austin-texas-08-25-01

Title: austin-texas-08-25-01
Author: Jacob "Armaedes" Taylor
Date: Aug 25, 2001

Austin, Texas
August 25, 2001

This would be my fourth tournament (ever), and I only had one goal for myself: to win two times with my dark side deck. In my previous three tournaments, my light side has always gone 2-1 or 3-0, but my dark has gone 1-2 every time. This round, I didn’t care if my light side deck lost all of its games - as long as I won twice with dark, I would be happy.

Because of this, I agonized over my dark deck for several weeks prior to the tournament date. I started out with Bring Him Before Me space. That turned into My Kind Of Scum beats, which turned into a Desert Landing Site / Jabba’s Palace Maul deck. Eventually, after trying every deck I could think of (including a senator deck with Security Battle Droids that I might go back to), Justin "hoostino" Warren finally turned me on to Brangus Glee. I put together a combination of Bastian’s and "Bottomly’s" deck, and Justin helped me refine it. I had never played any deck like this before, but I was a desperate fool at the end of his pitiful rope, so I went with it. I did some practice draws with it, and played against my friend Adam a couple of times, and the deck had the potential to win big. Of course, the curse of my bad dark side luck was still in effect, so I was sort of skeptical that I would break the streak.

For light, I used a Watch Your Step racing deck (soon to be posted) that Hayes Hunter, Warren and myself have been working on for several weeks now. The deck has been modified and playtested so much that I’m actually getting kind of tired of playing it, but it has obscenely good destiny and gets the job done.

We get to the tournament at Junior’s Comics about an hour and a half early, because . . . . well, I don’t really have a good reason why, we just did, so I do some trading to get another copy of Brangus (I only had two) and some of the new Coruscant cards I needed to complete my Watch Your Step deck. We get started right on time (read: 30 minutes late), and I draw light for the first game.

Game 1
Light Side vs. Mark Leahy’s ( 1517) No Money, No Parts, No Deal

Mark is a great guy, and always fun to play against, because he never plays objectives the way most people do. He comes through this time, starting Combat Response, You Cannot Hide Forever & Mobilization Points, and Imperial Decree. I start Insurrection and the podracer stuff, and since Mark doesn’t deploy a racer I get to draw on the first turn. He gets Watto and Boba Fett to the Junkyard from his hand and draws. I get an early Luke with Lightsaber, so I figure I will drop down Luke, hack Watto and kill Fett to attrition. Unfortunately, having never played against this objective, I neglect to read the light side text of Watto’s Junkyard, which says that as long as Watto is there, I can’t draw battle destiny. I slice Watto anyway, and he draws a decent destiny and hits with Fett, so I end up losing Luke and one or two cards. I make a couple of more strikes against Watto’s junkyard, because I figure whatever cards I lose I will get back when I win the race. Sure enough, I win the race in 4 turns, I think, and we do the 12 card swing, and I retrieve my whole lost pile, leaving only Anakin’s Racer there. I failed to dislodge him from the Junkyard, though, so I decide to seek my entertainment elsewhere and go to space. He has been tossing out a couple of unique TIE fighters with pilots, and some random 6-power star destroyer without a pilot. I put Dash in his ship at that system, and he plays a Tallon Roll on me. We tie in the draw, so Dash stays to battle, taking out the TIE fighter and pilot and managing to stay at the system himself thanks to a good destiny draw (mine) and a bad destiny draw (his). I move Mirax in the Pulsar Skate and Theron Nett in Red 10 over to Carida to join Dash and Mark’s lone star destroyer. He puts out another unique pilot in his ship and retrieves, because Sienar Fleet Systems is on the table, of all things. He battles, and then plays Tallon Roll on the Outrider again. This time, I draw high and he draws low, so his TIE fighter dies, and so does his ability to draw battle destiny. I reduce his power to 0, and draw some pretty good destiny, so he loses the destroyer and 15 more cards. This cripples him so bad that it’s hard for him to make a comeback. I think I should now point out that the Outrider is an independent starship, and thus may not be targeted by Tallon Roll, but I of course didn’t realize this until the end of the game when Justin Warren, who was spectating, asked me what the heck I was doing letting him try to roll my ships. Sorry, I was playing like a scrub all day, but he lost his ship and I didn’t, so it’s all good. I spread out in space to drain a little at Kessel and Tatooine, and Mark puts premiere Darth Vader at Mos Espa to flip (he didn’t flip for about 10 turns for some reason, probably because he was so occupied in space). Chewbacca, Protector, Wedge Antilles and Luke with Lightsaber come down hard on him. As soon as I deploy Luke, the spectators (there’s a couple by now) look confusingly at the table, and I wonder what I did wrong. I then realize that I had already put Luke and Han at the Cantina to drain. Yeah, I definitely felt dumb trying to deploy a guy that was already on the table somewhere else. I go ahead and battle with just Chewie and Wedge anyway, and draw some really fantastic destiny, as the deck is prone to do in the late game, so Vader dies and Wedge goes to the Bacta tank. Maul comes down to Mos Espa then, but Wedge comes back off the tank and is joined by Lando with Gun, who clear him off and flip his objective back. I am now draining at the Cantina, Kessel, Tatooine, and Mos Espa (I actually have a smuggler there, so am unaffected by the drain -1 gametext, which I thought was cool). I drain him out pretty quickly after that, because he can’t seem to get any more cards on the table. He didn’t use his objective to deploy something one single time. I win by 22.

FW 2 (+22)

Highs: Winning by 22 - this light deck is a beast.
Lows: Deploying Luke when he was already on the table - I’m such a loser.

Game 2
Dark Side vs. Ted Woodward’s (1750 ) Quiet Mining Colony Beatdown

My first game of the day with dark, and I run into QMC, which I feel pretty confident I can beat. We start racing, and Ted doesn’t deploy a podracer, so I win pretty easily (it took 4 turns, I think). He stacks destiny anyway, and I see a Frozen Assets and I’ve Got A Bad Feeling About This, so I can tell right away it’s a beatdown deck. I start looking for my Operational As Planned. I get Brangus out second turn, and he deploys Corran Horn to take Brangus out - why I didn’t play Put All Sections On Alert at that time we will never know. The attrition takes care of Brangus, so I’m forced to deploy another one from hand.

Author’s Note: At this time, I was silently thanking Justin Warren, who told me that under no circumstances should I try to play a Brangus Glee deck with only two copies of Brangus Glee.

Ted puts Lando with Blaster Pistol at the Cloud City location that lets you pay 2 force to cancel a drain at a Cloud City site - I forget which one. I drop EPP Vader down on Lando, and Ted immediately plays Path Of Least Resistance to move him away. Another time I am playing like a scrub, not seeing that one coming. I know the beat is coming, but there’s not much I can do about - there’s no dark side On The Edge to suicide my guys. I have the Ghhk in my hand ,but can’t seem to find the Operational As Planned. Ted actually lets me get away with draining him at his own Cloud City site, and cancelling his drain next door, for a few turns before the beat squad comes. Luke with Lightsaber, Han with Blaster Pistol and Artoo & Threepio. I have been drawing cards like crazy to find Operational As Planned, but it’s always in my reserve deck. As expected, Frozen Assets hits my force pile, and he plays the Bad Feeling card that says I can’t draw battle destiny. He hits Vader, plays Don’t Get @#$%y, and I lose Vader and 21. Ouch. He puts Dash Rendar and Chewbacca, Protector on the Outrider at Bespin, and I never contested him there for some reason, even though I had Fett in Slave 1, Bossk In Hound’s Tooth and Set For Stun in my hand. I’m telling you, I really played like crap all day. Eventually I get Palpatine and Janus Greejatus to the Death Star, and Ted uses Revealed to put Arica back in my deck, so I go ahead and insert numbers. I start to Counter Assault his drains. I Brangus the cards back and do it again. Ted’s life force starts to dwindle. He used to be up by about 30 cards. Now we’re within about 10 of each other. He starts edging, but it’s clear he has no idea how to track. I lost Secret Pland AND Do They Have A Code Clearance to the beatdown damage, but since he doesn’t know how to play Edge cards, he’s only getting 2 or 3 from each Off The Edge. The repeating 3,720 to 1 starts to really hurt him. I Counter Assault one of his drains for about 5 damage. I track a perfect sabacc and make him lose double the stakes. He gets in my face and tells me that perfect sabacc doesn’t double the stakes. The couple of guys around us tell him he’s wrong, so he loses Leia with Blaster Rifle and Wedge Antilles from his sabacc hand. He starts to get really anal, telling me that I’m playing the cheesiest deck on earth. He drains again, and I play the Counter Assault again for another couple of points of damage. He goes crazy at this point, asking me how I got that back into my hand. I tell him Brangus, and he says from now on I need to tell him when I’m doing that. I don’t know what else to do besides say "Brangus" and exchange the cards - it’s not like I was being secretive about it. Maybe I should have made flyers or used signal flares or something, it’s not my fault he wasn’t paying attention. He starts telling me to hurry up and stop taking so much time with my turns, because the game is about to time out. I don’t tell him that the reason we’re about to time out is because he takes hours deciding what to do on each of his turns, calculating power and destinies and asking me how many cards are in my hand, reserve deck and force pile every turn. He moves his space force over to the Death Star (which I now realize he shouldn’t have been able to do, since he didn’t have the hyperspeed to get there) for the drain of 3. Unfortunately, he doesn’t realize that now he doesn’t satisfy Battle Order or Come Here You Big Coward, so he can’t drain for free, which means my insert will pop when he is forced to activate, and his drain at the Death Star is cancelled, which means I’m only taking one point of drain per turn. Even more unfortunately, I don’t realize this either. He drains me out for the win by 7, and Ted, who I have always thought of as a cool guy, ruins my day. For the next 5 minutes anyway.

FL 2 (+15)

Highs: Playing the insert about 3 or 4 times, and playing Counter Assault twice in one turn for quite a bit of damage.
Lows: Losing all respect for Ted as a human being. I am such a scrub, and seriously considered dropping from the tournament at this point. Plus, Ted was playing a deck that was obviously the WYS beatdown transplanted into QMC, but he blatanly denied it and said his deck was completely original. Ted, if you’re reading this, you didn’t fool anyone.

Game 3
Light Side vs. Steven Butler’s (unrated) Asteroid Sanctuary

This is Steven’s first tournament, and I have to say that the Star Wars community got lucky when he decided to play the game, because he’s a great guy, and really hilarious. Unfortuately for him, his strategy is a little outdated. He starts Yavin 4, and actually has a podracer for me to race against. He uses Sebulba’s text to prevent me from drawing destiny, and then draws a zero himself. In fact, I think all he did was draw 0’s and 1’s for race destiny. His first turn he puts out a couple of Asteroid Sectors, Big One, the Big One Cave / Space Slug Belly, and drops Emperor Palpatine there. Weird. I get my standard start, pulling docking bays and Kessel, and I deploy Han with gun and Lando with gun to the Cantina. His turn he deploys Tech Morr and Orn Free Ta to the Space Slug Belly and inserts on me! What the heck! Then, he plays Scanning Crew! What the heck again! Theron Nett, I think, goes to my used pile, leaving me only Han in my hand. My turn I have a divine inspiration that I should activate 10 force, so I do and the insert doesn’t pop. If it does, it’s going to be bad, because my total is 2 and his total is 16. And I don’t have It Could Be Worse in the deck. I look for a docking bay, and notice that Your Insight Serves You Well & Staging Areas is still in my reserve deck. Apparently, 10 was not my lucky number, and I don’t have any of my 3 We Wish To Board At Once or any of my 3 Tunnel Visions, so I’m sort of at an impasse. I put down the Bantha Droid to get my numbers total up a little bit (my total is now 6 to his 16) and draw. His turn he puts down U-3PO in the Cantina to cancel my drain there. My turn I decide to activate ALL of the force I possibly can, and amazinly, numbers doesn’t pop. I search for a "docking bay" and I notice that Insight is no longer in my reserve deck. I have quite a pile of force that I don’t want to have to draw up, but I figure it’s the only way I’m going to get Insight out. Sure enough, Insight is the bottom card, so now I have about 20 cards in my hand. My next turn, I activate zero and put Insight on the table. His deck has effectively died now, because it’s based around Inserts and SCrew. I play the All Wings Report In combo to pull a ship and start piling it on in space. His drain at the Space Slug Belly has now become a drain of 2 because of Presence of the Force, but I have won the podrace by now, so I’m retrieving half of that back with I Did It!, and that’s pretty much all the damage he’s doing to me. He runs his destroyers around to avoid my smugglers, and I let him, because he’s not doing much damage to me at all. Right before I drain him out, I put Boonta Eve Podrace out of play to retrieve 4, and I finish with only 3 or 4 cards in my lost pile, but a bunch on the table. Win by 18.

FW 4 (+33)

Highs: Pretty much dominating the game. Having a new face in the Austin circle of players. I hope Steven (who wouldn’t let me call him Steve) comes to the next tournament, he was a real hoot.
Lows: Having to draw half my deck to get Insight. Going against Numbers and SCrew at the same time!

Game 4
Dark Side vs. Andrew Espinola’s (1442 ) Rescue The Princess

Andrew is one of the few people around here that I haven’t played against at some point. I know that if I’m going to break my streak of bad luck with Dark Side, this is a must-win, since I lost the last one. I see Rescue The Princess, and I think I can handle it, since this is the same deck Adam is playing, and he and I playtested extensively. I get Brangus down first turn, and I also have two of the three cards I need to do Much Anger In Him / Responsibilty Of Command combo. I drop Palpatine from my hand to the docking bay. If you haven’t played against Rescue The Princess before, let me give you a piece of advice - if you control the docking bay with Palpatine, and have a force lightning in hand, you will win, because no matter what kind of movement they’re using, they HAVE to disembark at the docking bay. At least, I haven’t seen a version that doesn’t. He doesn’t do anything for the first few turns except deploy the Home One Docking Bay and Hoth Docking Bay (which isn’t cool, since he could cancel the ROC/MAIH combo by moving there). I am looking for a specific card, I don’t even remember which one, and I end up drawing a hand of about 35 cards. Let me just say that this is definitely not a good idea, because my hand had all my docking bays, all of my Put All Sections On Alert, both Brangus, both Vader with Sabers . . . . a grimtaash right then would have cost me the game. Luckily, when I’m drawing up, I get Reactor Terminal in my hand, so 2 turns later I put the high-destiny portion of my hand back into the deck. Luke with Lightsaber eventually comes down to the Death Star docking bay, and a lift tube goes to the Detention Block where Prisoner 2187 sits. I thought about just moving Palpatine over and playing Force Lightning on her while she was in her cell, but I wasn’t sure if I could do that (and in fact, I’m still not), so Palpy just hung out at the Docking Bay. I win the podrace, and he plays It Could Be Worse. I don’t have It’s Worse (maybe THAT was the card I was looking for - I really don’t remember) or a grabber, so he reduced the loss by 9, which sucks, but I do retrieve my lost pile, which rules. Then my insert pops . . . and he plays ICBW again. Which sucks again. Mercenary Armor goes onto Luke, and now that he’s a spy, he moves over to the Cell Block, frees Leia via I’m Here To Rescue You, and . . . . . . stays there. For about 4 turns. He drains me for 4 there once, and then I play Come Here You Big Coward and that drain becomes impotent, so then he uses the life tube to move Luke and Leia back to the docking bay. They disembark . . . . and suddenly Prisoner 2187 is fried by the Force Lightning of Dark Jedi Master Palpatine. This basically kills his deck, because apparently he was only playing with one copy of Leia.

Author’s Note: Playing with one Leia in Rescue The Princess is dumb. Real dumb. It’s like playing with 1 Vader in a Hunt Down deck.

He leaves Luke at the docking bay, and drops down Qui-Gon and Han with Blaster onto Palpatine, who has been joined by Janus Greejatus and Darth Vader with Lightsaber. He battles, swings at Palpatine with Luke, and misses. I swing at Luke with Vader and miss. I draw an obscenely high destiny, and he doesn’t draw high enough, so I lose Vader (putting my number total back up into the double digits) and he loses Luke. On my turn, I put The Shaft (MAIH / ROC) on Han and he loses to it for about 4 or 5 turns before Han makes it over to the War Room to cancel it. Numbers pops over and over, and he just plays ICBW almost every time, although some get through, and I can’t find my It’s Worse to save my life, although I do eventually grab It Could Be Worse. I finally draw up It’s Worse, but by then he is almost dead and has run out of ICBW. After a Counter Assault or two, and after putting back my whole hand with Reactor Terminal, I drain him out for the win by 30.

FW 6 (+63)

Highs: I think this could be my highest differential ever in a sanctioned game, and I am now 1-1 with dark. I also have the highest differential of anyone at the tournament at this point, which is new, because I usually have a pathetic differential.
Lows: Only 1 Leia?

Game 5
Light Side vs. Ted Woodward’s (1750 ) Death Star 2

Sucks having to play Ted again. Life’s full of disappointments. Ted has changed his deck about 1 card since the last tournament, when I smacked him up by about 20, and apparently he has changed his deck about 10 cards total in the last couple of years. I know the matchup, and am fairly confident I can win.

Sadly, I am completely wrong in every way.

His deck plays exactly like it’s supposed to. The Death Star is up in 5 or 6 turns, and the Executor, Bossk in Hound’s Tooth, and a load of other destroyers with pilots invade the systems. He takes over the Cantina early with Palpatine and some backup and takes over space with a bunch of ships. There’s not much to say about this game, it was a pretty average game, where whoever gets the better draws wins. He got them, and he won by 14.

FL 6 (+49)

Game 6
Dark Side vs. Michael Richard’s ( 1645) Asteroid Sanctuary

Mike is always a fun guy to play because he definitely doesn’t care about his rating (even though it’s good) and is just there to have fun. This game was exactly like Star Wars should be - even though this was a terrible matchup, my deck being all about going to his locations, and his deck being all about me not going to his locations, it was the most fun game I have played in a really long time, just because we were both having a lot of fun.

He deploys Coruscant as his starting location (the Special Ed. one, that gives me 2 icons and him 1) and draws his opening hand. His eyes get real big, and he gives his hand to the guy next to him. That guy’s eyes get real big and he passes Mike’s hand to the guy across from him. That guy starts laughing, and gives Mike his hand back. I’m sort of confused, so I ask him if the big deal is that his hand is real good or real bad. He just laughs, so I go ahead and start my turn. He doesn’t have a podracer in his deck, but he draws destiny every turn anyway to keep me from getting up to 24 and stopping until I really need to retrieve. I finish my turn and tell him to go. He activates, drops a total of 4 Asteroid Sectors at Alderaan and Coruscant, and a Big One at each system, and with only 3 cards left in his hand, draws his whole force pile. That is pretty funny, when you think about it. He gets some A-wings and an Asteroid Sanctuary out, and I go diving for Come Here You Big Coward, which eludes me for about 5 turns. Luckily, Brangus decks in general have notoriously high destiny, so his ships die fast to asteroid destiny, and he can’t seem to get more than 2 cards with ability on the table at one time. So I play Ability, Ability, Ability, which I put in because of rumors that some guys were going to be doing Jedi Testing decks (they didn’t). I make him lose to Ability, Ability, Ability for about 2 turns, and then I forget about it, because I’m a scrub. He always saves a lot of force, so I don’t win the race until I can get It’s Worse in my hand. I never do, but eventually he stops saving force, so I win. Unfortunately, I didn’t see that he started the Insurrection combo (he didn’t even have any docking bays in his deck - he also played the Insight combo, which was really unfortunate because numbers would have sped the game up a lot), so I didn’t have the force to retrieve. Luckily, Mike is a cool guy and let me take back my race destiny so I could get 11 force saved and retrieve the next turn, which I thought was really sportsmanlike of him. I end up having a huge hand again, but Reactor Terminal saves the day again - if anyone around here starts playing alter, this deck could be in real trouble with me playing it. He plays Polarized Negative Power Coupling, and Visored Vision, so I’m losing force for my Podracer Collisions and flat out losing my Put All Sections On Alert, but he’s not putting many cards on the table, so I’m not having to use Brangus much. Come Here You Big Coward definitely won me this game, as his Hologameboard drain and Big One drain are cancelled, as is Asteroid Sanctuary. Eventually, Zuckuss and Fett in their ships pay a visit to his lone A-wing at Coruscant, and he loses the ship and about 10. I spread out to drain of 1 at Corulag and 1 at Coruscant, paying 6 each turn to do so. I eventually remember Ability, Ability, Ability is on the table, and it finishes him off for the win by 17.

FW 8 (+66)

Highs: A really fun game, against a really funny guy. And I finally won twice with dark for the first time ever!
Lows: None, this game made up for game 2.

Jacob’s final thought: I would just like to say that it is ALWAYS a good idea to play a high-destiny deck. High destinies will win you games, period. The supremely high destiny of both of these decks helped me out immensely numerous times.

Props:
Adam, for driving.
Me, for winning twice with my dark and having the highest differential in a tournament that I have ever pulled off.
Hayes Hunter, Brian Hunter and Justin Warren, for giving me some great advice and deck ideas. I could not have done this well without you guys.
Whoever came up with Brangus in the first place - that deck is unbelievable. If you are reading this, and you want to take credit for Brangus, dmail me, I’d like to have a chat with you.
Jacob Mayer . . . . . because he told me to.
Chris Greg, for continuing to run great tournaments, and for keeping these events pretty regular. He’s one of the few TDs in the area, so none of us would get to play if it wasn’t for him.
The It Could Be Worse tournament foil, for looking cool, and the new foil Maul and Qui-Gon Enhanced cards, for being awesome beyond belief.
Michael Richards and Mark Leahy, for being cool.
Justin Warren, for offering to let me borrow a Brangus because apparently playing with only 2 is "not right."
Counter Assault, for being devastating and horrible.
Tatooine Maul - That’s the best character in the game, I don’t care what you guys say.

Slops:
Ted, for making me feel like crap just because he was starting to lose in Game 2.
McDonald’s, for making me wait 2 whole minutes for my McNuggets - what kind of "fast" food is that?
Juniors, for having the most vile restroom facilities of Earth, and not even any hand towels. I had to walk all the way across the street to H.E.B. just to use the potty.
Me, for playing like an absolute scrub, and for forgetting all the people that deserve props that I forgot about - nothing personal.

Peace out,
Jacob "Armaedes The Destructor" Taylor