mt-laurel-nj-04-08-01
Title: mt-laurel-nj-04-08-01
Author: Pete "Ghetto 13" Flamini
Date: Apr 9, 2001
So at about 11:30 Saturday night, the official decision was made that Ghetto Leader and I were going to play at Nate Brown’s tournament on Sunday. Usually they are six gamers starting at 11am, but Nate had to work this week and couldn’t start until 1pm. A little disappointing since this would force us into a four game format, but like I said, a lesson had to be taught. No more foils for beating townies. Besides, I’ve become bored with the broken-ness of Raw Deal lately anyway.
So I meet him at 12:30, we hit Einstien Bros. Bagels and I get a super-tech peppered-bacon BLT on a bagel. It was some good sh1t. So when 1:00 rolls around, we’ve got 5 decent players (but no top-10 guys like TJ or Praskac) and 3 townies. I’m playing the same two decks as I was two months ago (the last time I played) and hoping nobody has come up with a new counter for them. Dark Side is Court with M’yoom. Pull Executor Docking Bay, drop Ephant Mon for extra activation and protect M’yoom from a beat squad, and from there, run standard Court/Manip. Light Side is Watch Your Step. No Palace Raiders, no Kessel Runs, no NightFall, no nothing. I don’t know how, but it’s 8-0 in tourney play having run over everything from Hunt Down to MKOS to SYFCA and so on. Anyway, here’s the breakdown:
1st Game: My LS vs. Ted Cohen’s (1515) SYCFA beatdown.
I don’t even count this as a win for my LS deck. Ted has been playing for almost a year, but won’t win because he can’t shake his fascination for crap-cards. The best thing I can do for Ted is give him game-play pointers, keep him from getting ripped off on trades (which isn’t easy), and try to make a game out of our match-up. He deploys a lone character on his first turn thinking ability 4 makes him safe. I don’t want to completely dishearten him early, so I pass on the Jedi Luke/Luke’s Saber, and just set up a drain at Kessel. He’s completely ignoring me in space because he knows my Bantha Droid will cancel his Lateral Damage, and doesn’t want to mess with Dash and crew unless he can make something power zero. So he keeps getting drained 4 a turn (Kessel + Tatooine) while he gradually stockpiles guys on the ground. Of course, limiting his activation plus GooNeeTay keeps him from ever getting down more than one guy, but eventually he gets Vader and Saber, Mara and Saber, Emperor, Janus and somebody else draining at my DB94, so I have to address it or else it’s a drain of four for him. Jedi Luke, Talon Karde, Lando w/Tech-9, Theron Nett, and 2 Raltiir Freighter Crap-tains (are you scared yet?) come down to block the drain. We leave the battle for his turn so I can Fallen Portal Mara, but somehow I miss. He swings at Luke and hits, then swings at some random.smuggler and misses. I lose Luke and a Crap-tain, he loses Janus (got capped) and Bossk (see what I’m saying about crap cards?) to attrition. Little matter, I deploy another Jedi Luke and another Crap-tain, but leave the battling to him again. Now he’s afraid of Fallen Portal so we end up just chasing each other around on the ground (Empy retired to the D*DB) until the 4 per turn in space burned him out.
FW by 22; 2 (+22)
2nd Game: My DS vs. Ghetto Leader’s (1877) "LS Pile of Crap"
Well, it’s Greg and I playing against each other again, like we’ve done a zillion times before. I’m not believing his claim that his deck is just a "pile of crap", and he’s not believing my claim that this isn’t the same deck he saw me play last time. It starts out all joking around, but got serious quick. He started Obi’s Hut/Moisture Farm, and deployed Old Ben to the hut and started his march for the Chamber. I got Jabba/Boelo to the Chamber while looking for M’yoom, but since I can’t start No Bargain with this deck, EPP Luke snuck into the Chamber. He cut Boelo and Smoke Screen’ed the destiny so I couldn’t cancel it. So now the Chamber is empty, but I manage to M’yoom away about 4 characters on my next turn. That’ll help since he’s activating around 16-18 to my 13. I deploy Arica out to Ben’s site to block the drain, but eventually she got Sniper’ed and we had to battle to clear that site. Later we salvage enough characters together to have another battle at the Rancor Pit. I forget the long and short of it, but Dr. E got shot but still operated on Han, Snoova snagged R2/3PO, and Leia died to attrition. So we’re back to lockdown again. Snoova took R2/3PO to the dungeon, but then got smacked by EJP Lando. So r2/3po get freed, Boba Fett caps Lando, and he sets up a Gift. That’s it now. We’re down to about 12 cards apiece, and an empty table. Had I known he was playing zero space, I would’ve thrown Zuckuss at Carida for an annoying steady drain of 1 earleir in the game. So what we’ve got instead is Chall Beckan and a B’marr Monk blocking each other at the hut, EPP Leia and EJP Dengar chasing each other around the Moisture Farm. Except he’s got nothing but 5’s in his reserve deck so I won’t survive a battle, and he’s got 6 cards in his life force to my 5. So I’d lose if we timed out too. Since I didn’t want to screw my friend over with a timed win, I tried to at least track a six to kill Leia, but screwed up. So he battles me, I fire and miss, he mops me up.
FL by 6; 2(+16)
Game 3: My LS vs. Chris Lanci’s (1748) BHBM TIEs/Numbers
Well, I wasn’t worried when I saw BHBM revealed, figuring I have a Rebel Scout Luke in my deck for just such an occassion. So I started w/ business as usual, and went draining at Kessel to start my second turn. When I saw the three cards he lost, I got nervous. Twilek, Short Range Fighters, and a TIE cannon. I don’t think my deck could withstand a TIE Interceptor Swarm/Weapon firing/Mad retrieval type deck. Then to make matters worse, he dropped Tech M’or and inserted numbers. Of course, when he inserted I was only down 13 to 11 (Dash/Bantha Droid/Wedge), but the retrieval from the TIEs forced me to try to up his force loss by setting up a drain in the Cantina with some lower destiny guys. Of course then numbers pops and costs me 7. I fortify my drain at Kessel which leaves his TIEs where he had just beaten down Mirax at Tatooine. Of course, my objective (and Luke removing Vader from DB94) has his activation at 8 per turn, and it costs him 3 to drain at Tatooine. You’re not going to swarm anything with 5 force. So in addition to draining 3 at Kessel and 2 at the Cantina, I throw Theron Nett/Red 10 at Tatooine and move to his Wakeelmui to increase his TIE cost even further. He came down with all he could afford (a dreadnaught and a TIE Interceptor), intiated a battle and played All Power to Weapons to try to get a card for Insignificant Rebellion. He didn’t know I had a 6 tracked for Theron’s "destiny to power", so we ended up flush at 11, no attrition. My turn, I initiate again with the same stacked 6, and hit him for 2 more cards. Finally all the drains catch up with him, and I get a narrow win by 11. This LS deck doesn’t win big, but it does keep rolling out the victories.
FW by 11; 4 (+27)
4th Game: My DS vs. Chris Lanci’s (1748) Jedi Test 6/Space Beats deck.
I had no idea early who was going to win this game. So first turn I drop Ephant at the Exec:DB, and lose the top card of my reserve to my own objective. Oh look, it was Scum. It doesn’t matter. He loses one a turn while he’s training, and I start running M’yoom. Meanwhile, I deploy No Escape to get back my Scum, then deploy Scum and a bunch of aliens to set up S&D. This was a problem for him, because his deck wants to wait until the tests are completed, retrive ten, and then beat you silly. Meanwhile, the threat of losing the characters to M’yoom is forcing him to deploy or discard characters before he is ready to. He threw out an Obi, and deployed a Jedi Luke and Wedge to the Pit of Carkoon to avoid M’yoom the next turn. I capture Wedge with IG and kill Jedi Luke, but I can’t dump Wedge in the dungeon to retrive 2, because it’s D*2 Wedge, and that would flip my objective. So I just sit around outside, hitting him with the objective and S&D, and M’yoom-ing away about another 3-5 characters from his hand. He completes Test 5, but by then it’s too late. Even with retrieving 10, my Court deck just nickel-and-dimed him to death. Objective, AC drain, S&D, etc., it was just a little too much for a slow moving deck. We had one more battle where Clash and Test 2 prevented me from drawing destiny, but he had to chuck his characters just to cover the battle damage. Finally, as we were the last game of the tourney, Chris draws up to prevent any more differential change.
FW by 23; 6 (+50)
So Greg wins (that bastard) with 6 (+52), and I take second with 6 (+50). Two lousy points. Oh well, he deserved to win anyway, he did beat me head-to-head. Brian Kim also went 3-1 to take third, followed by Chris and Kim at 2-2, and then three townies were something like 3-9 because eventually they all played each other and somebody had to win. I had a splitting headache since every game was a tough one, but all-in-all enjoyed the day. You can’t go wrong hangin’ out with Brain Kim and Ghetto Leader, they’re some funny muthaf*ckas. Of course Greg got gipped because Decipher still didn’t send Nate the foils from the last tourney, but what are ya gonna do, it’s Decipher.
Peace.....