SAS II Second Place tourney report.
I was one of a group of 12 people from ATL who made the long trek down to Fort Misery to kick ass and chew bubble gum at the SAS II. And we were really all out of gum. Awakenz had graciously offered up floor space to our poor asses, which helped a large portion of us actually muster the funds to go. Team Lionstance decided to head down Thursday night to get there early and decktest ect. and our group, which has been known as “the other half of team ATL” or at some points “Team Tigersit”, took two cars and went down during Friday. Besides being a frustratingly long drive and somehow ending up roughly 90 minutes behind the other car, the drive was fairly uneventful. We arrived at 10:00 PM and knocked on the door of Awakenz house to be greeted by none other than Ben Shoemaker who barged out the door, doggie styling a polar bear footstool and cornering me up against a wall. I couldn’t make this **** up.
Anyway, street fighter was set up and most everyone was hanging out in the living room. I’ve never been good at fighting games in general so I naturally went to find the UFS room where Vik and Jay (Awakenz) were doing some deck testing before the tourney. Apparently Jay was going to be running Heihachi as well as myself, though his build was completely different (off of fire). I actually never got to play a single game vs. anyone that night, but there were a lot of tech discussions going on, and it appeared that both Vik and Jay were unconvinced that a chaos build of Heihachi could do a whole lot in the fire dominated meta. Anyway, I did get to see awakenz deck work a couple times, which really helped the following day when I had to play him twice. After a while I tried to go to sleep, but good luck conking out with constant cries of “ESCARCEGA!” and “BAKKA” all while being sardine canned with 6 people in a room that comfortably fits 3.
So, sleep deprived and completely fatigued from an angry 11 hour drive, we made our way to the store and to get ready for the event.
ROUND 1
Me (Keenan Meadows) playing Heihachi off of chaos
Vs.
Ben Lambright (Ziephnir) playing Astrid off fire
Well that’s just great, round one vs. a team mate. Not that ATL hadn’t seen that before at a million other regionals but I was just hoping it wouldn’t happen here. Either way, I had played this match up a million times and the playing field was fairly level. Regardless, I took the round (I actually don’t remember the game count due to my lack of pen and paper)
Win
1-0
ROUND 2
Me
Vs.
I don’t even remember
Lol whoops, I can honestly say I don’t remember the match very well (at all really), but I did pull out the win. After doing so I went to go check on how Jay was fairing in his matchups. So far he and I were 2-0. And I was in no mood to get diversified today after being diversified at the last SAS.
Win
2-0
ROUND 3
Me
Vs.
Drew Maffei (ShippuJinrai playing King)
Despite playing at the same store, I had not played this against deck once while Heihachi was built so I had no idea what would happen. Game one I quickly caught on to the stupid 4 foundations, King form, Path of the master crap, though that doesn’t mean I had much to say or do about it. Regardless I sided into Demon Slayer game 2 to maybe negate a stand off or a path of the master activation. Game 2 I think I brought him down to 7 by turn 2, but I stopped drawing attacks and he stabilized by turn 4. I also never saw a demon slayer.
Loss
2-1
At this point I looked over to see how Jay’s matches were going and it turned out he was 3-0. Crap. I couldn’t afford to lose another game. Onto next round.
ROUND 4
Me
Vs.
Jay playing Heihachi off fire
Well HAI THERE!! Stroke of luck, Jay got paired down. No better way to get on top of diversity than to beat the guy who will diversify you. Of course I say beat as if this game was actually on even footing. But his deck completely crapped all over him. Jay was very consistently rolling 2’s and 3’s on 5 diff’s and game 1 he had over extended his board by the second attack he played. I had also learned the night before that his deck plays nothing but low attacks so I kept my blocks and the moment he was forced to tap out, murder faced him to the head. Game 2 was altogether much shorter. His deck acted the same way and turn 2 he flipped a 2 check to play a tandoya with 2 foundations and Heihachi ready, at which point he conceded. I always hate to win these kind of matches because that was not the way his deck was supposed to run and it was really a stroke of bad luck. Either way, all I had to do was win my next match and I was in top 8.
Win
3-1
ROUND 5
Me
Vs.
Brad from Canada (B-rad) playing astrid
Second astrid matchup of the day and I was really nervous going in. I had seen the deck play the night before and it was quite brutal. This is no understatement. I think I may have gotten one game off of him but reverse pommel smash hurts like a ***** and I have no side board for that particular shenanigan.
Loss
3-2
This round Jay played against Drew and by some ridiculous stroke of luck, Drew took their match 2-1. So Jay and I were now tied with completely matching records. What to do? Well, if left up to the system, the match would be decided by last name. That is some of the dumbest **** I have ever heard, and luckily, everyone else thought so as well. So what to do?
BONUS ROUND
Me
Vs.
Jay
This was a legitimate match. Neither one of our decks shat themselves. The entire time we were both pretty much completely silent and this was the most tense match I played the whole weekend. I believe I took game one, then he took game two, both games were very short in comparison to game three. Game three I just couldn’t find my Spinning Demon’s and he was having just as hard a time finding the attacks to put the hurt on me. So we were walling. I was keeping low blocks in my hand and he had a few stand offs on the board. Finally, around turn 5, he triple communing forms and drops an attack (was either a first rite or a tandoya). He heichi’s it, and sends it at me. I had 4 cards in hand, 3 low blocks and one mid, so I block for half. He R’s with Heich but luckily shows up a for the money. Drops a leg slash, which he heichi’s and maybe even standoffs. Either way I block for full. Drops another attack and pumps it to high heaven, I full block. Finally he puts a fire shadow on the board and I believe I block this as well. He is completely over extended and I don’t think he has any cards in his hand. I draw up my hand and rip into 4 attacks, one of which was a spinning demon.
Win
After this match, Jay shakes my hand and despite the loss says tells me that it was a fantastic match and that I better get all the way to finals. Jay’s deck is a complete monster in the format, and holy god was this a tough match. All I have to say was that was the best game I have ever played at a regional and it really could have gone either way. Good game man.
Top 8
QUARTER FINALS
Me
Vs.
Alex Marco (Generalreaction89) Playing Paul off fire.
Another ATL player and this was a match I had played before literally dozens of times. So I knew how fast it could go downhill. I took game one super fast, and he returned the favor game 2. Game three I drop double for the money and on turn three dropped something like wheel kick into first rite into shadow flare into unmultipled spinning demon into geo da ray multipled. The sad part was after the geodaray hit, he was at three, so I R’ed with Heichi and magically picked up another spinning demon. My only two foundations still up were two for the money’s so I dropped spinning demon, needed an 10, double for the moneyed, checked a 5, which was an eight, and tapped both for the money’s to pass. Freaking ridokulous.
Win
Semi-Finals
Me
Vs.
Ben Shoemaker (Nfxon) playing Zi Mei off fire
I love playing against Ben. You have no idea how ridiculous UFS can get until you see him with his decks with ridiculous kill conditions and (most of the time) unorthodox ways to achieve them. Everyone knows Zi Mei runs Fury of the Ancients. So everyone also knows that mark of the beast should stop the deck in its tracks. Ben Shoemaker knows that if you don’t want to get beasted, just tap your opponent out first. And that he did. The win condition even had a song that went along with it called Pac Man is Loving It. Either way, 19 vitality was the squishiest vitality I had seen all day, so I knew the match was going to go either way, very fast. I think I took 1, he took 2, and I took 3. Then we had to wait another 45 minutes for Drew and Vik to finish their match.
Win
Finals
Me
Vs.
Vik (VikramaS) playing James Hata off Fire
My deck started off hauling ass and taking names. I chucked attacks early and left him at 12, and then stop drawing attacks. To which he responded a few turns later with a high zone 11 speed 27 damage hammer of the gods. Too bad I had somehow gotten 4 chasing after the powers in play. Anyway, stun 2, a negated standoff and 3 ready foundations later, I drop Maniacal laughter into my cardpool to block for a 14, check 5 and proceed to blow apart my staging area. Next turn I dropped a shadow flare for 7 which he full blocks, and then another shadow flare for 13 which he takes to the face. Game’s two and three went the other way. He stabilized early, I didn’t see attacks early enough, and the rest is UFS history.
The next day we played the SAS III with a few less people. I ended up getting 7th, losing to Ben Lambright’s astrid in top eight, and I’m sure the revenge was sweet. Of course this doesn’t mean there were no epic matches. Against one of the costa’s (don’t remember which, but he was playing Tira) I dropped a multiple 5 spinning demon using 4 need to destroys that I had piled up in my staging area. Most epic match of the day however went to when I was playing Dave “Wagondriver” Wagoner also playing tira. He went first and played one foundation, and failed his second. I immediately responded on my turn by dropping a spinning demon, activating an ascending zephyr and multiple-ing it for 20 damage exactly; he ended up failing both of his blocks.
Holy most epic UFS tourney I’ve ever been to. We got our prize support, which was a lot more epic than usual; I ended up with 2 uncut sheets of commons and uncommons from soul caliber/ shadow war along with a chaos life counter, an art print of Tire’s warding smash (my favorite card to mis-pronounce in the format) and 4 standoffs. If it takes 20 dollars to get prize support this epic, than FFG better run A LOT more than 4 pro tours.
Thanks to Jay for running the tournament, some truly amazing games and the invaluable crash space that enabled me to go. Thanks to Alex Marco and Ben Lambright for helping our car get there and back safely without anyone falling asleep at the wheel. Thanks to Phil, Chris Escarcega, Matt Shannonhouse (who still doesn’t know how to play, despite running the 40 character heiheichi deck) and Ian for bringing this tournament to a more epic level with fart cupping, stupid algol shenanigans, Dicktochat, bathroom problems, awful Chinese food, randomly appearing bagels, bananas and apples ect. Thanks to Ben, Drew, Dave, Ivey and Kroswick, for continuing to uphold the furious force of the ATL crew. It was great to meet Vik, B-rad, little Kohls, the costa’s and everyone else this weekend. Also, thanks to 2d10 games for letting us use the play space and having IBC root beer for $1.
The deck I ran will be posted in deck building as are all of the other chaos Heichi’s are right now, and I’ll explain a little bit about how it works and what problems it has against other decks. What a great weekend. I can’t wait to see everyone again at whatever regional ATL happens to stomp face at next.
