Actually not true. Game mechanics - not copy writable. Wayland, Jentiki etc.. belong to FFG. So what does Wizards own again? Not much from what I can tell. They just have to call certain things by a slightly different name here and there.

Grimwalker, 
Do you really have to troll on everyones posts?
How do you know what FFG's intentions are?  Do you work for them?  Ever consider this is a business, and its a strategy to gain financial resources?  You think their CEO is up at night worrying about the customer experience when they do stuff like this?  Its more about $$$ than anything else.  Your responses are annoying bro.....

At the moment if you're getting the Revised Core, the packs that go best with it aren't any of the deluxes: it's the datapacks of the latest cycle (Kitara). They've got "spiritual successors" for a lot of the original core cards that didn't make it into Revised Core, so they really complement the starting box very well. 
They also just announced Reign and Reverie, which will be a new deluxe coming out after Kitara with cards for all factions, so it'll probably also be a good buy for a beginner. But it's at least 3 months away right now, so get started on Kitara rather than buy any of the old deluxe boxes. 
 
(I might have misunderstood your question though: if what you were saying is that you already HAVE the deluxe expansions, and wanted to play with just them until you get your core, then my answer is irrelevant, sorry!  To answer that question, I think you can construct a legal deck out of each of the original 4 deluxes, but without any of the basic economy staples of the core set it'll be barely functional. The ones that work best are probably corp side D&D and runner side O&C.)

My biggest concerns with L5r at the moment is the small card pool combined with a design that is way too compartmentalized. Which as a result gives 0 possibility of deck building.  
Even with the full cycle out, L5r has significantly less cards that would have any TCG/CCG at release. But the biggest killer for deck building is the fact that the game is extremely compartmentalized, 7 different clans with no possibility to use the fate cards of any other faction , on the conflict side there is simply too many cards that are a no brainier inclusion, role cards that prevent you from using certain strategies ... In the end, the only real decision is to figure out what you are going to splash and even then it's pretty obvious most of the time. Considering how insanely compartmentalized the game is, it would require at least triple the amount of cards we have now to make things interesting to build with which will take for ever at this rate.
If characters had an influence value so we could splash fate cards and if the role cards were not a thing the deck-building possibilities would explode without having to print a single card.
Deck building is the key in any card game, no deck building -> no test -> no play .
Phoenix pack is coming soon but it it will only impact phoenix and if we have to wait 2 or 3 month for something after I am afraid it will kill the game.
Of course the fact that Scorpion combines being the most frustrating deck to play against and by far the most powerful deck, doesn't help enjoying the current meta.

This is literally the most exciting L5r related news I've seen in 2 months

An extremely helpful link, I will say that.

Check following link:
http://www.knowthemeta.com/Buyers-Guide/
Maybe helpful

Check following link:
http://www.knowthemeta.com/Buyers-Guide/
Maybe helpful
 

I do.

YOu might like this: https://runthenet.wordpress.com/2018/01/26/thebigboy-cube-draft-reviving-my-love-of-the-game/
It uses most of the good rotated cards.

I prefer the "FFG Doesn't Really Know What They Are Doing" hypothesis. Lots of data to back it up. No one knows, including FFG, what will happen in the future.

Ok, let me address this, as it is an argument that I hear too much, although it’s wrong, at least in my case. 
I live in Spain. If you go to FFG Spain’s website, you’ll see that the Core and every single Imperial cycle pack is sold out and restocking. And this happened the same day that they were launched. Possibility of restocking? Probably it’ll take a year.
One of my Friends tried to buy the 2nd pack a few days ago. Our LGS was out of stock without possibility of ordering it to the distributor (Asmodee) as it is sold out. He had to move to a bigger city and had to visit 5 different game shops until he found it (the last pack they had). The other option was ordering it online, and then pay 15€ + 6 or 10€ in delivery fees, which makes it a very expensive option  
Two others from my playgroup bought 3 cores and splitted by clans. Now they want another 3 cores. They had to bought them online, paying delivery fees, of course. 
The guys that wanted to buy the game for Christmas? Our LGS was willing to keep 3 cores for them from launch till Christmas. But it’s not gonna held the 6 packs during 6 months so they can buy them one a month. It was all the expansions or nothing. So we’re back to the online option with the delivery fees, and if you take too long you may not find it.
Thing is, right now, if you want to play L5R in my country you have to buy everything that comes out within a month of launching or risk not being able to find it later. Waiting for reprint is out of question too. Others FFG LCG have been in “restocking” for more than a year...
And, apart from that, the objective of a LCG is having fun, and, even playing casual, if you’re losing all the time and feel underpowered also all the time, you’re probably not gonna have too much fun. The guy who’s buying the packs now was frustrated by playing against those of us who had all the cards. Specially against the magistrates he had too much of a hard time and no possibility of changing his deck to face them, as the core card pool was too limited. Long story short, he ended up caving and is now trying to buy all the packs as fast as his monthly income lets him. 

@Aingeru TeamworkCast and Trace Five are fantastic and just what I was looking for! Thank you!

Thanks for the replies! Metropole Grid is indeed good, and I'm working through the Team Covenant tutorials too. I also found Run Last Click (probably when searching this forum for podcasts). Their most recent episode is Episode 90: Revised Core - Beginner Special, so that was helpful.
There is a dead YouTube channel devoted to Android lore ... any chance there are other media that cover lore? Even just stray podcast episodes?

TeamworkCast had very good ANr videos with great comments (and very entertaining).
https://www.youtube.com/user/TeamworkCast
 
Now they have split it to create a channel dedicated to ANr: Trace Five (not yet time to view the new videos... so I can not talk yet on their quality)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNh1ufhc1xCa26M0nYurpNQ

FFG always does this and I'm not a fan either.

"Fine Katana", not "For Rokugan".
 
Alex
 

or c) Janice from Accounts who writes FFG's Xwing articles (that is my head canon as to why the articles *always* have at least one glaring error) doesn't know a thing about L5R either and while tasked to make the graphic, she had no idea she made a mistake before posting it.

Well, I already have the top 16 Unicorn deck...

Compilation of new spoilers.
 
 



 
The following images were captured from the World Championship 2017 Livestream. The sizes are very irregular so here's a direct link instead:
Scorpion - Sake House Confident: https://imgur.com/45OTKdy
Lion - A Legion of One: https://imgur.com/lOQoqT4
Dragon - Itinerant Philosopher: https://imgur.com/fWxPSfv
Crane - Doji Shizue: https://imgur.com/g4q2Aac
Neutral Province - Before the Throne: https://imgur.com/Ft34AJ6
 

https://imgur.com/gallery/nfLBk

Did anyone else notice the typo in the flavour text on HQ Interface in the latest Netrunner article?
Hope that's not the final version.

Not a ton of buzz for this?!  They do not look that great compared to what is out there, particularly from the Polish artist C. O. who has a bunch of L5R art mats. His are Strongholds, which I prefer over Characters on playmats anyway. In general I avoid playmats that create too much distraction.

I think they did a lot of good with the Core revision. That said, they may have to pull a few more OP cards to get the rest of the way there. Sadly it would mean effectively a ban list but may be needed (in a way Core 2.0 was a sort of ban list). 

You have brought an important point.
When rotation was announced there were no Campaign expansions, how should they be integrated in Rotation? As deluxe packs (no rotation) or cycle packs?
In the first case, they would increase (progresively) the Card Pool and come back to initial problem.
In the second case, it would imply short-live small cycle (not sure if that is good or bad... at least a bit expensive from my player/customer point of view).
Probably, what you suggest is the better idea, reviewing periodically (one core/deluxe every 2 years?) could shift both the meta and amending problematic cards/iterations.
By the way, even if it was not stated before.
KUDOS to FFG & ANr Design Team, for providing a list of Revised Core and allowing "old" ANr Players to avoid having to buy additional (Revised Core). Thanks (although they do not read this Forum )
 
I personally like the Runner+Corp Deluxes, as I consider Core = Entry level and Deluxe = ¿Learning level?.
As you need both a Runner and Corp decks, with only 1-2 Core + 1 Deluxe, you could play entertaining games (I would avoid for now the "competitive" word)
One of my big concerns was that the preconstructed decks indicated in the deluxes were quite bad, and do not understand why they do not use cards from Core (and Influence points), both as quick decks for non-Org.Play Players and for Starting Players. Hope they amend that in the future.