A topic from AEG's L5R CCG Rules forum, copied for Oracle of the Void from a copy of the forum saved in October 2015, so pages it didn't save are missing. Players' names are left out; the rules officials are named. Rulings are as they stood on these dates; later rulings, the rulebooks and the Rules Archive may differ.
A player, 4 February 2012
Hello everyone,
I have been looking all over the place to try and find what sets and cards are actually legal for current tournament use without much success. Through much searching, I am unable to find anything telling me what edition and expansions are currently legal. I have a considerable collection of much older cards (a lot of them from Lotus Edition), and I would like to see which of these I can actually still use. All I really need to know is what sets are still legal, and checklists for these sets would be especially helpful.
Also, how do they determine which expansions/editions are legal? I mean, magic has the most current core set plus the last two blocks that are legal, so it's usually not hard to find the information needed. Does L5R do something similar to that, or is it completely different? I really appreciate any help anyone can give.
Jon Palmer (rules official), 5 February 2012
Hello everyone,
I have been looking all over the place to try and find what sets and cards are actually legal for current tournament use without much success. Through much searching, I am unable to find anything telling me what edition and expansions are currently legal. I have a considerable collection of much older cards (a lot of them from Lotus Edition), and I would like to see which of these I can actually still use. All I really need to know is what sets are still legal, and checklists for these sets would be especially helpful.
Also, how do they determine which expansions/editions are legal? I mean, magic has the most current core set plus the last two blocks that are legal, so it's usually not hard to find the information needed. Does L5R do something similar to that, or is it completely different? I really appreciate any help anyone can give.
At present, the legal sets are:
Before the Dawn Certain cards from the War of Honor game Forgotten Legacy (direct to player set) Second City Emperor Edition
You can tell what cards are legal by what is called a "bug" at the bottom of the card - all Emperor Edition legal cards will share that bug. In terms of older cards that are legal, the only reprints legal would be in Emperor Edition itself, the base set - there is a checklist in the back of the rulebook, which can be downloaded here.
L5R Search also allows you to search cards by legality, so you can check on older cards there as well.