and-then-there-were-bombs-montreal-dpc

Title: and-then-there-were-bombs-montreal-dpc
Author: Andy "RexBanner7" Klema
Date: Sep 7, 2001

I realize that this report is slightly late, but I have good reasons, most of which revolve around college. Anyway, this is the story of my trip to the Montreal DPC, the ensuing drunkeness, and a lot of bad driving.

This all started sometime towards the end of July. Me, Mike Gemme, Justin Desai, and Steve Baroni were all talking about going up to Montreal to the DPC because it would be a hell of a time. I left on a family vacation (insert @#$%ty story here) for a week and a half and left it up to the other guys to come up with a plan. When I came back, Steve couldn’t go, Gemme was going with the Twiggs, and Justin didn’t have any sort of plan. @#$%. But we put that aside and made a @#$%ing plan. Cody DiCara, my Star Wars playing friend from town, Dave Villa, my non-Star Wars playing friend from town who just went for the beer and the strippers, and I were to drive up to Justin’s house in Boston on Thursday night, and then drive up to Alex Klammrodt’s house on Friday. So Cody, Dave, and I start the drive up to Boston (with me driving) around 6 pm. Mapquest says that it’ll take 3 hours, but Mapquest also has us going some assbackwards way that adds on an extra half an hour. Long story short, we make it there in 2 hours or so.

*LIE INFO*
Justin was able to go on the trip because of a few lies that he told his parents, so the rest of us had to be careful not to @#$% it up. The lies went like this; Dave and I had been up in Montreal vacationing with my family, especially my dad who loves to fish. We came in two seperate cars, so as my parents went back to Connecticut, we went to pick up Cody who had been going through orientation at Northeastern (which is partly true actually). After we spent the night at Justin’s, we were going to Gemme’s house, down to my house, and then to the DPC Connecticut.
*END LIE INFO*

So we get in the door to Justin’s house, and his mom is right on top of us. Not in a Ms. Baroni to Mike Gemme kind of way, or in a suspicious questioning mother kind of way, but she’s very interested in our trip. So I take the first opportunity I can to @#$% up by saying that we took the turnpike to get to Boston. Now, you could do this, but it’d be dumb and out of the way, but I could have saved it if I was pressed to. But she didn’t pay it any mind. We escape from her and go playtest/build decks for a while. I have a DS Senate deck built that I want to play, but I need mad Squabbling Delegates, so I have to rely on other people having them. We meet Justin’s dad eventually, and I do a better job of lying. I elaborate on my dad’s passion for fishing and how he always wanted to visit Montreal. With our story intact, Justin’s dad leaves and we go back to playing. Cody beats Justin in war for the first time EVER (meaning that Justin has never lost a game of war), but Cody loses to Dave in Stratego for probably the first time ever, so I suppose it evens out. Then Cody tries to tell a highly amusing story from out senior year of high school, but fails miserably. Cody’s storytelling ability deserves it’s own paragraph.

Cody DiCara is the absolute worst storyteller in the history of the world. He can take the best story you’ve ever heard, and mangle it so horribly that you can’t even see the point. He lacks the humorous attention to detail that most good storytellers have, but that’s not what make him a bad story teller. What makes him bad is that he is easily distracted while he’s telling his story. He’ll be in the middle of a crucial part of this epic tale, and then he’ll watch something fly by the window and completely lose his place. It’s horrible.

So Cody is trying to tell his story and is getting nowhere. So Dave, Justin and I start interrupting him with nonsensical phrases like “and then I was hungry” or “and then there were bombs,” hence the name of this TR.

So Dave goads me into doing push ups with him since he’s going into the army and he needs to do them, and then we all fall asleep, for the most part. I fall asleep a little later than the rest, but that’s usual because I’m an insomniac.

The next morning, we all get up and decide to go to McDonalds for breakfast because Dave used to work there and we have free breakfast sandwich coupons. On the way there, I’m driving down a pretty tight street and a van decides to do the same thing. He doesn’t slow down at all or let me pass, so going by it is gonna be really tight. We drive by and miss the van, but clip my right mirror on a parked car. So that’s just great. Cody is riding shotgun, and instead of holding the mirror, he lets it kind of hang there. So then the wire snaps and the mirror falls off the car. We make Cody go get it because he was dumb, and then we stash it in the trunk.

*LIE INFO*
To cover up for my somewhat bad driving and moreover, bad judgement, the following lie is constructed. We successfully made it to McDonalds and ate breakfast. When we came out, the mirror was lying on the ground! Some @#$% must have clipped the car while we were in the resteraunt and then sped off! People are such @#$%s! :)
*END LIE INFO*

After this unfortunate incident and our stop at McDonalds, we head up towards Montreal. I suppose there wasn’t really anything special about this trip. We played some half-assed lisence plate poker, and Cody and Dave fought. A lot. The highlight of the trip though, was definitely Justin and Dave’s antics in the back seat (mind out of the gutter people). Dave was waving to every hot chick he could find, and also to random people in an attempt to piss them off/ illicit a response. Up in Vermont, Dave waved to this one girl, but she didn’t wave back. From then on, we were on a mission to make her wave to us. We kept passing her, slowing down, matching speeds, racing her, etc, all while Dave is trying to get her to wave back. Finally, Dave waves and then Justin jumps in with the assist, flashing her his nipples (sans stickers). She finally waves so the mission is accomplished. She gets off an exit later, and we never see her again. Oh well.

We get to the Canadian border, and it’s really simple. They ask maybe 5 questions, then send you through. I don’t think it took any more than a minute. Then we just hauled @#$% towards Montreal. The road system took some getting used to, and we had to do some backtracking, but eventually, we made it to Point Claire and Alex’s house, which was outside of Montreal. He wasn’t there when we got there, so we bought the beer we promised him, and then started hacking out on the lawn of his apartment. Within a half an hour, he came home, so we all went up and chilled in his pad. I’m not that used to apartment living, so I thought it was a pretty nice place, but that might just be naive. Whatever. We played a lot, built a lot, and borrowed a lot. The problem for me was that I had no DS deck because I couldn’t find the cards I needed for my Senate deck. Under the advice of Alex and Justin, I rebuilt the MKOS deck that had been ridiculously strong for me in the past. Problem was, I had no idea how it would do in the current environment. It turned out to be a mistake. In any case, Alex’s friend came over and we played a little more. Justin was using WYS Solid with heavy space and Hunt Down Jizz. Cody was using a modified Rancourt and my QMC. Alex was using his HuntDown and his QMC. Dave was using his fist to continually hit Cody, and fights were started. Whatever. Me, Justin, Cody and Dave all slept in Alex’s living room, which isn’t that big. I didn’t get a good sleep, but that’s not a big problem for me cuz I’m used to it.

We get up pretty early in the morning and begin the trip into the city. Alex’s friend’s brother (sorry guys, I’m bad with names) came over to make sure we all woke up, but it wasn’t a problem. We took the bus for the first part, but me and Justin were the only ones who had Canadian coins, so Dave and Cody made the rest of us look like asses. With that out of the way, the bus ride was relatively short, and then we got on the metro, subway, tram, or whatever other @#$%ing names there are for it. No problems there, except when we got out of the subway, metro, tram, etc, and found that we’d have to walk about two miles to get where we had to be. Balls. We made the hike like champs though, and found Mike Gemme, the Twiggs, and Chris Schout (sp?) who walk to the place with us. We get there, make decklists, shoot the @#$%, check out the competition, and start. Unfortunately, there were only 40 odd people there, but some damn good players. The Twiggs, Raphael, Yannick, Clint Hays, Greg Hodur, Alex, Jonny Chu, etc.

Decks One More Time

LS: Dagobah Hit and Run
DS: MKOS New School (read; @#$%)

Game 1: LS vs Jonny Chu’s Brangus

Well @#$%. Not what I wanted in my first game. But on the plus side, it was Brangus, and my deck rapes Brangus. Well, it should when things go my way. Basically, we start the game and of course he gets Brangus and Emperor out mad early and inserts. We also start the race and it goes even for quite a while. I grab Brisky Morning and bait out his Force Lightenings by sending Jar Jar to the War Room. His insert pops once and I lose 9. 4 of those were EPPs. That’s balls, since I only play 7 characters. 3x Obi, 3x Luke, and Jar Jar. I’ll have to make due. I send Obi and Jar Jar into the War Room and clear that mess. At one point, he gets a successful Podrace Collision in and pulls, out of a 4,5,5,2, the 2, which was On the Edge. That goes back into by hand, and he never sets up the beast. Bad luck for him, but I had some to offset it. At one point, there were two cards in the lost pile, one of which was Brangus. I never found my OOCs until late game. That also stopped me from shuffling his lost pile so he couldn’t get the same cards back. My AFAs are doing damage, and eventually I win the race when I draw double 6s. But he has CHYBC out so I can’t retrieve. That saves the game for him it turns out, because I also can’t retrieve with I Did It! and get any of my characters back. So, the race destinies recirculate and there are 2 Jedi Resiliences there. The only character left is EPP Obi, who is in my hand. But on his turn, he deploys Vader and Ability x3. Instead of getting my Jedi Resilience into hand, I just suicide with Jar Jar and Obi, killing Vader and Ability x3, but also my last EPP. So I’m just draining with Jar Jar and he isn’t getting characters, and I have AFA’s running. Eventually, he draws into a character, and groans. Then he puts Maul in front of Jar Jar, and we stalemate. See, we were on the Death Star, so he couldn’t drain due to his objective. He had an AFA in his deck, so he couldn’t go digging for any other characters without losing his remaining 4 force. I didn’t have any characters left in my deck, and I couldn’t make him follow me around to stop my drains because he had CHYBC out. So we time with about 20 minutes left, my 10 to his 4. Balls.
1 (+10)

Highlights: Playing and beating Chu. That Podracer Collision. The game.
Lowlights: How it ended. We both made mistakes, but my impatience kept me from getting a full win. Oh well.

I have to tell this same story about ten times because people are confused as to how I beat Chu timed before the round was over. Whatever. I’m sure he had to do the same thing. Me, Dave, Cody, Gemme and Brian Twigg hack for a while, and then the next round begins.

Game 2: DS vs Jonathan Williams’s (I think that’s it) RTP

This game was me learning how to play MKOS again. I made so many mistakes when it came to deploying characters. I got both my beatdown forces and Myo trapped on the table draining for next to nothing. My saving grace was Secret Plans so he couldn’t get everything back with Death Star Plans. In the end, I played like @#$%, but still won because it’s such a good matchup for me. He really couldn’t have done anything else. I just won in the end by draining him out, although beating on Tawss for 13 helped.
3 (+29)

Highlights: The matchup. I needed to remember how to play this.
Lowlights: I suck. That was the worst I’d played in a long time.

Hack some more, next game really. Nothing else to tell.

Game 3: LS vs Chris Terwilliger’s HuntDown

Not HuntDown Jizz, but HuntDown, so it’s not an auto win for me. I race and win without problems. He sets up with Vader etc, but I get rid of them. He eventually stocks a site with Vader, Tarkin, Dr E, Iggy, and Emperor. I clear the site in two turns. AFA is doing damage, but I’m not getting them in every turn, so not a lot of damage. I keep taking Visage because again I can’t find my OOC/TTs. I make a horrible mistake because I don’t know what that new anti-retrieval card does. I play Effective Repairs, which is retrieval, and it cancels my retrieval from DTF for the rest of the game. That cost me at least 10 force, no lie. I had Bacta Tank working like a charm, as well as Brisky Morning. In the end, I was just able to clear his characters away, keep him from playing important interrupts with DTF/ I Did It! I only won by 6, mostly because of my stupidity, Visage draining both of us for so long, and because Chris is a damn good player.
5 (+35)

Highlights: Playing and beating Chris Twigg. I am now 2-0 lifetime vs the Twiggs!
Lowlights: My horrible mistake that very easily could have cost me the game.

Again, not much to tell. Dave is getting bored because he’s not doing anything but hacking once my games get done, but what can you do? Chris Googlen is doing really well and is on the top table. This surprised a lot of people, and Gemme was pissed about it. I don’t know the story, so I’m staying out of it. We also busted out the Young Jedi Demo Decks and played some Hardcore (obvious plug; JOIN THE HARDCORE GROUP!!!).

Game 4: DS vs Raphael’s High Destiny TIGIH

I had a good combination of bad luck, @#$%ty play, and Raphael being a machine. Within the first couple of turns, I had lost 4 EPPs off the top through drains and what not. I couldn’t put up a fight when he went after me. I played really badly, he played damn well. Basically, I got schooled and there’s not much I could do about it.
5 (+3)

Highlights: Umm, huh?
Lowlights: Getting schooled hardcore. My luck.

More random stuff happened, including Matt Sokol being funny as hell (more on that next game). All around good stuff.

Game 5: LS vs ???’s Walker Garrison

Oh @#$%! I didn’t put in Mech Failure. That was my magic bullet for this deck. EPP beatdown for the one turn kill. I’m thinking I’m @#$%ed. Fortunately, within the first couple turns of race damage and AFAs, I knock out two Garrisons so he only gets one off the whole game. I stick to my game plan otherwise. Knock all of his walkers out with ridiculous destiny and beat him off the ground. He loses Hoth early so he can’t set up Occupation or get around Battle Plan. Basically, it was pretty easy and an On the Edge boosts my diff late game.
7 (+37)

Highlights: Owning. The high diff.
Lowlights: Fearing for my life after realizing I forgot my tech.

I realize now that that game and the next may be out of order, but oh well. Anyway, during this last game, Matt Sokol is sitting right next to me playing one of the two girls there. And from the very beginning of the game, this comes;

Matt: Hey, I have a question for you.

Girl (puzzled): Ok

Matt: There’s the girl, right? And she’s always talking to me and flirting with me, but then she always tells me about these other dates she’s going on.

Girl (puzzled further): Umm, ok.

Matt: Would you ever do that? Try to play mindgames with a guy to kind of get him jealous?

Girl: Umm, no?

This goes on for about 10 minutes, and me and Dave are sitting there laughing our asses off. Later, Matt describes the same thing to Gemme, who responds; “Dude, she’s not playing mind games. Girls don’t know how to play mind games.” You guys are funny @#$%. Next game.

Game 6: DS vs Chris Twigg’s Pile

Well @#$%, I don’t want to play this game. I keep forgetting why I didn’t play MKOS after Tatooine. Qui Gon. If Qui Gon comes down early, you’re @#$%ed. You can only hope to Barrier him, but cards like the Camp and the fact that he gives off no force make it hard to save force. Plus, anyone playing the pile plays SAC. That’s how this game goes. First turn he puts down the trix (copyright 2001Mike Gemme) and another twix, Threepio’s, and draws. @#$%. Qui Gon comes down soon thereafter and rapes me. The rest of his characters get in after Sensing my Barriers and None Shall Passes. I’m trying to put up a fight so I’m not drawing into any of my good characters, and I just die. I’m down to two force and Chris has like 30. He asks how much time is left and is told 40 minutes. So he puts his hand down with Drop and asks how the wife and kids are doing. We have the hilarious Bull@#$% conversation for about 5 minutes before I make him beat the crap out of Xizor. Good times.
7 (+4)

Highlights: Umm, Chris is funny?
Lowlights: Getting raped. No more undefeated vs Twiggs.

Well, I’m officially out. I could only take one loss because of the timed win, so now I’m done. But of course, I’m playing this @#$% out, so next game.

Game 7: DS vs ???’s TIGIH Cheese

Whatever. This game blew. My highlight was stopping him from retrieving from the podrace by laying down Secret Plans. Other than that, Artoo, 8D8 and Luke sat at Chief Chirpa’s Hut and inserted on me. They all popped right away, I couldn’t find Galid, and I died. I definitely shouldn’t have played this deck.
7 (-16)

Highlights: Nothing. This blew.
Lowlights: The game. It’s not anything against my opponent, I was just annoyed that I played such a @#$%ty deck (mine that is).

Well, I’m determined to go 5-3, low goal as it may be. So I decide to win my next game.

Game 8: LS vs ???’s Maul Senate

Well, he had a free drain 3 the whole game because of that damn epic event, but it didn’t matter. As soon as I got Honor out, he put out Tikkes. I AFA’d him to death, won the podrace, beat anyone else he put down, caused some battle damage and DTF damage, and won. That’s a bad matchup for me if he goes to space, but he never did. So I won handily.
9 (+3)

Highlights: This deck is such a machine.
Lowlights: That drain of 3.

Well, the finals everyone knows, including that Desai missed them by 5 diff so that sucks. We say goodbye to the Twiggs, Gemme, Desai (who goes back with Gemme and the Twiggs) and everyone else, and then head back to Alex’s to get drunk. We see about 5 ridiculously hot girls in zebra print shirts or pants so we have this long conversation on the bus about zebra’s being our power animal. I love Fight Club. We buy some Sleemans (?) which is Canadian beer that was actually pretty good, for beer. Me, Alex and Cody play the century game. The century game is taking a shot of beer every minute, on the minute for one hundred minutes. Cody bowed out after about 5 minutes saying he’d puke if he drank that fast (yeah, we made fun of him, don’t worry), so me and Alex were the only ones left. We played for a half an hour, part of while eating pizza. We stopped after those 30 minutes to smoke (heehee), and then I drank about two beers more afterwards. I was moving very, very slowly. We had this hilarious drunken conversation about socialism versus democracy when all of us (except Dave since he hates beer) were either drunk or high. It was very cool. At one point I found a huge pillow and just curled up on the couch. Cody yells at me “Andy, are you awake?” To which I respond that of course I am dammit! And so on. I was asleep 2 minutes later, if that. I woke up around 9. Apparently Alex did the same thing since he was asleep sitting up on the floor. Me, Dave and Cody left shortly thereafter, after saying goodbye to Alex.

The trip back was inconsequential, except for our stop at Burger King. We stopped at some random Burger King in Vermont, and in the store, there was a picture of a rooster in a crate. @#$% in a Box! That was originally the title of this TR, but I changed it instead. We get into Connecticut without trouble, and then had to go home and spread the lie info to my parents. But it went on without a hitch, and that’s the end of our epic story. Now for the time honored tradition of props and slops.

Maddest Possible Props:
Alex Klammrodt for giving us a place to stay, being really cool, and just being the @#$%ing man. You’re cool, but gimmie back my cards. :) See you at Worlds.

Mad Props:
Justin Desai because you’re my boy and a cool mofo. 5 diff is nothing, wreck at worlds. I’ll talk to you soon enough.
Mike Gemme because he’s my hero. I only wish that I could be as smooth as you.
The Twiggs because you’re such awesome people. Chris, thanks for the games. I’ll see you both down in worlds.
Matt Sokol because you’re very funny and very cool. Check your invite to the Hardcore Group dammit.
Jonny Chu for being so damn cool and for that game. You’ll win worlds. Don’t worry.
Cody and Dave for providing many many laughs, even if Cody scrubbed out while Dave went undefeated (think about it).
I’m sorry, but that’s it. It’s been a while since this all happened, so cut me some slack.

Slops:
None, you’re all cool.

As a side note, if anyone plays in Pennsylvania near Carlisle (read; @#$%inson College), dmail me or talk to me on AIM: RexBanner7. I need to find some people to test with. That’s about it. Later all.