Release Event Thoughts
Last night, I attended Vancouver’s Second City Release Event. It wasn’t particularly well populated, as I think a lot of players in our area are pretty much waiting for Emperor Edition to start and taking a mini L5R hiatus. That said, there were about 8 players, and I got a feel for how the starters worked out in practice rather than just theory.
We got to pick our starters, so I played Mantis, solely because I’d included Br’nn in the deck contents. I opened a couple of extra Magistrates that could be useful, so I ended up removing a few of the Shugs and beefing up a bit out of clan. I ran the full suite of my beloved non-humans, and finished things off with the Fukuzo I pulled. It ended up working out okay for me. My first match was against Dragon, and I got off to a solid start seeing the Sparrow Shug early. He saw two Cav beatsticks, but I saw Yukitaka no Onna and held them off. The turning point was when I went to bow for the Favour with my Sparrow and got Enough Talk-ed for my troubles. Why the heck did I put that in the Dragon deck?!? That was followed up on his turn by an Impromptu on Yukitaka and a big honour boost, and I was on my heels without the Sparrow’s 3 honour per turn. I had to switch to military, but by then, he was well established and he had more actions than I did.
Second game was also against Dragon and went better for me. He didn’t have two beatsticks early, so I was able to swarm out my guys while he gained a bunch of honour. I didn’t gain any honour the whole game. Eventually, I had a 2 to 1 personality advantage and he wasn’t able to deal with the numbers I had. Crippling Weather sealed the deal.
Sadly, at that point, my third round opponent wanted to open packs and conceded and that was that. I didn’t see Br’nn in either game. My first round Dragon opponent went on to win.
Looking at the overall decks in action, I thought the Dragon performed better than I thought it would. While it didn’t have to two Tamori Yayu I requested, Bryan did put in two of IG2’s Tamori Masako, so it balanced out. Having a solid 7 Shugs to work with was important to its success. The Mantis deck also flowed better than I thought it would, although that might’ve been because of the packs I opened. It was tough for Scorpion to crack, especially if it saw the Sparrow early, and if it realized it couldn’t race Dragon without a good start, it had some military game against them as well. On the other hand, the Scorpion deck wasn’t as synergistic as I thought it would be and may have lacked enough ways to dishonour someone for the full effect of their actions. However, all three performed fairly well, so I’m happy with how they ended up, as I’d been concerned that they would be much farther apart than they appeared from my small sample.
Story Love
Is it just me or has the story team really been firing on all cylinders since the now-infamous Goddesses Pt.4 story? The story scrolls from Gencon were very well done, the initial efforts of the two new writers were very good (I really liked the subtle horror feel to the infiltration of the Sparrow story and the character of Suzume Kenta), the last Scenes from the Empire had some stellar entries in it (particularly the Turquoise Championship and Master of Horse stories), and even the stuff that hasn’t been amazing has at least been good. After the histrionics that G4 caused across the interwebs, I have to make sure that the Story Team gets equal love for doing a great job, and I think that they’ve done just that over the last month’s work. I find myself really looking forward to Friday’s fictions right now.
Now, I just have to convince Shawn & Fred to let me have one Br’nn story...
Winner’s Choice Seattle & Earth Dragon Tournament
This past weekend saw a couple of events that had my interest, although I didn’t expect the Earth Dragon tourney to do that. Locally, Seattle had a Winner’s Choice event that saw 37 players attend. The finals saw Jonas Solberg’s Crab Scouts take down Nathan Peever’s Embassy Crane, with former Gencon Champ, Roby Swann (also playing Crab), and Mitchell “Satoshi’s Dual Warfans” Hammond (playing Lion Paragons) rounding out the top 4. Jonas, a former Kotei winner, chose Ascended Shugenja, requesting Kuni Kiyoshi if possible. From all accounts, it was a good event and I wish I had been able to attend. The playskill level was off the charts. With the Team Marike’s House players in the area, everyone has to raise their game to be able to compete and having faced many of these players, I can tell you that there are a lot of excellent players playing in the Pacific Northwest, and they aren’t all named Case and Andrew.
Speaking of Team Marike’s House players, another of their group, Kyle Anderson, showed his skill by taking down the Favoured of the Earth Dragon event in New Hampshire. Kyle, newly moved to the area for work, got his turn to shine, taking his TST Yojimbo deck through 40 other players to take the day. I remember Kyle winning many a youngest player award at the local Koteis for a few years, but he’s all grown up now and another fantastic player. It’s nice to see him win a big event. Well deserved.
One last note about both events: Spider had 1 player in Seattle and 2 in New Hampshire. I think my clan might be in trouble for the end of CE.
Under Heaven
Just before Christmas last year, I wrote up an entry about a fantastic novel I read that I thought L5R players would like. That novel was Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay. Its now out in paperback and recently won Canada’s Sunburst Award for excellence in the literature of the fantastic, in the adult fiction category. If you enjoy a good book, I once again heartily endorse this one. You'll thank me.Pocketing the Loot
That wraps up this tidbit article of Br’nn Power. I hope everyone enjoys (or enjoyed) their Release Events! Now, let’s get those final CE decks built with SC and bring this great arc to a close!
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