Legend of the Five Rings, the premiere Interactive Collectible Card Game (CCG) is letting you discover its universe and its playstyle for FREE until March 19!
What do you have to do? Simply download the L5R Free Decks flyer, read up on the game, pick your Clan and print its pre-made deck. Voilà! You’re ready.
Download the flyer >
Kolat Edition is the name given to the Emperor Edition (the current arc) proxy environment. Until March 19th, you can go to any tournament and play with your deck full of Kolat Edition watermarked cards if you so desire. A complete PDF of Kolat Edition is also available if you want to create your own deck.
View the Kolat Edition PDF >
Discover a game unlike any other CCG, where Honor is Stronger than Steel and community is a vital aspect!
Just a couple reminders once you have printed your proxies:
- Back them with uniform card backs.
- Put them in opaque sleeves.
- Pass this information to your friends so you all of you can experience L5R together.
- Last but not least: HAVE FUN!
For more information on the game, you can visit our Legend of the Five Rings Main Page >
Welcome to Rokugan, the Emerald Empire!
Very cool idea to get people into it!
All this press has gotten me craving it again. Dang it. Well looks like I’m going to try to con my friends into player L5R with me again.
One more note: We’re giving away free starters on Facebook! Just “Like” our Legend of the Five Rings page on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/legendofthefiverings) and comment on the appropriate posts for your chance to win.
@Bobb33z3r
You can go to Kaze no Shiro (www.kazenoshiro.com) for a compendium of all the fictions ever released (sortable by eras of the game).
If you stopped at Toturi as an Emperor, it means you stopped before Gold Edition so you can read all fictions starting from then if you want to.
The basic timeline can be found on the RPG core books (3rd Ed and now 4th Ed).
Speaking of which, we are in the process of creating a BG area for the RPG as well as entries for the 4ED products.
One of those is the newly released “Imperial Histories” book which covers in depth 10 eras of the game!
Enjoy the reads 🙂
@AEG-Todd
Hi Todd,
I’m part of the old guard of CCG’ers playing CCG’s since ’94 and I have to say this is such a great idea by AEG! My primary game has always been Star Wars: CCG by Decipher (which the community is also doing great things with proxy cards to keep the game alive) but I did try and play in a L5R event at Gen Con in 2003 and I had a blast. I didn’t have the players near me to continue to play back then, but with these decks and the ability to demo it with some friends, I’m hoping I can get back into the game. Great job! ps. Is there any really good resource with a time line to catch up on the story so far, last I remember Toturi was Emperor 😛
It’s rare that a game keeps me engaged as long as L5R has.
I’m really hoping that this new try-it-before-you-buy-it approach to CCG marketing brings a few more players in to what I consider the best community in gaming.
It’s true – I wasn’t about to go out and buy a starter deck when I didn’t have any other friends to play with (I live in one of those no player base communities), but I’m quite willing to give this a shot as a print and play. If one out of the five people I’ve shared this with takes an interest, they’ll have successfully started a player base.
The free-mium try before you buy model is a no brainer, assuming of course that you have a quality product that people will actually enjoy.
@Corey: L5R is far from its “last, dying gasp.” However I assume that you may live in a locale where the game has lost its player base; or perhaps even never had one. For many CCGs that do not have mass market appeal, their player bases exist in “pockets” throughout the world: and L5R has a significant number of well filled pockets of extraordinarily dedicated players.
This is not the first time a company has offered a “try before you buy print & play” however it may be the first time a company has allowed proxies in official, tournament play.
L5R is not for everyone; there are complex layers of strategic depth that simply do not exist in other CCGs. The base rules of the game seem to change with every edition (sometimes significantly; sometimes not so much); and a lot of erratum winds up being issued with every arc.
While I would never attempt to play L5R at a tournament level, I find L5R to be the most fun multiplayer CCG ever created. If nothing else several balanced proxy decks can be built with Kolat Edition that will provide a playing group with hundreds of hours of fun. If you like it, buy it. If you don’t; maybe you’ll find something else in AEG’s catalog that will suit you better.
Corey: I’m not sure where you get your info, but it is terribly off the mark. The player base and overall sales of L5R have been steadily rising over the last 5 years. It’s as vibrant as it has ever been.
We put so much into making Emperor Edition the biggest and best set of L5R ever released (I mean, just look at all the stuff that comes in a starter: http://www.l5r.com/news/focus-on-emperor-edition-5-starter-decks/ ), and we wanted that to reach as many people as is possible. Posters in stores are ok, banner ads on CCG sites are ok, but giving people the chance to try before they buy? We’ve never seen that done, and it seemed like a great idea. You play, don’t care for it, no loss (well ink…); you play and you like, and you pick up the cards you need to replace the proxies.
Seems like a win-win all around to us.
Very interesting idea – I’d love to see a follow up article in about six months letting us know what the reactions and results of this experiment are. I’ll be downloading this once I get home.
@Corey: why is that? And what leads you to think they game is dying?
Things like this is one of the reasons people love playing L5R. There was a printing error which pushed back the physical product release date. But instead of telling the gamers to suck it up, they gave it away for free to play with for a limited time.
I hope this does great things for the game. It would be nice to have something like happen during a games base set release. For experience players it lets them know what they are getting into environment wise, and new players gives them time to feel the game out.
Fantastic idea! A great way to promote a game in a gaming set up that can be a little annoying to get into.
It’s rare that I go negative, but I see this as a last, dying gasp.
I will not mourn the CCG.
I really enjoyed this move! I played L5R for years but gave it up when I moved because the local environment for it isn’t that great. This was a way for me to print up a bunch of decks for all my board game friends just to have something extra laying around to play when we feel the mood strike us. It’s worth checking out for everyone, even if you don’t plan on investing in the CCG or playing competitively. Who doesn’t want to add another game to their collection for pennies?
I really like when companies make it easy on new players to learn about their games, this being a fantastic example. The L5R players I know are very enthusiastic about the game, and this helps show why.
Keep up the great work!
A very good business model for a CCG. Changing business models is how you win back customers, especially when the CCG model has turned off so many. I’ll be interested to see how this works for them in the long run.
Interesting!
Making proxies even temporarily playable in tournaments is an innovative idea…
Next step could be leaving a few cards as existing only in permanent tournament legal proxies form. 🙂