Welcome to Celestial Edition! Let me first say that the launch has been a worldwide success and we have you, the players, to thank for that!
New players are being introduced to Rokugan and old players are seeing the game as they did when they fell in love with it. I couldn’t help but grin when opening my Crane Starter and carefully thumbing through the cards, stopping to feel each card.
It is a new era.
Samurai Edition was an amazing step forward in terms of refining the game. Celestial has captured that and even further pushed the limits of what a great game can be. I have never been so happy to have Doji Domotai ‘trampled’ in my life!
That being said, I feel I should address the various problems that have plagued Celestial Edition’s release. When I joined the L5R Team, Celestial Edition was going on press and we were looking at proofs. It was evident that somewhere in the process some critical steps were missed. I made the decision to pull it off press and correct those issues, with the goal of keeping the release in June. We succeeded and the product is better for it. I know that it was disappointing to wait for the release, but it needed to be done. The previews stalled out a bit, and this is definitely my fault. Once we were finished with CE and it was back on track, we were hit with Path of the Destroyer and Imperial Gift 2 problems. Again, in the shuffling of staff, some things were just missed and production issues complicated that. I got bogged down in the day-to-day push to keep Path of the Destroyer on schedule. I apologize for the way I handled this, fortunately Todd was kind enough to step in and help out. In the rush to get CE back onto press when we proofed the packaging we evidently missed changing the number of booster packs listed on the booster display. It is 36, not 48 as I am sure some of you have discovered.
Finally, the rulebook- The decision to move the rulebooks from the Starter Decks and put them online was made, but I didn’t realize that the online version had not been created. As soon as I discovered this I scrambled to get it ready. Again, ultimately this is my fault. I assumed it had been arranged previous to my joining the team.
The L5R team sincerely apologizes for the various troubles that have occurred and believe me when I say they have performed admirably to rectify these issues as they cropped up. Many hours were put in to bring you Celestial Edition, and as you have seen, so far it’s pretty awesome! Just wait to see what we have in store for you this year and into next!
I want to thank the players sending in cards to decorate my door! I am beginning to actually put them up this weekend. By the way, I have heard a rumor that I should be expecting a Spider Mon made up of corrupted Crane cards. Let me just say- That is freakin awesome! I look forward to it! Please keep the cards coming.
Lastly, I am putting together some updates for you guys, so expect some Gen Con and Path of the Destroyer announcements this week!
Together we are Stronger! We will test this in the next year, believe me!
Jon Hall
Alderac Entertainment Group
L5R Brand Manager
jhall@alderac.com
