Readers of my blog already saw several posts from me about this game. For newcomers:
Legend of the Five Rings is a collectible card game set in a world of Rokugan a medieval Japan inspired setting. The card game employs its own continuing story that goes from arc to arc. The game is relatively complex for a beginner and I would not recommend it to any players not being familiar with this game. On the other hand the level of the game is relatively balanced and slow paced, which means that the game is relatively beginner friendly. Anyway if by a chance you would grab this game of the shelves I would suggest you 1-on-1 game to find out what a deck can do and to understand how the game mechanics work. It takes usually 5-10 games to figure out what the turn structure is and what you can do in each phase/step! I usually recommend this game to players with years of experience in other TCGs or CCGs. If the game will seem difficult, it's because it actually is difficult on many levels. It's entry point is way higher than for Magic: The Gathering for example.
War of Honor brings something new to the CCG game. L5R multiplayer games many times ended pretty badly because one player's deck was simply too fast or too powerful. In the CCG game, there are four different win conditions and if none can match a ultra fast honor victory no one will be happy (the victory conditions are Honor, Dishonor, Enlightenment and Military. A deck can have two win conditions and is named a switch deck). WoH tries to eliminate this by setting new Paths to Victory. There are four (obviously) and each of them has 5 steps. Military one needs 5 provinces taken down (1 province = 1 step). One Honor path step can be achieved after gaining 8 honor points in a single turn. Same goes to dishonor that needs to take 8 honor points in a turn. Enlightenment players need to put one ring into play to make a step. This way the WoH Path to Victories balance the different deck styles. In the CCG games you can take 3 provinces in one turn or put all five rings into play during a single turn which means other strategies may not be able to compete with that. This way the win condition cannot be reached in a single turn but in 5 for each win condition.
There is another novelty in the game. There are tiles with either Plains or a Fortress. Fortress tile has an ability on it. That ability can be used once per turn if the tile is face up. An active player can declare an attack from his own face up Fortress. He can attack any Fortress on the earlier created plan. The attacker can invite any, all or none of the remaining players to ally with him. The Defender has the same right under the same condition.
This brings a new element and can make it either more difficult or easier to pursue your own path to victory. Although it seems that with this rule and the wording in the rule book there might be situations in which a player cannot attack or is unable to have allies (and as military it can get really bad, as honor and dishonor decks in late game can easily make one step on their turn.).
As a downside of this game I'd say are the rules. The game has a very complex rules that cannot be explained in a board game rules. If a player already knows the CCG game they may also wonder how certain things work or if the game actually checks for it. For example there is something like an Honor requirement in the CCG. That is a number on Personalities mostly (also on other cards). If a player doesn't have enough Honor points, they need to pay 2 more to play the Personality. This is important for example for Dishonor players because this way they can tax the opponents that need to pay more for their Personalities. In the board game this is not explained in the rules, but the values are printed on the cards. This might be the only thing I encountered and bugged me for a while but in general the rules are a serious problem. If you don't know the game you can be pretty lost and as I stated above it's better to start with just another player and try to figure out in 1-on-1 game how the game works first. If you can manage to play the game within the rules, playing the multiplayer game using the War of Honor Path to Victories is actually a very enjoyable experience. It takes some of the complexity of the board game out of the game and makes it more balanced for all the players at the table.
Also the game takes a LOOONG time. If you don't have few hours spare don't even start it. And if you don't know the rules then don't even think about it if you don't have at least a half day free. The game in terms of turns can be quick, thus experienced players won't play this for that long but if you don't know how to achieve your goal the game can take ages. Believe me that realizing how to win in this game takes long.
Each deck has actions in different phases of the turn. When I played Dragon Enlightenment I usually had actions in Action Phase and other players were just passing. In 1-on-1 games this does not need to take long, but when 4 people need to pass on actions it gets tiring. When beginning players start to play, they don't usually rush the game much and wait till they have many Personalities and a lot of Gold available. This results in big battles that take really long and the outcome is not that predictable and is really difficult to tell what to do in such a battle (since players can't usually keep track of what happened and what the resulting power of the army actually is - meaning knowing the outcome of the battle).
This brings me to misplays. In L5R a mistake during the game has a big impact on it. Your whole army can die in a battle for example. This especially in multiplayer game will result in being hapless and unable to catch up once again. In WoH there is only a winner, if you want to win you need to watch out and grasp each possibility given to you.
So well is the game good? Yes and no. It really depends on the players, not only on the way how they like having fun but also on how well the players can deal with the game that is very complex.
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