mirkwood-rocks-rochester-4-28-01
Title: mirkwood-rocks-rochester-4-28-01
Author: Joshua "Stormcrow" Grace
Date: May 1, 2001
Friday night, I went to playtest with Justin Alfs and Garrett Larson at the house belonging to Justin. Hoping to win a tournament again after having gone the past two or three weeks without winning at Mirkwood, I decided to slap together my reliable Jedi training and Agent of the Black Sun decks. Justin had built a Jedi training deck that was nearly a mirror image of my own that Garrett was going to use. They played two or three games so that Garrett could figure out the ins and outs of Jedi training, but Garrett lost first to his BHBM deck, played by Justin, and then to the SYCFA deck Justin had built. During this time, I attempted to build a Raw Deal deck using Jericho and High Risk maneuvers. It stunk. Meanwhile, Garrett kept losing with the Jedi training and was starting to condemn the deck. But he blamed his losses on the fact that both decks were tailor-built to beat MWYHL. That sounded like a challenge to me, so I dug out my Jedi training deck and beat Garrett, using his BHBM, by 6 force. Certainly, it was not the most convincing win in the world, but then again, I proved to myself, at least, that BHBM was no auto-loss either.
Saturday morning, Garrett and Justin swing by my place at about eight-thirty, and we head off to Rochester, listening to the Vandals and then Tool. I liked Tool better than the Vandals, but I confess that some of the Vandals stuff was funny. Sitting in the back seat while music was playing, it was hard to hear the conversations those two were having, so I immersed myself in the book I had brought with, Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.
Finally, we arrived at Face the Music, and I dug out my decks.
Light side was Save You It Can, Apocalyptic.
Dark side was Graces Vengeance.
We had 24 players attending.
Game 1, my Vengeance versus Josh L. and his Jabbas Palace start.
I asked Josh if he had an objective, and he said no. I asked him if he had a starting interrupt, and he said no. It had been stolen out of his locker. Hmm. I felt bad already, realizing that this game was going to be a bit of a slaughter. And it was. I just set up bunches of stuff at my docking bays and used Dangerous Time to manipulate away most of his characters. By the time he put Luke at a battleground site, I was already draining for 6 to his 1. It was simply a matter of time.
FW by 23. 2, +23.
Game 2, my Save You It Can, Apocalyptic versus Brad Stebbins, MKOS with Myo.
Brad was from Iowa, so if nothing else, I had a chance to play against someone I did not normally get to play. He put early pressure on me with drains and Search and Destroy while I set up my tests and then finally got Captain Han and Leia with Blaster to the Lower Corridor to stop Search and Destroy.
He paid to drain on his next turn, apparently lacking the cards in his hand to make Han and Leia suffer, then he drew a few. That gave me time to continue testing and deploy Obi with Saber to back up his pals at the Lower Corridor. On his next turn, Brad played Scum and First Strike, deployed Mara, 4Lom, Dengar and Dr E and Ponda and battled. He did not have enough force to retrieve because of Aim High, but he blanked Leia with 4Lom and played Jabbas Through with You. I paid my force to play I Know. I still had enough force left to use 2 to force a redraw, but both his shots at Han missed. I swung and hit Mara. I ended up losing Han and Leia, which was good because now I could deploy them at Kessel in the Falcon. He lost his entire force at the site.
He stung me for a couple more force loss while I completed my testing, but I retrieved some with On the Edge and then retrieved all but my starting interrupt when I completed Test 5, stacking a permanent 0 or 7. I abused that destiny on my next turn by deploying Lando with Axe against a lone Myo, then picking Luke up into my hand and deploying him against Myo and using Nabrun to get Obi at the site as well. A Ghhk prevented the battle from ending the game.
On his turn, Brad could only pay 6 to drain for 2 and consolidate his forces. I did not matter, though, because I used 2 during my control phase to grab Nabrun, drained for 5, and used Nabrun to get Obi, Lando and Luke to the Audience Chamber for free. They proceeded to clear it out except for Boelo who was excluded. On my next turn, another free Nabrun and another battle ended the game. God bless Nabrun Leids.
FW by 24. 4, + 47.
Garrett, Justin and I went for lunch at Boston Market, and all too late did I realize that I could order a meal of sides. The mashed potatoes were good. The salad that I ordered was just too much roughage. But I am still a little kid, so I enjoyed mixing various flavors of pop together at the fountain.
At some point, maybe this point, I check out Timm Halversons trade binder, and I go, Oooo! when I see Choke Lords for trade. Of course, I have nothing he wants. But I store this information in the back of my brain.
Game 3, my Vengeance versus Graham Neal, QMC.
Graham is a cheeseball. So I fully expected Mr Cheese to play a deck that would be nearly identical to Josh Kohmans QMC that handed my Vengeance its only loss in a game where I could not get either of my retrieval killers. That game had prompted me to switch out a card for another Twilek, so against Graham I got both Something Special and Secret Plans out in the first few turns. Meanwhile, I continually manipulated his Lukes out of his hand, and Luke never hit the table. I set up on the ground and did not pay to drain, due to Battle Plan, for much of the beginning of the game, choosing instead to just cause my 2 direct damage from Xixor and the Emperor and draw for a beat-down squad. I managed to play A Dangerous Time for each of the first 5 turns or so, allowing me to know exactly when Graham was going to have all 3 of his Paths of Least Resistance in his hand. Conveniently, this was just after he had deployed 3 characters at three locations to flip his objective. I activated and then Monnoked his escape cards away. Then I proceeded to kill each of his three characters and cause some overflow. Even though I had to pay to drain, I remained in complete control of the ground, while Graham had only Cloud City and Bespin under his influence. The game ended shortly.
Against Vengeance, no Luke equals quick death.
FW by 27. 6, +74.
Game 4, my Save You It Can, Apocalyptic versus Seth van Winkle, SYCFA Ties.
Okay, so after one of the St. Cloud tournaments, I told Zach Stenerson that the key to beating SYCFA was taking control of the Death Star docking bay. Somebody gave me a star off in the review, or something, because, apparently, I should not give advice to players as good as Zach. Hmmm, okay. But, not wanting to be a hypocrite, that was my established goal. I would take control of the docking bay and force Seth to pay 3 for each of his drains with Battle Plan.
Unfortunately, Seth got one of those opening hands that included an Emperor Palpatine. Fine, then. It did not however, include a battleground system. So he set up Palpatine and drew for systems for a couple of turns while I went through the initial tests. Finally, he set up ties at Kiffex and Sullust, but I had Obi with Saber, Melas and an Advantage in my hand. They met Papatine at the docking bay. Obi got barriered, and I grabbed that. On his next turn, Seth deployed a couple of back-up Ties and battled. Obi sliced the dark jedi. Melas covered the attrition, and Obi took Advantage of the situation.
Seth paid to drain at his two systems for a turn or two while I continued to work through my Jedi tests. Then, when I had enough force saved, I deployed the SuperFalcon at Sullust and I Will Take the Leader and battled, crushing a Tie and causing some amount of overflow. Sadly, I had lost Legendary to an earlier drain, planning to retrieve it, so the Falcon just sat at Sullust being an ordinary SuperFalcon rather than a Legendary one. That was okay, though, since on his next turn, Seth replaced my AO with his own, deployed a Tie and Laser Cannon and blasted away my Falcon. Now, I realize that if I had saved my 2 force like a good monkey, when Seth drew the tracked 5 or 6 that he had at the bottom of his reserve deck to hit the Falcon, I could have forced a redraw and ended the game right then.
Instead, the Falcon died, and I lost Obi to a battle with Merrek and Mara. Both of them died, too, of course. But Luke minded all that he had learned, and it saved him. Drawing a 7 for Test 5, I then pulled Luke into my hand during my deploy phase with Test 6 and set him back down in Red 5 along with I Will Take the Leader to crush that pesky Tie interceptor with its feeble laser for a few overflow. Meanwhile, to my delight, primarily because it disproved the comments Justin Alfs made about how Squassin was crap in my deck, I scrapped Insight to grab it. During my control phase I used 2 force to search for a card, verified that both Captain Han and the Falcon were in my reserve, grabbed Han and drained at Sullust, forgetting, again, to cause 2 damage at the beginning of my turn with Test 6. Grr. Anyway, I flash Han to grab the Falcon and deploy him against the two Ties belonging to Seth at Kiffex. I then flew Luke over to Kiffex as well, just in case. Unfortunately, due to the untimely departure of Obi, this move cost me 6 force since Come Here You Big Coward prevented the retrieval I intended to pull off before pulverizing his last Tie. We battled, and I demolished his 2 Ties, choosing to make my destiny 14 instead of 0 or 7 like I could have. Grr, again. No matter how we tried, Seth and I were unable to make the battle damage any less than the rest of his deck.
FW by 19. 8, +93.
At this point, only three players were left undefeated, Tim Halverson, Dion Erbes and myself. I got paired against Tim, and Dion squared off against Garrett.
Game 5, my Vengeance versus the WYS that Tim built.
I played against this deck before, using an ISB ground pounder. That was a tough game because I ended up eating a bunch of force loss to Order to Engage, AFA and attrition in space battles. My Vengeance deck had significantly less power, so I knew I would have to play intelligently.
Fortunately, though I failed to draw a Barrier in my first hand, a first turn Monnok revealed that Tim did not have anything with which to come kill my Xixor. So I moved the Dark Prince to the generic docking bay and started the pain. I did not have a Dangerous Time in my hand first turn, but I got to verify his deck when he failed to find a docking bay. I saw a whole lot of doubles and three, all three I presumed, of his Lukes in the reserve. No Tunnel Visions. That was good.
Tim inserted AFA, and there was a slight delay while he had to get a sticker or something to mark the back of my opaque sleeve. Earlier, Garrett and I had decided that, while a player receiving an insert must present a marked sleeve, that the player using the insert should be prepared to present a cheek to be slapped. But Tim is a good guy, and AFA is not the worst of the inserts, so it was okay. I got the AFA shuffled into the deck, and Tim cut it to the top. So, we tried again. Given all the shuffling I could do with the various ways to search my deck, I managed to keep the AFA from bothering me for several turns.
Meanwhile, I moved away from the generic docking bay when I saw Ounee Ta sitting in Tims force pile. Xixor, who had been hanging out with Palpatine for protection, moved ot the Cantina. The Emperor remained at the Tatooine docking bay. Tim revealed the Outrider to get Dash with Squassin, but both copies of Dash were sitting at the bottom of his force pile. On his next turn, he flashed Mirax and deployed her in the Pulsar Skate at Kessel. I responded, on the turn AFA popped, by attacking her on my next turn with Bossk and Zuckuss in their respective ships.
Tim inserted another AFA, and that came up quickly. I lost my 4 force, but the game was still decidedly lopsided. Tim drew a bunch, and I played Monnok used. However, he managed to retain a Jedi Luke which he deployed along with two Raltir Freighter Captains to the Cantina. I stopped Luke with a Barrier, so his two RFCs were ineffectual against the Dark Prince. On my turn, then, I deployed Snoova with an Axe, Fett with Blaster and Guri or something. Snoova captured Luke, Fett shot one of the Raltir Freighter Captains, and it was my power of 33 to his power of 4. The RFC with forfeit only went for 3 since his objective was on its zero side. That was game.
FW by 29, I think. 10, +122.
Dion won his game against Garrett. I thought that was cool. Dion has not typically done that well. The pairings at the top two tables remained the same since no one among the players with 3 wins surpassed Garretts differential. This meant that if I won the last game, I would win the tournament since my differential was still significantly larger than that of Dion. However, if I lost, the tournament was still up for grabs between Tim and Dion and myself. The last win against Tim made it unlikely he would surpass me in differential, but I had to tell Dion that I was rooting for Garrett. No, actually, I had to tell Dion that I was rooting against him. Too bad, since as I already said, Dion is a nice guy who was having one of his best tournaments ever. But all is fair in love, war and SWCCG.
Okay, all is not fair in SWCCG. All is fair that does not directly contradict the rules. But that still leaves lots of room for being a total jerk to your opponent, and I am quite against that, too. That is not fair in the aesthetic sense. So all is fair that does not contradict the rules nor underwhelm the sense of honor and sportsmanship that even a single-cell amoeba could understand.
Right. So, anyway.
Game 6, my Save You It Can, Best Ever versus the Hunt Down belonging to Tim.
Even when it faces a disfavorable match up, my deck loves me. I started Insight instead of the speed training effect since I could scrap it either for Honor or the speed trainer. But my deck gave me an opening hand OOC and TT. I waited until Tim had passed his deploy phase and played it. I set up my Jedi training while Tim deployed Vader, his Saber and a Presence to the Death Star docking bay. Crud. That was a lot of draining early.
Fortunately, he had to pay to drain, and Test 1 was completed in short order. When he searched for a second Visage, I scrapped Insight to pull Honor since I had already played The Signal to get my speed trainer. Can anyone remember the name of that effect? I never can, and I have used it a million times.
Nonetheless, I sat around eating drains for a while. Tim played an early Imperial Command while I did not have a grabber in my hand, so I knew to be careful about space. However, he deployed to Carida with just Fett in his ship. By that time, he also had the Emperor draining on Cloud City, and the damage was getting to be too much to just take lying down. So Captain Han flew out to Carida in the Falcon but encountered a Barrier. I drew some cards hoping to find an I Know and did not. On his next turn, Tim deployed the Chimaera and a couple of pilots and battled. Either he did not have an Imperial Command or an Admiral because I was able to play Punch It! But my destiny stunk. 0, 6 and a 1. Uggh. He lost the Chimaera, and I lost Han, the Falcon, and a couple more. That really was not the way it was supposed to work.
I kept going through my tests with determination, telling myself that all the force drain that I was suffering was going to be okay. It would all be okay. When I drew the Lower Corridor, I put Obi there and played an On the Edge. But Tim grabbed it. That meant I would only be able to play one more. I had to time it carefully.
Tim politely reminded me that my Lower Corridor was not quite as safe as I thought it was when he moved several characters over from the CC docking bay on his next turn. Oh yeah, I remembered, the Lower Corridor is on CC. So we played a bit of cat and mouse on CC until, on the turn I was going to complete Test 5, I verified that Secret Plans was really, truly, honestly, not in play. I verified to myself that it was my turn. Recalling the deployment rules of effects into my mind, I verified, also, that Tim would be unable to play Secret Plans during my turn. Cool, I thought. I was going to get to retrieve for free. Obi ran away again, I completed Test 5, stacked a permanent 6 because I had been too sloppy to get a 7, and I retrieved.
The retrieval put me ahead in life force, and with all my Jedi tests through 5 completed, I knew I would win. It was just a matter of time. I decided to make a stand at the Lower Corridor, deploying Captain Han, Leia with Blaster and Luke to back up Obi-wan. The battle saw the death of the Dark Lord, but before he died, Lord Vader had managed to hit Farmboy with a fatal saber blow. Nonetheless, Obi, Han and Leia all survived and were able to chase Xixor, who up to this point had been dragging with all the arrogance befitting a Dark Prince, around like a scared rat while paying to drain away the rest of his life force. I tracked a 7 with my Traffic Control and played On the Edge to retrieve Luke. However, despite the fact that I spent the rest of the game paying to drain, drawing and recycling cards with Traffic Control, I was unable to get my hands on Luke.
I ended up winning with my tests suspended. It was okay, though. It was not the first time Luke foolishly rushed into combat on Cloud City after an extended stay on Dagobah.
FW by 11. 12, +133.
And this is where props go out to Peter Jacobson and Face the Music because there was bunch of cool stuff for prize support. Everyone got a copy of the Scrye which reported on the alleged top 100 ccgs of all time, but, better yet, the Scrye included a starter deck of Warlords. More on that later. Also, all of the top 12 got a starter of Jedi Knights, and those that already owned some passed the decks down to the next places. The top 4 all got box topper foils, and for first place I got a Japanese Foil Vader, a foil Sense, a pack of Reflections II and a mad keen bowling trophy 68 – 70. Yeah. Rock on.
So Garrett and I opened our Scryes to play Warlords. Then we decided to each get another Scrye and add double our deck sizes. Then we decided to make up some rules and play since neither of us felt like actually reading the rules. I declared that Japanese Foil Vader was my Warlord, and Garrett opted to make Palpatine his. Combat was fast and furious, but the decisive factor was the ungodly number of Chain Lightnings that Garrett managed to draw, charring Vader, causing two wounds each. Vader just could not stand up to that kind of abuse, and I lost.
Then I played a game of Jedi Knights against Dion. Hmm, I should qualify that statement. Dion played a game of Jedi Knights. I got played. My starter deck proved it did not have as many rares as Dions deck had, and I lost convincingly.
Garrett, Justin and I drove back north after the tournament, and the car went silent after, at one point, I delineated the basic tenets of the biological concept of the Love Map.
Oh, yeah, one last thing. I managed to trade my foil Sense along with a foil Alter for the Choke Lord I had my eye on in the trade binder belonging to Tim. So I got two Vaders in one day. Not bad for my three bucks.
Joshua "Stormcrow" Grace