11 minutes ago, JRosen9 said:

My understanding is that world's is held in their hq. It's not a NA vs Europe thing. However I thought they started providing airfare and hotel accommodations to the people who have qualified for world's

Not everyone. Most just go to worlds if they want to try and qualify for top cuts. It is not an invite only event.

The current X-Wing World champion is from Singapore and last year's was from the Netherlands, he was also runner up this year.

Yeah, they provide travel and accomodation to national and continental champions only.

7 minutes ago, Khudzlin said:

Yeah, they provide travel and accomodation to national and continental champions only.

From what I heard FFG only offers the accomodation. The flight is at the expense of the local publisher. At least it was like that for ANR in France. In Belgium, on the other hand, the national champion don't get anything since the product isn't localized, we just have a distributor who sell the national kit.

From the player's point of view, it doesn't really matter exactly which entity pays for what.

I have never been to gencon, but what was the largest l5r event? 350 and 100 sounds like a lot to the fact that most were praising how big it was a week ago

9 minutes ago, JRosen9 said:

I have never been to gencon, but what was the largest l5r event? 350 and 100 sounds like a lot to the fact that most were praising how big it was a week ago

350 is monstrously huge for GenCon.

32 minutes ago, JRosen9 said:

I have never been to gencon, but what was the largest l5r event? 350 and 100 sounds like a lot to the fact that most were praising how big it was a week ago

Since 2005 Main Event in CCG never crossed 140 players, but these tourneys rarely were open for everyone. There were so called "grinders", elimination tourneys in swiss system, where only best (Top16/Top8 or people with maximum 1 or 2 loses) advanced to Main Event. Also current season Kotei winners and all EC/WC champions got they slot there. In other words, Main Tourneys were not so huge, but kept high competetive standards.

26 minutes ago, JRosen9 said:

I have never been to gencon, but what was the largest l5r event? 350 and 100 sounds like a lot to the fact that most were praising how big it was a week ago

Huge. It is just sour grapes from people who never entertained the notion they might not get in. I never expected to get in to all 3 and was prepared with other events/plans just in case.

10 minutes ago, Toqtamish said:

Huge. It is just sour grapes from people who never entertained the notion they might not get in. I never expected to get in to all 3 and was prepared with other events/plans just in case.

To be fair, I never expected to get in to the 100-man tourney, and wasn't even trying. I just wanted to know I had a guaranteed box. I'm also trying to get Pandemic Legacy Ssn 2, and those are the only 2 items I'm trying for, so knowing i only had to rush for one item on Thursday morning would have been a big boon to me.

Now I have to rush for L5R and pray there's still some of the other big item I want....

I don't have numbers on hand, and maybe someone on this forum might have had experience in one, but European Koteis used to draw large crowds and be two day affairs. Its possible one of them could have been the largest event event.

The old system was really competitive. In the main event, you knew your Round 1 opponent was someone that had some success in the game.

Inb4 kempy posts that in old l5r there was a 351 people kotei and how that proves ccg is better.

14 minutes ago, profparm said:

To be fair, I never expected to get in to the 100-man tourney, and wasn't even trying. I just wanted to know I had a guaranteed box. I'm also trying to get Pandemic Legacy Ssn 2, and those are the only 2 items I'm trying for, so knowing i only had to rush for one item on Thursday morning would have been a big boon to me.

Now I have to rush for L5R and pray there's still some of the other big item I want....

L5R will be on sale all weekend. Go for the Pandemic first.

2 hours ago, Dovla said:

Inb4 kempy posts that in old l5r there was a 351 people kotei and how that proves ccg is better.

Yeah, compare one-shot opening (hype!) GenCon tourney with standard Regional type events. Smart guy! Let's check these numbers in two years from now...

Anyway.

http://kyudenryu.tripod.com/features/pictures.htm

" A shot of the largest L5R tournament EVER. With 375 playing on Thursday and 352 playing on Friday, this was an incredible event to watch. By the way... the Magic Pro Qualifier had ~180 participants. ^_^"

There were French and Spanish Koteis (Regionals-Nationals in term of FFG tourney scheme) in Diamond with 200+ players.

http://www.jadehand.com/tourneys/index2.php?year=2004#Kotei2004

Biggest event I can remember is To The Last Man 2 which was held in France around 2004, over 450 players in this tournament. Couldnt find any link online but its bound to be somewhere

By the way, I'm one of the bitter guys that couldnt make it on Thursday, despite clicking on the button as soon as it became available. I'm coming from France with 4 friends as we are hyped by this relaunch, to find that we cannot participate in any event. Even though I understand the reason, its hard to swallow given the cost commitment of coming there. I believe its likely to be one of my last gencon, the event is becoming too big, its impossible to get in any major event without being lucky, impossible to find a hotel room downtown for less than 500$/night, ... Guess its what success brings, but I do not think its worth it anymore when you have to cross the ocean.

Maybe my experience at the Gencon will make me change my mind but I already fear the crowded hall, the long lines to get a demo etc

On 5/28/2017 at 4:31 PM, Bayushi Bajie said:

Show me your stance, samurai!

haven't been to Gencon but everytime a local Kotei coincedes with MtG launch or other CG event, we would UTZ our lungs out over here just to see them other ccg communities' reaction..hoping our frenzy convert them to L5R players.

Personally, if I were at an event and I heard a bunch of people being loud and obnoxious, it would be more likely to turn me away from a game rather than attract me to it, but maybe that's just me.

On 5/28/2017 at 4:39 PM, profparm said:

Maybe it's just me, but what would certainly help would be if FFG had an option for another event that was literally just "reserve a copy of the starter, limit 1 per person". Then I'd know I can at least play casually with other cool L5R fans that didn't make it in to the tourney.

Reserving a copy was my primary motivation for playing in the event and the largest factor for me going to GenCon. I'd be happy to at least know for a fact I'll have a copy my Gf and I can play during downtimes.

If enough of the cards and rules are available, you could always print out and sleeve a couple decks. Not as good as having the real thing, but if you have no other options, it's a good stop-gap while waiting to be able to buy a core set.

23 hours ago, C2K said:

Thats people who played the game, not people who wanted to play the game. Anyone could join grinders to make the Saturday cut at gencon, its just that perhaps the game wasn't as popular in 2013. At this point, people are being turned away.

This is a rather good problem to have. It's great seeing this much excitement about the game! Even if a lot of the people lose interest and stop playing pretty quickly, odds are that a good number will keep with it!

15 hours ago, Khudzlin said:

From the player's point of view, it doesn't really matter exactly which entity pays for what.

Well it helps to anticipate if your national championship would give you a chance to win a flight + hotel thing.

Product is translated ? There is a chance. It isn't ? Better starting to put some money aside.

30 minutes ago, MrMenthe said:

Well it helps to anticipate if your national championship would give you a chance to win a flight + hotel thing.

Product is translated ? There is a chance. It isn't ? Better starting to put some money aside.

The prizes should be clearly announced in any case.

14 minutes ago, Khudzlin said:

The prizes should be clearly announced in any case.

And some local distibutors say in national tournament rulesets: if we gather X players there will be free flight to USA. If no, grab glass trophy and go home. It was clearly visible in last Conquest season.

13 hours ago, JJ48 said:

Personally, if I were at an event and I heard a bunch of people being loud and obnoxious, it would be more likely to turn me away from a game rather than attract me to it, but maybe that's just me.

If enough of the cards and rules are available, you could always print out and sleeve a couple decks. Not as good as having the real thing, but if you have no other options, it's a good stop-gap while waiting to be able to buy a core set.

This is a rather good problem to have. It's great seeing this much excitement about the game! Even if a lot of the people lose interest and stop playing pretty quickly, odds are that a good number will keep with it!

1. I think you are misunderstanding of the situation. Having a group of people yell in unison is not loud AND obnoxious. Yes it's loud, but it's loud in the sense that a troop of soldiers yells, "YES SIR".

2. This is not a rather good problem to have as a player. People are planning thousand dollars for a week at Gencon to see friends and play L5R. Sure it's great demand for FFG. That is the only good that comes out of this: verifying demand. Your comment comes off as insensitive to all of those players that didn't get tickets. Is it acceptable to fail at gauging demand for a player base that has to spend hundreds/thousands of dollars and their primary pull is this game? This could be remedied with additional events at the same or overlapping time (assuming FFG could find space and workers) so that people that already have tickets could not participate in another event.

5 minutes ago, Winner said:

1. I think you are misunderstanding of the situation. Having a group of people yell in unison is not loud AND obnoxious. Yes it's loud, but it's loud in the sense that a troop of soldiers yells, "YES SIR".

2. This is not a rather good problem to have as a player. People are planning thousand dollars for a week at Gencon to see friends and play L5R. Sure it's great demand for FFG. That is the only good that comes out of this: verifying demand. Your comment comes off as insensitive to all of those players that didn't get tickets. Is it acceptable to fail at gauging demand for a player base that has to spend hundreds of dollars and their primary pull is this game? This could be remedied with additional events at the same or overlapping time (assuming FFG could find space and workers) so that people that already have tickets could not participate in another event.

Well, I'm sorry if it came across as insensitive, as that certainly wasn't my intent. I was just trying to point out that there is a silver-lining to all this. If we had a choice between a few hundred slots filling up instantly or having a thousand slots with only a hundred people signing up, I'd personally opt for the former. Yes, it's more frustrating in the short-term, but in the long-run higher excitement will mean bigger events and a healthier game overall.

I also think it's a bit unfair to insinuate that this is an unacceptable failing on FFG's part, when most of us (I assume) have no clue about what they did or did not think about or plan. Maybe they simply couldn't get the product or the manpower to support a larger even or more eventst. Maybe they tried to get space for 1,000 seats and the venue said, "Eh, we can't give you that much." Maybe it actually was an oversight and they'll end up tweeting an apology. Whatever the case may be, we need to resist the urge to rage about our own preferred narrative and keep in mind that we really don't have any idea at this point.

Many people just buy tickets to these events to secure themselves boxes without waiting in line. A not insignificant amount if those people have limited or no interest in the actual event. It's basically a pre-sale with a seat attached to it, and FFG would not want to offer too many seats only to have them unused. That costs them money and space for other games.

350 is very ambitious for a launch event.

15 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

Well, I'm sorry if it came across as insensitive, as that certainly wasn't my intent. I was just trying to point out that there is a silver-lining to all this. If we had a choice between a few hundred slots filling up instantly or having a thousand slots with only a hundred people signing up, I'd personally opt for the former. Yes, it's more frustrating in the short-term, but in the long-run higher excitement will mean bigger events and a healthier game overall.

I also think it's a bit unfair to insinuate that this is an unacceptable failing on FFG's part, when most of us (I assume) have no clue about what they did or did not think about or plan. Maybe they simply couldn't get the product or the manpower to support a larger even or more eventst. Maybe they tried to get space for 1,000 seats and the venue said, "Eh, we can't give you that much." Maybe it actually was an oversight and they'll end up tweeting an apology. Whatever the case may be, we need to resist the urge to rage about our own preferred narrative and keep in mind that we really don't have any idea at this point.

IMO, it's not a failing yet. There's time for additional work arounds.

It will be a failing of FFGs if no additional work is done or even considered before Gencon. If they lock in the "business as usual" mentality and ignore the hundreds of upset former and new L5R players, then that, in my opinion, is a failure (at minimum on the PR level).

37 minutes ago, Winner said:

IMO, it's not a failing yet. There's time for additional work arounds.

It will be a failing of FFGs if no additional work is done or even considered before Gencon. If they lock in the "business as usual" mentality and ignore the hundreds of upset former and new L5R players, then that, in my opinion, is a failure (at minimum on the PR level).

I can bet there are plenty of things already being considered before Gencon. It's a question of what can they do, and the sad reality may be not much.

The clan-specific promos and swag are what will sting the most about this situation.

3 minutes ago, Ide Yoshiya said:

The clan-specific promos and swag are what will sting the most about this situation.

Aw, what sort of promos?