Chaos Reigns Part III Previews Week:
Day One

Hello, all, and welcome to the previews week for the last set of the Shattered Empire arc! I hope you're as excited to see these as we are to the deliver them to you, so let's begin with the Events shaping the fate of Rokugan (and your games), including one which resolves one of the AEG era storyline prizes still outstanding: The Lion's Wedding.

Up next, we have the set's Holdings, though I wanted to highlight two in particular to begin with. The first is Hantei Katsumi, the future Hantei XLI (if the current Hantei gets his way). Special thanks to contributor Chris Quesenberry for the artwork for the Empress-to-be.

The second is one of the few remaining outstanding story prizes from the AEG days we have on our docket, and our newest Oracle.

Without further ado, here are the rest of the set's Holdings.

Next, we have a selection of Sensei, running the spread of nine of the ten factions currently in the game. Of particular note is Kimiono Sensei, which players of pre-Ivory Edition L5R might notice effectively adds a form of old-style Cavalry functionality back into the game. The "Cavalry rulebook ability" to which it refers is the current function of the Cavalry keyword, which allows you to move a single Cavalry unit to a battlefield.

Kimiono Sensei's text also refers to what will be a new defined term in the game going forward, "empty battlefields". "Empty battlefields" are, in effect, battlefields where no units are present on either side.

To break the use of Kimiono Sensei down: if you declare an attack, assigning no units during the initial Maneuvers Segment (colloquially, "infantry assignment" for old-school players), and your opponent defends at a single province, your Cavalry may assign during the additional Maneuvers Segment (colloquially, "cavalry assignment"), but only to the battlefield opposing the defending units, as it is the only non-"empty battlefield."

If you instead assigned one or more units to a province during "infantry assignment," and your opponent defended a different province, your Cavalry units now have two potential battlefields to assign to during "cavalry assignment" which are not "empty" -- the one they are defending, and the battlefield where you sent your unit during "infantry assignment."

Note that the final clause on the Sensei, "unless the Defender assigned no Personalities," means that if you declare an attack and assign no units during "infantry assignment" and your opponent assigns no defenders, your Cavalry are then free to assign to whichever battlefield they like during "cavalry assignment."

We are hopeful this will provide some of the 'feel' of 'old school Cavalry' without some of the more egregious issues that came along with it. Also, it is a Sensei meant to represent Kimono's attempts to build a Battle Maiden force in the Colonies, and it seemed appropriate that Battle Maidens prefer to take the fight to the enemy directly whenever possible.

That's all for today! We hope to see you back here tomorrow for our first block of Personalities!