By Paul Norman

Hello there. Welcome to part II of my Beginner's Guide to Legend of the Burning Sands. Last month we discussed only the very basics of the game, covering the Stronghold and City Section cards that you begin the game with, and the three simplest types of cards that go into decks - Holdings, Heroes and Actions. This month we'll take a look at the other card types, beginning with several special types of Holdings and Actions.

Special Holding and Action Cards

We discussed how to play Holdings and Actions in last month's issue, but there are two special classes of Holding that I purposely saved for discussion this month. These two classes are Fortifications and Advisors. Fortifications have a special feature connected with them, in that after you have brought them into play (by paying the appropriate Copper and Water costs), they then become attached to one of your City Sections. Most fortifications then have an ability that affects that City Section (for example, it might raise the City Section's Base Strength, or, as in the case of the card "Burning Oil", let you bow it as a Battle action to create a Strength 4 engagement). Fortifications generally make it more difficult for your opponent to destroy or Raid from the City Section they are attached to. However, they do have the disadvantage of being destroyed when the City Section itself is destroyed - so in that sense they can be more vulnerable than many of the other Holdings. 

Advisors act just like conventional Holdings in many ways, except that their status as Advisors interacts differently with certain other cards in the game (for example, because Advisor cards are generally considered to represent people rather than stone work, they can be affected by cards like "Qolat Assassin" - which destroys either an Advisor, or a Hero with a Ka of less than 4). Advisors have uses that range from retrieving Story cards from your discard piles, to allowing you to assign units to a Battle after the Flying Assignment phase. 

As for Action cards, well I mentioned the special "Reaction" cards last week, which are triggered by certain things happening in the game. Another type of Action exists, however, in the form of Omens. These are a special type of Action that stay in play after you have paid the cost of playing them. Only one Omen may exist in play at any one time, and so you may remove any other Omen by simply playing another, and the more recent one then replaces it. Like Pantheon cards (which we'll come onto later), Omens tend to have a type of global effect, much like an Enchantment does in Magic: The Gathering. Omens generally come in two types - Open and Battle. Open Omens can stay in play for any amount of time, as long as they are not replaced by another Omen. Battle Omens only last for the duration of the Battle in which they are played, however, and are removed from play as soon as the Battle has resolved. There are many powerful types of Omen, including one which sets up a new victory condition if you can bow cards with sufficient Influence.

Followers

While the Hero cards in your deck form the main players in the Legend of the Burning Sands game and storyline, most Heroes benefit from the attachment of Follower cards. These represent small units of troops that are under the command of the Hero to which they are attached. Followers have a Strength value, but no Ka of their own as such (although in some cases they may grant a Ka bonus to the Hero to which they are attached). A Hero and any cards attached to him or her form what is called a "unit". In Battles you may bow either a separate Hero or Follower to engage, or you may bow the whole unit for an engagement equal to its total Strength. Followers therefore form an excellent way of enhancing the Strength of your engagements, and a Follower with a certain Strength score often costs somewhat less than a Hero with the corresponding same Strength value. Followers also protect the Heroes to which they are attached in several ways. The first of these is through immunity. - An attached Follower will make its Hero immune to engagements of lower Strength than the Follower's Strength, which can be of great use if the Follower is of higher Strength than the Hero (for example, Adnan (Strength 0) has an Elephant (Strength 4) attached to him, and is attacking an opponent's City Section - in this instance Adnan, and indeed the whole unit, is immune to engagements of Strength 3 or lower). Followers also give their Hero a certain amount of protection against a number of other effects which target either a Follower, or a Hero without attached Followers. The most noticeable of these effects is probably the Archery trait - an ability that lets you make engagements which target specific cards (but you can normally only target Heroes in this way if they have no attached Followers). Of course, with all of these great advantages, Followers have to have a few minus points. The most noticeable of these is probably the frailty that comes from the fact that they are destroyed if the Hero they are attached to is destroyed (and while strong Followers can protect their Heroes in Battles, they often offer limited protection in Duels). While Followers can be destroyed to absorb damage equal to their Strength in a Battle, they also have the disadvantage that only Heroes destroyed in this way allow you to discard a card from your hand to absorb additional damage. On a more fundamental level, Followers also cannot exist on their own - so despite them being more cost-effective in terms of Strength, even a heavy Follower deck needs its share of Heroes.

Items

While Follower cards let you attach small units to your Heroes, Item cards let you equip them with powerful weapons and magic objects. Unlike Followers, Items do not have Strength scores of their own, but instead grant Strength and Ka bonuses to the Hero to which they are attached. Like Followers, Items tend to be quite cost-efficient for the bonuses they provide, and since these bonuses go straight to the Hero they are attached to, this can have important implications in terms of immunity (for example, a 3 Strength Hero with a 3 Strength Follower attached will only be immune to engagements of Strength 2 or below - however, although a unit consisting of a 3 Strength Hero with a +2 Strength Item has a lower overall Strength, it will be immune to all engagements of Strength 4 or below). Items have a wide range of diverse abilities as well, and a number of them (particularly the fixed items that come in the Starter decks) have high Fate Values too. A couple of common traits also bear a special mention with respect to Item cards. These are "Weapon" and "Armor" - of which a Hero may normally have only one of each type attached at any one time (although there are a few special cards that allow a Hero to use two Weapons at once).

Spells

Spell cards in LBS operate slightly differently to those in its sister game, L5R, in that they are not usually attached to Heroes when they come into play. To play a Spell you must generally bow a Hero you control who has the "Sahir" trait (the equivalent of "Shugenja" in L5R), and the card generates its effect and cannot normally be used again (although there is a special Item card that allows you to keep Spells attached to your Sahir for repeated uses). There is one particularly notable group of spell cards, that are used to Summon Jinn Heroes. In this case, a player bows their Sahir and pays any costs as normal, and the Spell then enters play as a Jinn Hero with Strength, Ka, and special abilities as printed on the card. Jinn tend to make pretty useful Heroes, because many of them have no Copper cost (and therefore can be played fairly quickly, without any speed restrictions), and several of them also have the "Flying" trait, which can make them difficult to block. There are a number of anti-Jinn cards in the game, however, which can be used to either destroy Jinn directly, or else inhibit the ease with which they can be brought into play. Jinn tend to be the only Spell cards which remain in play after they are cast, and most other Spells create effects similar to the way in which a number of Action cards do.

Story Cards

So far, I've described three different methods of winning the game. The first is by destroying all of your opponent's City Sections - at which point they are eliminated immediately. The second is by leaving them with no Water (something which you would have, by default, done if you destroyed their City Sections). Players with no Water are then eliminated at the end of each turn. Thirdly, there lies the path to victory through the Omen card "Old Friends" - with which you raise your influence throughout the City to such a level that you claim victory outright. A fourth victory condition exists in the form of a specific card type - Story cards. By the use of Story cards you attempt to create a powerful Legend by performing incredible deeds, and claiming victory by virtue of your now Legendary status in the City. Story cards are played as reactions to certain deeds you perform (for example, the card "The Tale of the Moto and the Senpet" can be played after a battle where you were the Defender against an opposing army, and no Water tokens or City Sections were lost). Once in play, Story Cards give you a Story Reward - which is a special ability you can use as a bonus for getting the card into play. Once in play, the Story card also gives you a number of Story points (typically one or two), and if you ever have five or more points worth of Story cards in play then you win the game. Note that, as with all other card types except Pantheon, you may have up to three of any individual Story card in your deck (this includes the two different versions of "The Tale of the Fourth Avatar" released in The Awakening set). However, you may have only one of each card in play at any one time (so you cannot win the game just by playing three copies of "The Tale of Selqet's Capture", for example). In general, Story victories in LBS are thought to be quite a bit more viable than the corresponding Enlightenment victories in L5R. This is probably for two reasons. - Firstly, you pick the stories from a number of different possible choices, and so it is possible to have cards more closely based around one theme than it is with the more diverse requirements of the L5R Ring cards. Secondly (again connected to the fact that you have a choice of which cards to go for), your opponent will often not know exactly which cards you're trying to play to finish off your Story victory - in complete contrast to L5R, where your opponent will always know which Rings you have left to play.

Pantheon Cards

Finishing off my look at all of the current LBS card types are the newly released Pantheon cards. Introduced a couple of months ago in The Awakening set, Pantheon cards represent the favor of the Gods of the Burning Sands. Played as an Open action (and typically with a cost of 3 Water), Pantheon cards have a global effect on the game, much like Omen cards do (for example, "Conquest", the Yodatai Deity of War gives all Heroes aligned to your faction +1 Strength). Note that any faction may use any of the Deity cards (so Conquest may be played by non-Yodatai players, and a Pantheon card with the trait "Ivory Kingdoms Deity" may be used by all players, and not just Ivory Kingdoms players). Pantheon cards are limited to one of each type in a deck. To reflect the fickleness of many of the LBS deities, you may also only have only one of any Pantheon card in play at the same time (so if you play a different Pantheon card, it replaces the old one). Pantheon cards are not exactly "Unique" cards, however (of which there can be only one in play at any time), because both you and your opponent may bring the same Pantheon card into play (you may both worship the same gods, after all). These cards give a nice feel to the game, and despite their high Water costs, they are beginning to see use in a number of decks.

That completes my look at all of the existing card types in the game. While I've mentioned a number of ways in which LBS differs from L5R, a number of other significant differences are present. Perhaps most obvious of these is the set-up. - In LBS, provinces are replaced by City Section cards which you choose beforehand. LBS is also played from a single deck - unlike L5R. This also gives rise to differences in card drawing, since in LBS you draw 4 cards from a single deck at the end of turn, while in L5R you draw a single card from your Fate deck, and can replace upturned Dynasty cards in your provinces. While neither game suffers from quite the same "top-decking" problem that Magic does, the L5R Fate deck draw is rather slow, although albeit this is not a huge problem given that the more often key cards (Personalities and Holdings) lie in the Dynasty deck. We also have Water costs in LBS, which compare, in a way (although there are obviously slight differences) to Honor requirements in L5R. Battles and Duels also reflect major differences in the two games, since L5R battles can often hinge on one or two points of Force that a player generates with an action to go just past his or her opponent's Force (or Province Strength), thereby wiping them out. LBS battles tend to be much more about attrition, with both sides usually taking losses unless particularly big units are present that are immune to the lower strength opposing units. That's not to say one method is definitely better than the other, however, since while a 31 Force army completely destroying a 30 Force army without losses in L5R is plainly unrealistic, so too is a single 5 Strength Hero being completely immune to damage from six 4 Strength Heroes in LBS. Duels again show different strategies.

While an L5R duel involves simply who can generate the highest Chi through a combination of starting Chi and focusing (in which players can virtually guarantee a win if they know they are ahead at some point - unless cards such as "Bend Like a Reed" are used, of course), LBS duels can be more uncertain because they require successful thrusting and parrying. Finally, we have a different set of victory conditions in both games. L5R offers us Military (including by Dishonor), Honor victories, Enlightenment, and a number of card-specific victories such as with "The Darkest Magics", and through the set of four Walls of Otosan Uchi from Scorpion Clan Coup. LBS has a similar Military victory, Water deprivation, Story Victory, and as with L5R, card-specific victory conditions, such as through "Old Friends" or the set of four Goddess cards.