ramapocon-ii-5-5-5-7
Title: ramapocon-ii-5-5-5-7
Author: Doug "Phrim" Faust
Date: May 10, 2000
Note before reading: This report is *way* too long.
Well, for the week before the convention, I hadn't even touched Star Wars cards, mostly tweaking Young Jedi decks. I've been playing my Dark High Destiny Hunt Down deck forever, it's solid, and I'm sticking with it. For Light I've been having more of a problem, as I can't find anything that works for me. I end up going with a version of Mike Dalton's Falcon deck, although I could never really get it to work well. It was better than the other junk I had put together though.
Anyway, I wake up right on time Friday morning, at 8am. I packed everything up the night before, so I'm good to go. So I take the bus down to the bus station to buy tickets to New Jersey. The lady behind the counter says there's some special, so it's 'fifty cents'. Fifty cents??? What the heck? I don't argue, hand the lady 50 cents, and she looks at me funny. 'Fifty-six!' she says. Oops. Knew it was too good to be true. I can tell I really made her day, too. :-( Anyway, the bus ride is rather uneventful, I pass the time by re-reading Jurassic Park for the heck of it. I finally arrive at the bus station in Ramsey, NJ, and give Scott Lingrell a call, he says he'll come pick me right up. Scott comes by in his convertible, and we're off. We head back to his apartment, where Jon Chu and John Lolli are playing a quick game, and Charlie Herren's just relaxing. We all get the stuff we need and head out to the Student Center. Scott leads us to the room that the earlybird tournaments are going to be in, it's a little conference room in some odd corner of the building. It's really hot in the room, so I look for a themostat, but there is none, and the windows don't open either. We end up just turning the lights out. Anyway, I start to get people filling out command cards, while Scott goes and puts up signs. The guys from Michigan showed up, Mike Blythe, Todd Theiner, and Craig Berry. Also, a bunch of guys from North Jersey also showed up, including Rich Haman, Jason Lembo, Chris Gogolen, Mike Dalton, and Tom Hermley-Keen. Anyway, it's really hot in the room, so we complain to Scott, and he finds a different room that's actually air conditioned, off in another obscure corner of the building. We all get settled in there, but I have no clue how anyone else would find us back there. We end up getting 12 people for the first tournament, which is pretty good. Here we go...
Game 1: My Light vs. Jason Lembo's (1833) Court
Here's where it hit me that I hadn't actually played Star Wars in quite a while. So I'm busy remembering how to play, and get myself acclimated. I set up my stuff, get Luke trained fairly easy, but he's not playing Vader, so Fury's going to do nothing for me this game. He gets some guys on Tatooine, and I'm sucking up the drain plus the Court damage. I Projection one of his sites, but he just moves to another one. I eventually get my Falcon/Captain Han/EPP Leia combo out at some system, but he battles it with Dengar and Bossk, I think, so he's drawing two destiny and canceling my immunity. He takes out Leia and Artoo, so I'm left with the Captain alone on the Falcon. He drops Zuckuss on me, so I don't get destiny, and blows me away. I think that's what happened at least, playing so many games this weekend it's all kind of a blur. Anyway, I'm pretty much toast at that time, I throw an EPP Obi at his ground drains, but he recovers quickly. So he's draining and making me lose Force for Court, while I'm spending 3 to drain for 1 at the Holotable, which is no good. I lose by a good bit, not sure exactly how much now. FL-?, 0(-?)
Highlights: None that I recall
Lowlights: Everything
Game 2: My Dark vs. Michael Blythe's (1648) Throne Room Mains
Don't recall much of this game either, unfortunately. Didn't really want to be playing against Throne Room Mains, especially after getting beat like that, because it's one of the few decks that's fairly strong against my Hunt Down. I get out Vader with Saber and Mara with Saber at the Cloud City Docking Bay pretty early. He throws some mains at me, but I fend them off. I think the game went pretty much like that the whole time. He tries to battle me, but my characters turn out to be more effective in battle than his. He deploys the Cloud City Lower Corridor or something, and puts Obi there, I move Vader over and reinforce with Tarkin, Dengar, and Iggy. He drops a whole bunch of stuff and battles, I can't keep people from dying, and lose everyone but Vader, but he loses a good bit too. But Vader just won't die, so I keep battling with him and win. Or something like that. FW+?, 2(?)
Highlights: Getting some confidence back after my first loss
Lowlights: Mike seemed to be pretty grouchy during this game...
Game 3: My Light vs. Michael Blythe's (1648) Court
Somehow, I end up playing against Mike again, even though he's 0-2 and I'm 1-1. Oh, well. I get my stuff all out eventually, but again he's not playing Vader, my Fury angle is going nowhere. I get out the Falcon with Captain Han and EPP Leia again, he tries battling me with like 3 Bounty Hunter ships, but I play a bunch of destiny adders and he loses all his ships. But he's playing heavy space, so he keeps throwing Bounty Hunter ships at me, and eventually wears away the Falcon. Meanwhile, I'm losing Force to his drains on the ground as well as the Court objective, which is no good. I Projection one of his drains, but it doesn't hurt him that much. Every time he battles the Falcon, he's retrieving with Scum and Villany too (I think). So in the end, I'm left without much of an angle, and he's still draining away. FL-?, 2(?)
Highlights: Mike seemed happier after beating me :-)
Lowlights: 2-2 isn't that good for me, and it was the best I could do at that point
Game 4: My Dark vs. Thomas Hermley-Keen's (1688) Hidden Base/Kessel Runs
My Dark deck usually has no trouble whatsoever against Hidden Base decks, but I had never tested it against such heavy retrieval before. We both get set me, me getting DLOTS and a Saber out at the Cloud City Docking Bay, and Mara, her Saber, and a Walker at the Endor Docking Bay. He gets out a bunch of systems, including Ralltiir and Kessel, and flips. He's playing lots of Corvettes and stuff, and is canceling my drains with a Bargaining Table. I get out Search And Destroy, and with the Visage that's quite a bit of damage. So he gets a Spaceport Docking Bay with his Insurrection and puts EPP Obi there. So he retrieves 10 Force from a Kessel Run, and next turn I docking bay transit Vader to Kessel, and duel Obi, making him lose 9. I don't drain at Kessel, because I'm afraid of Always Thinking With Your Stomach, so I go back to Cloud City. I drop a Bounty Hunter ship at Kessel to beat up his ships, I probe there first, and boom, find the Hidden Base on my first try. Anyway, I take out some stuff, but lose the Hunter Ship. He drops Lando in Falcon at Coruscant, which is too big of a drain for my tastes, so I drop Boba Fett in Slave 1 there and battle, he plays Punch It, but my destiny is large so everything dies. I drop Zuckuss at Ralltiir and battle some guys too, and move Zuckuss to Kiffex for a nifty drain. He might've gotten one more Kessel Run off, but the Visage plus Search And Destroy plus my drains were too much, so I win. FW+?, 4(+13)
Highlights: Showing that I could deal with HB Kessel Run with ease
Lowlights: None
Anyway, 2-2 is a fairly less than average showing from me, so I need to make up for it in the next tournament. Though some quirk, I end up getting 3rd in this tourney, because there was only 1 undefeated and only 1 3-1 player. Doesn't get me anything, but it's weird that I can go 2-2 and get 3rd. Charlie Herren, who flew up from Atlanta to play at Ramapo, won the whole thing, with Jon Chu coming in second.
Anyway, a lot of people show up for the next tournament. Adam Kronfeld finally shows up after apparently wandering the building for hours. Three folks from Virginia, including VA State Champ Dan Bojanowski and Deciphereans Juz Pakes and Kevin Reitzel. Also, about half of Team Albany shows up, including Matt Sokol, but he ends up not playing. In the end we had like 30-some for the tournament, which was a pretty tight squeeze for the room. Anyway, we get started...
Game 1: My Light vs. Adam Kronfeld's (1646) Hunt Down
Well, I know Adam from online, and I kept telling him that I didn't want to play him, as he's way better than his rating may indicate. So, if I win, I don't gain much, and if I lose, I lose a lot. So we both get set up, he drops Vader and flips, I train Luke and the such. I'm having trouble drawing my Transmission Terminated, despite the fact that I have 3 in the deck, so Visage is hurting me for a while. I drop the Falcon (sans Leia) at Kessel, but he plays Search And Destroy, which really hurts, and I can't Alter it because he's playing Hunt Down. I eventually pull a Transmission, and cancel Visage, but he drops another one. So I draw another Transmission, cancel Visage again, so he drops a third Visage. So I draw my last Transmission, try to cancel Visage, so he Holonet Transmissions it. Blah. You'd think 3 Transmissions would be enough to cancel Visage, but noooo... I get out Fury on Vader, which would have been huge, but he YAB'ed it. So, in the end, I'm losing way more force than him, and I lose by 20. FL-20, 0(-20)
Highlights: Umm...
Lowlights: Not canceling Visage!
Game 2: My Dark vs. Brent Haertlin's (1466) Mains Deck
So Adam beat me down enough so I was in the last pairing, dangerously close to the bye. I forget exactly what he started, but it was some random site and not an Objective. I think it was on Cloud City. He drops EPP Luke and Kal Fal C'ndros, so I drop DLOTS and his Saber, and choke the chicken drawing a 6 (I coulda got Luke!). Anyway, I hit Luke, so he loses Force. The whole game goes pretty much like that, I beat up his guys taking very little damage myself. eventually he drops Obi, so I set up some destiny and duel him, with a 6,7,6, so he loses Obi and 9. I drain him out next turn. FW+?, 2(+?)
Highlights: Winning
Lowlights: I dueled Obi when I could have choked him with DLOTS! Choking Obi would have been sooooo much cooler...
Game 3: My Dark vs. Adam Kronfeld's (1646) Throne Room Mains
Well, I didn't want to play Adam the first time, and I'm not thrilled at all about playing him again. Anyway, I get a fairly good start, and drop DLOTS with Saber at the Cloud City Docking Bay. He drops Tawss Khaa and ECC Lando on me, and battles. I really don't have that many 4's in my deck, so I figure I'll try to Choke Tawss (my deck is like half destiny 5+ so it's not that big of a stretch), get her with a 6, hit Lando, draw a nice destiny, and he loses everything plus a whole bunch of Force, and I lose nothing. So he keeps trying to attack Vader, and kills him a few times, but I amazingly got all 3 of the DLOTS in the deck in my opening hand, so I he's always on the table. So eventually he just runs out of stuff to battle me with, so I win. FW+21, 4(+?)
Highlights: Getting Adam back for beating me that first game
Lowlights: Having to play Adam for the second time in the same tourney
Game 4: My Light vs. Michael Dalton's (2023) High Destiny Hunt Down
Great, now I get to play Mike with the deck I essentially got off of him. So he pretty much knows my deck inside and out, but I have a pretty good idea what's in his deck too. Anyway, we both get set up, I train Luke and he drops Vader at the Cloud City Docking Bay to flip his Objective. I don't recall having any trouble cancelling Visage, either. So, I draw up to find my Falcon combo, but I'm having trouble finding Kessel or Tunnel Visions with which to find Kessel. Mike asks me how many cards are in my hand, there's 12. He decides to Monnok anyway, and I lose 2 Captain Hans, and 2 On The Edges. So now not only don't I have the Captain Hans to make the Falcon worthwhile, I also don't have anything to retrieve him with! So, I have to rely on my Holotable drain a Fury to win this game, which ain't gonna be easy. I get Fury on Vader, but he YAB's it. He deploys Come Here You Big Coward, so I can't Effective Repairs for my Fury back unless I control a second battleground. So I drop Obi in front of Vader, and he gets Barrier'ed, but with the Holotable, that's good enough to play Effective Repairs, and I get my Fury back. He beats up Obi without a problem, and I deploy Fury, but he YABs it again. Then he drops his Visage at my Holotable, and I don't have a Transmission Terminated in hand, so he beats up my Projection, and now I'm not doing any damage to him. Plus, I can't get my Projection back with Effective Repairs, because he has Coward out. So, there's absolutely no way I can do damage to him, so I draw up. FL-?, 4(+21)
Highlights: None
Lowlights: My deck losing because of a Monnok
So I end up finishing in 10th, but another 2-2 isn't good for me, especially since the people I beat weren't rated that high. At this point, I grab a piece of pizza because I haven't eaten in forever (thanks to Tom for letting me have a piece), loan some YJ cards to Mike Dalton, and head back to Scott's apartment with Charlie, Jon Chu, and Bart Robinson. Scott had to run off somewhere, so we're left on our own to find it, which after wandering around for like 20 minutes, we manage to do. We get back, everyone's exhausted and hungry, so we all wait for Scott to get back so we can get together to order some food. Jon flips around the TV, doesn't find anything to watch, so he puts the movie Highlander in the VCR. Scott doesn't come back for a long time, and everyone falls asleep but me (I'm still watching Highlander--can't watch anything without seeing the ending). Eventually, Scott gets back at like 4am, the movie ends, and I go to sleep. We get up the next morning, and I get all the stuff I'll need for the day, but since I'm playing in SW and YJ, and running a Sealed Deck, it's really a lot of stuff and my bag won't close, but oh well. So we get to the Student Center, we're in the big room today, and there's a bunch of people already there, including Mike Dalton, Tom Hermley-Keen, Rich Haman, Chris Gogolen, Jay Lembo, and some others. Adam Kronfeld said he wanted to borrow my bad decks for the YJ tournament, but he's not here for some reason. So we just begin with the early YJ tourney.
I'll be brief, since most people don't care that much about YJ. First game, I'm paired up against Jason Lembo; I'm pretty confident because I'm using my good deck. Anyway, I only drew 2 weapons the entire game, so I lost. That's the way things go sometimes. Oh, well. Next game, I get to play my Senator deck against Rich Haman, who's playing a random character deck, and manage to win without major problems. Next, I play against Mike Dalton's Anakin deck, for which Mike borrowed lots of my cards. As it turns out, he never deployed Anakin all game, so I won by 44. Typically, it's bad for an Anakin deck never to deploy Anakin. :-) So, I move onto the fourth game, end up playing Luis Rodriguez I think, and win pretty easily. So I'm the highest 3-1 player, and there's no 4-0 players, so I win and take home the uncut sheet of YJ commons. Not bad, not bad at all.
By this time, a lot of players had shown up for the main event, including all the big Coruscant names, as well as Steve Brentson and the crew from Virginia Beach. There were 66 total people playing, I think. I'm playing the same decks as yesterday. My Dark deck went 4-0, no reason to change that. My Light deck, on the other hand, went 0-4, but I really didn't have anything to replace it with on such short notice, unless I wanted to play my EBO, which is really cool but loses a lot. Anyway, after getting everyone's command cards and the such, and getting pairings figured out, we begin...
Game 1: My Light vs. Chris Gogolen's (1849) Hunt Down Battle
Well, we were the first pair called, so I actually enjoyed a brief stint at the top table. It wasn't going to last long, though. Chris was playing basically the same deck that I've seen a lot of the Albany guys playing, it was a tough deck to compete against. I end up drawing Yoda in my hand, but other than that, training goes without many problems. He gets Vader down at some Endor site I believe, and starts draining. I eventually Terminate his Visage, he gets another one down, and I terminate that as well. I get Fury down on Vader, and he's losing to that for a good amount of time. I drop the Falcon and Captain Han at Kessel, but he deploys Zuckuss there and battles, and I don't have an I Know, so I end up losing Captain Han. Since I lost the other Han off the top to Visage, the Falcon isn't going anywhere this game. He eventually draws a YAB to cancel Fury, but I Effective Repairs and get it back. It doesn't matter that much though, as he's draining and I'm not. In the end, I lose by 5. FL-5, 0(-5)
Highlights: None
Lowlights: This deck has gone 0-5 so far this weekend... :-(
Game 2: My Dark vs. Kim Caton's (1866) MWYHL Anti-Damage Deck
Kim's a real good player, and she's beat me more than I've beat her, but I'm playing my Dark deck which so far is undefeated this weekend, so I'm pretty confident. She starts MWYHL, so I'm thinking she's playing some kind of Mains deck that I shouldn't have any trouble with. She cancels Visage with a Transmission before anything happens, and I drop Vader at the Cloud City Docking Bay to flip my Objective. She trains EPP Luke without a problem, and deploys Fury on my Vader, which I promptly YAB. However, she just Effective Repairs for the Fury back (I lost my Coward to Visage, I think), and I never did find room for the 2nd YAB, so I'm losing 2 to Fury for the rest of the game. I deploy Visage again, and she Terminates it again, so I deploy it for a third time, and she Transmissions it yet again. Well, then. So anyway, I'm draining, but she drops Boushh undercover at the Cloud City Docking Bay, so I get Mara and a Walker draining at the Endor Docking Bay, but she puts TK-422 undercover there. I didn't find room in my deck for any Snipers either, so I'm kind of stuck, drain-wise. I get out Search And Destroy, and she can't do much about that since I'm playing Hunt Down. However, she gets a bunch of ships at Kessel. I'm not drawing many ships this game, so I really can't compete in space. So she's draining at Kessel and making me lose 2 every turn to Fury, and all I've got going for me is S+D, I really can't do any other damage. So I end up dropping Zuckuss down at Kessel one turn just to block the drain, and she of course takes out Zuckuss, and plays Legendary Starfighter too. So all this damage coming at me is too much, especially since my only damage is S+D, so I lose. FL-?, 0(-?)
Highlights: Kim's deck kinda looked my Falcon deck, and it won, so maybe my Light deck had a chance to win a few this weekend...
Lowlights: 0-2 is a real rough start for the tourney. And this was the Dark deck's first loss all weekend.
Game 3: My Dark vs. Chris Lanci's (1778) Profit Beat Down
I don't think Chris has played a lot recently, but his deck wasn't too bad. It was just the kind of deck that my Dark deck likes to smack around. I haven't played against a Profit deck in a really long time, so I completely forget about being able to deploy aliens, but I get Mara right away anyway. He starts Goo Nee Tay, so I can't drop Vader first turn, but I do manage to get him down second turn. He never cancels Visage, which is fairly bad for him. I have Vader and Mara running around Tatooine, and he throws lots of mains at me, but he can't seem to hit Vader with a Lightsaber, and Vader doesn't manage to choke that much, but in the end, my destiny is higher than his, so he's losing mains left and right, and I'm managing to keep a good portion of my stuff. At one point, he dropped Artoo in front of Mara, and I don't see it coming at all, he Double Agents Mara, which is somewhat unfortunate, but livable. We end up fighting lots and lots of battles, it was a really fun game, but unfortunately I don't remember the exact details of what happened. In the end, I think I went and dueled Obi or something, so he lost him and 9 Force. That, combined with my drains and my Visage easily win me the game. FW+?, 2(?)
Highlights: Having a really fun game with lots of battles
Lowlights: Chris's deck was pretty good, I'm sure he was pretty discouraged at not winning any yet today.
Game 4: My Light vs. Josh Strauss's (1603) Ralltiir Operations
So everyone's been talking about Ralltiir Ops lately, and how strong it is, but this is the first one I face off against all weekend. He gets a pretty slow start, I get Luke all trained and stuff. Before he flipped, I manage to get the Falcon with Captain Han and EPP Leia out at his Kashyyyk, and move over to Ralltiir so he can't flip. He deploys a ship in front of the Falcon and then flips, but I think he tried to battle the Falcon too, so I wiped everything out and deployed my Legendary Starfighter. I couldn't really do anything to flip ROps back, so no point in staying at Ralltiir where I can drain for 0. So I move over to his Kashyyyk, and eventually get Kessel out and move over to that. I started Battle Plan, so draining is expensive for him, and he's not going to do much in space with the Falcon running around. My Anger, Fear, Agressions are doing some damage, along with Legenday Starfighter and my drains, he can't seem to do anything to stop me even being able to pull cards with his Objective, so I win by a bunch. FW+?, 4(+?)
Highlights: Yea! My Falcon deck actually won a game!
Lowlights: He almost deployed Vader, but didn't. Fury would have won me the game a lot more quickly... :-)
Game 5: My Light vs. Frank Walsh's (1717) Ralltiir Operations
I've talked to Frank online before, and he seemed to be a pretty good player. I really wanted to win this game, because I'd like to have a shot at going 4-2 after my disappointing performances yesterday. Frank's deck is not your typical RallOps. He starts Bad Feeling Have I, but gives me lots of Force early so I'm not slowed down that much. I get my training set up, and insert an Anger, Fear, Agression. He plays Projective Telepathy. Wha? When's the last time you saw that card? Anyway, he spreads out really thin on Ralltiir and flips, I think he's got a lone Ozzel at a site and stuff like that. I guess he's relying on me having to pay lots and lots of Force to get anyone on Ralltiir, then playing something like Barrier or Projective Telepathy so I don't end up battling. He drops some Bounty Hunter ships at Kashyyyk or something, so I drop the Falcon, Captain Han, and EPP Leia and battle using I Know or something, he loses everything, and I play Legendary Starfighter. Next turn, I start activating, and then I remember about Legendary Starighter, but he says it's too late. So I make a special note to remember Legendary Starfighter, and proceed to forget about it like 5 more times. Ugh. He gets out Search And Destroy, which is pretty painful, but I manage to Alter it a few turns later with Yoda. Anyway, he deploys Zuckuss and battles the Falcon, I'm pretty confused as to what he's trying to do, so I only play one destiny adder, Punch It!, and he uses Projective Telepathy to cancel the battle, then moves over to Ralltiir. The Falcon of course follows him. He makes a big mistake here, and forgets to move Zuckuss out of the way, so I battle it and play I Know to get 5 destinies, and take out Zuckuss plus like 12. It's still pretty close Force-wise, but now I'm actually remembering to make him lose to Legendary Starfighter. I Projection some of his drains on Ralltiir (he had Presenced a few), and later Surprise Assault Ozzel with a tracked 5. In the end, I manage to pull off a close win. FW+4, 6(+?)
Highlights: The Falcon deck worked again! Altering S+D was pretty huge too.
Lowlights: Forgetting to make him lose for Legendary Starfighter a bunch of times.
Game 6: My Dark vs. Joseph Giannetti's (1877) Throne Room Mains
At this point I'm feeling pretty confident, if I can win a game with my Dark deck, which is the better of my decks, I'll go 4-2 and do pretty well overall in the tournament. I've never played Joe before, but from what I hear he's a very good player. He told me he wasn't having that good of a day himself, losing to a couple people rated lower than him. So anyway, we get going, and I get a pretty good start, deploying DLOTS with a Saber at the Cloud City Docking Bay to flip, like second turn or something. He played an Out Of Commission early on, so that tipped me off to make sure Vader isn't in the Lost Pile while it's still likely that he'll be caught by an OOC. He does manage to come down and kill Vader, but I play Evader to make sure Vader's not in the Lost Pile. I'm still going pretty strong, and he's not doing much. I get Mara and her Saber out, but I haven't found another Vader yet. Visage is hurting us both, but I've got a drain on top of that, and he doesn't have any other characters out, so it's all good. Eventually I topdeck an EPP Vader, but I'm not overly concerned, as I have like 20 cards in my Lost Pile, only one of which is Vader. So you know what happens next. He plays Out Of Commission, and against all odds grabs the Vader. Ugh. Winning with a Hunt Down deck when Vader is out of play is darned hard. I get down Tarkin and a Walker to give Mara some back up. He gets Jeroen Webb and Melas on the Executor and cancels Visage, which is fine, because it's hurting us equally, and I have no chance at flipping. What's bad though is that I had lost my Coward earlier, so the drain isn't going to be pleasant. He also gets down the Lower Corridor with Obi-Wan there. So now he's draining me for 4, and I'm draining him for 2, which is no good. I leave Tarkin and the Walker as is, and use Mara to go chase people on the Executor. I drain on the Executor with Mara's Saber, placing the Objective out of play, but the objective really wasn't doing anything for me, especially since I had grabbed his Sense. However, he goes and plays Scramble, which makes Mara about as useful as a wet noodle. Somehow I end up with Mara fighting against the guys on the Executor, I try to YAB Melas, but he just spends a couple and Senses it. So I hit Melas with the Saber, and lose Mara. He replaces Melas with someone else, and spreads out on the Executor, so I send Tarkin onto the Executor, but he gets ambushed and dies or something. In the end, draining with my Walker doesn't cut it, and I lose. FL-?, 6(+13)
Highlights: I really was doing great...
Lowlights: ...and then Vader had to go get placed out of play.
So I finish 32nd out of 66 people, a rather unexciting performance on my part. I guess I should be happy, as all the people who beat me were rated higher than me, but 4-2 would have been so nice. So anyway, I get a few packs and a foil as prize support, nothing spectacular out of the packs, and a Rancor foil. They had gotten some pizza for the volunteers to eat, and I hadn't eaten since I got a piece of pizza off of Tom yesterday, so I grab a few slices. In the tourney, Greg Hodur does surprisingly well and ties Ray Bordier for 4th place, but Greg has a bigger win, so he takes 4th and Ray takes 5th. Mike Dalton took 3rd with a solid performance. Chris Terwilliger, who was the only undefeated, got to play Jon Chu, the second place performer and last year's Ramapo Champion, for the title. There's a YJ tournament next, and neither Chris nor Jon can play, which is a shame since Chris is a pretty good YJ player and really wanted a chance to play. Anyway, Rich is running this YJ tournament, we get a slightly larger turnout than we did this morning, which is cool, but there's no uncut sheet for this one. On to the tourney...
As before, I'll be brief with the YJ. First game, I play against Charlie Herren's Tank deck. Charlie had borrowed a lot of cards from me to be able to make the deck, but somehow he managed to trade for 20 Tanks before the weekend was over, which was pretty amazing. Anyway, we play, and I end up losing some key fights, so I end up losing by a few. I could have won that game, but I didn't, that's how YJ works. So next game, I'm paired up against Mike Blythe, I'm not quite sure what was in his deck, he might've borrowed it from someone. It was actually a pretty close game, he could've won, but my Senators came out on top. So next I get paired up against Josh Strauss, who apparently got trashed by Charlie's Handmaidens earlier, so he's not that anxious to play against mine. I win this one pretty easily, despite the fact that he managed to get the new Rune down, which was pretty cool. So last game, I think there's 2 or 3 undefeateds, and I get to play one of them, Charlie Herren, who'd beaten me earlier. He's playing Handmaidens, and I had also loaned some cards to him for this deck. It turns out to be a pretty close game again, but my Senators come out on top by winning some important fights. So I end up 3-1 again, but this time Dan Bojanowski was undefeated, so he got first, and my high differential gets me second. I would've liked to play him too, but I never got the chance. So as it works out, we all get a couple packs and a rare or foil, last place gets to choose which one they want first, so by the time they get up to me, there's a foil Gasgano's Podracer and a Sith Lightsaber left, I take the Pod because I don't have one. I was supposed to get a RamapoCon II shirt, with Dan getting a Decipher Jedi Council shirt, but Dan really wanted a Ramapo shirt, and I already had a Ramapo shirt for being a volunteer, so we swapped. It was cool.
Anyway, the final face-off between Chris Terwilliger and Jon Chu is over by this time, Chris had won the first game, but Jon ended up winning the second game by more to get the title. This is the second year straight that Jon Chu won the big tourney at RamapoCon, which is pretty amazing in my opinion. Props to Chu for being so mighty. And also for being the coolest Star Wars player I know.
So next was my turn to run an event, I had scheduled to run a Sealed Deck for Ramapo. Originally, it was planned to conflict with Jason Lembo's No Such Thing As Luck tournament, because I only really had enough product for 18 people, and I didn't want to get overloaded. It turned out though that the people from Clark's Summit really wanted to play in NSTAL, and had to leave at a reasonable time, so it got bumped up to conflict with the YJ tournament instead. So we had to wait a long time until it was over before I could start. In the meantime, I start collecting command cards from people that want to play, and the number quickly passes 18, which puts me in a bit of trouble. So Scott pulls through and gives me an extra box of Jabba's Palace he had gotten from Decipher for prize support, so I manage to spread everything out to 32 people, then I run out of Premiere. There was also some confusion about some other details, Scott was telling everyone it was going to be free, and I was telling people there would be a small cost, as I had spend my own money in getting all the Cloud City and Jabba's Palace packs I was providing, and I really didn't want to put myself a couple hundred in the hole. So we work it out so that it costs $3 to play, which is nothing for the amount of packs I had, from the player's perspective, but it turned out to be a few bucks short of covering my costs, which was cool. However, the NSTAL tournament was going pretty long, and Scott said that they were going to kick us out at 2:30am, which was bad. So I suggest running 3 games and a final face-off instead of 4 games and a final face-off, but a bunch of SM's there say that you need 4 games for a sanction. That isn't the case with Sealed Deck, you only need 3 games to get it sanctioned, but they convince me just to drop the final face-off anyway. Anyway, the NSTAL tournament ends at like 11pm or something, so I begin to get ready, and it turns out that we have 38 players that want to play. There's no way I could stretch it out that much. However, it turns out that a few of the people who had given me command cards had left, bringing the number down to 36. So I try to redistribute my packs, and the only even arrangement I could get was 2 Premiere, 2 Jabba's Palace, and 1 Cloud City, which turned out to be 57 cards. This was very bad, as you need to have a minimum of 60 cards available for it to be sanctioned. Anyway, I'm running it booster draft format, and Juz tells me that I can just drop a couple packs at each table and let them get passed around. It turns out that I have 18 Premiere and 18 Jabba's Palace packs left over, so this works out perfectly, I leave 3 packs of each at each of the 6 tables, and everyone has enough cards now. So I go over the rules for Booster Draft, but I'm not known for my voice, so it's kind of hard. It turns out everyone in the room already knew how to play, so it ended up working out. After we got started, everything went smoothly. The was only one problem: the time issue. I tried to hurry everyone up as quickly as possible, but by the end of the third game, it was like 2:25, so we had to stop it there. Luckily, 3 games is good enough for a sanction in sealed. Here's the top 8:
1. Chris Erwin Light 6(+38)
2. Dan Bojanowski Dark 6(+36)
3. John Lolli Dark 6(+29)
4. Andy Talaga Dark 6(+24)
5. Chris Lanci Dark 4(+35)
6. Jonathan Chu Light 4(+21)
7. Chris Terwilliger Light 4(+14)
8. Michael Dalton Dark 4(+13)
So we finish just in time, I rush giving out prizes and the such, and Scott, Jon Chu, Charlie Herren, and myself head back to Scott's apartment. However, Scott wants to go to a bar or something with Juz, so he gives us a key and sends us on our way. Fortunately, we know where it is this time, and have no trouble getting there. We consider ordering food, but it's late, so everyone ends up just going to sleep.
Next morning, we wake up, and head out to the team tournament. I'm still using the same decks, but they're what I have. Anyway, I was supposed to be on a team with the South Jersey guys, Briam Kim, Pat Brennan, and Chris Lanci, but they didn't know there was going to be a separate team tournament, and couldn't show up today, so I'm out of a team. Well, it turns out that the Michigan guys were leaving early in the morning, so Adam Kronfeld and George Gundry were looking for a team as well. We wind up recruiting Tom Hermley-Keen for our fourth, and enter ourselves as 'Team Mosep' (inside joke). Anyway, this tournament is unsanctioned, because Scott was arranging it so that people on the same team didn't play against each other. And we begin...
Game 1: My Light vs. Matt Sokol's (2092) Hunt Down Battle
I've never played against him before, but Matt's a real good player, and I'm playing my not-so-good deck, so my chances of winning are pretty slim. Anyway, this game for the most part goes like the rest of my games against Hunt Down this weekend. I think he takes out the Falcon with Zuckuss or something, and I don't have an I Know in hand. Really not quite sure how it worked exactly though. In any case, I got wrecked, and my deck once against got shut down by Hunt Down. Do we start to notice a trend...? FL-16, 0(-16)
Highlights: Well, at least I lost to somebody good... :-)
Lowlights: My deck doesn't work.
Game 2: My Dark vs. Chris Praskac's (1995) Throne Room Mains
Well, I really wasn't expecting to play against someone as good as Chris after getting smacked around by Matt, but I haven't played Chris in a while, so it's cool. Anyway, this game turns out to be ugly. Real ugly. First turn, he puts down Oola and Kal Fal C'ndros at some Yavin site. Then Civil Disorder. Since he's giving me no Force, I can't deploy anyone first turn, and next turn all my characters are Oola'ed. This continues on for 4 turns, and I keep losing to Civil Disorder, and then I finally draw a Shock and get rid of Oola. The 4 damage from the Shock is nice, but I lost more Force than that to Civil Disorder, and now I'm 4 turns behind him. I never really recover from that start all game, and I'm desperately trying to get characters on the table. Civil Disorder is never canceled, and I'm having a bit of trouble drawing characters. The game ends before I can do anything to turn the tide. FL-20some, 0(-?)
Highlights: Umm
Lowlights: Well, my Dark deck getting destroyed by Oola has to happen at least once in every big tourney I go to. First in the Philly Grand Slam, then at the NYC Megatourney, and now here... :-)
Game 3: My Dark vs. Nathan Brown's (1702) MWYHL X-wings
Nathan's a pretty good player, and I certainly wasn't expecting to play him after two big losses. He starts MWYHL, so I just pray that he's not playing a deck similar to the one that Kim smacked me around with yesterday. As it turns out, he's playing X-wings, which I can deal with. I get a pretty good start, I think I dropped Vader first turn. He draws up looking for stuff, and I do what's always good against X-wing decks, Monnok Lost. He loses 2 X-wings and 2 Organized Attacks, well worth my trouble. Meanwhile, he's canceling my drains with Rebel Fleet some, but he's still taking the Visage damage. He might've canceled it once, I don't remember, but if he did I put down another. So I eventually spread out and get Search And Destroy out, he's starts spreading out too. So he's got ships at Kessel, Kiffex, and Coruscant. I Counter Assault the ships at Kessel, and manage to do some damage there. I attack with a Bounty Hunter ship at Kiffex, and move over to Coruscant to block the drain. Then I attack at Kessel, but I don't take everything out, and I'm afraid he might come down with a bunch of X-wings and beat me down next turn, so I move both of my Bounty Hunter ships to some other planet that was in-between, Corulag I think. He beefs up at Kessel, so I just move my ships to Kiffex for the drain. So now I'm draining on the ground and at Kiffex, while doing Visage and S+D damage, and he's just draining at Kessel, so I win that drain race pretty easily. FW+?, 2(?)
Highlights: My deck worked exactly as it's supposed to work against an X-wing deck...
Lowlights: Giving Nathan his 3rd loss of the day. He's really a better player than that...
Game 4: My Light vs. Ivan Turner's (1591) Stuff
I really don't know what to say about Ivan's deck. Ivan really hates Objectives, for reasons that are totally beyond me, so he starts the Rendili system with that effect that helps Victory-Class Star Destroyers. So I figure he's playing some sort of Star Destroyer deck, right? He then goes on to deploy Vader and a whole bunch of Stormtroopers in the Cantina. At this point, I'm completely confused, but it's not bothering me any. He doesn't occupy Rendili, so I eventually manage to Alter that effect just for the heck of it, I figure it might hurt him somehow. I start testing, and he puts He Is Not Ready on Luke, so I go and fetch At Peace to make it easier to train. Later, he tells me that he didn't want to stop my testing, he just wants to make Luke move or lose a Force. Okay, I can deal with it. I keep Luke around long enough to pass Test 1, then start moving him around. I get my loaded Falcon down at Rendili, and start draining there, except it's drain -1, which is no good. I draw a Surprise Assault, which really looks juicy for all those Stormtroopers sitting in the Cantina. Eventually, I get out Kessel and move there, and put Uncontrollable Fury on Vader. He plays Full Scale Alert, so I can't move Luke and have to lose a Force to He Is Not Ready. No prob. So he's really starting to hurt from all the damage I'm doing to him, so he throws down 2 Victory Class Star Destroyers and Ozzel to block my drain at Kessel, but doesn't battle. So I battle, play I Know, and draw 5 battle destinies, wiping everything out, and follow up with Legendary Starfighter. At that point, it was pretty much game, and he just drew up. FW+?, 4(?)
Highlights: Well, my deck worked.
Lowlights: I still can't figure out what exactly his deck was supposed to do...
Game 5: My Dark vs. Andy Talaga's (1816) Throne Room Mains
I've played against Andy once before, and he beat me by like 2, so I'm a bit worried about this matchup. Andy's been known to play straight Revolution before, but I've learned that my deck really can't afford to start Crush, because I'll just end up Force choking myself not drawing locations. So I just start out, and hope to get Crush or a Twi'lek ASAP. I get a fairly good draw, and get down the Dark Lord with his Saber at the Cloud City Docking Bay on the second turn. Andy drops EPP Luke there. I figure my destiny's better than his, so I Epic Duel him right away with Focused Attack. Against Throne Room mains, dragging things out can end up making things work against you. He tries to Sense it but draws a 4 or something, so it doesn't work. He draws a 2 and a 4. I draw a 1 (hrm), a 2 (uh oh), and a 7 (whew). So Luke crosses over, and he loses 5 Force. I reinforce with a Walker at the Docking Bay. Things apparently aren't going well for him, and he drops Obi or something in front of me. I forget whether he initiated the battle or me. In any case, I play I Have You Now to add a destiny, hit Obi with Vader's glowstick, and draw high destiny, like a 5 and a 6 or something, to his 0. He loses enormous amounts of Force. At this point, the game is pretty much over, and he draws up. FW+31, 6(+?)
Highlights: The 'Duel-the-bleep-now' strategy worked for me, won me the game.
Lowlights: Well, the game was a bit short... :-)
Game 6: My Light vs. Chris Praskac's (1995) Hunt Down Battle
For some reason, the pairing for this last round are really messed up, and all the 4-1 players except one are on the same side of the Force. So I end up in the second pairing right behind Dalton. With my results with this deck against Hunt Down so far this weekend, I wasn't really looking forward to this matchup. Anyway, I get a pretty good start this game, and get the Falcon down fairly quickly. I get Fury on Vader, but he YAB's it, and plays Come Here You Big Coward so I can't get it back without occupying another battleground. Unfortunately, I topdecked my Holotable to early Visage damage. He drops the Executor to battle the Falcon, but I play I Know and deploy Leia on it from my Reserve Deck, and play Punch It! so I'm getting 5 destinies. I easily take out the Executor, but I don't have Legendary Starfighter in my hand, so I can't capitalize. Next turn, I play On The Edge on Leia, naming 6, so she dies and I can drain with Hunt Down flipped. From there on out, he pretty much ignores the Falcon, but he's doing more damage to me, I think he got out Search And Destroy or something. Coward is really a big crimp in my plans, as I can't retrieve anything, so I deploy EPP Obi down at one of his sites, and then play Effective Repairs. I saw he has a few more YAB floating around in his deck, so I just get an Anger, Fear, Agression back. I forgot what exactly happened to Obi, but sufficed to say, he died. In the end, he was dealing more damage to me than I was to him, so I lost. FL-16 or so, 6(+32)
Highlights: When I was inserting, Chris showed me his sleeves, they were high-quality, but weren't Ultra-Pro. He said they never split, unlike the Ultra-Pro ones which fall apart all the time. Now if only I can remember what the brand name was...
Lowlights: I beat up the Executor, but forgot to make the Executor sites go away. Argh. It may not have made a big difference, but I really should be paying more attention that that.
So in the end, I finish in 13th, highest out of my team. I think I did better today than I did during the rest of the weekend, as my losses were against really, really good players. So, I'm happy, I guess. And my team didn't finish in last, which is cool.
So, we finish up, I help Scott clean up the auditorium a bit, and we head back to Scott's apartment. I liked hanging out with Charlie, Jon, and Scott, so I decide to stay the night instead of going home right away. We all order some pizza, and I play Scott some in YJ. Early next morning, Scott gives me a ride back to the bus stop, and I head back to reality...
Props:
- Mad props to Scott Lingrell for putting this whole weekend together, it was the most fun I had at a tourney since DecipherCon. It was awesome beyond description.
- Rich Haman for being hands down the best SM in the region. Can't wait for regionals!
- Jon Chu for being a champ, and a great guy besides
- Charlie Herren for actually giving me stuff for letting him borrow my cards :-)
- Mike Dalton for loaning me an I Know to replace the Klatooinian Revolutionary I had in my Falcon deck as a placeholder :-)
- Tom Hermley-Keen for letting me have a piece of pizza on Friday, then ordering out for Chinese with me on Sunday
- Adam Kronfeld, for being on my team in the Team Tourney so I didn't have to play him again :-)
- Mike Blythe for being himself
- Blythe Hermley-Keen and Bart Robinson for keeping everything running smoothly
- Juz, Kevin, and Dan Bojo for making the long trip up
- All of the people that donated stuff to the convention, all those prizes were great!
- All of the people I played for being great opponents
Slops:
- My Falcon deck, for losing way too much
- The NYC guys, for not coming (except those who did)
- The SATs, for being on the same day at RamapoCon and keeping a lot of players away
- TJ's knee, for being busted
- Monnok, for completely shutting down my deck vs. Dalton
- Executor sites, for miraculously surviving the destruction of the Executor
- Out Of Commission, which shall henceforth be named 'Vader Seeker'
Well, that's about it. Until next time...
--
Doug Faust
dlf14@cornell.edu
SM Rogue 40, based in Ithaca, NY