Legend of the Five Rings LCG: Clan War Expansion

Since the launch of Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game, the Great Clans of Rokugan have been teetering on a precarious ledge. Now, in one night, that ledge has given way. New alliances have been formed, old rivalries have been ignited, and the great Clans of Rokugan are prepared for all-out war.

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce Clan War, a new Premium Expansion for Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game!

This Premium Expansion, like Children of the Empire before it, contains a total of 234 new cards. While Children of the Empire focused on an Imperial theme, Clan War instead introduces two ways to bring multiplayer to Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game.

The Enlightenment format sees three or more players racing to claim all five elemental rings, while Team Conquest allows four players to join up into two teams to break each others’ strongholds. When the clans clash in open war, none can be victorious alone!

Not only does this expansion include the rules for how to play these new formats, most cards in the set synergize with multiplayer play, and a treaty pad and cards included in the expansion allow you to form and break alliances.

Read on for more information of what to expect in Clan War! 

Finding Enlightenment

The Enlightenment format is a new way to play Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game in which players race to claim all five elemental rings and escape from the karmic cycle of reincarnation. This format is meant for three or more players, meaning that the path to victory often requires dealmaking, treachery, and shifting priorities as opponents’ strengths and weaknesses change throughout the game. Claiming rings is pivotal in this format, and as they are claimed onto a player’s provinces, they can be collected—or stolen—as the game progresses.

In Enlightenment, each player has their own set of unclaimed rings. When a player declares a conflict, a player uses a ring from their unclaimed pool, and should they win, they can both claim that ring by putting it on one of their provinces, and take any rings on the opponent’s attacked province if they managed to break it!

We’ll take a deeper look at the Enlightenment format in a future preview!

Clan War features plenty of new cards to interact with rings claimed on provinces. It should be noted these card's abilities only work during Enlightenment games, as contested rings do not trigger them. For example, the Hida Secretkeeper (Clan War, 25) is a samurai you want in your corner when defending the rings you’ve claimed. Furthermore, new Dragon province Karmic Teachings (Clan War, 15) can mitigate a momentous defeat by returning your claimed rings on it your pool once its broken, potentially denying your opponent their chance to ascend.

While many cards in Clan War synergize particularly well with multiplayer, they are all legal for standard Legend of the Five Rings play. In fact, you can even bring Enlightenment victory to standard play with the Enlightenment (Clan War, 94) event. Should you somehow manage to claim all five rings in a round, you can break the cycle of reincarnation and immediately win the game. Clan War also includes characters that aren't specifically geared towards the multiplayer formats, like the Lion Clan's Battle Aspirant (Clan War, 42).

The Enemy of my Enemy

With multiple opponents, Clan War encourages dealmaking and negotiation like never before. In fact, strategic alliances will be key to winning the game, and in Rokugan, you can always be sure there are consequences for dishonorable behavior. A treaty pad included in Clan War allows you to formalize these alliances.

When you make a treaty, players fill out the top form of the treaty pad to confirm what is being promised by each player, how long the treaty will last, and the value of the treaty. Each of these fields must be agreed upon by both players. The value essentially determines how much honor a player will lose should the terms of the treaty be broken. This incentivizes players to uphold their treaties, unless the perfect opportunity comes along.

The Clan War expansion also introduces a new card type: treaty cards. These cards bring a more dynamic and unpredictable game experience to the use of treaties in Enlightenment games, and are completely optional. When using treaty cards, you simply select a random card when forming a treaty and place the honor value on it. When a treaty is broken, the player who broke the treaty reveals the card and resolves its text. For example, Exposed Secrets (Clan War, 3) allows the betrayed player to draw cards equl to the value of the treaty when it is broken.

Of course, there are other ways to support other players and form temporary alliances. For example, your Endless Plains Skirmisher (Clan War, 57) can always be farmed out to the highest bidder.

Strategic Alliances

For groups of four players, the Team Conquest format introduces team play to Legend of the Five Rings in a 2 versus 2 battle. This format is similar to the standard game mode as victory is achieved by destroying the opposing team’s strongholds. However, players attack and defend as a team, meaning that they can share their resources, plan their strategy together, and prioritize whichever opponent has the weaker board position until both opponents’ strongholds are broken.

While each player still has to pay fate for their own cards, Clan War introduces an additional way teammates can work together to ease each other’s burdens. The support mechanic allows teammates to contribute fate to pay the cost of each other’s cards. For example, if an event an opponent plays could destroy your alliance’s plans, both players may Appeal to Sympathy (Clan War, 82) to delay the consequences for a time. While many of these cards work well in the Team Conquest format, they can also be valuable tools in the Enlightenment format by encouraging negotiation and deal making. For example, Compelling Testimony (Clan War, 86) can allow you to manipulate the result of a political conflict between any two players—and through proper negotiation—may cost you absolutely nothing to play.  No one is ever obligated to help pay the cost of a support card, so you may have to sweeten the deal by offering things like the Perfect Guest (Clan War, 32) to get what you want.

We’ll take a deeper look at the Team Conquest format in a future preview, so be sure to check the Fantasy Flight Games website frequently! But if you can't wait for Clan War to release to experience these multiplayer formats, the official rules are already available on our website here!

The Fires of War

The clans are at war, and the conflicts of Rokugan are more complicated than ever. A web of alliances can lead to surprising new battles, what role will your clan play when Clan War releases in the first quarter of 2020?