So i think I already know the answer to this question but just wanted some clarification. I would like to go to the Los Angeles Kotei. That is being held at Anime Expo 2018. So do I really have to buy a $117 dollar ticket to get into Anime Expo, then also pay the $40 to Cascade Games to participate in the Kotei? Please tell me I'm wrong. That is to much money for me to spend, just to play a card game.

Pretty sure that is correct. To get into the expo, you have to have a ticket/badge for the day(s) you plan to come in. The $40 to Cascade is the actual cost for the event itself to cover things like hiring Cascade to run the event, tables/space at the expo to run the event, prize support, etc. Ideally you will have some time outside of the kotei to do other things at the expo. Depending on how badly you want your swag from the kotei, you could potentially sell some of that to recoup some of the costs (every participant gets a kotei playmat, so that could get you at least part of the cost by itself).

Its one of the reasons that American Kotei attendance has been so low while European attendance is high.

41 minutes ago, Kakita Shiro said:

Its one of the reasons that American Kotei attendance has been so low while European attendance is high.

Hey at least America's getting Koteis, Canada nothing.

Breakout con in Toronto last March had the Canadian Nationals for everything else FFG. For L5R, we had a tourney, Prize support was a plaque, some donated mats, full art Keepers and Seekers for participation and acrylic strongholds for top of clan. I won't lie the Strongholds were nice but when i look at what they are giving away for Kotei it makes me feel sort of ignored.

4 hours ago, Schmoozies said:

Hey at least America's getting Koteis, Canada nothing.

Breakout con in Toronto last March had the Canadian Nationals for everything else FFG. For L5R, we had a tourney, Prize support was a plaque, some donated mats, full art Keepers and Seekers for participation and acrylic strongholds for top of clan. I won't lie the Strongholds were nice but when i look at what they are giving away for Kotei it makes me feel sort of ignored.

Yeah, the lack of Koteis in Canada is sad. Hopefully FFG and their partners take the global population into consideration next year.

Thanks for the replies. That is really disappointing though. I mean if I had a disposable income, it would not be that big of a deal. But that is a huge barrier of entry that I don't think I'm going to be able to swing. I mean, I just want to throw down in some L5R, not get some anime voice actor autographs. And yea, sorry about the Canada thing, that sucks.

16 hours ago, ShibaCarlos said:

Thanks for the replies. That is really disappointing though. I mean if I had a disposable income, it would not be that big of a deal. But that is a huge barrier of entry that I don't think I'm going to be able to swing. I mean, I just want to throw down in some L5R, not get some anime voice actor autographs. And yea, sorry about the Canada thing, that sucks. 

If you can get to Seattle in June or Texas in July, then you can play in the only two American events not at a convention.

Go crazy and head to Birmingham for next week!

This cost is ludicrous. I'm not going to buy a $100+ set of tickets for a convention I am not actually going to be attending. This means players will be sneaking in en masse and may get kicked out in droves, or the turnout will be terrible. Plus there is the fact that the first day of the tournament is scheduled for Friday, rather than Saturday. How many people are actually going to take a day off of work to spend $150+ to go to downtown on a Friday morning to play in this tournament? Are any of you actually planning to attend this?

There have been multiple threads discussing the policy of 'gating' almost every US Kotei behind a convention, and indeed going back to the CCG days, there were sometimes complaints about the World/North American Championships being held at GenCon...but this is the first time I've ever seen the phrase "sneaking in en masse" used. Conjures up some vivid images for sure.

For the record, the lowest attendance at a US Kotei for the LCG is still above 50 players, which is pretty decent. If a person doesn't want to pay the considerable cost of attending, they should probably just not attend rather than attempt to ninja sneak in. I'd suggest also contacting FFG and Cascade Games to politely and firmly explain why you chose not to attend. I'd also give serious consideration to, if possible, attending either of the two non-gated events in Houston or Seattle - if attendance at these are high enough, it'll send a pretty clear message about what players want, and also perhaps prove the financial validity of standalone tournaments ahead of next season.

At least in my experience, con staff is pretty good at badge checking...not saying sneaking in is impossible, but may have a hard time getting away with it. Generally speaking though, for bigger events like this, yeah people are taking days off from work to participate. Consequently though, players who aren't performing well are more likely to drop and go explore the convention. Case in point, Birmingham Kotei has 25 drops after Round 3, which is about 14-15% of players today...I suspect it's due to being held at the UK Games Expo, so they legitimately have other things they can do while there.

I recognized a few AGOT players just looking to game before their event started later that day.

Surprise, surprise. Set a kotei at an unrelated convention, start it on a Friday, and put a $200+ barrier on attendance and you get terrible attendance. Apparently only 21 people showed up to the Los Angeles kotei today. I hope the organizers take this as a sign that they need to set kotei at other venues.

Wow that sucks, I had 13 at our local stronghold final this weekend so for a Kotei that is sad. Any word on what the clan breakdown was?

Rough estimates by some players I know there: 4 Lion, 4 Crab, 3 Crane, 3 Dragon, 3 Scorpion, 2 Phoenix, 1 Unicorn. Not sure what the missing one is playing. It's set to be a 2 day tournament, but they only have to play 2 or 3 rounds to cut to top 7. A third of the players there will get in as top of clan. Very disappointing. Even small kotei in the old L5R game brought in more people. Heck, about a fifth of the players there are from my play group alone.

Hopefully they are learning from this and we won't have a repeat of this next year.

Apparently the missing person is Dragon and some numbers were off from my previous posts. So the totals are: 4 Crab, 4 Crane, 4 Dragon, 4 Lion, 1 Phoenix, 3 Scorpion, and 1 Unicorn.