Legend of the Five Rings General: Your Shugenja Are Now Diamonds

Granny Asako is here with honor cookies for good flame turkeys

I mean did we expect much else? Its like Dragon Voltron. It isn't a very new person friendly looking faction but seems good if you know what you're doing

Yeah. Its about the samurai of these clans and the political and military intrigue of the setting sometimes with a giant dollop of end of the world threat. The original story arc of the game was about a massive free for all war brewing between the clans all leading to the return of Satan basically. Do you want us here to give highly biased summaries of the clans for you?

For some reason a deck that says fuck shudenja and goes all in on honoring their high glory dudes and protecting them seems appealing, especially combined with crane

Sure, I'm always down for totally biased explanations

One day, the Ki-Rin was frolicking in a field. Her sister the Phoenix had told her to look out for the Scorpion, but the Ki-Rin was so busy playing and looking at all the new things that she only half-listened to her sister's warning. While she was playing, a creature climbed upon a rock to watch. The Ki-Rin saw the creature and said, "I have seen Flower, and I have seen Tree, and I have seen Horse, but I have not seen you. Who are you?" The creature said, "I am Truth." The Ki-Rin smiled. "I am very pleased to meet you, friend Truth. Have you seen the Scorpion? My sister told me to watch for him, but I do not know what he looks like." "Yes, I know Scorpion," said Truth. "Can you tell me what he looks like?" "Yes," said Truth, "In fact, let us go look for him now. If you put me on your back, we will go much faster than if we both walk." "Good idea!" said Ki-Rin. "Climb on my back, friend, and we will be off." Truth climbed on the Ki-Rin's back and together, they went looking for Scorpion.

"So," asked Ki-Rin. "What does Scorpion look like?" "He has two sharp pincers," said Truth. Ki-Rin looked at Truth's two sharp pincers and said, "Ah, I see." "And he has many legs," Ki-Rin looked at Truth's many legs and said "Ah, I see." "And he has a tail that drips deadly poison." Ki-Rin looked at Truth's tail and said, "Why Truth, he looks just like you!" Truth smiled and said, "Yes. Yes he does." Ki-Rin laughed. "Isn't it fortunate I met you before I met him!" The Scorpion nodded. "Yes, it is." And Ki-Rin had nothing more to say.

Once there was a Lion, sleeping in a sunny field. A Scorpion came to him and said, "Lion, you are so large. I suppose you are the largest creature in all the lands." The Lion replied, "Yes, I believe that I am." "And," said the Scorpion, "You must be the bravest and strongest creature as well." "That is what they say," said the Lion. "My only advantage is my poison tail," the Scorpion said. "And I suppose you could smash me underfoot before I could sting you even once." "I could, quite easily," the Lion said, rising and stretching. "In fact, if I stung you, I doubt you would even notice." The Lion looked down at the little Scorpion curiously. "Perhaps. But I believe that I will step on you now, tiny one, and you will never have a chance." "Oh, but great Lion," the Scorpion said, smiling. "I stung you five minutes ago." And the Lion had nothing further to say.

Once there was a Crane and a Scorpion, sitting by the edge of a river. The Crane said, "Isn't it funny how the Fortunes distribute their blessings among the creatures?" The Scorpion eyed the Crane suspiciously, "What do you mean?" The Crane smiled and said, "Look at me. Look at my beautiful wings and feathers. I can fly and I can swim. Look at my perfect neck and my shining eyes. I am the envy of all the creatures in the world." Then the Crane looked down at the Scorpion and said, "Look at you. All you have is your tail." "Ah," said the Scorpion, "but all that means is that you have nothing to gain, and I have nothing to lose. And when you are old and have lost your feathers, you will no longer be able to fly. And when you are fat and half-blind, you will no longer be able to swim. Then, when you are counting everything that you have lost, I will be counting everything I have gained." And the Crane had nothing more to say.

Once, long ago, Scorpion was walking on a sandy beach with his brother, Crab. "Ah Scorpion," said Crab, "you have tricked Lion, and you have tricked Crane, but you shall not best me. For I am safe within my armored house, and not even your poison sting can reach me here." Scorpion eyed Crab's metal plating and nodded wisely. "That is true, my friend. But how sad for you that you are trapped in such an unwieldy prison." "What?" said Crab. "This is not a prison, it is my home." "Of course." smiled Scorpion. "And that is what everyone tells you. But, if it were not a prison, you would be able to take it off. I have heard that you were cursed, condemned to spend the rest of your life, carrying your own prison on your back." Crab said, "I can take it off whenever I want to!" Scorpion nodded sadly and said, "I'll be sure to tell everyone that." Crab stomped in the sand, "I can take off my shell whenever I want!" Scorpion said "Have you ever tried?" Crab stopped and took his house off his back and threw it to the ground. Scorpion smiled as they looked at each other. And Crab had nothing else to say.

One day, Scorpion came to Phoenix in his high mountains and said "I have a gift for you." Phoenix backed away. "Oh, no. I know of you, brother Scorpion. I know all about you. I don't want your gift." "Oh really," said Scorpion. "I will leave it here," he said as he put it on the ground. "And if you don't want it, someone else certainly will." Then, Scorpion walked away. Phoenix looked at the gift and thought, "If I take the gift, and it is a trap, then I have been tricked. But if I leave it and it is not a trap, then I have been tricked. What shall I do?" All day long, Phoenix sat and looked at the gift, pondering it. "What does he have in mind? He tricked Crab with anger and the Lion with pride. He tricked the Ki-Rin with her ignorance and the Crane with flattery. How does this mean to trick me?" Soon, Mother Sun had crossed the sky and Father Moon had made his nightly progress, but Phoenix had not moved a single footstep. He was rooted to the spot, pondering Scorpion's gift. When he looked up the next morning, he saw Scorpion watching him and laughing. And Phoenix had nothing more to say.

One day, Dragon came to Scorpion and said, "I saw how you tricked Ki-Rin." And Scorpion nodded. Dragon continued. "I saw how you tricked Lion." And Scorpion nodded. Dragon continued. "I watched you trick Crane." And Scorpion nodded. Dragon continued. "I was there when you tricked Crab." And Scorpion nodded. Dragon continued. "I knew what you would do to Phoenix." And Scorpion said "And you stood by and did nothing." And Dragon had nothing more to say.

One day, as Scorpion was planning his next trick, the Emperor came up to him

"Ah, little Scorpion" said the Emperor, "You truly are the most clever of all the creatures."

Scorpion smiled proudly at the Emperor's praise. "Indeed, I have so few gifts, but that is my strength! I need only turn the others strength against them for they do not know anything else!"

The Emperor nodded wisely. "Yes, you have shown that you can defeat any Creature you set your mind to." The Emperor smiled at Scorpion.

"I must thank you, little Scorpion. Now all the creatures know you. None of them trust you. They will blame all their misfortune on you"

Scorpion tilted his head in confusion

The Emperor continued. "Even when their misfortune is my doing."

And Scorpion had nothing more to say.

That was a fun read. Guessing you're a scorpion fan?

Ignoring the other user's nice storytime which doesn't tell you much without knowing who the clans represent we're going to start with the Crane because that's the order FFG is presenting the clans and I like their clan champion art.

The Crane get a bad rap on Veeky Forums, we've had major Crab partisans here since time immemorial and frankly there's a lot of really shitty Crane stuff from a few RPG editions back that make them easy to hate. I love the Crane and enjoy playing 'make fun of REEEEE Soesbee' too even.

The basic idea of the Crane is the guardians of culture. They or their founder invented a lot of the cultural practices and arts of the Empire and they are huge proponents of the finer things in life. This earns them a reasonably well deserved rep as a bunch of artists and ponces. They also have a strong dueling tradition and a warrior family who invented guerilla warfare, which seems odd next to the artists and courtiers until you realize one thing: The Crane are, culturally, a bunch of dangerous obsessive perfectionists.

They're the artist who climbs a cliff in a hurricane to get the perfect view of the area when the eye of the storm comes by and gives them just a moment of peace to paint. They're the courtiers who train their children by waking them up hours before dawn to do their hair and clothes and then mock spar verbally with their sensei in court rooms carefully constructed to look like those of other clans, including famous locations, with their senseis playing at being those other clans. They're the warrior family who is so good at guerilla warfare because they obsessively keep up to date scale models of fortresses and their local surrounding lands down to the last tree for them to study and memorize. They're the duelist who wades waist deep into a frozen stream to practice their cuts under adverse conditions so that if they have to duel on the clan's behalf they won't slip up be it in a storm or in a court.

The Crane be crazy.

The Lion are the bellicose children of Akodo, the god who literally wrote the book on bushido. Of course, at the moment the clan has forgotten there's more virtues than the ones which talk about how hard you should kill people for slights against your honor. Not everyone, the Akodo family has always been more on top of things than not, but culturally at this point in the old lore and it looks like it is being kept in the new one, is that the extremely numerous, extremely bellicose Matsu family is culturally ascendant. So they're in short a huge army with a state attached to it full of honor bound people with anger issues.

The Lion are also the most hardcore of ancestor worshippers and the Kitsu family in the LCG is bringing their A game apparently since the Lion get discard pile necromancy tricks.

Dragon are...special. Not like short bus special, though kind of like that, but in that they're basically a bunch of families each doing their own thing united by two things: Being zen buddhists, and the loyalty to the Togashi monastic order since their founder, the Kami Togashi, basically let these families pursue their own interests without imposing on them.

Because of this you get a clan of duel wielding poet-swordsmen, a shugenja family who is closest to developing the periodic table of elements than anyone else in the setting, a courtier family who trains their children in the Sherlock Holmes methodology (and is also the only group in the empire who really believes in anything but the most blatant of evidence), and a family of monks tattooed with ink mixed with the very blood of their founding god to give them magic powers.

Oh and also Togashi Yokuni is Togashi himself, having lives for a thousand years and periodically changing his identity. So they've got god on their side. And god has not been skipping weight training days.

The Crab are rad. To the south of Rokugan lies the Shadowlands, a twisted hellscape where demons and undead and twisted, tainted monstrosities live. These things hate Rokugan and want to tear it to the foundations.

The Crab, the children of Hida, were tasked by the first Emperor Hantei of holding back that tide after the First War. They did this in the most logical manner possible: They built an enormous wall along that border (in the old canon it took a few centuries and another major war to get there, in the new it apparently was built at Hida's command in life). The Kaiu family are engineers and builders and have lined the wall with siege weapons and filled the secret passes that are beneath it to let Crab armies and scouts through to the far side with deadly traps making the underside of the Kaiu Wall basically a Dungeons and Dragons dungeon. There's even goblins and monsters in there sometimes, though the traps are meant for them.

They're stoics, less concerned with social niceties than they are pragmatic effectiveness, and some of the best warriors in the Empire. Their courtier family, Crane defectors from days of yore, are shady money grubbing merchants turning their gifts towards funding the massive needs for food and supplies the Crab have to maintain their vigil.

Also their current champion, Hida Kisada, is the largest samurai in Rokugani history and is called the Great Bear. He's pretty rad, and I'm hoping doesn't fuck up as stupidly in this game as he did in the CCG. Which was just so bad, let me tell you.

I'm going to be joining an l5r campaign soon, first time with the setting and system. Playing a shugenja. Any advice on good spells/combinations? Mostly going for support-based and some social skills.

So now we get to the Phoenix, who are today's thread focus. I like them a lot, probably my second favorite clan, even though in the old lore they basically existed to either fuck up in a way that ruins the Empire or try to do the right thing and get crushed for it.

The Phoenix are the heirs of the Kami Shiba, but led by the Isawa family after Shiba demonstrated humility nobody expected from an actual god by kneeling before Isawa and pledging his family's protection to the other man's...forever. This got Isawa onboard in the First War I mentioned before and effectively saved the world, so good job Shiba.

The Phoenix as a clan are the most religious and mystically devoted figures in the Empire. They have more shugenja, the priests of the elemental kami, than anyone else (mostly Isawa but not all) and theirs are often powerful indeed. They are also devoted pacifists, essentially refusing to use all that mystical power and the skills of the Shiba bushi unless pressed hard. I believe Shouting Matsu described them as basically a big kid everyone bullies because he doesn't fight back until he lashes out and breaks someone's arm, and that is pretty accurate.

The Phoenix are led by the Shiba, but the Shiba champion defers to the will of the Elemental Masters who head the Isawa family. This is a problem because as I noted before, the Phoenix fuck up badly all the time. The Isawa have a kind of baked in arrogance about their abilities and knowledge which leads to a lot of 'Of COURSE this is the right thing!' thinking as they crack open a Black Scroll or dabble in blood magic or something.

Also the new Phoenix Champion is chosen by their ancestral sword that belonged to Shiba after the old one dies, and is haunted by the ghosts of all the past champions who offer them advice. Which is pretty rad. The current champion is just a kid who basically was thrust into this, but is going to do her best.

So now we are at the Unicorn who we don't know what's going on with them in nu5R yet.

They are a clan with a lot of foreign ways since after the Empire was founded they went on an eight century trek outside of Rokugan to see the world and look for any other existential threats. They came back with horses and cavalry techniques nobody else had, and barbarous ways that horrified the other samurai.

In the absence of knowing what's coming for them, I'll just say they're defined by compassion, a willingness to embrace the new, and a few extremely honorable, very skilled families of warriors. And horses. They fucking love them some horses.

And finally, the Scorpion clan. The Scorpion were tasked by the first Emperor with providing an enemy within the Empire that the other clans can rally around with their hate and disdain, in order to keep angry eyes focused away from the Imperials and prevent a coup. This plan is perfect and has no flaws. Please ignore how the initiating event of old5R fiction was the Scorpion Clan Coup.

But anyway, they're a conniving political clan who makes use of ninjas, subtle shugenja magic, blackmail and courtiers who aren't afraid to go for the throat when they need to, and a respectable military tradition to keep all eyes on them and protect the Empire from any threats internally they feel they can deal with better than the armies of the Lion or mystic arts of the Phoenix or soft words of the Crane. They are the Emperor's Underhand.

At present they're basking in political power as the Emperor showers them in favor since he is old friends with their champion Bayushi Shoju, and his wife, Bayushi Kachiko is the Imperial Advisor. She's also having a lesbian affair with the Crane's champion 90% likely on Shoju's orders

Also they fucking love masks.

Each element has good support spells, but if you want a social shugenja the best call is Air focused since you'll be cranking Awareness to increase your main casting ring anyway. Any school that isn't Air inferior is fine though.

I'd suggest keeping it simple for yourself and making an Isawa.

Cool, thanks for the write ups! Sounds like Scorpion, Lion and Crane are probably the ones I'll be most interested in. Love me some masks and ancestor worship necromancy.

Lion and Crane are sort of mechanically similar from the previews we've seen in that they're very new person friendly and their Champions being mirror images of one another.

Lion have a lot of handy tricks to put a lot of dudes on the table, the Crane have snowballing political and honoring tricks. They aren't like Dragon and Phoenix we've seen so far who seem to be the most fiddly clans, with weird Voltron Dragon builds and Phoenix doing janky ring tricks.

Scorpion are probably last preview, but the few spoilers we've seen of them so far seem like they're a political control deck with dishonor tricks.

In the RPG all these clans have plenty of cool shit though of various skill needed to grok, so less new person concerns if that's what you're in for.

Yeah, I figured Scorpion would be the monoblack of this game. I'll have to read up on the rules and such once I get home.

>"Isn't it fortunate I met you before I met him!" The Scorpion nodded. "Yes, it is." And Ki-Rin had nothing more to say.

And then they went frolicking, right?

So far we've had enough previews to have a general picture of the rules, but we only have some of the clans spoiled and are missing a ton of neutral cards. The game should be coming out after Gen Con, so probably two months or so off.

Too late I've already decided to play a Yogo Wardmaster. Theme wise I really like their backstory and abilities, even though in-game they strike me as under-powered. But I'm fine with that. Every group needs a Scorpion too.

>tfw your kimono is so great it can distribute honor.

The real height of fashion is here, step off Crane.

>though in-game they strike me as under-powered

They kind of are, yeah. I run a game and one of my players is using a homebrewed buffed version of the school we wrote. Talk to your GM and see if he's okay houseruling it a bit to improve it.

A fine choice. Be sure to mack on all the ladies. Or men. Whatever.

>Be sure to mack on all the ladies. Or men.

Both.

>Talk to your GM and see if he's okay houseruling it a bit to improve it.

What ares do you think they could use a boost in the most? I'm not interested in playing an overpowered offensive monster, but I don't want to be a complete burden either. I haven't played yet so mechanically I'm not sure what areas they really struggle in comparatively.

There are already two attachment cards in this game that are just really nice clothes, and another that's a really nice accessory. I love L5R.

We expanded the utility of the wards a bit. It isn't quite Tamori spell bottling powerful, but it lets you get more mileage out of your cool prayer strips. Here, I'll copy the text of ours over to a pastebin.

We definitely went kind of fiddly here since we basically invented subsystem rules for the wards themselves in addition to their technique: pastebin.com/da5EQkPL

Thank you friend, I will run this by my GM. I appreciate it!

Out of curiosity, are there any particular ward spells that are generally considered good picks? Or ones that are just flat out useless in nearly in any situation? I don't want to gimp myself by choosing something that sounds cool but actually isn't.

>Go home, Crab-san. You're drunk.

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>"I heard you were a specialized conflict type build. It would be a shame if something were to happen to your conflict type, especially if this were under my stronghold."

I honestly hope that eventually you can twink a Crane courtier out with an ungodly stream of fashion accessories. A nice kimono, a fan, a pretty comb for your hair, maybe even make makeup a card.

It's like you're combining dressing up a doll with ruthlessly crushing opponents underfoot.

I guess I'm playing Phoenix until the Mantis come back. I think I'm going to regret it in the long run, but I love their general gameplay and overall aesthetic. Also sounds like the best way to get used to the game's new mechanics, even if they are very likely to be less effective than the other clans.

This is dumb. This combo is dumb.

Two characters with covert -- and then two send homes.

>Best way to get used to new mechanics is to play a clan which does weird bullshit that involves niche cases you have to set up

I mean they look like fun too, I'm definitely going to play them a bunch, but I'd have imagined you'd want to do something a bit less niche first.

If you send all of them to one attack you can make it so the opponent has to lose, the province breaks, and they lose an honor since nobody was defending unless of course they have enough covert and glory at once to win.

They all bow after that though, leaving you with nothing to attack or defend with though.

>Shiba Tsukune.png

I should ask an artfriend one day to just sketch a kimono over her.

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Correct. That's a stronghold busting squad. It gets even better when you saw what was in his hand -- he had an Assassination and an Admit Defeat, meaning the defender had to have exactly 7 characters in order to keep ANYTHING on their side of the board.

Phoenix strong!

unicorn a best. i can't wait to see what ffg has in store for them because i want to start playtesting.

They're a clan that went through a bunch of radical shifts in the old canon, and frankly didn't have a ton of character during the original Clan War arc so I'm curious to see what synthesis FFG is going to arrive at with them for fluff. So far it looks more like playing up the outsider elements without the Moto having to displace the Shinjo on top of the heap, but I kind of want to see what else is going on.

Also I want to see what Altansarnai looks like under that mask. Odds are we're getting a new champion trio and an older, more experienced trio with Hotaru/Tsukune/Toturi vs. Shoju/Yokuni/Kisada, leaving the Unicorn once more as outsiders to a pattern. Is she an experienced veteran leader, is she new at this and managed to broker a peace with the Lion as an early achievement?

Is FFG going to ruse us and change the actual Kami who keeps changing their identity and she's Shinjo all along

Not that user, but I let people convince me not to play Convergence when I started with Warmachine, and I'm not letting that happen again. (Also, I don't have to choose which clan to buy into with this game.)

I really hope Altansarnai isn't another noob. I think we have enough new, inexperienced champs for now, and it'd be nice to have a new character who starts out already established in the new setting.

Point. I'm splitting my clans with a friend to ameliorate the cost of the boxes so I am needing to make judgment calls on which I don't want to play that much.

There's going to be an inevitable backmarket on cards though, right?

There will be for promos, if my Netrunner experience is anything to go by. For non-promo cards, it's less likely, but clan loyalties might make things a little different for L5R.

Who is the flyest motherfucker in Rokugan for 500, Alex

And if you people don't think it is Bayushi Shoju I need to hear reasons. Kakita Toshimoko is the only other acceptable substitute

Will we have to buy more than one core set/expansion sets to get playsets of cards?

Core set, yes, you'll need three if you want full playsets.

Expansion sets, no, they'll have playsets of everything in the box.

One set is playable, but for competitive play you want decks with more copies of cards you build your deck around so you'll need 3.

All but the last were in the 1e Way of the Scorpion book as children's fables. The last is Veeky Forums tripe that ignores the canon meeting between Bayushi and Hantei. The point of that meeting was Bayushi was intentionally protecting Hantei by being his Villain.

I've been out of the loop; how are the kakita and daidoji looking in NuL5R? I've been a fan for a while, especially of the Kakita.

That Naive Student art screams "reaction image" to me.

>we've had major crab partisans
dwarffags. It's a venn diagram that's just a circle.

Yeah once we get full preview on that card I'm clipping it to my L5R folder. There's still I think a handful of Phoenix cards we haven't seen in detail yet and he's one of them.

I mean there's a lot to like about most clans, but when I first got into the game right around when the 4th edition hit the amount of Crab dick stroking was insane. It wasn't just Crane hate. It eventually died down to more normal levels but still was kind of weird. Did something happen in the CCG around that time that brought them out of the woodwork?

Also RIP in peace, new Crab waifu. You lasted one story.

>tfw you are fucking your ice queen milf sensei but your true love is her young and vibrant yojimbo
We shall never know the pain of samurai.

There's not much for the Daidoji to feel like a unique deck style just yet. I figure they might be an option for later Crane decks via the monthlies.

The named Kakita duelist character has an ungodly 'send your army home' duel mechanic though which is great. Honor him and slap a fine katana on and he'll be 7 military, and you can get that to 12 via a full bid of 5 in the duel.

Also we have Duelist Training which has little influence pips meaning it can be splashed into other decks if you lack any native dueling options (The only other one we've seen so far is a Dragon one).

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>tfw no autistic crane waifu to play with action figures with

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In the crane story it's mentioned that Shizuka Toshi (their core-set stronghold) has been attacked by a bunch of pirates lead by someone called 'Yoritomo'. I can't imagine him being an important character though.

Since I haven't seen it posted in this thread yet:-

fiveringsdb.com/

You can click on 'view as images' to get a nice visual spoiler.

I really want crane and spider to stay gone

You mean "Mantis and Spider", not "crane and spider" I assume.

Honored user-sama would never make such a mistake on an Imperial Tapestry Forum, would he?

>Implying this isn't an Ivindi board for fingerpuppets

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>And finally, the Scorpion clan.
What happened to Mantis. There were Mantis, right?

Mantis were made a GC originally at the end of the Clan War and aren't one of the Great Clans right now. They do seem to still exist (Hotaru fumed to herself about Yoritomo and his pirates in the Crane fic) but aren't a faction anymore. Nor are the Spider for those who know about that late era madness.

I actually like the Mantis a fair bit so this is a bit lame, but since I mostly play the RPG we can keep doing our own thing.

Mantis was a coalition of Minor Clans that united for political power and leveraged it into Great Clan status, but FFG has rolled the timeline back to before that happened.

I just dug out my old cards since some friends are getting back into Magic and I thought I'd show them what I was doing growing up. I played from Late Jade up to about the Diamond/Lotus transition and have some stuff older than that.

I'm thinking about making some kitchen table level Open format decks out of the stuff that I have. Struggling with a bit of a foggy memory and a disorganized mess of cards. Is there still a scene out there for open? Does anyone have any generalized advice?

I'm definitely making a Phoenix deck since that was my clan of choice, and Mantis I had a lot of. Phoenix I could probably throw together something with Riake/Tomo mobility, some samurai, chasing osano wo, et al with a switch deck maybe. Mantis, their big things were naval and shooty, right? I am probably better equipped for shooty since Naval was a later mechanic. What kind of decks would you build for noobs if you were me? Maybe a straightforward Crane honor runner, a Scorp dishonor deck, and a Dragon Kaede Sensei enlightenment setup to showcase those victory conditions?

I was a Phoenix in the CCG era, and man, I can't get over how politically dysfunctional the clan is. It's basically run like a bickering academic department if the academics were Shinto priests. It's fun to set people on fire and shit with prayers though. I always liked this suicide bomber guy

Yeah I love the poor flame turkeys. I'm definitely running them as one of my primary decks with the LCG, they look like a blast.

Unrelated, but can anyone who has more card game acumen tell me how good the Shiba Yojimbo there is? She seems stat low for the cost, but a 'fuck you it doesn't work' effect sounds really good. See also Kisada. But in her case it is a very specific situational one which may not be worth it, since it can force people to play around her but won't stop them if you aren't fielding nothing but shugenja.

Anyone have this image in a hires version

I noticed that Hiruma Yojimbo reads that it "cannot be declared as an attacker" while Shiba Peacemaker "cannot participate in conflicts as an attacker". Is there actually a difference between these effects? Can you somehow get a character involved in a conflict with declaring them?

I cropped it out of the fiction. There's a decent poster version of all the clan champions done so far, but I can't for the life of me find it since googling Shiba Tsukune just gets old5R art of her. I'd prefer better too, yeah. If anyone has it feel free to share.

I don't think so, it might just be wording choice. If there is a difference, FFG does a facebook livestream every friday. Go and ask them

There is, actually, a way to get a character into a conflict without declaring it -- pic related.

Please note this image is a mockup; the wording is exactly what FFG read out loud on stream, but the art is not right.

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Night, samurai friends. Only two more previews, four more weeks before it is all done and we are at game launch. Are you ready? I'm ready.

As a discussion topic as the night waxes: What clan are you most planning to play of the ones shown so far? I'm a blatant Scorpion partisan but even I can't promise I'll play them much if I hate the style they go with, so right now I'm actually really into Dragon and Phoenix.