The the regional is finished and here are the results!

Im sure there will be more info later and possible tourney reports from myself and Arch.... but for now here is the top eight.

1 Order Guy (Archemides)

2 All Alex (me)

3 Earth Sagat

4 Air Felicia

5 Earth Astaroth

6 Air Tira

7 Fire Zi Mei

8 Earth Hugo

Overall we had 21 people with a Tira and Felicia cut to diversity. We had 5 Zi Meis, 2 Felicias, 2 Padma, and 2 Tira as repeat characters.

Earth is ridiculous right now... it can stall forever while it waits to push damage through. Order is still a power house, its commital options along with BRT are one of the only ways to tap down the abundant amounts of E's out there right now (Amys, Healer) and it can stop Rs with Charismatic and more commital.

Overall a great tourney I had a blast and I hope everyone else that attended did as well.

NintendoMan said:

W00T congrats Arch!

Grats on #2 Nintendoman, looks like Alls absent answers for a) comittal and b) hack must have got you down in the final.

Earth is a strong symbol. There are a lot of symbols that are competitive at the moment, Good/Earth/Order/All/Air, etc.

I'm hoping to get a chance to face Archimedes at Gencon now more than ever, although having won a regional already he shouldn't have taken the win = boo

Just kidding!

Grats again and thank you for the breakdown.

- dut

I'm sure Brett (Archimedes) will post a tournament report sometime when he wakes up (maybe once he's back home in AZ), but for now here are the results. The strangest thing to me was that we had no Astrid's, Hilde's, or Zangief's present.

SWISS RESULTS (after 4 rounds):

(Record listed in W-L-D)

1. Brett H. (Archimedes) - Guy - 4-0-0
2. Grant W. (NintendoMan) - Alex - 3-0-1
3. Jon C. (AsianUFSNoob) - Felicia - 3-1-0
4. Chris R. - Tira - 3-1-0
5. David D. (Solstice) - Tira - 3-1-0
6. James L. - Felicia - 3-1-0
7. Russ A. - Sagat - 2-1-1
8. Scott A. - Astaroth - 2-1-1
9. Kevin C. - Zi-Mei - 2-2-0
10. Tyler W. (NintendoMan's younger brother) - Akuma - 2-2-0
11. Chris H. (AryanUFSNoob) - Hugo - 2-2-0 NOTE: Tyler and Chris were actually tied, with same Strength of Schedule
12. Matt G. (Philip45) - Elena - 2-2-0
13. Robert H. - Zi-Mei - 2-2-0
14. Donald P. (Judas225) - Ken - 2-2-0
15. Albert B. - Ivy - 1-2-1
16. Danny P. - Chae - 1-2-1
17. Chris A. - Talim - 1-3-0
18. Mason S. - Padma - 1-3-0
19. Adrian G. - Zi-Mei - 1-3-0
20. Helio R. - Padma - 1-3-0
21. Tim N. - Lillith - 0-3-1 NOTE: Tim is almost entirely new to the game, and the deck was built with help from Arch and others about an hour before the tournament started. I think Tim learned a lot about the game at this tourney, and towards the end, foundation-destruction Lillith (running Nightmare support) was actually winning a several games (if not several rounds).

So Top 8 (at Swiss) had two Tira's and two Felicias. This meant a diversity cut. James and David were eliminated due to their weaker strength of schedule. This brought Kevin's Zi-Mei into Top 8.

This would also bring Tyler in, but I was uncomfortable with that decision because Tyler's SoS and rating were perfectly matched with Chris H.'s, and the tournament software gave me no evidence as to why it had ranked Tyler higher than Chris. The software has no place to keep game win records for tie-breakers (it just tracks rounds), so the two players were, as fairly as I could tell perfectly tied.

Archimedes suggested doing another round before cutting, which we probably should have done, except that the store closes at 9pm and we were on a tight schedule. Instead I had Chris H. and Tyler play a 30-min. single-elimination tie-breaker game, which saved a bit of time for the tournament, and gave me a free half-hour to set up the Jigs & Reels side event for those who didn't make Top 8.

Chris's Hugo came out with the win, so the final Top 8 was:

• Brett (Guy) vs. Chris H. (Hugo) -- Brett gets the win.
• Grant (Alex) vs. Kevin (Zi-Mei) -- Grant gets the win.
• Jon (Felicia) vs. Scott (Astaroth) -- When time was called, Scott had just won the second game (Jon won the first). We had them play a 4-turn game to tie-break. At the end of 4 turns, Astaroth had lost the most vitality, so Jon's Felicia got the win.
• Chris R. (Tira) vs. Russ (Sagat) - Russ gets the win.

Top 4 was:

• Brett (Guy) vs. Russ (Sagat) - Brett gets the win.
• Jon (Felicia) vs. Grant (Alex) - Grant gets the win.

Finals:

• Brett (Guy) vs. Grant (Alex) - Arch and Nintendo have been waiting to battle each other for a long time. In the end, Brett (Archimedes) took the win to defeat the swiss curse, claim his plaque, life-counter, print, and giant SoCal Regionals banner.

I may post more about the Jigs & Reels tournament later. I'll leave it to others to talk about all the additional prize support that got handed out/raffled off.

Big thanks to:

• Brett for helping out with the software and computer support,
• Scott and David for helping me stock my highlander Jigs & Reels decks with theme cards (giving me a ridiculously good trade on legacy material)
• Mat (PatchedArtist) our local scout, who did at least as much work with pairings, judging, and set-up as I did
• Dave (the store owner) for putting out the $150 for the OFFICIAL prize support, and being a gracious host
• FFG for getting the official prize support there on time
• All the players for playing nice and making the store management happy, and having a **** good time.

The last thing I'll say for now is watch out for Brett at Worlds. He'll cut the whole world in half for the Number One Headband.

I had alot of fun at this and I cant wait for the next big tourney to come around. There were alot of strong decks there which inspired me to make a few new decks of my own. Overall it was great meeting pple like armedpirate and nintendoman, my only regret is that I didnt get to sit down and have a match between u two and archimedies. Again grats to the champ.

Archimedes hasn't posted in seemingly forever.

This thread ought to act as his bat signal

I haven't posted since Monday because I was in Las Vegas seeing my Girlfriend.

Then I went to California for the tournament.

I just arrived back in Tucson. I am dead tired.

Vegas

Girlfriend

Cali

...You, sir, win Party Animal of the Summer award

dutpotd said:

You couldnt have said it better! Granted I hit DF on turn 1 or 2 in both games but Brett was able to get huge foundation set ups with Cursed Blood and his sided Lynettes dominated. He had 4 or 5 BRTs on the field at one time. 1 or 2 BRT is easy to play around but that many its hard to play anything useful for that situation. Bretts a gamer I hope he does well at worlds, the man eats sleeps and bleeds ufs it seems.

Solstice- dude i didnt even know that was you! we shoulda definately had a game against eachother.

It was a great tourney.... I had not been so drained after a tourney before. By head hurt from all the strategizing.

ARMed_PIrate said:

Its funny that you say that since we had like 5 Astrids in our playgroup at one time and I planned on running one of the two other characters. Gief Mill would have pwned the meta with only one deck even running Spinta!

NintendoMan said:

So much lack of spinta heading to worlds... The Felicia's weren't running it??? (cough, no wonder it didn't top - just kidding! Or am I?)

I take it when you say 'hit the Dark Force' you mean checking it and not playing it and hitting with it. If you hit with it I trust Arch would have been dead that turn ^^

Intersting top 8, not a alot of good... The order must have run wild. I was going to ask where the Akuma was, but it seems it just got edged - still an interesting outcome.

I'm also surprised the Zi Mei didn't go farther with that meta, I find Tira eats it from her with little commit negation. I guess it depends though, Death Zi Mei usally does better (can stop Tag Along with Inhuman, fire doesn't).

I bet 7/8 of the top 8 ran Tag Along?

- dut

dutpotd said:

O yeah I definatley checked the Dark Force....

My brother ran the Akuma, this was his first major tourney and he didnt know what alot of the older block three cards did (didnt know cutting edge was playable while commited ) If he had he would have made top 8 for sure with my build.

The AIr felicia that made top 8 should have been running it... but Im pretty sure he doesnt have any. My teamates Good Felicia got diversified and he strictly ran her off of good for a t2 Kill with Bringing the Master+ Masters Challenge + Clear + Felines with Mentallys.

As for Tag ALong I Dont think the Hugo build was... so 6/8.

Im pretty sure all of the Zi Meis were off of fire. I think one might have been the pack version off of air though, not too sure.
I think the Zi Mei that t8 woulda surprised some more people if it didnt face me in the t8. Alexs big vitality with Discard and lifegain has that decks number... not to mention my Tag Alongs.

BTW I emailed you....

Lastly I want to raise some symbol discussion! IMO any deck that can can commit/SPinta cards is at a huge advantage!!! There are so many cheap free Es and R's in the meta with so little to "negate" them with that commital is more important then ever! Momentum generation is also such a huge asset, momentum is finally what it is supposed to be now; a valuable commodity. Lastly Red Lotus and any symbol that can run it are at a huge advantage! That card is so good...

MarcoPulleaux said:

Worlds after this.

I am going to die.

=P

Hey dude, best of luck. You've proven yourself to be a more than valuable player.

Although, as I'm sure you already expected...

...

WHY DID YOU USE GUY?! (as opposed to any other Order character?)

MarcoPulleaux said:

Momentum generation and hate.... yes please!!! Momentum is a valuable commodity now, moreso than ever. Most decks kill conditions revolve around it and theres not much ways to generate it. Plus guys speed pump alongside BRT means it wont be blocked

MarcoPulleaux said:

With Lord of the Makai banned, typical order decks lost their ability to go aggro as they no were no longer capable of turning Lunar Slash and Kuzuryu Reppa on easily. As such, many order decks fell into a slower pattern of Ira Spinta and High Plasma Beam abuse.

Guy alleviates my momentum generation problem. Destroying my hand to generate the momentum is offset by Kuzuryu Reppa's hand refill and the "draw 2 if it hits" ability of Lunar Slash. Guy also allows me to push damage with his speed pump, and when combined with Personal Style I was sending Reppa's for typical 8mid8 damage a piece, then using that draw to dig for Lunar Slash which usually got sent for 6mid11 a piece after the Reppas in the pool.

The fact that Guy also denies the opponent momentum means a lot as well. It means that Akuma is never going to have momentum for Seclusion. It means that decks that loop Ira Spinta with From the Mouse, Humility are never going to be able to do so.

Guy presented the opportunity to be flexible. In my matches against Zi Mei I set up a preliminary barrier to make sure I didn't get annihilated, but I was also capable of racing her in the damage output department. Against Hugo I did a lot of damage really fast while also denying him his key cards with BRT and Program Malfunction. Against Sagat I totally switched strategies and walled up until he tried to kill me. At which point I ate half his field with Psycho Style then went to town next turn with a 42 damage High Plasma Beam. Granted, he survived the Plasma Beam with Cutting Edge, but he had to destroy 10 foundations to do so, leaving him with 4 or 5 on the field against my massive wall (I won the next turn).

He suits my taste for playing aggressively with the common sense notion of "Control=good".

It was a blast on Saturday! Earth is a definately a beast and has quickly become my favorite symbol. It has answers to pretty much anything (no E or F negation, but that would push Earth over the top!), you just have to figure out how to use them. Astaroth performed pretty well for me as that E can be pretty disgusting. I was able to fling out 16 damage Flooded Nile Throws with the deck!

It was great playing against a diverse group of people that were fun to play against.

I had loads of fun at this tourney Completely awesome. I got to face Archimedes yet again this year, but I was unable to topple him again. I will beat you again some day Arch....some day...

In other news, the other decks I faced we very fun:
I had to face a person from my play group (Adrian G.) round one. This always seems to happen with us. He made one mistake that cost him the game, and that was forgetting to commit my Make a Difference, which allowed me to reversal his first attack with a Heel Snipe. No more committing for him, and that killed his multiple. Great game though. Always love fighting him.

Fighting the Talim deck was an interesting thing. No one in our group runs her, so I was not fully prepared for the speed she could create. I must say...it was fast XD We both had bad first hands, so the game took longer then we were expecting. I am considering trying out a build of her myself after fighting this one.

The other Tira deck as interesting to see; it got WAY more momentum then mine, as I can live of 1-3 while his got 5-6 very quickly. He played way more multiples then I (seeing as I only have 1 with the actual keyword) so, I was quite happy I had Make a Difference in play for at least one of them XD I enjoyed seeing a slightly different Tira build, and loved playing against it.

Finally for swiss, I played against Arch. I have faced him every regional I have been to except for my first one. And I only managed to ever beat him with my Makoto deck during a teams tourney (against Ukyo). I cannot seem to repeat my victory against him XD. The time before this, I was DESTROYED by his Hilde deck. This time, I had the pleasure of fighting his Order Guy deck, and I was VERY pleased. This time did not seem as one sided as the Hilde fight, as I took him out one round (after playing about 7 attacks). The last round I feel victim to his baiting of my Make a Difference to his first Lunar Slash of the turn, BIG mistake. That was followed by a Kuzu, and then another Lunar Slash...yea...I died. XD But I had fun doing so.

In top 8, I only got to face 1 person, seeing as they beat me. Russ with Earth Sagat. The game over all was kinda balanced; nothing extravagant from either player...but Russ was SOO much fun to fight against. What with the singing bad songs badly, and the lil dancing, it was hard to not smile while playing. I hope to see him at next year’s regional.

Overall, I had a blast, and thank you once again to AP and (I think) PatchedArtist for organizing. It was AWESOME, and I can't wait to see what next year brings

Well Arch, you have THIS Guy-hater convinced.

Also, props for Lunar Slash. I can't believe people are STILL dissing that card because it has a 1 =/

As I'm not able to make it to Worlds, do me a favor. Send me an EMail at [email protected]

I want to discuss some Worlds strategies with you =)

God I wish I could have gotten the time off for Worlds.

I very much want to play that Guy deck. BADLY.

I personally had a blast at the regionals and, though my Talim deck didn't perform as well as I had hoped (partially to some bad luck, but mostly to some rough competition) I enjoyed the whole day.

My Report goes something like this:

Round 1:

Helio's Padma Deck

Since Helio and I had spent about and hour playing 15 games (yes they were that fast) we knew how this would go for the most part (the winner was whoever set up fastest, and I tended to win that race). I was confident of the win, barring anything bad. Both rounds went by quickly as the padma deck ran into issues drawing it's attacks. I think we set a record on the fastest reporting ever with 10 minutes off the clock by the time we finished.

1-0

Round 2:

Chris R's Tira deck

Chrono's tira deck had me worried from the get-go. I'd played against Solstice's Tira deck in the weeks prior to the tourney and knew my Talim deck couldn't kill as fast as Tira could manage. Game 1 went by pretty quickly due to a few bad checks on my part. I took a Swing Tomahawk that was multipled using Tira's E: to the face when I flubbed my Block using Mark of the beast (my melancholics hated me this round it seemed. Winner: Tira. Game 2 started off spectacularly bad when I checked said melancholic again on a Natural Leader. Turn 2 had the same on my 3rd foundation putting me at a big disadvantage. Fortunately (or un fortunately as it may be) Tira had the same issues setting up and I was able to put the heat on. After a string of attacks, I left him at 4 health and ready for a bit of defense for what seemed like a win. His turn came up with the swing Tomahawk multipled again that was taken care of using a simple block and my sole copy of healer to finish it off. Then came the fully multipled Menuette Dance that nicely tore me up and sealed Tira's win:

1-1

Round 3:

James L.'s Felicia Deck

I knew going in that it was going to be a feline spike deck and that it would run off fast. With that in mind I was setting up fairly quickly and had a Tag Along in hand for turn 1 to stop the inevitable F: that would fuel the Spike. After a master's challenge I was looking at a 7 difficulty when the time came and, much to my annoyance, I checked just 1 below what I needed (13 6 checks and I never get em when I need em). With that the spike hit home and killed me. WInner: Felicia. Game 2 had me without my tag alongs, but I had gotten a mark of the beast, making me feel a little safer. On turn 3 the spike came again after he retrieved it with a Tag along and I attempted to block with the mark, only to flip an attack. The same happened with the second copy meaning that, at 2 life I had to fully block the last and, with only mids in my hand, I couldn't manage it.

1-2

Round 4:

Scott's Astaroth

This was a true Sibling Rivalry as I was forced to face my brother in this match running his Astaroth Deck. I had realized that we hadn't played each other with these decks at the beginning of the game. I knew what it could do and what I had to do to stop it so, with that in mind, we started. Game 1 saw him going first and putting up an impressive couple of cards, cutting edge, Ka technique, and an Inhuman Perception. I was annoyed because it would take an army to run through that set-up on top of 28 life. That was, until I checked my hand and saw a natural leader, whirlwind, professional soldier, and, what eventually became enemy #1 on Scott's radar, End it All. I played them out, soaked up some damage from a throw or two (enough to sting, but not kill) and netted a couple of momentum from the Leader. My hand showed me the godly combination of two melancholics and a mark of the beast. End it all fired (goodbye cutting edge, holding ground, and the bulk of his defense) and the beast hit the table on a 6. He took the hit using criminal past to keep the damage low and from then on it was two melancholics that went through unhindered for the win. Winner Talim.

Game 2 showed Scott his weakness to End it All so, whenever possible, he used No Fogiveness to flip it when I got it. It wasn't long before he outlasted me and scored the win. Talim's R: became a new annoyance to him this round so he started packing his Tag Alongs. Winner: astaroth

Game 3 Went a lot like Game 2 did with my End it All's face-planting the table the second they came out. I got a good setup and decided to run with it. Much like the first game I hit him hard, but with his defenses unhindered he survived with 6 health. I had plenty of momentum stored to hinder his attacks on his turn, but it didn't take long for that to get tag alonged. Without any healers face up I couldn't last against the devastating throws. Winner Astaroth.

I would love to give props to ArmedPirate for one of the best ways to utilize legacy play. His Highlander theme decks brought back the fun of using plenty of the old cards for a huge Nostalgia moment for me and many of the other veteran players and it served as a fun way for the Non-top 8 finishers to kill the time.

Since nobody's given out the details on this little gem I feel obligated to enlighten everyone on it. First and formost it was a highlander legacy event (meaning only one copy of a card allowed in case people haven't tried the event before) and ArmedPirate had put together I think 44 different decks that were built around a single character, though they contained 4 other characters to allow for alternative playstyles. Each player was given the list to look at where the characters present in each deck were posted as well as the symbols they were based off of and a brief 3 word description of the deck's theme.

Once the decks were chosen you had a couple of minutes to look through them and pick out 5 cards to remove from the deck prior to the game (such as character only cards if you weren't playing that character, or anything else you wouldn't see using). Afterwards you played a single game with a 30 minute time limit. Once the game was over, the loser had the option to either switch his deck with the winner for round 2, or keep his deck for the next round. If the loser kept his deck, the winner was forced to choose a separate deck, otherwise they were forced to play their opponent's deck.

The rounds I played in went like this:

Round 1

My Deck: Talim/Blanka fire/chaos multiples - Being a massive Talim fan (as if people couldn't realize from the avatar and my insistance to using a Talim deck in the tourney) I couldn't pass up the chance to play the original promo again. The deck didn't disappoint as it had fun cards like Criminal Uppercut, Rolling Storm, and other fun multiple abusers. It's been a long time since I considered The Horns along with Criminal Uppercut a 'killer' combo.

Opponent: Deejay - Looked to be based off of kicks and other Deejay support cards. It threw a couple of good hits, but couldn't stand up to the multiple madness.

1-0

Round 2:

Adon Fire - Knocked out deck : After laughing at the idea of a knocked out deck I figured promo adon (another old favorite) would be fun to try again. It was full of the old fire pumps and some of the newer ones.

Opponent Ukyo - Using the latest promo it seemed to be based off of reversals.

I ended up making a few fast attacks get through due to some early speed pumps until I got a shadow hunter with an unrequitted love on the table. Next turn he had a 17 speed 32 damage monster coming at him that couldn't be stopped.

2-0

Round 3:

Jubei Powerful - Another old favorite. Running old busted cards like Tsunami Saber and others like Geyser Thrust was a kick.

Opponent - Guile Reversals. At least Solstice said it was reversal based. He ended up pounding me a lot early on and let me slowly tick my momentum up while feeding his as well. When I drew the Geyeser thrust I knew it was pretty much the end. Using jubei to give it powerful 5 and then sacking all the momentum we both had brought it up to a 47 damager. With only a low block in hand he took enough damage off of the partial to lose.

3-0

And with that the tourney was over. Everyone around had loads of fun with it and plenty of guys kept playing long after, testing out the other builds. A fun way to end the day.

Big thanks for the tourney report, Chris!

Chris (Griffinman) took home the complete Highlander: The Animated Series for those victories. (:

Tim, last place in the main tournament, also took home Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li .

At this point, I'd like to give a special thank you to Matt G. (Philip45) for bringing the additional prize support: an Ibuki action figure and a Guile action figure off his own dime. These were raffled off to two people who did not make Top 8. So who got these gems?

By sheer coincidence, when the die was rolled, Chris and Tim's numbers came up. So the guys walking away with DVDs also walked away with action figures. (|:

The Darkstalkers Graphic File was ogled by many, and auctioned off to one person who had not won the entire tournament (i.e., not Brett), who was present (i.e., not James), and who hadn't already won a major raffle (i.e., not Chris and Tim, to Tim's great disappointment). The lucky winner was Kevin C., who also snagged some Top 8 goodies.

I'm definitely looking forward to City Fight when that gets under way. I want more excuses to hang out with all of you guys. I'm going to try to make sure our Tekken Prerelease doesn't conflict with that of the Torrance players, for the possibility of some inter-store Tekken games. (;

MegaGeese said:

The Guy deck I used for the SoCal Regionals was actually a terrible mess of a build. It is now much more refined.

I can send you a list if you like.

After seeing Talim in action, I think she has a lot of possibility. That R is pretty potent against certain decks, and a built in speed boost is really nice. Plus, all three of her symbols are pretty decent now.

Archimedes said:

Hey Arch, personally, i would LOVE to see your build of Promo Guy. I've ran a version of Guy at 3 different events with varying success (Top4 at the Santa Clara AoP being my best finish), and i also had an Order Promo Guy build that was 'decent'. Unfortunately, i no longer own any BRT (long story, but suffice it to say, i believe you're running the Set that i USED to own). Anyway, i'm not going to Worlds this year, so there's obviously no chance of us playing against each other , and i'm a HUGE Guy fan (been playing him since Final Fight, and then again in the SF Alpha Series), so...if you wouldn't mind it, please hit me with a list here: [email protected]

Thanks, man! And, good luck at Worlds this year!