The Emerald Dojo
A Legend of the Five Rings Strategy Site
Deckbuilding Tools
By paulofhallett#7086/Severijn#5194
Updated 04 November, 2021
While official Legend of the Five Rings page links to Cardgamedb as Fantasy Flight Games' deckbuilder of choice, in practice this site is rarely utilised by the community (although card images are placed there when each expansion is released). Instead, the fan-created FiveRingsDB (and its successor EmeraldDB) and BushiBuilder are much preferred by players.
FiveRingsDB
FiveRingsDB is popular deck building site with updated cards and rules. It shows current popular decks for each clan, and has its own versions of all official rules documents. In addition, pages for individual cards include any related developer rulings, helping to resolve disputes over text or mechanics.
You can read a great interview with WorkerBee of FiveRingsDB in the January 2021 issue of The Imperial Herald.
Bushi Builder
Bushi Builder is a another popular deck building website with up-to-date cards and rules. It shows both popular and recent decks for each clan, and has excellent construction tools to find synergy between cards and mechanics within the game.
Bushi Builder is a site that rewards exploration. There is a lot going on under the hood and the more time spent viewing existing decks (including recent tournament winners), and playing around with new ideas, the more valuable the site becomes.
There is also a Patreon page for those wishing to support the site and its development, however, a Patreon announcement from creator Dan on 17 May, 2021 stated "As of the publishing of this article, I won't be adding any new data to bushibuilder or updating the images (whenever FFG actually provides them). I'll keep the site up and running at least through the summer, likely longer, giving people enough time to transition over to using another builder, like fiveringsdb."
We will be very sorry to see BushiBuilder go as it has been a wonderful resource for the community; however, we respect a decision that mirror's our own choice to sunset The Emerald Dojo. For those interested, you can also read a great interview with Dan in the February 2021 issue of The Imperial Herald.
EmeraldDB
EmeraldDB is a popular deck building site with updated cards and rules. If this sounds similar to FiveRingsDB, this is because it is a direct successor made by Workerbee, who vastly improves on the user experience of the old site. It is a fusion of Bushi Builder's ease of use with FiveRingsDB's rulings.
This is also the only deck building tool that has all the cards on it and that is actively maintained (at the time of writing). It is also the home of all cards from the Emerald Legacy, a fan continuation to the card game.
Closing Thoughts
While there is always a quiet joy that comes with rifling through binders or boxes and spreading cards across the table to build a unique deck, this can take significant time and space, especially when preparing for a tournament.
Online deckbuilders are an intrinsic part of modern card games, and Legend of the Five Rings is fortunately to have three such well-designed and well-supported resources. I encourage you to try each platform to find the one that works best for you.