This is a great question. Did you submit it to the Rules Questions page? If you get a response, please post it here as I would like to know the answer as well!

It's much better than having 300+ commons in a box that are completely redundant, so it's fine with me, especially if it's cheaper or easier to produce.

I'm quite concerned about how the FFG team is going about rules making and rule explaining internally. At Gen Con, the question was asked whether or not the opponent's Stronghold was known prior to choosing where to place your own provinces. One judge said that you would know, another said you would not know. I was honestly surprised that something like this didn't come up in playtesting and was part of the documentation for judges to review. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I feel like this could have a huge impact on a game. And now we have a ruling that blatantly contradicts preview material, which leaves me questioning the rules writing process and how complete the rules were when these articles were written. At this point, I have the impression that no one at FFG has a comprehensive grasp of the rules, and that's worrying, especially given the long development cycle of this game.

It's good to hear that dishonor is a credible threat. I wonder if it will feature in most games.

I don't get very hung up about it if my opponent can't pronounce card names, and as far as I know no one ever complained about the way I pronounced things either. This is a silly thing to worry about, especially since Shugenja, Bushi, and even Courtier are not native English words, yet the card names feature these job descriptions frequently.

This is why I feel that having actual names for non-unique characters is a great thing. In the CCG days, facing off against a Scorpion meant that my characters would become dishonored. When you dishonor Doji Doukohito, I am angry. When you dishonor Cunning Magistrate, I'm mildly annoyed. When I sacrifice Kakita Kai to use the Ring of Fire, it's a noble sacrifice. When I sacrifice Influential Courtier, it's a calculated game move. None of the actions have the same gravitas, even if other cards share the same name on the table. Further, names carry weight. Who didn't become crestfallen at the sound of "Bayushi Saya" or "Doji Saori"? Maybe it's because I don't read the fiction, but for me a lot of the fun of the game came from what happened to these named characters through the course of the game and attempting to win, and learning that in the fiction, all of these characters were dead, or in hiding, or what-have-you. Accepting that you can't keep them alive, you can't keep them all honorable, and you can't use them to their full potential adds weight to when bad things inevitably happen to them, because the player across from you is doing the same. Having your faceless mooks take one for the team is a storytelling trope that doesn't fit L5R (except for followers, but they are filthy peasants and not important). Anyway, that's just my opinion. I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy the game regardless, it just feels like we lost something that was quite unique and cool to the L5R brand.

Right, but you can still move personalities characters to the battlefield or play them from hand, so I think it's just something you have to consider in the design of your deck. Plus, I'm not aware that you need to have units at the battlefield in order to play actions, so you can still try and get their total strength to 0 by playing fate cards or using the abilities on your units at home. (Are units still a thing? I can't wait to see the whole rulebook, I don't want to confuse people by using the wrong terminology!)

Oh yeah, good call! The reverse probably says 五輪, the title for the Book of Five Rings. That would definitely point toward it being the first player token, I think.

I think the most interesting thing about this page is the minimum deck size is only 30 when using 1 box to construct a deck. This is pretty interesting for the GenCon tournaments.

It could be. The kanji appears to say 伝説, which means "legend". I'm not really sure what it could mean in the context of the game. Both being the first player or it representing an amount of honor more than 1 could be the case, or it could be something different. However, it could say something else. The second kanji is pretty blurry and I searched for alternate words that it could be, but I didn't come up with anything, even anything uncommon, so that's my best guess.