This might be a bit of a weird/unpopular question, but what do you guys think about the possibility of FFG making "flashback" expansions to periods before the time of the Core Set? In the Facebook live stream they said that the game is meant to represent the sort-of "overall" history of Rokugan, and that characters from the Core Set could be killed off, but would still be legal to play. This raises the possibility that, as the story moves forward, a new character could be featured in a deck alongside an old character that died before the new character was even born. So with that in mind, what would you guys think if they made an expansion that covered an important even in Rokugani history, such as the First Day of Thunder (if that happened in this timeline) or the founding of the Great Clans and the Hantei dynasty? It looks like Old5R might have done something like this (I never played, so I don't know for sure), but what do you guys think about the New5R doing it? Even though it'd be a prequel, it wouldn't be hard to come up with story prizes--just have the previous expansion feature a mystery about who won/survived some important event in history, have the flashback chapter tournament determine the answer, and then the next set will deal with the modern-day characters discovering the truth and dealing with the fallout of this revelation. The main problem I see with having flashback chapters would be the aforementioned fact that we'd have characters from different time periods being played side-by-side. From what they said in the Facebook live stream, this will most likely already be happening due to the progressing story and potential character deaths. But I could see some players being pulled out of the story if characters who were born HUNDREDS of years apart were played in the same deck, whereas having characters born decades apart might not be as jarring. I personally hope they DO make flashback expansions--but would you guys have a problem with it? What do you think?

I'd prefer they keep the timeline moving forward and let us write the prequel to 5 years from now through our play.

Especially elevation of new named characters and minor clans.

I would like this very, very much! The Thousand Years of Peace in the Old Legend made this mildly pointless, but now that that concept seems to have been thrown out, the past is ripe with possibilities. With that in mind, one might even wonder why they chose the same point in time that the CCG already covered - oh yeah, it was so that they could genderswap characters we'd actually heard of! ?

2 minutes ago, Ide Yoshiya said:

I would like this very, very much! The Thousand Years of Peace in the Old Legend made this mildly pointless, but now that that concept seems to have been thrown out, the past is ripe with possibilities. With that in mind, one might even wonder why they chose the same point in time that the CCG already covered - oh yeah, it was so that they could genderswap characters we'd actually heard of! ?

Thousand years of peace? You talk the old canon, FFG doesn't call it that way, but instead when they refer to the history of the Emerald Empire they called it it thousand years of conflict. Anyway, AEG also did stuff like Dawn of the Empire, so I would not mind to explore some historical moments... and well if one would take for example the Iuchiban stuff, then one would already have him ready for a return in current times.

40 minutes ago, Drudenfusz said:

Thousand years of peace? You talk the old canon, FFG doesn't call it that way, but instead when they refer to the history of the Emerald Empire they called it it thousand years of conflict.

That's exactly what I meant when I said they threw it out; "they" as in FFG.

Well, They could always have the Deluxe boxes be about specific events of the history of Rokugan.

Was the 1000-years of peace actually true or just how Rokugan was described by Rokugani?

Since they were supposed to be the perfect Empire in Harmony with the Celestial Order I can imagine it was often said to be a 1000 years of peace but realit was actually quite diffrent.

14 minutes ago, Mig el Pig said:

Was the 1000-years of peace actually true or just how Rokugan was described by Rokugani?

Since they were supposed to be the perfect Empire in Harmony with the Celestial Order I can imagine it was often said to be a 1000 years of peace but realit was actually quite diffrent.

I believe that the answer to this morphed over time. When first presented I think it was meant to be a literal 1000 years of peace. However, as time went on and there was more investigation into the history of Rokugan, it became somewhat of a propaganda thing. Eventually, things like Imperial Archives peppered the millennium with revolts, gaijin, conspiracies and evil/incompetent emperors.

To answer the OP, it is pretty easy to say that flashback expansions are possible: we have 1000 years of conflict. Whether they will do that is a different question. It might come up after the 7 Great clans have their Deluxe expansions. At 2 Clans per box, that would be at least 2 1/2 years from November. So I wouldn't expect to see anything like that until ~Gencon 2020. One other vague possibility would be to put one of the 6-pack cycles in the past, but I feel that would be less likely, currently.

Making each Deluxe box about a specific event/chain of events would be a nice way to have cards about all the clans in the box. That would also mean you wouldn't need to wait 1-2.5 years before your clan gets its Deluxe.

You have so many opportunities to pick from for such deluxe boxes :

- Scorpion Clan Coup

- Second Day of Thunder

- Spirit Wars/Battle at Oblivion's Gate

- Death at Koten

- 1000 Years of Darkness (yay, Alternate timelines)

- Rain of Blood

- Rise of the Naga

- etc.

When the Dawn of the Empire was released it was like the coming of the primarchs in Warhammer 40K (Horus Heresy!!! ). It was around 10 years into the game and was very cool, but it was a "deluxe special order" set.

The way I see it, FFG has their own story they want to tell. If they wanted to redo the founding of the Empire, they likely would have started their card game during this era. (Now having the Kami in the core set, being legal the entirety of the game, THAT would have been something I would have emphatically gotten behind!)

They may do a retelling of the founding or other historical events (pre year 1000), but I think it would be after the current story line has been WELL established.

Indeed, or as a draft set special.

3 hours ago, Mig el Pig said:

Was the 1000-years of peace actually true or just how Rokugan was described by Rokugani?

It wasn't, and admittedly served as a sort of "propaganda saying" like 'honor is stronger than steel'.

1 hour ago, Ser Nakata said:

Making each Deluxe box about a specific event/chain of events would be a nice way to have cards about all the clans in the box. That would also mean you wouldn't need to wait 1-2.5 years before your clan gets its Deluxe.

You have so many opportunities to pick from for such deluxe boxes :

- Scorpion Clan Coup

- Second Day of Thunder

- Spirit Wars/Battle at Oblivion's Gate

- Death at Koten

- 1000 Years of Darkness (yay, Alternate timelines)

- Rain of Blood

- Rise of the Naga

- etc.

Keep in mind that deluxe boxes are legal forever. Though, that may actually work pretty well thematically for truly epic events, as even after the characters die, their legend lives on and continues to influence us!

Yes, and considering that apparently, the game is more about snapshots of the history of rokugan than a continuing storyline, this could very well happen.

2 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

It wasn't, and admittedly served as a sort of "propaganda saying" like 'honor is stronger than steel'.

Indeed. If honor truly were stronger than steel, there would be no way for an honorable duelist to lose, as the foe's blade would simply glance off harmlessly against the duelist's stronger-than-steel skin.

12 minutes ago, Ide Yoshiya said:

Indeed. If honor truly were stronger than steel, there would be no way for an honorable duelist to lose, as the foe's blade would simply glance off harmlessly against the duelist's stronger-than-steel skin.

This is an interesting take, but I would rather imagine it as true if, say, a honorable character could bridge considerable gaps in skill and talent via his honorable nature and greater understanding of the world. For example, a dishonorable duelist trying to strike down a honorable artisan would be in a lot of trouble because the artisan perceives his attack before he even draws his sword and simply traps the sword mid-strike between his palms (y'know, the extra-cool samurai deflection). How? The duelist might have skill, but the artisan has a profound insight and integrity because him following the Bushido gives him an understanding of the world the duelist simply does not possess. In this way, Honor (knowing Bushido and heeding its ways) is indeed stronger than steel (applying brute force).

There is a section in The Book of Void that talks about this.