I'm going to just throw this out there right now that, unless there is some other unbelievably good fire province card, Phoenix players will always use Mori Kuroi as the province for their stronghold. The ability to dictate which type of conflict will be fought when the game on the line looks like the clear choice to me. I could be jumping the gun a little bit, but, I can't imagine design gives Phoenix a better choice to use as the province for their stronghold. At least that is what I overheard the foreman of the silver mine discussing with the local magistrate.

I get the feeling that once we can play the game we'll know pretty early on what 5 province cards different types of decks will run but I can see there being some strategy in how you place them each individual game. You don't even have to take all 4 of the main provinces so there is a chance you wouldn't even know which of the last two you'd be attacking at their stronghold. It will also just matter less in local play groups. But at bigger tournaments I would expect to be surprised occasionally... That's my hope at least!

My favorite experiences in L5R were always surprising my opponent with something they hadn't thought of. It was always fun being 4-5 turns into a game and have them just looking at you while scratching their head.

It may depend on how important the rings are... being able to change conflict type is great particularly in final battles, but if you want/need to get a ring early this can force the issue. Or stop your opponent getting the ring he wanted which may be better earlier.... (irresponsible speculation).

Well, the rings do this:

"Air —Take one honor from your opponent or gain two honor from the token pool.

Earth — Draw one card from your conflict deck and discard one random card from your opponent’s hand.

Fire — Choose a character in play and honor or dishonor that character.

Water — Choose a character and ready it or choose a character with no fate and bow it.

Void — Choose a character and remove one fate from it."

Being able to switch from Air to something else could be quite a crimp on an Honour-runner.

Yeah, rings are definitely gonna be important.... each of those rings are great for a specific deck delaying them getting it by a turn could be very advantageous. Stop Crane getting Air, Prevent Scorpion getting Fire is obvious. Void is going to be silly powerful as we can already see how important fate is. And Water straightening a card to allow to defend or attack is always going to be great for military based decks....

So yeah changing rings is probably going to be more important than conflict type, particularly early game.

Oh and we have already seen that there are actions that only work in "fire" conflict etc... also clutch.

By reading your discussion, I wondered if I understood how the rings work correctly.

If player A announces an attack using the ring of Fire, then later this round player B can't announce an attack using the ring of Fire but he must chose from the rings not already used this turn ?

Just now, Katsutoshi said:

By reading your discussion, I wondered if I understood how the rings work correctly.

If player A announces an attack using the ring of Fire, then later this round player B can't announce an attack using the ring of Fire but he must chose from the rings not already used this turn ?

Yes.

Yeah, that's what was said durint the TC interview with the designers.

Ohhhhh, it all makes sense now. Nice, nice, thanks.

1 minute ago, Katsutoshi said:

By reading your discussion, I wondered if I understood how the rings work correctly.

If player A announces an attack using the ring of Fire, then later this round player B can't announce an attack using the ring of Fire but he must chose from the rings not already used this turn ?

Something like that yes. I am not sure though if you must win the challenge to "claim" the ring, or works just on announcing it.

Just now, C3gorach said:

Something like that yes. I am not sure though if you must win the challenge to "claim" the ring, or works just on announcing it.

I'm pretty sure somewhere it said that the winner of the conflict "claims" the ring, but normally only the attacker can gain the benefits of claiming a ring. Unless you're at that Crab province where you can gain the benefit of winning even as defender.

Just now, C3gorach said:

Something like that yes. I am not sure though if you must win the challenge to "claim" the ring, or works just on announcing it.

Mmm, yea. "Announcing" would be better for even more tension during the game. And since your number of attacks per round are very limited (two isn't it ?), I think it makes more sense.

My understanding is that whoever win the conflict will claim the ring, be it attacker or defender, but the effects will be applied only if it's the attacker that won the conflict. But that's guessing on my part, as I don't think it has been explained clearly it will work that way. We'll probably know more with next week update.

Dang, and here I figured it was clearly Kuroi Mori after all.

1 minute ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

I'm pretty sure somewhere it said that the winner of the conflict "claims" the ring, but normally only the attacker can gain the benefits of claiming a ring. Unless you're at that Crab province where you can gain the benefit of winning even as defender.

What I mean is if you "lock" for the turn a ring just by announcing it, or you have to win the challenge also...

2 minutes ago, Builder2 said:

Dang, and here I figured it was clearly Kuroi Mori after all.

Took me a sec but I got it....

2 minutes ago, C3gorach said:

What I mean is if you "lock" for the turn a ring just by announcing it, or you have to win the challenge also...

Neither of those two options. A ring is locked for the turn once a conflict is resolved using it. Normally this would be the ring that you announced, but there are at least 2 cards which change the ring of a conflict part way through. And you don't need to win the conflict to "lock" it.

4 hours ago, Builder2 said:

Dang, and here I figured it was clearly Kuroi Mori after all.

Or Kuro Mori.

Also, it's a Void province, not fire

On 27.4.2017 at 2:50 PM, Suzume Tomonori said:

Or Kuro Mori.

Or Kuromori, since the japanese have the tendency to combine words... but well, Rokugan is not Japan.

14 minutes ago, Drudenfusz said:

Or Kuromori, since the japanese have the tendency to combine words... but well, Rokugan is not Japan.

Or Kuromukuro, where if you attack the Province a giant mecha samurai appears and wipes the opposition...

25 minutes ago, Drudenfusz said:

Or Kuromori, since the japanese have the tendency to combine words... but well, Rokugan is not Japan.

Right you are. Then there would also be a Wikipedia talk page about whether the correct English version of the name is "Kuromori Forest" or "Kuro Forest."

(See the "Arakawa River / Ara River" talk page on Wikipedia for a heated discussion of "Arakawa River" vs. "Ara River.")

6 minutes ago, C3gorach said:

Or Kuromukuro, where if you attack the Province a giant mecha samurai appears and wipes the opposition...

If FFG doesn't include this card they have let us all down.?

I'll just leave this here...

What was that, R2K?