It's interesting to me I Can Swim says "if your honor dial is higher than an opponent's" instead of "your opponent's". Leads me to believe they have multiplayer rules planned.

Scorpion manipulator looks powerful....

I get the impression that holdings are just fortifications. They attach to the province, not block it.

Just now, Yoritomo Reiu said:

I get the impression that holdings are just fortifications. They attach to the province, not block it.

Same here.

1 minute ago, Yoritomo Reiu said:

I get the impression that holdings are just fortifications. They attach to the province, not block it.

Yes, but how? There is no mechanic described anywhere for attaching holdings to provinces or bringing them into play!

I wonder if you can use Bayushi Manipulator to go EVEN FURTHER BEYOND in Honor Bid in order to grab 6. Or if you can use it multiple times on the same bid if you have multiple Manipulators on field.

Just now, WHW said:

I wonder if you can use Bayushi Manipulator to go BEYOND 5! in Honor Bid.

Maybe that's why the dial is Hexagonal: for the Bayushi Manipulator 6

The term "breaking provinces" still seems really, really weird to me.

1 minute ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

Yes, but how? There is no mechanic described anywhere for attaching provinces or bringing them into play!

My guess is that it would be placed under the province and the province would be filled with a card turned upside down. So that turn you have fewer options for playing personalities. Just a guess.

3 minutes ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

Yes, but how? There is no mechanic described anywhere for attaching holdings to provinces or bringing them into play!

Those are not full rules, there are just general explanations on how things will work. It's not surprising they're not the most precise.

It would not have any sense that those holding stay in province, and they have similar layout as attachment so it's very likely they will work like them but on provinces.

5 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

I like the idea of discarding repeat copies of Unique characters to give them more Fate!

Aye the character duping seems a very smooth mechanic thanks to fate. Curious if this refills a province, and if it costs an action.

The key to figuring the province rule is the intent and application of the fortifications. There seems to be a distinction between cards 'in' a province (As on this card), and " holdings can also be placed ON province cards from the dynasty deck" (As in the article)

Article left me scratching my head about some things:
•What are Province Cards? Are they a separate type of card from Dynasty and Conflict cards that you only have 5 of? What do they do? Etc.
•What determines who goes first? A mechanic? Rock, paper, scissors?
•When does the 2nd player get to flip cards over?

Also, I'm really kind of surprised that the initial Fate cost of personalities isn't added to said personalities when you play them. Everyone is only out for 1 turn, regardless of their cost, unless you pay extra. I was really expecting initial Fate investment to go right onto the personality.
I imagine this means putting extra Fate on personalities will not be a very common thing, reserved for only the best of the best, since cost will just be way too high otherwise, considering Conflict cards can cost Fate and up to Four battles (that you would/should need to be prepared to attack or defend in) can happen each turn.

Hm...

A small thing, but I note that the flavor text on Bayushi Manipulator is attributed to "Bayushi's Lies" instead of Tangen's Lies .

8 minutes ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

Yes, but how? There is no mechanic described anywhere for attaching holdings to provinces or bringing them into play!

" In addition to character cards, holdings can also be placed on province cards from the dynasty deck, representing lands, structures, fortifications, and other locations. These cards are not played to the home area and instead provide powerful abilities and bonus strength to their relevant provinces. "

Pay and Place?

2 minutes ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

Article left me scratching my head about some things:
•What are Province Cards? Are they a separate type of card from Dynasty and Conflict cards that you only have 5 of? What do they do? Etc.
•What determines who goes first? A mechanic? Rock, paper, scissors?
•When does the 2nd player get to flip cards over?

1) Some province cards are previewed in the Showcase. They start the game face down and when attacked are flipped face up. They all have an ability of some sort and a Province Strength as well as a ring symbol in the lower right hand corner

2) According to the article its random so any random way works. You can roll die, flip a coin, play odds or even, its your choice

3) Unknown. I'm hoping its a typo and should read the first player flips over cards and takes an action, then the second player flips over cards and takes an action

Just now, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

Article left me scratching my head about some things:
•What are Province Cards? Are they a separate type of card from Dynasty and Conflict cards that you only have 5 of? What do they do? Etc.
•What determines who goes first? A mechanic? Rock, paper, scissors?
•When does the 2nd player get to flip cards over?

Also, I'm really kind of surprised that the initial Fate cost of personalities isn't added to said personalities when you play them. Everyone is only out for 1 turn, regardless of their cost, unless you pay extra. I was really expecting initial Fate investment to go right onto the personality.
I imagine this means putting extra Fate on personalities will not be a very common thing, reserved for only the best of the best, since cost will just be way too high otherwise, considering Conflict cards can cost Fate and up to Four battles (that you would/should need to be prepared to attack or defend in) can happen each turn.

Hm...

First player is selected randomly:

" Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game sees two Great Clans of Rokugan vying for superiority. A game begins with both players choosing their decks and randomly determining the first player."

For the Fate on played characters, it would not make a lot of sense with the intended length of the game. Since the games will mostly have between 3 to 6 turns, a 3- or 4- fate cost character would be ingame for the entire length of the game, killing the wanted feeling of ephemerality for them. And in this case, nobody would put extra fate on expensive personalities since it would have no use (or almost none).

4 minutes ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

•What are Province Cards? Are they a separate type of card from Dynasty and Conflict cards that you only have 5 of? What do they do? Etc.

Yup Provinces are your 5 predetermined locations facedown until attacked.

4 minutes ago, Daramere said:

A small thing, but I note that the flavor text on Bayushi Manipulator is attributed to "Bayushi's Lies" instead of Tangen's Lies .

Honestly, I hope they have cleaned up a lot of in-game sources and redestributed them between the founding Kami. No need for Sun Tao if you can merge his stuff with Akodo, or for Tangen if you can just make it Bayushi's.

Bonus points for the fact that you can always say that these sources are ever evolving, and people adding to them don't "name themselves" when they do so. This was quite popular thing to do all over the world.

4 minutes ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

•What are Province Cards? Are they a separate type of card from Dynasty and Conflict cards that you only have 5 of? What do they do? Etc.
•What determines who goes first? A mechanic? Rock, paper, scissors?

We've seen the Province Cards. They are literally the cards that define your provinces, it appears (and you can pick a different one of your five to put under your stronghold depending on the opponent). Face down cards appear in your provinces; holdings are attached on your provinces (presumably the one it appeared in).

Given they want the trading of actions (you do something, I do something) to be repeated in the Dynasty Phase and Conflict Phase, and given the way some of the previewed cards work (flipping over face down cards only works mechanically if you have access to additional face down cards to flip up), I think we can safely surmise that just like Old5R, purchased Dynasty cards are immediately replaced by a face down one.

Humans have figured out how to randomly determine who goes first in a game for thousands of years. I'm sure L5R will survive not having explicit rules on random determination of first player.

6 minutes ago, Daramere said:

A small thing, but I note that the flavor text on Bayushi Manipulator is attributed to "Bayushi's Lies" instead of Tangen's Lies .

Nice catch. Interesting.

"The dynasty phase begins with both players turning over all facedown cards in their provinces, revealing the holdings and characters ready to join their cause."

It is not true that only the first player flips provinces.

1 minute ago, Iuchi Toshimo said:

"The dynasty phase begins with both players turning over all facedown cards in their provinces, revealing the holdings and characters ready to join their cause."

It is not true that only the first player flips provinces.

Which means the article have been corrected on this point. Good to see they catch their "mistakes" quickly and they are willing to update what they wrote to give us exact informations. Same with the name change on the Lion Stronghold.

9 minutes ago, Bayushi Tsubaki said:

I imagine this means putting extra Fate on personalities will not be a very common thing, reserved for only the best of the best, since cost will just be way too high otherwise, considering Conflict cards can cost Fate and up to Four battles (that you would/should need to be prepared to attack or defend in) can happen each turn.

Yup. If we assume Crane and Lion's 7 Fate is average, those sweet-looking 3 Cost Scorpion Conflict cards means you're not buying a lot of people to defend your provinces with.

So do you want a lot of peeps, or sweet Conflict hand tricks? It's another good balancing act that makes the player decide their plan for the turn before conflicts begin. You have 6 Fate worth of cards in your hand you really want to play this conflict phase? That's good, but that leaves you 1 Fate to buy someone. And looking at the board state, you know you need more than 1 person just to survive. Or if you buy two cheap dudes, do you invest in them to keep them up a while longer? Or save Fate for the conflict cards burning a hole in your hand.

Those are good choices that will reward players able to read the game and play their decks. And hopefully the correct choice won't be the same in each game.

Whatever page those Province cards are on, I missed it somehow.

I only knew about the initial page and the "veterans click here" page! Where was more info posted?

While there may be a limit to a maximum bid in the Rules Reference (once it's given to us), given our shaky knowledge of the rules structure of the game, it does appear that Bayushi Manipulator affects all revealings of Honor dials (if you want him to): card draw and duels.