I've scratched my head these last days, trying to understand how the province cards will work.

It has been said province cards are all tagged with a ring. A deck will include 5 province cards : 4 attached to the 4 provinces, one attached to the stronghold.

Since it also has been said that the ring tagged on the province cards will be important toward deckbuilding, here is my assumption.

The 5 province cards all must have a different ring tagged on it.

When a conflict is resolved and you win it : you manage to claim a ring. To claim a ring will give you the opportunity (in addition to the rulebook effect related to this ring's being claimed, described in FFG's second article) to reveal your province card with this ring tagged on it and to use its power whenever you want.

Does claiming a ring also makes your opponent unreveal his province card with this ring taggued on it ? So that only one player can have "a ring claimed at all time". Or can both players have the same ring tagged on their revealed provinces ? Good question. I would rather see the first option happening, it would mean more difficult choices and less of a stack-up of powerful effects on the table.

Either way, you will want to focus your conflicts on your opponent's provinces that have a province card which effect bothers you the most. It adds some strategic depth to conflicts and destroying provinces.

As a side note, I don't see why, if all this is correct, illumination couldn't be a victory condition. If a player manages to win enough conflicts to claim all the rings and to reveal all his five province cards, then doesn't he deserve to win ?

Ok, but my opponent destroyed one of my provinces which had my water ring's province card... how can I illuminate now ? Well, let's imagine you must have all five rings either on your revealed province cards or on the province cards you 'won' by destroying an opponent's province.

For example, you have revealed your own void, water and fire rings' province cards, and destroyed your opponent's provinces that hosted the air and earth rings' province cards, you illuminate.

What do you think ?

8 minutes ago, Katsutoshi said:

tagged on the province cards will be important toward deckbuilding, here is my assumption.

The 5 province cards all must have a different ring tagged on it

FFG all but confirmed this to be the case in the r/boardgames AMA.

Quote

When a conflict is resolved and you win it : you manage to claim a ring. To claim a ring will give you the opportunity (in addition to the rulebook effect related to this ring's being claimed, described in the second article) to reveal your province card with this ring tagged on it and to use its power whenever you want.

Does claiming a ring also makes your opponent unreveal his province card with this ring tagged on it ? So that only one player can have "a ring claimed at all time". Or can both players have the same ring tagged on their revealed provinces ? Good question. I would rather see the first option happening, it would mean more difficult choices and less of a stack-up of powerful effects on the table.

Provinces are flipped up when a conflict occurs at them. Given the text on the cards we've seen so far, they are meant to be a little like traps from Android: Netrunner.

That being said, it's unclear why the Enlightenment win condition from Old5R has been removed given that there seems to be a nice way to determine Ring "claim". However, it's unclear if Rings remain claimed between turns. Given the wording on Mori Kuroi it could honestly go either way.

As I understand it rings are not kept from round to round. If you win the conflict, as the attacker, you get whatever ring bonus for the element you declared in the conflict. It also pevents your opponent from attempting to claim that ring when they declare their conflicts. When the round ends the rings are reset.

Provinces are only hidden until the first time they are attacked because you have to reveal them to know if the province is broken. I don't think there is anything more to the elemental symbols on the province cards other than you can only pick one of each element. I wouldn't be surprised if there was more to it than that but for know that's what my understanding is.

Honestly, having psudo enlightenment or illumination doesn't make too much sense to me. If I successfully win two conflicts at different provinces, In your example I would have also helped my opponent get 2/5 of the way towards illumination. A turn 2 illumination win doesn't strike me a being a very enjoyable game. I think we'll just have to live without enlightenment in order to have a better overall game. As neat as enlightenment victories were in Old5R they were mostly the result of gimmicky combos.

I had a scary thought what if they implement some sort of Pod system similar to star wars lcg or conquest.

10 minutes ago, Spoonfunk said:

I had a scary thought what if they implement some sort of Pod system similar to star wars lcg or conquest.

Too risky, even for them. But I'll admit: the thought did unnerve me momentarily.

25 minutes ago, Spoonfunk said:

I had a scary thought what if they implement some sort of Pod system similar to star wars lcg or conquest.

What is a Pod system? completely unfamiliar with this term.

5 minutes ago, Yandia said:

What is a Pod system? completely unfamiliar with this term.

Instead of selecting each card individually when deck building you select a "pod". In starwars lcg, pods were a set of five cards that would go into the deck and an outside resource card. Select 10 pods that composed of your 50 card deck and the 10 resource cards out of deck.. forgot what they were called.

its a mechanic in deck building that forces you to include specific cards in your deck based off of other card choices.

So in Star Wars LCG you had Location cards and you had to select 10 ( i think haven't played it in a while). Each Location card had a "pod" of 5 cards that had to be included in your 50 card deck. Conquest however had a variant of the pod system that had you select the commander (sort of like stronghold) and you had to include 5 cards that were unique to them in your deck..

I just have to say that illumination is what happens when you put the light on at night...... enlightenment is what happens when you acquire all 5 rings in L5R...

11 hours ago, Isawa Tasatu said:

I just have to say that illumination is what happens when you put the light on at night...... enlightenment is what happens when you acquire all 5 rings in L5R...

And I would like to point out that several foreign translations of "enlightenment" are the word for "illumination".

Hence my mistake, enlightenment is said 'illumination' in French.

The spanish FFG website says the box will contain 5 ring tokens... my speculation does not seems so absurd after all !

2 minutes ago, Katsutoshi said:

Hence my mistake, enlightenment is said 'illumination' in French.

The spanish FFG website says the box will contain 5 ring tokens... my speculation does not seems so absurd after all !

It was not meant to be insulting... it was just meant to be "enlightening". I would not even attempt speaking or writing in French.....

Be at peace, I didn't take it badly at all. I'm the one ashamed not to be able to write english properly here on the english boards. Doing my best.

I just wanted to tease a little bit Ishi Tonu who didn't think the rings would play a bigger role than just being a type of conflict. If there are tokens, there is a way to earn them, and a path to enlightenment there !

10 minutes ago, Katsutoshi said:

Hence my mistake, enlightenment is said 'illumination' in French.

The spanish FFG website says the box will contain 5 ring tokens... my speculation does not seems so absurd after all !

To me, it was clear that it will come with 5, just after the TC interview with developers. Brad clearly describe usage of those tokens.
I doubt about the provinces having such a deep connection with rings, those symbols are more likely to be there for deck building purposes.

11 minutes ago, Katsutoshi said:

Be at peace, I didn't take it badly at all. I'm the one ashamed not to be able to speak english properly here on the english boards. Doing my best.

I just wanted to tease a little bit Ishi Tonu who didn't think the rings would play a bigger role than just being a type of conflict. If there are tokens, there is a way to earn them, and a path to enlightenment there !

Not really, so far from what we have seen there won't be an illumination? elimination? enlightenment! victory condition. The five double-sided [red(military) / blue(political)] Ring tokens are to easily declare to your opponent What type, for What Ring and at Which Province, Conflict you will do as the developers described in their interview with Team Covenant.

The Ring tokens have been shown since the first news. They are on the Product page, when you click on the "Read more" line. You see them below the conflict type icons, one face red to use for military conflicts and one face blue for political conflicts.

Once the battle is over, the token is taken by the victor to symbolize that's it's not available for the other conflicts this turn. At the end of the turn, they are put back in the available Rings pool.

To illustrate what C3goarach is explaining, let's say you want to declare a Political Fire conflict at your opponent's leftmost province. You take the Fire Ring token, put it on the blue side on your opponent's leftmost province.

That would make sense. Useless tokens for clarification, a thing FFG does indeed.

Thanks for ruining my time until they release the next article...

At least, if nothing else, they will help prevent some arguments on which rings have already been used for conflicts this turn.