There are three major instances I want to talk about in the early history of the LCG version of Legend of the Five Rings (henceforth referred to as L5R):

• Let Go & attachment hate
• The advantage of going second
• Charge!

To explain these, I first have to relate a small number of L5R's core rules. I'll try to limit this to the relevant game rules so as to not get bogged down in how the entire game works. L5R is a traditional 2-player dueling card game, but in typical FFG fashion is highly complex, uses many tokens, and while features minimal randomness, basically cannot be played quickly.

So, L5R works on a kind-of shared-turn system, first of all: there is a designated "first" and "second" player that gets swapped each turn, where the "first" player gets first opportunity at things like playing cards and declaring combat, but it's not as clear a division as with most other games. Whether you go first or second on any given turn is a highly tactical part of the game, especially given that each player has 2 "battle phases" where they can declare attackers, but only with characters (creatures) that have not been bowed (tapped) prior, such as from participating in earlier battles. As you would expect, standing effects (untap effects) are extremely strong in this game, but that's a discussion for later.

Each player has two decks in (technically three, but that can be ignored for now) L5R: a 40-45 card dynasty deck of characters (i.e. creatures) and holdings (I can't think of an appropriate analogue here, besides maybe a nonbasic land with a non-mana-producing ability?); and another 40-45 card conflict deck of events (spells), and attachments (auras, as these specifically attach to other cards and get discarded when the attached card does), and a limited number of conflict characters. A player's hand is only ever filled from the event deck, and normally players only ever have up to 4 characters available to put into play at any time, for reasons I won't get into right now. What comes out of the dynasty deck to be played is public knowledge, but player hands from the conflict deck is not.

Players pay for their cards from a refilling pool of Fate (mana) that doesn't empty, and has no upper limit. Most dynasty characters cost between 1-5 fate, most events cost 0-1 fate, most attachments cost 0-2 fate, and most conflict characters cost 1-3 fate. The amount of fate you gain each turn is determined by what Stronghold you're running (a card type I can explain when it's more relevant later), but almost all printed so far have a +7 fate each turn.

The last and possibly most important bit of information needed is how creature removal works in this game. As far as card effects go, creature removal is nearly non-existent, because removal is baked into the core mechanics. When you put any character into play, you first pay the fate cost, then you may place any amount of additional fate from your pool onto that character card. 1 fate is removed from ALL characters at the end of every turn. This is important since it operates quite differently to how most card games handle creature summons, as any character's actual worth is more a matter of how much you're willing to invest in them rather than what the card itself can do or what its numbers are.

So, with the most relevant core mechanics out of the way, I can explain:

Case 1:


In the top-left corner, you'll see the printed cost of 0. I already explained that most event cards, like this one, cost between 0-1 fate, to allow you to play a lot of them while still playing dynasty characters. The bolded action word indicates the "spell speed," here essentially a sorcery speed, but very few instant-speed cards exist and even fewer let you counter effects. Why this card is a problem is that it was the only form of attachment removal most factions had access to for nearly a year and a half (how mixing factions works isn't strictly important for this discussion).

Let Go was printed in the first big-box core set in the Dragon Clan faction, which had a heavy attachment theme, but through the core and many of the first expansions big attachments that cost 1 or even 2 fate were also pushed as a theme in several factions, not just in Dragon, and I'm sure you can see where the problem arose. Attachments, as one of the 4 main card types, became a miniscule part of the game because not only did they carry the two-for-one problem of auras that when the character they were attached to gets discarded, so do they, but this absolutely free card the opponent can easily run 3 copies of could negate 2 out of your 7 fate if you were foolish enough to run what were supposed to be the big, impactful attachments.

To compensate for this, future attachments came out with even larger effects, to give players more reward for playing them, which then also led to every deck requiring some form of attachment control. If you were playing a faction that didn't have in-house attachment control, you had to splash in Let Go, and this resulted in Dragon being really over-represented as many, many competitive players felt this was the only choice available to them.

Case 2: The importance of going second.

This game's economy is tight. There are a few built-in ways to gain small handfuls of fate a turn, but there is next to no card effect that grants free fate. Knowing what not to play and when to back out or when to invest is a big part of this game.

Which is why it was inevitable that an original core mechanic had to be removed.

Originally, when the game first came out, whomever went second got 1 free fate, presumably to compensate for the advantage of going first. As already explained, however, this game doesn't operate on the same turn structure as most games and first player doesn't get that much of an advantage.

This was found out in pretty short order, and it was statistically averaged out that, if I'm recalling correctly, going second gave an evenly-matched opponent a 68% chance of winning. In particular, some of the avenues of gaining that handful of fate each turn I mentioned isn't available on the first turn, so being the first player to move during the second turn, when it first becomes available, often gives the second player the advantage if they play well enough.

It took a long while to get this change implemented into the game because we are talking about the core rules and not just a restricted/banned list, but it happened with the very first rules revision, and there was much rejoicing.

Case 3:


I explained how "investing" in your character works, and from that you can understand how a 5-cost character with 2 fate placed on it should be "worth" more than a 2-cost character with 5 fate placed on it -- essentially you're paying for 3 turns worth of a 5 cost, or a 15-cost "return" for 7 "investment" in one scenario, and paying for 6 turns worth of a 2-cost, or 12-cost "return" for the same "investment." I also briefly touched on how combat works and why it makes stand (untap) effects so powerful.

Now piece together what the above card means for all of that.

A bit of backstory: for the longest time -- I think it was around three years -- L5R didn't have a ban list, because its restricted list worked exceptionally well to keep cards in check. Rather than restrict the number of copies you could have in your deck, you got to choose no more than 1 card on the restricted list to include in your deck. You could run the full 3 copies of it, but it was the ONLY restricted list card you could run.

Charge! was among the first handful of cards to make the restricted list.

Hyper-aggressive decks, those that aimed for a turn-three or possibly even turn-two win (it's nearly impossible to win on turn 1 in L5R, and then only if you win by one of the non-combat win conditions), still chose Charge! as their restricted card, because you cannot ignore an up to 4-fate discount and 5-6 bonus strength in combats that typically don't even reach 20 total strength for ether side (how combat works specifically would require an entire explanation, so let's just say 5-6 is a hefty number). Even as other cards crucial for those decks got put on the ban list, they kept Charge!, though it's worth noting that these aggressive decks were also found almost exclusively in the weakest factions during that time, meaning they had horrible track records and had difficulty securing wins.

When a ban list was finally implemented, Charge! was also among the first handful to make it on there. This card had been printed in the core set, and even when it was previewed before the game officially launched, community talk was that someone had misheard, or the footage was too blurry, because the basic mechanics of the game meant that getting a high-cost character out for a single fate was extremely powerful even before factoring in the ability to re-stand and throw that character into multiple combats, which became increasingly common as more expansions were released.

Originally produced by Force of Will Co. (explaining why some of its technical jargon is the same -- Quickcast and Rest(ed)/Recover(ed), most typically), Caster Chronicles is a CCG about Magical Girls, and one that is much more divergent from Magic: the Gathering than is Force of Will. English sets are a bit scarce (and the newest ones are either delayed or not releasing in EN), but I've found it to be very fun and different.

One of the first things to know about Caster Chronicles is that there is no life total. How close to losing or far from it you are is not represented by a numerical value that's adjusted. Instead, you basically have seven hits to give, and whether you're tapped by a creature (called a Servant) with 0 Attack or one with 5000 Attack, you lose the same basic 'hit'. There are abilities that can adjust this, as you might imagine for a CCG, but that's essentially the way the game works. The way these hits are tracked is with a fairly ingenious anti-snowballing mechanic that I've learned to appreciate there being deep nuances with.

At the start of the game, seven cards from the top of your deck will be dealt out, face-down, hidden information to everyone. These seven random cards are your "Orbs". If you take an attack, your opponent chooses one of your Orbs to "Corrupt". You then pick up that card and add it to your hand. A fairly common and basic ability in The Caster Chronicles is "Break". If your orb is corrupted and it's a card with Break, you may choose to play it immediately without paying its cost instead of putting it into your hand. So, the farther behind you get on "life" the more cards and even potentially free spells you'll receive to help you recover and crack back! But, if you take an attack and don't have any Orbs left (Not when your last one is Corrupted) you lose the game.

Attacking, Blocking, and damage also work very differently than in Magic and FoW. In the Caster Chronicles, there is no "Summoning Sickness" by default; Servants are ready to go right away. And go they shall. The Combat phase occurs after the only main phase, and is the last thing you do on your turn, really. Except on the first player's first turn (the very first turn of the game) all Servants you control that can attack (typically all your Recovered servants) MUST attack. Attacks occur one attacker at a time, and for each one you can choose whether to attack one of your opponent's servants or your opponent directly. The results of that combat occur, and you go on to the next one, until you can't attack any more.

There is no active "blocking" from the player whose turn it is not, but there is defense, handled by another mechanic I haven't seen elsewhere: a third position Servants (specifically) can be in rather than just Recovered or Rested: Reversed (Represented by placing the card bottom towards your opponent, rather than bottom-towards-you Recovered). Reversed Servants can't attack, and when you attack, if your opponent controls any Reversed Servants, you cannot attack the player and corrupt their orbs. You can attack the Reversed Servant(s) to get it out of the way, or you can attack other Servants to pick them off, but you can't go for the head.

When a Servant attack another Servant, the attacking Servant's attack is compared to its target's. If the attacking Servant's is higher, its target dies. Otherwise, nothing happens. If it's attacking a Reversed servant, the same thing happens, except the Reversed servant's Defense is used instead of its Attack. In any case, there is no "lingering damage" and the attacker is never in any danger (from basic combat resolution, at least). And, if you attack a player, you either corrupt one of their orbs or cause them to lose, depending on if they have any orbs, assuming no chicanery would stop the attack from connecting (there is a window, for instance, to cast a Murder-equivalent at a Servant attacking you. Or anything else, before combat results are calculated).

Last to note is that when you first play a Servant, you can (normally) play it Reversed, and if you've controlled a Servant since the start of the turn you can switch it (from Rested to Recovered or Recovered to Rested) once per Servant per turn at sorcery timing.

With Servants (and with them Orbs, Winning, and Losing) covered it's time to talk about the next big thing in The Caster Chronicles: Casters and the mana system!



Casters are the cards representing Magical Girls themselves, rather than the things summoned or cast by Magical Girls, and they are your land analogs. They go in your main deck, just like lands in Magic. The thing is, there are no "basic" or "generic" Casters. Each Caster has an element (one of the seven colors of TCC; more on those and their pie later) and a level, and an innate ability to be rested (tapped) for their level worth of Aether (mana) of their element. So Zoi Russel can produce one blue in addition to her ability to tap for a card if you lost a creature in battle. Basically every caster is like this: in addition to their innate Aether-production ability they also have one or more abilities, usually abilities that require resting (and are thus exclusive with Aether production on a given turn). They are also, essentially Legendary. If you control a Caster with a particular name -- exact full name; Zoi Russel can coexist with Zoi Russel (Demon ver.) -- you can't play another alongside it. In part to avoid bricking, you can play any card (literally any card) face-down as a level 1 caster of no element (which naturally rests for 1 aether of no element). So if you've got your level 1 Zoi Russel out and you draw another, you can slap her face down to keep getting more Aether. Same with any random card if you didn't get enough Casters. You play your Caster for the turn (or don't) in its own phase, the Call phase, which takes place between Draw and Main. This limits the Caster cheese somewhat.

To play a Level 2 caster, you have to do something a little odd, though: you basically upgrade one of your existing casters. if you have a level 1 caster with the same exact card name (Zoi Russel level 2 can be played on the Level 1 Zoi Russel, not Demon), you can play the Level 2 caster on top of her. The old card becomes "Stock" for the Level 2 caster. You can do this with a face-down nameless caster, though in that case the "Stock" will probably be less useful. The reason for that is in Level 2 Zoi's first ability: it requires banishing (sacrificing) another Zoi Russel. Since Zoi can't normally coexist with herself, there are a few ways to do this: sacrificing an alternate version (like Demon Zoi) works for once, but is probably the weirdest way. You can also sacrifice a face-down Zoi Russel... or one that's stock! So if you played Zoi 2 on top of Zoi 1 rather than a random, that Zoi 1 can act as a "free" use of the Level 2 Zoi's banish ability!

Level 3 casters, which are extremely rare, must be played on matching level 2 casters. Them's the breaks.

This, to me, is pretty neat. The Caster Chronicles chose to focus on the most dull, invisible facet of M:tG, the Lands, and make its version one of the most tactical and engaging parts of the game. Balancing what you have for an arsenal of Caster abilities, how many duplicates and higher level Casters you run, and whether you use them to go all-out for Aether production or for their powerful abilities is a hugely rewarding puzzle in both deckbuilding and gameplay.

A side note, something you may have noticed is the the cost (say, of Griphon) is just a number (6, for instance). This number is how much Aether the card costs. At least one of those Aether must match the card's element; the rest can be anything else. So, in Magic terms, everything would cost (N)C. This makes decks fairly friendly to multicolor, since there are no CC or heavier costs, despite the fact that multi-element aether production is an incredibly rare ability. This always kind of reminded me of the Alpha playtest cards where Llanowar Elves had its cost written as ("1, at least one of which is ") rather than the to which we've become accustom.

In addition to Casters and Servants, there are two other basic card types: Conjures (which are the instant and sorcery equivalents) and Barriers (Which are equivalent to global Enchantments). Conjures are about as common as you'd expect (constant and important in gameplay), but Barriers are actually pretty rare.

In another divergence from M:tG/FoW, there are seven Colors in The Caster Chronicles, which map to the Seven Deadly Sins. They tend to have fairly well-defined slices of the color pie that are theirs and also a characteristic Servant type, as well as different relations and themes in the expansion sets.



Orange is "Solis", and represents the sin of Gluttony. Solis is particularly good at "Sacrifice and Revive", similar to or multicolor in Magic. Solis play will consume their own resources, but they'll also get them back where others don't. The signature servant type for Solis is "Sweets" -- animated confections. As a side note, I bloody love Hard Pancake as a game piece -- hitting it on Break can totally reverse things with its beefy defense and ability to get you something critical back.



Red is "Ignis", and represents the sin of Wrath. Ignis is about like Red in M:tG, focusing on aggro both in terms of playing fast and its stat priorities, tending to have a powerhouse early game with both good Servants and removal, but struggle more later on with fewer top-end servants, few servants that are good Reversed, and little unrestricted removal. The most notable Servant type in Ignis is Yokai, but it has fewer tribal effects for Yokai than most of the other colors do for their signature types. Furious Dragon is one of my favorite non-standard Dragon designs in gaming. It's still recognizable as a dragon, but it's freaky as hell and only gets freakier the more you look at it.



Green is "Silva", and represents the sin of Sloth. Silva goes all-in on its Sin aspect; many of its servants have the Slow Start or Lethargy (enters rested, which replaced Slow Start going forward in later sets) abilities, and in an offensive sense it loves bounce effects, some tapdown, and ability-removal. In essence, it ends up playing a good deal like the tempo side of M:tG's Blue, except no counterspells because The Caster Chronicles has never printed a Counterspell equivalent. (Its "Land Destruction" equivalents are very interesting designs, but that's another topic). Silva's most supported type is Plant, but like Ignis, it doesn't go all-in on tribal interactions. Biwa Monk, unlike the other Servants I've shown off, is from the second set and supports the multicolor Heishi archetype.



Purple is Terra, and represents the sin of Pride. Terra is big on Defense and Evasion, but is probably the color that seemed to have the hardest time finding a comfortable "Pie" slice, experimenting with "If this is your only Servant" conditions as well. One thing's for sure: as opposed to Ignis, Terra feels weaker in the early game, but much stronger if it survives, as it has both tools to stabilize and tools to establish inevitability. Terra has two very supported Servant types: Flowers and Insects. Many tribal cards that call them out call out both ("If an allied Flower or Insect..."). Mechanically, they sort of represent the two facets of Terra, with Flowers being wall-like defense while Insects are evasive attackers. Notably, the first starter decks for the game, which are one of the products you can still reliably find, are an Ignis deck with Passion Wing and Glory Butterfly as the face characters and level 2 casters included, which I suppose is fair since they're the two who most obviously cribbed design notes from famous Magical Girls (Sakura Kinomoto and Homura Akemi). As for Tactless Butterfly, it was in that starting deck, and is an excellent go-to card!



Yellow is Luna, and represents the sin of Greed. Luna has two powerful claims to fame: it has the best card draw (outside of "Draw a card if X" being a common Caster ability in every color) and it is the color with tools to increase your Orbs! As you can see with Extravagant Necklace, some Luna cards let you gain new orbs (usually out of cards in your hand, negating the usual Orb CA, but rarely off the top of your deck), though even though it's a Luna signature it's still not a common ability for good reason. In my experience, the stats of Luna servants tend to be a little bit anemic, though there are exceptions. It's sort of the other half of Blue's bloated M:tG pie from Silva, getting the crap creatures and massive CA. There's a good amount of support for Luna's signature Jewelry type.



Blue is Aqua, and represents the sin of Envy. Don't ask me why Envy is blue and Sloth green rather than the other way around, but I've gotten used to it. Aqua is great at equalizing, but less so pulling ahead with several effects that punish your opponent for having more of something. It's also your best source of tutoring in the game, being the color that mostly gets it in its pie. Aqua's signature Servant type is Supplies, as in animated school supplies. Red Pencil of Judgment, especially having the second type of Demon, really tickled my funny bone from this perspective



Lastly, Pink is Aes, and represents the sin of Lust. Aes cards are the best at messing with the position of enemy cards: Resting, recovering, or reversing them as pleases you, preventing your opponent from willingly Switching, and so on. Aes also, naturally, has "Gain control of..." effects in its slice of the pie. This might be more powerful than it seems to some: Recovering an enemy servant means changing it to Recovered position even if it was reversed, potentially removing a "blocker" from contention. And because of how combat works, it's many Servants are hard to kill if they stay Rested or Recovered, but trivial to destroy if they end up Reversed, either because they have a massive attack and no defense, or a position-based ability like Tactless Butterfly. Responding to your opponent playing something Huge/Pathetic by reversing it and then kicking it on your turn is amazing, as is recovering that Hard Pancake so you can finally kill it or your opponent around it. Not depicted, the signature (and heavily supported) Servant type for Aes is Cosmetics (animate beauty products). No special story for Heartbreak Cupid, sorry!

I don't know if he's always been like this, or the pressures of this pandemic has just brought out the worst in him (and I know he trawls around facebook, as well), but he's just... become this ball of privileged hate, it seems. While I've been having my eyes opened to just how good I've had it by learning about the legacy of both slavery and segregation in this country, he's ending our calls by saying "if you live in this country, you're not 'oppressed.'"

I'm learning to really hold my tongue now, because there's only so much I can even say to him right now that he'd listen to, and he's getting really worked up over things that don't really affect him. AFAIK there have been no riots or even major protests around his area, and as I sit here thinking about his group of friends, the ones I've met have all been one of three ethnicities: eastern European (Russian, Moldovan, etc.), Latin descent (Spanish/Portugese, Latin American, or South American), or the more common heinz57 white from the U.S. I don't think he even has anyone that can give him perspective on the race issues, and I may be the only one in his close circle that could possibly educate him about the virus itself. I know all too well what the news (particularly internet news) does to the human brain, too, and I just couldn't compete with that even at my best.