Legend of the five rings

I found a couple starter packs from a few years back that I bought for myself and my wife to introduce her to the game. We never did get the chance to play, and the game more or less got forgotten about. Well, looking at the cards everything seemed like pristine condition so figured I would see what I could do. I have played L5R in the past and really enjoyed it, so wanted to see if it was just me or if the game actually held my interest.

First problem I ran into with the decks is that apparently the newest rules assumes you have a few cards in in the decks that these older decks did not have. No problem though, a bit slower on the gold contribution at the start of the game, but still playable.

Second problem... I am picky about card games. I dislike using game games without card protectors, because I don't want the cards to get damaged in anyway. Same reason I treat my normal wargaming army books, codexs, and Forces of X books all with tender care when handling them. I just hate stuff that costs so much to get damaged from use. Anyhow I didn't have any spare card holders I could think of on hand, but thankfully I tend to jump games so often that I managed to find a couple games that were just sitting away unplayed for a few months and with no need for the extra protection. L5R cards now good to go in that regard.

I tried to play a solo game, set out the four provinces and everything per the rules and played through. I have to admit, the game is still fairly intricate. Granted it isn't as deep in gameplay as Warhammer, Warmachine, or Anima Tactics, but it also takes up much less space.

My wife's deck was a Scorpion clan deck, while I had a Dragon clan. back when I first started playing the game many years ago I started with a Lion clan, and my best friend at the time used the Shadowlands as his deck. Almost as soon as i started getting the solo game cards rolling out, flash backs of back in the day came back. Building up armies of monks and samurai, defending my territories against the enemy, wishing I had just a little bit more gold to buy this one more person. All great fun.

I really do need to get more updated cards though, as it seems the design (from the pics in the official online rules) of the cards seem to have changed. I'm not sure how high I rank this game in my priorities, as while I do enjoy it, I do have other wargame materials I need to get before anything else. it will certainly be one of those games I try and get the wife to play when it is just a little to late to play a game of Warmachine though.