austin-texas-12-08-01-worst-2nd-ever
Title: austin-texas-12-08-01-worst-2nd-ever
Author: Jacob "Armaedes" Taylor
Date: Dec 8, 2001
December 8, 2001
This is a report on my sixth sanctioned tournament. I don’t know why I write how many tournaments I’ve been in at the beginning of all my reports, maybe because eventually I’ll get to "This is my 107th sanctioned tournament ever" and people will start to wonder why, after 107 tournaments, I’m still not winning.
The ironic thing is, I totally didn’t want to go to this tournament. I kept losing, over and over and over. I tried dark and light lightsaber combat with limited (meaning no) success. I finally put together Hayes WYS again, and changed it around by about 10 cards, and played that, but I lost some more with it. I got wrecked by my roommate’s speed-Watto over and over, so I took it apart and just decided not to go to the tournament at all
The end.
No, just kidding. The night before the tournament, I don’t have any light decks built at all, and I’ve got a screwy Hunt Down for dark that is decent. I decide I’m just gonna stay home, since not only do I not have decks, but I haven’t played much all week long courtesy of finals up here at SWT. Then Zane (my roommate) tells me I AM going to the tournament or he’s going to beat the holy hell out of me. Zane’s kind of a big guy, and I’m thinking he could take me, so I throw together a Hayes-esque WYS and reconstruct my old BHBM (the one on my member page) with a different space force (Thrawn, Chireaneau, Imperial Commands, that kind of thing) and decide that I don’t give a flying crap how I do, I’ll just show up, hang with my Star Wars friends, and try to have a good time, despite the fact that I fully expect to lose all my games. But hey, if you can’t go hand out your hard-earned ratings points to people that are rated way below you, then what is there to live for? So the final tally shows that my decks will be:
Light deck: WYS Solid a la Hayes
Dark deck: BHBM mains and toys
I ride up to the tournament with Zane as usual, who is playing Watto for dark and QMC for light. My rating going in is 1657, but don’t let that number give you a wrong impression of my playing skills: I’m actually much worse than that.
Game One
LS vs. Zane Thorp’s (1576) No Money, No Parts, No Deal
Zane and I have played each other in EVERY tournament we have gone to. That’s just the way it goes, you play the guy you ride with, I’ve resigned myself to that fate. As I mentioned earlier, my WYS has yet to even come close to beating Zane’s Watto, so I figure I’ll lose this game and maybe get to play a guy that sucks next round so I can stomp his @#$% into the ground and feel better about coming. I start the Insight combo (which I think I am going to change out for the actual Staging Areas next time), Insurrection combo and of course Squadron Assignments. Zane starts Mobilization Points, Imperial Arrest Order combo, and Crush The Rebellion. He flips first turn of course, using Palpatine, and I lose some interrupts from hand. I go ahead and flip first turn with a guy at Tatooine and a guy in the Cantina. He backs up Palpatine with Mara Jade and then puts a card down. He doesn’t have a lot of force, so I figure he won’t drop anything big and I pay the two. He deploys Jade’s saber for free. I sigh with relief. This was the only time I let him deploy something for free. The rest of the time, I just lost two and counted on my retrieval to bail me out in the end game. I know he is playing two Tatooine Occupations, and I took out my Endor Celebration combo when I rebuilt the deck, so I get a death grip on Tatooine with three or four ships and don’t put Kessel out for a long time. I am playing very carefully, because I know if I make any mistakes Zane will pounce on it and I’m really going down. We actually don’t battle very much amazingly, considering his deck is Tatooine-based, and so is mine. I just make sure I back my sites up so I can’t get stomped and my drains get pretty big. The only real battle we had was when EPP Vader came down to carve up Jedi Knight Luke and some other dude (Phylo, maybe). He hacks Luke with the stick, and then plays I Have You Now to get 3 destinies. I draw Mos Espa docking bay for my destiny (I knew I was forgetting something, but I couldn’t remember what) so for what has to be a first in tournament play, EPP Vader goes up against 2 guys that draw destiny and stays on the table after the battle is over. Vader drains the next turn and goes Lost In The Wilderness, and I spread out a little. I edge twice, and even though he has a pretty decent amount of cards left, Zane can’t find any characters so he draws up when I have 12 cards left.
FW 2 (+12)
Highs: First time I have beat Watto in my LIFE.
Lows: Zane putting Watto at Mos Espa instead of the Junkyard, and me losing 2 to his objective for about 5 turns before I realized it shouldn’t even be flipped. Me edging off Theron Nett (we didn’t even catch it until after the game - hey, I hardly ever use edges!). Zane for leaving 3 cards from his deck in his card box, one of which was a character he could have used.
Game Two
DS vs. Joseph Amaya’s (1736) MWYHL Test to 6
I see the objective, and I pray to all things pure and holy that he isn’t actually testing and that this is just a platform for beats. Of course, then he reveals The Way Of Things as one of his starting effects, and I know it’s a test to 6, and that makes me sad, because my deck is all about beatings and has trouble doing damage if my opponent doesn’t give me anything to do. He starts his training jank, but I get a Zuckuss in my opening hand so I can put him at Carida to reactivate Mobilization Points. I figure all I have to do is make sure he doesn’t have any guys at battlegrounds when he flips, and the Come Here You Big Coward shield, coupled with Secret Plans, should finish the game. I get a pretty early Thrawn-Chimaera at Carida, and Palpatine goes to the Endor Docking Bay to drain. He complete Test 1 before I get Chireaneau or Janus, so no drain bonuses for me. Palpatine goes Lost In The Wilderness right after I back him up with 4-LOM, so I put down Dr. Evazan & Ponda Baba to search for him next turn. This is where Joseph makes the mistake that ends up costing him the game (oops, did I just give away the ending?). He puts down Lando Calrissian, Scoundrel and Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight with his lightsaber against Dr. Evazan & Ponda Baba and 4-LOM. He hacks up Evazan and draws his two destiny, which are relatively high. I don’t draw destiny, leaving his guys at the site. I have to lose both of my characters and about 6 or 7 force. Of course, the next turn I bring the beat squad of Vader, his lightsaber, the new Boba Fett, and a horde of other guys, followed by First Strike. I capture Luke, and battle Lando. Because of Secret Plans, he can’t retrieve and add to his power with Lando, so I draw about 3 or 4 really high destinies, and it’s Lando and about 20 cards. From there it’s just a matter of spreading out to my 3 battlegrounds and draining for one at each until he dies, right before he finishes test 5. I count up my cards, and am amazed to learn I have 18 left. If THIS deck can beat training, that should be proof that people shouldn’t Jedi Test anymore.
FW 4 (+30)
Highs: Beating testing with a deck that shouldn’t have beat testing.
Lows: Testing to 6? Bleah!
Game Three
DS vs. Michael Richard’s (1724) Hidden Base X-wings
Michael is playing basically the same deck that Carl Thompson was playing at the last tournament, when Carl smacked me around. What he does is play a lot of X-wings and Nebulon-B Frigates with Heavy Turbolaser Batteries. When you commit to space, he plays On Target so that your guys can’t move or use their ability towards drawing battle destiny. It’s pretty gross. Unfortunately, I still think that I can handle this deck with Thrawn and the Chimaera and an Imperial Command. As it turns out, I can’t handle it, and soon after I go to space it’s Thrawn, the Chimaera, and 16 cards in my lost pile. One thing BHBM cannot handle is a load of damage all at once. Shortly after that massacre, he flips and I put Zuckuss and Maul up to start probing. I probe 4 times before I finally get the Hidden Base (it was Kessel - it’s ALWAYS Kessel, why did I not go there first?). There was one point where he dropped EPP Obi on board a Nebulon-B Frigate to battle Maul / Zuckuss, but Bad Feeling Have I (which every BHBM should have, by the way) makes sure he doesn’t have enough force to deploy and battle in the same turn, so Zuckuss runs away to probe. I get the hidden base eventually, like I said, but I FORGET TO GET MY PROBE CARDS BACK! This probably ended up costing me the game, as he only had 7 cards left and didn’t satisfy Battle Order, but I’m a dumbass and I have no friends so instead of possibly winning by a card or two I lose instead. That beat on the Chimaera pretty much ended the game on turn 6, it just took a while for me to realize it.
FL 4 (+23)
Highs: Probing the Hidden Base. I never let it go unprobed. And Maul on Zuckuss is AWESOME.
Lows: Thrawn AND the Chimaera AND 16 cards! What the heck is that?!?! On Target is WRONG. But least Michael got his first victory against me in 3 attempts. Oh, and my BHBM lost for the first time ever (tournament play or otherwise).
Game Four
LS vs. Jacob Mayer’s (1882) Maul Deck
I thought it was understood that when you lose a game, you get to play someone lower-rated than your previous opponent? As it turns out, Mayer and I are playing almost the same decks as the last time we paired up at the previous tournament. In that game, he handed me my @#$% by 34, and I didn’t flip WYS the whole game. This time I am determined to do better (and to do better, all I’ll really have to do is flip my objective once and maybe drain him once). He does the standard Maul’s Hut / Jabba’s Palace start, and pulls out his sites and has the first-turn Maul and Palpatine with Janus to the Cantina. He moves Maul over to Jabba’s Palace and it’s my turn. That’s a pretty nasty first turn, right there. It’s starting to look like the last game, except this time I have a good opening hand (with a few characters this time). I go ahead and put Dash in the Outrider at Tatooine and pull the Battle Order shield and save my force. He pays three to drain me for three in the Cantina and drops Mara Jade with Maul. On my turn, Chewie, Enraged and Han with Heavy Blaster Pistol make a visit to Palpatine and Janus in the Cantina. Jacob tries to Force Lightning Han and draws a one. All of a sudden he lets out this bestial scream of rage and yells "DAMMIT" as loud as he can. It was actually kind of scary. So we battle and I try to shoot Janus, but I draw a one. Now it’s my turn to yell "DAMMIT" as loud as I can, and people start to wonder what’s going on down here. I draw three decent destiny, +2 each and Dash adding one to my power from the system. I clear out his guys, and Han stays by himself in the Cantina. His turn he doesn’t drain, because now that Menace Fades is in effect, it would be paying three for a drain of one. Instead he sets up some more guys and moves them into the Cantina to take advantage of poor Han. I put Jedi Luke at the Home One docking bay and transit him out to Docking Bay 94, moving Han over with him. That was the first mistake I made. I did this the last time we played and got raped, but like a dumbass I do it again and once again I get raped by the whole I Have You Now, Clash of Sabers bit. It’s actually not as bad as it could be. I set up Threepio to start tracking for edges, and Jacob doesn’t have the Do They Have A Code Clearance shield, so I edge twice with no problem. Then I make my second mistake of the game. Up until this point, Jacob has complete board control, but is still having to pay three for his drains of one. I decide I need to do some more damage, so I put out Kessel with Mirax in her ship there. By spreading out that soon, I opened myself up to one of Jacob’s two ships in the deck: the Executor. He doesn’t even put a pilot on it, he just battle Mirax and even though my destiny is decent, I still lose her while the Executor hangs around. I set up another ship in space, but the game has been going on so long by now that I have no idea where all my ships and characters are in my deck - I didn’t exactly think I’d need them. Jacob puts premiere Vader on the Executor and we chase each other between Tatooine and Kessel, with him suddenly satisfying Battle Order and draining me a lot again. I just can’t seem to get a foothold again, and those two mistakes end up costing me the game by 12. If I hadn’t been so greedy for the space drains, it might have turned out differently, but instead Mayer gets his third win against me in three attempts.
FL 4 (+11)
Highs: Coming so close . . . .
Lows: . . . but not close enough, as I make two rookiee mistakes and die horribly for it.
At this point I am well on my way to scrubbing out, sitting on a 2-2 record now. I think I should probably just drop now, but I don’t have anywhere else to go, since Zane was my ride, so I decide to finish it out.
Game Five
DS vs. Zane Thorp’s (1576) QMC Standard
I know it’s in the rules that you play the person you come with once, but twice in the same tournament?! Whatever, Zane and I know this matchup and we know he can’t win if I get good draws. I start Palpatine at the Guest Quarters, and Vader at the adjacent site, and just set up a couple of guys at each of his sites. I don’t deploy the Cloud City docking bay so that he can’t pull out one of his Cloud City sites and do a quick-flip using my own location. By taking over the ground, I prevent him from flipping all game. I eventually go to Bespin with Thrawn, the Chimaera and Zuckuss and drain for about seven a turn at his sites. He puts Luke down at the Endor Docking Bay, rather than give him to me, but he never has enough force to pay the three to drain with him. He saves quite a bit of force and has a pretty good sized hand, and then scares the crap out of me by dropping Dash in the Outrider, Elyehk Rue in Red 7 and Wedge Antilles in Red Squadron 1 on Thrawn and Zuckuss. He battles and reduces my power, and I play Imperial Command to add a destiny to make up for the one Wedge will cancel. I draw enoguh destiny to take out the Outrider, and he makes me lose Zuckuss and a card. A couple of turns later he shoots the Chimaera down with Ten Nunb in Blue Squadron 5, but by then he is too low on force to stage a comeback and the game is mine by 20.
FW 6 (+31)
Highs: Not once, but twice! In the same tournament!
Lows: Beating your roommate is never a good idea, especially when he’s your ride home.
Game Six
LS vs. Conor Brace’s (1540) Trooper Dark Deal
I’m glad I went against at least one of these, since Dark Deal is the entire reason I am playing WYS instead of Lightsaber Combat. WYS can just set up Menace Fades faster than any other deck out there. He pulls the Executor using Mobilization Points, and then his two sites, but he doesn’t deploy them right away. Instead, he pull the docking bay, and puts two troopers at his starting location. Don’t know what that’s about, but just to be safe I go ahead and flip first turn, setting up Menace Fades and pulling the Battle Order shield. His turn he declines to drain, and in fact only drains me a couple of times all game (paying 3 each time). Instead he sticks Baron Soontir Fel up at the sector (no TIE cannon), drops only one of his sites he got with I’m Sorry, and puts one trooper at the docking bay and one more at the other site. He plays Dark Deal and tells me to go. Second turn Dark Deal, not bad, but unfortunatley not fast enough. I drain him, and he loses his other Cloud City site to it, so now he is only activating about 10 force for the rest of the game. Dash in the Outrider make short work of Fel, and Han follow on the Falcon to give me that power +2 in Bespin battles. Jedi Luke and Phylo go to his Cloud City docking bay, but a trooper beatdown clears them off. I spend most of the game draining for 5 at the Cantina, the cloud sector, and the Tatooine system. Eventually he puts Xizor at the Cantina against Melas, so I dodge away. The next turn I drop Chewie, Enraged and Lando with gun against Xizor. He reminds me that I have to have a 6 ability to draw destiny, but that point it doesn’t matter because with the power bonus from the Cantina, the power bonus from ships at Tatooine and the fact that Lando hit Xizor with his gun, it ends up being Xizor and 7 cards. I lose Chewie, and move Melas back into the Cantina. I am draining him a lot, and he’s dropping a couple of troopers here and there on unoccupied sites, but he never pays the three to drain so I don’t know what that was all about. At the end, I edge for 5 cards right before I drain him out for the win by 27.
FW 8 (+58)
Highs: WYS owns Dark Deal.
Lows: A trooper beat on the Jedi Knight himself? That’s not right!
So I finish with a +58 differential with 4 wins and 2 losses. You are going to find this hard to believe - I know I did - but I finish in second place behind Justin Warren (who was 6-0 with something like +130 differential). How on earth do you get 2nd going 4-2? And I have Justin Warren to thank for it, since he beat my competition bad enough for me to get that high with a mediocre differential. So I get my first ever tournament foil (an Alter) and a prize pack which, according to tournament guidelines, must be full of crappy cards (Desert Landing Site this time, I think).
Props:
Zane, for driving.
Zane, for making me go to the tournament even though I didn’t want to.
Everybody who came, it was a real blast.
Jeremy Lossee, for running the darn thing, and doing a fine job of keeping us on schedule.
Alter foil - I don’t know if it looks cooler just because I won it or what, but I have decided to put that Alter foil in every deck I make (including WYS).
Light Side Lightsaber combat, for owning most decks up there (I didn’t go against one, but there were quite a few floating around).
Jacob Mayer, for playing 4 copies of The Bith Shuffle & Desperate Reach just because Justin said no one in Austin plays anti-Barrier cards.
WYS, for flipping against Jacob this time.
Hayes, for building the best damn WYS deck I have ever seen.
Carl Thompson, for not showing up - the only reason I did this good is because I didn’t play you, you know you would have creamed me.
Austin meta, for not playing Code Clearance this time - you know I hate that card.
Did I mention the Alter foil? I just want to make sure it’s ingrained in everyone’s mind, because I’ll never do this good again.
Slops:
Me, for not wanting to go.
Not getting to play Justin Warren - I still say my BHBM owns your WYS, you punk! But thanks for the light . . .
My dark deck, for losing its first game. Time to switch to something more reliable.
As always, the bathrooms at Junior’s Cards And Comics. It smells like a sumo wrestler took a piss on a burning cow turd.