Radio Free Decipher/Episode 170 transcript
Radio Free Decipher Broadcast 170 (18 July 2003) previews the Decipher World Championships at Gen Con/DecipherCon 2003 in Indianapolis with Mike Girard, then one of Decipher's Lord of the Rings TCG game developers, together with Star Trek CCG news. Participants: Evan Lorentz (host), Mike Girard.
Source: Broadcast 170 - Radio Free Decipher (18 July, 2003): Mike Girard on World Championships, Player's Council, YouTube (uploaded 14 May 2022; originally released 18 July 2003). Preserved copy: Internet Archive.
The text below is from the video's automatic captions, corrected for names and card titles; it has not yet been checked against the audio. Words that could not be made out are marked [unclear].
Transcript[edit]
[00:01] Evan Lorentz: Hello everyone out there, welcome to another installment of Radio Free Decipher. This is Evan Lorentz coming at you from Norfolk, with my special guest today, Mike Girard. How's it going?
[00:10] Mike Girard: I'm good. How about you?
[00:11] Evan Lorentz: Pretty good, pretty good. We are in a very empty, very lonely, quiet little corner of the office today, because everybody—and I do mean everybody—in the marketing department is out today at Comic-Con. You sorry you didn't get to go?
[00:26] Mike Girard: No, no. I'm excited; I get to go to Origins and Gen Con.
[00:30] Evan Lorentz: Right. Okay, well, for those of you who can get out to Comic-Con—of course, you're probably there already if you're planning to go—it's an excellent show, well worth checking out. You'll have an opportunity there to demo .hack//Enemy, either at our booth or at the Bandai booth. There are going to be some big events going on there. We've got a lot of booth space. Lots of fun, the typical Decipher love fest there if you're a fan.
[00:53] Mike Girard: Yeah. If I remember right, there's a Premiere series animated voyage out there as well.
[00:58] Evan Lorentz: I believe that would be the case, yeah. So, definitely events worth checking out. If you can't make it there, though, we hope, we assume, that we will be seeing you next week at the big Gen Con/DecipherCon happening in Indianapolis. Now, you said you are going to that, as am I.
[01:16] Mike Girard: I'll be attending that one.
[01:18] Evan Lorentz: As are most everybody in the TCG and marketing departments. Some people in the sales department are going, and it's big.
[01:24] Mike Girard: Yeah, I suspect most of Decipher will be there.
[01:27] Evan Lorentz: And of course, big mainly in that both of our World Championship events are going to be happening there. We should talk about that a little bit. One of the things that's sort of a tie-in to the World Championship event this year is, on DGMA, as has been done for some of our larger events this summer, there's going to be a pick-your-winning-players, winning team—how does it work?
[01:48] Mike Girard: It is actually a winning team. It's a fantasy pro tour. It's like a fantasy-type thing, where DGMA will rank individual players based on their performance, and they'll give them a point value.
[01:59] Evan Lorentz: Okay.
[02:00] Mike Girard: You have a maximum point value you can spend, and relatively, you know, the inconspicuous players aren't worth very many points, but a lot of the big names, like Brochu and Dominic and Patrick, they're worth quite a few.
[02:12] Evan Lorentz: Yeah. And of course, on the Trek side, we've got John Corbett, who's coming off of winning Origins, and he of course placed second at the World Championship last year for First Edition.
[02:21] Mike Girard: That is correct.
[02:22] Evan Lorentz: So there are going to be some recognizable names on all sides of this. What would your team be for Lord of the Rings? Who would you pick?
[02:34] Mike Girard: Well, for Lord of the Rings, I would probably have to go with some kind of combination of the Canadians: maybe a Patrick Sullivan, Patrick [unclear], obviously Brochu.
[02:44] Evan Lorentz: I think you'd run out of points pretty quick trying to do that. I mean, probably in the front-runners is Mathieu. He's just coming off his Origins win, and he's the reigning World Champion and whatnot. He's certainly going to be tough to beat. But I mean, we've got the stateside boys, Mike Dalton and Alex Tennant, and who knows who's going to show up out of California. I mean, Ryan will probably make an appearance.
[03:04] Mike Girard: Yeah. I expect that's going to be quite the event to behold.
[03:08] Evan Lorentz: Well, especially since it's still relatively new in the season, [as far as what] is legal.
[03:13] Mike Girard: Right, right. There are certainly going to be some tricks there still to be learned.
[03:16] Evan Lorentz: I know a lot of people are staying tuned to DGMA early next week to see the decklists from San Diego this weekend.
[03:24] Mike Girard: Oh, yeah, that's right, you'll be able to see.
[03:26] Evan Lorentz: I wonder—if I were a player qualifying at San Diego, I probably wouldn't plan on taking the same deck.
[03:32] Mike Girard: Well, it depends. I mean, there's a lot of money at stake.
[03:36] Evan Lorentz: That's true. You want to do the best thing you've got. And especially if you can't make it to DecipherCon, well, then there just might be some new tech for you to steal from somebody else and use.
[03:45] Mike Girard: That is correct. I mean, the trees are big, and Saruman and Gríma have their bully boys and whatnot, so there's a lot of new strategies out there.
[03:53] Evan Lorentz: And of course, when it comes down to these final competitions, you and I both have certain duties to perform this year—the first time for both of us. We're going to be helping with the commentating on the final games. You looking forward to that?
[04:04] Mike Girard: Yes, I am actually looking really forward to that.
[04:07] Evan Lorentz: Of course, this was a rhetorical question, because I knew you were, but for the folks listening: he's been talking about this constantly. It comes up every day, all week.
[04:16] Mike Girard: Yep, that is correct. This year it'll be Mark Tuttle on the play-by-play, as usual. He is an excellent sort of master of ceremonies for that.
[04:24] Evan Lorentz: That is correct.
[04:25] Mike Girard: And Jeff Snyder and I, the game developers for Decipher, will be doing the color commentary for Lord of the Rings.
[04:33] Evan Lorentz: And then Brad and I, game designers for Star Trek, will be assisting in the Second Edition championship commentary. And a lot of us are quite eager to have some fun with that. And of course you'll also be able to get .hack//Enemy demos there at the booth. Let's see, they'll be giving away the dinosaur cards at the booth.
[04:57] Mike Girard: That is correct, yep. Lots of activities.
[04:59] Evan Lorentz: There are some trivia things going on.
[05:01] Mike Girard: That's right. The roving Aragorn, as we have done at some cons before—people will be familiar with that. There are charity tournaments; there are Race to Mount Doom league tournaments that are going to go on.
[05:11] Evan Lorentz: Yeah. Poor Trevor and Pojo, they've got their hands full.
[05:15] Mike Girard: That is correct. So if you see them, be nice.
[05:17] Evan Lorentz: But I mean, anything you expect at DecipherCon will be going on at this event. Now, you've been to Gen Con before, haven't you?
[05:24] Mike Girard: Yes.
[05:25] Evan Lorentz: Qualifying?
[05:26] Mike Girard: Of course, of course.
[05:27] Evan Lorentz: You going to miss not being there as a player?
[05:30] Mike Girard: I am going to miss it, but I do enjoy the note-taking and the play-by-play that I keep track of in the past events that I've been doing this year.
[05:41] Evan Lorentz: Yeah. How was that for you at Origins?
[05:43] Mike Girard: It was interesting. There was a lot of interesting gameplay and whatnot, and a lot of dynamic players that were in the top-level competitions.
[05:51] Evan Lorentz: Did you go in with predictions about what kind of decks you expected to see?
[05:54] Mike Girard: I did, and some of them were correct. I expected to see a lot of Hobbits with [unclear], because he maximizes on, like, the pull potential and whatnot, because now that standard environment has become pretty standard. We miss No Stranger to the Shadows and the Aragorn that emphasized the pull choke, but the Hobbits have their own kind of pull choke, and they keep this Fellowship small, and yet they have a lot of vitality. So that means a lot of diversity and versatility.
[06:23] Evan Lorentz: Right. Okay. Well, have you got similar predictions ready for next week?
[06:27] Mike Girard: Unfortunately I don't. They're not as concrete.
[06:30] Evan Lorentz: Well, it throws that into chaos.
[06:32] Mike Girard: Come talk to me next Tuesday.
[06:34] Evan Lorentz: Okay, I got you. Well, we'll see what comes out of Comic-Con and whatnot.
[06:38] Mike Girard: I mean, I have my ideas, but we'll see.
[06:42] Evan Lorentz: Sure. Also, for Trek players, it would be worth pointing out, in case you haven't spotted it already, that there are new Current Rulings documents that went up this week. No real substantial changes in either the First Edition or Second Edition rules documents, but some clarifications on some questions that came up at Origins, and also questions about card strategy in All Good Things. So you'll want to check those out, because they will possibly impact what you want to do a little bit. Again, nothing new, but definitely worth knowing if you're going to play. And speaking of All Good Things, that has finally released this week, after a short delay. We have heard that some distributors are still having trouble pulling it through the channels, but it is out there. So if your local store doesn't have it, you'll want to check back with them over the next couple of days, early next week, or you can hook up with us at Gen Con, and we should have it in our booth. I'm not sure if we're offering it through the Decipher store as well.
[07:39] Mike Girard: Oh, really?
[07:40] Evan Lorentz: I'm not sure. I've got to check into that.
[07:42] Mike Girard: I don't know either. And of course the Fellowship Anthology next week as well. That also had a short delay, but you will be seeing it at the tail end of next week.
[07:52] Evan Lorentz: Right. So you will be able to play with your Tengwar. Are you going to play with Tengwar?
[07:56] Mike Girard: I don't know. That's a lot of squiggly marks for me.
[07:59] Evan Lorentz: It would be a challenge for me too. I mean, I guess it's no different than—you know, it looks cool, but I still prefer to play with the Chinese and the Portuguese cards.
[08:07] Mike Girard: See, I wouldn't even do that. I really need to be able to read my cards.
[08:11] Evan Lorentz: But then again, I'm not a very advanced player, so it's hard to say. So, one other thing that I do want to mention here, before we kind of head out and make our preparations, is to talk about Call to Arms very briefly, because we have received our approvals, as I may have noted already, and you will start to see cards from that next week. I'm actually very excited about some of the new templates that have people very excited: Borg and Dominion. So watch for that next week. We're going to start with some very big, splashy cards. I also believe that Scrye and InQuest magazines are going to have some advertisements that will show off some cards. So there's lots of places to look for Call to Arms goodness starting next week. We would probably have started it earlier, but with all of us going to Gen Con/DecipherCon, it kind of made the posting sort of a nightmare for our beleaguered web team.
[09:05] Mike Girard: I'm actually excited about some of the templates that are going to be in Call to Arms.
[09:08] Evan Lorentz: Yeah, it's some really good-looking stuff. I was really impressed the first time around with just the new templates in Premiere, but, at the risk of sounding like Emeril, he really kicked it up a notch. Our artist Joe Boulden did a really good job on the Call to Arms templates, and I think everybody's going to be a fan. I encourage everybody to look at them closely. There are a lot of subtleties.
[09:33] Mike Girard: Yes.
[09:34] Evan Lorentz: It's things like, you'll notice that the Romulan pattern is their uniform checker marks, and then the Federation has like a starship hull design in their text box, and stuff like that. You'll notice more of those details on the new templates that make it a lot of fun.
[09:50] Mike Girard: Very much fun. Cool. Very impressed.
[09:52] Evan Lorentz: All right. Well, then, that is all the news that I have to share today. And of course there will not be an RFD broadcast next week, because we'll all be on the road, and hoping to see you there. Thanks for sitting down to talk a little shop with me, Mike.
[10:04] Mike Girard: No problem, no problem.
[10:06] Evan Lorentz: All right. We'll see you all at DecipherCon.