houston-texas-07-14-02-dpc-houston
Title: houston-texas-07-14-02-dpc-houston
Author: Jacob "Armaedes" Taylor
Date: Jul 16, 2002
July 14, 2002
This would be my first-ever DPC, and it’s also the farthest I have ever driven to play Star Wars CCG (230+ miles). My roommate Zane is going with me, and he has family that lives in Houston, so we make plans to stay with them Saturday and Sunday night so we can go to the DPC Sunday and not have to worry about driving home really late.
Then something unexpected happens - Zane’s great-grandmother gets really sick and is taken to the hospital. Zane’s whole family, including him, are called to Austin to give their last respects because they think she isn’t going to make it through the weekend. I don’t know how to get where we’re going, I don’t have a place to stay in Houston, and I don’t really have a ride down there, either. So I’m not going to DPC Houston. What can you do?
Zane and I were scheduled to work until 4:00 PM the day we left for Houston, so at about 3:00 PM we get a phone call from someone in Zane’s family. It turns out his great-grandma isn’t quite as sick as she made out, so I am going to DPC Houston. So that’s kind of cool.
So we head down to Houston. There is pouring rain for the majority of the way down there, so what is supposed to be a three and a half hour drive quickly turns into a five hour drive. Finally we arrive at Zane’s uncle’s house, and he lives in the biggest house I’ve ever seen. It turns out Zane and I will each have our own room while we’re staying there, plus they have a pool and a refrigerator full of beer and Dr Pepper. So Zane and I playtest a few games and make some last-minute changes to our decks. I take out A Few Maneuvers and put in Fusion Generator Supply Tanks (V) for some Lateral Damage protection, but when I get to the tournament Brian Hunter convinces me to switch it back because (and I quote) "Fusion Generator Supply Tanks is gay, A Few Maneuvers is destiny-6." So I go back to A Few Maneuvers, and no one plays Lateral Damage on me all day, so I guess that was a good call. Zane is playing his MKOS deck (posted on his member page) with a few meta changes and he’s playing a TIGIH deck I built for him (it will be posted on my page when Zane gets done with it).
I decide to use the same dark deck I used at regionals, with a couple of card changes (these changes have been updated on the deck on my member page). I tried a variation of Hunter’s dark side combat, but I have bad luck with it and can’t make it work. I also think his DSC will be a tough game against WYS, which I am expecting to see some of. So I take out a lot of my anti-light senate cards from my deck and replace them with some anti-WYS cards, including a way to cancel Celebration, a way to cancel Bacta Tank, a way to cancel Demotion, a way to cancel Fallen Portal . . . in other words, I am more teched out against WYS than any other person on earth should be.
For light side I play WYS raiders. The reason I hate raiders with such a burning passion, and teched out so much against it, is because it is a very solid deck, so I decide to give it a try. I send Brian my decklist, and he helps me change five or six cards to it and I’m good to go.
Light deck: WYS Raiders
Dark deck: dark senate mains
The tournament starts at 11:00 AM, but Zane and I want to get there early so we can hang out with some of the other players, so we leave his uncle’s house early and get to Strike Zone at around 10:00 AM. We are the only ones there, which is kind of unusual, so we go to Eckerd’s and grab a drink and then smoke about fifteen cigarettes while Zane’s uncle and his uncle’s roommate wait around for someone to show up. Eventually two other kids show up, but they are Magic players. So we talk to them for a while, and play a game of Magic or two, and 11:00 rolls around and there is still no one else there but us and these two kids. So we start to get a little worried that either the DPC has been cancelled or relocated. I would think that if it was relocated, they would have put a sign or something on Strike Zone, but they didn’t, and Strike Zone still isn’t open. Then one of the magic players that’s sitting there mentions that he thinks there’s two Strike Zones in Houston. So I whip out my cell phone and call information. Sure enough, there are two Strike Zones in Houston. So she connects me to one of them. It’s the one I’m in front on. So I call back and ask to be connected to the other one. It’s the one I’m in front of. So I call back a third time and say "I am in front on the Strike Zone on Scarsdale, I want to be connected to the Strike Zone that is NOT on Scarsdale." So then we get connected to a different phone. I don’t know who answers the phone, but when I talk to them they tell me directions to that Strike Zone and that we have forty minutes to get there before the tournament starts. And the other Strike Zone is on the other side of town. Forty minutes to get all the way across Houston. So Zane drives like a madman and we get there just in time. Alan Denny, the TD, allows us to fill out our decklists after the first game. I ask Alan why he gave me directions to the wrong Strike Zone, and he says he didn’t, so as soon as I get home I forward him the e-mail he sent me giving me precise and detailed directions to the totally wrong Strike Force. Thanks a lot Alan!
Game One
DS vs.Keith Cervantes’ (1617) Quiet Mining Colony
I have not playtested against QMC, but it is a matchup I feel fairly confident in as I have never had any trouble beating it with any other deck I’ve ever played. The key against QMC, I believe, is to play aggressively and take control of their sites early. So on my first turn, rather than flipping my objective, I deploy Sidious to the Cloud City location he started. I deploy Carida and a docking bay and then it’s his turn. He activates more than I would like, considering Bad Feeling Have I didn’t come out on the table first turn. He deploys Luke With Lightsaber and Obi-Wan With Lightsaber, but instead of deploying them to Sidious’ site, he deploys them to the site that he just deployed next to the Guest Quarters. On my turn I drain for one with Sidious and then flip my objective and pull out a political effect and a docking bay. He drains for one, which I cancel, and then he deploys Pucumir and Rebel Princess Leia with Luke and moves Obi to his Cloud City: Carbonite Chamber, setting himself up for a nice fat drain of six on his next turn. But then he makes what I consider to be the scrub move of all time (for any player) and pulls out Battle Order shield entirely too early so that I won’t drain him for one in the senate. On his turn he will drain me for six, but instead he pulls out Battle Order to stop my drain of one. I don’t get that. In any event, I still haven’t made any decision on the best way to handle Rebel Princess Leia, whether I should kill her off before I drain or whether I should just go ahead and let her cancel her two drains and get that out of the way. I don’t feel like paying to drain to find out, so instead I put Darth Vader With Lightsaber with Sidious and deploy my final docking bay. I still don’t move over to his site because he is activating quite a bit and QMC is usually a pretty cheap deck. So I leave my guys there and draw to get a senator. I don’t get a senator, but I do get a big chunk of my space force, so I decide to save myself some force so I can go to space quickly and maybe prevent him from easily flipping his objective. He pays six to drain for six, which surprised me because it didn’t leave him very much force to deploy with. So I lose my six cards and he uses his remaining force to put Derek "Hobbie" Klivian in Red Squadron 4 at Bespin to flip. So there goes my big plan of keeping him from flipping and therefore making sure that he couldn’t keep the Empire out forever. He saves himself a couple of force, possibly for a Barrier. So at the beginning of my turn I activate quite a bit, courtesy of Tikkes, and then use my objective to put two of his cards back, hoping to grab his Houjix or his Barrier or whatever "save my ass" card he is counting on. I never found out what I put back, but when I deployed Thrawn on the Chimaera and Zuckuss In Mist Hunter to his location and battle, he’s got nothing for me. I don’t recall if I Lateral Damaged Hobbie or not, but I do know that he lost his pilot, ship and a load of cards. He then starts tossing his space force into his lost pile to my drains. Once I have control of space, and therefore a consistent drain of two (four with Motion Supported) I am able to devote my resources to battling him on the ground. With my high destiny and Our Blockade Is Perfectly Legal, it is no hard task to beat him off of his locations, especially considering he never played Path Of Least Resistance. He also never pulls his Secret Plans shield, so I retrieve about four or five with Squabbling Delegates before I drain him out, a couple of points of damage from Baskol Yeesrim helping me out. I didn’t pull one defensive shield all game long.
2 (+17)
Highs: Winning the first game.
Lows: Pay six to drain six on turn three when I had no senators. That’s nasty.
This was the first (and only) time during the tournament when I was sitting at the top table (since the first round seatings are random). Brian Hunter was playing Michael Richards right next to me, so for the first time ever I get to meet the man himself, so I finally have a face to put to all of the AOL conversations we’ve had. Brian is a very soft-spoken player and was actually quite a nice guy that does some great impersonations of Neimoidians, Gungans and Southpark characters. I inadvertently notice he is playing WYS Raiders and I pray to all things holy that if I play him, it’s not against his light deck.
Game Two
LS vs. Zane Thorp’s (1704) My Kind Of Scum
When this matchup is called I think everyone in the store, even those that didn’t know Zane and I, let out a groan. You see, in the ten or so tournaments Zane and I have gone to together, only in one (the 57-person Dantooine Regionals) did we not play each other. Zane has beaten me one time in tournament play in all of those attempts, and I am very confident from our playtesting that my WYS raiders can beat his Scum. Zane has changed a couple of cards since we last played though, one of which I suggested and that helped him out tremendouly in this game, and that card was Nal Hutta. I guess from all of our practice games, Zane realizes that it is no easy feat to kick a WYS space fleet out of the sky, so after he sets up at his Jabba’s Palace sites (and I set up Menace Fades) he deploys Nal Hutta with Zuckuss In Mist Hunter and Guri in the Stinger. This is bad for me, because I didn’t know Zane had put Nal Hutta in his deck, so I had put most of my space fleet at Tatooine to guard Celebration, leaving me few ships to go attack him with. I don’t want to move away from Tatooine because I know he is playing at least one more ship, and I haven’t seen either of his Boba Fett, Bounty Hunters, so he could still beat me down if I spread myself out. At this point, Zane is draining me for three and I am draining him for three, but I am also retrieving two with Tatooine Celebration and one with virtual Luke Skywalker, so I feel confident I will win the drain race. Unfortunately for me, Zane gets an incredible stroke of good luck with his opening draw and is able to keep a steady supply of characters attacking my raiders on the ground. There were two turning points in this game that worked highly to Zane’s advantage. First, he battled a raider with a couple of his characters and I used the gamtext of WYS to play an interrupt from my lost pile. You see, I could have sworn I had a Fallen Portal in there, but it turns out I had retrieved it with Luke the turn before, so instead I am forced to play We Wish To Board At Once to look for a podracing interrupts (there wasn’t one). Then I react with one raider, which he cancels with his Ghhhk combo. So I react with my other raider, which he cancels with his second Ghhhk combo! So I draw my one destiny, and he draws three or four destiny (each +2), then cancels my destiny with Myo to his objective, and I lose the raider, the craft, and a chunk of cards. I had the Houjix in my lost pile, but since I had already used my objective that turn to play an interrupt, I couldn’t do it again. So at the end of my turn I play A Few Maneuvers on one of my ships so that I can On The Edge to get back some of my cards I just lost. He then uses his grabber on A Few Maneuvers! I thought for sure I was going to lose the game right then and there, because I couldn’t find Mirax to track for my Edge. But then I all of a sudden realize that in that last battle, he had lost his second Boba Fett, so on my turn I take a chance and spread to Kessel. It becomes a drain race, but since Zane isn’t playing Endor Occupation I retrieve three a turn with Celebration and one with Luke while draining for about eight a turn. In what could be the closest game I’ve ever had, I pull out the win by three cards.
4 (+20)
Highs: What an awesome game!
Lows: Playing Zane for like the millionth time. I’m getting kind of sick of that jank.
Game Three
LS vs. Rob Rau’s (1628) Imperial Square Start
Rob is from Louisiana, so to the best of my knowledge this is the first time I will play someone from out of state. He starts Coruscant: Imperial Square and for his three effects starts Imperial Arrest Order (not the combo), Mobilization Points, and You Cannot Hide Forever. Then he reads my objective for a couple of minutes to figure out what it does. So I’m feeling confident about this game, since he obviously hasn’t played in a while. He activates before using Mobilization Points, so I pull out Don’t Do That Again but he has Carida in his opening hand (he would later lose it to a drain). He pulls a docking bay, deploys Palpatine for free to his starting location, along with Security Precautions, and moves Palpy over to the docking bay. I do my usual business, setting up in space while drawing for Palace Raiders and Patrol Crafts. He eventually comes to my locations with Mara Jade with her lightsaber, Darth Maul with double-bladed lightsaber, and then puts Janus with Palpatine. He slaps Presence Of The Force on the Cantina and moves his crew in there, so unless I get Menace Fades working that’s a drain of about seven on my location. I don’t have the cards to set up Menace Fades, but I do manage to draw up It’s A Hit and It Could Be Worse, so I’m good. He used his defensive shield grabber to catch my Tunnel Vision combo, and then paid three to use an old-school grabber to catch We Wish To Board At Once, and then he deployed Oppressive Enforcement so he can play his free grabber to get the ICBW I play on his Cantina drain. It was expensive to play ICBW for seven, but I would rather him grab ICBW rather than It’s A Hit. I get to verify his deck and don’t see any space, so I spread to Kessel. Unfortunately for me, the reason I didn’t see space is because he had some in his hand. He deploys Maul’s Sith Infiltrator to Docking Bay 94, moves Maul over to it, and shuttles Maul up to Tatooine. He loses two to cloak the Infiltrator and says go. I don’t notice until almost the end of the game, but he was using Tatooine Maul and I had no ability-4 characters at Tatooine, so technically he should have been able to drain me at Tatooine and cancel my Celebration. But neither of us notice so I contine retrieving. He has Keder the Black at one of my docking bays, so I am not draining for much as the Infiltrator moves to Kessel to block that drain instead. He deploys the Cloud Cty: Downtown Plaza to his Cloud City docking bay and puts Xizor there. I then make a scrub move that could have cost me the game. I have Phylo, a Patrol Craft and a Fallen Portal in hand. So I drop Phylo in the craft at his CC docking bay and then move her to the Downtown Plaza so that I can block his drain and play Portal if he battles me. As soon as I end my turn I realize that the Downtown Plaza is not a docking bay, Jabba’s Palace, or the Rancor Pit, and that Fallen Portal will not work even a little bit. So I use Mirax, and she saves my arse for the millionth time as I draw my Houjix, which I proceed to use in the ensuing battle. I put Projection Of A Skywalker on the Downtown Plaza to slow that drain, but at this point my retrieval and plink drains have caught up to him. I Edge once to increse my differential and ultimately win by 19.
6 (+39)
Highs: Winning against a weird deck.
Lows: Losing two with the Infiltrator to stop a drain of one? That guy really wanted to satisfy Battle Order in a bad way.
At this point we break for lunch and head over to Whataburger. It turns out I am waiting in line next to Hunter, and he points out that I had promised to buy him lunch when he came down to Texas. I don’t have any recollection of saying this, and I’m sure that if I did say such a thing that it was only because I had no idea that Brian would ever actually make it down to Texas. In any event, I pay for his lunch anyway because I’m such a nice guy, and I learn something about him that I think I can use to my advantage if we match up in this tournament: Brian doesn’t like tomatoes. As we’re eating, I ask him why he decided to come to this DPC but not to go to any of the major cons. His response: "I’ve never been to Texas." Not "I wanted to win a buttload of cash" or "I wanted to be a three-time DPC champ," but "I’ve never been to Texas." Now that is why people should play Star Wars - so they can come to exotic places like this.
After lunch I meet Chris Fanchi, who is the number two player in Texas but he lives in Colorado. That’s hilarious. I have some good pictures of all of this, I’ll post them somewhere when I finally get them developed.
Game Four
DS vs. Thomas McGee’s (1890) Watch Your Step Raiders
Thomas is from Colorado and came down with the Brian Hunter crew. WYS raiders is the toughest matchup on earth as far as I’m concerned, and the game ends up being closer than the differential would suggest. I take control of ground quickly, which isn’t hard considering I get an early Passel to increase the deploy cost of his crafts (and he’s having trouble finding his crafts anyway). I then start diving for my space force and he quickly Demotes Lott Dodd. It takes me a few turns to get my Boring Conversation Anyway to cancel it, but I finally get my fleet assembled and deploy en masse to Tatooine. Several space battles ensue, none of which I can remember the specifics of, but eventually one battle clears out all of my ships at once when he draws massive attrition. I can’t find Shut Him Up Or Shut Him Down to cancel his stupid Bacta Tank, so I can never really get rid of his fleet. The turn after my ships die, I immediately play Squabbling Delegates to retrieve four, all of which were the ships I just lost, so my space is back in my deck. I know I won’t be able to make another comeback though, because I’m too low on force to generate enough to put it all back in space. So I start paying to drain, and stacking senators to increase the damage. I make another, smaller run at space after he spreads out, but to no avail - WYS space is just too tough. We go all the way to time. He asks me if I think I have a chance of winning the game, and I look across the board. I have uncontested control of the ground, while he is only draining me for a couple a turn. The difference is that he has finally manage to get a raider and a craft at my Naboo docking bay, and I have no characters to get rid of him. So he’s draining for a couple for free, while I’m paying to drain for about five. So I go ahead and draw up to give him the full win, because I’m nice like that.
6 (+19)
Highs: Playing another out-of-state player, and a darn good one. Plus, he was a really nice guy and congratulated me on the best game he’d played in a while. It really was a good game.
Lows: I hate playing against WYS raiders with a burning passion. Where’s the player’s committee with some anti-raider cards?
Game Five
LS vs. Chris McClure’s (1769) My Lord, Is That Legal?
Chris is from Alabama, so that makes three out-of-staters in a row. Very nice. Chris plays extremely quickly, so I try to slow things down to a reasonable pace. It’s no use, he just gets an incredible draw. He flips first turn with Lott Dodd and Yeb Yeb and uses Yeb Yeb every turn (usually he gets rid of my card, since it’s always something good). He puts Presence Of The Force on the Galactic Senate, which is the cheesiest thing I’ve ever heard of. I We Wish To Board At Once on my turn for the Bacta Tank. In retrospect, I should have gone for Demotion but I wasn’t thinking clearly. He started Moblization Points as well, and I also forget to pull out the Don’t Do That Again shield all game so he is activating a ton. I set up in space with no problem, but as soon as I come to the ground I get beat down for a few overflow by Xizor and P-59. It just seems like I can’t ever get control of the ground, and I play Fallen Portal several times, missing every time (I mean, now hard is it to Fallen Portal Xizor? Really @#$%ing hard when you draw Captain Han!). Eventually I set up Celebration and move out to Kessel, but he always has a senator to cancel the drain with. He gets in several good battles, one of which hits me for enough overflow to kill me off. I wish there was more to say about this game, but I just made too many mental mistakes and he used those mistakes to own me up one side and down the other, and the game is over in about 20 minutes.
6 (+3)
Highs: Not a one.
Lows: So when I play senate, raiders own it, but when I play raiders, senate owns it? I am like the worst player on earth, and am well on my way to scrubbing out this tournament.
Game Six
DS vs. Michael Richard’s (1921) WYS Raiders
I @#$%ing hate the mother @#$%ing stupid-ass butt-@#$%ing ass-ramming @#$%-eating piece of @#$%ing @#$% @#$% @#$%ing raiders!!!! Every time I see myself facing off against raiders, I really want to quit playing SWCCG and never touch it again. It is just the most impossible matchup for dark side ever and I can’t beat it no matter what I do. I am 3-1 against Mike in sanctioned games, so he’s due for a win against me anyway. I am not writing many details about this game, the only difference between this game and my game against Thomas is that this time I actually had Shut Him Up Or Shut Him Down to cancel his Bacta Tank. Lott Dodd got Demoted, I lost my entire space force to a load of @#$%ing attrition, retrieved it back with Squabbling Delegates and lost it some more. He Edged, used V-Luke and such to raise his differential, and drained my @#$% off with I’ll Take The Leader drains while cancelling my Cantina drain with It’s A Hit. I @#$%ing hate that @#$%ing deck, everyone plays it the same and it really makes me not want to play the game.
6 (-9)
Highs: Can’t complain too much, after all I’m playing raiders myself, and Mike is an ultra-cool guy.
Lows: Did I mention I hate raiders? I mean, dear lord, who on the player’s committee do I have to sleep with to get some definitive anti-WYS card? Decipher tried to kill that deck with so many cards, and they couldn’t do it, I think it’s time for the PC to step up and give me reason to keep playing this game. :-)
I’m not sure, but this could be the first time I have finished a tournament with a negative differential. So at a pathetic 3-3 that cost me five rating points, I sit back and watch the final. Brian Hunter’s Dark Deal beats Chris McClure’s Light Senate racing, and Justin Warren’s Hunt Down beat Thomas McGee’s WYS raiders (maybe I should try Hunt Down). Then Brian wins both games of the final. I remember those games better than I remember my own actually, but I’ll let those players write about it in their own TRs. There were a couple of noteworthy events though:
In game one (Justin’s HDADTJ against Brian’s WYS raiders) Justin gets the first-turn choke Vader with saber to Brian’s Cantina but can’t draw into a single ship until one turn before the game is over. Hunter wins easily by putting only a couple of ships in space all game and retrieving his entire lost pile.
In game two (Justin’s WYS raiders against Brian’s Dark Deal) Justin drains for four on his second turn on Brian’s locations. Then later in the game, both players forget about Brian’s Battle Deployment Admiral’s Order and Justin does a smooth Han/Chewie beatdown on Blizzard 4, causing Brian fifteen cards of overflow. Justin is retrieving for Celebration on all four of his Tatooine sites, and is draining for a couple, and Hunter still wins the game. It was crazy, I really thought Justin was going to win.
In defense of my bad performance, two of my three losses were by two of the finalists, but I still scrubbed out like a champ and now I’m thinking about taking a leave of absence from Star Wars until someone does something about gay-ass WYS. On the other hand, the TIGIH deck I built Zane is owning everyone (at least, everyone that isn’t Justin Warren). That deck is just MEAN.
Props:
Zane, for driving, and for beating a lot of people with my TIGIH deck. It’s MEAN!
ALAN DENNY, for running a great tournament. I really love the feeling of these high-caliber, big tournaments.
Darryl and Bobby, for letting Zane and I stay in your house all weekend. You made the trip possible for us.
Brian Hunter, for being an unspeakably cool guy, and for also being the only three-time DPC winner that I know of (and from what I hear, the first-time Star Wars TCG DPC winner).
Justin Warren, for also being a cool guy, even though he folded like a house of cards to Hunter in the final. It’s all right man, WYS raiders is not a fair matchup.
Thomas McKinney, for being a great guy and my hardest-thinking game of the day.
Michael Richards, for being a cool guy. You owe me one more, dude.
Chris Fanchi, for being the number two player in Texas without even living in Texas - that’s hilarious.
Carl Thompson, for being a beligerent drunk that swore at everyone, and still won the "under 1700" contest. And for teching out against me - he played five Controls because he always plays me and I always play SAC. But we didn’t play each other and I played WYS (so almost no SAC). Oh well.
David Burnett, for being a punk that gets on everybody’s nerves and thinks he’s better than everyone when he actually isn’t. That’s what I like most about you dude, no matter what people say to you you stick to your guns. Thanks for the cards, too.
Keith Cervantes, for trading me my first black-border Luke Skywalker and my first black-border Tunnel Vision. And for being a good opponent.
Matt Lush, for giving out cold hard cash to everyone who beat him (I believe it was only one person). If you jabronies hadn’t given him timed wins, he might have been in the final (and you know who you are you tub of @#$%)
Chris McClure, whose new nickname is Spaz. I actually thought his head was going to explode when he was playing Hunter in the final.
All of the people that came that made this a great CCG experience.
Slops:
All you shmucks that gave Matt Lush timed wins. What is wrong with you @#$%s? After his speech about how much timed wins suck, you still did it? Why can’t you people just admit defeat?
WYS Raiders, for single-handedly making me tired of playing SWCCG. I thought I would always love playing this game, but everytime I see that deck I’m suddenly very sick of it.