Hey, it gives you guys a goal to aim for straight out of the gate, right? You had better get cracking on liberating that castle! I personally will be enjoying the first 5-minutes of story where the Phoenix aren't tainted.

"Beyond the trappings of kimono and katana and cherry blossoms" Yeah it's become very clear they want to make cherry blossoms an important visual/theme for the game. I hope there is an event card where a bunch of samurai sit in a park under a cherry blossom tree getting wasted on cheap sake and canned beer. #hanami

I saw the weird "Mori Kuroi" name too, but Rokugan already has a lot of questionable/out-right wrong Japanese established in the setting, and if we wanted to point out and fix it all we'd be here all day (but I'll add that the reboot would have been a really good chance for FFG to fix it all!) The capital of the empire is "Dad's House" for the Fortunes' sake.

What I'm wondering is if I just want a game to bust out on game night with a friend, how many boxes am I going to need for each of us to have a fully playable 40/40 deck? It sounds like if we want to change factions between games we are going to have to spend some time fishing cards from the decks we just used, but I can live with that.

I heard the second syllable being pronounced like "tie" all the time back in the day. Kyuden as "kai-den", "Kage" as "cage", etc. Comes with playing the game, I fear.

My first reaction was honestly negative; building up a character or an army or a stronghold or whatever is a fun part of a lot of games. This Fate system means that it looks like we won't get to have that kind of fun in L5R 2. That being said, reading a lot of the discussion on the board has got me to thinking about the ways that the mechanic is interesting. There are a lot of things it does for game flow; now, you can do stuff from turn 1. And because the board state is transient, it could mean that there is more chance for come backs even after a few encounters go poorly for you. Since cards are fading out of play anyway, you are not getting too far behind your opponent. It may help prevent the situation where a game's result is already basically decided early on but the two players have to play it out anyway. (The changes to province breaking also help with this, too.) So while I'm not sure I like the idea of the mechanic per se (and that is probably due to L5R 1 nostalgia baggage, I will admit) I am looking forward to trying out this fate mechanic and seeing how it plays.

Hiroshima, Japan. I have absolutely zero hopes of ever finding a competitive scene, but I plan on forcing my gaming friends to play this every now and then.

Good call. I'll admit it took me a few moments to realize I wasn't looking at a Phoenix card at first...

I'm glad to see we have Ujimitsu (and if FFG is really on the ball he'll be non-unique) and it would be a crime if we didn't get Shiba Tsukune. I'm wondering what the chances are that we'll see "Shiba Yojimbo" as a generic personality with the Tsukune artwork, though. Also Suzume Mukashino?

Shikaku for emperor.

I like the reading Kokuren for "black lotus" better (it sounds more Buddhist), but it would also then be a homonym for "the United Nations." Another option might be Anren (literally "dark lotus"), but the problem in the end with this discussion is that a lot of L5R names actually already sound silly in Japanese. Basically have you ever seen a Japanese video game or anime with characters who have weird-sounding English-esque names? It's like that.

As someone who has never played Ivory Edition I am curious, what was it about that edition that killed the game scene do you think?

Personally, I found that a bit unnecessary. It is English convention to bring over Japanese words without diacritical marks. I mean, do you realize how much of a pain it's going to be to write forum posts? But seriously, why spend your time adding diacritics to "Bushido" (a term with an already established no-diacritic-using English spelling) but keep the grammatically backwards word order of "Shiro no Yojin?" Are we going to see "Oni no Akuma" as well? Now this is Rokugani, not Japanese, so it's not going to follow Japanese language rules, but what I'm saying is I'm not sure I'd take the diacritic as a sign that someone "gets it" quite yet.

The kanji in the background symbol to the bottom left number is "honor," though I'm not sure what that means mechanics-wise.

The name is Hotaru ("Firefly"). The similarity to Hoturi is probably intentional, though.

Also, am I missing something or is there no Phoenix personality er "character" card in this reveal?

Hm... generic characters (easily the biggest disappointment from this reveal) and this new-fangled fate system both have me wary, but everything else sounds pretty cool. I especially like the idea of "political" conflicts as a basic component of the game (going alongside "military" conflicts) very much. I'll probably buy at least one set to try it out.

Actually, I kind of agree with Katsutoshi. I'm not knocking the new mons, but I prefer the "classic" mons myself. I like the simple designs better. But hey, to each their own. And I don't think they'll be doing away with the older mons; I have a feeling both the old and the new will be used depending on the situation.

My guess is that the spoiler character from the fan of cards we didn't get to see at GAMA is Bayushi Kachiko.

I don't think that has actually been confirmed yet, though we'll find out Wednesday.

If there is even one pure (i.e. non-Spider) Sparrow clan personality in the core box, I will be a happy man. (There is basically a zero percent chance of that, however.)

Human nature is such that a person might balk at a $45 dollar money drop once every three months, but be very willing to do $15 one a month. The math might be the same, but people are sometime just not as "rational" as you might expect when it comes to purchasing decisions. The amount of money over time is the same, but the emotion and thought process behind the individual purchase decisions is different for many people, even if it might not be different for you. Supermarkets sell stuff for $4.99 instead of $5.00 because as much as we objectively realize those prices are basically the same our subconscious minds automatically "feel" $4.99 to be cheaper. FFG is going to decide the release schedule that gets them better profits.

The infiltration of the Sparrow always leaves me conflicted. On one hand, as an emotionally invested fan of the story I did not like what happened to them at all, absorption of the Spider infiltrators included. On the other hand, the Sparrow Clan actually appeared in fiction. (This post is partly tongue-in-cheek, btw.)

Basically everything Doji Satevis said.

Plot twist; we were actually beta-testing the L5R LCG for 20 years.