Exclusive look at cards from the upcoming L5R Torn Asunder set – Part 2

Torn Asunder, the new set for the Legend of the Five Rings CCG is coming soon and previews have already begun at www.l5r.com. Here is an exclusive look at two new cards from the upcoming expansion. Check back next Thursday for the final two cards we’ll preview!

Brothers of the Great Lake

This card brings us a unique effect; its power grows the more of them you have in play. Looking at the printed stats for the individual card, 3 Force for 4 Gold is pretty standard. Tack on a Battle ability, and it’s certainly a playable card. Where the Brothers start to get interesting is how each copy you play makes itself and the other copies even better. With only three copies of a card per deck, this keeps the power level from getting out of control. That said, if you can manage to recruit all three of this Follower to your cause, the 5 Force each provides makes them very resilient to your opponent’s Melee and Ranged Attacks all the while giving your army the power it needs to overwhelm your opponent.

The Battle action on the card also lends the Brothers a versatility that not many cards provide. Being able to target any card controlled by your opponent in the battle can allow you to bypass your opponent’s protective attachments and shut down their Personalities without losing any tempo dealing with their Followers and Items; something that is rare among attachments themselves. This flexibility combined with the potential power of the card itself makes for a card that could find its way into a large variety of decks.

Imperial Deployment

Keeping your opponent’s Units from coming to battle has long been a tactic of defensive decks. With the proper strategy and game plan in place, keeping a large unit from assigning to a critical battle can mean the difference between glory and defeat. Imperial Deployment brings those strategies to a halt with a way to combat the lock down tactics used by the defensive decks. Trumping both prevention of assignment and bowing effects, this card will likely prove to be a thorn in the side of many a player. The added utility of being able to simply straighten any bowed unit when an attack would be declared can provide a Military deck with added defense when facing another Military deck as well.

One of the cool things found within Legend of the Five Rings and on this card in particular is the existence of color text within the rules text of the ability. “The Empress dispatches him to the Colonies,” is a sentence that contains no rules mechanics, but gives the action a sense of flavor that relates directly to the interactive storyline that L5R has built over its 17 years in print. While not added to every card, these little easter eggs of story can give a flash of inspiration to an otherwise bland mechanic. The color text of Imperial Deployment itself hints at a coming civil war between the traditionalists of the Emerald Empire and the pragmatists of the Ivory Colonies.