Mike Manners is an L5R fanatic who lives up in the Bay Area. He's currently running an electronic magazine called "The Imperial Favor" which is an unofficial L5R fan- zuse Here's a little taste of what you can expect to get from Mike and Co., and if you'd like to get more, you can get it by zuriting Mike at Mychal17@aol.com.

Koku Ante

Variant One: As the name implies, Koku is used as ante. Each player antes up a set amount of Koku, winner takes all.

Variant Two: A player may use Koku at any time during the game in place of gold on a one Koku for one gold basis. All Koku used in the fashion goes to the middle of the table, winner takes all. We Like to limit each player to 5 (duels)-10 (multi-player) Koku per game. In a unlimited Koku game think of what kind of non-holding deck you could build, and talk about speed.

The Wandering Ronin

The idea of this variant is that the unaligned personalities are wandering about Rokugan looking for new lords to serve and will serve the Daimyo that will pay them the most gold.

All unaligned personalities are considered Unique. Place all unaligned personalities and Event cards into one deck (Ronin deck). Place the Ronin deck in the middle of the table. At the start of the game place four Ronin cards face down into four "Unaligned Provinces" These provinces can not be attacked or the target of any cards that affect provinces. A new phase will be added to each player's turn, the Ronin Phase. The Ronin Phase precedes the player's Straighten Phase.

In the Ronin Phase, discard the card in the rightmost unaligned province. Empty provinces are filled by moving all cards one province to the right and replacing the leftmost empty provinces from the Ronin deck with face down cards. Turn all cards face up. Any Events revealed are resolved and then empty provinces are filled as described above. During each player's dynasty phase, the current player may attempt to hire a wandering ronin.

During your Dynasty Phase, you may initiate the bid process (a Bid Action) to hire a ronin by selecting a personality to hire and make an "Opening Bid". An "Opening Bid" is a bid equal to the full gold cost on the card of the personality you wish to bid on.

To bid on a personality, a player must be able to meet the minimum honor requirement for that personality. You may temporarily increase you family honor with the same methods used to temporarily increase you family honor while lobbying for the Imperial Favor. This temporary honor increase ends after the bidding and can not be used for any other purpose than to hire a wandering ronin.

Move in a clockwise direction around the table. A player must "Bid" or "Pass". Any player who wishes to try and hire the personality must "Bid" at least one more gold than the current high bid for that personality or "Pass."

The player who started the bid gets the last chance to "Bid" on a personality. The personality is hired by the highest bidder. The player with the highest bid now bows holdings to pay for their bid. You may play one fate card from your hand and add itis focus value on a one to one basis to help pay for the gold cost of your bid.

Only one personality may be bid on at a time. A player may bid on as many personalities as they can make an "Opening Bid" on. Replace all empty provinces as described above.

Once ail of the cards in the Ronin Deck have been played, shuffle all of the cards in the Ronin deck's discard pile to replenish the Ronin Deck Unaligned personalities that are destroyed in play are removed from tie game and do not recycle back into the Ronin Deck.

This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com