regional-warmup-livingston-nj-5-25-02
Title: regional-warmup-livingston-nj-5-25-02
Author: Ted "Rogue15" Panczyszyn
Date: May 26, 2002
Pre-weekend Junk:
I decided a week ago to play the All-Wings/LS Combat tech that I modified from Decktech in addition to the Black Sun/AAT/Droidekas that I’ve been enjoying for the last few months. Drew Scott, Greg Shaw, and I spend much of the week communicating the different cards we needed for some decks and we make arrangements to stay at the Holiday Inn in Parsippany, NJ. The hotel is about 10-15 minutes away from the many locations were were going to be hitting over the weekend.
Drew meets me outside of Philly at about 8:30am on Saturday and we cross over to Bordentown, NJ to get Greg, Bill Kafer, and Jon "Buzzsaw" Dansbury. Other than missing an exit and doing some creative back-tracking, the ride up is uneventful as we talked about our decks, Ep II, listening to Moxy Fruvous, and teasing Jon. We drop off Greg and Bill at Time Warp Comics in Cedar Grove at about 10:30am, where they were participating in the LotR State Open. Jon, Drew and I head to New World Manga in Livingston, about 15 minutes away. We arrive early, sleeve our decks and borrowed cards, and at about 12:00 Tom H-K starts of the tournament with 6 players. He reported that many would be going to the regional the next day, so he wasn’t too surprised when the turnout was low. Once again, my car is needed to sanction the event.
Game 1: My DS v. Kelly Krieble’s QMC.
This is basically a rematch from 3/23/02. He begins his buildup on Cloud City with QuiGon and he puts UberFalcon (Han, Chewie, and Falcon) at Bespin. I never get much of a buildup on Cloud City, because my AAT’s can’t go in there. He does manage to put Liberty and hyper Lando at my Kiffex, and I promptly dispatch him with Fett in Slave I and a Res luk Rauf I had saved, nailing him with about 10 attrition (bye, everyone). He manages to set up a few decent drains on Cloud City, and what few characters can go in can’t keep up with ongoing battle attrition. Full Loss by 27.
0(-27)
Game 2: My LS v. Tom Schwarz’s Invasion
Tom is a young local guy that loves the game. He’s not packing any shields, which perplexes me, but as we go along I tell him where they would have helped out. He gets the Theed Throne Room out early, and plops Rune and Maul there, thus flipping both of our objectives at once. I move Jedi Luck, Obi Wan, JK, and Yoda, Master of the Force (YoMaFo) there and bust a combat cap in Maul’s heinie. Rune sticks around and he deploys a shipload of battle droids there, and he keeps battling and using Droid Racks to save them. He then goes outside with an AAT and the AAT transport to the swamp, but Bouschh manages to hang around to block that drain for the rest of the game. I soon get UberFalcon to Naboo and take out the Blockade Flagship and its brave Captain with no difficulty. He drew a 6, though, so that just cleared out the system with no further problems in space for the rest of the game. Inside the palace, we spend the rest of the game chasing each other with reincarnated droids and Jedi (Resilience) until he has no more characters left and I drain him out. Full win by 18
2(-9)
Game 3: My DS v. Tom Schwarz’s Rebel Strike Team
Well, with only six people it’s bound to happen... often. Again he has no defensive shields. I flip to Vengeance on the first turn, and he speed drops scouts to Endor. Over the next few turns the Hidden Trail, Back Door, and Bunker all appear, but after 2 tries he never blows the bunker. I have Naboo: Battle Plains in opening hand so I focus everything on deploying my tanks to Naboo. I get my docking bays out by turn 2, and thanks to Mob Points, I am activating at will. There are no battles this game as he wants to avoid my big boomahs (Energy Shell Launchers) and multiple destinies. Our deploy/drain race ends with me on top. Full win by 11.
4(2)
Game 3: My LS v. Jon Dansbury’s DS Combat with Podrace
I love busting Jon’s chops. He enjoys the game and with good decks can play well, but he has been off for the last few months. DS Combat is a new deck for him, and he is surprised that I am playing the counterpart. ( I didn’t say we were talking about MY decks on the ride up...) He wins the race quickly, and I lose my force. QuiGon combats with Maul, and Strike Blocked covers my a$$ on many occasions. After I make him lose Maul after a few go-rounds, I forget to flip my objective back for about 3-4 turns, thus not draining for 4 a pop (DOH!!!!). I plant Luke with LS ("Padawan Luke") at the Arena. I deploy Bouschh to the Flagship Bridge but Arica comes by and shish-kebobs her. Palpi comes down but soon falls to another Strike Blocked and goes bye-bye. He runs out of Dark Jedi to deploy, so I go on to drain him out to win. Full win by 11.
6(13)
Allright!! I have my 3 wins I wanted!!!
Game 5: My LS v. Drew Scott’s BHBM
Hmmm. Interesting matchup. I had no Jedi characters in my first 3 turns. I can’t set up my drain and wait routine, and by the time we get Vader and Luke out and about, he’s squatting in my Generators and Generator Core with Palpi, EPP Vader, and Janus and I can’t flip the darn thing back. By the time I had QuiGon and Obi around, he kept making me re-draw my combat cards so I couldn’t make him lose force or characters. He finally gets Luke and Palpi off of Naboo to get to DS II, but I manage a small counter-offensive, almost getting enough characters out to drain and battle. Other than a few brief skirmishes, there were no decent battles in this game either. Drew takes the game by 12.
6(1)
Game 6: My Ds v. Drew Scott’s MWYHL
He’s playing a deck similar to Kim Caton, which basically buys him time to complete to 5 and then send Jedi guys around to clean up whatever is left. I did get a few characters out quickly to Naboo, but Quigon and Luke seemed to hold their own and with him subtracting one from destiny draws (test 3), my energy shell launchers never hit their target and he is immune to most of my attrition. For test 5 he draws a 1 and a 5, keeping the 5 and pretty much knocking everyone out. Bah. Full loss by 27.
6(-26)
So Drew wins, going 6-0, Kelly is 3-3 with plus-something diff and I’m in 3rd. Jon went 2-4 and is all verklempt because he bet Bill Kafer he’d go 4-2.
Props:
Drew joining us for the weekend
LS combat holding its own having never used it before
Beating Jon...just because ;-)
Only 6 people makes the games faster!!!
Chinese food at adjacent store is pretty good.
Slops:
Only 6 people and having to play the same guy twice on two occasions.
Maniacal Interlude:
So we pack up the Neon and go back to Time Warp where all of these people are playing game 7 of the LotR open regional thingie.. Bill and Greg both win and go 4-3 for the day, and we leave Jon and Drew there to play WWF tag team. We go check in at the Holiday Inn, get dinner at Wendy’s (the official fst-food of Team I Bent My Wookie). Drew calls and says the WWF thing is lame, so I pick them up right after they are teased by the local bullies. They inform us that Mike Dalton is the NJ champ in LotR.. whoooo-peeeeee (insert sarcastic tone here... I’m not a LotR guru...) We order LotR movie for our room as we playtest, make last-minute changes to decks, and complete our decklists. Bill has to call the girlfriend and we tease them a bit while he’s in the hall on his cell-phone. Then Greg’s mom calls (again) on my cell-phone and I hand it over to him to explain why he hadn’t called yet (he said he left a message on the machine...riiiighht). At Midnite, Bill and Greg are still playtesting and Greg wants a new DS deck, so we kick them out into the hall to try to get some sleep until after 1 or so. When they come back, Dansbury sounds like frikkin Vader after Palpi messed up his life support, so I heave a pillow at him and tell him to roll over, which seems to resolve the noise pollution. by 1:30 lights are out and the noise level is bearable...
Look for part 2 sometime on Monday, 5/27... There is a lot more game detail for the big event.
Ted Panczyszyn
Rogue 15