Shadowlands is just a collection of slimes and goblins without Junzo, Fu Leng, Iuchiban, Daigotsu and their enforcers. So many things about this are the opposite of the way I hope FFG is thinking about L5R, at least for the LCG. It's not a video game. I'm quoting this for emphasis... BD and I differ in many ways on what we hope the emphasis of the game, design, and FFG's plans will be... But "Boss Monsters" are something we evidently share a profound distaste for.Much as I think Daigotsu is a noxious growth the Spider Clan has never been able to escape from, what value he DOES have comes not from his being The Boss of the Shadowlands, but from his actions as a character. It's why he still has a hold on a large fanbase, while Fu Leng has basically been allowed to lapse into obscurity. It's why Iuchiban being gone for good caused no real tears to be shed.

I really dig the idea that the battlefields might work more like Conquest than the poorly designed provinces from L5R.

Wow I would love to see these fan sets happen, especially the LBS setting. That was pretty much the coolest card game of all time.

It was more about coolness and style in my local play group than MTG which was more about money and ego. I and my fellow Dolphin Clan members traveled to Gencon every year to compete. I thnk making connections in the community was always a big part of the value to traveling to L5R events that you honestly had only a remote chance of even making the final cut, much less the top 8 or better.

L5R was fresh. It had a darkness to it that made the lands of Rokugan mysterious and a little scary. I like the idea of warring samurai coming together to fight the darkness. I really enjoyed the variety of art and how they explored asian mythology. I dislike when card games homogenize the art.

I for one am glad to be rid of koku. Yeah, you could get free stuff, but it was a pain in the ass to collect and mail it. Often times you couldn't even get the better cards. AEG didn't have the foresight to print more of the non-unique cards.

Yes! I always loved that story! I think the most exciting aspect of FF acquiring L5R is all the things they could do without outside the LCG. Maybe even video game licenses like GW is doing with 40k.

I think getting cards designed with some input from tournament winners is really cool. Voting on clans seems like it will leave some members feeling unhappy.

I'd like to see them make cycles for all sorts of eras, even 1st Day of Thunder and redoing 2nd Day of Thunder. I thought that L5R had too much rehashing of the same ideas and they personalities were often not as interesting versions of the original main characters. Everytime they brought back someone like Mitsu, Kokujin, Icuhiban, Toku, Akodo Kage etc it was a major shot in the arm for the story.

Evil monsters always need a Boss Monster or there is little climax to finishing the level. The struggle between Iuchiban and Daigotsu was my favorite post Clan War story. Only Kokujin vs Satsu/Mitsu and company came anywhere close.

Does anyone in the US know what AEG charges to ship a booster box? Not that I think about I think they only sell booster packs and starter decks.

I hope they let us help them test the game out. Two years is a long time.

I like small things like Who will be the target of the Egg of P'an Ku? and large general arcs like Shadowlands either lost or won the Second Day of Thunder. The first is cool but no big deal(False Nimuro was super cool) and the second was the kind of community choice I like. Struggle if you want to help shape the path but you don't get to make up a direction for the story. That seems like the writers will end up trying to potentially fit square pegs into circular holes. I would really like to see descendants of famous characters. I think the story after Clan War was kind of meh and most of the interesting parts involved the older characters like Mitsu, Kisada and Kokujin or bringing in Yajinden and Iuchiban. Daigotsu was super cool though. Most of the newer main characters seemed kind of generic or simply echoed previous fan favorites.

That's cool, I haven't had an opportunity to play the new version. We are spoiled for choice these days in gaming.

The uncertainty of what focus values people were putting down made dueling interesting. You might not be bluffing at winning but you could be bluffing in the sense you were trying to get your opponent to discard useful cards. This was completely lost when your focused cards were free. I would be interested in a dueling mechanic similar to the aforementioned 7th sea. It needs to be really carefully designed however. In the original Doomtown it was really easy to get 5 of a kind in the poker parts of the game.