Liverpool 16th July 2000

A fine sunny day saw three merry Mancuians travel to Liverpool to try out there new pre-SotE decks.

Personally I took a version of the Ninja Holding denial deck including the SotE cards Kage and Adorai, while Steve C played a crane honor deck that sat behind a Yodin Sensei and bowed for honor. Personally for me the deck was a disaster, by including the ultra-cool Kage, plus cheap Kolats to go with him, the deck lost focus. It struggled to lock and destroy in time to hold off attacks. Kage was a revelation. A ninja/kolat deck using him successfully could be a braintwister. The ability to not only search your opponents decks and remove a card, but to see the deck style ROCKS! Throw in the Kolat/Ninja for Adorai's ability aswell and the deck could cause mayhem.

The Crane Yodin deck turtled it's way easily to the final, but lack of characters, and the ability of the Lion Stronghold (terrains) meant that it's effectiveness was hurt. I'd played alot against the Crane/Yodin deck the night before, and it was funny to see people go..."Won't affect me that much.." and then come away complaining that it TOTALLY slowed there deck down.

Final Result 1] Lion Tactician - Paul Evens 2] Crane Honor w/ Yodin - Steve Clegg 3] Mantis METH - Ben Davis 4] Shadowlands Force Bonus - Marc Crowley

Having seen a brief impact of the SotE cards and talked to some guys in the US, who have them in abundance, I can't AT THE MOMENT see SotE effecting the play area that much card wise...The new crane stronghold is strong, and there are some nice characters in the set, but the action/event cards seem to contain nothing outstanding.....

Ikoma At-the-oche Toturi's Army * Tactician * Ninja * Kolat * AGM Historian