origins-2001-weekend-report-part-1
Title: origins-2001-weekend-report-part-1
Author: Ted "Rogue15" Panczyszyn
Date: Jul 9, 2001
Episode I
Prelude
Ahhh, this is the weekend I plan for for 6 months then it is over before I know it!! I’ll give a little background, talk about the tournaments I played in (and ran) then wrap it up. The tournament detail will be sketchy..In fact, I played 12 new people and lost to most of them!! I’d rather focus on the community part of the weekend to support why this is the best card game ever!!
After making my reservations in January, I spent the two months leading up to Origins trying to figure out the Decipher Volunteer schedule and getting people to commit to sharing a room with me. Last year I had plenty of people for the room, but 2 of my regulars didn’t come this year. I also worked all 4 days last year, which left little time for gaming. I was hoping there would be a "2 0n, 2 Off" schedule which would let me play some and work some, but when the word was given that it was a 4-day commitment, I decided to make it a gaming weekend only. Nathan Brown, my usual roomie, Tom Heller, long-time e-friend and fellow SM puts out the call on the discussion board so he joins us. Decktech hound Dave Montiero also joins us for his first Con ever. A few people joined us for 1 night here and there, and the room was set.
Thursday, Day 1
I arrived at about 9am on Thursday to pick up my pre-reg packeet and see if I can check in. I had spent the first part of the week visiting family in Toledo, so I had a decent night’s sleep and a short drive to Columbus. As soon as I get my badge, Dave approaches me and says, "are you Ted?" We go check in and call Kim Caton’s room, get my bags from the car, and we start seeing people we know. We reorient the table in the room to suit ccg play, then Dave and I and his friend Jim Booger Booker play a few games. My dark deck is a pretty bad Surgeon deck, so I decide to change it later that night. First I had to wander the exhibition hall, visit with the Albanites, Decipher employees, and see all the regulars: Girard, Hays and Holman, Janiak, some Canadians, the NJ crew, and many other regulars!! I see Tom Heller working the Decipher booth and I tell him to find me later so I can give him a key and move him in. I shop around for some Tatooine ($60.00 for a box), some electric blue sleeves, and I bought a Darth Maul for $10.00 at another booth. I was getting sick of opening packs and getting shut out!!! I did, however, get the 2 Padme’s I needed for my set and the 2 additional "The Shield is Down" for my sad attempt at Lingrell’s Pod-Striking deck.
After opening my packs and sorting the box into R-L-D, I decide to see the Star Blazers Demo. If you are familiar with Battlefleet Gothic (Games Workshop) and Starfleet Battles, this is the same thing but based on my most favorite Anime show. The game was easy to learn, but there are a lot of time-consuming actions. We wrap up at about 6:15 after my team almost blows up the Argo (Yamamto) and I go looking for Tom H. I can’t find him, but I find Dave and Booker and we get some dinner and talk about the game and what we’d done all day. I excuse myself to go to the Volunteer Summit. For those of you that don’t know what that is, its a chance for D to share information from it’s "eyes and ears" to the gaming community. All the major games are represented and we talked a lot about the upcoming Lord of the Rings TCG that will be out later this year. Initial feedback is this game will rock!! There are some new playing dynamics that we haven’t seen as gamers yet, and some of the bugs are being worked out in playtesting as I type. Decipher’s marketing person is there, and she talks about all the Decipher products and how they support each other. As SW/ST/YJ/JK players we only see the tip of the iceberg!!! I find Tom there, so we head back to the room and everyone is working on decks. I decide to go to a SYCFA start with lot of charaters and blue. The 3/5 deck was great, but this gives me more force and I can get effects out from the start. It does well that night, so I complete my decklists and go to sleep confident that I will do OK.
Friday Day 2
I wake up at about 7:30am, shower, then head to the tournament area to register. I am the second person there and get a big 2 on my command card. I went around doing "Number 2" lines from Austin Powers for most of the day. At about 10:30, everyone is registered and pairing are made. This is where my TR will lose points, because I did not document any of these games. I played 8 different people that I didn’t know. My first game was my Pod Striking Deck against a Bounty/Scum deck. I realized about 2/3 through the game that he had Elis’ed his captives and I kicked myself in the butt many times!!! If I had caught that earlier it would have been a closer loss or maybe even a win. I lose by 20. My second game I was schooled by 29 by a WYS deck. (I am sooooo sick of WYS!! I played against 4 of them in that tournament!!). So I’m 0(-49) and I am thinking I can swim the sea of Jizz. I win my next 3 games but I never break into positive differential. Of significant note, while I was playtesting the night before I was contemplating removing Menace Fades from my deck. I told Tom that my gut said keep it in. This was a good move because some boy played an EV 9D9 deck!!! I was able to get it set up pretty quick, but my podracing and strike team was able to get some of my force back from a few early drains. I only ended up winning by 8-10 cards. At midday I am 3-2 and thinking that a 5-3 or 4-4 day is at hand. HA!!! Once again the sea is getting rough and I end up losing my last 3 games. I have no complaints about anything!! They were great games, except for the last one where the boy was activating while I was moving... Every turn I had to ask him (nicely at first...) to not do that!! It took me forever to OOC his Vader... I got almost everyone else... but not Vader!!! He beat me by 27, but when I did the math something magical happened: My final differential was -69!!!! It was my dream come true!!!
(Interlude: for those of you that demand to know how this helps your game, here is that part: remember to follow the rules (eg Elis business from game 1), read the cards, and spend time with your cards. Don’t just slap decks together that you see others playing. I did not playtest as well as I should have if I was serious about winning. I had a lot of fun and my success rate was proportional to the amount of effort I put into it. I’m going to gamble that TJ and Clint played those decks for hours before their final versions were made.)
So after 8 games, 11 hours, 106 players starting, 30 players dropping (bums!!!), Rich and Bojo give out the prize support (I got a foil Rebel Barrier!! woohoo!!) and TJ and Clint duel it out. I heard they were playing the same decks so I bet it was just loads of fun. From what I saw and heard, they exchanged wins but Clint had the edge on differential. This was a repeat of the 1999 Origins final too!! Not too bad!!
I had posted a tournament for right after the open, so I recruited folks to play in that, including Open judge Rich Haman and myself, we had 18 people start. Since it was 9:30 when we started and people were tired from the Open, there was a lot of attrition. I lost my first 2 (and only games). We had 2 people drop after 1 game and 1 person dropped after 2, so I dropped to even it out. After 3 games we had 5 more people drop, but it was 6 on one side and 3 on another, so three more people dropped anyway. Only 6 people finished, but everyone had a good time. We were able to keep an eye on the final duel and other people came over to hang out... the only drawback is that it was 1:30 when we ended and we were all beat!!
Final Standings from my tournament:
1. Rich Haman 4-0 8(47)
2. Jim Booker 3-0 6(67)
3. Erich Butzlaff 3-1 6(47)
4. Kim Caton 3-1 6(12)
5. Dave Monteiro 2-2 4(32)
6. Paul Tartaglio 2-1 4(29)
7. Chris Gogolen 2-1 4(10)
8. Aaron Littlejohn 2-1 3(45)
9. Jim Sells 2-2 3(23)
10. Sharrod Blatter 1-2 2(-4)
11. Alex Klammrodt 1-2 2(-13)
12. George Gundry 1-3 2(-31)
13. Lee Fisk 1-2 2(-51)
14. Mark Davis 0-1 0(-29)
15. TD Masta P 0-2 0(-29)
16. Mike Rhodedoeck 0-1 0(-30)
17. Blake Mandalis 0-1 0(-54)
18. Brad Hilton 0-3 0(-71)
Interesting Statistics: Most LS decks were WYS. Out of 27 games played in my tournament, 17 wins were by the light side... A few of us talked about that afterwards and what is it with WYS that makes it so powerful...
I was hoping to get to bed after that, but we stayed up to 4am talking and playing cards and Nathan had arrived with some of my favorite beverages. I’ll close this report on that note and finish the weekend story later. Thanks for reading!!
Ted Panczyszyn
Rogue 15
"The most feared TD in Coruscant"