iceman-s-dagobah-regional-report-2000
Title: iceman-s-dagobah-regional-report-2000
Author: Mike "Iceman" Fitzgerald
Date: Jul 31, 2000
Prologue- I had a tough time trying to work out a few minor
details of the Dagobah Regionals. I was losing interest in
the game and was trying to save money for other stuff. My
friends Dan and Lee were very interested in going though so
I figured I'd at least think about it. I was strapped for
cash and decided that if I was gonna go I'd try to make them
pay for most of the journey. I ordered Death Star 2 boxes
but they came 6 days after I expected them so I was a bit
crippled for playtesting. I decide that I know I won't
have the deck(s) fully tuned so I'm just gonna flat out
play the opponent to get the win. I was thinking Lightside
Weapons and Musicians. I decided to mess around with the new
DS2 Objectives and gave them a fair shot. ::Speed up to Day
before Regional::. We arrive in Jacksonville in very good
time. The downside is that the hotel jerks me around
saying : a.) they didn't have any reservations in my name
b.) you need to be 21 to get a room and c.) I could try my
luck down the street. So I could either go find another
place or wait until any of my friends over 21 would arrive
and help me rent a room. So we finally find a place to give
us a deal and we finally start playtesting and using the
group think. We are all playing the same Dark Side and Lee
breaks form from our Light Side.
Decks :
LS- " For 3 years the system kept me down as forfeit fodder
but now I'm the supafly!" - Uses New Wedge to the fullest
Matching pilots and Weapons.
DS- " Burn Him Before Me" - Decided to tap around with this
new objective to see how it does. Battle heavy and flexible
always sounds good to me.
Game 1 : " Burn Him Before Me" vs. Gabe Alonso's Profit
I start Arrest Order , Mobil Points , and Crush. I also get
Mara Jade and Evazan to start at his Audience Chamber. He
starts Goo Nee Tay which I figure is kinda risky since I
could get Emperor and Alter it right off the bat or even
try with Mara. Ah well I get rolling and deploy Emperor to
DS2 Docking Bay and kick out Rendili too. He drops Master
Luke right off the bat versus Mara and Evazan , battles ,
and draws a 5 ( Narrow Escape ) to my 1 so I lose them
both. I deploy Commander Igar and Tempest 1 to JP and he
later flips and retrieves. Ben Kenobi comes down and its
gonna be hard to get rid of General Solo. He kicks out
Bargaining Table and starts cancelling drains with aliens.
Before I know it I'm down like 25 cards and he's got like
2 cards in his lost pile and is pretty much set. I decide
to start doing some Chamber invasions. Vader comes in and
gets Barriered. I decide to give him Janus Greetus to keep
him company. He has EPP Leia , Ben , Han , and an Elom
to battle and give me trouble. Vader is at least keeping
Luke as captive and probably preventing like 3 more
destiny draws or combos. He battles at the AChamber and I
Weapon Levitation Ben's Stick. Leia misses and we draw
destiny him getting the better of the situation. He gets
two and I make him revive. Vader dies and I'm really
limited in my decisions because of force. I deploy another
Vader and use You Are Beaten to exclude Ben. I use the
Emperor's Power to get a decent draw and force him to lose
Leia at least but Vader goes down again. I decide to sent
Janus for a walk to help out Igar. Igar has been doing
the whole draining thing joined by a Projection and a PotF.
I'm taking more damage and I'm in danger mode. I gotta
step up here and make the game or break the game. I deploy
Lord Vader with his Lightsaber to the Audience Chamber and
battle versus General Solo , Ben , Elom , and a Monk.
I have to hit Ben and Lord Vader is insane adding to his
weapon destiny so I rack up like a 10 total and Ben is
slashed. The tricky part is that I also have to rack up
8 attrition to get rid of Solo and avoid any more damage.
I use Emporer's Power and come up with exactly 8 which is
awesome. He tries to revive Solo during weapon segment
but because the End of a battle is after all forfeiting
Ben has to survive to revive ( heh- it rhymes ) he's gotta
lose Solo. That's huge. So he tries to minimize the damage
and throws out Harc Seff and an Elom to battle and try to
suck up all the damage. I slash an Elom and he tries to
forfeit all his characters there but can't. I say can't
because he has this one little B'omarr Monk who has survived
for quite some time but doesn't participate in offensive
battles so he takes 3 damage , stacks a force , and now
has to choose between staying inside versus Vader with
Lightsaber or go outside to Tempest 1 , Igar , and Janus
with the possibility of 2 destiny plus I could burn the
Emperor's Power so he's looking at a lot of damage either
way. He decides to stay in the AChamber. On my turn I drop
Tarkin , 4-LOM , and beatdown on the Monk for 16 after the
Monk , he also has to stack a card and I've jumped right
back into the game. His turn he starts drawing while I start
draining and playing catch up. He puts down Mos Eisley and I
move my characters around to my best and leave super ginzu
inside. Eventually Ben Kenobi and Orrimarko are deployed at
Mos Eisley so the end game is near. We keep positioning
ourselves around and I put Vader's Shuttle up at Rendili
to fulfill the Battle Order I tracked so hard to deploy
-- gotta love the retrieval from Op Killer. I haven't seen
a ship all game until he deploys Lando in Millenium Falcon
in front of Vader's Shuttle. After deploying Lando he has
exactly one force left and draws it ( fearing Emperor's P
to draw a 5). It was probably the longest I've ever waited
for someone to decide to draw a card or not at a critical
time ;) I'm putting lots of pressure on him with my drains
and drop down First Strike , battle twice , retrieve 2 while
he loses 2 and I get rid of Lando in Falcon. Battle Order
is fulfilled and Igar packs up and moves away from Mos
Eisley. If Han isn't deployed all he can do is battle me,
if he deploys Han then I have an extra drain of 2 in the
Audience Chamber. He was in trouble either way. So I pull
up a win by 7 or 8. Record : 2 ( +8 )
Highs : Coming back after a huge deficit. Punishing him and
basically winning the game off one mistake.
Lows : Watching like half my deck go to my Lost Pile in
Record time.
Game 2 : " X-Y-Z Supafly" vs. Walter Cowart's ROps
This game goes bad for a deck I've spent soo many cardslots
to mess over. Basically a 3rd turn Search and Destroy
eats me for like 20 force while I struggle to find my
last system I need to flip ( Systems get in active pile
quickly when you activate a ton ). Not much to this game.
Monnok helps keep the game from major surprises. Just about
everything just twisted a little bit to mess me over. I
think this game was over in like 15 minutes.
Record : 2 ( -13 )
Highs : limiting the loss to 21.
Lows : Just about everything.
Game 3 : " Burn Him Before Me" vs. a scrub
It was ugly. I deploy Vader and he deploys EPP Luke to an
X-Wing in space. He takes like 3 damage from Your Destiny
the whole game through. He uses lots and lots of X-Wings
but its just over after it starts. Win by 25-26.
Record : 4 ( +12 )
Highs : Deciding when to lose the Op Killer to retrieve
a card.
Lows : Not working hard versus player.
Game 4 : " X-Y-Z Supafly" vs. Lee's Bring Him Before Me
Lee seems a little unhappy about the pairing and lets
the room know. We both know each other decks but I keep
switching my Hidden Base on him so that gives me a bit
of an edge. Vader hits Cloud City Docking Bay so I give
him Farmboy Luke. Mara and Saber deploy to take his place
while Supafly in ship and Jek on Spiral hang at Bespin
system. I cancel his drain with It's a Hit and start
doing a little bit of damage. He deploys like the Avenger
and Devastator with Evax aboard and Lateral Damages
Spiral. I have a Laser Cannon on Wedge's ship and when he
battles I play Power Pivot to make the Evax ship Power=0
but he Senses and loses 3 force total for it. I take a bit
of damage and draw a 0 to make things worse. I stack a card.
I kick out another system or two and flip then move Wedge
and ship to Kessel while Keir Santage goes to Kiffex.
He drops Chimaera which I barrier and he puts Tarkin on it.
On my turn I Tunnel Vision for Falcon and drop Cpt. Han
and Falcon. I battle and come up big by drawing a 10 battle
destiny which gets rid of Tarkin , Chimaera , wins the
battle , and I play Legendary Starfighter on the Falcon
so he starts losing 2 force everymove phase which is big.
He finally probes the correct system but I It Could Be
Worse the damage so I'm up and put Landing Claw on the Falcon
to make it safe as possible. He cancels the Claw with Godherd
but its too late. Win by 21. Record : 6 (+33)
Highs : Drawing a 10 destiny to knock out Chimeara for Legend
and getting a solid win.
Lows : He had 2 cards stacked and with a freaky win of a
battle he could've won the game at any time.
Game 5 : " Burn Him Before Me " v. Walter Cowart's Throne Room
So its Throne Room start versus Throne Room start. I start
Op Enforcement along with the normal two to keep SAC down.
Side note here : I was actually supposed to play Light Side
again but since I'd already played Walter with the Light Side
I figured that they know that I can't play him with the same
side again so I walk over and use my Dark Side. This causes
me to play my Darkside this game and the next which is probably
in my advantage to do. First turn I deploy Emperor to CC:DBay
and go. He deploys Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker from Reserve ,
a Nudj , battles , and plays Smoke Screen to have a 12 power
while I only have like a 5. Its 7 or just Emperor.
I toss Emperor aside like its no big deal and it isn't.
So I get out Rendili and generate and stuff and draw trying to
figure a way around Jedi Luke. He deploys Lower Corridor and
moves Jedi Knight Luke into there and deploys another Nudj to
the swamp but forgets to move it ( huge ). I have Fett in Slave
1 up at Rendili and Battle Order on the table so he's paying for
his drains. The downside is he deploys Obi-Wan Kenobi with Saber
to the Corridor too so he is paying 3 to drain for 3. Once
again I'm looking at a +15 card lost pile very quickly and have
to pull another big comeback to win it. He forgets to move a
Nudj over to the Farm again so I decide to make him pay. I drop
Tempest 1 and Igar ( I only play one of each but T1 came out
every single game and the combo popped twice ) so I have
fulfilled Battle Order for the time being. He gets to Drain
me for 3 twice and moves over a Nudj and I choose not to pay
to drain for 1 until I get Battle Order up for free. I manage
to get Evazan and Blizzard 2 down to the Swamp and Janus moves
into the Throne Room (his). So now I'm paying nothing to drain
and I hit him for 6 drain while he pays 3 to drain for 3. On
his turn he deploys Supafly to his Homeone : War Room and
deploys Home One to Rendili for like 7 Force...Barrier. Heh.
On my turn I deploy Lateral Damage on Rendezvous Point , deploy
Mist Hunter , and Dengar in Ship. Battle I draw good and after
all it said and done he loses Home One , Wedge , 13 to battle
damage , and stacks a card. That was huge. He drops Melas and
Boussh to the Throne Room but its already too late. He does more
damage here and there but not enough. Win by 7.
Record : 8 (+40)
Highs : Getting huge confidence boosts in this deck , twice
spotting players rated over 1900 and 2000 about 20 force and
coming back to win the game. Keeping from getting beat twice by
the same person.
Lows : I seem to keep being the person on the edge playing
someone with one less win so I need higher differential to get
into to the Final.
Game 6 : " Burn Him Before Me" vs. Will Raiman's Good Deck
I think his name was Will Raiman , nice guy , reminded me of a
mini-Steven Turner :) Well I let them know that I should be
playing light. One of the weirdest feelings is when you both
pull your Light decks to play. They say we should've looked
at the cards but yada , yada , yada things stay the same so
I get to play my Darkside 4 times and thats an edge for me.
So this can be an epic game that could be won at any time
because both DS2 Objectives are being played and every battle
counts. I get my usual generation and deploy Fett to Rendili
to fulfill an early Battle Order. He starts pulling Scouts
left and right with Madine and stuff. I bring down Lord Vader
with stick and start smacking around scouts. I You Are Beaten
any particularly nasty ones and we tie on power a ton of times
which is weird and keeps us from stacking cards. I'm burning
Emperor's Power a bit so that keeps me a little be behind.
I manage to spread out a bit and hit him once with Your
Destiny because Luke forget to move from the Hut for a turn.
He's got scout crazyness and we keep manuevering around each
other but I've got Battle Order so his major activation is
put to use for drains. He plays Insertion Planning a few times
which is pretty cool. I never really manage to beat him down
because he's got a ton of scouts and plays with the most
under-rated card from Endor , Corporal Delevar. So I'm just
tossing little guys aside and have Tarkin cancel a destiny here
and there. He's got out like 5 sites so I can keep Vader away
from Luke and Force loss. He never ever comes to space so Fett
just drains away for 1 a turn. We start transitting all over
the place and Luke finally catches up to Vader ( side note :
he used like Hidden Trail or Great forest thing where Scouts
can move from any location to or from there and could've
caught Vader like 3 turns quicker) little mistake. Vader ,
Blizzard 2 , and Tarkin move to Cloud City while a whole ton
of scouts move to Death Star 2 for a mortgage and come to say
hello to the Emperor. Another side note : he could've kept
a destiny draw at the Docking Bay and made it so the Emperor
couldn't move away and we would've had some interesting
battles. I stacked maybe a card or 2 and the same was with him.
In the end though I've got him pretty solid. I win by 13-16 ?
Record : 10 ( +50-something )
Highs : winning
Lows : Not winning by enough to reach the finals.
Overall it was a great tournament that ran so smoothly it didn't
feel like I played 6 games. Tournament was over at like 5-6 ,
no bad rulings for me , and I came in 5th so I picked up the
last custom trophy made by Gregg Keefer. I turn in my usual
5-1 performance at a major event and land in Top 8 in Dagobah
for the 4th year in a row.
I watch the Final confrontation which was pretty much a bore and
actually made me pretty frustrated. Ben Matthews' decks sucked
and Charlie Herren made a bunch of silly mistakes one was pretty
major. After a 29 win with his Light Side its pretty obvious that
Charlie will win especially after Ben has like 10 systems on the
table and a bunch of X-Wings. Nothing really special about the
games.
Tournament Observations : Squadron Assignments was in probably
60-80% of all the decks I saw , that was a bit of a shock.
Ralltiir Ops probably consisted of 25-30 of the 64 players
Dark Sides decks. Lord Vader is insanely strong with a
lightsaber , even if your paying +10 for him. My darkside can
spot a lead and then make it really interesting at the end.
Pairings make all the difference if you lose. My rating will
go up like +50 points so I just cranked up my highest rating
ever a few notches and should be in the 1980s range.
After Tournament : Lots of fun stuff. Most of my friends stayed
the night after the tournament so we went out to eat , played
cards , and played some N64. After spending one night in a
good hotel with a bad shower and one night in a bad hotel
with a good shower I truly believe a good shower can overcome
any bad hotel.
Funniest happening of weekend : Before going to Bennigan's for
dinner we're all outside and Lee takes out a cigar and lights
it , those who don't know him look a little shocked , then Josh
Hoade says out loud " WHAT THE HELL, or **** , ARE YOU DOING?".
Lee gets scared and spazes out dropping his lighter and cigar ,
it was pretty funny.
Props :
-to Neal Razi and Joshua Hoade for making me laugh
-to Lee's Suicide Knob which was really fun to spin when it
was boring driving.
-to the funny stories in Swank , which were better then the
pictures.
-to Jason Burrows , for being cool.
Slops :
-to any gibronies who couldn't beat the players higher then
me ;)
-to Swank for showing like skanks.
Quotes :
"He must've been hiding cards in his @#$%-tits "
( Anonymous for safety reasons )
"You mean you can use 2 force to get a card with Ralltiir Ops?"
( Neal in sarcasm )
"How many times have you started just S-Foils in an X-Wing deck,
how many times have you played no SAC protection in an X-Wing
deck , how many times would you start the signal over 3 effects
over The Signal in an X-Wing deck ?"
( Neal again )
"Search and Destroy...what does that do?"
( Neal in sarcasm )
Mike Fitzgerald