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Most of this is second hand as I spent the weekend gaming instead of living at the L5R booth...

The Lion deck that won was a super LSD. The main thing I heard was he used alot of high focus Fate cards for Merchant Caravans, etc and won games by having the most personalities out the fastest. The Crane deck made use of the Shinsei's Shrine for the quick honor run. Opponents had to decide whether to attack provinces with the Shrine or provinces that could bring out personalities. Only one Scorpion made it into the finals (plus the Skirmisher). He's a friend of mine and I'll post his deck sometime this week.

Other Tournament notes: When two nagas had to play each other, they agreed not to fight saying that fighting member of the same race was a "human thing". They agreed the player that could generate the most force after turn 6 would be the winner. When two Dragons had to fight, they withdrew to the mountains (left the playing area) saying it was an internal dispute and note for outside eyes. A Scorpion game I observed ended with the winner's honor at -72 and the losers honor at -48. A Unicorn, working through the Sorpions, tried to bribe the judges with Koku to have the Lions seeded against each other Friday night. The Dragon skirmisher go into the finals with 1 (yes, one) win.

Togashi Yokuni is actually Togashi (yes, the original). He and Fu Leng turned into Dragons and fought. Togashi died and Mirumoto Hitomi used her Obsidian Hand to reach into Togashi's dead body and remove his heart. Inside the heart was the 12th black scroll. The Yakamo's fought (oni and hero). Mirumoto Hitomi stepped in, helped kill the oni, and made sure Hida Yakamo knew he lived because of Hitomi. Qamar died fighting the hordes of Fu Leng. Isha picked up the Spear of the Naga and fought on. He later responded to a human who called out his name that he was no long Isha - he is Qamar. Isawa Tadaka killed Isawa Tsuke in a duel (go figure). The Pheonix champion died from a fall off a tower (there's got to be more to the story than this...) and the female samurai who led the Pheonix army in defense of the Crane in the beginning of the story is the new champion. All 5 elemental masters are dead (3rd hand info). The Mantis is now a major clan. The other minor clans are still minor. Unicorn still did nothing in the storyline (the thunder was thrown by Fu Leng and was never mentioned in the story line again. Hitomi read the 12th scroll (making Fu Leng mortal) and then sat back and watched the Thunders do battle.

I hope somebody who was there for the whole thing will be able to fill in missed details and correct any mistakes in my report.

Mirumoto Mandor - Follower of Togashi