First off, pictures are coming soon. I took a few, and the scout running the event took a few more, so they'll be up in the next few days... but I left my camera at the store since I run a Warhammer league there and use it to take pictures for battle reports!
The tournament was an awesome one. There were (I believe) 13 players total with 11 of the 12 symbols being played (All but Earth, doubles of Fire and Air). There were NO duplicate characters anywhere to be seen. Most of the players were from Washington, but a few came up from California to play. Even though it was a smaller turn-out than we'd expected it was a ton of fun.
Day one I showed up about half an hour early, and the store was crowded wall-to-wall with Magic players. The guy working pointed me to a tiny secluded table in the back of the store where the other two UFS guys were waiting. That was an inauspicious start to be sure... Thankfully by the time we started getting signed up they'd cleared out and we had a few tables to use. The players I remembered looked something like this:
Sakura (Me)
Seong Mi-Na (Phil)
Blanka (Rielly)
Nightmare (Mike)
Victor (Sakai)
Tira (David)
Ivy (?)
T.Hawk (James)
? (Micheal "Tuggs")
J.Talbain (?)
Night Terror (Rick)
Zhao Daiyu (?)
And a few others...
Round 1:
I get paired against Tira. I'd only played against one Tira before and it wasn't a very serious deck, so at first I was pretty confident... though that confidence faded pretty fast after I got shredded in the fourth turn with a minuet followed by a verbrato. Ouch, ouch and ouch. Second game goes on a LONG time's worth of a control war. Time gets called on my turn and I finish up, throwing a couple big attacks that take him down to 3 and finally a Kuzuryu Reppa that he could only half block... but I forgot about his Tira's Contract and the game becomes a draw. Win for Tira.
Overall record: 0/1
Round 2:
I get paired against an Ivy player (to whom I owe my most sincere appologies, and if you read this let me know!) Game one goes to me after I gain control over the board and Kuzuryu Reppa/ Hurricane Punishment him into oblivion! Game two starts to go in my favor... and just as my friend who'd finished walks over and I tell him I'm about to be 1/1, it turned out that he had an Anti-K I didn't see lurking under a pile of commited foundations that saves him! He then proceeds to unload on me with 15 attacks and wins with 6 minutes left in the round. I rant for about 5 seconds about how BS that was... which was totally untrue, of course it seemed that way after 4 hours of sleep and no lunch (And again I'd like to TOTALLY appologize for my hair trigger temper to the Ivy player if he's reading). We move onto game three which I win thanks to a huge second and third turn. The Ivy player was a really great sport about it and didn't stall. He moved very quickly for me to allow me a chance at the final cuts inspite me freaking out with frustration after losing a game I thought was in the bag. Thanks again to that player for his sportsmanship, and I'm SOOOO sorry.
Overall record: 1/1
Round 3:
My next opponent is a Good Talbain. First game I establish board control quickly thanks to Olcadan's and Chester's. I bait him out on one of his 6 hand-size turns and let him run his hand down to 1 card. I Saikyo-Ryu that out and take him down on the following turn unloading on him while his hand is empty! Game two, I'm shocked to see him not sideboard into Destiny to stop my BRTs... He explains that in his meta at a different store in a neighboring city no one has any chase promos. That oversight proves to be his undoing as he gets hit by a 12 damage Kuzuryu Reppa an 8 damage Hurricane Punishment, then a 10 damage Hurricane Punishment to end the game on turn 5, using BRT to stop his blocking.
Overall Record: 2/1
Round 4:
Next up is James Canova playing T.Hawk. He's clearly not having the best time of his life with Regionals, being very new to the game and having a limited card pool. Game one, I go first, he sees my first turn and scoops... Game 2 he goes first, but scoops after seeing my first turn as well...
Overall Record: 3/1
That was the end of Swiss Rounds and after that, the cut to top four spared my Sakura, David's Tira, Phil's Seong Mi-Na and Zhao Daiyu. We get paired with me against Seong Mi-Na and Zhao against Tira. Me and the Zhao player make a bargain, as the Seong Mi-Na beat him and Tira beat me in the Swiss rounds. If I beat Seong Mi-Na, he'll beat Tira.
Round 5:
Game one goes on for what seems like forever. It's an uphill battle every step of the way with Rejection and Ira Spinta loops all over the place. After a long and exhausting first game, I finally win by Rival-ing a series of attacks off-zone. Game 2, I stop those annoying shenanigans cold, throwing in three Tough Outer Shells and three Prominent Noblewoman. Take that Chester, Rejection and Seong Mi-na! Game 2 wraps up much faster after I gain board control and Phil conceids, as it's getting pretty late, and he can't see an easy way out of the situation... Sadly, the Zhao player didn't uphold his end of the bargain.
Total record: 4/1
Round 6, The final match:
Great... I face the same Tira that beat me again. The other player and I get in an epically comical staredown after I tell him that I'm going home with the plaque! Game one goes pretty much the same way as my first game against Tira. Before I know what even happened I'm down to 3 vitality and I conceide, knowing that with his dominant staging area I can't come back. Game 2, I put up a good fight, knocking him down by 10 before he throws out a huge flurry of attacks again. I BRT his winning Verbrato... and he draws another. I scoop and call it game, knowing he can easily make the unmodified check.
Second place isn't first... but it sure ain't bad!
Day two rolls around and it's time for Teams. I wake up at about 2pm, thanks to my friends keeping me out late for drunken Warhammer games. I modify my sideboard fairly quickly so that I can fight Tira this time around if I need to. I should've been packing Silver Spoon anyway to be honest, but I thought the only multiple I really had to worry about was Spike, and I assumed BRT and Fight or Flight would've taken care of that!
Three teams showed up for Team Regionals, and they looked something like this:
Fire Sagat, Air Tira (Grrrrr...), and Water Mai
Death Nightmare, All Alex, and All Sakura (me)
Good Hilde, Water/Air Chun-Li, and Evil Night Terror
There was another team scheduled to arrive, but they didn't show.
Round 1:
We get paired against the team with David and his **** dirty Tira. We win the flip and I tell our captain to match me with ANYONE but her. We end up pairing Me against Sagat, Alex against Tira and Nightmare against Mai. Game one against Sagat is over pretty fast. His deck seems like it's mostly commons and uncommons save for Midnight Launcher. He over-plays and I mop up in a single turn on turn 4 of the game. The second matchup I get to see what his deck is really made to do after I overextend and sacrifice my control position to put him down to five vitality. I go from 27 to three in one turn (With my character E) in one turn. Ouch. I am able to win on the next turn however since he commited so hard to aggro the turn before. Tira wins over Alex 1/2. The ten hand size proved to be trouble... but that Tira just proved to be a monster. Nightmare and Mai also went to game three, but Nightmare pulled through after the poor Mai player started the third game by going for 3 difficulty foundations on his first turn and checking a Spike and a Lunar Slash respectively.
Round 2:
Next up was Hilde, Chunners and Night Terror. Three frustrating decks... None of us really wanted any matchup, but we won the roll-off and our captain decided that I should go against Phil's new Chun-Li (it seems he dropped Seong Mi-na after his defeat the day before). Our captain was convinced that he'd be demoralized and frustrated at seeing the same deck across the table from him again. Night Terror faces off with Alex and Nightmare faces off with Hilde. Game one doesn't take too long, since my control deck can't be controlling against someone who can play an Olcadan's before their first turn. We duke it out for a while until I realize there's no coming back from behind after the Ira-Spintas start flying. Game two goes close to the same as the first, but I hold on for much longer, taking her down to 8 at one point with a huge turn with some Kuzuryu to Fight or Flight'd Neo Raging Storm action... Of course I screw up royally and forget about my multiple copy resolving and just go to play my NRS, revealing it from my hand and letting him know he should save his block. I r teh smrt. Finally after **** near an hour of boredom the other two games finish up and after I find out both my team-mates one I scoop, not wanting to sit across the table from more Ira Spintas for one second.
Round 3:
The third team never showed up. My team sat around and talked about random stuff with the other two teams duked it out and we got a free victory along with the odd man out last round.
Winning for the win, wut wut!
