Impressions: L5R Imperial Gift

August 14, 2009 2 comments

To celebrate the 15 anniversary of the Legend of the Five Rings collectible card game, Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG) has released Imperial Gift, a free learn-to-play deck. This 2-player set supposedly has everything needed to become familiar with and start playing the game.

While I’m not a card game guy, I have played a RPG setting a few times and enjoyed its mix of Asian mythology and standard fantasy tropes. The card game is the same (yes, I know it came first and the RPG came later), and the artwork is definitely high-quality and evocative. My only gripe is that for a starter set only an abbreviated version of rules is included, printed across several cards. To get the full you have to go to the the official website and download the PDF. That’s not bad, but the rules are 38 pages of full color artwork with backgrounds. No printer-friendly version? You want me to burn through my ink cartridge to decide if I like this game or not? That was off-putting to me. It may be that these decks were designed so that experienced players can use them to teach new players, but as a new player trying to teach myself I’m finding it awkward.

For experienced players, this set may be a little odd. The two starting Stronghold have no clans assigned. There are no Rings in the deck. It’s an abbreviated experience for a demo, but it seems (from reading the rules, not from actually playing) that these are important elements that carry a lot of the appeal of the game, and it seems like a weird choice to leave these elements out. Again, if this is designed by experienced players to teach new player, the old pros could talk up those points. And with the focus on learning the game, maybe those elements were considered expendable. I have the impression that the cards are unique to this deck and not available elsewhere, so if experienced players want to snag a deck just to add to their collection it’s probably pretty cool.

Imperial Gift is available at qualifying stores participating in AEG’s Stronghold Stores program. A complete list of stores is available at the website.

I will be bringing the Imperial Gift decks with me to Ides of Gaming tomorrow, if anyone would like to fumble through a couple of demo games with me.