So I am playing the Order Gill lock deck that I played in the Montreal regional as I felt it was the strongest deck I could play. Essentially it commits all the opponent’s foundations and then hits you with a Juni’s spiral arrow. Spill and then Tenacious the arrow back to your hand. Rinse and repeat and the opponent is already dead, and they just don’t know it. I added I-spins to the deck because it’s bonkers and lets me get rid of torn hero and destiny, and mysterious stance as they hurt me very much. I knew there was only one other player who would play gill, (Tanner Lang, he made the deck… I adopted it after drawing to him in Michigan) so I might be up for diversity, if he shows up.
So Thursday night, I do some deck testing with my foxhound team mates and Tuesday from the UK. I find Tuesday’s deck manageable during testing, but am impressed with the quality of his deck. His deck was the best Akuma deck that I have seen, and it flowed right, and didn’t do anything weird like run a billion 2 checks. I sincerely think that Akuma is a control character and not an agro character, and Tuesday managed to tune that character just right as a wall of evil and then blast you with Tiger Fury.
After playing his deck he mentions that I’m light on damage defence, so I take out some cute cards (Valerie’s shop, the bigger they are) and add more psycho-styles and main board some holding grounds, I figure feline spike will be popular. Popular doesn't even cover it.
Saturday morning, I pick up Tuesday cause he is along the way, and meet up with the Foxhound/Dirty Shwa Guys at the Con. I see some regulars like Andre and his Ottawa crew, Team Phail, Brett and his Calgary Crew, Antigoth, Jay Winger, and the guys from Rochester, Ohio, and Michigan… Jon Herr attempts to relieve my anxiety by telling me he is playing All Herr, I almost believe him and then he laughs at me and tells me it’s evil. JERK!
New York City fails to show up… FU Omar!!! (kidding, I heard there was some complications with grey hound, suxors, cause I still wanna face omar) So I meet up with Ultimo, and it’s the first time we meet each other as we speak online but never met each other even though we practically live in the same city. Tanner isn’t present so I don’t worry about diversity –SWEET!!!!
Alright lets get the show on the road.
Round 1 Nick brown-All Herr- Oh man. I know he is going to run turn it on something, cause that’s what he was running at Rochester regional and did well with it. So I sit down to play him, and he is playing Jon Herr, and then he starts to play all, I guess he never heard Jon’s Joke. Well game 1, I beat him with the lock. Game two he rolls me no problem. Game three I read his character and he has been playing the look ability before he checked for the card not after, I call judge and he gets a game loss (harsh).
1-0
Round 2 Kin Tong Chan-Chaos Order Negase-Oh man, during testing, Kin always blows me out of the water with a combo of chaos protection and order crazyness. Well thank fully, Kin isn’t able to draw a red lotus for the life of him, and I get the jump on him with spintas and eventually manage to lock him out. I don’t think we finish game 2.
2-0
Round 3 Kirk Polka-Air Mignon-Kirk and I talk about how annoying it is that we always draw. We drew at Worlds last year (Ibuki vs Yoshimitsu) and at Michigan (Negase vs Minon). We start to play, and Kirk gets the jump on me with some crazy amount of attacks like heel snipe, spinta’s and feline spikes. Game two, I side into Donovan with spikes, defenders, and rejections, and Kirk turns into chun li (he didn’t really need to though) and just pounds my face in with some mad air skillz. Later on, I find out that he runs like four 1 checks, six 2 checks, and four 3 checks… man that guy is nutzors. Half the time I brt him, he draws an attack and checks a 6… Man BRT can really just suck sometimes.
2-1
Round 4 Marc Renaud-Air Chun li- It’s always nice a chun li deck after losing to an air deck. Well the jist of this match up is that marc smacks me up during game 1 with feline spikes, and in game 2 I come back and lock him out, and show him that I don’t actually suck. I’ve always wanted to face Marc cause he is a really good player, and I saw him wreck house in Montreal and Oshawa but never had a chance to play him. We end up drawing, too bad maybe next time we’ll finish a match.
2-1-1
Round 5 David Target X-Order water Arrow Lockout Juni- So I sit down across David and instantly think he was playing his old crazy Juni with spinta’s spikes and defenders. Well I was wrong
. He picked up a couple of tricks from me when I went to Montreal (Tanner your deck is spreading like AIDS!) Just to my luck it’s a kind of mirror except I draw 8 and he draws 6. I out develop him soon just lock him out eventually and don’t give him a chance to hit me. We go to game two and I start to lock him out, and he declares it’s time for a smoke and concedes. I agree, so we go report and feed our cravings.
3-1-1
Round 6 Aaron St. Peirre-Air Evil Hanzo boot to the nutz (Hanzo kick)- Oh man, he gets the jump on me early game kicks me to death, and I can tell he is a inexperienced player as he doesn’t know my cards oh oh. Well he is taking too long on decisions, I’m sure it was legitimate, I can’t afford a straight loss. So I call Jay to make sure that a moderate pace is kept cause I don’t want to be timed out. My apologies to Aaron, but I got royally shafted at worlds last year cause a guy stalled me out which ended up in me being diversified to Hata (suxzors). So I end up locking him out and eventually kill him as time is being called and throw 2 spiral arrows for lethal damage.
3-1-2 eleven points at this point.
I finish in like 10th place, but diversity is my friend today, and I get into top 8 cause there were 3 chun li’s in top 8 and I squeeze in. My friend mike ends up diversifying khols.
Good news, mikey and I are top 8 and we are in exact opposite brackets.
Bad news, Tuesday is 1st place, so now I have to face him quarter finals.
So on to the good stuff. Foxhound and Tuesday end up going to a bar, I think it was Jack Astors. We all end getting trashed. I had 3 pints of Guinness, 1 Stella and 2 blues. Seeing as I am a lightweight, I don’t know how I managed that. Well after food and getting shot down by the Hot waitress twice, we decided I embarrassed myself enough and went to the hotel to sleep the alcohol off.
Quarter Finals- Mark (Tuesday)-Evil Fire Akuma
So we sit down have the most epic match ever, nothing like our testing which was fairly laid back. Mark ends up getting a brutal tiger on me cause I failed a check as I was spilling and I have 4 cards in my pool and he activated a new low. He commits everything on my side after a bit of some grey war, (it was more like a grey genocide of evil vs order). Luckily for me, I pass my enhance step, and so does he, then I say ok I’ll take 4. He looks at me in utter shock as he forgot to do the Tiger Fury enhance. He tries to fury me again, and I manage to pass a half block going to 6 on his turn. On my turn, I know it’s time to crank up the lock juice but there is a slight problem. After all my forms are done, everything is committed but a lone no memories. And Mark is looking pretty toasty with 3 momentum to activate that no memories skip enhance r. I don’t have any r negation online, and slump in defeat as the only thing that would save me would be a psycho-style from my hand so I could lock him. I slump in despair, and in my hand I have a tag along and spiral arrow and allot of foundations. As I begin to spill, on my third card, I check a psycho style. The light shines in my head, and I tag along for 8 and grab the psycho style. Then I psycho-style for 8 to commit no memories. Then I play playing a spiral arrow for 11, and end up checking a 3, I was left with 3 foundations, and a tough choice. All my tag alongs and my spiral arrows were going to be in my discard pile or RFG. I could take a chance and not forethought and hope he can’t pass the block and then tenacious it. Or I could forethought but not be able to recur tenacious and be screwed in a couple of turns anyway. I throw caution to the wind and see if he can pass the block as he needed a natural 5 to pass, I knew he had a fair amount of fours, and let him make the check to block. He checks a 5 and proceeds to his turn to play Fury for like 25 and hacks my block with a vengeance.
Jay announces that there is like 7 minutes left. And I know I can’t kill him in seven minutes with gill. I concede, but then my friends urge me to try to kill him as Donovan. I figure I might as well give it a shot. Tuesday is worried but lets me play my game 2 and I shuffle up my Donovan sideboard of spikes and defenders, and mis-sideboard and forget to take out 1 arrow as I took out gill 2 arrows and holding grounds as I have to kill him quick. Well this game was soo crazy… as I go first, and I spill. He commits out and I hit him with the arrow I forgot to board out, lol. No tenacious so it goes into my momentum. He goes and plays a lynettes on my cutting edge and some other stuff. I then draw into 2 spinta’s and a feline spike. So I throw a spinta, he akuma hacks and I fail it. I throw another spinta, and spinta enhance to which he triggers seal of cessation, but I have two momentum now, so it’s ok. He takes 4. I play a card and clear. I then go for the hell mary and throw the spike and end passing, he is now cursing as he has a seclusion in hand but had no momentum to pass and now wished he had spinta through for momentum. As I play the spike, Antigoth comes yells out time and I overwhelm him with 24 damage from feline spike and he can’t sac enough foundations to cutting edge.
OOOMMMGGG I pulled that win out of my ass. Antigoth and Jay talk it out and decide the only fair way to decide our victory would be a third match with no time limit as first blood would be unfair as I can throw spinta and win, or he can get lucky and tiger fury for nothing and akuma hack me for not much too much damage.
I side back into gill as I know I have almost no change as Donovan against him. I play fairly controlling and really conservatively when he finally decides to a tiger fury me, and does the akuma enhance in an attempt to commit my board, he leaves 1 foundation open to pump his attack. I then proceed to tag along him, and he seals my tag along, then I tag along him again, and just high block with a makai high noble to completely block the Tiger Fury. I draw into a tag along and begin my loop. With three program malfunctions online, I let him play 3 foundations a turn and hack the 4th. I make a quick checklist to make sure I don’t mess up.
-Commit
-Arrow enhance
-Hack
-Tenacious
Mark sits there slumped, and after the 2nd loop he has had enough and shakes my hand congratulating me on my victory.
Semi Finals- Andrew Olexa-Air Olexa
The jist of the match up is that Olexa schooled me really hard with an early ira spinta that set up his character ability. Once I was pretty much almost set up to start looping, he plays a feline spike, stuns me and I commit 2 forethought leaving 2 holding grounds and my experienced combatant ready. I block the 1st spike with a makai high noble, he tries to hack, I respond with Tag Along check a 5, commit EC, and check a 5 to completely block feline spike, and holding ground both multiples. I’m feeling cool right now and am about to start to grin, I just punked his feline spike completely. Well after he plays a second one for 10 difficulty and passes, wiping that smile off my face.
I side into Donovan and he sides into Chunners
The whole game I see nothing really relevant and he keeps me in control with perfect sense of balance and 4 chester’s backing and blinding rage so I can’t punch through with my olcadans. We end up timing out as I can’t find a proper set up to kill him with.
Olexa loses to Kirk Polka in the finals.
Congrats Kirk You deserve the win after seeing beat Olexa with double feline spike on his turn.
Props-
Calgary Crew, Brett ( I don’t know your buddies)
Team Phail-David, Martin, Charles, nathaniel, Shanda, HHAAATTTMMMAAANN, Rene
Ottawa Crew-Marc, Andre, Aaron
Tuesday (Mark), for teaching us about the UK meta and telling us that Chun Li sucks. 6-0 Swiss Champ wow!
Mr. P and Anti Goth for running the tournament well.
Kirk Polka for winning
Nice meeting Matt, Jon, Paul, Jeremy, Andrew, and Kirk again
Slops-
Not winning
Mike Not winning
Brett and Danny not making top 8, I would have like to see them make it
Having to Face Mark in the quarter finals, I think he could have won the whole event, I was his only loss for the day.
Kirk Polka for winning (an American again)
