Having checked the source code I feel a bit silly now! The whole thing is a beautiful hoax!

it says a lot about how DESPERATE l5r fans are for news that anyone thought, for even half a second, that this was legit. the URL alone should have tipped, if the slogans didn't do it as well. i'll give them this, the production values are pretty impressive, at first glance, if you just look at the page, it looks decent, so i guess thats something.

if it were me, i'd have just given it an obscure IP address, not tried to be cute about it with the trump slogans, and said "hey, i was poking around FFG's ip block...". that woulda been a high caliber prank. this is just kind of lame hijinks, and for some reason feels vaguely in poor taste

54 minutes ago, cielago said:

it says a lot about how DESPERATE l5r fans are for news that anyone thought, for even half a second, that this was legit. the URL alone should have tipped, if the slogans didn't do it as well. i'll give them this, the production values are pretty impressive, at first glance, if you just look at the page, it looks decent, so i guess thats something.

if it were me, i'd have just given it an obscure IP address, not tried to be cute about it with the trump slogans, and said "hey, i was poking around FFG's ip block...". that woulda been a high caliber prank. this is just kind of lame hijinks, and for some reason feels vaguely in poor taste

Yeah haha!

The reason it works too though is people are expecting a prank from FFG too! So you think its a prank from FFG, but its a prank of a prank of FFG!

Prankception!

Finally read the URL correctly. Now the whole thing makes more sense.

6 hours ago, cielago said:

it says a lot about how DESPERATE l5r fans are for news that anyone thought, for even half a second, that this was legit. the URL alone should have tipped, if the slogans didn't do it as well. i'll give them this, the production values are pretty impressive, at first glance, if you just look at the page, it looks decent, so i guess thats something.

if it were me, i'd have just given it an obscure IP address, not tried to be cute about it with the trump slogans, and said "hey, i was poking around FFG's ip block...". that woulda been a high caliber prank. this is just kind of lame hijinks, and for some reason feels vaguely in poor taste

DESPERATE is a bit harsh. More like INVESTED. Also, as a gullible person myself, I find it to be an endearing trait.

Or this is one way for FFG to tell us that there are more things they intend to keep alive than just the spirit of the card game... Darn, can't wait for the official updates...

Hey there,

I am one of the administrators of the french forum dedicated to L5R LCG.
we are the guys who launched the fake news yesterday.

Our goal was mainly to have everybody enjoy the wait before April, 19th and we hope we achieved this goal. For our part, we had fun designing this page and sharing it with you, I hope you did enjoy it too.

We were not prepared to see it posted on the FFG forum though.
Actually, numerous links on the fake page were supposed to prevent it and reveal it was a fake as soon as the "forum", "twitter" or "facebook" buttons would be clicked on.

It was very instructive to read your comments though, and I must admit I share your thoughts on many points : this joke was a lame attempt to have its visitors believe (not for long) that they eventually got some hard news about their favorite game. Because we can't wait to discover what it is like !

Sorry for the typos, we did not have enough time to proofread the page correctly.

Anyway, we are very confident that Fantasy Flight Games will make a great game out of L5R, and we're looking forward to discuss that matter with you all after April, 19th.

If you are comfortable with google translate, please come and pay us a visit at : http://l5ajce.forumactif.fr.

Kempy already knows the way.

That should not stop us guessing. They are pranking 'not 2 but 1 deck'. 'win conditions military and dishonour', 'never need more than 20 cards in play at any one time', 'shadowlands and mantis in expansions with the odd card in the mian box set' 'gold holdings'

Sooooo I would guess the 2 decks is being retained and the win condition is probably military and honour (perhaps others but the deliberate dishonour mention was intended to get the backs up of people who see the game as honour based as well). Dont know about holdings and The Shadowlands and Mantis bit would have pleased a lot of people so why slap them now? Not certain about the last..

this is not from FFG. Keep in mind it's from a fan who has probably no more information than we do.

This is not part of FFG's marketing campaign.

Here's explanation from people who made this April joke:

"Hey there,

I am one of the administrators of the french forum dedicated to L5R LCG. We are the guys who launched the fake news yesterday.

Our goal was mainly to have everybody enjoy the wait before April, 19th and we hope we achieved this goal. For our part, we had fun designing this page and sharing it with you, I hope you did enjoy it too.

We were not prepared to see it posted on the FFG forum though. Actually, numerous links on the fake page were supposed to prevent it and reveal it was a fake as soon as the "forum", "twitter" or "facebook" buttons would be clicked on.

It was very instructive to read your comments, and I must admit I share your thoughts on many points : this joke was a lame attempt to have its visitors believe (not for long) that they eventually got some hard news about their favorite game. Because we can't wait to discover what it is like !

Sorry for the typos, we did not have enough time to proofread the page correctly.

Anyway, we are very confident that Fantasy Flight Games will make a great game out of L5R, and we're looking forward to discuss that matter with you all after April, 19th.

If you are comfortable with google translate, please come and pay us a visit at : http://l5ajce.forumactif.fr.

Kempy already knows the way.

Cheers

Mika"

7 hours ago, Matrim said:

That should not stop us guessing. They are pranking 'not 2 but 1 deck'. 'win conditions military and dishonour', 'never need more than 20 cards in play at any one time', 'shadowlands and mantis in expansions with the odd card in the mian box set' 'gold holdings'

Sooooo I would guess the 2 decks is being retained and the win condition is probably military and honour (perhaps others but the deliberate dishonour mention was intended to get the backs up of people who see the game as honour based as well). Dont know about holdings and The Shadowlands and Mantis bit would have pleased a lot of people so why slap them now? Not certain about the last..

Shadowlands does NOT equal Spider. Sorry.

If you read the article, you would clearly see that it says spider and NOT shadowlands.

8 hours ago, kempy said:

Mika's Explanation

Wait.

Are you saying there won't be a Phenix Clan?

NOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooo!!!!!!

5 hours ago, Coyote Walks said:

Wait.

Are you saying there won't be a Phenix Clan?

NOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooo!!!!!!

Of course there is. And when you're pitted against one of their members, if you're resolving a card containing an 'O' in its name, you immediately lose ten honor points and your katana unless you cancel with a sharpie the dishonorable vowel

11 hours ago, Julia said:

Of course there is. And when you're pitted against one of their members, if you're resolving a card containing an 'O' in its name, you immediately lose ten honor points and your katana unless you cancel with a sharpie the dishonorable vowel

In French, the mythological bird (and thus, the Clan) is called "Phénix".

21 hours ago, Sparks Duh said:

Shadowlands does NOT equal Spider. Sorry.

If you read the article, you would clearly see that it says spider and NOT shadowlands.

I stopped playing before Spider was a thing, but I figured Spider was basically "Shadowlands, but legit." Is that impression wrong? Spider is to Shadowlands what Mantis is to Yoritomo's Alliance. A once "minor" faction bumped to Great Clan status.

4 minutes ago, Ryric said:

I stopped playing before Spider was a thing, but I figured Spider was basically "Shadowlands, but legit." Is that impression wrong?

Completely. Spider came from 'the Lost'. Shadowlands = tainted nonhumans.

Well, the disctinction is not perfect. Some elements of the Shadowlands Horde are present within the Spider Clan (mainly heavily tainted Samurais and undeads), but apart from a few summoners' pets, there is no Oni in the Spider Clan. In fact, in the recent years, many of those horrific elements were either destroyed, banished or carefully hidden to gain approval from the rest of Rokugan.

Ah, okay. So while Shadowlands was "everything with the taint," Spider is "just because we have the taint doesn't mean we're not samurai too." That more accurate? I stopped playing sometime during Diamond so I'm less familiar with the plot developments since then. Looking over my old cards I have a few with both the Diamond and Lotus bug, but nothing with just Lotus. Shadowlands was always my second favorite faction, after Monk, so I might investigate the Spider clan if they return in the new format. I figure such a thing will depend on the timeline they choose.

42 minutes ago, Ryric said:

Ah, okay. So while Shadowlands was "everything with the taint," Spider is "just because we have the taint doesn't mean we're not samurai too." That more accurate? I stopped playing sometime during Diamond so I'm less familiar with the plot developments since then. Looking over my old cards I have a few with both the Diamond and Lotus bug, but nothing with just Lotus. Shadowlands was always my second favorite faction, after Monk, so I might investigate the Spider clan if they return in the new format. I figure such a thing will depend on the timeline they choose.

i'll try and give this my best shot...

Shadowlands: anything and anyone within the shadowlands and tainted

Lost: a subgroup of Shadowlands who attempted to retain some of their Rokugani identity. This group originated the "Dark Mirror" concept

Spider v1: a group of Lost operating covertly within Rokugan, under Daigotsu's direction. At this time, they were still almost entirely tainted. After he ascension, Iweko reveals that she is aware what the Spider are.

Great Clan Spider: extends the "Dark Mirror" concept to the creation a great clan, following the Destroyer War. In this iteration, the clan is split into a Tainted contingent in the colonies and a pure group that remains in Rokugan, who are united by a clan champion and worship of Daigotsu, who has become the Dark Lord of Jigoku. They also have an order of monks who are loyal were loyal to Daigotsu but never tainted, another order who were occasionally tainted, and eventually a pure shugenja family. In becoming a great clan, they lose the chuda. tl;dr great clan spider was a hodge podge of tainted, untainted, and those who rejected traditional rokugan values but still wanted (...mostly...) to operate within the traditional rokugan social structure.

1 hour ago, Ryric said:

Shadowlands was always my second favorite faction, after Monk

You would have loved the Spider Sohei then, especially when they were tainted.

1 hour ago, Ryric said:

Ah, okay. So while Shadowlands was "everything with the taint," Spider is "just because we have the taint doesn't mean we're not samurai too." That more accurate? I stopped playing sometime during Diamond so I'm less familiar with the plot developments since then. Looking over my old cards I have a few with both the Diamond and Lotus bug, but nothing with just Lotus. Shadowlands was always my second favorite faction, after Monk, so I might investigate the Spider clan if they return in the new format. I figure such a thing will depend on the timeline they choose.

Spider follow a code called Shourido, which is a corruption of Bushido. Where Bushido makes a samurai a "servant of all," Shourido rewards personal conquest. It's literally the Dark Side. If the Star Wars analogy is to your liking, Spider are Samurai the same way Darth Vader is a Jedi. Both can use the force, I guess... ? The whole Galactic Emperor Palpatine thing was starting to happen in the setting when FFG bought the game. It became apparent that this is were the story was heading when Daigotsu/Spider were repeatedly saved by plot armor.

In any case, Spider has six(?) families (Chuda, Daigotsu, Kokujin, Goju, Susumu, Ninube) many with essentially overlapping themes. I'm certain someone will correct me there. They do have millions, nay billions, of corrupted monks and you may have liked that, but they weren't concerned with enlightenment even a little. Facepunch.

1 minute ago, Iuchi Toshimo said:

Spider follow a code called Shourido, which is a corruption of Bushido. Where Bushido makes a samurai a "servant of all," Shourido rewards personal conquest. It's literally the Dark Side. If the Star Wars analogy is to your liking, Spider are Samurai the same way Darth Vader is a Jedi. Both can use the force, I guess... ? The whole Galactic Emperor Palpatine thing was starting to happen in the setting when FFG bought the game. It became apparent that this is were the story was heading when Daigotsu/Spider were repeatedly saved by plot armor.

In any case, Spider has six(?) families (Chuda, Daigotsu, Kokujin, Goju, Susumu, Ninube) many with essentially overlapping themes. I'm certain someone will correct me there. They do have millions, nay billions, of corrupted monks and you may have liked that, but they weren't concerned with enlightenment even a little. Facepunch.

Chuda (Oni Summoners) quit and went back to the Shadowlands proper. Spider wasn't evil enough? That and when the Spider was allowed to join as a Great Clan, the ones within the borders of the Empire proper weren't allowed to be tainted anymore. But the ones out in the colonies could be. Chuda probably didn't like that either.

The chuda weren't too into the whole "you can't summon oni no more" thing. the spider also had, briefly, at the end there, the Gyushi family. i think they were more a vassal than a full family, but they got carded so whatever that means.

That post wasn't made on the official forums. If you can't tell by the typos, then consider the context. You know it's the official forum when someone pranks the community, and they just go right back to nitpicking the differences between random keywords.

25 minutes ago, Nickciufi said:

That post wasn't made on the official forums. If you can't tell by the typos, then consider the context. You know it's the official forum when someone pranks the community, and they just go right back to nitpicking the differences between random keywords.

Got anything better to do?