va-beach-2001-worlds-part-1
Title: va-beach-2001-worlds-part-1
Author: Brad "Admiral Twk" Reinhold
Date: Nov 20, 2001
hey guys, this will probably be long, but i hope you enjoy it. This was the best weekend of my life, i don’t know if that makes it a good weekend or my life sad :) a well.
DAY ONE: WEDNESDAY, BURLINGTON, NORTH CAROLINA
It all starts on wednesday. I drive up to durham, NC, to pick up my buddy mike merletto. He’s spending the night, then we’re waiting for caleb and driving up the next day. I get up to his house, but there are no cars. hmmm, i suppose I’ll wait for the bus. after like 25 minutes, the bus shows up, goes past the house, stops, some kid gets out, mike does NOT get out, and the bus drives off. Um, yeah. great. So, i decide to break into mikes house. I am bored, and i need to get my cards. So i walk around back, looking for the key. i don’t see it, and decide to look near the window to his computer room. MIKE IS AT HIS COMPUTER. i knock on the window (i had already rung the door bell 2 times when i got there jsut to make sure) and he’s like, what the hell are you doing THERE?! I just shake my head and walk around to the front where he lets me in. Anyway, we get his stuff together, he rags on me for not cleaning my car yet, and we are off. Once we get back to Burlington, I go over to K-mart and buy some of their chicken (he said that k-mart didn’t sell cooked chiken, so I had to prove it :) ) We take it back, eat some, and test. I’ve been working on this huntdown for dark that is awesome beats, and for light.......well, i wanted to do LS saber combat, then tried hidden mains, then TRM, then QMC, then WYS. I have no idea what to do. So i build the hidden mains back, as it would be a tough matchup for the HD, and it is. We tech the HD a lil, then test some more. The huntdown owns it several times, so all is good. Around that time I get a call from charles shanlever, a good friend from my first college, and he wants to come over later and chill. I say cool, let him know we are teching for worlds, but would love to play a lil magic. So i get owned (he’s good, and I haven’t looked at magic in a while, tho i do get my combo off the last game), and i ask if i can take some decks to FCon with me, and he’s like ya. I bring that and a DBZ uber deck of destruction that hasn’t lost yet, even against eric hunter, and I have all my non star wars crap out of the way. he chills and looks through my old cards for a while, gives me a beer, and departs. Mike and I call it quits for the night, and go to sleep. I have an right o’clock the next day, but I don’t get to sleep til 3 or 4 am cause I have been having sleep problems lately (anxiety about worlds, i suppose).
DAY TWO: THURSDAY, BURLINGTON, NORTH CAROLINA to VA. BEACH, VIRGINIA
I oversleep, then get up around 11am and start testing. I ask where caleb is, and he says he hasn’t gotten here yet. just then, there is a knock at the door, and its caleb (he had to drive up from SC. I go to class late at 12 (I was beating the @#$% out of caleb, a fun and worthwhile endeavor :) )and tell the teacher I was taking a makeup test on 18th century Tennis. I don’t think he believes me, and i get nothing done for the rest of class. I then go to poli-sci, and run in a campaign for a fictitious mayor in a simulated city. I lost the race when one person in class, during the questions session, asked what I would do about Live Gator Wresting that apparently had gone underground and in peoples back yards. My opponent kept a straight face, answered politely something. Meanwhile, I was like, "Gator Wrestling....BWhahahahahahahahahahahaha," making me look like an idiot because i couldn’t stop laughing. Hayes will attest to my laughing disease. Once i get started, it is damn near impossible for me to stop. I nearly died choking when he made another comment at KFC, to be addressed later in the TR. All I will say is this: MASHED POTATOES! Bwhahahahahahhaha. Ok. Anyways, i lose by a vote or 10, go home, throw all my coke cans under the car next to me to make room for all our @#$% (I know the guy who owns the car, he’s not nice. he had it coming. It wasn’t intentional. You’ll never catch me, coppers!). Caleb is a dumbass, but apparently I am too, as you shall soon see. We head over to chick-fil-a (mike has never been there before. He also, before the previous night, had never eaten any chicken other than fried legs. No wings. No Breast (mmmmmm....breast...). nothing. and he had only eaten it fried. So please, next time you see mike, please feel free to laugh your @#$% off:) j/k, buddy) and i get us some food. Once we finish, i get into the car, then ask mike to call ahead about some cards we need to pick up. Mike, being a normal guy, asks for the phone...AAAAAAA! so he runs back into the chick-fil-a, while I hold up traffic, and grabs the phone. I also realize i forgot the vodka, so we go get that. On the way, I get a call from henry jicha, and I have to re arrange everything to go pick the bastard up after he said he would be at my place...grrr. I am going to be late to pick up alan sagan (I’m to pick him up in norfolk around 8). then gas, then head up, wait for henry (grrrr!), then to C+B cards and comics to pick up x3 epp mauls and x2 epp quiggys. When we get there, I find out that charles deese, te owner, has thrown his back out, so we get the cards then help him load out some stuff into his truck. Once we get ready to leave, I ask mike to call ahead to verify our reservations. He asks for the phone, and i tell him he had it last. He says no, so i panic. charles goes back up, reopens the store, but no phone. I come back down and find out mike found it under his seat in the car...grrrrrr. So anyway, we’re on our way. Henry rides with caleb.
We drive for a long time, get into virginia (btw, caleb took his own car, and we split up. He’s going strait to the hotel, we’re going to get alan and hope he doesn’t kill us for being late) then get onto 58? and drive for a long long long time. In that time, we work up a really good LS obj that uses racing, but need to test it. About half way on 58, i smell vodka. @#$%! so i pull over (after mike crawls into the back seat to try to get into the trunk from there to check on the stuff) but the vodka is fine. WTF? I guess some states smell like vodka at 10pm. thats right, 10pm, and still not up to norfolk. damn. I feel really bad for alan. Around 10:45 we get up to the norfolk airport, but no alan. Dude, I am still so sorry for not being there on time. I am punctual to a T about everything except classes, and had really looked forward to meeting you after talking on AIM for a month now.
so we hang around, hoping alan will be there, jsut hiding for like 30-45 minutes, then hea on to the hotel. Also, it sould be noted, that my phone didn’t work the second I got into VA, nor all weekend, so i had no means to call an operator and the hotel to see if alan is there. So we get to the Hotel, check in, find out caleb didn’t get there yet, meet up with Rob werbicki, another member of our room team. I head up to find alan, find him, don’t get assassinated, then meet hayes. I figure it has to be hayes, cause he’s got like snow on top of his head he’s so tall :)i say hi, find out the room they are in, meet Andy Klema, tho it is a camoflaged Matt Berta (who proceeds to go around with my name on his hand, and every time i see him, he’s like "your brad reinhold, right?". dude, you are a trip :)) i went up to hayes room, they were all drinking, i got to meet some KA guys, and went up to my room. After getting everything put away, i went back down to the gaming room, met more cool people, went upstairs yet again (i do this alot) to see hayes puke, then went back down (last time, folks) to play against bastian.
Game one of the weekend:
bastian winklehaus QMC versus me HD
bastian was very tired. I was too, but i think he needed sleep more at that point. It was really nice of him to play another game that night. I think he assumed it would be over quickly, which from his stand point is fair to say.
I deploy choke vader plus lightsaber turn one, after pulling carida and exec DB. I draw one card, and get lateral damage. His turn, activate 6, play wedge + ship, draw one. end of his turn, I play imperial supply to activate 4, then activate 10 on my turn. lateral damage wedge, thrawn plus chimaera, initiate, make him lose wedge and 9 cards. visage is eating him up, so he drops luke w/ stick at another site. i drain, he cancels with the site (I haven’t played against QMC in a while) then i drop epp maul plus dr. E combo and fight. he dodges away, and we cat and mouse with him with obi and luke, me with vader and tarkin, maul and drE. he finally gets low enough that he moves his crew in front of lone vader at this point. I drop iggy and fett, YAB obi, initiate, I have you now, and we quit befoe its even over.
Highs: getting to play against bastian, beating him by 20+.
lows: not a good way for a friend to end their night, and he was tired.
SIGN OF DOOM: henry jicha, watching the game, has to tell me i can use the game text of the site to cancel drains. I suck.
DAY THREE: FRIDAY, VA BEACH, VA: STAR WARS OPEN
So, I stay up making decks in my room and testing for day 2. Mike will be playing the HD day one, but the LS combat just isn’t seeming to do enough damage, so we decide at like 5am he’ll play WYS. I get no sleep and help him get the WYS together, test a bit more, loan out 7590565693875694 cards for day one to random people (dudes, I STILL need back some of the mauls I loaned out. If you got em, just let me know. You can keep using them, i just need them back sometime) (and for those of you that say I’m a dumb @#$% for loaning out that many cards, look at it this way: I came this weekend to have fun. I can go to a tournament here and almost guarantee getting a maul or such, at least every other tourny. Not trying to be @#$%y or anything, but there are more important things, like making sure everybody has a blast playing in what may be the last star wars worlds ever. I don’t care about the cards...its just cards. But i do care about whether or not YOU have fun.) then, i get a bright idea. I offer to help TD day one. I know they need us to help, and I also want to get a look at the meta, see whats big, maybe learn some things (I did!) and meet some people (I did! and I helped out kim with her Inner Strength thingy...I am sorry that guy jewed you like that. That sucks.) also, guys, if you are at a con, and are curious about a gameplay aspect, just ask a judge. thats what we are there for. we want to help you win your games through correct interpretation of the game. bad judges make things tough, and there were some, but if you see me reffing at a con or something or even playing, just ask me a question, and I’ll give it to you as best i can. Anyway, so day one, there were SO many people playing QMC. other notables were the combat objectives, senate monkey ties, HDADTJ, WYS(but not played by a lot of people), and Scum was huge. at the start of the 4th round, I find Alan Sagan, and we decide to enter into the Open at 9pm. I don’t have any decks, cause mike has them, so he hooks me up with ISB scum and I make a LS saber combat based off of the deck I made on the way up. I added x4 OOC to take up the last of the opponents grabbers (they will play an anti drain or I did it! one, an anti retrieval one, then the grabber) so that I can play free edges :) I played x3 of that. I don’t remember who I played in the games, but I went 4-0, with positive differential of over a hundred as i recall...the LS won by 46 and 41...it was SICK! I mean, steven lewis, brian rippetoe, scott lingrell, alan sagan, david irvine, andy mclure are all there, it should have been the toughest tourny of my life, and it feels (no offense guys) like an ep1 tourny. I know many were playing ’fun’ decks, but it was a real confidence boost, and that helped on day 2. I find out that Mike qualified for day 2, losing only his last 2 games against tim guzman. Anyway, scum was ok, having never palyed with it before kinda stank, but the LS was a machine!!!!I was so happy. Anyway, that finishes up, I get a full set of Cloud City (ya-hoo!)(j/k) and go upstairs, running into ben young on the way. Ben was cool as hell, and he and his crew hooked me up with cards for day 2. Basically, I told ben about the LS I had played, and he’s like, why not play numbers? I’m like, dude, Brilliant! So I think about it, ask if they have the cards I’ll need to make the deck changes, go see hayes (we had been working on decks between the time that won the tourny and the time I met up with Ben Young) I asked him if it was a drunken idea (it was like 4 am after all) and if it was worth trying, and he really like it! So, I make the deck, go down and test one game with alan. I don’t tell him what it is, just that he needs to play a game. So we sit down, he does the usual things he would against what my deck seems to do, and as soon as the I Did It! shield comes out, I play new lando and insert odds. He just stares at it. I stare at him. So I’m like, dude, I jsut inserted odds in the deck you were playing for tomorrow, in a post rIII environment. He’s like, yeah, I want to make one :) So I get about an hour of sleep while he techs the deck west coast canadian style.