orlando-florida-2000
Title: orlando-florida-2000
Author: Michael "Gilliatt" Raveling
Date: Oct 10, 2000
announcement that the D-Con line was still so long that the tourney would be postponed 20 minutes. I started to get hungry around 11 and wanted to get something to eat. Decipher made no other announcements about any start time
but when I asked they insisted that if I left to eat, I might miss the start and would be out. So I waited and waited. No announcements by Decipher on the status of the tournament made the time drag on and on. I expected a
little delay but this was getting out of hand. Sometime around 12, or later, I sat down in front of my first opponent. I apologize for not remembering any names.
Game 1: My Imperial Command BHBM vs ???s EBO "Stimmed Jim" variation.
As we flipped our starting I was surprised to see him start with Heading for Medical Frigate with his Main Power Generators. When he took out Insurrection, Wise Advice, and A New Secret Base something was up. I told him he could not start with A New Secret Base using that starting interrupt and I told him that if he had a Signal then he should probably use it to start with A New Secret Base. So he changed his starting to Signal to get A New Secret Base. I started Secret Plans, Mob. Points, and IAO. I didn’t notice it but he puts the Signal back into his reserve and reshuffles, not on purpose but just on err. I pull out the Executer,Emperors Power, and
Ozzel(using Imperial Command) before activating. I activate and get out the Emporer and set him at the DS2 Docking Bay. I also deploy the Endor: Dark
Forest. On his turn he activates before using A New Secret Base’s game text so I know that he did not playtest his deck at all. He plays the Signal but I Sense it. Here, he puts the Signal over in his empty lost pile and I ask
what happened to his starting Interrupt. He says he put it into his reserve after he played it. That is ok because I didn’t notice and should have probably paid more attention to it. He deploys his Echo Sites, Honor of the Jedi, and an Ishi Tib. Now I know that he has the super Falcon. On my turn I deploy Lord Vader to the Dark Forest and save a lot of force. He deploys the Hoth System but I wait to deploy
the Executer until he commits the falcon somewhere. When he loses Kiffex to the force drain at Dark Forest I deploy the Executer to Hoth and put Ozzel on board. He gets Echo Base Operations set up with Ishi Tibs and Baragwins
and gets the falcon up to Hoth with Leia and Han aboard. On my turn I initiate a battle and lose 1 to draw an extra destiny. He plays Punch It and Out of Nowhere to draw 6 battle destinies. I play Imperial Command to
cancel all but one of them. He loses a lot in battle damage prefering to leave the Falcon up at Hoth. His turn involved a lot of drawing up. On my next turn he loses to Your Destiny and then gets drained for 2. Veers goes
to the North Ridge. I do another battle with the Executer at Hoth and he plays Punch It again. I add a destiny and play Imperial Command to cancel his destinies again. This time he loses everything at the system. He deploys Obi w/ Saber to the North Ridge but I barrier him and move away. He drains me at the 4th marker and I Thinking With Your Stomach to make Obi go missing. Now the game is over and I can drain him out in relative peace.
Win by 28.
After the game I give him some pointers on playing his deck. I tell him to get the sites out before he activates and that he should have deployed Luke from his lost pile. He is friendly and tells me he hasn’t played in a long
time. I wanted an easy game but this one was truly a strange one to have at Worlds.
After game one there is another long, long wait. I am starving but I figure that they would announce if they were having huge problems. I think that any minute they could start so I just wait around. When they get around to
posting the next set of pairing I get confused and run around looking for my opponent like a crazy goose.
I am sitting at the first table and across from me is a quiet serious looking chap. This tourney has already been longer than a standard 4 gamer and I hadnt slept the night before. I am in for trouble if I need all my concentration for a game. I needed all my concentration for this game.
Game 2: My Non-Hidden Base Squasin vs. ???(from England w/ a nasty scar on his cheek)s Trooper Ralltir Ops.
As we count up our decks I discover 61 cards in his deck. I don’t know what to do so I call over the tourney director and my opponent spends a good chunk of time going over his deck and his deck list. He apologizes for his
61 card deck and I tell him it is OK and I don’t want to win on a stupid technicality anyway. After he fixes that we get down to business. I flip my Rendezvous Point over and then I flip over all my effects. He starts
Ralltir Ops with Prepared Defences. Before he chooses his effects he looks over what I already put out and selects a new third effect. I am about to say something to him but I dont know what to say as I probably shouldnt have
just thrown all my effects on the table without waiting for him to at least acknowledge he was ready. He starts with Mob. Points, IAO, and his newly chosen one is Oppressive Enforcement. Well he puts out Carida with Mob Points and
puts a guy down at the DS2 Docking bay. On my first turn I activate 5 and get the Home 1 DB. I deploy Red 9 to Carida with Lt. Naytan and move them over to Ralltir. I have a pretty good match up against Ralltir unless the
player is really good at playing without a flipped Ralltir. He was good at playing without a flipped Ralltir and spent most of the game without flipping it. He gets an early drain of 2 set up at his Spaceport Docking Bay and another Spaceport Site. I get a drain of 2
set up at Ralltir when I deploy Red 7 with Elyhek Rue to Raltir. He gets out Search and Destroy so I need to get some guys deployed to his sites. I get Jedi Luke deployed at Home 1 DB and move him over with Boussh. I get out Goo Nee Tay and put TK-422 at the Forest. All his imperials are
deploy +1 and the big guns are deploy +3. After a few turns of draining me draining for two at Ralltir he sets up a huge task force of troopers with Mara Jade at the Spaceport Docking Bay and I have to move my guys (Jedi Luke,
Boush, and 2 scrub pilots) over. I pay 4 and move them all over to the next site when he says "Can you move them over one at a time." This is it. I know he has Full Scale Alert but I dont know what to do about it. So I
move one at a time and leave Jedi Luke by himself when he plays that card. Luke is going to be killed but I notice that his reserve is pretty low so that he wont be able to kill me with very many huge guys. I do have TK-422
out as well as Goo Nee Tay. His turn he activates all but 2 and tries to put out Vader w/Saber but I point to the +3 he has to pay and he changes his mind. So he battles with what he has at the site and plays Trooper Assault with about 4 troopers there. I lose Jedi Luke and 5. Now I am scared that all he needs to do is track that Full Scale Alert and do the same trick on me again. We are
running out of time and I am losing. So in a last ditch effort I put a scrub pilot all alone at a site. He has only a few force as well so he cant do much. However, he has First Strike on the table and he deploys a
lone scrub with my scrub pilot and battles me at every site where I have guys. I lose my remainder of life force. I cant remember the differential but is was in the low teens.
In this game I know I forgot a lot of things and was getting really sloppy with play. I ask him when we are over what card he had taken out of his 61 card deck but I can’t remember what it was.
Sometime in between games 2 and 3 I hear that people are getting disqualified for deck lists. I hear about Michael Girard and Steven Lewis already getting the boot. I have a sneaky suspicion that I didnt take the time to fill mine out as carefully as I should have I put that fear out of
my mind to get on to game 3.
After my second game loss I was in for another long wait. I hoped after the first game or two that things would speed up when the Decipher crew got organized but it didnt happen. Apparently people were dropping and not
letting the tournament people know. Things were really going slowly. I felt like I could roam around more and went up to the room to change into my swimming suit so that I could go swimming in between games. That was a
pretty good idea and the Doubletree resort had a nice pool even though it was shallow. I tried to do a couple of back-flips into the pool but I ended up conking my head on the bottom when I only went halfway around. I gave up
swimming after that. So as I began my third game I was really tired and I felt dizzy from having my head smashed.
Game 3: My BHBM Imperial Command vs ???(Wycheck jersey)s Profit Mains Beatdown.
As he flipped over his objective I felt pretty good about this game. Profit is a really easy match up with this deck and I hoped for a high differential win. Things didnt go too well with my first turn as the Emperor was hiding
in my force pile and I got no Imperial Commands out of the six that I play with. I had to settle for a measly force activation on the second turn while he had deployed Yodas Hut and was activating a bunch. Second turn, I deployed the Emperor from my hand and got out all of my docking bays. For my tech move of the evening I play Imperial Code Cylinder to look at his reserve. I note all the SAC he had and his two Controls. That means trouble. He also has 3
obi/w Saber in his reserve and Jedi Lukes. He disdainfully says, "I bet you are the only one here that plays with that card." I say "thanks!" He
deploys a scrubby 2 ability character and rescues Han. He tries to retrieve his one force but I start with Secret Plans and he elects not to pay the 5 or 6 force that it would cost to retrieve his Heading For the Medical
Frigate. In my hand I have no characters, except 4-lom with blaster, to do anything about Han draining me at the Audience Chamber and the one damage
from Profit. On my turn I deploy 4-Lom to the Audience Chamber to try to move him out to the Jabba’s Palace so that I can try to do Thinking with
Your Stomach to Han. What I need to do is get him out to Jabbas Palace so that I can play it. It works and he moves away to an exterior site. In my draw I
finally get an Imperial Command and Mara Jade along with my Thinking with Your Stomach. His turn he tries to drain but I play Stomach. I draw a one and fail to get Han. My destiny was Sim Aloo and I curse him for coming as
a destiny and not coming into hand. He plays Yodas Stew and I try to Sense it but he plays a Control. I try to Sense again but he has an Alter and I lose the SAC war. I have 1 Alter in my hand and I am afraid I wont be able
to win any other SAC battle. I should have waited to play my Senses until after he tried to Sense my stuff because I knew he was playing heavy SAC from my Imperial Code Cylinder move. I deploy Mara with General Veers to
kill Han and the wimp pilot drawing two destiny with Imperial Command. I also move the Emperor over to the Throne room. He deploys the Rendezvous point and saves a ton of force. He also says "Oh you are dead." A friendly
sort of thing to say. So on my next move I deploy Godherdt and DS-181-3 to Jabbas Palace as back up. His turn he activates almost everything and deploys Boush to Jabbas Palace and Cracken to the DS2 Throne Room. Then he deploys Jedi Luke from hand to the Throne Room. I play Imperial Barrier which he senses. I alter the sense which he Controls. I have another Sense in my hand so I
try to hit him with that but he Senses it. I lose the deciding SAC war. He also deploys Obi w/Saber to the Throne Room all of them +2 to deploy. He
battles and plays Courage of a Skywalker and Jedi Presence. I lose a million force. He thinks I will give up now but on my turn I deploy Come Here You Big Coward so that he cant do anything over at my Throne Room. If
I had Vader then he would have to lose to Your Destiny for the rest of the game but Vader was long gone. I do have Zuckuss with Mist Hunter and I put that at Kashyyk to establish the only drain of the game for either of us.
His turn he deploys Chewie to the Audience Chamber puts Han w/ Blaster at his Cantina and I am pretty much finished. He has a drain and Profit damage. If only that damn Thinking With Your Stomach had worked it might have been different. Oh well.
I lose by 28 and I am now deep in the negatives.
Game three is over and I have lost. To play these three games has taken a total of eight hours and I joked on how this will be the worlds first 24 hour tournament. I vowed not to drop out even if I lose all of my next games. I expected a lot of drop outs from the close to 200 participants but to my surprise the tournament kept most of its players. I need to win game four.
Game 4: My Light Side Non-Hidden Base Squasin vs ???s ISB ops.
He starts Coruscant with There is No Try, Mob Points, and IAO while I start Rendezvous Point with Do or Do Not, Insurrection, and Squadron As. In my opening hand I get Tala 2 so there will be almost no way for him to flip his
objective. On his first turn he deploys Sunsdown on his system and gets the Coruscant docking bay. He deploys Officer Evax with the 2-ability guy that breaks spies cover. On my first turn I deploy Tala 2 to Coruscant with
matching pilot but my deck is centered around undercover spies so I have to take care of that guy he put down. I have Boush in my hand and Cracken so I deploy them both to Coruscant for free using Sunsdown game text and battle.
He only has 3 ability which means no destiny and decides to forfeit the undercover killer rather than officer Evax. He runs away from my guys to the Tatooine Docking bay and I put a Projection of a Skywalker down there. I get Wedge to Coruscant with ship along with Grey Squadron 1 and the force
drain +1 guy, Kin Kian. He has Come Here You Big Coward but I put down my own Coruscant over his. He puts Mara down at his Hoth DB but I put Momaw Nadon down to join her. Now he knows that he has to do something so he sends the Executer with Bossk in Bus and Dengar in Punishing 1 up to my fleet to try to retake Coruscant. He has plenty of Outer Rim Scouts to lose as fodder and I cant find any x-wing cannons to shoot down Dengar. So I keep losing
guys to battles. I am draining him for 1 at Cloud City with Boush and pilot and another 1 at Hoth where i have placed Jedi Luke to sit. He is draining me for zero and I am in complete control the whole game. I do have to
continually deploy guys to Coruscant to keep from losing the space battles and my reserve dwindles down to nothing. He never gets ISB flipped and I finally kill off his entire fleet at Cosuscant and deploy Kessel to drain
for 3 at. I win by 9 or so. As we were waiting for game 5 to start he comes up to me and asks me how many systems I play with. After I tell him 3, he laughs and says I
am lucky.
Now I have even wins and losses and I am on to game 5...
It is game five and I am now over the halfway point of the tournament. I have two wins and two losses so i am doing poorly.
Game 5: My Light Side Matching Pilot Squasin vs. ???s Endor Occupation deck.
As he flips over his objective I am thrown for a loop. Endor Occupation??? What the heck is going on here? He starts Mob. Points, IAO, and Combat Response. I start Do or do Not, Insurrection, and
Squadron Assignements. On his first turn he pulls Weekulmui with Mob Points, drops Kashyyk, and draws. On my first turn I deploy both Cracken and Hobie in their matching ships and move them over to his Endor using 4 force. Right here is my big mistake of the game. I should have put both those guys at Weekulmui and recognized that I was facing a Tie deck just from him using that card. I did not make that connection and I paid for it. On his turn
he draws and eats my drain of 1 while I move over to Kashyyk. I see Baron Soontir Fell go the lost pile. His turn he deploys a fleet to Kashyyk. First comes Zuckuss which I barrier. Then, he deploys two Tie Interceptors and a Tie Laser Cannon to one of them. Lateral Damage comes down on Hobie. Then he puts out Concentrate All Fire and procedes to shoot Cracken out of the sky. I get hit with about 4 or 5 battle damage with my lone Hobie and I lose him as well. On my turn I deploy Kiffex and set up two x-wings with matching pilots to defend it. He
procedes to set up his drain of 4 at Kashyyk using Ominous Rumors. He deploys Janus and Officer Evax to the Bunker to set it up. I convert his Admirals Order with my Ill Take The Leader which means that I have given him a destiny 6 card to track. I risk it so that I have a chance versus his Ties. I cant do anything about the drain of 4 because of Zuckuss along with the 2 Tie Interceptors. I deploy Wedge and Tycho to
Endor System to get a little drain in. I deploy Boush to Endor Bunker to battle Janus Greejatus with Officer Evax but I cant kill off them both to stop the drain of 4. He gets Mara Jade to kill off poor Boussh on his next
turn. I am forced to move Wedge and Tycho over to Kashyyk. I can only pray that my opponent is a sucky card tracker and cant shoot Wedge from his ship. On my turn he battles and draws a 6 for the Tie Laser Cannon while
adding 3 for the gun. Wedge is gone leaving Tycho to face an All Power to Weapons. I am dead. Big loss by huge differential....
After this game Juz calls me over and tells me I have 61 cards on my deck list. I am stunned and I dont know what to say. I look over my deck list and I count 61 too. I made some last minute changes so I figure something
must have happened. I count three times and get 61 each time. I look over the list and I see a scribbly number and Juz tells me a Decipher guy will
look over my deck and see if I am DQd or not. I wait impatiently for the dude to check it and he points out that Grey Squadron 1 was not even listed in my decklist but that I had 2 Gold Squadron 1 on it. There is nothing I
can do because there it is in black and white...I had written down Gold Squadron 1 instead of Grey Squadron 1. So I accept my fate and dont argue about it. Juz tries to console me with a little humor which I appreciate
while the other Decipher guy that had looked over my deck was just a huge jerk and treated me as if I was beneath contempt and a cheater.
So my tourney is over in a spectacular ball of flaming heaping suckitude.
I stunk.
On to my Decipher Notes.....
-Michael Raveling