This is a series of posts where I play 100 boardgames.
Game: Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game
Designer: Brad Andres, Erik Dahlman, Nate French & Tyler Parrott
Year: 2017
Country: U.S.A.
Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games
Fantasy Flight Games has published a series of “Living Card Games”, expandable card games where deckbuilding is an important aspect of the experience. The idea is that you buy the core game and expansions then add variety and new options. It’s not a collectable card game because the expansions are not random booster packs. You know what you’re buying.
Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game is a two-player game in which each player controls one of the great clans of Rokugan. They war upon one another, and your goal is to first devastate three of your enemy’s four lands, and then their stronghold.
One of the distinctive mechanics in Legend of the Five Rings is honor. You have honor tokens, and if you get enough you win the game. If their number goes to zero, you lose the game. Each round, there’s a draw phase where you decide how many cards you’re going to draw to your hand, between 1 and 5. Both players decide on their own and reveal their numbers simultaneously. The one who’s number is bigger has to give the difference in honor tokens to the one who’s number is smaller. This means that you can make desperate moves and draw 5 cards, very probably losing honor, or play it safe and draw just 1 card, thus safeguarding your honor.
Another distinctive mechanic is the five rings. Each time you assault an enemy territory, you have to choose one of the elemental rings. You place it on your opponent’s territory card and if the attack is successful, you gain a specific bonus, for example draw a card and remove a card from your opponent’s hand.
At the core of the game are conflicts, physical and social. You commit characters to an assault or a defense and hope to vanquish them so that you can demolish the land you’re attacking. During a conflict, each player can also play cards from their hands to bolster their side.
I played this game because I wanted to learn how the Living Card Game format from Fantasy Flight Games worked, and I have no special attachment to the Legend of the Five Rings IP. However, the basic functioning of the game was pretty clear and the fiction came through well enough.