Honor and Treachery

A week or so ago AEG announced  their "Learn to Play set" for the Emperor Arc, "Honor and Treachery",  and I could not be more excited!  Not only because despite playing for several months now, I still consider myself a new player, but because it is primarily a Phoenix/Scorpion set, with one of my favorite Scorpions, our Champion, Bayushi Nitoshi taking a key role in the story. 

It's her...

 *SPOILER* Story wise, the set covers the events of the "War of the Twins", the name coming from the twin Kami, Shiba and Bayushi.  Not a lot is known about this war except it ended with a duel between  the phoenix champion, Shiba Tsukimi and the Scorpion Champion, Bayushi Nitoshi.  The duel was supposed to be to the first blood, and Nitoshi reflected the sun off of his blade to blind the phoenix champion and strike... only Nitoshi used a poisoned blade, rendering Tsukimi permanently blind.  Nitoshi was also never truly implicated in using poison.  * END SPOILER*

... VS him

Currently, the MSRP looks to be $25, and comes with fixed decks for both the Phoenix and the Scorpion, as well as deck boxes for both of those and a small book detailing the events of the "War of the Twins".  One of the things I'm even more excited about is the Global Story Line tournament associated with the set.  It will be a sealed format, in which players will have to play either the premade Phoenix or Scorpion deck.  The winner gets to affect the outcome of the story.  Story wise, a set of journals have been found (belonging to a Phoenix General iirc) and the winner gets to vote on which of the clans actually discovers the missing journals, and whether or not they return the journals to the Phoenix or the Scorpion.  Whichever faction ends up with the most votes wins, along with which outcome got the most votes as well.  Who knows what all this could mean, new allies, perhaps some evidence condemning the Scorpion, or even perhaps condemning the Phoenix in a plot to kill off their champion.  Or, maybe they are just journals, detailing the rise and fall of samurai... it's kind of up to the L5R story team at that point!  

Either way, I'm really excited for this set.  Sure, as an L2P set, the cards may or may not be the most powerful cards in this arc, but I'm willing to bet there will be a couple of new gems to throw into existing decks.  Not to mention and possible new themes to come out the Yogo Stronghold!  I'm hoping my LGS (31st Century games) can get stuff organized enough to run the story line event... it would be the shop's 1st official L5R event too!