Joshua Grace Minneapolis Minnesota 8-22-00 (tournament report)

From SWCCG Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Joshua Grace Minneapolis Minnesota 8-22-00 (tournament report) is the tournament report Joshua Grace posted on DeckTech on 25 August 2000 about August 2000 Minneapolis tournament.[1] Joshua Grace won a Tuesday-night tournament at Mirkwood in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on 22 August 2000, going 4–0 (about 8 (+75)) with Mind What You Have Learned and Court Of The Vile Gangster, ahead of two other undefeated players.

Report info

Games

Games as the author describes them; margins are as stated in the report.

Round Opponent Author's deck Opponent's deck Result Margin
1 Chad Light MWYHL (training Luke through Test 6) BHBM mains & toys Win (last name not known) FW +14
2 Jerome Flynn Dark COTVG Profit Win (margin an estimate ('Or something like that')) FW +22
3 Michael Raveling Dark COTVG Scrub beat-down Win (report spells 'Michael Ravelling') FW +26
4 Garrett Light MWYHL (training Luke through Test 6) Ties Win (last name not known; margin 'Or thereabouts') FW +13

Other results named in the report

  • Undefeated, below 1st: Herb Macy
  • Undefeated, below 1st: Jon

Original report

minneapolis-minnesota-8-22-00

  • Author: Joshua "Stormcrow" Grace
  • Published: Aug 25, 2000
Just to set the stage, Mirkwood hosts a Star Wars tournament every Tuesday night (well, except for holidays) for a mere $1, and each tournament typically draws 12 to 20 players. Owing to the frequency and low expense of the tournaments, they’ve become great opportunities to play new, strange and fun deck ideas while, simultaneously (owing to the presence of such players as Jim Li, Michael Ravelling and Graham Neal), providing chances to meet some stiff competition. Anyway, on to the rest of the report: The Star Wars tournament at GenCon was a dismal experience for me due to the number of rounds (I knew I’d leave early as soon as they announced it was 8 games), conflict with other events, sloppy play on my part during one game and a miserable encounter with some fellow who was blatantly cheating. I don’t mind losing, but I really don’t like playing against someone who’s a bad sport or arrogant or just plain obnoxious. This fellow was a terrible sport. But I did learn a bit about the meta game, post D*2. I hadn’t brought a very good DS deck with me to the tournament, then, and I wanted to integrate the new cards more fully into my deck. Docking Bays & Mob Points seemed all the rage with the BHBM objective, but I didn’t have an Emperor. It idea occurred to me, though, to use the 0 side of the Court objective to search for docking bays (instead of IAO, saving me one effect slot), grab Hoth’s and Yavin’s, and I could play Imperial Decree (because I love that card). So, I threw that deck together without planning to flip it, but I realized a Profit deck could spoil it as it was. I threw in a couple of Trap Doors, the Rancor and its Pit and tested the deck against my LS Training deck. It won 2 out of 3 with Search and Destroy cutting out a good chunk. And it was only a Tuesday night tourney, so that was good enough for me. It would be, at any rate, a fun deck to play, and that’s what I was really looking forward to--fun--especially after my sour tourney at GenCon. LS: MWYHL, Training Luke through Test 6. DS: COTVG, pull everything from the reserve deck. Game 1: My LS vs Chad’s (don’t know his last name) BHBM. Chad’s a good guy and seems to play more for moral victories than tourney points. He once played a super-weird trooper deck against me using that interrupt that prevents all movement if he draws a destiny lower than the number of troopers on the table. It almost worked, too. Anyway, I expected something of that style when it turned out he was playing pretty much a straight BHBM mains & toys deck. Though I have to credit him with the idea of using the D*2 anti-ops effect (you know: occupy their system, kill their deck...) to ditch it to retrieve the top card of his lost pile. (It ended up retrieving the Executor for him--which never came into play.) I just waited for Vader to show up and deployed HOTJ which, with Battle Plan, slowed my force loss to a manageable amount while I sped through my tests to flip. I eventually flipped but got only a 4 since I had mis-tracked my 7’s, and I still had a couple of force left in my lost pile. He was sitting on Endor with Vader and Mara holding two sites. I left Vader alone and pulled Farmboy Luke back from Dagobah to set down Jedi Luke and Obi w/Saber vs Mara. He removed Luke from battle with You Are Beaten, but Obi hit Mara for enough of a loss that the game was decided. I controlled his Endor system with a multiple-destiny drawing ship and he had to pay to drain for 1 each turn with Vader. FW 2 (+14) Game 2: My DS vs. Jerome Flynn’s Profit. Well, you can probably tell that this game was decided by a couple of battles. He hit Mara hard with Jedi Luke, early on, for some damage from my life force, but then he Nabrunned Luke w/Saber and Proficiency over to face Vader. Vader then showed why he’s still the baddest dude in the galaxy when he Levitated away Luke’s 4-power stick and then proceeded to target and hit and beat up Luke (with the aid of Blizzard 2) for something like 13 extra force from the reserve deck. Of course, I had started Secret Plans, so this was a bit of a problem for Jerome’s deck, and, in the end, he never flipped. I continued my piddly drains and pulled off a win by 22. Or something like that. All the differentials in this report are estimates. FW 4(+36) Game 3: My DS vs Michael Ravelling’s scrub beat-down Michael had some EPP’s in there, too, but he lost a lot of them to early damage (Mara, Fett w/Blaster and Dr. E vs Leia w/Blaster--hit, lost; Chewbacca--hit, lost; and Orrimarko). So he was left to play most of the game with characters like Melas and 2/2 pilots. However, he must have been playing 4 or 5 Out of Commissions because they just kept hitting me, and I couldn’t for the life of me draw one of my two Hell to Pays. Jabba quit for good, then Fett, and... just when he showed up in my hand (typical)... Vader. Uggh. That was killer. So I was left to face his seemingly endless hordes of weenies with the likes of Tarkin, Igar (and where’s his walker?), Dr. E in Blizzard 2 and ECC IG-88. But Iggy proved to have what it took when Michael plopped down Han w/Blaster, Wedge and Momaw to drain at my <> DB on Tatooine where my Iggy was sitting all by his lonesome on the other side. My next turn, Iggy Snipered Han (capture) used the text on COTVG to search for a DB and saw this his weapon destiny were all quite high, initiated a battle, fired to send Wedge scurrying back to the used pile and beat up on Momaw. I moved Iggy over, flipped my objective and started drawing for a Trap Door. Eventually, I drew one along with my Rendili (I had opted to search for the Executor earlier since Michael started Rendez-vous Point w/Insurrection, Strike Planning and Squassi). I plopped down the Rancor Pit, Rancor and Rendili w/Zuckuss (he didn’t really have enough force to beat me up there). I dropped Han to the Rancor and expected a quick feeding, but Michael played Fallen Portal--and missed. Han had only stunned the Rancor, who then gnawed on the famed smugglers bones, dropping Michael to something like 5 or 6 life force, which quickly disappeared. FW 6 (+62) I had won that last game by 26 or so, my biggest of the evening, but when the pairings were called out I was on the same side as the player with the highest differential. Oh, well. My LS deck was fairly solid, but I didn’t expect that I could win by much. Game 4 (last game): My LS vs Garrett’s (great guy, don’t remember his last name) Ties He sacrificed his drains for the first few turns, allowing me to go straight through my tests. He didn’t drain until he got out Kiffex and a sizable fleet there. I ended up flipping with Artoo in Red 5 as my tracked 7 and paid 10 to retrieve 6 or so. My next turn, I asked him what his power was at the system, what it would be after he played All Power to Weapons (and I had a grabber waiting for that one), and checked to see how much force he had saved (a lot). I had Home 1 and EPP madness--Han, Leia and Chewie--but only enough force for Han, Chewie and Life Debt. Yet, considering my destiny of 28, I would still be up by enough power at the start of the battle that I didn’t figure I would lose by too much. So I battled and he reacted and played All Power, which I grabbed, and I lost Han and Chewie and one or two more from my deck. But he had all his ties there with no capital ship and, thus, no hyperspeed, so I moved Home 1 over to Wakeelmui. The next turn, Home 1 cleared out Wakeelmui with another Han and Leia, I think, and I Altered his SFS. With Aim High in play, things were looking good. I had a good armada of ships in my deck, including the Gold Squadron 1 combo, and we just kept battling according to my calculated terms. Garrett managed to pull off a moral victory when he blew away the Lando’s Falcon with a Tie Laser; he needed a 5 and got it. Ultimately, however, 2 damage each turn from Test 6, Battle Plan and my space armada--which deployed at systems other than his space armada’s--secured the victory for me by 13. Or thereabouts. So I managed to go undefeated through the tournament with a differential of something like 75, which wasn’t very high, at least not for our player base. But Herb Macy, who was sitting at the top table, must have had a squeaker, because I ended up getting first ahead of TWO other undefeated players. Another kid, Jon, had gone undefeated, too. But I knew he had won one game by a mere 4 since a crowd had gathered (with permission, of course) to watch his game when it was the last game running (2nd game in the tournament, I think). At $1 a tournament, any prize support is really nice, especially when you pull the Spiral in your one pack of Special Edition. --Joshua Grace PS After the tournament, I played a game with one of my friends, Justin Alfs, whose EBO deck with Rogue speeders ended up killing me by 6 or 7 force, causing me to rethink DS space--five bounty hunter ships and the Executor just aren’t enough...

See also

Sources

References

  1. ↑ minneapolis-minnesota-8-22-00, DeckTech (Joshua "Stormcrow" Grace, 25 August 2000). Preservation copy: GitHub Pages.
Retrieved from "https://wiki.swccg.com/index.php?title=Joshua_Grace_Minneapolis_Minnesota_8-22-00_(tournament_report)&oldid=138927"