First, I will admit, I might have missed things trying to read through the rules, but it seems like there are bits that are left out.

Now, to the questions, and hoping someone can even point out where they are in the rule book so I can find them to show others when I try to play.

1) What is the point, other than some Dragon cards, of putting the Fate tokens on the Rings?

2) Since you just declare that you are doing a (conflict type) for (ring), how do you know which province is which before they are revealed(since they are only revealed, I assume, when you attack that province)?

3)Does winning a defense of a ring matter beyond just denying it to your opponent?

When you declare a conflict with a ring that has fate on it you immediately gain that fate yourself. (rules reference page 21 first bullet point paragraph 2)

You do not match the ring to the province by element. You pick any ring and type based on the conflict stat and ring ability you want, and then choose which province to attack. You assign attacking characters with this. The defender then reveals the province card of the targeted province and then declares defenders. (same page as above)

Winning in defense still claims the ring. You do not get to activate its ability, but when you count up for the Imperial Favor you add your rings + glory of ready characters, so the rings claimed in defense help there. (rules reference page 22, 3.4.1 Glory Count and 3.4.2 Claim the Imperial Favor)

3 hours ago, sakieh said:

3)Does winning a defense of a ring matter beyond just denying it to your opponent?

besides what shosuko said, no, unless you are crab, phoenix, ordragon. Between the three they have several effects that lets you activate on the defense.

What happens once the province card is flipped? Does it stay face up on the provibce until end of game or only until the province is destroyed?

Does anything happen if you attack a broken provonce?

You are not allowed to attack a broken province. If a province is face up and not destroyed then it is active until it is destroyed (through potentially multiple rounds)

OK..I did find the rules regarding the taking the fate when the Ring becomes contested, but.. it was not in the section on conflicts(where it would make sense, as that is part of the Conflict phase) in the Learn to Play document/rool book in the box. Of course, neither are the action windows and a bunch of other stuff in the Rules Reference document.

I suppose they intended people to read the entire learn to play document. Even if you read just enough to carry out the next phase that particular issue would not occur until the following turn and by that point you would have read

Finally, place one fate from the general token pool on each unclaimed ring. Note: When a player selects a ring with fate on it as the contested ring in a conflict, the attacking player takes all the fate from the ring and adds it to their fate pool.

Which seems clear enough to me. Sometimes you can overthink these things. The learn to play is to help provide an easier to read guide to playing the basic game. As long as it does this it does its job. It is not supposed to either the repository of all rules or the font of all knowledge. Though it is pretty amusing it covers the iinitial point quite nicely.

It's hard for me to comment on the quality of the Learn To Play guide since I pretty much knew all the rules before that book was released based on what we had aggregated from other sources. So for me that book was just a review as I read through it. That said their Learn to Play guides are usually quite good and are written in such a way that they walk you through your first game telling you rules as they come up. Don't try and learn by reading the Rules Reference guide. It's written to be a reference document and will be much too detailed an answer most of the time and will not be set up in any convenient order for learning the game.

FFG usually puts up tutorial videos quickly explaining their LCGs. They are usually good at pushing across the major points. They seem to lag behind the initial release by too much in my opinion though. The AH TCG one just came out a couple month ago. That's way too late. Team Covenant has a video up of Brad teaching them the game. That's probably just as good. I think they play out three turns in the video so they encounter a lot of stuff that a beginner might find challenging.

1 hour ago, phillos said:

FFG usually puts up tutorial videos quickly explaining their LCGs. They are usually good at pushing across the major points. They seem to lag behind the initial release by too much in my opinion though. The AH TCG one just came out a couple month ago. That's way too late. Team Covenant has a video up of Brad teaching them the game. That's probably just as good. I think they play out three turns in the video so they encounter a lot of stuff that a beginner might find challenging.

This was already put up a week ago.

I'm not familiar with that channel, but it seems like a very clear explanation of the game.

Yeah that one is really well done imo. Its the one I've been sending all my friends to review as their homework before our 10/5 release event takes place.

I don't plan on playing nice. Sukkas betta recognize.

21 hours ago, phillos said:

I'm not familiar with that channel, but it seems like a very clear explanation of the game.

They live streamed gencon, as well. It was Unicorn's top player.

Great video.