I walked into the hall on Saturday ready armed with my Scorpion Ninja Duelling deck. I thought it would do me as well as it did the last time.

First annoyance of the day: When we went to register, the Magic people there told us to come back with decklists! Decklist! In a L5R tournament!

Grrrrr!!!

So, we dutifully made our way back to the tables and proceeded to write stuff down. Then, Mark (Wootton) shouts out "They're doing the Lion Dance in the trade Hall now! Lets go!". Having lived through many many many Lion dances throughout my life, I didn't really feel the need to go. The Mark swooped down upon us again and told us to go once more. We said "but we have to fill up these decklists!!!" And lo, he pronounced that no such thing need be done for L5R games! We cheat not! And so, we made our way to the trade hall. Stood around for a little while, met up with a few friends. And then it started. In an amazing feat of originality, they decided that instead of throwing flower petals at us, they would hand out L5R cards! Well, we weren't complaining! Got an Oracle of Thunder, which I was missing!

Anywho, in typical L5R loud fashion, the Lion danced its way right through the Trade Hall, upseting the fragile psyches of the gamers there. We L5Rers were of course following behind in a long procession. About 20 minutes later, we finally stopped in front of the DCI HQ, and the Lion went to sleep. All players present crowded round and pictures were taken. The Dance was quite impressive, easily being one of the longest lasting ones I've ever seen.

And so, we made our way up to the top floor again. Incidentally, the venue had (apparently) been marked as Condemned the day before GC started.

And so, we started.

Round 1: Naga

"Aha!", I thought! Easy pickings! Naga have no chi! I was right there. Unfortunately, in a deck packing 9-11 duels, I drew only one in the entire game. The one saving grace was the amount of stuff I managed to put on Yudoka: Corrupted Jade Sliver, Burden of the Word, Bloodsword, Poison Dartgun and Goju Stalkers. That actually got the Naga to not attack me for two turns.

0-1

Round 2: Yoritomo/Ratling

"Aha!" I thought again. Ratling only have okay chi! Again I was correct. Unfortunately, I also drew only 1 duel the entire game.

0-2

Round 3: Phoenix

I was feeling rather despondent by this point. Never have I ever lost the first 2 rounds of a tournament before. So, I was less than happy to go up against a phoenix. Again I failed to draw my duels. All except *both* my For the Empires, which I of course couldn't use against a Phoenix. It all went to hell when he got his Isawa Tsuke Exp out. Then, he conceded the match to me. He'd only joined in to make up the numbers to 100 to tie for largest L5R tournament in UK ever. So, bittersweet end

1-2

Round 4: Ninja

This had to be a real joke by the powers that be. If anyone can be bothered to cast his/her mind back to GCUK last year, I drew with Victoria Lawford, a Unicorn, in the 4th round for a storyline effort to return Ryoko Owari to the Scorpion. This year, we promised that we'd draw if we met again, and work out a storyline compromise again. Heh heh! Guess who I got matched up against? So, we drew, and I submitted the following: "The Scorpion welcomed the Ninja home..." This coincided nicely with Ralph's actions the whole day, which was Oathing all his Ninja to the Scorpion.

1-2-1

Round 5: Scorpion

I didn't even get a chance to say anything. Johnathan sat down and said "Draw". Went along.

1-2-2

Round 6: Dragon

I almost felt sorry for the guy. I got my god-draw. He never had more than 1 personality out by the end of my turn. The "almost" in the first sentence is because I was very happy that I won that last game to give me the magic

2-2-2 record.

I got soooooo many baffled looks from people who asked me how I did. After that I was called to give away the prizes I'd offered: 1 signed card from each clan for the lowest placing of that clan. Scorpion got Bayushi Yojiro Exp signed by both John Wick and Willian O'Connor. I thought it'd be a nice thing for people to walk away with after making the effort. The biggest surprise there was me giving the Rekai to Mark Wootton (who I'm sure placed higher than I did)!!! It was nice to give a Taki to the Dragon I'd beaten in the 6th round. Sadly, about half of the people had left and so didn't collect their cards.

So, my adventures ended there, ranked 60th. Or so I thought.. Later on that night, Adam and Mark told me that Paul Hounslow was looking for me. So I went hunting for him. Earlier, he'd been drawn as the random Scorpion player to play in the Master of Fire Invitationals. The MoFI was to be a tournament to commemorate the formation of the Association of Gaijin Merchants (AGM), a player-run organisation to facilitate the running of tournaments and to support the DCI. It was named in honour of Justin's victory at GCUS. So, former winners of GCUK, winners of all side events at GCUK, top ranked players in UK/Ireland, a random person from each clan who'd participated in the storyline tournament and most honourable player would play 30/30 open, single elimination. The winner would then play Justin in the Super Finals for a super prize!

So, back to the story. Paul said that he couldn't make it, as he had to be back home that night itself. So, he offered his spot to me. Boy was I honoured by that. I'd have jumped at the chance immediately, but as I was a member of the AGM, I thought that it would be better if someone else took the spot instead. In the end, Paul managed to persuade me (okay, so I didn't need that much persuasion :) and I played. Much to my delight. But more on that in a little bit.

So, it was past 12am, I think, when the finals were played between Justin Walsh and Jimmy K (won't try to spell his last name) from Finland. It was quite a tense match, from not too close to the table. It seemed as if Jimmy was going to pull off a Mo5 victory, when suddenly, Justin seemed to pull several Dragons out from his provinces and went stompy. It was over. Justin won! Again! It was almost the same deck, except that he'd put in 1 Rest, My Brother to clease the Air Dragon that he'd corrupted at GCUS.

And so, Steve read out the Story.

To paraphrase: The armies of Rokugan, victorious at Volturnum, had one more task before them: To return home. But, with the Shadow gone, the Shadowlands were free to act once again. And so, the heroes had to fight all their way home. You see the wall. Or rather, you thought you saw the Kaiu Walls. Over there. Before the wall of monsters came crashing at you. Beside you, a samurai lies split in half, his swordstroke too slow. You carry on fighting. A goblin is replaced by an Ogre. And when even that is slain, an Oni steps into its place. As you find your spirit dying away, a bright glowing figure on a horse rides past. Alone, the figure takes down ten Oni, and turns the tide of battle. The army rallies! When the battle is over, you see the glowing figure standing in front of you. She takes her helmet off, and says her name. A name which is over 500 years old. I can't remember the name but it was a Shiba, since Justin won. She will be in Gold, along with her armour, undoubtedly.

And so, the tournament ended. When the Magic players complained that we were making too much noise at the end, we of course yelled louder! Followed by the required Banzais!!!

MoFI:

So, I had to build a deck. My first instinct was to play a Nork Blitz. So I went and made one. But, I wasn't convinced that I could get force out quickly enough.

Next day, I was prepared to play the deck, after borrowing Norikazu from Kamal. Silly me, I'd left all my Sensei at home. Then, while waiting, Brian, Tom and I got into a discussion about what deck Brian should play. He settled on Ninja Dishonour which he'd been playing yesterday. By the end of the talk, I was convinced to play Ruined Dishonour. So, I quickly threw a deck together.

Round 1: Lion

Infuriating match up. Pavel had come all the way from the Czech Republic and had won his place by placing 2nd in the Jadex on Friday. I'd earlier met him in London when he arrived. Really didn't want to have to play him. It was pretty much over by the 2nd turn. He forgot to Hantei my Breaches. So I Breached. I believe that was my first ever 1st turn Breach in a tournament. Then, on his turn, he got a Desperate Measures, putting him down to -3. He couldn't really do much. Played a few more rounds, and then he played his Lion Sword. I Dark Lord's Favoured it. And he conceded. He didn't have any other source of honour gain. :(

1-0

Round 2: Lion

The fortunes must have been smiling on me :) He Hantei'ed my Breach First turn. I wasn't sure what to take from his deck. I didn't see any Tactitians (I was planning to name The Sun Returns) in his provinces, so I named Charge. Little did I know that this was going to save my hide later. Later, he got Iris Festival. Amazingly, I didn't start with any corrupt gold. And, because I didn't start with any corrupt gold, I had no personalities for him to Kolat Duplicate. He had to shuffle his Ikoma Gunjin Exp back into his deck. I Unrequited his Morishigi, played Command of the Kami and Shamed him on my turn. I don't know why he didn't seppuku in response. He got Ken'o out and attacked next turn. He Tactitianed, and the played a Charge. At which point I reminded him that I'd Hantei'd that. So he wedged him instead. Plea.It was a blur from there on. I think I got Goshiu, DLFed, and redirected the honour loss. He conceded.

2-0 I was ecstatic at this point. I was in the top 8 and still playing!! I've never done that before!

Round 3: Crane

More specifically, it was Tom Mulheims. If there's one thing I have noticed it's that I always play Tom when I play dishonour. At least this time he wasn't playing SHadowlands. He had a decent start, while I didn't get my dishonour stuff. I knew he was going to win on honour, but I just played anyway as it was a pretty fun game. I probably could've held him off indefinitely at the threshold of 40, but then I made a mistake and bowed my CGH and put myself to -20 honour, thus reducing my province strength to 0. This would've been fine had I not been reduced to actually *attacking* his provinces to kill him. Splat.

2-1 and I was out.

Still, I was very happy with the day. Then came the prizes! I got to pick 1 card each from 4 stacks. I think they were from the box of  greed, but I'm not 100% sure. The first cards was a bit worrying: Court Jester. Then I turned up what seemed to be the hottest card at the Con: Kolat Instigator!!! Wow! I was way pleased! Then, 3rd card: TIME OF THE VOID!!! Yeeehaaa!!! And finally, Path of Wisdom! Yes! On top of that, I got a t-shirt! SO, I have finally managed to win a T-shirt!!! Well, that sure was worth it! Paul, many thanks for letting me play in your spot.