Thoughts on L5R and anything else, from March 23-28, 2012 – which apparently includes an excessive emphasis on the Lion Clan.
1) AEG needs to let people know what’s going on with Den of Iniquity. And they need to make sure that it isn’t instantly legal and delivered in such a time and manner that whether you have it for a particular weekend depends on when your mail happens to show up.
2) Maybe we should start a pool on what eras will be included in Imperial Histories 2. Top of my list is the Return of the Unicorn.
3) The notion of opening Helvaults at Avacyn Restored pre-releases is pretty cool. Not that I’m going to be at one, but still.
4) Continuing with my “reading Imperial Histories” commentary – is it just me, or are the Lion sometimes the dumb jock bullies of Rokugan? They’re obsessed with football war. They’ve always been part of the attractive/popular honorable/traditional in-crowd. They have anger management issues. They like to pick on smaller Clans. And they think it’s un-Lion to be too scholarly – these are, after all, the people who thought that Akodo Toturi (generally considered one of the greatest leaders in the history of the Empire) was too bookish to be a proper Lion.
5) And, on the subject of Lion who hated Toturi, did Matsu Tsuko do anything right? Her tenure as Clan Champion seems to be characterized by letting her emotions get the better of her, making the Clan Wars worse by attacking anything that moved just because she could, and then completely failing as a leader when the chips were down and Fu Leng was walking and talking again. The character gets written about as if she was heroic in some way, but it seems like her greatest accomplishment was killing herself so that Toturi could lead the Lion armies again.
6) The Lion seem to be at their best when their Clan Champion is considered “un-Lion” (read: has interests other than getting in as many fights as possible) by the conservative/bloodthirsty wing of the Clan, so it’s probably a good sign for Akodo Dairuko that many of them don’t like her.
7) I think my wife likes Colossal Arena better than I do. That’s not a common occurrence with a designer game.
8) Don’t forget that you can contribute to Strange Assembly too – you don’t need to have been on the podcast or live in Atlanta to write a strategy article.
9) We finally got an Embers of War release date. Looks like GenCon will be my first real EoW play (there are 10 EoW-legal Kotei, but none in my vicinity).
10) Look’s like AEG’s hitting the euro-game market with its new Tempest setting. This line has been kicking around for years, so it’s nice to see it finally making its way to market.
2. I’d love to see a chapter about living under the yoke of Hantei XVI, myself. (And if they do another ‘submit an era’ contest, the idea I couldn’t quite get to gel in time for the last one might get sent in also.) But if we’re talking about what’s likely to appear, then yeah, “Return of the Unicorn” probably has some pretty safe odds. And probably one or both of the first two Iuchiban incidents.
3. Yeah, I haven’t played Magic in years (unless you count a game of drunken team Unhinged booster draft at a bachelor party a year almost two years ago, I haven’t played a game of Magic since the Fifth Dawn prerelease) but that does sound pretty darn cool.
4. Yes they often are. Honestly, I’m not even a Lion player and I’d like to see more stories where the Lion get to live up to the more positive aspects of their reputation. The only time that’s happened in the last few years that immediately comes to mind would be when Shigetoshi presented Genki with Shono’s daisho and a free pass for Shono’s daughter to come settle the score if she was still sore about it. In the long run it turns out that was also a free ticket for admission into Cluster$%^& City, but at the time it was probably one of the coolest things a Lion has done on-camera in a long time.
6. I think Dairuko being regarded as something of a master sensei could be a very good thing for the Lion in the setting. She could really combine the tactical sense of the Akodo with the intellectual sensibilities of the Ikoma. Whether she’ll be able to lead, who knows. But I’m guessing she’ll shine more leading from the command tents than from the front.
8. Honestly, I’d love to contribute and do my part to help the community, but asking me to provide any sort of strategy article would be like asking Rachael Ray to review dubstep albums. I’m just not equipped for the task.
9. Yeah, I knew that when I had just gotten my deck about the way I wanted it they’d announce when EoW was going to come out. Ah well, at least I’ll get in one Kotei with it before having to completely rebuild. (I can only make three this year. One before it’s legal, one right after, and then one of the last few in June.)
So the problem with Lion is that as constructed in the original clan wars setup, they have so many troops, and so much battle expertise, that they have to be written to attack everything, otherwise they’d just destroy the Crane and anyone else they were angry at (with the exception of the Crab). As far as Tsuko, yeah, she was kind of an idiot, but she was one of the rare characters that followed bushido. There was no clause in the Empire’s rules that said you don’t have to listen to the Emperor if you think he gets possessed by Fu Leng. The only honorable option if you disagree is seppuku to show your distaste, which, uh, isn’t going to really dissuade Fu Leng. What was sad/great about Tsuko was that she realized the error in her ways, in a strict adherence to bushido, and so she offs herself so that Toturi can take over.
I see my work here is already done.
With regards to #9, there will be more than 10 EoW-legal Kotei, because AEG is measuring the 30-day legality window from . . . well, I’m not sure, but it will be legal on June 2, instead of 30 days after the release date (which would be June 14).