endor-regional-seattle-wa-july-1-2000
Title: endor-regional-seattle-wa-july-1-2000
Author: Douglas "Douglas" Harvilla
Date: Jul 2, 2000
I find Chris Wirfs, Keith Watubayashi and Steven Harpster somewhere and join them in a team. Whatever group of 3-4 players gets the best final standings wins some extra prizes and prestige, so we take a shot at it, under the moniker "Jabba's Twerps."
Deck registration and deckbuilding blurr as people scramble about making last-minute trades. Yanking counters to this, adding counters to that. I'm planning on playing my Ralltir Ops deck, and not looking forward to it. Harpster talks me into going with trusty old Hunt Down. At least it's more fun, if nothing else.
I add even more Senses and Alters to the deck, removing my odds protection. What the hey, I've never lost a game to numbers, even back when I refused to put Tortures in my deck. I'm just not expecting to see odds today, and if they do rear their ugly head, I can still lop it off, I'm not helpless.
Sifting through some kid's binder, I found a page of YT-1300 Freighters. When I realized how much better these things are than the B-Wings in my deck, I smacked myself upside the head and gave the kid a good trade for three of them.
Light Side: Deus Ex Machina
My take on A New Secret Base, long on ground power with several good ships and ASP droids. So named because in battle, devices tend to suddenly appear and resolve difficulties. ;)
Dark Side: Kido Senshi Dasu Beida
My 'Fortress Vader' theme, a little thinner on characters but with tougher ships and heavy Sense/Alter. Plenty of Japanese cards because they just look so dang cool.
Game 1 - Light versus Jeremy Riel's Ralltir Ops
Jeremy deploys a Ralltir site every turn, but doesn't seem to get his twix (2-0) sites early. He's going for a trooper theme, with the Spaceport Prefect's Office and Imperial leaders. With A New Secret Base, I get out all my Echo sites and the Hoth system, plus Echo Base Garrison.
Davin Felth, DS-61-2, and a unique Biker Scout deploy to flip the objective and then move to the Forest to huddle together in relative safety. I let him reap the benefits of the objective for a turn before forcing the flip back.
Deploy Rogue 4 piloted by Derek 'Hobbie' Klivian and a H'nemthe to the Prefect's Office on Ralltir, and Gold Leader In Gold 1 to Hoth, moving to Ralltir and flipping In The Hands Of The Empire. Jeremy attacks at the Prefect's Office but Rogue 4 holds on with the immunity to attrition from Echo Base Garrison.
At the Echo Docking Bay, I deploy ASP-707 and a landed YT-1300 with an Intruder Missle. That bad boy will come in handy. Jeremy spreads a bit on Ralltir to flip again. I put the Intruder Missle on top of my deck with the ASP droid and jump on Tarkin, who was left alone at a Ralltir site. Rogue 3, Commander Wedge, and a H'nemthe battle and flip a 7. Jeremy loses the moff and 5 more cards.
Skip deploying the Bacta Tank, so I can draw some cards this turn. Deploy Artoo In Red 5 piloted by Luke to Ralltir and move Gold Leader away to Hoth. Jeremy deploys Zuckuss In Mist Hunter and Boba Fett In Slave 1 against Red 5 and battles. My flip is reduced to zero, the Dark Side gets a 5, taking out Luke. Slave 1 moves to Hoth.
Lando In Millennium Falcon and BoShek back up Gold Leader, and smash Boba and his ship with a power total of 20 to 5. Following this battle damage, it only takes a couple turns of draining to end the game.
Win by 19
Highs: The deck worked. Moderate differential, so I keep a low profile for now, instead of bouncing up to get returned like a tennis ball.
Lows: Holding off on Bacta Tank to save force the turn before Luke was taken out by bounty hunter ships.
Game 2 - Dark versus Jonathan Egges' Tatooine Deck
Starts with Tatooine and Careful Planning for Docking Bay 94, if I remember correctly. Mara and company drain at the Audience Chamber while Vader set up at the Tusken Canyon. In space, a B-Wing drains me until I draw Boba Fett In Slave 1. Deploy it and Dengar In Punishing One, battle, and make him lose the ship and 4 cards. Visage and drains finish him off.
Win by 34
Highs: Winning.
Lows: The game never went anywhere. My opponent didn't get the deck theme up and moving.
Game 3 - Dark versus Keith Watubayashi's Throne Room Mains
Aw, man. I'm paired against someone from my own team. Oh, well, let's rumble. I start with Crush The Rebellion. Keith deploys a Nudj to the Swamp and draws. I deploy Mara to Yavin, a little nervous about making such a bold move, but I want to get the game moving.
Keith isn't getting his twix (2-0) sites, so it'll take a couple turns for him to arrange a good strike force and dislodge Mara. In that time, Vader deploys and flips my objective, and Tarkin joins him on the next turn. Deploy Mara's Lightsaber and move the Emperor's Hand to the Throne Room, Vader and Tarkin to the Farm.
Obi-Wan with Obi-Wan's Lightsaber takes over the Light Side Jundland Wastes, flipping my objective, and drains for 3 cards a turn. We keep this up for a couple turns, but Keith is losing more cards than I am, to the drains of 2 and 3 on Yavin. So he has to deal with Mara at the Throne Room.
Frozen Assets, Draw Their Fire, Luke With Lightsaber, Han With Heavy Blaster Pistol. Battles, swings and hits Mara. I return the favor, slashing at Han. We draw destiny, he gets a 5 and a 3, I get a 3. I lose Mara and 10 cards, but the site is cleared.
On my turn, I activate down to a 6 I drew for the lightsaber weapon destiny. Drain at the Farm, then deploy another copy of Mara to the Jundland Wastes. Battle, and Draw Their Fire kicks in. Keith loses a card, I retrieve a 6 destiny card off the top of my Lost Pile. Obi-Wan swings, misses, flips a 2. Mara flips a 6. Obi goes away, the Emperor's Hand stays.
Flip my objective, Keith loses 1 to Visage and begins his turn. A spare Obi-Wan deploys and battles. He draws a 5 to my 6, clearing the site. Hunt Down flips, the drains and Visage take their toll, and Keith draws up.
Win by 9.
Highs: Very quick game with lots of battling. We're finished so early we can take our time getting lunch.
Lows: Playing someone on my own team, losing 10 cards in a battle.
Game 4 - LS versus Tom Thomas' Ralltir Ops
Early on, I draw all my high-destiny cards fairly early, but never draw any of the cards which let me put them back in (or on top of) my Reserve Deck. That is a problem.
Tom gets the 'net deck stuff out on Ralltir, but I make him pay extra by deploying Commander Wedge and a H'nemthe on Rogue 3 to Ralltir. Without flipping, he still manages to draw Tempest 1 and Commander Igar to outbattle me on the ground, and Zuckuss In Mist Hunter to take back Ralltir from my ships.
Boushh hangs out on Ralltir and makes three attempts to Sabotage an AT-ST, finally killing Tempest Scout 1 and both pilots aboard. It is the one cool moment in an otherwise pitiful game.
Loss by 21.
Highs: Not much.
Lows: Fighting over generic sites, which happens way too often in this game now that Throne Room and Rallops are the most popular decks.
Game 5 - LS versus James Canova's SYCFA Manipulator
My first tournament game against Set Your Course For Alderaan. James starts with Presence Of The Force on Docking Bay 327, gets out the Docking Bay Control Room and occupies it with Miyoom Onith, deploying docking bays from the Reserve Deck. I get massive force generation on my turn, and deploy Echo sites from the deck for even more.
The Signal to get Wise Advice, deploy Zev Senesca in Rogue 2 to DB 327 and get in one good drain before Vader and Tarkin battle him out. Forfeit Zev and never set foot at a Death Star site for the rest of the game. Just use Echo Base Garrison to search for pilots without getting them blasted by Miyoom, and use them to set up Echo Base Operations and pilot my ships.
James uses Scanning Crew to keep returning Boushh to my Used Pile, and Used Monnok to keep my hand size low enough to scan with Miyoom. But his only force drain is at DB 327, and I've got ships taking over all the systems on table. Boba In Slave 1 and Zuckuss In Mist Hunter deploy to take back the Death Star system, but a Portable Scanner set up by an ASP droid is my destiny draw. Both bounty hunter ships are wiped out.
A couple turns draining for 10 end the game, and my first encounter with Set Your Course For Alderaan.
Win by 12.
Highs: Controlling space.
Lows: Manipulation. 'Nuff said.
Game 6 - DS versus James Nguyen's EBO Drop And Baraguins
Looking at this kid, I underestimate him until I check out his command card. A big win against Joe Olson, a very solid player from our area. Start with Blast Door Controls, set up Vader at the Tusken Canyon early for the flip.
James gets his Echo sites out, and turns the table back over to me.
Deploy the Audience Chamber, Mara from the Reserve Deck, and her lightsaber from hand. A Bothan Spy deploys to the Holotheatre on James' turn to cancel Visage, then goes Undercover. He also deploys a couple Baraguins and an Ishti Tib to Hoth under the shield.
Drains are causing their share of damage. James is retrieving devices with the Baraguins, but that doesn't save the other valuable cards he is losing. Replace Visage with Djas Puhr to protect it. The Bothan breaks cover and is joined by a Baraguin in pushing out Djas. He flips a 5, I flip a 4. The site is cleared.
Next turn, another Bothan takes out Visage and this one goes Undercover, too. After the game is over, James tells me he couldn't get his spies and Undercovers to block my drains. Yes, he did. But he squandered them taking out Visage. I had Bubo in my hand for the duration of the game, anyhow, hankerin' for a Bothan feast if they set foot on Tatooine.
Systems finally show up. I deploy Zuckuss In Mist Hunter and Dengar In Punishing One at Kiffex against two X-Wings. Battle, he plays Organized Attack, I let it through. Why waste a Sense at this point, since Dengar cancels the immunity anyway? And he plays Rapid Fire, more to put a force back in the deck than anything else. Doesn't find a starship weapon in the deck to deploy.
I flip low, but we tie on total power and he loses an X-Wing. I move my ships to a neighboring system where there are no ships. James uses a Baraguin's text to exchange a card in hand for an X-Wing Laser Cannon from the Lost Pile. Deploys it on his X-Wing, moves over. Force drains don't leave him with enough cards to use the cannon, however, and I clear out the system.
He breaks the Bothan's cover at the Holotheatre to drain, but it is too late. I drain him out on my turn.
Win by 25.
Highs: Winning against EBO, with good differential.
Lows: The threat of getting my ships blasted by X-Wing Laser Cannon.
10 (+78)
So I finish in 5th place, just behind Derek Snook in 4th and Tom Kitzman in 3rd. I'm very pleased with my return to Hunt Down, which went 3-0, but disappointed that my heavy SAC was never necessary.
Peter Sundholm predicted a Seattle sweep before the tournament began, but it was not to be. Lots of great local players had a real bad day, and were eliminated from the running. A few really weren't feeling well, either.
Jeremy Lamere is the only undefeated player, and squares off against John Hawkins, who has had a lot of near misses at qualifiers. Lamere's Y-Wing Tibrin Operatives deck, a theme I wouldn't have put any money on to make the top table, lost out by 20 cards in the first game to Hawkins' nicely built Pray I Don't Alter It Any Further deck.
Hawkins played Cloud City Sabacc frequently, retrieving force and winning Y-Wings from Lamere's deck. Though he played The Signal for it early, Lamere never played his "catch" card to stop the recycling Sabacc interrupts.
Not one battle was initiated, as Dark Deal and operatives resulted in vast drains. Hawkins was playing several docking bays and used Brangus Glee to exchange them for cards from the top of his Reserve Deck, then retrieved the bays with Sabacc.
On what was to be Lamere's last turn, he played Limited Resources and got it back with Brangus. Even if the force drains didn't finish Lamere off, the repeated force loss to Limited Resources would get him.
Next Hawkins' Quiet Mining Colony deck faced Lamere's Set Your Course For Alderaan. Someone related the details to me afterwards, as I was playing casual games at the time. Lamere let Hawkins get away with deploying 8D8 twice in one turn, selling him twice with Spaceport Speeders for massive activation.
I didn't get the details of this game, but the overall winner was Hawkins and he is representing the Endor region at Worlds. Congrats to him, and it is good to see someone else thinks the ECC objectives are underrated.
Best wishes in your respective regionals, and remember, you don't need to play Throne Room and Ralltir Ops to win. They didn't make much of a dent in the top 5 here.