We've seen a dramatic increase in the number of sanctioned events since March of this year, and we thank you for your continued support of sanctioned L5R events through the transition to DCI services. In the past five months, we have already sanctioned double the number of events that took place in all of 1998. Additionally, a number of countries that had low participation in the past are now reporting some of our largest regular tournaments. These reports are great to see, and we hope our developing tournament and fan-club support systems will deliver to you the support you expect and deserve.

If you haven't had a chance yet to check out your ranking online, visit the new L5R ranking page at

That's quite a mouthful, but once you get there, you can geographically slice and dice the rankings in a number of ways. For example, you can now identify the top Lion Clan players in your metropolitan area and compare their rankings against your own. You can still check out the top- ranked players in the world, but, just for fun, you can also see who the top players are in, say, Spain.

DCI Numbers and Your Ranking

For a number of years, the DCI has required all participants in sanctioned events to register using DCI numbers. We need these numbers primarily for contacting event participants to find out how a given tournament ran. Secondarily, this requirement exists because we track many DCI-supported games with match-by-match ratings and rankings. As you probably know, however, the DCI only tracks L5R events by final standings.

Given the differences between the L5R playing community and that of other DCI-supported games, we have modified our requirement for DCI numbers at L5R events. Of course, if you want your tournament perform ance to count toward your ranking, you still need to supply your DCI number; however, players who choose not to use DCI numbers for L5R events may still participate-but they are not included in the participant count that determines how many ranking points a given even is worth. So, if a twenty-player event has sixteen player, participate using DCI numbers, we calculate the rankings points as if only sixteen players participated.

Please note, however, this exception only applies to events tracked only by final standings, such as Legend of the Five Rings, Doomtown, Rage: Across Las Vegas, Legend of the Burning Sands, Dune, and Vampire: The Eternal Struggle events.

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