austin-texas-1-27-01
Title: austin-texas-1-27-01
Author: Stephen "Texan" Beckham
Date: Jan 29, 2001
The morning of I wake up after having spending the night watching five movies with my girlfriend who claims to be on her death bed. I wake up look in the closet and try decide what clothes will serve me best as my lucky rags. The right clothes to a gathering is pure tech. I grab a McDonalds bacon/egg/cheese biscuit value meal and start on the way to Austin, a good hour drive. I put in some Chris Rock and get myself fully relaxed for tournament. Pure tech.
I arrive after driving through traffic, ran and fog and get some trading done to get closer to finishing my Court and Rebel Strike Team decks. Well the games are about to begin. I just want to make one more comment. I have never won a game in a tournament until this day. I went 4-2 and I was so excited that I left my notepad with winners and my opponents behind at the store so I am s.o.l. as far as that goes. THis is my first TR so LMK what to do better next time.
GAME1: My LS Enlightenment Training vs Endor Ops/Death Star II/Hoth/Rebel Base Occupation
This was a weird game. I first saw it and thought there is no way I can lose to this deck. I start training and the first couple of turns go well. He drains here and there and finally gets his Occupation set up. This is where it all hit the fan. I had a good character base running around and stopping force drains but I can’t wipe out all his forces totally. This is a real pain since the whole Occupation starts hurting. I lose two On the Edges after test five so I know I have one more left. All of the sudden he drops Janus, Mara, Sim and Emperor Palpy. Oh man, that was not cool at all. He is draining for a good two or three a turn in space and his Occupation/That things Operational/Ground Drains start adding up to about seven loss a turn even with my It Could be worse. Then out of nowhere he plays Ommni Box/It’s Worse for nine more damage on top of a three. That made me lose just about the rest of it and then he battles me enough and does his big drains to finish me off.
Highs: Flipping my objective, nothing else went right
Lows: Getting beat by something as slow as my deck
FL (-14)
GAME 2: My Battling Hunt Down vs. Ground Profit
Well I am playing the same guy I played the first game. This time I didn’t underestimate him. My opening hand I pull Emperor, Janus and Sim. Oh man. I already had EPP Boba and Mara sitting in the Chamber so I was sitting tight. Didn’t have a Vader yet, but I was not worried too much. I drop the incredible three-some to the chamber and move Mara and Boba to Tatooine Jabba’s Palace. I draw up IG-88 and 4-Lom with their guns. That is sweet. He deploys a Ben Kenobi and Lando with Vibro Ax to the Palace site. He tries to exclude Mara and he is successful. My targeting Lando with Boba does not go through so I am left there alone with Boba. I lose Boba Fett. Next turn I deploy my two Bounty Hunters with Mara. I captured Lando and beat the hell out of a Ben Kenobi that was hit by Mara’s saber. I move back to the chamber with Mara, draw up a ton of cards and get Lord Vader, Circle, Masterful Move, Blizzard 2 and Operational as Planned. Can life get any better? He deploys a couple sites and put EPP Luke and EPP Leia out together. I use my special interrupts and my next turn I deploy Vader, circle Luke, steal him away and deploy my Blizzard 2. Sorry poor Leia. After that I eventually get Tempest One piloted by Sarkli moving around and draining at sites with Blizzard and my bounty Hunters at anther. I leave Vader alone though. In a last ditch effort, he deploy Ben Kenobi, ECC Chewie and Tawss. He slashes me with Ben, and plays a Sorry about the mess. That one hurt and left me with a little less differential than desired. But hey, I get my first tourney win ever.
Highs: Drawing the best hands I could possibly draw
Lows: Leaving Vader to get raped and hurting my differential
FW 2 (+1)
GAME 3: My DS vs. Rebel Strike Team trying to Blow Bunker
Opening hand has an AT-AT, Emperor Palpy and Lord Vader. I have enough force to drop Palpy at the Landing Site first turn and lose some to Visage. Oh well, he is down. My opponent drops down four sites, all of them have two force icons. I just lick my lips in anticipation. Next turn I have enough force to drop Vader, Blizzard 2 and Grand Moff Tarkin. I am draining him immensely. He did not start Strike Planning so he isn’t getting anyone out. I drain for a good six force for about about three turns when he finally gets COK and General Solo down with Mercanary Armors on each of them. He moves them into the Bunker, but I load up the back door so once it blew he would die. He never decided to blow it though. I was happy. He gets two Blue Squad B-wings to endor and drains me twice for two before the end of the game. In a last ditch effort he battles me with COK and Solo. That didn’t go over well once I dropped Tempest 1 and Mara down. Felt really sorry for him after draining him for nearly 18 force by the end of my third turn. Massive forces rule!! Bunker blowing does not.
Highs: Showing how powerful and fast this Hunt Down actually is
Lows: Beating the crap out of a kid who plays a whole lot more than me, just does not have the cards to be top notch
FW 4 (+26)
GAME 4: My LS vs. a really cool SYCFA deck with that pulled Death Star Troopers and did numbers
I can’t believe I lost this game but I did. My opponents got Reactor Terminal first turn so he is drawing everything and pulling all of his systems out like a mad man. He drops Raithal and I look at him like a moron. He then pulls his troopers and inserts in my deck. Oh crap, I have Leia and Yoda training and that aint good for numbers. It reaches the top on my and I lose 12 force to that card. Raithal pumped his destiny up by two to each trooper. I almost start crying. His backup of TIES is now eating me for lunch. I am using my Edges to retrieve but when he does numbers again for another 12 loss I am screwed. I finally get some characters and I drop down Jedi Luke and EPP Obi to the Docking bay and rid the game of the troopers. But the damage is done and his space drains are massive. I can’t even do anything since I missed passing test 2 and ran out of force to move on test 4. I spend too much time piddling around so I lose badly. I can not help but be impressed by his numbers deck since I did not even expect it. I started Battle Plan since I say SYCFA
Highs: Playing something new and getting the experience of it to make me that much better
Lows: Realizing that Raithal does add +2 to destiny and losing to numbers when all I had to do was start the YISYW that I saw drop in my lost pile
FL 4 (+1)
GAME 5: My DS vs. Incom Speeder/X-Wings Deck That used Fallen portals with every site it works at
Well this game starts off slow except for the fact I get Search and Destroy out first turn. I get Vader to the Death Star Docking bay. He loses a quick two to me and the game begins. He pulls Honor and kinda snickers but I know better. He deploy Manuevering Flaps and S-Foils first turn too. Oh well, that can’t hurt me right? Second turn I pull out CC docking bay and put 4-Lom and Iggy there. Then I deploy Zuckess and Dengar to Rendilli. (We had a lot of sites out real fast in from out hands) Now Honor is canceled and he is losing again. I draw up and get No Escape. Looks cool. He deploys EPP Luke to the Entrance Cavern and flips my obj back over. He then drops half a dozen X-Wings on my guys, plays organized, activates the foils and he had already played Incom corp. Oh crap. I lose everything and a couple force to boot. I am pissed now. I drop Mara to the cavern along with a Blizzard 2 and I miss the saber. Should have checked. He misses Mara and all is good but he loses force instead of losing Luke. I draw Vaders Obcession. That is nice. Next turn he drops down five speeders. Ouch. He swings at Mara and misses again. What the luck. I notice his destiny is pretty low and I should have some good destiny floating around the top. What the heck, I blind duel Luke. I drop focused attack to make sure it passes and Luke is now mine. He still battles me, but the loss of Luke screws him bad. I keep poking him with Search and destroy and Visage and he keeps battling me at the cavern. It finally comes close to the end. He battles me and I draw two masterful moves for destiny. That hurt. He loses all but three cards. I do my two damge to him and realize I only have one cards left in my pile. My turn comes up and Vader drains him for one giving me the +1 differential win.
Highs: Turning Luke with Mara. She truly is a bad-ass
Lows: Not carrying a monnok. It can really wreck these decks
FW 6(+2)
GAME 4: My LS vs. RallOps
Nothing much to this game. My Projections and It Could be worse keep his drains to a minimum. Occasionally I venture down to Ralltir with some guys to take out some of his biker scouts on bikes. They react everywhere and eventually everyone dies. Lando with Ax excluded Irol every time I battled, it was classic. However, his high speed tactics knocked a lot of guys out. He finally starts deploying some air with unique interceptors with his Combat Response. Now he drains for free. His drains to start adding up, but I get most of it back with Edges. Then I made a mistake. I drop Corran and Tawss all alone. I force drain and he reacts with six bikers on bikes and I eat it. He drains some more and the TD comes and tells us time is up. That turn I flip my objective, retrieve my ten and deploy test six. This allows me to pull DOS into my hand. The whole game I held the Falcon, Capt Han and EPP Leia for this moment. I find DS-181-4 and deploy to him with the super falcon. I mistracked my darn destiny so my auto was a four. That is crap but three fours aint bad. That is enough loss to him to let me come up by four cards. Oh yeah, super falcon rocks
Highs: Getting the Super falcon down with the drained Leia. That rocked
Lows: Going the distance against RallOps speeders. I felt bad for not having done better
FL 8 (+30)
PROPS:
To Myself for actually winning a game
To Brian Guthrie, who announced his retirement from SWCCG. We will miss him
To all the guys there for trading away some good stuff for the foils they kinda needed
To all the kids that play this great game even though they do not have the money to buy all the top notch cards. They are the future
SLOPS:
To Justin who left early I think he was pissed he lost a game. Oh well, he is still a bad @#$% player who can not be denied that.
To Scrye for getting magazines out to the card stores and not the book stores back where I live.
To Scrye for conducting a poll that doesn’t even seem all that accurate IMHO
To Decipher for giving us more Cloud City packs for prize support. Just more kindling.
Stephen “Texan” Beckham