austin-texas-03-23-02-senate-swarm
Title: austin-texas-03-23-02-senate-swarm
Author: Jacob "Armaedes" Taylor
Date: Mar 25, 2002
March 23, 2002
I had actually done quite a bit of playtesting in preparation for this tournament, trying out a variety of decks. In the end I decided to go with my lightsaber combat deck for light. That deck has performed very well, is very easy to meta, and hasn’t lost yet. I’m convinced it can’t lose to most decks, and has a chance of winning against all decks. Dark, as always, is a problem. After experimenting with some different types of beats, I decide on Senate TIEs, because I can’t think of anything that it couldn’t beat. So I’m taking two very solid decks that I had played a lot, and I expected to do very well. So after all the debate . . .
Light deck: Lightsaber combat
Dark deck: Senate TIEs
My roommate Zane drives us up there, as always, and Zane is taking MKOS beats for dark and Hidden Base flip with matching X-wings for light (that deck is tight, you’ll have to check it out when he finally posts it). The tournament director is Jeremy Losee, who usually does a good job of keeping us on schedule, so we start almost on time and the pairings are called.
Game One
LS vs. Jacob Mayer’s (1947) Maul Mains
I have played against Jake’s Maul deck more times than I can remember, usually using my WYS. This is the first time my combat has ever gone against it, though, and I’m confident I can win if I play smart. The only thing I am worried about is his first-turn Jade using the Audience Chamber game text - that drain could make the game tight if I don’t have an early EPP to deal with it. So Jake draws his opening hand and, contrary to what I would have expeted from him, drops the first-turn free Maul and draws. I get a really good opening hand, with Qui-Gon, his saber, and an evasion card, so I drop all of that, get out the Jedi Council Chambers, and draw. On Jake’s turn he puts Dr. Evazan & Ponda Baba at one Jabba’s Palace site, Gailid in the Audience Chamber, then moves Maul to his third Jabba’s Palace locations. He saves himself some cards, so I know he has to have a barrier or something. So on my turn I deploy Yoda from hand, use his gametext to pull a Sense, and then drop EPP Luke onto Gailid. As suspected, he barriers Luke, and I Sense it. I battle and swing at Gailid and expect he’ll just Ghhhk. But he doesn’t have the Ghhhk. I draw a low destiny, though, and he just loses Gailid and about six cards. I move Luke in front of Dr. Evazan & Ponda Baba and draw a card or two. As expected, he drops a whole horde of characters in front of Luke to battle. I, of course, Dodge away to the Audience Chamber, and he follows with some guys. On my turn I drain for four at Naboo and move Luke over to the next empty Jabba’s Palace site. On his turn he drains for one, and drops EPP Vader on Luke. I barrier. We play a cat and mouse game like this for a while, but he is only draining for one while I am draining for four, and he also has a lot more cards on the table than I do. I believe there was one other EPP strike (by me) that cost him a few cards of overflow. At one point I made a mistake though; I had Yoda draining at Naboo and he drops EPP Vader on him. I stack a 7 on Qui-Gon at the adjacent site. He battles, and I have no evasion cards, but I don’t figure it’s a big deal. Then he plays Dark Strike to add three to his saber swing, and hits Yoda, and that isn’t good. He flips over an average destiny, and in the heat of battle I decide it would be a good idea for me to draw destiny too. I end up drawing one of my only one-destinies left in my deck for battle destiny. This works out pretty bad for me, because I end up losing Yoda and a handful of cards, and he gets to forfeit Vader so I can’t duel him. My objective flips during this exchange, so at least I get to retrieve one. This hurts my differential, but basically Jake is playing dark side mains, which LSC rolls, so the drains of four catch up and I finally beat that Maul deck, for the first time ever in many tries, by 15 cards.
FW 2(+15)
Highs: Ahhh, vindication! After all those losses, I finally beat Jake.
Lows: Drawing destiny versus Vader - that was a bad move.
Game Two
DS vs. Zane Thorps (1679) Hidden Base Flip
This game sucks loads. I always play Zane during every tournament, but this is the most worried I have been about a matchup. This is because I’m playing Senate TIEs, while Zane is playing Hidden Base flip. This in itself is a nail-biting matchup for TIEs, because if you miss with the cannons you’re in trouble. But Zane’s deck is much worse - he plays Barrier x3, A Few Manuevers x3, and he’s playing about four X-wing cannons. So he barriers my ship, then shoots it down, or he plays A Few Maneuvers on his ships, so I have trouble shooting them down, and then kills me instantly if I don’t have the Ghhhk. Prior to the match, I put Blast Door Controls in my deck to improve my chances against Zane, but I don’t actually get it out all game. It doesn’t matter much, because Zane has the worst luck I have ever seen him have in a deck. His Hidden Base is based around using the new Luke to abuse the All Wings Report In combo, but he doesn’t get Luke out (despite playing three AWRI combos) for about the first five turns. When Luke finally does come up to space, I immediately shoot him down. This game is just really bad for Zane, especially when an early Monnok gets two of his A Few Manuevers and half of his ground force (Yoda x2). There really isn’t much to say - my cannons do their work, and the drain +2 political effect ends the game quickly. The most exciting part of the game was when I pulled out all the defensive shields I would need for the game before I even activated - the bad part of playtesting as much as we do. I win handily by 32.
FW 4 (+47)
Highs: None.
Lows: Playing the guy responsible for my ride home - good thing Zane’s not a vindictive guy. That Monnok for two A Few Manuevers was ugly.
Game Three
LS vs. Michael Richard’s (1817) Senate Manip.
If I had to pick someone in Austin that was on the same playing level as me, it would be Mike. Games against him always make me think more than I should have to. Combat against Senate is supposed to be a ridiculously simple matcup, and has been for me so far, but Mike makes the game close by limiting my hand size. He uses the Senate every turn to take two cards, and then plays Defensive Fire, and Monnok, and when I get down to a couple of cards, he plays Limited Resources. He starts the Coruscant system and the Senate, and then plays nothing but twixes for the rest of his generation. If it wasn’t for stupid Tikkes, Honor alone would have helped me a lot. He quickly flips and piles Senators in the senate, and he gets to verify my deck early, so he sees that Han, Chewie & The Falcon is my only space. So he puts Zuckuss alone in space to drain, knowing his destiny is high enough to handle my Falcon. With Aks Moe at the Senate, he’s draining for three a turn, and sometimes hitting me with Limited Resources, while I am draining for four, so the game is very close and I have the strong suspicion I’m going to lose by a couple of cards. Bad Feeling Have I hits the table, making life a little rougher on me for my master plan. Eventually he puts out Ability, Ability, Ability. On my turn I Alter it, but since he started There Is No Try & Oppressive Enforcement, I lose the Alter and two cards. Then on his turn he deploys his second copy of Ability, Ability, Ability. Not good. Finally, I get enough force saved up and decide to make my move. With a Bith Shuffle combo in hand, I drop Han, Chewie & The Falcon and Luke with Lightsaber on Artoo-Detoo in Red 5 onto Zuckuss. He doesn’t have a barrier anyway, so I needn’t have worried. The ensusing battle takes out Zuckuss and seven cards, but more importantly it gives me free drains of six a turn, while he is left with a lone drain at the Senate that he has to pay three for. The space battle was really a game-ending thing, because by then he had ditched the rest of his space to the lost pile thinking I wouldn’t go after him. My big (free) drains finish the game and I win by 16.
FW 6(+63)
Highs: That is the first time I have ever actually deployed Artoo-Detoo in Red 5 to space. It was hilarious, and also one of the better Star Wars CCG moves I have successfully pulled off. Mike is an awesome guy to play against because not only is he a good card player, he’s also a funny guy. If you’re reading this Mike, thanks for the nail biter.
Lows: Three wins in a row - time to start losing!
It was in the middle of this game that Ted, an Austin regular, decided to leave the tournament. If you know Ted, or if you’ve read previous TRs from Austin players, you too will feel the pain and loss we all felt when Ted dropped. Apparently he was crying like a baby that he was losing to Jacob Mayer’s Gungan deck (I would be too, actually). When the Falcon and some Bravo fighters drew a lot of destinies and destroyed Ted’s fleet of Star Destroyers, he got pissed off at the state of the game and decided he should sell his cards on ebay and quit the game. So if you want some Star Wars cards, check out ebay for his stuff, and if you deal in child porn, I’m sure Ted will be by with his ebay money to make a large purchase in the near future.
Game Four
DS vs. Matt Lush’s (1970) Jedi Council Chambers Mains
I’ve never played against Matt before, but I’ve been told that his time in the army has hurt his CCG playing. There was certainly no evidence of that this game. Since he is Matt Lush, I start off by pulling out the There Is No Try shield. I think maybe I am disadvantaged in this matchup, since Matt just got done playing against Justin Warren’s Senate TIEs, which is very close to mine. As a result, Matt knows what to expect. I drop a first turn Lott Dodd, and Matt dumps down Boussh to the Senate, deploys Mantellian Savrip (who plays Masterful Move in Senate TIEs?) and battles. I lose control of the Senate immediately. Thanks to Savrip, I never get it back. I will drop a couple of Senators, battle, and he will use the Claw Fish to get high enough to kill both my senators, and then he will use Savrip to cover my attrition. So Boussh owns the Senate all game long, sadly. In space, I get owned just as much. He is playing only capital starships, so my cannons are useless. He also starts Draw Their Fire, so I am losing cards from that while he retrieves. Nothing really went my way this game, and I lose very quickly by over half my deck (33 cards).
FL 6 (+30)
Highs: Playing Matt Lush for the first time - apparently he has recovered from his Army stint.
Lows: Why couldn’t I have played against his dark deck? It was BHBM!
Game Five
DS vs. Justin Warren’s (2045) Senate Beats
Justin and I have finished first and second place (respectively) at a couple of tournaments, but this is only the second time I have played him ever. That’s pretty crazy. I am concerned I won’t be able to hold the Senate, both because I don’t play a lot of Senators or political-based interrupts, and because in my last game I couldn’t kick freakin’ Boussh out of the Senate, so what the hell am I gonna do against guys that aren’t power = 0? I have ridiculously bad luck this game. I mean, no matter what I do, I can’t get the cards I need. At least, once I do, Justin uses his objective to put them back. I hate to blame a loss on a bad hand, because I think people are full of crap when they do that, but that’s what a lot of it was - a god-awful draw. Normally this is not a big deal. TIEs is already pretty combo-intensive to make it work, but Lott Dodd facilitates the whole thing so that you can recover from a bad draw pretty easily. Unfortunately, I never had a Senate majority during my control phase, so I didn’t get to use Lott Dodd once. Justin kicks me out of the Senate early, and I never get it back. He also only gives me two icons all game, and I don’t draw any systems, so basically I activate about six force and draw. I always save seven force, because that gives me two shots with a cannon and an interrupt (since Justin started Draw Their Fire). So I activate, draw, activate, draw. I am doing no damage, but the Come Here You Big Coward shield keeps Justin to a drain of one at his only battleground, and no Amidala retrieval. Once or twice Justin forgets to take his senator of the "cancel a drain" effect and then I stack one of my own to drain +2 at Coruscant. Since my objective isn’t flipped, I can’t put the Senators back into my deck, so I just deploy them to a Dreadnaught at Wakeelmui. Despite my bad luck, the game is close, because Justin can’t do any damage to me. Finally he finds his Falcon and goes after my only TIE. I shoot him down. On his next turn, his second Falcon goes against my TIE. I shoot it down, but in the process he retrieved his previous Falcon using Draw Their Fire and drew it again with Threepio. Since I’m having to use three force a turn to fire my cannon, I can’t pay to drain AND save my force for cannons and stuff, so basically I just lose one to Draw Their Fire every turn while he futily throws his Falcons against me. FINALLY I get a third system (I play six), then a fourth, and I eventually am generating in the double digits. But then Justin puts his Falcon at Endor, far away from me, so he can satisfy Battle Plan, Come Here You Big Coward, etc. I deploy Ability, Ability, Ability, but I miscounted and he actually has one more card with ability than I do. This is when time is called. He has fourteen cards left, and I have nine. I probably should have kept the timed win, to help my rating out, but in all honesty he most likely would have beaten me now that he can drain for free and I can’t. We’ll never know if I had another TIE and cannon in those last nine cards to take Endor from him, but I didn’t want to be a bastard and pretend I had an advantage and could pull out a win when I wasn’t sure I could. So I draw up and take the full loss by 14.
FL 6 (+16)
Highs: Playing Warren, the cream of the crop as far as Austin is concerned.
Lows: That was the most ridiculous game of Star Wars CCG I’ve ever played. That may have been the worst draw I’ve ever had, including the time I played WYS and didn’t flip.
Game Six
LS vs. David Burnetts (1642) ISB Troopers
David talks a lot of smack, so I’m interested to see if he’s any good. This is my first time to play him, so I don’t know what to expect. He activates and pulls out a docking bay before he thinks to use Mobilization Points, so I have Don’t Do That Again out to stunt his early activation. He draws his first turn, and I drop Qui-Gon on mine. He pulls out the Battle Order shield, and the drops Lieutenant Suba, pulls a Tactical Support, plays it, and then drops about 10 troopers for free, including a couple of Garrisons. Then he deploys the Spaceport Docking Bay to Naboo and moves his troopers there. Yikes! Unfortunately, he also draws a 17-card hand, so of course I Grimtaash him lost and get Trooper Assault x3, Dark Jedi Presence x3, and a couple of other cards. That took a big chunk of his offense. I put Yoda at my other Naboo site, and then I think he’s probably not playing much space so I put my Falcon at his Carida (that he finally drew up). On his turn he proves my assumption wrong by dropping Zuckuss, 4-LOM and Guri in Stinger on my poor defenseless Falcon. The ensuing battle clears the Falcon, but doesn’t leave him enough force to move his troopers, so I’m free to drain for four my next turn. I put TK-422 at his trooper’s site to block his drain. He finally uses a pile of force to move his guys to Yoda’s site. I deathfinger a garrison, then move Yoda, but he plays Full Scale Alert. I Sense it. His turn he follows Yoda, and I elect to not move TK-422 to block the drain. Instead I move Yoda back, and he plays Full Scale Alert again. I Sense it again (this was making me sweat, because I was worried I would mis-track the Sense I had just played and not be able to draw it with Threepio). Luckily, I got my Sense back. At the beginning of his turn, I finally get the card I was looking for - Surprise Assault - courtesy of Threepio. When he drains me with his load of troopers, I Surprise Assault, and that leaves him with about four cards in his deck. He moves two troopers to Yoda’s site, since that’s all the force he has left. Yoda deathfingers one, then battles the other, and the overflow instantly wins me the game by 22.
FW 8 (+38)
Highs: ISB troopers has beat me before, it was cool to beat it back. Also, Dave is mad cool - he’s a big mouth and a punk, and I think he’s one of the coolest guys in Dantooine. Thanks for the game, dude, and that Feltipern Trevagg / Dr. E. / Disarmed tech for combat is nice.
Lows: Full Scale Alert is just wrong - without Sense, I would have lost the game completely.
So the final standings are like this:
First - Justin Warren
Second - Matt Lush
Third - Jacob Taylor (me)
Fourth - Michael Richards
Fifth - Zane
Sixth through Ninth (in no discernable order) - Eric Clegg, David Burnett, Jeremy Forbes, Jacob Mayer
Dead Last - Ted
Props:
Zane, for driving
Justin, for winning the whole thing
Lightsaber combat, for winning (and being the most unfair objective in the game) mine is now 6-0 in tournament play
Jeremy, for running a great tourney - thanks man
Everyone who showed up and is helping keep the game alive. We had 10 people, which I think is pretty darn impressive.
Slops:
Ted - you all know why
Me, for going 1-2 with dark, as always.
My game against Justin - it just sucked
Everyone who played Senate - there were six or seven Senate decks at the tournament, I was getting kind of tired of them (even though I played it myself).
The bathrooms at Junior’s Cards and Comics, which also doubles as a storage room for their excess stock and the rotting dead bodies that the Korean lady collects. It smells bad in there.