To summarize, yes, in at least 2 conflicts: duels and mass battle.
In duels, 9 times out of 10, attack is the only right answer.
In mass battles, the right objective is to cut off the head and then assault the commander’s cohort. 

To summarize, yes, in at least 2 conflicts: duels and mass battle.
In duels, 9 times out of 10, attack is the only right answer.
In mass battles, the right objective is to cut off the head and then assault the commander’s cohort. 

Bean Bunny - Hantei Satoru
Robin the Frog - Hantei Daisetsu
Not really sure how a bunny and a frog are brothers, but...

Not exactly a lore discussion, but I though it belonged here more than anywhere else.
We've just been doing one of our family's Christmas traditions: watching A Muppet Christmas Carol. This prompted a rather daft debate in our gaming group.
As a silly-but-hopefully-entertaining debate, imagine that through a bizzare sequence of events (slightly less bizzare for @Kinzen or @DGLaderoute, but still, you have to admit, pretty unlikely) you've been solicited for suggestions on 'casting' a new Muppet Legend Of The Five Rings.
Your suggestions below...
Thoughts our group had:
 
Miss Piggy - Bayushi Kachiko
Count von Count - Kuni Yori
Animal - Matsu Tsuko

Fozzie Bear - Kakita Yoshi

I hope that doesn't happen this time around. One thing I like in this version is that the RPG shows off Shiro Gotei as the second-sorry-third largest city, Yoritomo's-resouces-at-court being a bag of gold on par with the Scorpion or Crane, and basically underlining that by size and wealth the Mantis are already a par for the great clans without needing to hoover up all the other interesting minor clans.
That (a) makes the chip on their shoulder about being denied great clan status much more understandable, and (b) leaves the many minor clans that are more interesting for RPG players - Since they can be created, have all-out wars and be destroyed (see, for example, the hare) without upsetting the main LCG storyline where wiping out a great clan - or even a great clan family - is a huge deal.
It's the same reason I like the clan vassal families being fleshed out. 

Funny I feel the exact same thing about Reddit which is why I've been spending more time on the Discord recently

Thing is, it's already better than it was in the old lore, since the Phoenix at least showed up to help Hotaru, and did it with bushi instead of swanning in on fiery wings to napalm all before them.
 
But in the old lore, it seemed like there was always a desperate effort to NOT USE the Phoenix unless there was magic involved. You could go whole arcs without realizing they had courtiers! (And also, **** but the Crane hogged the doomed yojimbo-charge romance plotlines, even though it would have been painfulyl easy to hand that to the Phoenix without blinking).
 
Frankly, the Scorpion/Lion/Crane presence as the overwhelming default has always felt more like it's about laziness than any real reason to use those clans so much more heavily than the others.

So - after a somewhat boring morning of control-x and control-v, salient bits of this thread are now here:
https://rpggeek.com/thread/2564161/5th-edition-campaign-notes
updates will be on rpggeek from now on, in advance of the forum shutdown. I'll probably ping the discord when it gets updated so people know - we usually manage one session a week, but sometimes I don't finish getting it typed up till the following week.
Thanks to everyone for the interest, advice and commentary! It's been very, very welcome and please continue.

I CALL DIBS!

I CALL DIBS!

Please don’t encourage them!
I can think of a Kakita player placing a white canvas behind his opponent’s, and then also placing his fallen opponent’s haiku in the canvas too and call it art!

I know, it pisses me off how unprofessional the whole thing has been, even joined Twitter to ask them and they just ignore me.

Howdy folks! For those who aren’t familiar, http://courtgamespod.com/forums/ is up and operational. Although our forums can use some work to improve user experience, I will say that it’s already better than half of the beginner forums out there on the internet.
Our website is focused on being an archive of “all things rokugan”, and that’s why we’re continuing efforts to import all of the AEG fiction and Fan Fiction we can find from old forums. We also allow for people to upload their own content, either so they can add a fiction that they don’t see on our website, or so that they can add adventures and other RPG content that they’ve worked hard on so that it doesn’t disappear or get drowned out in the discord chat. Our website also allows for people to blog their thoughts out and share those posts easily with others.
Our forums are currently focused on posing challenges to the community for fun new ideas for the RPG, but we’re absolutely open to add in rules discussions for the LCG, roleplaying play by posts, and trading boards. Whatever the community wants, especially since CourtGames wouldn’t be here without you all, literally.
Reply here if you have any questions, PM us, or friend us on CourtGames. we’re happy to provide this service to the community.

I primarily have my Creature Collection thread here that I will have to relocate. The document itself is on my personal server and thus safe, but I'll have to see where I can advertise it to L5R players.
@KakitaKaori If you have a place for my Collection, I would be grateful if you hosted it.

Well what an announcement. 😩
This hit me twice as hard because I always spend my time between here and the SW forums.
I will really miss the camaraderie in the forums, it was really a hub for creative minds to share their rpg creations, read good fiction and learn from other products and personal projects.
If you excuse me now I’ll light some incense and shred my biwa to remove my strife...

Well, I honestly wasn’t surprised by that announcement. I am surprised though that it is for the entire forum and not just for L5R RPG. Makes me wonder, really, how financially bad Asmodée is to decide that removing an official forum is a good way of cutting corners.
I guess I will be moving to courtgames then.

A goodly chunk of the Mantis hate stems from how they Borged other Minor Clans and more or less wiped out what made them interesting. I can't recall the exact phrasing, but I recall somebody going off on an amazing tear once about how the Centipede went from "pious sun priestesses" to "pirate henchwenches." Mantis flavor isn't inherently bad, but when it starts assimilating everything around it . . .

Oh, the setting is richer, more complex and more involving for their existence and as such I'm glad they're there.
They're still jerks, though.

Core, page 251
Last I checked, Duels and Mass Combats are conflicts, so you have your answer there. And again, this book is horribly organized with related information being spread all over the place.
But sure, okay, we could do that and consider stances affecting your cohort as well, but that would still leave Earth and Water providing no stance benefits because there are no Conditions applied to cohorts and there’s no mass combat action where you don’t roll dice (yet?)
And that was one of the things I liked about stances because some time you will want to choose a particular stance because of its bonus instead of necessarily being your best Ring, in Mass Combats, unless your Void and Fire really suck, they are still the best choices.

Right, but specific overrides general, and stances are called out as having benefits in Intrigues and Skirmishes and not so for Duels and Mass Battles. So again, if you're trying to read the book in the nitpicky style, the lack of consistent templating breaks the game horribly. Go with what's intended and the stances totally work, as does Air stance.
Earth Stance will still prevent you from being Immobilized for example, because again: Things target your leader, and affect your cohort, as "For the purposes of identification, targeting, and effects, each cohort is defined by its leader."
Water stance is still the weakest in Mass Battles, yes.
And sure, if Bonus Successes matter at all, Fire stance is always very very strong, and Void in general is strong - this is not very specific to Mass Battles, although it's exacerbated there, due to the amount of things scaling off of bonus successes. FYI: if you cap Fire stance at a maximum of +2, it's still useful, but not as broken, particularly in Intrigues.

Honestly, they should've taken the idea they clearly had during the Intrigue section and made stance bonuses change depending on the type of conflict. (Intrigues call the stance bonuses out as the "default effect". Clearly, there can be alternative benefits, then. Except... there aren't any in any of the books...)

This is a BS move.  I'd be a bit more understanding if the Edge Studios website was anything more than the placeholder that it's been for, what, 6 months? "We love roleplaying games!" "We don't know the title of our own game!" (There's no "the" at the beginning of Legend of the Five Rings, guys). 

@Magnus Grendel : If you have a Google doc or site of your preference, I'd be glad to host a link to your work at Winter Garden of the Kakita.  You probably don't want to keep it on my site itself because then you couldn't update it.
To anyone else....Any links to RPG materials I'd be happy to host.
I'll talk to CBass about how to ramp up the forums for courtgamespod.com if you'd like general discussion to go there.
 
Kaori

Just being nitpicky, but Air Stance only increases the TN of attacks and schemes targeting YOU, not your cohort. Again, proving that Stance wise ALONE, the only ones worth taking in Mass Combat are Fire and Void.

The opening round was 'too quiet', as Goriate put it.  Kazumi's army deployed along most of the southern an eastern sides of the castle, but aside from rallying to support the vanguard, didn't actually launch any assaults. The peasants formed the southwestern end of the line, putting them closest to Suiren's ambush - probably for the best as the heimin would be most likely to break and run. Ume (and Uiri) aimed to rally the troops, providing assistance to Goriate. Goriate - who'd not been given any official authority by the Reju - had nonetheless made himself defacto commander around the main gate as the ronin, at least, were prepared to be pragmatic: when there is a wall needing defending you listen to the Hida. One reinforce action later, and the area around gate was as secure as he could make it. Suiren and Nakama launched a series of hit and run attacks, inflicting a fair amount if panic and fatigue on the desperate villagers. Suiren lacks both command and tactics, but does have air rank 4, and had skilled assistance from Nakama, so was doing pretty well. Horonigai stayed in the court, trying to be ready if things kicked off, and wondering where Nobu was. Out of paranoia, she did augment an arrow with Howl of Isora in case a skirmish kicked off locally. The second round started with one of Kazumi's cohort commanders launching an assault on the castle gates - which swung open as the Otomo approached. "I'm sorry, you said what?!?!" - Goriate's player. Fortunately, with the assisted reinforce action from last round, Goriate has managed to up the TN enough that the assault just failed, and fighting broke out across the line of the gate as both sides tried to pour reinforcements in. An attempted assault by the villagers to drive Suiren and Nakama's forces off also failed thanks to the TN increases from air stance and obscuring terrain. Suiren in turn took the opportunity to slip through the chaos of the fight and kill Natsumi (we used a challenge action modified to use the Skulduggery skill to trigger the clash). Goriate launched a counter-attack with the reserves - less the squad of ronin who should have been in the gatehouse and unsurprisingly had either defected or deserted after their actions. With a solid success, the ronin started to push the Otomo back. The fight tipped even further when Ume and the Reju bushi joined the fight. Uiri took the opportunity to issue a challenge action, and brought down the Loyal Bushi commanding the Otomo vanguard. Battered and leaderless, Kazumi's first assault fell back and the gates were secured. At this point - unaware that the gates had held - Nobu launched his coup attempt, with Nobu, To Toshio and a group of ronin bursting into Reju Jikai's court. Many of the ronin already in the court turned coat and attacked their neighbours, and ultimately Horonigai, Reju Jinzaburo and Seppun Azusa were the Daimyo's only  effective line of defence. Goriate guessed - correctly - that having blown her nasty surprise, Otomo Kazumi would launch a follow up attack elsewhere, hoping to break in before reserves could be shifted - most likely at the ruined tower. Goriate moved over to reinforce the tower, and once again was able to raise the TN such that Kazumi's surviving cohort commander failed to make any impression. Suiren and Nakama launched a final all-out attack on the village peasants, panicking them into flight, and garuanteeing local legends that Closed Shell was guarded by 'daemon wolves' would be springing up within a generation. Ume and Uiri were an route to the ruined tower to assist Goriate when Uiri heard the unmistakable sound of a magically induced temporary indoor hurricane. He and Ume rushed to investigate, and found Horonigai and Jinzaburo holding off several ronin trying to reach Jikai.  Horonigai had put one down with her daikyu but the fight was now up close and personal, and however good a brawler the shrine keeper was she wasn't going to stop an opponent with a sword. Jinzaburo- with Azusa's assistance - was holding off two other ronin, and Ume engaged a third, leaving Uiri to sprint across the court to save the Kaito. He took some fatigue from tremors caused by Toshio, but managed to incapacitate the ronin  attacking Horonigai before the ronin could in turn attack the incapacitated Phoenix. Horonigai followed this up with an impressive daikyu shot - rolling enough opportunities with void 4/ranged 3 to ignore incapacitated herself and land enough fatigue to incapacitate Reju Toshio. One of the loyalist ronin put him down swiftly after. Otomo Nobu, seeing his 'coup' falling apart in front of him - and receiving word that Otomo Kazumi had failed to take the gates - turned tail and fled into the castle keep, with Uiri in hot pursuit.