GenCon 2000

In Pictures!

 

(click on a picture to view a larger image)

 

First of all.... your hosts at Kyuden Ryu! Mirumoto Christopher (left) and Kakita Brent (right).

 

OH-MY-KAMI! This is Mirumoto Chris and Bayushi James (who forgot his mask.... silly Scorpion) in Milwaukee. It took a while to get a hold of our luggage. I think it was the Kolat...

 

We stayed at the Phister Hotel. This place was fancy! Unfortunately, we had to pay for all the luxuries. This is Brent being utterly amazed by the fact that there was a television in the bathroom!

 

This is the convenience store that kept us in Mountain Dew and doughnuts. Without this place... <shudder>

 

This...... is........ BOSHNIGGY!   I am proud to say that I, Christopher Orr, am the first GenCon convert to Boshniggism.

 

The Team Boshniggy banner. Amazing, isn't it?

 

Thus starts the cavalcade of Kakita Kaori's kimonos. They are very pretty, as is the wearer.

 

Another beautiful kimono... sorry about my undue presence.

 

A shot of the largest L5R tournament EVER. With 375 playing on Thursday and 352 playing on Friday, this was an incredible event to watch. By the way... the Magic Pro Qualifier had ~180 participants. ^_^

 

Another shot of the Battle at Oblivion's Gate. This one better shows the sea of banners. It was amazing. On Thursday, the L5R players staked out a fourth of the floor and gave no quarter the entire convention.

 

A shot of the Crane and Scorpion bounties. The Crane Clan offered a powder blue Daisho to the highest placing Crane, and a crystal wakizashi to the highest placing Scorpion. Very nice bounties, both of them.

 

Here they are... the people who brought you the L5R Challenge Booth. From left to right: Jerrod Schuster, Christopher Orr, Eric and his wife, and Jeanne Kalvar. The Booth will be back next year... start making your challenges now.

 

This is a shot of the Challenge Booth on Friday night. We had an amazing turnout... a big 'arigato ' to everyone who showed up at the Challenge Booth!

 

Yet another match in the Moto Challenge. The sheer number of games played floored me. Mainly because I was there for almost all of them. Silly Bayushi James.... hiding again.

 

This picture did not turn out as well as I had hoped. But it is John Wick reading "No Regrets" the Final Story of Kachiko. This brought tears to John's eyes and to mine.

 

A rare shot of Kakita Kaori in her secret identity... Jeanne Kalvar! I think Brent was going for style points in this picture.

 

This is me with MitsuMan (Chris Hill). He is a really great guy. MitsuMan allowed people to beat on his decks for hours in the name of charity. What a guy!

 

Yes... this is THE Ikoma Andy. From what I heard, he got that a lot during GenCon. He was very professional during the entire convention, handing out Deathseeker.com business cards. He also helped us avoid a major problem during the Moto Challenge. Arigato, Andy!

 

Another picture of two Chris's. Me with Chris Bergstrom. At times there were up to 5 different Chris's at the Challenge Booth. You would not believe how much trouble this caused.

 

Wow... this is Rakki Yaru (Chris Burns). This man is all about the Monkey Clan. He presented a storyline challenge to any Ninja player for control of Otosan Uchi and there were no takers... we will all have to wait and see what this means to the story.

            Quote: "You want Otosan Uchi? You have to go through TOKU!"

 

Here is Jeff Alexander, the new Lead Guy (tm) and still Rules Guru for L5R. He is a really personable fellow. He supported the Valley of the Two Generals Duel. He was going to participate, but his schedule was as busy as one might expect.

 

This is Midnight Madness. I helped Eric Devlin and the others run the tourney, and it was insane. 251 people preregistered for the event, but over 100 of them never showed up. Add to that the people who left halfway through and you have a big mess. But somehow, eight hours later, we got through it.

 

This is our hotel room right before we left. I think we gave the maid plenty to do...

 

 

Wow.... a very interesting convention to say the very least. 

The Challenge Booth was a *major* success. This was due in large to three groups of people:

    1) Eric and everyone else who worked or played at the Challenge Booth. People were very supportive of both the Challenges and the Haiku Books.

    2) Brent Keith (Shosho) and Todd Rowland (Todo, the Shadowlands Monk). These two brought us the Moto Challenge. That brought in over 120 games. Arigato!

    3) Andy Heckts and the rest of the L5R staff: they brought the Box 'o Greed to the Challenge Booth and donated it! This was extremely generous and unexpected. I got a chance to speak with a lot of them, and they are a great group of people.

I plan on attending next year, and I will probably drag Brent along with me. I will try to get more sleep next year, however. This year I opened up the Challenge Booth every morning at 8:30 a.m. and watched it through until 11 p.m.. Unfortunately, by working the Midnight Madness tourney I went over 50 hours without sleep. I was nearly out of it by the time we caught our flight home.

See you next year!

-Mirumoto Christopher