A reasonably brief UK Kotei Report. This was probably the best-organized and hosted L5R event I have ever been to. And Darrian you will have cause to celebrate it. The second largest Kotei this year was held in New Century House in Manchester. 100 players from the UK and Ireland attended, placing the 'beating heart of L5R', as someone put it, squarely in Europe, somewhere between France and Britain ;-) I organized a trip for, and traveled down with, a band of ten Scottish players in a minibus. I am still pretty tired after all that driving but here goes. The venue was decked out with L5R banners, ornamental plant arrangements and bamboo screens. Entry was free and although material prizes were only for the top 16 everyone went away with something from the day. Between rounds one and two and during lunch there was a performance of traditional music. Lunch was an Oriental Buffet laid on free for all the players by WotC. Between rounds three and four we were treated to a Lion Dance. Between rounds five and six we got an amazing display of martial arts and dance all performed to music, this included Ribbon Dancing, an unbelievable sword kata and the most flexible woman I have ever seen (who would probably make a very good bodyguard as well)! The clan breakdown reflected both the tendency in the UK to stick to clan as well as some of the strong deck types. Top clan was Unicorn with 16, followed by Alliance with 15 (about 50/50 with most of the true Alliance players sticking to Mantis). The others were fairly even, with 9 Dragon, Toturi and Lion I think. Phoenix only had 5 representatives and the lowest was Monk with just 2. I had thought really long and hard about what to play with. I had tried to get a Crane deck to work and had one that bore some similarities to Mr. Bergstrom's Dragon. However, I felt that it just did not hack it as I wanted. That left me with the choice of FETA/Mo5 or a Unicorn Magistrate. I knew in the UK that, at these big events, Unicorn is always strong and usually PCP-based, I also felt that the FETA was just too cheesy and would be heavily metagamed against. I went with the Unicorn as I felt it was strong against Phoenix, Toturi and other Unicorn. I took some other decisions - like I pretty much accepted that if a dishonour deck got hold of me I was toast and I was decent against honour but not brilliant. You can get too preoccupied with the metagame. I also ignored the wisdom that most people seem to have that Fortress of the Dragonfly is important to Unicorn duellers. I also tried to give it a bit more speed of development at the sacrifice of some speed of attack - Buodin instead of Kamoko. I knew Fox would be difficult, but in testing I was about 40/60 and that was acceptable. I won't bore everyone with the details of every game. All in all the deck played well and I was happy with the way I played it apart from a couple of silly mistakes. I lost one game in the seven round Swiss to a Lion Tactician. My mistake was in taking out a province with Ken'o in it! After I had done it I realised that I had a Kolat Master in hand, and given that he had two of the zero force tacticians in play already I should have let the Ken'o out and stolen him. One more turn would certainly have seen my duelling personality destruction give me control, and prevent him attacking without a Sneak (which he didn't have). Still I had no complaints as Myles, my opponent, played the game very well. My opponents were Unicorn, Lion, Unicorn, Yoritomo (Fox), Lion, Naga and Monk Honour in that order. It was a downer in the last round having to play Neil Jones, a friend from Scotland and last year's champion as one of us was going to go out. I got a start of Time of the Void, Buodin, Merchant Caravan and Return of Fu Leng and against an honour deck that is always going to be tough. I made it to the top eight knockout. Unbelievably the only undefeated deck going into the last eight was a Crab deck and a four Walls deck at that! I spoke to the guy and he did remarkably well, he felt that he was only really weak against fast honour and perhaps FETA but had avoided them all day! The other seven were Phoenix Dishonour, Spawning Pools Shadowlands, Lion Tactician/Speed Attack, Fox Military/Personality kill, Unicorn Magistrate (me), Junzo Smash and Toturi's Army. I did make another huge mistake in the quarterfinals that I am too embarrassed to even mention. Still, The Hooded Ronin (thanks to Tom Mulheims!) showed up with a Bloodsword and that is about all she needs to write when playing against Shadowlands (I had killed a lot of his people by this time). So Unicorn beats Spawning Pools Junzo beats Phoenix Dishonour (d'oh!) Fox beats Lion Crab beats Toturi My semis was against Marc Crowley playing Junzo. Nio Sensei is beatable for me, but with a Take the Initiative as well I just couldn't get going fast enough. Although Marc's first turn was only gold, it included the Festering Pit and from then on it was two people a turn. I got a first turn Shirasu and got the favour once, but unfortunately the only gold for turns one and two were Silk Works that I had to flush. He smartly used Dark Lord's favour on my Karasu to dishonour him and left me with the choice of saving the province or rehonouring so that I could use the favour again next turn. I went with the former and did manage to get a Tetsuko down. I made a couple of judgement calls that didn't go my way and it was over pretty soon. Marc played an excellent game, completely mistake free. So Marc was in the finals. Marc went on to beat Kamal playing Fox (when the four walls deck finally lucked out on the guy in the semi) in the finals. It was a 2-1 best of three match. Both finalists will get free flights and accommodation to the US courtesy of WotC UK and the top sixteen players must have got nigh on thirty boxes of product between them. I managed to just miss out again at the UK national championship - that's 2nd, 5th and 4th in the last 3 years So to some up. The setting was Awesome. The day was Awesome The prizes were Awesome The turnout was Awesome Fu Leng was Awesome Final standings: 1st Junzo 2nd Fox 3rd Crab 4th Unicorn Any message that you would like to pass on to Marc from his Warlord Darrian and I will do my best to get it to him - I am not sure whether he has net access or not, but it will get there. Neither of the two players that won were going to US Gen Con before the event so that now means that there will be a total of 29 UK and Ireland players crossing the Atlantic. I have to say "MINDY!", given the turnouts over here in Europe I would like to start the petition that the conclusion to the Gold storyline be held over here in 2002 or whenever it is. We'd make you all welcome you know, but hey, this is where it is at! ;-) If we can get 357 in two national koteis, what would we get for the World Championship? Mark P. S. Anyone with a website that wants to lift this report - feel free!