Power of Strength - Prof Herbert - Prof loves Berserkers and goblins so having one use the other as a meat bat seemed like a great scene and he clearly had a lot of fun with it.
Murderous Thieves - Patrick McEvoy - A terrible mugging was the gist of the idea for this one. We just wanted a lonely side street where some poor sap gets it in the ribs.
Stuck in Rokugan - Greg Lambrakis - Greg does great facial expressions, I wanted to see a bored as hell crew stuck in port due to a nasty winter.
Pillar Tattoo - Tony Foti - So first off I love how this looks. I will admit a sadness on my part that I did not use Tony for a personality card instead of this one. Pillar Tattoo looks awesome because Tony is an amazing artist. His faces are so detailed and amazing the man has a great knowledge of the human anatomy that after this card I more or less told myself he’d always be doing personalities unless he asked otherwise.
Armor of the Uruwashii - Aurelien Hubert - Bad ass is really what needs to be said about this. I asked Aurelien for some big bad looking armor in the style of Steve Argyles Return of the Shogun and he sends me three just amazing pieces, so we went with this one. The second most awesome one is coming later I think you’ll recognize it. It’s epic, and Aurelien is a rising L5R star artist.
Stand as the Mountain - Steve Argyle - For the life of me the art is not showing up when I search for it so to be continued.
Ikoma Sido - Glen Osterberger
Sido meets a jaguar in an attempt to bring it to the world class Akodo’s Five Rings Circus.
We wanted an Ikoma out in the Colonies getting into the mix to show that the Ikoma to have a presence out in the new territories. Light armor for ease of travel.
Sudden Guardian - Eddie was a new artist we tried out interested to see what peoples opinions on him are.
Thick Marsh - Love the helmet sinking into the swap. We wanted to show just a miserable place to fight and die in this one.
You Are Unworthy - “You sir are not cool enough for Paragon High School, get out.”
Tactical Trap - This poor guy shows up in another card, keep an eye out.
Kitsu Miro - Charles Urbach
So this one might look add at first glance a Kitsu Shugenja dressed far more like a samurai.. That is on purpose. This is a shugenja who knows war not just “oh I was at a battle once”, but one who is trained in warfare far more than your average shugenja. To the point that she carries a full daisho, pretty ballsy for a shugenja. Her design mechanics originally reflected that a little more with her handing out various traits to spirits rather than her final one of generating spirits.
Charles brings a nobility to all his characters that I want to transplant into everyone, his characters hold themselves like samurai and that’s an attitude that is so very hard to teach, he remains a high bar by which we look at others.
The Celestial Sword of the Lion Clan - AKA Shinrai - Steve Argyle
Traditional. Traditional. Traditional. The model by which all other katana are measured. This sword happens to look a great deal like Steve Argyles own personal katana his wife bought him from Japan. Notice it has a longer suka (handle) which is more common to katana’s built for war, more leverage. The only other clan you’ll see with the very long suka on is Spider and Crab. Unicorn approaches the same length but not quiet the full war time design.
Doji Akeha - Mario Wibisono
This tumblr started with posting Akeha’s art work a few days after it was turned in by Mario. It got spoiled faster than any art work in the game’s history perhaps. I believe she will be an iconic piece of Legend of the Five Rings catalog of work for years to come. I know she is one of my all time favorites, on a hell of a card to boot. Tough as nails Harrier..er I mean..Iron Crane…yeah >.>
I really loved that just about everyone guessed she had to be the Daidoji Daimyo, the art work alone conveyed that message fairly strongly and it really pleased us to see those guesses.
You guys can expect to see about 5 more Mario works show up in EoW.
The Celestial Sword of the Unicorn - Steve Argyle A.K.A Enginoshi
I love this sword. Now we made a call on this to update the look of the weapon. The RPG tells us the saya was on the whole not very decorative and simple to keep a low profile of the blade which was much more exotic. We liked the idea that the Unicorn are a massively powerful military clan with a reborn Kami leading them. They don’t care as much about hiding their history and traditions these days. The blade is the important part of the sword so we updated the look of everything else. Steve is also big on blade styles and patterns so check out the details on all the coming swords he really goes all out on the details of the blade.
I’m a huge fan of the trait of the swords name, I originally pushed for them to just be named their story names. But we ended up settling on having it as a trait which is awesome.
The Ancestral Sword of Hantei - Steve Argyle
Steve did a Japan trip last year and came back super excited to draw swords on display. So he snagged this and really had fun with it. The Red and Green auras are the Blessing of Hantei and the Blessing of Daigotsu all in one blade. Held up by obsidian Spider statues on the sides the Saya, Suba and Suka are on display separate from the blade its self. He had a lot of fun with this.
He also made sure it was a particularly large sword almost no-dachi size as that’s how Drew Baker always drew it back in the hands of Daigotsu.
