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Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game

Enter the vibrant world of Rokugan with Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game, a Living Card Game® of honor and conflict for two players! Drawing on the legacy of AEG’s original Legend of the Five Rings collectible card game, and now reimagined with new mechanics, story, and the Living Card Game distribution model, you are invited to join the Great Clans, uphold the tenets of Bushidō, and fulfill your duty to your daimyō and the Emperor in a world shaped and changed by a dynamic, player-influenced story.

During the game, you take on the leadership of one of the Great Clans which define Rokugani society, and you are cast into conflict against another clan. Your conflicts will decide the future of Rokugan, whether you’re battling with a katana or with cutting words, but the samurai of your clan cannot remain by your side indefinitely—when their destinies are fulfilled, you must find new allies to continue your conflicts. Ultimately, it’s your choice whether you will fight with honor or use unsavory means, but in every game, it is your role to lead your clan to victory.

Quinns: Phew! I birthed two of the year’s toughest reviews last week, but there’s no rest for the wicked. Today we’ve got some coverage that a lot of people have been asking for.

Remember when Fantasy Flight Games bought the rights to 1996 collectible card game Netrunner and released a new edition that took over my life? Well, Legend of the Five Rings (henceforth “L5R”) is them doing that again. This was originally a 1995 card game, but any week now shops will receive FFG’s beautimus new edition using the Living Card Game business model of releasing fixed expansions rather than randomised boosters. This makes it cheap compared to most collectable card games, albeit still expensive compared to board games.

In other words, we could have a hit on our hands. Have Fantasy Flight folded the original game’s steel into a captivating card katana?

Let’s find out.

Paul: Good News to you, my friends. Or, as we say here in Canada, News Be With You. I’m writing this Games News from atop a rock on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, watching the sun plunge past the horizon, thinking about the final touches we’re putting to SHUX. I’m already considering how to make next year bigger, better and cheaper, so it’s all that I can do to pull my head out of all this and tell you about Fantasy Flight’s BATTLE FOR ROKUGAN.

Quinns: It’s time to have a Really Honorable War.

OH MY GOODNESS! It’s time for a fantastically exciting box. First Martians: Adventures on the Red Planet is a game of surviving as the very first colonists on the Solar Satsuma, and keeping your wits about you as your home crumbles like a dunked biscuit.

It’s also the sequel to 2012 release Robinson Crusoe, which Quinns didn’t get on with very well. What’s changed in five years? A lot, we can tell you.

Built on the core of the award-winning Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island, First Martians: Adventures on the Red Planet pits players against the hostile Martian environment and a whole host of new adventures and challenges. The immersion experience is further enhanced with an integrated app that maintains the balance and challenge throughout. Players have the option of taking on the design as a series of separate games, in a custom campaign mode in which each successive game builds on the last.

Quinns: Remember last month when we reviewed Tales from the Loop, the charming sci-fi RPG of bicycles, bottle rockets and 1980s theme songs? Today we’re going to look at the other new role-playing game that’s been turning heads among my friends, and we’re going as villainous as Tales from the Loop was innocent.

Blades in the Dark is a game by John Harper, who you might remember from Cynthia’s review of superb free RPG Lady Blackbird. But while that game was an improbable 15 pages, Blades is 336 pages. By comparison, it’s his opus.

Which is very good news if (like me) you’re a fan of Scott Lynch’s Locke Lamora books or the heist genre in general, because Blades is a game of playing regency-era criminals. Oh, yes. This is a scoundrel simulator, and whether you want to play a crew of classy vice dealers, some down-and-dirty brawlers, or even a worrisome cult is simply the first of one million entertaining decisions that you’ll be making.

Blades in the Dark also offers a vast, seductive backdrop to your escapades: The haunted city of Doskvol, which will be familiar to anyone who’s escaped into the gloompunk of videogames like Thief, Dishonored, Sunless Sea or Fallen London.

This is going to be a long review, and not just because this is a huge book. You see, not only is Blades the most fun that my friends and I have ever had playing an RPG, it’s also like nothing I’ve ever played.

The streets of Duskwall are haunted. By vengeful ghosts and cruel demons. By the masked spirit wardens and their lightning-hooks. By sharp-eyed inspectors and their gossiping crows. By the alluring hawkers of vice and pleasure. By thieves and killers and scoundrels like you— the Blades in the Dark.

The noble elite grow ever richer from the profits of their leviathan-hunting fleets and electroplasm refineries. The Bluecoats of the constabulary crack skulls and line their pockets with graft. The powerful crime syndicates leech coin from every business, brothel, drug den, and gambling house. And then there’s your crew of scoundrels: all the way down at the bottom rung. Can you make it to the top? What are you willing to do to get there? There’s only one way to find out…

Paul: The Games News comes at you live today from the Shut Up & Sit Down jacuzzi. We always thought it would be cool to have one, so we splashed out but didn’t actually think about where it would go or how we were going to install it. So now we’re just sat in an empty jacuzzi. In our swimming trunks. With no water and no bubbles.

Still, there’s a new Uwe Rosenberg game coming, hooray! Let’s all hail Nusfjord, a game of fishing and worker placement.

Quinns: Hooray! That said, we made this our top story without thinking about how we were going to illustrate it. So up there is just a picture of the real-life town of Nusfjord.

Paul: This isn’t our finest hour, is it?

Quinns: Quick, let’s distract them with the box!

Quinns: So, we’re seven months on from when Matt and I first peeled the delicate outer membrane from the otherworldly Arkham Horror: The Card Game (otherwise known as ‘shrink-wrap’). We were stunned at how much fun we had. After years of rolling our eyes at Fantasy Flight’s Lovecraft products, we found that inside this small, unassuming box was an absolutely electric experience. I was as surprised as anyone when I announced that it was my favourite game of 2016.

Now, you’ll remember that while you can go back and play this game’s scenarios on “Hard” and “Expert” modes, most of the appeal is in the first playthrough, making each new expansion pack feel like a long-awaited episode of a favourite TV show. You call your friends over, microwave some popcorn, put the popcorn in the bin so nobody can get grease on the cards and sit down to see what happens to your characters (and their decks!) next.

Which begs a question. Now that the first full campaign has been published (seven expansions that make up The Dunwich Legacy), how’s this TV show doing?

And I think most players would answer you the same way. A small laugh, a faraway look, and then they’d say “Oh, man. It’s good. And… weird.”

While the driver gets all the attention, the pit crew are the unsung heroes of racing…

Pit Crew is a lightning-fast game where up to three teams of players must work together to get their race car back onto the track as quickly as possible. There are no turns in Pit Crew, as cards can be played at any time, but teams need to work together to make sure that their tires are properly replaced, fuel tank filled up, and engine repaired without making any costly mistakes. And will your team just go as fast as they can to get back out on the track? Or will you play smart and earn the Turbo Bonuses that can mean the difference between the checkered flag and last place?

Pit Crew challenges players to balance speed and skill in a fast-paced game of teamwork and communication.

Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game

Review: Legend of the Five Rings

Games News! 04/09/2017

Review: First Martians

First Martians: Adventures on the Red Planet

RPG Review: Blades in the Dark

Blades in the Dark

Games News! 28/08/2017

A Re-Review? Arkham Horror: The Card Game

Pit Crew

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