Twelve people showed up for the Showdown of the Sands, the War of the Wastes, and one other neat title to appeal to the human psychological liking of pairings of three…

TWELVE?! You may scream at the computer screen, but you must realize that the West Coast is a very small environment for UFS. If an event is not being hosted in California, it’s probably not going to pull a lot of players. Shame really, because I know we have a healthy two dozen or so players floating around Arizona, guess they bailed. Also, aside from the two Cali players that showed up, I would just like to ask WTF California ?! I know it’s a bit of a drive, but an AZ crew has ALWAYS rolled out to the WCC so it would have been nice to see a little more love. I was offering all of you floor space for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

But yeah, little rage rant aside. Twelve people showed up, this is the character list.

Promo Alex (All Wall)

Andrew Olexa (My deck, mindless Air beats make me feel good)

Felicia (Spike beats as well)

Kyoshiro (Chaos Accel’o’rama)

Sophitia (Order hybrid with tendencies towards aggro, sided into Donovan)

Nakoruru (Good reversals. Wind Dance shenanigans)

Lilith (Budget Evil aggro)

Yumeji (Life staaaaaaallllllll)

Nagase (Redux Redux Redux!)

Yuri (Water Aggro Rush)

Remy (Air aggro Rush)

Chun Li (Void disruption, multiple assault)

Top 8

Alex

Andrew Olexa

Felicia

Kyoshiro

Sophitia

Nakoruru

Yuri

Lilith

Top 4

Alex

Olexa

Felicia

Sophita

Finals

Alex vs Olexa

Winner: EVERYBODY IS A WINNAR AT MY TOURNAMENTS (and yes this was my tournament, not DVC's. I was asked three days for DWars to run it because they could not get into contact with her.)

You can see my personal tournament report here!

http://new.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=28&efcid=5&efidt=40631

My deck list will be up shortly!

This tournament was not a flop . Just because there weren’t a lot of people doesn’t mean that a good sum of us did not get together, enjoy the game we play, and participate in the first Regional of the year (suck East Coast, there’s more of you and you’re better than us but we were FIRST! WOOOOOO!)

With such a small playing pool, I did as much observing as I possibly could, but could only come to one major conclusion that I feel I need to share (aside from Alex potentially being a problem when block 3 proper hits).

Lord of the Makai needs to be banned. This is the part where I tell all the people already typing "QUIT WHINING ABOUT BANNING! BANNING TALK IS NOT ALLOWED!" into the reply boxes to shut up because I actually have an argument and mindless banning complaints is what is verbatim.

The stated course of this game is to move it away from walling up and finishing in one sure fire shot. The stated course of this game is to encourage attacking over multiple turns. The damage from attacking is nice, but the momentum is what matters.

Why would I ever want to attack over multiple turns when the best/fastest finishers in the environment can be set up in 1 turn with Lord of the Makai? Why would I fill my deck with more 3 checks when they could be blocked/reduced to zero and not give me momentum when Lord of the Makai gives me momentum for free?

Momentum needs to mean something in this game. And at the moment, the concept behind it is worthless with Lord of the Makai in the environment. Attacking needs to be the premier method of generating momentum, and if any sort of momentum generation is to be put onto Actions, Assets, or Foundations it needs to be 1 shot, heavily costed, and most likely combo oriented (or at the very least, temporary).

I am speaking as a mid-high caliber tournament player. Watching decks in the tournament that could not run Lord of the Makai, it IS possible to attack over multiple turns to generate momentum for you, but if you drop into the top 8, you’ll see that 5 of them ran Lord of the Makai, and by top 4 every single deck had Lord of the Makai. It just makes tossing out the game ending Feline Spike/Lunar Slash/Ryu’s Shin Shoryuken too easy too early. And the three to four turns spent not attacking for momentum were spent building a foundation base that was made fully available to them by NOT having to run 8-10 extra attacks.

For the health and for the charted course of this game, Lord of the Makai needs to go away.

Thanks for the update, we were definitely keeping our eye on this tourney. If the top 4 feel like sharing their decklists, I would like very much to do an analysis/write-up.

Also, any "spoilers" regarding that regional prize support?

Prize support was standard prize support+Foil Red Lotus.

No special promos.

Hey Arch,

Sorry i couldn't be there, if even to socialize and rep the SF Bay Area, CA. Alas, the timing couldn't be worse for me as I have 2 cars that need repair. So, no reliable transportation + no funds (all going to the cars, right?) = me no showing an event i would've loved to come out for.

Next, Arch. Next time...

I wanted to go but the timing was just terrible. Work was basically shut down the last 2 weeks of december for the holidays and early january is crazy. Late Feb/mar ill make a drive

On a plus i went undefeated at our local store today with the deck i wanted to take to desert wars....except i forgot SoC wasn't 4 point so i guess it would of been slightly different, lol.

Smazzurco said:

All of the Assets of Power are 4-point, actually.

Wow now that was a dissapointing turnout.

Well thankyou for running the first regionals anyhow Arch.......

Now can we seriously shut up about Makai, if that gets banned i'm so leaving ¬_¬

P.S Could you list the whole contents of the regionals kit pretty please.

Shiny Red Lotus, sweet! I can't wait to get my greasy hands on those... or the deck lists

btw, did you mean "verboten" instead of "verbatim"? Verbatim is with the same words, verboten is forbidden.

Wafflecopter said:

Yeah, Verboten. Thanks.

Your "Olexa.dek" has gotten me thinking. I may have found my singles deck for Louisiana...sort of. Glad someone else caught on to Healer.

*shifty glance*

Sucks about the turnout, but the report was a good read. I think my favorite part was you and your opponent flipping Spikes over and over xD

Yeah Im sorry to hear about the turnout, part of which I was to blame.... but the timing of this event wasw just bad for me. I thought last minute I was going to be able to go and was starting to make plns but my previous commitments got pushed up a few days which ruined my hopes for going.

Glad to hear it went well though with lots of diversity and creative decks.

Kinda dissapointed about the prize support though because from the desert wars thread it sounded to be awsome support....

COngrats arch on the win/co win... I def look forward to meeting you eventually

It's kind of hard to get into contact with someone that doesn't exist.

So this tournament then wasn't a real regional, seeing as you didn't have a regional kit?

Dude someone else played me....Thanks! and congrats for kicking a heap of butt!

JDub said:

They had a regionals Kit. FFG co-ordinated with Arch when they could no longer get a hold of DVC.

Archimedes said:

I don't see how, but then again I'm kind of biased in the fact that I think Hyper Bomb is goddamned awesome and he loses that.

So standard prize support + foil red lotus is the $135 + shipping regional kits?

not the advertised:

* 8x Custom UFS vitality Counters
* 1x Card Plaque Trophy for the winner
* 60x Foiled promos available only to regional participants
* 8x Regional Promo Packs for Top 8
* 1x 2008-2009 UFS Regional banner
* 4x Regional Exclusive UFS Art Prints

I am slightly confused.

Jypsy said:

Personally, I am not amused.

Arch did you get the actually prize kit or was it too short notice to send away for one ?

Also was it alex or olexa that won I couldnt figure that out haha... And andrew I had a new player play you at our air event this weekend he had a lot of fun .

Jypsy said:

We got all of those. Excepting the 60 foiled promo's only available to regional participants (that might have been the Lotus' though).

Sorry for the confusion.

Drewkasa said:

Dude, let me be the first to say that your character is absolutely ridiculous and will probably be one of my go to decks to play in block three.

well, my previous question was about the "exclusive promo pack" and such. sorry for not having been specific

Archimedes said:

Oh cool, can we get some pics of the event? or at least the prize support? I'd love to see the plaque and banners and all that stuff! It sounds awesome, and I have been dying to see what all the regional exclusive stuff is! (And I think lots of others have also, so Spoilers please!)

Wow, no DVC around when it comes down to it? Sounds like what I've been saying the last few months now...

Event looks pretty cash though, and I'm not shocked at 12. West Coast is pretty small right now, but good post Arch.

Were the playmats new ones? What were the vitality counters and art prints? And the top 8 promo packs were just normal prize support?

I mean if the exclusive card is just a foil Red Lotus and top 8 is just normal prize support that seems like of janky, especially for $135. I thought the kits would have a little bit more exclusive stuff, doesn't seem like anything "regional" worthy to me.