coruscant-civil-war-ii-4-nov-00

Title: coruscant-civil-war-ii-4-nov-00
Author: Doug "Phrim" Faust
Date: Nov 6, 2000

Coruscant Civil War: 9 Nov 00 (Syracuse, NY)

Well, I really wanted to go to this one, as a lot of people from Ithaca and Syracuse that I haven’t seen in a long time will probably be there. However, I’m not sure I can go, as my parents are going to Pittsburgh this weekend so my bro can check out colleges, and they want me to babysit my sister. But I manage to arrange to drop my sister off at my aunt’s house for the day, so I take a half day off work on Friday and drive up.

The drive was fairly uneventful, I hit some big time traffic in Philly (the Schyukill Expressway was a mess), and I hit a whole lot of rain up north, but other than that it was smooth flying. I’m heading up to Ithaca for the night, they’re having a weekly Games Club meeting at Cornell at which I can hopefully get some games in, and a couple of folks from Ithaca need a ride up as well. I get in around 8:30pm or so, and Spencer and Ben Rich are already playing a game of Titan, but Ben gets eliminated pretty quickly. It turns out that Ben and his brother Jake can’t go tomorrow, since they have to take the SATs, which is kind of a shame. Anyway, Ben doesn’t have any decks on him, so he borrows Spencer’s Light deck and we play a game. My old Dark Deal deck has been doing horribly over the last few weeks, so I decided to ditch in in favor of Hunt Down. I used to play Hunt Down all the time before D*, so I’m pretty familiar with how to use it.

Anyway, he’s playing some sort of non-flipping HB that drained at Tatooine, Endor, and their respective Docking Bays with I’ll Take The Leader to add to drains. He starts Squass, Insurrection, and Staging Areas, and I start IAO, Mob Points, and Ephant-fetcher. Anyway, I get out Ephant at the Holotheatre first turn, and then get Vader out. He deploys EPP Obi, so Vader goes over and duels him. I play Focused, he plays Courage, but I end up winning by like 3. After that, I basically chased him around with Vader and Mara for the rest of the game. He deployed Luke to the Home One Docking Bay and moved him for free to the Executor, but he couldn’t drain cause Hunt Down was flipped, and he couldn’t move far enough to mess with Ephant before I drained him out.

Spencer ended up winning the game of Titan, amassing one of the biggest armies I had ever seen. So after that, I recommend a few changes to his Light deck, like playing Glancing Blow cause it’s better than Courage, and starting Strike Planning instead of Staging Areas, cause he already uses 2 Generals and Endor. So I decide to play against against his Dark deck, which is an evil EV-9D9 deck that he’s been tweaking for years now. I’m playing my Hidden Base deck with a few revisions, but it’s basically the same deck. He starts Security Precautions, which is kind of nasty. Anyway, I get my system and ships out, cause I really need to flip before his drains get nasty. He throws EV-9D9 and a bunch of Gonk droids and Mining Droids. I’ve played against his deck before, so I know not to go down with a spy to block his drains, cause he’ll just put down Iggy and beat the hell out of me. And I don’t have any Undercover spies in my deck, cause Ted stole them at the last tourney. :-) But then again, he’d just put down a Mine and blow it up anyway. So I flip before the drains get too bad, but he puts down Vader’s Personal Shuttle and ZuckussIMH and finds it pretty quickly. I didn’t draw a ICBW, so that stings (turns out he was playing It’s Worse anyway...). I battle and I take out Vader’s Shuttle, and Zuckuss runs away. He plays Battle Order, and starts draining me for like 13 or something. That gets real ugly real fast, especially since what drains I manage to get in he cancels with Control. So I lose by a bunch.

So anyway, Spencer takes off, so I stick around and watch people playing Jyhad, steal some cold, stale (but free!) pizza, then I take off. Now I get to tell you about how intelligent I am. I figured I’d be up pretty late at the games club (and I was), so I’m not going to get much sleep; not worth it to get a room somewhere. I figure I might get a few hours of shuteye in my car. Note: THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE WHEN IT’S 30 DEGREES OUT! So I try to sleep for a little bit, but it’s just way too cold, so I go hang out in the supermarket for like 4 hours just to get away from the cold. Yippee. Anyway, I get some breakfast, pick Spencer up, and head out to Syracuse.

So we get there at like 10:30am, and there’s a lot of people at the store. There’s a whole bunch of people from Albany, a good amount of people from Rochester, a selection of Philly’s finest, and a handful from Jersey. Notice something missing? That’s right, the tournament is in Syracuse but there’s no Syracuse people there! In any case, the Syracuse people did end up showing up: Bob Schultz and Josh Paterniti showed up before game 1, Tony Vigliotti and Jeff Cisz showed up after game 3, and Jon Schultz showed up real late and didn’t play. So anyway, I talk to a bunch of people before the tourney starts, Janiak is saying about how Dark Deal is soooo good, and I tell him about how mine lost soooo much. Anyway, the last Albany van shows up, and we get started...

Game 1: My Hidden Base vs. Chris Praskac’s (2132-Philly) Set Your Course for Scum

Lovely, not only do I get to play against someone I play against all the time, I get to play against someone who beats me all the time. :-) Anyway, we both get set up, he gets out Jabba’s Palace and looks gets the AC with it, and puts Jabba and Gailid there. I get some systems and ships out. He puts Djas Puhr down at Jabba’s Palace, and puts Bragnus down at the Death Star Docking Bay. Then he plays Scum and Search And Destroy. I’ve got a good beatdown squad in my hand, but I know I’ll just be None Shall Pass’ed if I come down on Tatooine. So I go to beat up Bragnus despite the SYCFA text, him having Bragnus out is bad anyway. So I come down with EPP Luke and Blount, kill Bragnus, and lose Blount. Fair enough. Next turn, he comes down with Mara to battle Luke, but I Clash her so she can’t. So he deploys some other 4-ability alien and battles and retrieves Bragnus, but he decides not to draw destiny so Luke lives. So I have to decide whether Luke should run away to the War Room so he doesn’t battle him with Mara, but I decide to stay put so I didn’t have to lose for Search And Destroy. I draw my Lost In The Wilderness, and I think I might’ve canceled Search if I drew it two turns earlier and made Djas missing while Bragnus was dead, but oh, well. So I use in on Djas anyway and miss. Mara does her job and kills Luke, and I don’t come to the ground again. I flip my objective, but he probes my hidden base right away. So both of us drain some, and I lose to Search some, and he deploys First Strike and battles in space some, and I lose. FL-20, 0(-20)

Highlights: I killed Snuggle!
Lowlights: Wanting to come to Tatooine all game, but not being able to because of NSP.

Game 2: My Hunt Down vs. Nathan Brown’s (1707-Philly) AITC Chadra Fans

Umm, wonderful, I get to play another Philly player I play against all the time. He gives me 2 Force, so I drop EPP Vader down at the D* Docking Bay first turn and flip, and deploy Ephant to the Holotheatre second turn. He gets Kabe and someone else in the AC, and deploys Bo Shuda. I get the Emperor down, and he deploys a Monk, a couple Chadras, and Ben Kenobi down at Obi’s Hut. So I put some destinies back with my Reactor and pick up Vader. Next turn, I activate all but 3, come down with Vader, and duel Ben, winning easily. I don’t battle afterwards because I have no destinies left, so I recycle. He puts down some more Chadra Fans, but I Barrier one, and he battles anyway. I can’t swing at the Monk so I hit a Chadra, and EPP Vader dies to attrition, taking 3 Chadras with him. So on my turn I deploy Lord Vader and his Lightsaber and smack around the leftovers. At this point, he’s really hurting, so he deploys Arliel and 2 Sic-Sixes at some other Tatooine site. So I Counter Assault them and he loses. FW+23, 2(+3)

Highlights: I actually tracked right this game...
Lowlights: Playing another Philly player.

Game 3: My Hidden Base vs. Mike Panayotou’s (1752-Albany) Dueling HDADTJ

Finally get to play someone I don’t play all the time. I feel pretty good about this game, as Hidden Base usually does pretty good against Hunt Down. So we both get set up, and he finally drops Vader down at the Death Star Docking Bay. Now being a good time to cancel Visage, I Revolution the Med Chamber. He Alters it, but he takes 3 to the Do Or Do Not I started, so it’s all good, I have other ways. So I deploy Blount at the Holotheatre, and he cancels Visage then gets Hutt Smooched. I tell him that Visage is canceled despite the Smooch, and the judge agrees with me, but he wants to Hutt Smooch anyway. So Blount did his job and went back to my hand without having to back him up while he lost his Hutt Smooch, works for me. Anyway, I get set up in space, looking for an opportunity to deal a blow on the ground. But he goes and deploys Search And Destroy. I was doing fine until then, but he probed my Hidden Base right away so I’m losing the drain race. He’s got the Emperor, Janus, and Sim down at the Cloud City Docking Bay, and Vader and Mara down at the Death Star Docking Bay. I can’t find Obi, but I need to act fast, so I deploy Luke, Blount, and Cracken to fight the Emperor and friends. Much to my surprise, he doesn’t play Barrier or Force Lightning or anything nasty like that. So I battle, hit Sim, and Smoke, so he loses Sim and Janus, while I lose Blount. Here’s where I make a mistake. I have ICBW in my hand, and I know full well that Luke might be dueled next turn, but I draw cards anyway, leaving one. So he comes over with Vader and duels. Here’s where I make another mistake. I know I had a 1,3,3 on my reserve, and I just lost the 1 to a drain. So a 3,3 isn’t going to win me any duels, but when he duels, I play Glancing anyway. He draws like a 3,5,6 to my 3,3 and wins anyway. So I ICBW for one, take 4, and cross Luke. Now Cracken’s in a world of trouble, so I deploy Elyhek in front of Mara and move Cracken over there. Mara battles, and kills Elyhek, but there’s not enough battle damage to kill Cracken too (and heck, he’s saving me from Search And Destroy at the moment). After that, I can’t for the life of me figure out what happened to Cracken. Nothing too game-breaking, I don’t think. *shrug* Anyway, it’s still really close, and I drain for the last time bringing him down to 1 Force. He’ll drain me out next turn, and there’s like no way I can make him lose the 1, so I draw up. FL-1, 2(+2)

Highlights: I almost won...
Lowlights: ...but I didn’t.

Game 4: My Hunt Down vs. Chris Praskac’s (2132-Philly) Profit Mains

Dah! Now I’m 3 for 4 on playing Philly players. So Chris is talking about how he’s gonna lose because dueling Hunt Down beats Profit, which statistically is true, but then again, he’s Chris Praskac and I’m Doug Faust, which is a big plus for him. :-) Anyway, I get my Ephant down at the Holotheatre right away, which is a good thing, cause he’s got lots of spies. I’m having trouble finding Vader, so I put Mara out, and she dies. In the meanwhile, he puts out Honor, and I can’t find my No Escape, so I’m losing to Visage and he’s not, which is no good. So I finally find and deploy EPP Vader at the Death Star Docking Bay. He deploys Ben Kenobi to the AC and retrieves his 10 Force. I get out my Emperor, and I debate picking Vader up to go duel. For whatever reason, I decide to just Docking Bay Transit over to Tatooine and walk. Han walks out to Jabba’s Palace alone, and JPSD Lando goes to some other Tatooine site. So Vader goes to Jabba’s Palace with his lone Han, and the Emperor is stuck. He deploys Order To Engage, but keeps Han where he is. So I’m losing lots to his drains and his objective, not to mention my Visage (still haven’t found No Escape, or even a Twi’lek). So I’ve got my EPP Vader with his Han, I’m afraid he’s going to drop a Fallen Portal on me or something, but he’s got Order out, so I battle him anyway. He uses Narrow Escape to move Han in front of the Emperor, so I lose 3 Force anyway. I try to Force Lightning Han, but he Senses, misses, Senses, misses, and Senses again, and finally gets it. I move Vader into the AC with Ben and Master Luke with Saber, and duel Ben with a Focused Attack. He’s got no duel protection and he just used all his Senses, so I win. I circulate, then I duel Luke with a Focused Attack, and I cross him and he loses 5. He puts a bunch of guys in front of the Emperor, so I battle him and play I Have You Now, he tries to exclude the Emperor with Lando but fails, and I kill some guys, but he’s got lots of power Chewie-style so the Emperor dies. He deploys Boussh to the AC, so I move Luke out and Boussh follows. But I’ve got no characters left, and he’s still making me lose lots to my objective, and Visage took its toll in a huge way (No Escape went off the top to Visage), and he’s draining for more than me too. So meanwhile, he transits to all my Docking Bays, and I don’t have the characters to chase him around effectively, so I lose. FL-16, 2(-14)

Highlights: I successfully dueled both Luke and Ben!
Lowlights: And I still lost! No Escape would’ve obviously been huge, but I could never find it or one of my two Twi’leks. Sigh...

Game 5: My Hidden Base vs. Nick Bongio’s (1492-Rochester) Flipping TDIGWATT

This was a one-sided game from the very beginning. He made the mistake of deploying his Bespin: Cloud City first turn, so I used Strike Planning to look for Lando, used Squass to look for the Falcon, and put them both at Cloud City on my first turn. Next turn, I backed him up with Wedge on his Ship. He deployed Mara with her Saber to one of his sites, so I deployed EPP Obi there, battled, hit Mara, and played Smoke Screen. He tries attacking my ships with a Combat Cloud Car, Obsidian 1, and Bossk In Hound’s Tooth, but he draws 2 1’s and kills nothing, while I play Punch It and take out the Cloud Car and the Obsidian. Next turn, I come down with Tycho on his ship, battle him, cancel his destiny, and win easily. He gets some more stuff down on Cloud City, and he’s playing some Scanning Crews, so I can’t go attack him. So I get out the rest of my systems and flip. I put ships at Kessel, Coruscant, his Bespin, and his Cloud City, so I’m draining for 10; and he has 3 drains, two of which I’m canceling. And that’s pretty much how the game ends... FW+27, 4(+13)

Highlights: My Hidden Base did what my Hidden Base does...
Lowlights: Being this low in the pairings in the first place...

Game 6: My Hunt Down vs. Tony Vigliotti’s (1768-Syracuse) HBX

Well, I know Tony, he plays in a lot of my tournaments up at school, and he *always* plays HBX. It never fails, he’s been playing the deck since SE came out, I think. In any case, we played this matchup pre-D* and I won pretty easily, so I’m not too scared now. In any case, down come the X-wings, and he gets out Honor pretty quickly, which isn’t good. I get Lord Vader with his Saber at one docking bay, and Mara and the Emperor at another. He flips and starts draining me for a whole bunch. I finally find my No Escape, and deploy that and Search And Destroy. He tries to kill Vader with Obi and a tracked 5, but he doesn’t know the new Vader is immune less than 6, so Obi bites it, but he ICBW’s the extra damage. I need to stop him from draining, so I get the Executor with Mob Points and deploy it to Coruscant and probe (with Security Precautions). He’s got Draw Their Fire out, so we battle there every turn, with no result. However, I don’t want to move the Exec away to probe more, because then he’ll beat it up and I’ll lose my Visage. So anyway, he’s draining at Kiffex, Kessel, and like Bespin or something, and canceling my drains, so the only damage I’m doing is coming from Visage and Search. And he retrieves like 10 for All Wings Report In, and I lose. FL-23, 4(-10)

Highlights: Well, I actually found No Escape this time...
Lowlights: I obviously need more ships to beat HB. Quite obviously.

Game 7: My Hidden Base vs. Reid Smith’s (1772-Rochester) Dueling BHBM

Well, this game was all about beating stuff up. First turn, I get my Lando and Falcon at Endor. The turn after, he deploys ZuckussIMH and battles, and wins 7-6, so I give him a card to stack. I need 7 ability or lots of power, cause I really want to kill Zuckuss, but I can’t deploy the Liberty for lack of Force, so I decide to put Luke on the Falcon and battle. I kill Zuckuss easily, and he draws a 1 for battle destiny. Here’s where I make a huge mistake. I could ignore my immunity and lose Luke, but I decide to keep him there instead. Next turn, he deploys Vader, so I got to get Luke to a site pronto or face down losing 3 a turn. He deployed No Escape right away, so Honor won’t help me. I try to ICBW the 3 damage, but he Senses it (taking 3 to DODN), so I lose 3 anyway. Anyway, he deploys the Endor Docking Bay, which somewhat solves my problem. However, he puts Blizzard 2 with DS-61-2 there, so I don’t want to just land the Falcon, cause stuff would get beat up. So I deploy the Liberty, transfer Luke to the Liberty, and then shuttle down Luke, a lengthy procedure that costs me yet another 3 Force. Meanwhile, I draw Obi, so I come down on Vader, Glancing Blow him, hit him with my Saber, and play Smoke Screen. He draws a Intruder Missile for destiny, so he only lost 4 though. He battles my Luke with his Walker, and Luke dies, and I give him another card to stack. He deploys Premiere Vader at the Cloud City Docking Bay, so I come down again with another EPP Obi to beat him up. This time I don’t have any nifty interrupts though, so while I hit him with my Saber, he wins the battle and I give him another card to stack. Meanwhile, in Space, he deploys BosskIHT and some other ship and battles my Liberty and Falcon, he draws some big destinies, and wins the battle, so I give him a 4th card to stack. The Falcon speeds over to my Kiffex, and he probes Kessel unsuccessfully. He deploys a 3rd Vader, DLOTS this time I think, and I’m pretty much out of ways to kill him, which is bad. I do have a Lt. Blount in my hand to possibly go kill the Emperor. So I activate all but 3, and check my destinies. 4,4,4. So I can hit the Emperor with Luke. So I deploy Blount at the Throne Room, and he says Blount costs 4. Turns out that Emperor’s Power adds to deploy or something. So I don’t have enough to deploy Blount, Luke, and battle, so I take back Blount and just give Luke to Vader. He’s been sitting at Endor for a while, but he finally decides to probe there, and finds my Hidden Base, so I lose a bunch to Security Precautions. At this point the game’s pretty much over, but he comes down and kills Lando with FettIS1 for good measure. Vader gets to the Throne Room and duels. Well, if Vader wins the duel, I lose 3 and lose the game. If Luke wins the duel, then he’s gotta draw like more than a zero (4 cards stacked) to win the game. Well, Luke wins the duel, and he draws a 1 (Sim Aloo), and Luke turns to the Dark Side! FL-8, 4(-18)

Highlights: Well if I gotta lose, I might as well lose with style! :-P
Lowlights: Not getting to beat on the Emperor...

Game 8: My Hunt Down vs. Mark Mattingly’s (1691-Scranton) EBO X-wings

Kinda like Hidden Base, I used to be able to beat EBO without a problem with Hunt Down. Key words here are "used to". Maybe it’s a matter of having more ships. *shrug* In any case, he gets set up real quick, and starts draining for 4, 3, and 3 at Kiffex, Hoth, and Kashyyyk respectively. I flip my objective and get out Search And Destroy. He retrieves for lots with All Wings Report In. I lose. FL-22, 4(-40)

Highlights: Blah
Lowlights: Blah

So, I end up finishing 40th out of 45 (3 of whom came late) which, quite frankly, sucks. I really have to get out of this slump I’ve been having, I’ve dropped about 250 points since May. The fortunate thing, I guess, is being rated so low after last week’s debacle, I actually don’t lose any ratings for this tourney. Wacky, huh? In any case, as you probably know, Brian Terwilliger won the tournament; he was the only 7-1 player. Mike Dalton and Dan Sokol, who were both 6-1 after game 7, lost their last game. Second place went to Mike Dalton, 3rd went to Chris Terwilliger, and 4th went to Pat Ziagos. One surprising result was Spencer Hamblen, who I came up with, went 5-3 and got 10th, by far his best tournament ever. So that was pretty cool.

And by the way, be sure to check out the pictures from the tournament I have posted on my site! http://times.phrim.com Just click on "Pictures" in the Navbar.

Props:
- Ted Panczyszyn for doing the impossible and running an 8-game tourney with 45 people in less than 9 hours! Amazing!
- Brian Twigg for being a champ, and a great guy besides
- Mike Dalton for getting his ratings points back
- The Syracuse folks, for showing up at their own tourney
- Altered States, for being huge
- Chris Praskac for being funny
- Me, for taking lots of pictures, like I’m supposed to

Slops:
- Me, for being a scrub
- New York, for being cold and rainy
- George Gundry, for saying he’ll go to Wendy’s with me, then leaving without me, and not telling me or bringing me anything back...
- SATs, for keeping people from coming
- Adam Kronfeld, for having "more important things"

Anyway, that’s all I have. Until next time...

- Doug Faust, Rogue 40
http://times.phrim.com