Now compared to the incident here http://www.themarysue.com/sexism-at-magic-tournament/ what has happened recently at a kotei seems mostly harmless, but truth is, the things that got said were hurtful on a personal level. Even if it was just a reactionary temper tantrum (which I myself have been guilty of in the past), that’s no excuse for insults.

As far as being a girl gamer goes, I have been lucky. I have been treated mostly as an equal. I get it more from people who think I am a “pink hat” rather than a real Boston Sports Fan. It pisses me off when these people think I don’t know my teams. Regardless of male dominated hobby, women need to be treated with the respect they deserve. In fact EVERYONE should be treated with respect and dignity until such an incident occurs to warrant otherwise.

I have seen some instances where this simple rule has not been followed and heard about more. I suppose spending my teens as “one of the guys” makes me a lot more tolerant of the off color humor. I was also able to write off the one incident that crossed the line as drunken stupidity.

A little bit of back story here… I have been attending storyline events since fall of 2007. Only once have I ever been made to feel uncomfortable and that was 2011. Someone crossed that line between off color humor and harassment. I knew the person well and knew it was 100% the alcohol he had consumed. I kinda kept it quiet at the time since I had figured it wasnt a gender thing but a drunken stupidity thing. I told my fiance and one of the TO staff. The TO asked if I wanted the guy banned, I didnt feel that was right, so I said no I just wanted them to be aware so it didnt happen again, to anyone.

In L5R we are lucky and the sexual harassment stuff doesn’t happen often. Sadly we are not immune to it, as I know I am not the only one with this kind of story. What seems to be more common is the trash talking and the patronizing that some women get. I have not actually really experienced either, however I know folks who have. It goes back to the respect thing I mentioned. At this point I have been around long enough where I have to some extent become an equal… I have actually been told “You’re not a girl, you’re Rose” which I usually take as a good thing as I get treated as an equal. But I see that not everyone gets that treatment.

The community of L5R is one of the best I have experienced. Let’s keep it that way and be excellent to each other so we can all party on… respectfully.

As I reflect on Atlantic City and start prepping for Sterling, Virginia (my final of the season) some interesting conversation points got made that I think are interesting to point out.

Atlantic City had 124 players. This makes it the largest I have been to. If you look at some of the decks that made the x-2 play in round, not all of them were decks you would expect. I’ll be honest, I expected Lion Paragons to do better than Ancestors and also did not expect a scorp dishonor deck to do as well as it did. Congrats to DiBat for that. What was predictable was the overabundance of Crab (AC is still Northeast) and Mantis (Case built a winner, so its now the bandwagon deck)

The conclusion I have come to here is that the really large events (significantly larger than 100) and the really small events (20 -30 or less) allow for not necessarily top tier decks to do better. With that few (or that many) players. The pairings become a factor, especially in the new x-2 system. Some people got lucky in their matches and didn’t have to play that one auto lose game. Others Im sure got 4 or 5 crabs (Crab being a hard match up for most mantis players from what I have seen posted).

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtftO2eiUBGudE9QUWZNNC12U1JPYUJnLXZYektaakE

Here is a link to a spreadsheet that has been keeping track of the wins by clan and also the cut breakdown by clan.  The numbers seem to be indicative that yes, the larger and smaller events seem to have the outliers with oddball decks getting into t8 or 16.

Another thought is the thought that there isn’t really one deck that can be played everywhere and perform the same. Not without a sideboard. I tried Case’s deck, as did another Mantis at my store. We couldn’t quite get it to work on the east coast. East vs West Coast,  US vs Europe; I think each region tends to vary enough where a deck list would need to have certain slots changed to account for the regional field.

As I move forward with my prep I really have 2 options. I can either sit down, crunch all the numbers, check last years data for the DC area kotei, compare to the rest of the northeast koteis, take a decklist posted and work from it to meta the dominant decks right now. Or I can say the heck with it and play something silly and enjoyable that may or may not win much.

It will come down to how much work I put into it, because I am not that lucky to stumble upon something that just wins. So we’ll see what happens.

After the DDoS attack that we suffer on sunday this improviment are need!

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