Welcome, brave Samurai, to the fields of battle. This document is to advise you of the rules of dueling and combat in the world of Legend of the Five Rings™. These rules, as well as the general floor rules for all Alderac Entertainment Group’s line of games, will provide you with an enjoyable — and fair — tournament experience. Remember, however, these rules will only come into play if an opposing samurai (opponent) or magistrate (tournament organizer or judge) feels you are violating the Code. Penalties for violating the Code may result in as little as a warning, a game loss or in the worst of cases, disqualification from that and future events.

All of the rules presented in this document are the default tournament rules for Legend of the Five Rings. Tournament organizers are free to alter or adjust the rules of their tournaments as they see fit, as long as such alterations and adjustments are announced at least 30 days prior to the event date.

General Tournament Rules

What is expected of me?

In preparation for an L5R tournament, you should be knowledgeable of the latest Legend of the Five Rings rules and be prepared to follow the judgments and interpretations of the event organizer or floor judge, who has the absolute last call.

What is required of me?

You are required to attend the event with a legal deck for the format in question. If your deck fails to conform to these rules after the start of the tournament, illegal cards will be removed from your deck until your deck is legal. (If the discovery is made during a game, you will also receive a loss for that game.) If at that time you are still above the deck minimum, you will be permitted to continue. If, however, the removal of illegal cards would cause your deck to be below the stated deck minimum for the event, you will be disqualified.

Tournament Organizer/Judge’s Option: The TO or Judge may allow the player to replace the cards in his deck with functionally similar cards legal to the environment in question, so as to continue in the tournament.

Cards from a new Legend of the Five Rings release are not tournament legal until thirty (30) days after the set’s official release date.

Promo cards are legal for tournament play when the next released set is legal for tournament play.

A player using card sleeves must ensure that the sleeves have the same size and appearance throughout each deck and have a different appearance between decks.

A deck that does not have a uniform card back style throughout must use opaque sleeves. A deck that does not have a uniform card size throughout must use sleeves.

A player may not use a custom card-backing scheme or a play mat that creates confusion for his or her opponents.

A new optional tournament rule for Legend of the Five Rings is a sideboard. A sideboard is a selection of 5 cards that DO NOT count toward your deck minimum. These cards may be any combination of Dynasty and Fate cards, but may not contain any Events or cards with the Unique trait. At the beginning of each round, after your opponent has revealed his Stronghold but before all other effects (such as Sensei), you may substitute any number of cards in your Sideboard for an equal number of cards from your Play Decks. After substitution, your deck must still conform to deck construction rules and be legal.

Tournament Formats Official Legend of the Five Rings Formats

The default deck minimums for constructed Legend of the Five Rings events is 40/40 – at least 40 Dynasty cards and 40 Fate cards. Other deck minimums include 30/30 and 50/50. We suggest only using multiples of 10 for deck minimums, with 30/30 being the least.

Time Limit and Match Length

Matches in the preliminary rounds of a Legend of the Five Rings tournament shall consist of a single game with a forty-five (45) minute time limit. In the event a game goes to time, it is considered a draw. At this point either player is given a brief opportunity to honorably concede to his opponent.

Matches in the elimination rounds should ideally be decided by two games out of three, with no time limits. However, it is often best to run some or all of the elimination rounds with a time limit and/or as single-game matches to prevent an overly long tournament. The T.O. shall announce before the beginning of the tournament if any or all of the elimination rounds shall be of a different time limit or match size than the Swiss rounds.

Players should be in their assigned seats at the start of each round. In the event a player does not arrive within ten minutes of the start of the round, the late player will be penalized by being given a loss for that round of play.

1. All players simultaneously reveal their Stronghold and Wind.
2. All players may now utilize their Sideboard as described above.
3. All players simultaneously find and reveal their Sensei, if any.
4. Players compare Family Honor to determine who goes first. If more than one player is tied for highest, those tied players determine which among them will go first with a random method that gives all of them an equal chance, such as flipping a coin or rolling dice for a high roll.
5. Each player shuffles both their Dynasty and Fate decks and presents them to an opponent for further shuffling.
6. Each player places both decks on the table, takes the appropriate amount of Dynasty cards and lays them out, face down, to represent his or her Provinces. Each player then draws the top five Fate cards to make his or her Fate Hand.
7. Play the game, resolving any unfinished games by the method under “Time Limits”. Repeat steps 1-7 as necessary for multi-game matches.
8. Winner and Loser should both report to the results of their match to the official logistics person.

After any time a player’s deck is shuffled, the opponent may shuffle it further before play resumes. This further shuffle may be used to rearrange the cards in any order provided it is done without seeing the card faces. If the player desires, he or she can request that a judge or tournament official perform the shuffle instead of the opponent. The player may not rearrange the deck in any way between this further shuffle and resuming the game.

Resolving Conflicts

When two players in a game cannot agree on a card’s function or other game rule, either player may call upon head judge (or appointed floor judges) to make a decision. By entering a sanctioned tournament, all players agree to abide by any and all rulings and decisions made by tournament officials. If a floor judge makes a ruling a player believes to be in error, the player may appeal to the head judge without penalty. The head judge’s rulings and decisions are final, however.

Mistakes in Play

A player is under no obligation to allow an opponent to undo or reverse any play or decision once is has been made.

In the event that a play error is discovered after it is made, it should be corrected to the extent possible so long as no subsequent plays are impacted and less than one full turn has elapsed. If one or more turns have passed, or too many other plays were made contingent on the mistake, it shall be allowed to stand. Be aware that a judge or Tournament Organizer will often need to make a difficult arbitration call in these cases.

Recording Information

Players may not make written or recorded notes during a game, with the exception of Family Honor (for any player) and army Force totals.

A player may concede a game or match to his opponent at any time, for any reason.

Likewise, a player may withdraw from a tournament at any time. It is strongly encouraged that the player inform the T.O. or scorekeeper so that pairings for subsequent rounds can be made properly.

Players may arbitrarily agree upon the outcome of a match at any time prior to reporting results.

Between each round of the tournament, Tournament Organizers should make known to all players their current ranking within the tournament. In the case of an error in a player’s ranking, this gives players the earliest opportunity to make the error known to the Tournament Organizer so it may be fixed in a timely fashion.

Spectating and Scouting

Players are not permitted to watch other games after their game is over, as is it distracting to the players being watched. The tournament area should be kept clear of persons not actively involved in a tournament game.

Bribery, Collusion, and Cheating

Bribery and collusion in ANY form are strictly prohibited.

Bribery is broadly defined as offering compensation to a player to lose or concede a match or to give up a storyline prize. It does not apply to fan-supplied “bounty” prizes open to all who win using a certain Clan, Stronghold, deck style, etc.

Collusion is broadly defined as conspiring to manipulate tournament results.

“Mechanical cheating” refers to illegal actions and tricks as opposed to illegal card plays. It includes, but is not necessarily limited to:

To have one of your tournaments sanctioned by Alderac Entertainment Group, you must apply 30 days before the event in question. You may do so by going to the AEG web site at <http://www.alderac.com>.

Tournament Organizer Requirements

The following items are required of a Legend of the Five Rings Tournament Organizer:

The following pieces of information should be verbally announced at the beginning of the event and/or visually posted in a prominent location.

The style of judging is up to the tournament organizer of each event. They are described below:

Three-Judge System

If certain conditions are met, it is possible to allow an event’s judges to participate as players as well. The conditions are that there be at least three (3) judges, and that the total number of players (including playing judges) be at least eight (8) and no more than sixteen (16). If these conditions are met, any and all judges may participate as players. The judges should be ranked in order of authority, and all judge calls should be handled by the highest-ranking unoccupied judge. If all judges are occupied with games or other judge calls, the highest-ranking game-playing judge outside the disputed game shall make the call.

The most common competition format for L5R tournaments is a series of Swiss preliminary rounds followed by a series of single elimination finals matches. This document will only describe that format, although other formats are also allowed, including double elimination, pure single elimination, and pure Swiss.

The recommended number of Swiss rounds depends on how many participants you need to play in the elimination rounds. Ideally, enough Swiss rounds should be played so that the number of players with only zero or one loss is less than the number of finalists you need. The remainder of the finalists can then be selected from those players with two losses. The table below gives recommended numbers for rounds and finalist bracket sizes. You should not feel obliged to follow it exactly in all situations.

In the Swiss rounds, players score match points in the following fashion:

A player’s ranking is simply the number of matches he or she has won. A player’s strength of schedule is the sum of the rankings of all opponents he or she has faced so far.

For the first round of Swiss, pairings should be random. Do not pair participants alphabetically or by time of arrival.

For all subsequent rounds of Swiss, pairings should be made between players with equal ranking, if possible. If there is an odd number of players with a certain ranking, one will be matched against a player from the group with the next lowest ranking. Pairings within a group may be made either at random or in order of descending strength of schedule.

Any time there is an odd number of total players entering a round, the last unmatched player will receive a bye. No player should receive more than one bye, total, throughout the Swiss rounds. Also, no player should face the same opponent more than once throughout the Swiss rounds, unless this is necessary to avoid giving a player a second bye.

After the last Swiss round, order the players by descending ranking and then by descending strength of schedule within each ranking until you have enough to fill your finals matches. The first round of finals pairings should be made by matching the player at the top of this list with the one at the bottom, the second one with the next-to-last one, and so on.