denver-dpc-10-01-2001
Title: denver-dpc-10-01-2001
Author: Mark "The Maker" Ponting
Date: Sep 4, 2001
Okay, I’ll include the warm up tournament in this report as well.
I sucked (1-3), Brian Hunter won, we had next to no attendee’s for the warm up but the players we had were pretty impressive. Josh Bader (1938 last I checked), Tom Kathman (1936), John Arendt (21??), Chris Fanchi (19??) and of course Brian Hunter made up 5 of the 11 attendees. Tom Kathman beat me for the first of 3 times over the weekend, I continued to lose, I decide that MWYHL is just a little too weak to contend with the decks that I am seeing and my Watto deck is good, but not good enough to be truly competitive. I enter the weekend at 1807, I am probably now down to 1760 going into saturday - *sigh*.
I change up the decks.. I make the Watto deck a little more agressive and put in some additional effects to try and take care of the dangerous decks that I am expecting. I switch my LS entirely, and thanks to some virginians, I have an EBO/racing deck that has never been seen in Colorado before and should put me in good position. Thanks, Ganley!
So, I arrive with Decklists just minutes prior to the start time, all the typical players are here and there is one really, really tall guy ... after stepping on a chair to read his name badge, I discover that he is Hayes Hunter. Hayes is a really nice guy.
So, our rogue gallery is made up of Brian Hunter, Hayes Hunter, Kyle Craft, Chris Fanchi, Van Melancon, Tom Kathman (My nemesis :) ), Matt Riecks, and an overlooked Josh Bader. Lot of good players.
We only have 27 players in attendance, and this is a sad representation of our player base, which is generally considerably bigger.
I catch up with my newest YJ player, William Diniega, imported from Hawaii, and his brother (the SWCCG player in the family) Joe. They are telling stories of the night spent with Hayes and Kyle Craft, but those are stories for them to share. The pairings are finally called.
I am playing DS against a player whose name I don’t know and I don’t recognize him from any previous tournaments, but I am left with the impression that it was Dan Christy.
He was playing WYS (not a good match up) and I start Podracing. He does not start a pod, I have Watto’s box out, which was a mistake it would appear.
He has many A step backwards in his deck.. and guess what, they only effect me, since he does not have a pod out. This is a DUMB ruling... but I should have prepared for it. He wins the race eventually, since I can’t target his "pod" with Podracer Collision. He is not really doing anything except for draining in space and he and I interact a little through the game, but he simply loses force as he feels like, and saves 11 force to pay for secret plans. I podracer collision Sebulba to get EPP Vader back in my hand (the only cards he left were Zuckuss and Vader), I dropped the vader on his JK Luke and Lando in the Cantina in an attempt to lose all my cards prior to him getting to retrieve force, but he was smart enough to figure that out and refused to draw destiny, or target Vader.. I lost the battle by 5, enough to get down to 2 force, but not enough to prevent my move phase from arriving, he retrieves and I lose 11... with only 2 cards remaining, that is the end of the game.
His comment was "Yeah, it’s broken, but I’ll use it" .. can’t say I blame him, but it is the most ridiculous ruling!
0 (-35)
my next game was against another player that I did not know but it was my LS vs Raltiir Ops.
Well, I don’t stock Ounee Ta in my deck, but I know how to play against Raltiir Ops and therefore, the game was against him from the beginning. I took Raltiir away from him early, so he set up on the ground with his troops and drew for a ship to occupy Raltiir and run away with. That would be one mistake he made in the game. I get Squadron assignments in my hand pretty fast, I dropped Wedge in ship, Luke in ship, Dash in Ship, Han in Ship and sat at Raltiir and Malastare draining for a total of 7. He puts Zuckuss out, occupies, flips and runs. I drop Order to Engage the next turn and I chase Zuckuss around with ability 7 for the rest of the game and xwing cannons on my Xwings. He drops Bossk in Hounds tooth with Zuckuss when I have my ability 5 pair of Xwings, I saved 3 force, he initiates, I shoot Zuckuss, ahh... destiny, ... he draws a 6 for destiny, which I cancel, and I draw a 5 .. he loses Bossk and some more.. The game is simply over at that point as he has no cards in hand, and I am not worried about him getting 1 card from his reserve, so I put Kiffex on the table and spread out for a drain of 11. I did it prevented him from saving force and the game ended soon after.
2 (-22)
My LS vs Jonathon Cassidy (1709) HD
Horrible horrible game for Jon. I set up my EBO pretty quickly and he eventually drops Vader at the Endor Back Door. I drop EPP Obi to his vader. I hit Vader with the sabers, I play too close for comfort to protect Ben from the saber. He considers blind dueling Ben... but thus far, I have 2 7’s on my podracer and have played many 5’s and retrieved a couple of 7’s a few turns earlier with a baragwin. He decides against it. I would have put my Objective out of play, personally and circled. He loses Vader, I lose ben to attrition. He tries to invade with Maul and Mara. I win the race, he gets drained quickly in space and he is doing very little damage to me. Visage is ignored and then cancelled.
I win by 35
4 (+13)
Matt Reicks plays the Raltiir Ops deck I beat and gets beaten to go 0-3. He drops soon after.
Brian Hunter is still undefeated, Hayes is still undefeated, Kyle Craft is still undefeated.
Brian and Hayes play for the first time in Game 4.
My 4th game was against Chris Fanchi (1898)
My DS vs his Watch your Step.
Watch your step again!
And against Chris Fanchi, one of the higher rated players in the region! Not a good thing for me, I would say. I don’t start Watto’s box this time, as he throws an Anakin’s pod at the racing arena. I instead choose Imperial Arrest Order/Secret Plans. He was able to get into space pretty fast with Kessel and Tatooine to flip. I make him a slave a couple of turns in a row, before he gets bored of that and saves himself 2 force. I draw enough cards and take a commanding lead in the podrace, but with some interrupt play, it is still a couple of turns away. I don’t like the fact that he is draining for 3, so I use the objective and 2 of Chris’ force to deploy the Executor to Kessel, I deploy Thrawn and Guri as the support. Enough to be scary. I drop Zuckuss at Tatooine, deploy Occupation and draw. I have an untouchable force on the ground. This spelled the end of Chris’ game. He ran from the executer to Zuckuss, I switch to keep Zuckuss alive and the Executor following the ships he had down. He continues to allow me to deploy cards for free, and I spread out a little. EPP Vader dies a couple of times while attacking his ground forces, and I take a win by 20 due to the retrieval from the Podrace and he loses 6 and I am back in contention.
6 (+33)
Game 5 vs Tom Kathmans (1936) BHBM ties.
Sigh... I lose this game.. over a period of time.. I won the podrace, but it made little difference as he retrieved using seinar fleets. I should have waited taking the drains till I had all the ships I wanted in hand and gone and beaten down on his ships, but I got piece mealed out of the game with his interrupts and I lost the game soon after as I had nothing to inflict any damage. 2 loses in 2 days to Tom.
6 (+15ish)
So I am 3-2 and finish against William Diniega’s Asteroid Sanctuary deck.
This game was pretty much an autowin for me :) William knew it, but we played it out, he hit the executer with an asteroid for asteroid destiny. I won the race hitting him for 11 damage.. I retrieved 11, and finally, after blowing up a whole bunch of xwings with asteroids and him draining and sanctuaring for a bunch, I maintained the lead that I was always going to have and I drain him out winning by 10. In a race like this, the retrieval of 11 is just too much combined with the 11 card loss :)
Fun game though.
8 (+25ish)
So, I finish 8th out of the 27... not bad since that was my 3rd tournament in 6 months.
1st in the tournament was Hayes Hunter, beating Brian Hunter 1 time in the tournament. 2nd, was Brian Hunter, 3rd was Josh Bader, 4th was Dan Christy, 5th Tom Kathman, I lose track after that. Kyle Craft finishes 9th ... heh.
I opened my packs of reflections, I get ... nothing... I get my expanded universe cards though. Not a single rare though.
In the finals... Hayes beat Dan, Brian beat Josh. Josh Beat Dan and Hayes Beat Brian. Therefore, the standings in the tournament were exactly the same as the final confrontation... Hayes, Brian, Josh, Dan.
congratulations to all 4 players..
I may or may not report on the invitational :)
Mark Ponting