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I've been playing L5R casually for a couple of months now since I heard about the Ivory reset and over this past weekend I attended the local Kotei here in Brisbane, Australia. My previous experience with the game was a long, long time ago and mostly in the form of big multiplayer games with outrageously degenerate decks. Good times, but I'm glad the game isn't like that anymore. 35 people showed up and the TO invited Bryan Reese ("Oh, that guy works for AEG? What does he do?") so I got to spend time chatting to the lead designer about the good/bad old days, which was fun. I managed to make the Top 4 with a Crane courtier honor deck which was very similar to my favorite classic deck, just with a lot less rocket fuel. I'll post a decklist if anyone is interested but the main points would be that it lives or dies according to how many Imperial Summons I draw, and that Thoughtless Sacrifice is just as amusing to me as To Do What We Must was back in the day. My match-ups were pretty favorable right up until the end. I lost my first two games to Crab military (a crazy 60/60 deck from one of the locals who would've made Top 4 but passed to another local guy) and Crane scouts, then proceeded to go 4-2 against Mantis, Unicorn, Mantis, and Phoenix (all military). In my Top 8 play-off I faced a Phoenix dishonor deck which I was dreading because I knew dishonor was naturally my hardest match-up. For the first 4-5 turns I was able to re-honor my people immediately, thus avoiding his early dishonor tricks, and I spent the last 5-6 turns of the game crossing 40 and being pulled back. His dynasty deck ran out a few turns before mine, but I'd been keeping people face-up so I could get a proclaim every turn, and he played a very late Political Standoff which I hadn't seen before and which worried me (PPG vs BCI plus Hot Springs, fun math) but in the end it didn't matter. In my final turn I shot from 37 to 52 honor and he could only pull me back to 45. My Top 8 match was against a strong Mantis ranged deck. I lost provinces, my guys blew themselves up, and I managed to win 2-1 with an Encircled Terrain at my last province. These games really highlighted to me the importance of Imperial Summons. Based on forum-browsing and my own experience I find send home actions (and especially the IF) to be pretty useless at the moment; my military counters were force penalties, destruction actions, or the bowing effect from IS. My last match was against one of the two local Scorpion military/dishonor guys, who had both made it to the Top 4. I hadn't played against Scorpion at all but I thought I knew what to expect and I was feeling pretty good having beaten the Phoenix dishonor deck earlier. Unfortunately, this Scorpion was a very different beast. For one thing, he actually had force (the Phoenix had barely ten force total with a table full of people). I got a sinking feeling fairly early on when I realized this deck would play similarly to a couple of Mantis military/dishonor decks I'd played against socially. All it takes is for a deck with an army to slow me down by 1-2 turns via dishonor and I'm toast. The deck had a surprising amount of synergy and I had to read a lot of the cards twice, but to his credit my opponent made a few really killer plays against me across both games. I lost the first on 40 honor at my last province when he named Encircled Terrain, and in the second game I got steamrolled right from the start. Crane scouts won the day and I discovered that ranking highly is pretty rewarding in more ways than one! I ended up getting IvE and TCS rare packs (over 150 rares total) plus another 30 or so boosters over the course of the two days (the second day was casual drafting, which was more interesting than I thought it would be). It seemed like a huge amount of product for only 35 people but I guess they have a standard sized package for this sort of thing. One question for those who've been playing longer - is there any place on the net I'm missing which features a lot of competitive discussion? I know the game is very meta-sensitive with lots of small playgroups spread over large distances, but most of my preparation was done reading the various bits and pieces on the clan forums and trying to analyze the decklists that get posted on AEG's site. Is there anything else?
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Jun 10, 2014 08:53
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 12:02 |
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That's the group but I think Wayne has been in Melbourne for the last year or so? I didn't get to see his deck in action unfortunately. I was kinda surprised at how far some people traveled, there were a bunch of guys from Adelaide and Melbourne and a few places in between. That site doesn't seem to have a lot of recent activity. Does it have additional private forums like the Crane site?
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Jun 10, 2014 12:33
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