Just watched the final match.

CRAB vs. LION

Crab victory.

Level of play was significantly lower than what was seen at the Winter Court in my personal opinion. Looked like a local tournament more than a Kotei.

Wow way to be casually dismissive of all those players in public.. I suspect many of those will hold deep seated personal opinions themselves concerning your good self

So, they played even slower? Or you mean they looked like they were having fun?

To be fair, I keep hearing about a lot of botched supposed rulings by the judge(s) there. If the reports are accurate, the judging has been terrible, with several completely incorrect rulings made.

That said., it's at least partially FFG's fault that it's been difficult to have consistent rulings.

To me, there seemed to be quite an experience gap between Trevor Holmes and Stephen Didion, the latter looked to be far more experienced at the game.

Out of interest, what card did the Crab player play to trigger the Rally to the Cause reaction for a second time? The Lion player attacks with venerable historian and the crab player plays a card to switch the conflicts. Could have been captive audience but you can hear him say 'rally to the cause, which makes it a military conflict, she bows and goes home. (Venerable Historian).

8 minutes ago, Akodo Tetsuo said:

To me, there seemed to be quite an experience gap between Trevor Holmes and Stephen Didion, the latter looked to be far more experienced at the game.

Out of interest, what card did the Crab player play to trigger the Rally to the Cause reaction for a second time? The Lion player attacks with venerable historian and the crab player plays a card to switch the conflicts. Could have been captive audience but you can hear him say 'rally to the cause, which makes it a military conflict, she bows and goes home. (Venerable Historian).

There was no Rally to the Cause, he played Captive Audience from his hand, if you notice he pays an honor, he just said Rally to the Cause, probably by mistake.

4 minutes ago, blackheartz said:

There was no Rally to the Cause, he played Captive Audience from his hand, if you notice he pays an honor, he just said Rally to the Cause, probably by mistake.

Yup, your right, twas captive audience alright!

4 hours ago, kraken78 said:

Just watched the final match.

CRAB vs. LION

Crab victory.

Level of play was significantly lower than what was seen at the Winter Court in my personal opinion. Looked like a local tournament more than a Kotei.

Going from an international event to a regional event will do that.

But that shouldn't mean the win is any less impressive. Stephen faced who showed up, and conquered every single one of them. Level of competition is relative anyway.

6 minutes ago, Joe From Cincinnati said:

But that shouldn't mean the win is any less impressive. Stephen faced who showed up, and conquered every single one of them. Level of competition is relative anyway.

Agreed, I think he played very well.

When you see what you might consider "low skill players" competing at the top tables, then that can be the result of a particularly good deck that allows for a lower skill level or someone who is simply a skilled LCG player and is new(er) to L5R. That being said, Stephen (the winner) played Crab to 6-2 at worlds and was in the challenger round. So, his success is pretty consistent. I know that both top Crane and top Lion at PAX were also in the elimination rounds of worlds. If you go back and watch his other games that were on the live stream (thanks 6th Ring!!!!), then you'll see him playing against some very skilled opponents. Almost every single "mistake" that was pointed out on camera was the result of the viewers missing something said or done.

Hey everyone,

Disclaimer: I'm Stephen's buddy (I just learned how to play via YouTube and scrubbed out with 0-2 record).

Facts: If you lost 2, you were out. Stephen went 7-0 in the Swiss rounds along with another player. In his run, Stephen went 11-0.

Opinions/Thoughts:

Not knowing the rules well, to me, it seemed like Stephen knows the rules better than the judges. I know he was disappointed in letting Crab down at Worlds and vowed to do better at this Grand Kotei.

When you are on Twitch, it does affect your play (cause it's different than what you are used to) and I think the Finals are longer than the other rounds. If you watch the feed, Stephen prefers to put his honor dial on his right... anyone who plays sports has rituals (e.g. free throws) and with the crowded boards and play space, it can affect your rhythm. There's a lot of stuff to keep track of...

I think the top Lion guy in the semis against Stephen was "Wells"(?). The final conflict of that game was insane! Before the match, Stephen was telling me that Wells might be the best player (if not best Lion) right now? We were next to the Main Stage so there was heavy music as well! I think you can hear The Final Countdown in the background.

The Lion guy in the final round. He told me that he played a few games with his dad before buying his own Cores on Friday before the Kotei. He's an architecture student who made those wooden tokens he was using. FWIW, I thought his tokens looked cool. I think he has an Etsy shop.

Paul Heaver of X-Wing fame made the cut as well. As people who know him... that dude rarely makes mistakes in anything he plays. Stephen plays in the DMV (NoVa) area and he told me that there were a few Hamamotos(sp?) from our local area?

At the beginning, seemed like there were a lot of Hamamotos who stood up when they were asked to stand and be recognized.

Stephen said he's going to watch the Twitch feed to learn from his misplays. At the end of the day, he has a trophy. Ain't gonna lie, I'm pretty stoked for him.

Thanks for mentioning me, Q! I have my own Crab list that I added online: https://fiveringsdb.com/decks/f4e8c2d9-ce24-11e7-9e9b-8e1ccf16fca4/view

In case anyone wants to see my weird list that got me my Hatamoto mat.

I liked the PAX tourney a lot: the people were all fun to play against, and everyone was cool. I was worried that L5R wouldn't get the same community spirit that it had, but so far so good!

12 hours ago, Matrim said:

Wow way to be casually dismissive of all those players in public.. I suspect many of those will hold deep seated personal opinions themselves concerning your good self

Way to totally blow a comment way out of proportion. In no way did I attack these players and I held my statement as an opinion. I just made a blanket statement and was certainly not calling out anyone directly, as you felt justified to do.

My comment was not intended to offend anyone, and if that is the case I sincerely apologize.

But just like any competitive event it is reasonable for an observer to have an opinion about what they see in comparison to other events.

As well as discuss them with others in order to raise the bar on their own playstyles and ideas. I don't want to get into some crazy pissing contest, but I did feel your comment warranted a rebuttal.

8 hours ago, Joe From Cincinnati said:

Going from an international event to a regional event will do that.

But that shouldn't mean the win is any less impressive. Stephen faced who showed up, and conquered every single one of them. Level of competition is relative anyway.

I thoroughly agree and it was not the intent of my original post to marginalize the win.

In fact, I'm quite happy that CRAB got the win with such a mediocre showing at Worlds.

But you can agree the play was different between Worlds and PAX.

Timothy Wells (Lion) was the only person to go 8-0 in the swiss at Worlds, and Stephen beat him in the semis. So he certainly deserves his win.

Do we have the crab deck list that won it all!

8 minutes ago, yujufrazer said:

Do we have the crab deck list that won it all!

https://fiveringsdb.com/decks/a477f4bc-cb13-11e7-9e9b-8e1ccf16fca4/view

11 hours ago, IceQube MkII said:

Paul Heaver of X-Wing fame made the cut as well. As people who know him... that dude rarely makes mistakes in anything he plays. Stephen plays in the DMV (NoVa) area and he told me that there were a few Hamamotos(sp?) from our local area?

Oh hey, Paul Heaver plays this game? I watched several of his matches when I was trying to learn how to stop being a noob at X-Wing (spoiler alert: still a noob at X-Wing :/).

12 hours ago, pheaver said:

Thanks for mentioning me, Q! I have my own Crab list that I added online: https://fiveringsdb.com/decks/f4e8c2d9-ce24-11e7-9e9b-8e1ccf16fca4/view

In case anyone wants to see my weird list that got me my Hatamoto mat.

I liked the PAX tourney a lot: the people were all fun to play against, and everyone was cool. I was worried that L5R wouldn't get the same community spirit that it had, but so far so good!

Going by X-wing, in a matter of months whenever Paul Heaver goes to a tournament with a new deck that deck will suddenly be the one everyone has to learn to beat. He shouldn't have a Hatamoto mat. He should have a HataMETA mat.

It was nice to see Heaver playing a crab list which was very different than mine. 2 very dissimilar lists broke into the top cut, was interesting to see both getting good results

Also @kraken78 , I don’t think Matrim is out of line with the comment. As one of the guys who made it feel more “like a local tournament than a Kotei,” I feel a bit offended by it.

Tim Wells I consider to be one of if not the best Lion player out there, Kyle Wislocky was top Crane here and top 16 at worlds and is one of the best Crane players out there. This is my 2nd large event in a row showing as the top finishing Crab. Everyone I played in the top 16 gave me fantastic games. And there were quite a few strong players who didn’t make the cut.

You’re entitled to your opinion that the overall field may have been weaker than worlds and that’s fair, this was a regional/national level event compared to World Championships. You should probably say that in a way that doesn’t insult everyone who was there though.

2 hours ago, Spector1331 said:

Also @kraken78 , I don’t think Matrim is out of line with the comment. As one of the guys who made it feel more “like a local tournament than a Kotei,” I feel a bit offended by it.

You’re entitled to your opinion that the overall field may have been weaker than worlds and that’s fair, this was a regional/national level event compared to World Championships. You should probably say that in a way that doesn’t insult everyone who was there though.

Fair enough. I obviously didn't phrase my comments in the best of ways and apologize to all for the unintended slights.

Congratulations on the win and thanks for what you do for the Clan and the game.

what about the chant though?

7 hours ago, cerealkiller195 said:

what about the chant though?

They led the new, 'For Rokugan' chant, and people went along with it. There was a short, but pretty much equally loud Banzai chant afterwards, and the organizers proclaimed we weren't doing that, and it died down pretty quickly. Then everyone got into the game and the whole thing was forgotten.

No more Bonzai!?

nothing changes. criticizing people who are in the spotlight from the safety of the interwebs.

sucks about judges though. that's a tough gig considering how many rulings there have been and how some seem a bit counter-intuitive.