Tomorrow
The tail end of the Lotus arc was also the end of the Ratlings as a playable faction. They had been initially intended as a non competitive faction but, through some design mistakes, they rapidly became one of the dominant decks in the environment. To conmemorate the victory of Faber Van Kraanen in the 2006 World Championship, an all-foil version of his deck was released. The deck was full of staples and several sought-after cards. Several cards had alternative text telling the final battle of the Ratlings against Tomorrow. Also, a few staple cards had alternate artwork by artist Paul (Prof.) Herbert, depicting the pitched battle.
This plot line wasn’t too well received. Ratling players were not only very disappointed that their faction was gone, but they also felt the actual execution of it left a lot to be desired. Ratling warriors and heroes went to sleep in Rokugan to fight Tomorrow in Yume-do, where it tried to destroy the Transcendents and the nezumi afterlife with them. It is still unclear exactly what this version of «Tomorrow» was. The Herbert artwork shows some black goo, which is reminiscent of depictions of the Lying Darkness. On the other hand, the fiction released at the time had individual ratlings facing and defeating several avatars of it, in the shape of Dragons and other powerful beings. While victorious, most of the Ratlings were disconnected forever from Ningen-do, their sleeping bodies dead.
All in all, at the time it felt like it was a purely editorial decision (if legitimate) but one that had been rushed and not very well written.
In addition to Faber Van Kraanen’s winning deck, the product included a subset of 21 brand new cards (1 to 3 copies each). These were the result of the World Championship held several months previous in Brussels (if memory doesn’t fail me). After the tournament Top of Faction were led one after the other into a room staged as the Tomb of Shinsei, unavailable to everybody else and had the chance to colaborate in the final form these cards would take, by claiming them for their faction and matching them with a card type background.\
NOTE: I know it feels like I’m always reminiscing the bad aspects of the history of L5R, specifically where I feel they dropped the ball. Maybe it is true what they say bad experiences stick more intensely to you. However the overall experience of L5R was, hands down, unuarguably postive! Otherwise we wouldn’t be still speaking about it so many years afterwards.
So, AEG did some things wrong, which is to be expected when you are creating something that hasn’t been attempted before. They were a small company, and they were fighting shoulder to shoulder with giants like WotC for over a decade. And what AEG excelled at was this level of interaction, which in turn made the players feel stupidly loyal towards their cardboard samurai lords. Nobody has replicated that experience since, and players entering this forgotten Tomb to claim these dusty relics is one of the highest points!