Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game has been discontinued
Last expansion coming in May.
After three years of releases, Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game is being discontinued by publisher Fantasy Flight Games.
In a blog on the company’s website, Fantasy Flight announced that it would no longer be releasing expansions for Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game after the recently revealed Under Fu Leng’s Shadow. The publisher did not cite any particular reasons for the decision to discontinue the living card game, beyond the fact that “the time has come” for the title to reach “completion”.
Legend of the Five Rings began as a collectible card game published by Alderac Entertainment Group - the studio responsible for the party game Smash Up - in 1995, before the rights were acquired by Fantasy Flight in 2015. Two years later, Fantasy Flight relaunched the title as a living card game - meaning that new cards are released in set expansions rather than random packs - that sees two players competing against one another in the fictional realm of Rokugan. Inspired by Japanese history and myths, Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game challenges players to outwit one another using decks they’ve crafted themselves from the base game and any additional expansions.
Besides Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game, Fantasy Flight is also known for releasing Marvel Champions: The Card Game - another living card game, this time set within the Marvel comic book universe - unique deck game Keyforge, that has players using randomly-generated decks, and The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game based on the beloved fantasy novels written by JRR Tolkien.
Fantasy Flight confirmed that despite Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game being discontinued, the Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Game - created by Edge, a design studio responsible for several licensed RPGs including Zombicide: The Roleplaying Game and a title based on Star Wars - would continue to receive support. Aconyte Books, the company behind novelisations of tabletop games such as Terraforming Mars and Keyforge, will also be releasing more entries in the Legend of the Five Rings book series.
In a separate blog, Fantasy Flight stated that it has “hopes” of holding an organised play event “by the end of the year”. for Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game. However, due to the current COVID-19 pandemic - which has led Fantasy Flight to delay the Keyforge World Championship until 2022 - the studio has not confirmed whether an organised play event for the discontinued card game will definitely take place.
Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game - Under Fu Leng’s Shadow is set to be released in May.