. I would say it was a bad multiplayer experience and no one should buy it for that purpose.

This is one of the things a lot of L5R fans are hoping is fixed with the new edition coming out a little over a year from now.

Ther're two CCG multiplayer mechanics that quite nice fix original rulebook ruleset:

- War of Honor tiles/path of victories stuff

- Siege 1 vs other

Ther're two CCG multiplayer mechanics that quite nice fix original rulebook ruleset:

- War of Honor tiles/path of victories stuff

- Siege 1 vs other

I would tend to say that only War of Honor is a real multiplayer mechanisms but not updated for the latest editions. I'm not saying that the Siege is a bad way, but it's basically a 1 VS 1 where the difference is, a player is playing multiple decks at the same time.

Ther're two CCG multiplayer mechanics that quite nice fix original rulebook ruleset:

- War of Honor tiles/path of victories stuff

- Siege 1 vs other

I would tend to say that only War of Honor is a real multiplayer mechanisms but not updated for the latest editions.

There's non-official updated WoH rulebook for Ivory+ which streamlined many things and works really fine. It's enough good so i'll probably never play original WoH ruleset again (maybe as stand alone boxed games under CE rules).

It also have WoH tournament rules becasue same guys organized WoH side Event at Sheffield World Championships back in 2014.

For multiplayer card games the best one was Vampire: the eternal struggle, in my opinion. Universal Fighting System had a very good multiplayer format but it was always an optional extra. A new edition of L5R would benefit greatly from being designed to incorporate multiplayer from the ground up.

The original set of Legend of Five Rings was originally designed to be multiplayer. There were numerous cards in the set that only functioned if at least 3 players were playing and a number of cards that were vastly overpowered in 1-on-1 (Counterattack, Block Supply Lines, Rally, etc.) made a lot more sense if you were playing with 5 other people.

But by Jade edition, all thought of the game being done like that were done away with. After all, the real prizes in the game were won through tournaments of one-on-one play. It wasn't feasible to do circles of players at tournaments-- it also wouldn't have been particularly fair (although... that unfairness factor might have mitigated those times when a few imbalanced cards empowered a single clan to the point they were winning everything and might have given underpowered clans a shot if they were played by manipulative players). After all, it would have been mostly factors outside the actual cards or the skill with the players using those cards and more about players working with other players to destroy others in a spirit of very bad sportsmanship. One could easily see player factions not related to the card game factions developing and owning the top ranks by simply ganging up on anyone who remotely threatened them.

For those reasons the whole concept of the game as being a multiplayer game were sort of dropped. Instead they strived, even if they did not alway create, a balanced 1-on-1 card game.

The original set of Legend of Five Rings was originally designed to be multiplayer. There were numerous cards in the set that only functioned if at least 3 players were playing and a number of cards that were vastly overpowered in 1-on-1 (Counterattack, Block Supply Lines, Rally, etc.) made a lot more sense if you were playing with 5 other people.

You mean pre-Imperial set?

Whoa. It's a great theory i've never heard about. It's yours personal or maybe some original designers wrote about it somewhere?

When I was playtesting L5R way back when (Hidden Emperor and 4 winds cycle) some of the cards in the sets were marked as (MP). These were specifically designed to be more useful in multiplayer games than 2 player games. That notation was never made public, and I couldn't remember one to point at today, but it does prove that there was some official acknowledgement that multi-player was an option.

Whilst I agree that VTES was a great game, designed with multiplayer in mind, it suffered from being very long and the player elimination problem. Then again, the only CCGs that I can think of which didn't suffer from that are Arcadia, Illuminati and XXXenophile. I'd be tempted to give the title of best multiplayer CCG to INWO.

When I was playtesting L5R way back when (Hidden Emperor and 4 winds cycle) some of the cards in the sets were marked as (MP). These were specifically designed to be more useful in multiplayer games than 2 player games. That notation was never made public, and I couldn't remember one to point at today, but it does prove that there was some official acknowledgement that multi-player was an option.

Whilst I agree that VTES was a great game, designed with multiplayer in mind, it suffered from being very long and the player elimination problem. Then again, the only CCGs that I can think of which didn't suffer from that are Arcadia, Illuminati and XXXenophile. I'd be tempted to give the title of best multiplayer CCG to INWO.

Dedicated multiplayer cards were released probably in every Arc. Last one was this: http://imperialassembly.com/oracle/#cardid=10906

The original set of Legend of Five Rings was originally designed to be multiplayer. There were numerous cards in the set that only functioned if at least 3 players were playing and a number of cards that were vastly overpowered in 1-on-1 (Counterattack, Block Supply Lines, Rally, etc.) made a lot more sense if you were playing with 5 other people.

You mean pre-Imperial set?

Whoa. It's a great theory i've never heard about. It's yours personal or maybe some original designers wrote about it somewhere?

Well, I don't recall reading anything specifically, but... it would make sense.

Cards that say "I can cancel this battle and keep my province unless you have a card to destroy this" or "I am going to unbow all units who were in this battle so you can't attack me back"... they were troubling in 2-player.

But if you have 4 people playing, it changes something. If you are about to win because of honor amount and you can stop one person from being able to take you out, there are still 2 other players there who can attack you. Not the big deal for you to have a card that that makes sure you get through this attack phase with that province intact.

If you can unbow your army, that's fine... but it means the other three players might join up to attack you if you are such a threat as a result and unless you can beat their combined forces, you might be in trouble.

And a lot of that imperial and pre-imperial stuff was written in such a way that it seemed like one-on-one wasn't really intended as the primary way to play the game.

In fact, in multiplayer matches, assuming everyone comes there acting in their own interests, a lot of imbalances or swingy actions that would imbalance one-on-one get ironed out as players will all aim to try to prevent any single player from getting too far ahead. Once someone looks like they have victory in their pocket, their alliances will dissolve.