Every now and then (more like every two years) changes are made to the rulebook and the wording on the cards changes as well. But usually the changes made even bigger mess. This time with Ivory Edition the changes are much bigger and this time they finally make perfect sense (even though I don't like changes, especially big ones). (And by the way...graphically and artistically the sets are awesome. That is my opinion but I like this change...especially when all the games try to have so digital looking and hyper-'tech' feel to everything)
We no longer will be seeing 'Bow this card' written on it but there will be an icon representing this. Costs will finally be distinguishable right away and all cards will be playable and not restricted ONLY to a certain keyword. Keywords that actually DO something are in bold now. Followers no longer have Honor Requirement. There are big changes in rules as well though..like gold produced by a holding or stronghold can be now divided as we wish. No more Border Keep (we can still take mulligan) and Bamboo Harvesters and once again 5 cards on our opening hand. Equip as an open action (WTH?? but it makes perfectly sense after playing the 'imaginary' Romance of the Nine Empires game I can tell...). Clan discounts are gone...we'll just pay what is printed on our clan personality. Thus proclaim changes and off clan personalities simply cost 2 more. Two sided strongholds (one for going first and one for going second) and only ONE per arc. To diversify we can add a sensei to our deck. These aren't mandatory but well surely we'll choose one. And wait that's not all. Straighten Phase, Events Phase and End Phase are gone, so Events with Limited action will be actually something normal. Celestials and Regions also gone (that's why they don't have Ivory Bug now). Fortification Holdings are going to be reintroduced though (alongside the Sensei card).
Finally someone made a 16 card booster packs that will contain the stronghold needed for drafting (EACH PACK will have it) and the way the cards are designed now...there won't be that many dead picks as before. There are many changes that I like and now finally the cards are not a complex wall of text. Now a player can concentrate more on the game itself then math and reading skills.
The power level was brought down much more than I expected but that also means that there will be more diversity (hopefully). It seems to me that many decks were just killed (at least Blitz and ecowarfare) but I see where the designers are going (it feels much like Modern in Magic, at least it felt). If this brings new players to the game I'll be glad. L5R is a very good and solid game but needed to be redesigned to be more understandable and easier to teach and those are finally the changes that can achieve this. I hope that from now on the rules won't be undertaking big changes and will keep to this. It looks very promising. Hopefully "R&D" will test their ideas and cards in both constructed and limited so what happened in the last arc (I mean the current) won't happen once again. I have no idea what made AEG to open their eyes (Gamers 3?) but it was about time for this changes to come.
When Ivory Edition comes out I'll probably get some starters and a box and try to start anew. But for that, one needs other players to join. I hope that Ivory Edition will be a new start and new players will grab this and start enjoying this wonderful game and become part of the awesome L5R community that is already here.
Now I'd like to share a documentary done by John Harkless. YouTube proposed me to watch this video for some reason so here I propose you to watch it as well. It is about L5R community.
And here's a much shorter video of our L5R community (this is not a documentary).
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