modesto-ca-3-30-strawberry-mama-action
Title: modesto-ca-3-30-strawberry-mama-action
Author: Kevin "Kevbozzz" Shannon
Date: Apr 3, 2002
I’m going to be back home in northern California for Easter weekend, so I calls up Clayton Atkins and he sets up a tournament out at Krier’s Comics in Modesto. Me and Clay work on a neat little light deck via AIM and email for a couple of weeks, throwing around different ideas and tweaking it until we like it. We wind up calling it Undead Strawberries (don’t ask), and after a number of changes we settle on version 43.530.3x beta, which seems to be the most solid. So I’ve got a light deck, although of course I don’t bother building it until a few minutes before game time. For Dark I have several different ideas, but due to lack of time I just go with the Dark Deal deck that I already have, makin a few changes here and there.
Me, my little bro Eric, and Dan Mochizuki are all drivin up in my ride. Saturday morning, Dan comes over to my place, I get my mom to sign a card (more on that later) and we’re off. Drive up sucks because of traffic, but we have Pink Floyd so its ok. Me and Dan are in the front talking decks and rock music. We decide that dark side, like modern rock, sucks.
So we finally break through all the stupid traffic and get to Modesto, and apparently drive RIGHT by the Denny’s we’re supposed to meet Clay and Melissa at. Then we’re driving all over downtown asking where Denny’s is, and the local vagrants are like “you mean the one on McHenry Drive?” and I say “No, the other one” and they just get this confused look and point towards McHenry. Damn civilians. So we’re like screw it, the tournament starts soon anyways, we’ll just go to the store and meet Clay there. Then of course on the way to the card shop we come across… Denny’s. So we go in, explain to Clay that we’re stupid and he understands and we cut out while he finishes his grub.
We get some McDonald’s, and spend 20 minutes in the drive thru while some 14 year old putz keeps screwing up the order and Dan gets to drink Ice Tea instead of the soda he ordered. Damn civilians. Head back to the store, and everyone is outside, complaining that the Pokemon players stink. I need to make decks still, so I decide to head in anyways. After all, who’s afraid of a little stench? Well after I regain consciousness, I try not to vomit on my cards while I throw the light deck together. I mean, I’ve been through all sorts of chemical warfare training, but DAMN. I hope Iraq hasn’t developed that kind of bio-terror. Fortunately the Pokemon kiddies leave shortly thereafter, and we get ready to play some Star Wars. We got 12 players I believe, including Clayton Atkins, Peter Nordstrom, Peter’s snotty little step-bro, Jeff Miller, and Kyle Ishimaru. Kyle’s mom wasn’t there, although wherever she was, I’m sure she was also surrounded by gross, sweaty men. Hopefully she got paid this time.
Me and Kyle tend to rag on each other’s mothers (obviously), and he brought a Blow Parried signed by his mom (see his TR for the meaning behind this). I surprised him by whipping out my own gift, a Glancing Blow signed by my mother. Funny stuff. On to the games:
Game 1: Undead Strawberries vs. Kyle “my mom is really loose” Ishimaru’s Lightsaber Combat Racing
This game is just too funny. Kyle activates his first force, and I’m like “ACTION!!” and I play a card or something (see his TR for more detail), and this just sets the trend for the day. The entire game we’re yelling out “ACTION!!” during each other’s turns and stuff, and it doesn’t help that I’m wearing my G.I. Joe “man of action!” T-shirt (with life-like hair!). I win the race, and that pretty much does it since we’re both playing race decks.
Result: FW by 35
Game 2: My Dark Deal vs. Dan “my mom is almost as loose” Mochizuki’s QMC
Dark Deal beats QMC. It just does. Ask Brian Hunter.
Result: FW by quite a bit
Game 3: Undead Strawberries vs. Peter “leave my mom out of this” Nordstrom’s Senate.
He goes, deploys Kashyyyk system, and draws. Turn one I deploy Mirax with ship to Kashyyyk (she stays in space the whole game, draining and satisfying battle plan) and Melas to Cantina for the flip. Then on his second turn he comes down with Xixor, Snoova (deploy for 2!) and Ozzel (deploy for even less!) for some early beats. My turn, I deploy Melas number 2 to Docking Bay 94. His turn (turn 3 for him) he comes with ANOTHER beatdown of EPP Maul or EPP Vader (can’t remember which), and I get to lose a few more. This keeps happening; I deploy something to ground to stay flipped and get my game going, he comes down with more characters to pummel me. Meanwhile the race isn’t going so good, as I keep having to use A Step Backwards and it takes forever to get >24. At one point I have around 12 life left, and he has like 30, plus he has more stuff out and its lookin grim. I have like four big characters in my hand who are expensive because of Bad Feeling Have I. But I manage to knock his two senators out of the senate with Wedge and Tallon and some good destiny, flipping him back (for good it turns out, he didn’t use many Senators), while managing to save 6 Force so I can retrieve for the race on his turn. I win the race, get my 6 back (not to mention I had like 8 cards on my Podracer), plus use I Did It! to get 4 more back on my turn, so now my lifeforce is more than double what it was a minute ago. At this point I finally start getting down some heavy hitters, while most of Peter’s big characters were used early on. What really helped was that even late in the game, Peter was only activating 8 Force total, and I Did It! made saving Force tough for him. Eventually he got out Chimera and Thrawn to space, but Thrawn died fast, and I wound up chasing the Chimera around for the rest of the game. Luke, Han and Lando finally came out and were chasing his guys around on Tatooine. Time was eventually called on his turn, and after draining him on my turn, I had 10 Force left, while Peter had about 6, so I got the timed win by 10.
Result: TW by 10
Game 4: My Dark Deal vs. Jeff “these mama references aren’t even funny anymore” Miller’s Twix Beats
Jeff starts Jedi Council, Insurrection, and Staging Areas, and Draw Their Fire, and gets plenty of 2/0 sites out fast along with naked 3P0. Its obvious he won’t be having any trouble with activation. First couple of turns he also gets Yoda to the Coruscant Docking Bay, while I get out my locations and get ready to start the Deal. On turn 3 or 4 he has a bunch of Force Saved, and he’ll be activating about 60 or so next turn, so I set up on Cloud City and wait for him to counter. I get Dark Deal and Occupation going, and maintain presence at all 3 sites (I neglect deploying the CC Docking Bay to keep Yoda on Coruscant). He knocks me off two sites with mains and blocks the third site with everything that survives. Then the game turns into a battle for Cloud City. He never contests me at the system or sector, we just duke it out on the sites. He has a serious edge in activation, but Bad Feeling and Bespin system are making his stuff expensive, and Battle Deployment is keeping him at one Battle Destiny per battle, so things are pretty even. He manages to Wookie Strangle Dr Evazon and Ponda Baba, which is pretty cool (I guess Chewie had a paw around each of their necks). What’s giving me the edge is the +4 power bonus from Dark Deal (+1 more for my ship at Bespin: CC). In almost every battle he had to lose 3-7 cards in overflow, and without that +5 bonus he wouldn’t have lost much at all the entire game. His weapon destiny draws were huge, but whenever it came time to draw battle destiny he always seemed to draw a 1, while I was drawing big. Eventually the constant overflow and the little drains of 1 &1 at the system and sector made him run out of cards before me. It was an awesome game though, I don’t remember the last time I had that many battles in a single game of Star Wars.
Result: FW by 15 or so
I’m at 7(+ around 80), and there’s another 4/0 player with a timed win who has just one less differential than me, so I take first place by a narrow margin. Check Clayton Atkin’s TR for the exact standings. Prizes are… oh who cares
Props:
Clay – For settin the whole thing up and runnin it smoothly
Kyle – ACTION!
Dan – There’s a reason the kids call him the Champ
Jeff – for a fun filled game
Peter – he’s just cool
Eric – for playing it out even with my crappy half made decks
The Pope, John Paul II – Still going like the energizer bunny. Expect him to make a strong showing at DecipherCon this year after going 8-0 at the Vatican Regionals.
Slops:
Me –for giving my brother crappy half-made decks to play
Pokemon players – I’m sure they’re all nice people, but they smell like doodoo.
Kyle’s Mom – For openly soliciting herself to all the Pokemon players, most of which were little kids.
You – For reading this entire TR and expecting me to give you props for it.