Well, first things first, I'd like to give great thanks to Steve for both running the tournament, and making me feel very special getting everybody to wish me a happy 21st birthday at the Path Of The Master tournament on Saturday 30th May. That birthday card will be treasured for a while to come
. We had a fantastic turnout of around 46 or 47 (correct me if I'm wrong on this one), so while we didn't quite beat the turnout of the American tournament, we came pretty **** close! Thanks also need to go out to Damien and his friends who came all the way from France to participate in this tournament, my Morrigan playmat couldn't have gone to a better candidate
(They'll know what I mean ) and to Kevin Beadle, who while not being officially the Tournament Organiser, might as well have been for the amount of help he gave to us all. Thanks to all of you, as without you guys, I couldn't say that this was easily the most enjoyable tournament I've ever been to.
9 of us from Colchester went up in the end, after having had many troubles getting as many people as possible up there. We had myself running Order Donovan, my other half Alex (squall14) running his Air Chun-Li deck, Kyle (Zangetsu) with Evil Kula, Jonathan (Crazy Elf) with Fire Guy, Drew Spence (not a forum goer) running Order/Chaos Sophitia and his girlfriend Fiona running Air Tira, Ricky (Son_Gopaul) running his Air/Evil Hanzo deck, Dan (Nemesis) running Order Nagase, and my younger brother Oliver running Fire/Chaos Blanka. We originally planned to have 14 people go up, but people started to become unable to go, but we soldiered on to the end, and boy am I glad we did.
While I couldn't say exactly how all the other Colchester-ites games went in Swiss, I can give an idea of how my own went.
1st Round vs. Craig Aylett with Air/Death Tira.
Craig and I are good friends, so we made this as hilarious as possible, and it worked
Round one went in my favour with a Forethought lock, and while he tried very hard to throw attacks at me, Kuzuryu Reppa ended up killing him. However, he more than made up for this in Round 2, by going first and spewing out Destiny amongst other foundations, until he eventually multiplied a Midnight Launcher, having used the ability to stop the Tag Along I'd had saved in my hand to survive, doh! Round 3, and it was pretty To The Bone (
). But on Craig's kill turn, he went for a Menuette Dance, and lost vitality to try and Gloomy Side them away ready for a Midnight Launcher to follow it, but I managed to actually use Tag Along this time, and Psycho Style his staging area down, allowing me for a Spiral Arrow lock next turn. Tira could definately go far though, and as far as I remember, did so for the rest of the tournament.
2-1 Win for me
2nd Round vs. Richard Bassindale (aka Baz) with Air/Chaos Fio
This was a match I think the pair of us had been waiting for for a long time. Baz helped in taking the Team Nationals title away from us last year in arguably the most enjoyable game we'd both ever had with Donovan vs. Talbain, so this one also had to be a game to remember. And as I hoped, it was. First game, I managed to get the materials for a Defender loop down early, while holding on for dear life to the Spiral Arrow in my hand while he took the rest of it out using Billiard Player and Fio. Eventually, he managed to get rid of it, but at the cost of his own hand, and luckily, I pulled into two Pommel Smashes on the next draw, and so proceeded to Defender Loop them. Second game was fairly similar, although he was sniping my hand out a lot more quickly this time. Spiral Arrow arrived in just the nick of time however, and I had enough out to Defender loop that and a Pommel Smash. Revenge was mine! (In the nicest possible way, of course
) So now that we're even Baz, we'll need to play again soon
2-0 Win for me
3rd Round vs. Bevan Clatworthy (fiddlestix) with Evil/Fire Iori/Zi Mei
Now this was very interesting, and again, Bevan and I are good friends, so we tried to make this as fun as possible, and I hadn't seen Iori in quite some time since his first coming in SNK01, so this was very interesting. Luckily for me, Forethought and Spiral Arrow arrived really early on, so I managed to get a lock on quite early both games. This was a very entertaining game though, as Bevans deck was really unorthadox and clever, and the Knight Breakers sitting in his hand when he Bitter Rivals were really rather scary!
2-0 Win for me
4th Round vs, Jonathan Armstrong (Crazy Elf) with Fire/Order Guy
For the first time in a long while, it wasn't until the 4th round where I would have to play against one of my own players, but we most certainly made the most of it. Game 1, I got a Defender/Rejection loop running early, so his Rites became difficult to use effectively without Bitter Rivals, although a rogue Hozanto which Manifest Destinied Defender very nearly had me going! Game 2, Jonathan got a very early 3rd Rite combo off and killed me in one shot, which had me with gaping eyes and mouth for a short while
. Game 3 however, saw the Spiral Arrow/Forethought/BRT in my opening hand which stuck with the game the whole way through, and eventually killed him.
2-1 Win for me
5th Round vs. Matt Hewitt (Hewittzil) with Air/Water Chun-Li
Shockingly, the only Chun-Li (out of 6, I believe, again, correct me if I'm wrong on this one) that I played all day. Now this match had me really panicked, as while Alex's Chun-Li deck had more points than Matts, if both Alex and I lost, Matt would out-diversity Alex, but if either of us won, he would be on top, so I felt not only that I was playing for myself, but that I was also playing for him. Matt and I have had great fun playing in the past too, having been in the same team as Baz in Team Nats 2008, so again, this ought to be good
Matt and I only ended up getting one game within the time limit, however, as I had to spend most of my time using Pommel Smash and Tenacious in order to keep Chun-Li under control, which worked for a few turns, although after Matt played Blinding Rage and Perfect Sense of Balance in the same string, I had to change my tactics, although eventually, after about 35 mins, he Darkness Bladed me for the win. Although I had seen that Alex had already won his game 2-0 so he was safe.
1-0 Loss to Chun-Li
Then came the top 8 cut, which after a few technical problems and quite a bit of diversity (with 2 Chun Li’s and a Zi Mei being knocked down), looked like this:
1st: Alex - Chun-Li
2nd: Mark Aylett (Tuesday) – Akuma
3rd: Joe Hill (Me
) – Donovan
4th: Drew Spence – Sophitia
5th: Mark Donnelly - Zi Mei
6th: JJ (Zzasikar) - Himself
7th: Kyle Wright (Zangetsu) - Kula
8th: Jason (don't know last name or forum name
) - Nagase
We were all over the moon that 4 of our Colchester players managed to get into the top 8, so then after a short break, the matches looked like this:
Chun-Li vs Nagase
Akuma vs Kula
Donovan vs JJ
Sophitia vs Zi Mei
Top 8: vs. JJ (Zzasikar) playing Order/Evil JJ
So I was playing JJ in two different senses of the word
, both the player and the character were very fun to play with, even though he'd said that he could't believe he'd top 8'd with it. I managed an early Spiral Arrow lock in game 1, and having seen that JJ's Evil/Order build had The Ways Of Punishment in it, sided in Warriors Path for game 2. JJ had the upper hand throughout a lot of Game 2, but it was Warriors Path that ended up killing him, since the only attack he had in his hand was in his card pool when he used the Ways of Punishment, and I had kept a Spiral Arrow in my hand just in case.
2-0 Win for me
So after these matches, the top 4 looked like this:
Donovan vs. Akuma
Chun-Li vs. Sophitia
Yet again, 3 of us managed to top 4 in the tournament, which we were over the moon about
Top 4: vs Mark Aylett (Tuesday) playing tri - Akuma
Mark and I have had many an enjoyable game, and will continue to have many more judging by this game, and considering how friendly we are outside of UFS as well as in it, I'm pleased at the outcome of this match. Game 1, Mark got his Evil Wall out far more quickly than I could match it with Order's Wall, and so managed to clean me out with Tiger Fury quite infallibly. Game 2, however was a lot more interesting. We were a lot more levelled early game, although Mark started to get the edge on me after about 4 turns, so I had to think fast. He had tapped quite a lot of his staging area, leaving only a few critical control pieces open, and I had Spiral Arrow and 2 Kuzuryu Reppa in hand. I went for Kuzuryu first, which he Akuma'd and I failed, then tried again, and failed again due to BRT, but drew into a Pommel Smash, which I then used to take out Red Lotus to enable Olcadan use. I then used my Olcadans' to clear any remaining BRT's, leaving only Amy's Assistance and 2 other foundations ready. I used Charismatic's action half to clear my card pool and went for the Spiral Arrow. I then proceeded to check the 3rd Spiral Arrow.... I failed my check and died the next turn. Facepalm moment to the extreme. But I cannot put my loss down to luck, Mark outplayed me fair and square and I'm very pleased he did.
0-2 Loss to Akuma
And so the final was Alex's Chun-Li vs Mark's Akuma. Having never top 8'd at a tournament before, Alex was understandably nervous. After all Mark had won Regionals and top 8'd at Canadian Nationals with his deck. We were all very tired by this point (especially considering Alex's last game with Drew's Sophitia took almost an hour) and so fatigue was beginning to kick in. I didn't see the whole game, but I could see by turn 4 that Mark had set up everything he needed to in the first game, and that in the second game, Mark was really struggling at one point, but managed to throw out a lethal Tiger Fury due to Alex only having 3 cards in his hand, which meant that TWOP could give the damage boost it needed to kill.
And so Akuma comes out on top. But I must say, I meant it when I said this was the most enjoyable tournament I'd ever been to, not a single game for me was dull or boring, and so many of my own player base did well (including Oliver and Fiona, who had only been playing for 3 weeks each, and were both in the Top 25) that we were all beaming the whole way home. We won't be needing any Path Of The Master cards in Colchester for a while!
I will be posting my Donovan decklist at a later time so that people can see how he worked. I would also like some suggestions from everyone for something new to play. I'm trying to work out how to best use Path Of The Master as a draw engine rather than a damage pump, so any ideas are welcome
.
Thanks for everything guys, you're the best!
Joe xx