L5R Honored - View from the Scorekeeper's Desk

The new logo

For those who played Legend of the Five Rings (L5R) - either the collectable card game (CCG) or the roleplaying game - September 2015 was a month that will live long in infamy. It marked the second occasion where the Alderac Entertainment Group had sold the license, this time to Fantasy Flight Games¹. At the time, I described this as Jigoku achieving a victory, as the game would be on a hiatus for two years, while FFG developed their version of the game.

Outside the venue

Fast forward two years, to September 2nd 2017. I'm writing this post while at the L5R Honored² event, an invitational tournament for 100 players from across Europe. The day is being run by FFG as the official Europe launch for their version of the game, following its debut at GenCon. A group of us from Sheffield were asked to come down and help run the event - four Judges, and myself as Scorekeeper.

While I used to play the CCG earlier in its history, I'd stopped playing well before the sale of the license. I was still involved in the tournament scene by working as Scorekeeper as part of the event team at Patriot Games, which hosted multiple Kotei³ tournaments, and the 2014 L5R World Championship. I haven't played the new game at all yet, which isn't that surprising when the game hasn't been released yet.

Still, the chance to work at something like this, and make a good impression with the new people behind the game, is a powerful incentive, so our team travelled down on the Friday, doing battle with the Tube to make it to our venue by mid-afternoon. As a result, we got roped in with helping decorate, and retired to our rooms late in the evening.

After recharging overnight, we were ready to do battle, and were at the venue ready to greet the invitees - and their guests - before 8am. Making final preparations, saying hello to people we knew, and signing everyone in took us up to 10am, when it was time for the 100 players to take their seats, receive their copy of the core game, and start building decks.

The view from my desk...

As is traditional in L5R, each player declared their allegiance to one of the seven Great Clans represented in the core set - Crab, Crane, Dragon, Lion, Phoenix, Scorpion and Unicorn. For representing their clans with honour⁴, they received some bonuses to reflect their devotion:

My selection of clan here may be a little biased...

This wasn't the only loot available for players to win on the day - there were extended art promo cards up for grabs in four of the five rounds, and winning three or more games during the event would get a special version of the stronghold of the clan they were representing.

More promo cards

Two of the people invited on the day had attended GenCon in August, and had achieved Hatamoto⁵ status by going undefeated - if people managed to defeat them during the day, they got a special pin reflecting that achievement, and if anyone managed to go undefeated during the tournament, they too would become a Hatamoto of their clan.

Cabinet of Curiosities

Given the game was new, the length of the rounds started off longer than normal, then decreased as the tournament progressed. While the Learn to Play guide had been made available online at the start of August, with a comprehensive rules document released shortly afterwards, this was the first time a number of the players had been able to get their hands on the cards and build their own decks.

Clan breakdown

Clan loyalty has tended to be a thing in the L5R community in the old version of the game, and it is likely to be the same in the new game. People tend to find a faction that they identify with, and stick with it whether the faction is top tier or not. They might flirt with other factions in a pre-release, but normally return home.

As a result, it was interesting to see what people chose for factions at this invitational. I was surprised to see how few picked the Lion, as I would've thought a clan known for their military might would be straightforward to build from a core starter set. Equally, Dragon and Scorpion being the two most popular were a little odd - winning by dishonour in previous editions was always a tricky victory condition, and I wasn't sure at all how Dragon would play in the new environment.

Don't look behind the curtain - nothing to see here...

As a way of drumming interest from people not at the event, FFG had arranged for there to be streaming coverage of the event on Twitch. One game each round was selected to be a feature game, with the aim to show off each clan in play over the course of the event - something we just about managed to achieve in the final round. I'm not sure if the footage is available as video on demand, but I hope so - I heard good things about the commentary, and would like to have a listen at some point.

With the flags outside the entrance to the venue, we did get a fair few civilians popping in and asking what was going on - even though it was down a side street. Most people were intrigued as to what the event was, and what the game was about - as the judge station was next to the entrance, we ended up fielding such queries. Everyone we spoke to seemed to be positive about what they saw, even if gaming wasn't their thing, which was cool.

More games in progress, towards the end of a round.

As is usually the case with the L5R crowd, the tournament ran on in good spirits. While judges were required to make rulings, most of them were because people weren't familiar with the cards or the comprehensive rules, rather than because people were trying to break the rules.

The tournament format did make it a little tricky to be precise with timings, given the end of round procedure can allow players to complete additional elements of the turn once time is called. We did manage this better than at GenCon - where the event overran by four hours - and I think we were finished roughly on time. Despite its reputation, we didn't suffer any issues with the TOME tournament software, though numerous back-ups of the data were taken to be on the safe side.

The top ten, after five rounds.

Given this was an introductory event, we weren't playing through all the rounds you'd need to determine a true winner - instead, the aim was to see who was undefeated at the end of the event. I was glad to see that we had five different clans represented in the top 10 - this indicates to me that the core set is reasonably well balanced, at least in a this format. Whether this changes when people can construct decks from multiple core sets will be interesting to see.

One thing that was a little strange was the secondary award for Most Honourable Clan - each game was asked to report which player had the most honour at the end of the game, and these were added up for each clan, and divided by the number of players for that clan to give an average. Oddly, that led to the Scorpion being the most honourable clan at this tournament, which is the opposite of how they appear in the setting. Talking about it during the day, though, it did make sense - the Scorpion could try to win via dishonour out of the core set, meaning in any game where thy won by that victory condition they would automatically have the most honour. Possibly something to rethink for general events...

Two of the three new Hatamotos - apologies to Stefan, but the picture didn't turn out.

As you'd expect with an event run in a Swiss format, we had three players who ended the day undefeated - these became the first crop of Hatamoto to earn the title on European soil. These new champions were Grégory Miguel Henriques (Crane), Stefan Rockensub⁶ (Crab) and Mike Alexander (Dragon) - congratulations to the three of them. If you happen to run into them at an event, make sure to issue your challenge in an honourable fashion...

Final thoughts

The event was a lot of work from the whole team - and I'm quite glad I wasn't involved in making rules decisions. The effort we put in, however, was mirrored in the enthusiasm I saw from both players and spectators for the new version of Legend of the Five Rings. Everyone I spoke to seemed to have enjoyed themselves, and most of them were looking forwards to launch events at their local stores.

The community has been on life support for two years now, with sporadic events being held by dedicated stores to keep people interested. Players have drifted away, to other games which actually have new releases and organised play. However, the tide may now be turning - the game may not be what we once knew, and we may be dealing with a new version of the story, but it is a brand with name recognition, and I've already begun hearing lapsed players talking about picking the game up at my LGS.

Just do us a favour, FFG, and give us a hint about the roleplaying game in the near future, OK?

Utz!

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¹ - The first time was to Wizards of the Coast.
² - Silly FFG, and their American spellings...
³ - Kotei being the Rokugani word for tournament. Rokugani being the native language of the L5R setting.
⁴ - That's how you spell the word, America...
⁵ - A Rokugani rank which indicated someone was the chief aid or advisor to the head of a family.
⁶ - I'm fairly sure I've mangled Stefan's surname here, but I'm working off what I was given to register into TOME - mea culpa, etc.