maybe-i-dont-suck-at-this-game-afterall
Title: maybe-i-dont-suck-at-this-game-afterall
Author: Andy "Solo337" McClure
Date: Jul 30, 2001
"Maybe I don’t suck at this game afterall-" DPC Warm-up tournament.
--Pre-tourny junk
Well, as some of you may know, in the last 4 months I have played next to no SWCCG, and the DPC was approaching fast. Now I really wanted to win some cash, so as soon as baseball summer season ended (about 2 weeks ago), I decided I needed some serious practice if I wanted to do decent. So I went to a couple tournaments, and didn’t exactly clean up (3-1 both times), put in a few extra play testing sessions with my friends, and forced my bro to play more than he wanted to. I was playing alright, but I HATED my DS deck (my version of Brangus racing) because podracing is the gayest thing in the game, ESPECIALLY DS. My LS was a cool QMC I’ve been playing since Tatooine came out, but it had serious problems against HD racing, and was pretty much an auto-loss to TIEs, so I decided to build WYS even though I hate it. I posted it yesterday, so go check it out, it’s called "Brooke Burke is HOT!"
For DS I had nothing. I didn’t like Brangus, and my version didn’t perform as well as I’d like. I had a cool DS Shaft/Walker Gasrrison deck, which killed QMC and Rebel Strike Team, but had problems with WYS, and then it happened. Brian Hunter submitted his MKOS, and I fell in love. I’ve always loved DS mains, and I had toyed around with several weaker versions, but his MKOS was solid as anything, and absolutely destroyed WYS. I made some changes to suit me (added another character or 2, a Lateral Damage, which Hunter hadn’t put in there for no apparent reason, and second barrier, and maybe some more changes), and it absolutely wrecked everything I played with it. I do hate to copy decks, but all the ones I built myself sucked, and $1000 is huge, so I didn’t mind.
With the lack of practice I’ve had over the past 4 months, I had NO expectations coming into this weekend. I told myself I’d be happy if I went 3-1 in the warm up and 5-3 in the DPC, which is much lower than I would normally expect of myself, but I didn’t wanna screw up and expect too much.
We leave around 1 on Friday and get lost a little in Atlanta, but show up about a half hour before the warm up tourny is supposed to start. My mom took me and my bro, and my friend Ben in the big van, and the whole way down we laughed and joked about the worst cards in the game, and I’m pretty sure we all decided that the single worst card in SWCCG is Manuver Check. We also joked about how I seemed to be an unstoppable SWCCG machine whenever I wore my hat backwards when I play, and played much worse with my hat off or facing forwards, so I told them to remind me to put it backwards if they saw me playing with it the wrong way.
We show up a little early and get signed up, and learn to our delight that we don’t need decklists for the warm up, and we also learn it won’t be sanctioned. "Sweet," I told my bro and Ben, "less rating points lost for me this weekend."
A lot of good players are there, including Charlie Herran, Mike Kessling, Clint Hays and Steven Lewis, but Clint, Charlie and Kessling end up playing Raw Deal rather than SW. For one of the players there, this would be his first tournament, and a couple guys sat around joking about how much they wanted to play him first round. The warm up gets underway with about 16 people playing.
End pre-tourny junk--
Note: I don’t wanna spend forever on the non-sanctioned warm-up tourny TR, so the games will have a little less detail than some of my previous TRs, so please don’t count me off too bad. Expect a little more detail in the actual DPC TR.
Game 1: My version of Brian Hunter’s MKOS vs. Eric #1’s EBO X-wings
I played 2 Erics during this tournament, and I forgot their last names, so this one will be Eric #1. As it turns out, this is the guy who had never played before today. I get a pretty good opening draw, and deploy Xizor to the Chamber first turn, pull the Executor with Mob Points and save a force. He does the usual pulling sites and effects with ANSB, and draws. 2nd turn I play Imp Command to get Ozzel and put him at the Lower Passages, knowing he’ll be safe with the Barrier and Ghhhk in my hand, and deploy Gailid to the AC with its once per game text. He pulls a guy with Echo Base Garrison, and a site and EBO, drops a site from hand and sets up EBO with a couple EBG scrubs and an X-wing to the DB. My turn I drain for 4, Twi-lek for and deploy Search and Destroy and drop Aurra to Jabba’s Palace, and leave Ozzel alone at the Passages, then save a bunch of force. He gets Hoth and puts Haven on it and sets up a fleet there. I drain 6 and drop Executor and the Chimera with Thrawn on it to Hoth (yes I did have 28 force) to block the drain, and he loses to Search and Destroy. The rest of the game, he put up a fair fight in space, and even managed to blow up the Executor, but my damage was far to much for him to take for very long, and I won by like 28.
FW 2(+28)
Game Highs: I love this MKOS deck, and it did what it should on the ground while holding its own in space against EBO.
Lows: I didn’t really wanna play the guy who had never played before, but whatever.
Game 2: Brooke Burke Is HOT (WYS) vs. David Akers’ SYC Manip deck
Now first off, let me just say that David Akers is the founder of decktech (which wins him MAJOR coolness points), a good SW player, and an all around cool dude, but he does have one serious flaw. As I found out Saturday, he is the B.astard that deleted my all time favorite deck ever posted to Decktech, Techmo. (David, if you are reading this, I am only joking. I love you, I love Decktech and I agree that you should have deleted it. Please do not kick me off Decktech) Most of you probably know what I’m talking about, but that was the most broken deck ever submitted, and the coolest thing Clint Hays has ever done, and David deleted it before I had the chance to build it. He was able to defend his reasoning in deleting it, and I see his point, but that deck was AWESOME.
So the game gets started, and I just have a huge deck advantage over him. I mean, he’s playing SAC and scanning crews, and I’m playing 3 rebels in my whole deck and WYS (which nullifies SAC). He plays Scanning crew early, and gets nothing, then I reveal the Falcon to go get Han and set up in space. He plays Monnok and gets a couple Raiders, but then I play Nar Shadda and get the needed Raider to pilot my patrol craft and flip my objective, then proceeded to watch him pitch about 4 useless senses and a couple Alters. He plays Scanning Crew again and gets nothing, and right then I put back a useless podracing interrupt using Nekkid 3PO to draw a Jedi Luke and get him on the table. I set up celebration early and held Tatooine, and spread and drained with Reacts to protect me. My retrieval about matched his damage, and my drains finished him relatively quickly.
FW 2(+27)
Total: 4(+55)
Game Highs: Playing a really cool guy, and finally getting to meet the founder of Decktech (though I am sure I have seen him before somewhere....) Getting the cards I needed early, and being able to avoid being manipulated.
Game Lows: Nothing too bad.
So now I am feeling pretty good, and I haven’t done anything too scrubby all day. Me and a couple friends go grab some food at a GAY Mexican place where the woman could barely speak english, and the whole menu was in spanish. I went up to the counter and ordered a Carne Asada Taco, I think, and I the woman said something along the lines of, "YU WAN tacocarneasadaothedsaikopdjiojahyethe?" I was like, "huh?" and she said, " YU WAN DE carneasadadhsajkdhsajkhdas O DE TACO??!!" So I was like, "Yes," and I’ sure that wasn’t the right answer, but I got a drink and some food that I hated and looked nothing even remotely like a taco at all and headed back to the tournament complaing about the Damn Dirty Mexicans :-)
Game 3: Brooke Burke is HOT vs. Eric #2’s (believe it or not) Lamda Class shuttle Corulag Operatives and podracing.
Well, as we sit down, he says something along the lines of, "So you’re THE Andy McClure, huh?" I was like, "Yeah, I guess, why?" he said something like he had heard a lot about me, and I asked where, and he said something about the "who’s who in SWCCG in the southeast." So I was like that is pretty cool, someone has heard of me. I’m a celebrity :-)
We get started and he starts the podrace, stalls me, gets a bad destiny, and draws a couple. I activate, pull my docking bay and draw a couple cards and save a couple. On his turn, he draws a Ghhhk for the podrace destiny and deploys 3 Ops to 3 different sites, and puts a Lambda class shuttle at each site, so I point out that you can’t deploy starships directly to sites, but it doesn’t matter because he can deploy them to the system and land for free. He flips 2nd turn, and I activate, reveal Mirax to get the Pulsar Skate and deployed it to the <> docking bay on Tatooine. I dropped Bacta Tank and Menace Fades and deployed a Raider in a Craft and Wedge to beat up his Shuttle/Op combo, and battle. I draw insanely high destinies (6, 6, 4 I think), and he draws low, and I lose Wedge to the Tank while he loses Op and ship and like 14 cards 2nd turn of the game. Ironically, he had a Ghhhk on his podracer, and I’m pretty sure he drew a Ghhhk for destiny in that battle. Apparently the deck was centered around big drains early, and Ghhhking any beatdowns, and using like 3-4 Knowledge and Defenses to prevent battles and buy free turns of draining. However, his strategy got a little messed up when he lost all his Knowledge and Defensives to that one battle. The rest of the game consisted of me dominating space, and reacting with Jedi Luke and a PC to block most of his ground drains and using Menace Fades to knock out his modifiers. Most every character I lost went to the Bacta Tank and came back next turn, and he drew insanely bad Race destinies (I think the best one he got was a 3), and I won the podrace and retrieved all but Heading For The Medical Frigate. The game ended with nothing but HFTMF and Anakin’s Pod in my lost pile. Also, an interesting side note on this game is that I think this is probably the only game I have ever played where I won without making my opponent lose even 1 card to a force drain. I controlled 2 or 3 locations every turn, but they were always 1 drain locations, and his Force Drain -1 blocked every single one of them.
FW 2(+34)
Total so far: 6(+89)
Game highs: Beating the MESS out of an Ops deck. I hate Ops, always have, always will. Winning the podrace is insanely cool, and winning without a Force Drain is definitely interesting.
Game Lows: Nothing comes to mind.
Me and my bro and Ben talk about my killer differential, and they check back to make sure I had been wearing my hat backwards the whole time, and sure enough I had, and that, they said, accounted for my huge wins.
Ok, so now me and Steven Lewis are the only 2 undefeated players, and thank goodness we are opposite sides, because I really enjoy playing Steven Lewis.
Game 4: Me and Brian’s MKOS vs. Steven Lewis’ Hidden Base X-wings
Ok, before I describe the game, let me give you a little background with me and Steven. The first time I ever met him was at DragonCon (I think) and I was playing my totally broken DS ISB Scum deck (on my page) with about 8 None Shall Passes, and I won. More recently, I played him (and beat him) with my broken Abyssins deck that ran about 3 or 4 None Shall Passes at the Birmingham Grand Slam.
So we sit down and start to talk a little, and I ask him how’s married life, and he says he still has a month until his wedding. So I feel kinda dumb and explain that my friend Clay had told me he was already married and for some odd reason I had believed that lier :-)
He starts Podrace Prep with the anti-SAC effect (I think) and I start IAO, Mob Points and decide to go with Something Special Planned For Them as my 3rd effect. I’m counting on the fact that he won’t have much beatdown in his deck, and I go down very, very early with some characters to the Palace, and pull Gailid 2nd turn to make the drains sting. He gets Rebel Fleet 1st hand (of course) and it ends up saving him probably 12 or more cards. He does his usual stuff early, deploying X-wings for free to Rendevous Point and moving them to Endor and all that stuff. Around 3rd or 4th turn I have Ghhhk and a barrier in my hand, and Xizor and Gailid (I think) at the Audience Chamber, and Mara with Saber at Jabba’s Palace, and I leave Ozzel alone in the Lower Passages. I Twi-Lek for Search and destroy, and it makes him pay all game long, with me only forgetting it 1 time that I know of. He gets Boussh blocking my drain of 3, and flips after a while, and my damage per turn is greatly reduced. He wins the podrace by a lot, and has 6 force saved, just enough to pay for Secret Plans. I go to space with Zuckess I think, and probe a couple places and can’t find his hidden base. He’s doing way more damage per turn than I am by this time, and he blows Zuckess up so I’m not probing like I should be. Finally I get Thrawn in the Executor to probe, and drop Battle Order, and finally found his Hidden Base on the next to last system so he can’t cancel anymore of my drains and I move the Executor to block his drain of 3 with a lone X-wing at Kessel. On his turn, he activates 13 I think, pays 3 to drain and drops Jedi Luke who kills Mara and occupies a site so he doesn’t have to pay anymore (but Jedi Luke is destiny 6 so he’s still losing to Search and Destroy), and has one force left. He attempts to move the Lone X-wing away from the big bad Executor, but I point out that it costs +2 force to move away from a Star Destroyed. Instead he moves another X-wing to Kessel, and during my turn I drain and drop the Lateral Damage I’ve been holding all game long and battle the 2 X-wings. We didn’t calculate the damage, because we both knew it was more than he had cards left, so I won by 14 I think.
FW 2(+14)
Total: 8(+103)
Game Highs: Playing Steven is always fun, and beating Hidden Base is awesome. You see, I have this big problem that I always say Hidden Base flip sucks, and I NEVER play it, but I always seem to end up losing to it at a lot of non-local tournaments for no apparent reason. Beating it, especially played by such a good player.
Lows: Well, it took me way to long to find his Hidden Base, but nothing too bad happened.
After the game, Steven asked me about leaving Ozzel alone all game, and asked what I was thinking. I told him that I had a barrier and a Ghhhk all game long, and he pointed out that he had Draw Their Fire, and at least one turn I had no force saved. I told him that it was a calculated risk, hoping that he wouldn’t have the force or the characters to beat him down, and he told me that he was holding Jedi Luke with Anakin’s Saber all game long, but recalled our last few games, and he said he KNEW I was holding that None Shall Pass. I laughed pretty hard, and pointed out that I had Ozzel and Mara in the Palace all game long, and None Shall Pass can’t be played unless no Imperials are in the Palace.
I walk back to the rest of the Huntsville crew, and without me saying anything one of them said, "You won, didn’t you?" I told them I did, and asked how they knew, and one of them pointed out, "Simple. We saw you playing and you had your hat backwards all game." They again told me I was unstoppable with my hat backwards, and I was begininning to believe them.
So I was in first place, and Neal Razi was in second, so the 2 of us had a little Final Confrontation. He told me ahead of time that he wouldn’t be playing in the DPC, so even if he won he would let me have the $25, so it was a very informal couple of games. I am too tired to go into much detail, but I’ll give a summary anyway.
Game 1 of FC: Brooke Burke is HOT vs. Neal Razi’s DS SAC, Elis beat Mains
He started the Desert Landing Site and played Combat Readiness to get Jabba’s Palace. I started Insurrection, which effectively neutralized Elis, and WYS, which gets rid of SAC, so I had a serious deck advantage. I set up like normal and flipped and controlled Tatooine most of the game, and outdrained him most of the game and won by about 20.
Game 2 of FC: MKOS vs. Neal’s Rebel Strike Team blow up the bunker deck.
I spread and drained in the Palace early, and tried to interfere with him Blowing the bunker, but ended up getting all my guys beatdown in a big Jedi Presence battle. He blew the bunker and retrieved, and tried to get some drains on Endor, but I took over space and my drains finised him, so I won a close game by like 12.
I walk back to the Huntsville crew, and they asked me if I won both games, and I said yes, and they asked something along the lines of, "You won your first game fairly easily, but the 2nd one was a lot closer, right?" I said that they had nailed it, and they informed me that I had my hat backwards all the first game, but started out with my hat forwards in the second before realizing my mistake and pointing it backwards.
So I get the $25, and more importantly, imho, win a big confidence boost. Now I really wish the tournament was sanctioned so I could get my rating back over 2000, but I had no control over it.
--Post Tourny junk
We take some deck lists and get back to the hotel about 2, and we are all very hungry, but nothing is open ’cept the gas station next door. I fill out my deck lists and send my brother and Ben to go next door and get me a snack. They come back and tell me about how flamingly homosexual this gas station was. First off, you couldn’t go inside, you had to walk up to a window and the worker would go get what you wanted. So they went and ordered 2 Diet Cokes and a Dr. Pepper to drink, and 3 bags of Sour Cream and Onion Doritos. The woman leaves the window takes FOREVER (over 10 minutes they said), and comes back with 2 Caffine Free Diet Cokes, a Mr. Pibb and original Doritos. They come back and we all laugh about how gay that Race Trac is and decide to drive randomly around Atlanta at 3 in the morning until we find some decent grub. After a while we finally get to a Waffle House, and I swear it tasted better than any Waffle House ever has before. We get back, and I finish mt Decklists, and start to ask, "Hey guys, what should I call my LS d-" and broke off right then as Brooke Burke came on screen in a tiny red bikini. We all stared at the TV until they changed scenes and Ben said "Brooke Burke is HOT!" So I was like, ok, that works, and that is how my LS deck got its name. We got to bed about 4:30 after waiting until Wild On went off.
End post-tourny junk--
And now the often imitated, never duplicated Props and Slops:
Props:
To everyone I played- for making it 6 fun games.
To David Akers- For being the man, the founder of Decktech and one of the 6 cool games I had.
To Neal Razi- For being the man and playing RST blow the bunker, which is cool as anything.
To Neal Razi- Just for the hair.
To Steven Lewis- For being the my all time favorite SWCCG opponent.
To Eric #2- For knowing who I am.
To None Shall Pass- For being the most broken card in the game, and helping me win against one of the best players in the world with 2 Imperials in the Palace and without NSP even in my deck.
To the backwards hat- For transforming me into an unstoppable SWCCG machine :-)
To me- For winning cash in a SWCCG tourny (a first for me)
To Waffle House- For being open 24 hours.
To Blink 182- Just for the Take Off Your Pants and Jacket CD, which TOTALLY RULES.
To Brooke Burke- For being the only chick hot enough to inspire a deck title (that I know of).
To TJ Holman- for the Oompa Loompa deck. Now that is some funny stuff.
Slops:
To the warm-up tournament- For not being sanctioned.
To me- For playing WYS
To my brother- For losing one of his games because he took like 10+ cards of battle damage thanks to Clash Of Sabers, which wouldn’t be bad except he STARTS CRUSH THE REBELLION!
To Art Man and any other guys on Wild On- For taking the camera off of Brooke Burke.
To Race Track- For being flamingly gay.
To Decktech- If they mess up the apostrophes on this one I swear I’m.... I’m..... Well I’m not gonna be happy.
To David Akers- For deleting Techmo! (Just kidding. I love David and Decktech and hat Techmo and wish it would die. Don’t delete my decktech account)
Hope you enjoy, and look for my upcoming TR on the DPC-
Andy