As I have been looking through the threads I have noticed that some clans seem to be more heavily represented than others. That isn't really a surprise, but it did get me to wondering what clans have the strongest player bases. My time playing was limited to a small play group and just a couple Kotei tournaments during CE so I only saw a small part of the grand scope of it all. By the end of AEG's run, what clans would you say had the strongest player bases, and were there any clans that seemed under represented? I guess this could be answered a few different ways (forum activity, sheer number of players, tournament presence) but I would like to hear whatever you have.

iirc theres a site somewhere that kept tournament attendance records, going back YEARS which would be pretty interesting to look at, but i don't actually recall what it was called. i'm sure somewhere here has a link to it.

anecdotally, the last forums to stay particularly active after the sale were the spider and crane. i checked in on them all periodically, and moved the dead ones into a different section on the subreddit sidebar.

The Phoenix fanbase turfed like a lawn dart after they stopped being top tier abuse material in Emperor Edition.

The Crab always seem to have a strong base.

The Spider and Shadowlands forum is a lively one compared to most others.

Those are the ones I've been in a position to notice.

1 hour ago, cielago said:

iirc theres a site somewhere that kept tournament attendance records, going back YEARS which would be pretty interesting to look at, but i don't actually recall what it was called. i'm sure somewhere here has a link to it.

Are you thinking of The Jade Hand ? It's the big tourney result website I know, but it doesn't have a clan breakdown of their numbers (and stopped updating in 2012).

I have attendance figures for years of tournaments at Strange Assembly (well, there isn't individual tourney data posted much, but the sum of attendance and performance across tournaments in a given environment). If you search on something like "clan performance" or "clan tourney success" you'll get a bunch of posts.

Strange Assembly has a breakdown of Kotei attendance by clan for 2015, the last year of the game. Things break down pretty evenly, with Crab the smallest at 9.3% of the attendees and Spider the greatest at 12.8%. Here are the 2012 numbers for comparison (when the game was at the height of its Emperor Edition resurgence). Interestingly, the Spider and Crab switch places.

The 60% drop off in attendance numbers over three years really shows how badly Ivory hurt the game.

YEA! Highest percentage showed up! Lowest percentage made the cut! if thats not a succinct summary of the spider clan at the end of AEG's run, i dunno what is. Great enthusiasm! low effectiveness!

The last few years of the game, Spider were probably the biggest active player base, or at least one of the most vocal.

Earlier on, Dragon and Scorpion had slightly bigger active bases than most other clans for several years. Quite a few Dragon players switched clans or even left the game entirely after multiple, widely disliked story ret-cons happened specific to Dragon, though I have no way of being sure of the numbers.

6 hours ago, cielago said:

YEA! Highest percentage showed up! Lowest percentage made the cut! if thats not a succinct summary of the spider clan at the end of AEG's run, i dunno what is. Great enthusiasm! low effectiveness!

Forgive my ignorance, but what does the "made the cut" stat mean on those pages?

7 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

Forgive my ignorance, but what does the "made the cut" stat mean on those pages?

After swiss system pairings part of the tournament, Top X players were cut and entered into second single-elimination part. Cut means just these Top X, where X depended on number of tourney players, Top 4, Top 8 etc.

1 minute ago, kempy said:

After swiss system pairings part of the tournament, Top X players were cut and entered into second single-elimination part. Cut means just these Top X, where X depended on number of tourney players, Top 4, Top 8 etc.

I see. Thanks for the explanation.

Was this limited to certain events? I don't remember seeing two stages at the Koteis I was at.

5 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

I see. Thanks for the explanation.

Was this limited to certain events? I don't remember seeing two stages at the Koteis I was at.

Every Kotei and larger tourney used it becasue of official Floor Rules.

One thing that marked out L5R cut system was X-1/X-2 system followed by Ply-In part instead straight cut to Top X like in many other games. Every player, thanks to Floor Rules, knew that he need to win X-1 or X-2 games depend on attendance (where X is number of tourney rounds) to play later after swiss-part. It has it's own flaws and cons, but personally i liked becasue your chance of cut weren't determinated by results of your oponents, who fe could just drop after 1st round and make your SOS (strength of schedule) lower.

7 hours ago, cielago said:

YEA! Highest percentage showed up! Lowest percentage made the cut! if thats not a succinct summary of the spider clan at the end of AEG's run, i dunno what is. Great enthusiasm! low effectiveness!

I love this post a lot more than I should.

7 hours ago, cielago said:

YEA! Highest percentage showed up! Lowest percentage made the cut! if thats not a succinct summary of the spider clan at the end of AEG's run, i dunno what is. Great enthusiasm! low effectiveness!

It's Spring Kotei stuff. Just calm down and check Autumn one. I knew that attendance drop after 11-9, but that was hard-fanatic tourney season.

http://www.chikan.pl/index.php?topic=8756.0

27 minutes ago, kempy said:

Every Kotei and larger tourney used it becasue of official Floor Rules.

One thing that marked out L5R cut system was X-1/X-2 system followed by Ply-In part instead straight cut to Top X like in many other games. Every player, thanks to Floor Rules, knew that he need to win X-1 or X-2 games depend on attendance (where X is number of tourney rounds) to play later after swiss-part. It has it's own flaws and cons, but personally i liked becasue your chance of cut weren't determinated by results of your oponents, who fe could just drop after 1st round and make your SOS (strength of schedule) lower.

Ok, now I'm really confused. Can someone confirm if this happened at Monroeville, PA Kotei and Evansville, IN Kotei in Fall 2015? Because my entire memory of the events was just everyone playing three games, them doing some calculations with the totals, and then handing out prizes. Did I miss half of each event somehow? O_o

Fall Season was free style because of game was sold at the beginning so TO could do anything without consequences. Secondly if there were not enough players theres standard swiss without cut fe there's no sense to make cut with 8 players.

3 minutes ago, kempy said:

Fall Season was free style because of game was sold at the beginning so TO could do anything without consequences. Secondly if there were not enough players theres standard swiss without cut fe there's no sense to make cut with 8 players.

Ah, that explains it. Thanks!

14 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

Ah, that explains it. Thanks!

On the other side, a year or two before sell there was a Kotei in which TO modified Floor Rules and reduced TopX. One of the players who was a victim of this change (he missed Top becasue of this) raported it and TO got official ban for tournament organizing for two years or something.