holt-michigan-4-22-2001
Title: holt-michigan-4-22-2001
Author: Andrew "Gwaihir" Ehret
Date: Apr 24, 2001
Ok so the night before this tournament my usual driver Jim West tells me he has some violin performance gig in Ann Arbor, so Im getting kind of panicky. So I post on www.screwy.net, which is the state of Michigan SWCCG BBS that I need a ride and come up with one at the last minute thanks to East Lansings highest rated player Ed Rebman (1882 in 172 games).
So Ed is going to pick me up at 10:30 the next morning and there was some kind of mix-up cause I get back from breakfast and I have this message on my machine saying, “this is Ed, its 10:30 and I am leaving in 5 minutes”. I look at my watch and it says like 10:19 so maybe I need to replace the battery after 4 years of use. So I sprint down the stairs and see Ed is still there and get in his car and its like 10:28 on his car clock. I think he was just anxious to play in his first tournament in the last couple of months and was eager to go.
I find out Ed was up late the previous night playing some game called “beer pong” which involves heavy drinking and he was very good at it. This is consistent with his reputation as East Lansings own Lando. So anyways hes got cool music playing in his car and he also shares some interesting thoughts with me on how his light side kicks @#$% and what its packing. I secretly make a wish that I dont play that deck today cause it would own me. He did end up going 2-0 with it.
So we arrive at Daggetts with 10 minutes to spare and I look around the store and notice something interesting. The majority of the normally docile Ann Arbor scene got motivated and drove over so this is going to be a tough tournament. Notables include 1900+ players Joseph Giannetti and David Lankton.
My decks:
LS – A VERY old WYS deck. The only change I made was some stupid artoo+threepio tech that turned out to do nothing during the tournament.
DS – An ISB space deck that is also very old and expected.
What was I thinking, here are all these good players who are going to know exactly what I am doing and Im going to get my butt kicked.
Game 1. LS vs. Joseph Giannetti Huntdown Dueling (rating: 1928)
My WYS last loss was to a Huntdown so I am feeling really unhappy about this matchup. Then he starts shuffling and hes like got his deck carefully sorted and hes sorting his cards into 6 separate piles each with about 2 characters, 3 interrupts, 2 ships etc… Well I wasnt too happy with this and made a big deal about getting him to shuffle correctly and he was getting kind of angry. Maybe to try to throw me off a little more he leaves his 2 copies of Janus outside his deck and then inserts one into the top and bottom after shuffling. Well I am getting tired of @#$%ing and this is taking like 10 minutes so I just let it go and get the game started.
First turn he drops Vader to the Cantina and I put Captain Han in the Falcon at Kessel. About three turns later I have an awesome hand, for some reason I drew like every character in the deck with permanent weapon, and I attack the Emperor and Janus at the docking bay with Luke with saber, Lando with blaster, and an RFC. Now I start playing retarded and this leads to more arguments. I have Draw Their Fire out and make him lose to it but he still force lightnings my Lando without spending any force. For some moronic reason, maybe because Ive only been awake for an hour, I let him do it and lose Lando. I also forgot to flip my objective before destiny and this makes things even worse. About the time of destiny I notice all this and start getting mad at both him and myself. In the end I dont get to flip and only get one destiny draw but I argue my Lando back to life. He loses Palpatine and I lose Lando+RFC because I have crappy forfeit because I am not flipped. On his turn he moves over Dr.E+Ponda and DVDLOTS with saber to my Luke. My turn I sorry about the mess Vader, Joe spends some time trying to convince me choke Vader is defense value 8 (whats up with that?), and successfully hit him. Then I beat the crud out of Janus and Dr.E with Chewie and Luke. I accidentally played sorry about the mess/blaster pro from my lost pile on Janus even though its unique and I had already played it this turn, this game was so intense I was forgetting what my own damn cards did.
So anyways the battle damage severely weakens him and I Run,Luke,Run two duels which he would have won with tracked destiny draws. Full Win by 28
2(+28)
Game 2 DS vs. Chris Ohara WYS patrol crafts (rating: 1746)
Chris is a local who for some reason I completely dominate in tournament play going about 7-0 against him in our matchups. This game went exactly as any space versus patrol craft game would go. I won space due to the fact that he flashed Gold Squadron 1 and had to deploy artoo+threepio as the matching pilot, laugh. Without space to add in celebration retrieval and Ill take the Leader force drain bonuses patrol crafts are just a stupid drain of one. So I ignored them and won big. For some reason Chris has amazingly bad luck against me in games, I can recall several other games with him and his decks were never poor, bizarre things just happened. Full Win by 24.
4(+52)
Game 3 LS vs. David Lankton SYCFA ties and star destroyers (rating: 1917)
David earned big time rating points recently by performing well at the DPC in Normal beating high profile players including Yannick. Dave turned out to be maybe the most polite, to the letter of the rules, player I have ever played. He placed his deck on my side of the table after every search offering a cut, he shuffled his deck really randomly like I do, and counted his force and hand out loud whenever he counted them. This is the style of gameplay I aspire to achieve, it makes for the best tournament matchups. I even began going out of my way to try to remember his cards too, like paying +1 force to move to Wakeelmui during my draw phase because we both forgot it during until I read his card.
This game was decided really quickly with some battles involving the Outrider and Dash versus the Chimera and Thrawn at Tatooine. After a few conflicts his Imperial Commands wore out and he started taking heavy losses. As a last ditch effort he threw down an Interceptor with a tie cannon only too spend 6 force shooting and miss the outrider twice (he drew two very unlucky destinies of 1). My Outrider laid claim to Wakeelmui (ties deploy +2) and he only activated 1 force at the death star system so he was choked into only playing 2 ties a turn and he never recovered. Full Win by 28.
6(+80)
Game 4 DS vs. A Daggetts employee Ive never met before playing the TDs CC deck.
My opponent and I were both undefeated so I made sure not to underestimate him going into the final round of this four game tournament. It wasnt a very interactive game, he ran away from me in space with the Outrider while draining at four different CC sites with a power main at each. My drains at the systems turned out to be greater. As a result he began losing several battle interrupts I havent seen in decks including Gamblers Luck and I Dont Need Their Scum Either. I drew up a larger then normal handsize to protect myself against possible unknown tricks but it turned out there were none he was just losing them because he had never played the deck and didnt know what they did either. I ticked myself off by drawing an Ozzel I retrieved for battle destiny. Why was I not tracking? Turned out to be the closest game I played all day differential wise. Full Win by 15.
8(+95)
Ed, my ride and the third undefeated, lost in the last round. As a result I was the only undefeated at the end, and there were roughly 6 people that finished 3-1. This is my second 4-0 at Daggetts, Im going to have to do more of my buying there to make sure this kickass place keeps holding SWCCG events.
Results (Sorry I couldnt remember them all)
1st Andrew Ehret (4-0) *ME*
2nd Joseph Giannetti (3-1)
3rd David Lankton (3-1)
4th Chris Ohara (3-1)
-Hmm kind of interesting that in winning I defeated places 2,3, and 4. Those kinds of matchups rarely happen at an 18 person 4 game tourney.
Now for the Prizes! Big thanks to Daggetts and Russ the TD for an amazing amount of prize support for only $5 a head. I didnt memorize this huge list I got it off of someones web post.
1st place – voucher for a free box of Tatooine on the release date (WOOHOO!)
2nd place - UR foil Mara Jade and some packs
3rd place - Rare foil General Solo and some packs
4th place - Lord Vader and some packs
5th place – EPP Fett Foil and some packs
6th place – Obi-Wan Foil and some packs
7th place - foil Son of Skywalker and a pack
Props:
-Ed for dominating with a light deck that is not WYS or HB.
-Screwy.net for helping me find a ride at 1:00am the night of the tourney.
-Dave Lankton for being the most honorable of SWCCG players
-Russ for the big prize support
Slops:
- Jim for playing his violin for $400 instead of attending the tournament, get your priorities straight dude, laugh.
- Me for playing Sorry about the Mess/Blaster Pro twice in the same turn.
- Me for drawing an Ozzel for destiny I could have tracked
- Me for playing tired decks everyone was expecting; I am changing them BIG time before states. Maybe even different objectives.
I wrote this long report because after writing like 5 different exam essays in the last few days I needed to write something that actually interests me.
Hope to see everyone at States this Saturday April 28th, remember you need a decklist.
Andrew “Gwaihir” Ehret
ehreta@msu.edu