Holy crap they have some good cards.

from the looks of it; first impressions at least, I think it looks a bit like a middle finger to passive aggressive honor decks. Like Crane might shape out to be, decks that don't care too much about crushing provinces but want them fire/air rings. This might have come up in playtesting as something wrothy of meta out of box, but I highly doubt it. Honestly while I do enjoy the idea of every card having its place, I think this card was just a card designed to be a 5PS out of the box with no real downside. Might see play in turtle decks, but I think a better version of this card is the Crab Province card that lets you use the ring effect on the defense. I won't be surprised when every crab player flips that card from under his stronghold.
This card? Meh... might see play, but I doubt ALL card will see play out of the box sadly, this looks like just one of those cards. The, "Fortified Position" of the L5R Corebox. Looks nice on paper, and people may even try and make it work, but in the end it's just a decently stated card with a mediocre effect. The decks that end up running it will replace it the moment they can.
but I'm hardly ever right on these types of things

Good thoughts, and I like that the sort of head games you're talking about make the game's decisions more complex. Frequent complex and meaningful decisions are what allow LCGs to reward skilled play, and in my mind, what makes for a fun game experience.

Eh, I'm not outraged, I just think its odd to assign a category name to a game element , and then not fit the fiction to that category. It's like if they named a category of cards "characters" then proceeded to make those cards pieces of equipment that you attach to another category of cards called "lands", which are the people you control and play the game with.
There's no rage there, just a mild middle-aged confusion. Which is how I spend most of my days, y'know.
 
 
Yeah, fair enough. Though as I said, there's no rage anywhere. I'm 40 years old, I don't listen to Rage Against The Machine any more. I prefer my card game discussions set to the soothing tones of Birdie and Ed Sheeran.

Good thoughts, and I like that the sort of head games you're talking about make the game's decisions more complex. Frequent complex and meaningful decisions are what allow LCGs to reward skilled play, and in my mind, what makes for a fun game experience.

Yeah, but also, had you considered how much stronger it would be if there are more characters printed with abilities that can use the fate on them for different effects, i.e. Wandering Ronin?
Also, don't forget Wandering Ronin.
Oh, and Wandering Ronin.

A fact that I pointed out in my original post

Good thoughts, and I like that the sort of head games you're talking about make the game's decisions more complex. Frequent complex and meaningful decisions are what allow LCGs to reward skilled play, and in my mind, what makes for a fun game experience.

Hmm, a small advantage, at cost of 1 card only, but not consistently playable. Maybe, say, 3/4 of the time, as you'll bid lower when you have this card in hand.
I think it's a decent and balanced card, but I'm not seeing it as an autoinclude. Every card you run means leaving another card out, and the effect here just doesn't feel very impactful.
My thought is that good economy cards come in two sorts.
Either they give a small repeatable advantage (Llanowar Elf).
Or they give a one-off surge advantage (Dark Ritual).
A small one-off advantage isn't going to be worth running in most constructible games, generally, especially when the advantage doesn't increase tempo in any way, which tends to be the primary function of economy cards.
Rather, a card that increases durability, has a condition window, and which trades cards for board advantage: well that says "control deck" all over. I see this being a good card in certain decks that work around lynchpin characters and need time to work. And that, I think, will not be most decks.

Good thoughts, and I like that the sort of head games you're talking about make the game's decisions more complex. Frequent complex and meaningful decisions are what allow LCGs to reward skilled play, and in my mind, what makes for a fun game experience.

That's interesting! I'd not seen that comment about there not being any llanowar-elf type economy in this game. That does change things for sure.
I suppose my expectations had been set by previous LCGs, almost all of which have chump characters /  cheap permanents with +1 Thing as a permanent economy effect printed on them.
It'll be a refreshing change to deckbuilding to not have these "auto-include economy cards" purposefully left out of the card pool.

When I heard Fantasy Flight was going to remake L5R into an LCG I had planned on attending the debuting Gen Con.  I've never been to a Gen Con before and I was dead set on making this one my first. I had started making plans on how I would make this event possible and nothing in this wide world was going to stop me from being there at this epic new beginning!
I am very happy to announce I will not be attending Gen Con this year.
This August my wife i due to be giving birth to my third child and second son!  A pretty darn good reason to miss this prestigious event.

So good luck to all my fellow Scorpion players, good luck to all my wife's brothers and sisters in the Dragon Clan!
I'm sure if you listen hard enough you'll hear a little extra Banzai to cheer you on.

The struggle for me with this card is that while it does give you a great effect (seemingly free fate production in a game where fate production is mostly flat) it does have an actual cost to it.  Being a conflict card is a bigger deal than I think some people may realize.  Conflict cards are going to be your primary way to turn the balance of conflicts into your favor.  Having a card in your conflict deck that essentially does nothing to impact conflict can be a liability.  If you want this card to do anything for you it's going to be better to see it in the early to mid game, which means you would want more copies of it in the deck to increase you chances of seeing this earlier.  However, drawing this card during a game ending situation isn't going to help you at all.
Now some might question why I'm somewhat down on this card but much higher on a card like Way of the Unicorn.  There are a couple reasons for this.  WotU changes the order of play which could be very important if both players are close to winning and who gets to resolve a battle first is going to decide the winner.  Also the option to pass dynasty first and gain the extra fate and/or declare the first conflict and choose a ring with fate on it, the extra fate goes to your fate pool.  This fate can now be used for a variety of things instead of just being placed on a specific character. The potential gains of WotU are far greater than that of Good Omen.
Had this card just added fate to your fate pool, I would equate it to 1 koku as others have done, and I would consider it to be much better than what it is now.  But that's not the case.  What could save this card is if there are more characters printed with abilities that can use the fate on them for different effects, I.e. Wandering Ronin.  As it stands now, I don't feel this card it anything special.  

We cannot accurately judge the value of cards like this until we know how the meta will shape honor card drawing. Since we are getting new dynasty cards every turn, there will be turns that have high value dynasty cards that need to be played(like clan champions, because if your opponent breaks the province you will need to discard your unplayed chamion eot) and thus limit the need to draw heavy from the conflict deck since you will have limited fate. On the other hand if your dynasty cards reveal 2 holdings for example while the opponent has a strong board presence, you will be forced to draw conflict cards in the hopes of avoiding a double province loss.

Personally, I think this sounds like a great card.  Not only could it help a high-cost character stick around another turn, but the condition itself may mess with your opponent's head.
For instance, if you have your Clan Champion out, presumably going away at the end of this turn, just the knowledge this card exists may tempt me to bid low on my dial (for card draw or for dueling), just to ensure that this card isn't played.
Obviously, this is highly dependent on what cards we have in our hands and in play, but I anticipate that this card will be surprisingly irritating for people who dismiss it completely.

That is one happy frog.  I'm guessing he hasn't helped the Scorpion across the stream yet.  Bud...weis...er.

I admit that my first thought here to "Crabs sleep on the wall" was "I guess if you tie some string to their pincers and hang them between two nails...", and my second thought was of big armoured bushi sleeping standing up but leaning on the wall, because if they lie down properly it'd take 'em too long to stand up again.
 

I admit that my first thought here to "Crabs sleep on the wall" was "I guess if you tie some string to their pincers and hang them between two nails...", and my second thought was of big armoured bushi sleeping standing up but leaning on the wall, because if they lie down properly it'd take 'em too long to stand up again.
 

Myself I always played Crane in tournaments. But I enjoyed L5R so much in my day that still meant I had 4-5 other decks with me at a time so on causal play nights I had other decks to play for fun. Sometimes it might be a 2nd Crane deck thrown in there. But I agree you learn more from playing other clans that reading about them or playing against them. Maybe I'd build a top deck and hand it to a friend and say, "please play this versus my Crane" to see how it does.
I think what set L5R apart from Magic in its early days was that you could identify with a faction. No one ever said "Go Red!" in Magic.  

I admit that my first thought here to "Crabs sleep on the wall" was "I guess if you tie some string to their pincers and hang them between two nails...", and my second thought was of big armoured bushi sleeping standing up but leaning on the wall, because if they lie down properly it'd take 'em too long to stand up again.
 

I think this was pretty good for a non-Crab fiction.
Toturi letting Crane saboteurs past his position to burn the Lion siege so his brother would be forced to pull back and draw out more of the Crane garrison so he could catch them in a pincer was more ruthless than I would have expected.
As easy as it is to say Arasou was an idiot for not listening to Toturi I think there are some compelling arguments to be made for not getting bogged down in a siege.
First, when faced with a fleeing enemy and a chance to take a fortification with its gates open one generally doesn't want to surrender the initiative and give the enemy a chance to regroup. Especially since, if the Crane are in as dire straits as they seem, they might not be able to afford to declare war in retaliation for taking the city.
Second, other than the Crab Rokugani armies aren't good at conducting sieges. You're basically going to have to starve out the defenders and that leaves you vulnerable to a potential Crane relief force or one of your other neighbors taking advantage of your distraction.
Finally, it's generally not a good idea to give the Crane time to work their political magic. Any attempt at negotiation would likely just be a chance for them to stall until they can get sufficient sanctions levied against you to make your position untenable.
I think the direction they're going to go with Toturi's character is that he overthinks things too much. He needs to learn to recognize when the time comes to take action and be decisive. It'll be interesting if his desire to avenge his brother overcomes his better judgement.
I like people's tendency to turn geopolitics into hormonal high school melodrama. Having L5R characters in a slice of life series would be amusing.

Good strategy often leads to overwhelming numbers. 

This is worth noting, because people often think that good strategy should translate to winning without regard for numbers...and while it can, a good strategist should also know (as about the first lesson they learn) that fighting without a numerical advantage is a foolish, risky, desperate way to fight. The Lion SHOULD be shown to outnumber their opponents most of the time, because the Lions are *good* at deploying their forces to achieve victory, and achieving numerical advantage is a big part of that, 
(And even an outnumbered general's best move is usually to concentrate their forces against a weaker part of the enemy army, achieving *local* number advantage and using it to break the enemy's coordination)

I mean technically the Lion won the battle, they just didn't take the city. The Crane were in full retreat, and are still under siege. Although I agree the Lion are supposed to be the best at war and the best tacticians, but they always seem to get written losing wars, or winning with over whelming numbers.  Writing them as winning battles with brilliant tactics has happened a few times and are some of my favorite stories for them. Or the storyline where Matsu Yoshino said we will sack your city a year from now, stop us if you can, and they couldn't was cool as well.

Heh, in Thrones there was a card introduced on January 26th 2016 that relied on having a lot of "builder" characters to create an economic advantage.
 
We didn't get our 4th builder character until December 1, 2016.
 
We didn't get enough builders to make it actually useful until April 6, 2017 when the deluxe box arrived.
 
Now, 15 months later, it finally has made it into one single deck haha.

Yeah, this, for me, is one of the worst parts of the LCG model. Sometimes it takes 5 months to flesh out a certain theme or deck that they introduced at the beginning of the cycle.