L5R LCG Warriors of the Wind / Masters of the Court Preview

Published: June 27, 2019 1:00 PM /

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The Legend of the Five Rings Living Card Game (L5R LCG) has added two more Clan Packs to the available card pool. Warriors of the Wind and Masters of the Court are clan pack focused on the Unicorn and Crane clans. As with previous Clan Packs, they add a larger selection of the featured clan, and cards themed around the pack for the other clans.

We've been covering the L5R LCG from the start and all of our coverage of all the L5R LCG products can be read here:

For anyone interested in L5R, or FFG's LCG system, we advise you to check out the Core Set review first.

As with our other L5R LCG articles, we're going to look at some of our favorite cards from the pack. They might not necessarily be the best cards, they're just our favorite either mechanically, or thematically.

Warriors of the Wind

Warriors of the Wind is a clan pack focused on the mysterious Unicorn clan. The Unicorn clan are best known for their mounted warriors and their fast attack and cavalry traits in the LCG. We're going to look at our top 3 Unicorn clan picks and also 3 cards for the other factions from the set.

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Our Uniorn Clan picks from the Warriors of the Wind L5R LCG expansion.

Warriors of the Wind – We love the fast, cavalry focused combat theme of this card. It means that your opponent, knowing that you can play this card, might never truly know what’s actually going to attack. It brings a very thematic, movement focus to a static card game (as opposed to a miniatures game where you physically move pieces), which is awesome.

Ring of Binding – 1 cost and it essentially doubles the fate worth of a character in terms of how long they stay in play. It will be surprising to see Unicorn decks without this card. We also heard about a very powerful combination on the L5R LCG Site Imperial Herald with the Phoenix card, Jurōjin’s Curse which triggers an extra Fate phase. We’re going to be testing this out with some of our own decks as it could be huge.

Saadiyah al-Mozedu – Saadiyah’s effect is fantastic. It lets you either reset one of your own provinces to use again or turn an opponent’s face-down to deny them access to the ability. 3 cost is solid, especially with Sincerity, as you draw a card when she leaves play. Even if you can’t find a use for her now, she’s a brilliant tech card for any future use.

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Our other Clan picks from the Warriors of the Wind L5R LCG expansion.

Ivory Kingdoms Unicorn – The sheer audacity of this card is fantastic. If you break a province in a conflict, you can immediately begin a military conflict following it. Making sure you’ve got the units available to follow it up is essential. Your opponent will see it coming if you build up and attack and may well put more into ensuring that province’s defence. Could be a great bait, feint, or just straight-forward smashing tactic.

Trading on the Sand Road – A very interesting card. Rather than bidding and then drawing cards, players put the top 4 cards of their conflict deck into a shared pool that all players have access to. This can have some very big repercussions with players having access to your cards as much as you theirs. Will be very interesting to see if this has any effect on the larger game meta. It is very random, but could be hugely impactful.

Kaito Nobukai – A 3 cost Phoenix character that can be sacrificed to bow all characters in a conflict. If used defensively, this can lock out a conflict to save a province and can be combined with straightening effects offensively for some very oppressive play. We love the huge effect for sacrificing theme.

Masters of the Court

Masters of the Court is a clan pack focused on the Crane Clan. The Crane Clan are known as the political hand of the Emperor and have some great courtiers and dueling abilities. Masters of the Court as the Crane Clan pack is understandably pushed in their favour, but their cards really do shine in this pack. Therefore, we've picked our top 6 Crane cards as they outshine all the others from this pack.

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Our first 3 Crane Clan picks from the Masters of the Court L5R LCG expansion.

Iwasaki Pupil – This card really promotes images of card denial. It could be a huge factor in pushing that for your deck as it effectively locks down the draws for both you and your opponent. If your deck is designed around drawing more and making your opponent discard, this could be a powerful combo-piece.

Daidoji Uji – As a Scorpion player and a huge Shinobi fan, I’ve always had a lot of love for Uji and his Harriers. This character lets the Crane player play cards straight from the provinces at a 1 fate discount. This gives the Crane player a lot of flexibility, if they can keep Uji within the requirements.

Winter Court Hosts – Winter Court Hosts is a costly but crazy card. If you are more honorable than your opponent and this character is participating in a conflict, you can draw a card every time your opponent plays a card. If Winter Court Hosts hits the table, it will almost certainly be a target for your opponent to shut down as it as it could cause conservable issues for them.

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Our second 3 Crane Clan picks from the Masters of the Court L5R LCG expansion.

Kyūden Kakita - The Crane stronghold in this pack plays into the new Duelling rules brought in with Children of the Empire. The stronghold rewards Crane characters with the honored status, just for being in a duel. It can be played around, but owing to how much Crane decks love the honored state, it’s worth a shot every turn.

Gossip – Gossip is a great risk/reward control card and we really like what it adds to the game. It’s costing you a card in order to stop your opponent playing a named card, which means that you can either build in some options to find out what your opponent has in their deck or hand, or simply use it to cancel out a card that might cause you trouble. It’s a really interesting dynamic and we’d like to see more cards with depth like this.

Courteous Scheming – An extra political conflict for winning a political duel? This plays very well into the new duelling rules and especially with the options available for the Crane, especially with their political power, this is an incredible card that we’ve been making a lot of use out of.

 

These Clan Packs for the L5R LCG were provided by Asmodee UK.

 

What are your favorite cards from the two expansions? What's Clan at the moment and what deck are you running? Let us know in the comments below.

 

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A Potts TechRaptor
| Senior Tabletop Writer

Adam is a Tabletop Specialist for TechRaptor. He started writing for TechRaptor in 2017 and took over as Tabletop Editor in 2019 and has since stood down… More about Adam