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Author: Michael "MadSkills84" Pistone
Title: madskills-day-2-boxborough-july-29th
Date Published: 2001-08-01
Ok so it is now 12:00, officially day 2 and I am wired from drinking 6 cans of Pepsi. Well the guy i am sharing the room with, Mike Hawley, goes to bed and I turn on the TV, cuz i am not the slightest bit tired. So I flip through and I watch the last half of Eyes Wide Shut, but I only saw half of it so I understood only a little bit, I gotta rent it and see the rest later, well anyways it’s now 1:30 and I am not tired, and there is nothing on TV so I try to fall asleep. It just is not working, hotel beds suck so I keep trying to fall asleep. When 3:30 strolls around I just know it is not gonna work so I leave the room to go walk around the hotel until people get up. So I leave the room and walk down to the main area near the pool and there are these drunks that are like yelling at each other, it’s quite amusing. I go to the main desk and get the guy to open up the gaming room for me and I get a roll of quarters. So like an hour and a half later I have burned all of them on this dumb Marvel Universe fighting game, which was a pretty sweet game, but like all fighting games the last boss is way over-powered and practically impossible to kill but you waste all your money saying to yourself this will be the time you beat him, and you are wrong.
So at this point I am wondering what i am going to do for the next 2 hours, so I walk around the whole hotel once and I get back to where the drunks were, and they are walking around with this stand-up of Austin Powers which a Star Wars player, Steve Anderson, had on his 2ND FLOOR BALCONY. How they got it beats me and they looked so stupid walking around with it, but I knew Steve wanted it back so the security guard took it away from them lol, they were not happy. But these drunks then wanted to go in the pool and it was like 5 in the morning and the security dude yelled at them, it is funny watching stupid drunks have to think about things :-)
So i am very bored so I start talking to the security guard, Joe and he introduces me to the desk clerk Aaron, who is the only other person working at this time of night. I must say, these 2 have the SWEETEST job. Since no one is checking into a hotel this late and no one is up to need anything, they really do not have to do anything. So Aaron shows me his collection of DVDs which is all he does all night, dude his collection was SICK he had SOOOO many it was amazing. He shows me screen shots from Fight Club cuz we both agreed that is one of the best movies ever. This guy Aaron, knows SOOO much about literature and movies, it was amazing, he just talked and talked about inspirations for different films after I told him I came for a Star Wars tournament he kept telling me all these things I had no idea about for Star Wars, it was really amazing, but I guess anything is really amazing at 4:00 in the morning. So we continue to talk about things and we get to talking about how awesome martial arts is and how we all want to learn it. It is starting to get later and Aaron goes out to smoke a cigarette and I go with him and Joe cuz there is nothing to do at a hotel at 4:30 in the morning. I say something about getting my liscense soon and he asks how old I am, and when I say 16 the two of them were shocked, they both thought I was in my 20s lol, we all laughed about it because we we’re all up at an hour where, like I said before, everything is funny.
Well 6:30 strolls around and I go back up to my room cuz that was when the alarm was set for. I grab my stuff and eat breakfast and we head downstairs waiting for people to show up for the sealed tournament which is going to start at 8:00. Well i am going to simplify the entire sealed tournament in a few paragraphs here, because there are not many game details cuz jabbas palace sealed deck is way too unbalanced.
Well people start showing up and we have about 12 people playing. I get paired to swap cards with Kris Earle, runner of the Kon and the number 7th best sealed player in the world.
These are the cards we get to work with:
old school sealed
jabbas sealed
2x jedi pack
2x premiere wb packs
cloud city pack
so we got to build 60 card decks. Well basically I ended up going 0-4 cuz I drew dark side. Dark side blows, believe me every rumor you have heard is true, light has cheaper deploy, better ability, forfeit, destiny. All dark side has is power, which means JACK in sealed. It was not pretty I got completely creamed. There is nothing to say except that basically NOTHING stayed on the table and MKOS blew cuz everyone had a non tatooine site cuz it wasn’t just a jp sealed. It was BAD, i dont think any dark player was better than 1-3. The only notable moment was game 3 when I knew that I didnt give a crap about the sealed deck. Eric Hunter managed to get Kris Earle to let him into the tournament to just trade and play raw deal with me. So hes watching my game. My opponent deploys a projection of a skywalker, and I am like dude, i am gonna alter that eventually and Eric starts laughing. So like 3 turns later all i have on the board is a chevin. And I draw an alter, and i just go Dude this Chevin is a jedi in training and he owns you, he is the man and you should bow down before him, to which my opponent laughs, and i start laughing and the ridiculousness of what i am saying as well. Eric is just laughing at the absurdity of me trying to alter something with a chevin. So i just started laughing and am like if this destiny is a 0, that would be the moment of the tournament. Well..............................BOOOOOOOYEAH i draw a site and Eric starts rolling laughing and my chevin walks with his head a little higher that turn, but gets completely taken down the next turn :-)
well yeah so the sealed sucks so I get ready to play for closed environment, then I realize only 4 players are playing so I am thinking maybe I wont play in it and I will do the No Such Thing As Luck instead, but when Steve Anderson pulls out an r2-d2 tournament shirt that will be first prize, so I completely forget the endor tournament at this point. So I pull out my constructed an am ready to go and Eric is like, Mike if you really want that shirt i will play your Endor/DS2 decks to use for it, just make some changes cuz my playing skill will make me beat everyone. So i give him the decks and we make modifications. At this point Mike Hawley comes over and wants to use the Endor/DS2 decks to make that tournament an even amount of players. So Eric gives him those decks and Mike scrambles to fix them to his liking, and Eric borrows a Brangus deck from Mike and plays his WYS beats and we get ready for the tournament.
So we have 12 players and we get underway.......for the r2-d2 shirt:
Game 1 My WYS vs. guy that looks like Steven Richards from the WWF (sorry i forget your name) TDIGWATT
So I start my objective and am confident I will win this and the next game because he will not be able to play my deck with the skill required for it to win. Well I set up with Lando in Falcon at Kessel early, which proved to be pivotal because his deck relied on DS Lando playing Sabbac. He didn’t have enough to contend with me in space so he decided to try to set up dark deal. This was devastating for one turn because menace fades was nowhere to be seen so I had to rely on moving the ships over to bespin and having to cancel dark deal the next turn and eating the drains for one turn. So I did, on my turn I deploy 2 smugglers to adjacent Cloud City sites, move a ship from Bespin to Cloud City and then cancel dark deal, and re-affirm my sites. He could not gain control to set up Dark Deal again, so my superior space got me control and the drain of 3 at Kessel for the rest of the game.
Fw 2 (+12)
Highs: My deck worked great, and I did not set up the beats so he had no idea he could when he got to use the deck against me the next game, and I had a feeling I could pull out a win with his dark deck because it was not all that bad
Lows: Having to eat that drain for one turn, that hurt my differential
Game 2 Me playing his TDIGWATT vs Him using my WYS Beats
So from what I saw the previous game I knew I had to use the ships sparingly, set up higher drains on Tatooine, forget the whole sabbacc thing and just outdrain him and not let him do a devastating battle to win the game. I set up with tons of guys on Tattoine and he had a few ships at kessel but only 1 at tatooine and one at cloud city. This allowed zuckuss to follow wedge from tattooine to bespin, and when you are the one following, that allows YOU to get your drains in, and I knew eventually he’d forget to move wedge, which he did and I got to get rid of him. Using Janus, who was a complete god for me that weekend, I managed to cycle my hand back and get both os-72-1 in ship and os-72-2 to deal a 5 point smackdown of Chewbacca piloting red squadron 1 (which I had no idea why he had that combo on the ship) He had drains, I had drains, but I managed to get the win by 11.
FW, total 4 (+23)
So at this point there are 4 undefeated players, Mike Scheimer, James Valerie, Eric Hunter and myself. So Eric and Mike had the highest diffs so I thought they would play and I would play James, but because of the allegiances we played the previous game none of us ended up playing each other.
So I get paired up with Steve Anderson
Game 3 My Huntdown vs. Steve Anderson’s HB Flip W/ B-wings
So I start this game and realize immediately how cheesy HB flip is in no such thing as luck because when I get to use the deck he will know exactly where to probe. So I went ok, I must win this by a huge differential to catch up to the other guys. So I set up on Endor with vader, and he informs me this is his Space/Sectors tournament deck which runs no characters. Cool, thanks for the info. So I spread on ground to death and just let him get measley drains in space, I deploy security precautions and he loses his extra planets so he cannot flip. He spreads in space and I come down with hits with bounty hunter ships and I just cycle my hand back with janus. Win by 32.
FW, total 6 (+55)
So Eric and Scheimer are competing for differential, they are ahead of me, I have to hope one loses because I’m not gonna beat my Huntdown with this hidden base where he knows he can probe.
Game 4 His HB flip vs. My Huntdown
All I wanted to do this game was minimize my losses, so I drained as much as I could, he had bad luck getting vader so that slowed him down. I came down with every squadron assignment pilot in the deck and just used generic pilots in space, but there was not really much I could do. FL by 22 I think
Total 6 (+33)
So Eric and Mike Scheimer both go undefeated, but Mike gets insane differential and gets the shirt. I work out a deal with him, but he goes back on it and deals it to his friend, which pissed me off but oh well, I worked out a deal with his friend for it 2 days later so its all good.
Well basically after that I played 1 game in an elimination swiss but was so tired I drew up cuz I did not feel like playing anymore. I playtested this kids profit deck against his rops for fun at the end cuz I was sick of my decks. I got my cards from Mike Hawley, made my trades and said my goodbyes for the weekend.
Props to:
Kris for running the event
Mike Hawley for splitting the room
Eric for coming day 2 and playing raw deal and crap
Desai for helping me with my dark deck day 1
Maholick for playtesting and helping me with my dark deck
Klema for having a sick light deck and being a cool opponent, I enjoyed that game thoroughly
The funny little asian kid who steals cards from the vender without him knowing (whoops did I say that)
Gaudioso for picking me for his team and for the line about team tournaments being retarded because our motivation for this game is to further ourselves individually and kick our opponents ass
Pete Harrington for cutting me a deal on the shirt
Joe and Aaron for being 2 cool dudes and talking to me during my insomnia trip
Austin Powers for surviving the drunks
The people at Marvel for making a great arcade game
Steve Anderson for the line of the tournament (in a deep masculine voice) hey…….how you doing
The fluorescent green t-shirt for the tournament
Joe Sottile for picking up all those cards off me
The kid on my team day 1 with the good ROPS deck, dude if you read this email me we playtested a great game
Alex Shulman for the trades and playtesting
Dan Mailloux for helping me out with my decks before the tournament
My parents for letting me go and giving me the money lol
I dont feel like giving out slops, the people that I would give them too, they know who they are.
It is 1 in the morning, I should get some sleep. Goodnight.
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