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Mar. 7th, 2005 04:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nockergeekYesterday, I got my first Warlord tournament win. Wasn't sure earlier in the week if I would even go, but I decided that, as a Bounty Hunter for AEG, the very least I could do would be to go out to another store and show support for my main game. I'm glad that I ran into ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
richman1 on Saturday, who then got word to evildennis, so they both made it. (Note for future reference: call evildennis directly, for hidaman, as great as he is, sometimes forgets to pass along messages.) Sunday morning/afternoon, after I was finally fully conscious and mobile, I took some time to retool one of my decks, one that I'd used at a previous tournament with some success, but that fell flat after a point. Looked online, checked out some other designs of similar decks, and merged my deck with that design and decided to give it a go.
(A quick note on 'net decking, or the practice of using decks that others have built and posted online. Honestly, I don't have too many problems with it. For me, it's because one of the areas in any CCG that takes me the longest time to wrangle with is good deckbuilding. That's because to get good at building decks, you have to play often and see how different cards interact, how often needed cards come up, etc. Some people like to start from scratch and go that route, and I've got a number of decks where I've done that. However, I also have decks where I've started with a net deck, and then modified it to fit, either because I'm missing cards and need to make substitutions, or because I want something a bit different than the original deck. Basically, it gives me pointers on deck design by letting me see a deck that works, and then trying it out. After a while, though, any of my decks will end up getting tweaked to better fit my playstyle and the local environment. That said, I have a lot of respect for the people who develop the original decks, and I hope that one day I can start to approach their skill level.)
So, I showed up about 10 minutes before everything got underway, and went in hoping to have fun, but with no real anticipation of doing well. A number of players from Kansas were there, and the Kansas Warlord community is generally more polished and practiced than our group over on the Missouri side. (No offense to the Missouri players, myself included. They just play under tourney conditions more, and probably just play more often, than we do.) Each round was a best-two-of-three match. First round, I controlled the first game, but the second game was much closer... still, though, I managed to pull it out. Going 2/0 in the first round was a pleasant surprise.
Second round was a bad match for my opponent. Her deck just didn't seem to get going, and before she could make any progress in either game, my deck had already done so much damage that she couldn't recover. Both games were very quick. The third round, on the other hand, had me sweating. The player had come to Pulp Fiction a couple of times before for events we ran, and I knew that his deck was rather vicious. Somehow, though, with a combination of luck and skill, I managed to win both games yet again, with enough time left over to play a third game just for fun (where I used a different deck, and was just not focusing very clearly and made a number of play mistakes). The final round was against a deck type I'd never seen before, so I wasn't sure what to expect. The first game had a bit of back and forth, but an early play decision by my opponent left him in a weaker position than he anticipated. It also helped that a few of the cards in my deck were the perfect foils for some of the cards he was running. The second game, however, was all me. I was getting the right cards when I needed them, and my die rolls were spot on (sometimes just barely, but they were good enough to work). When I started the day, I hadn't expected much. Eight games and four rounds later, I was the only undefeated player.
Once everyone was finished, it was time to hand out prizes. Everyone got some cards just for participating, including a card that could only be earned at this event (which is a series of events going on in the KC area this month). After that, the tourney organizer was handing out extra rares to everyone, then extra rares to the top 8 players (out of the 16 that attended), then yet more to the top 4, then another few cards for the top 2, and then a few more for me. That wasn't all, though. After that, he had to go to his car to get the grand prize.
An uncut sheet of rares from the last set.
This is the first card sheet I've ever won. I remember seeing them as prizes back when I played L5R, but never expected to win one myself. There's 2 of each rare from the set on the sheet, and 3 of a few others, for a grand total of 110 cards. Theoretically, I could take the sheet to a card company (there's one in Blue Springs) and have it cut, but I think I'm going to frame it and hang it on the wall -- it's about poster-sized, maybe a bit larger. I think it's a nice trophy, really; it's something that I can show to people who don't play and say, "This is what I'm into," and something for people who do play the game to admire. ^_^
So, yeah, I'm pretty happy with how things went. I don't know how likely a repeat of this performance is, but there's just something about knowing that I can do it. I'm looking forward to trying again, though.
richman1 on Saturday, who then got word to evildennis, so they both made it. (Note for future reference: call evildennis directly, for hidaman, as great as he is, sometimes forgets to pass along messages.) Sunday morning/afternoon, after I was finally fully conscious and mobile, I took some time to retool one of my decks, one that I'd used at a previous tournament with some success, but that fell flat after a point. Looked online, checked out some other designs of similar decks, and merged my deck with that design and decided to give it a go.(A quick note on 'net decking, or the practice of using decks that others have built and posted online. Honestly, I don't have too many problems with it. For me, it's because one of the areas in any CCG that takes me the longest time to wrangle with is good deckbuilding. That's because to get good at building decks, you have to play often and see how different cards interact, how often needed cards come up, etc. Some people like to start from scratch and go that route, and I've got a number of decks where I've done that. However, I also have decks where I've started with a net deck, and then modified it to fit, either because I'm missing cards and need to make substitutions, or because I want something a bit different than the original deck. Basically, it gives me pointers on deck design by letting me see a deck that works, and then trying it out. After a while, though, any of my decks will end up getting tweaked to better fit my playstyle and the local environment. That said, I have a lot of respect for the people who develop the original decks, and I hope that one day I can start to approach their skill level.)
So, I showed up about 10 minutes before everything got underway, and went in hoping to have fun, but with no real anticipation of doing well. A number of players from Kansas were there, and the Kansas Warlord community is generally more polished and practiced than our group over on the Missouri side. (No offense to the Missouri players, myself included. They just play under tourney conditions more, and probably just play more often, than we do.) Each round was a best-two-of-three match. First round, I controlled the first game, but the second game was much closer... still, though, I managed to pull it out. Going 2/0 in the first round was a pleasant surprise.
Second round was a bad match for my opponent. Her deck just didn't seem to get going, and before she could make any progress in either game, my deck had already done so much damage that she couldn't recover. Both games were very quick. The third round, on the other hand, had me sweating. The player had come to Pulp Fiction a couple of times before for events we ran, and I knew that his deck was rather vicious. Somehow, though, with a combination of luck and skill, I managed to win both games yet again, with enough time left over to play a third game just for fun (where I used a different deck, and was just not focusing very clearly and made a number of play mistakes). The final round was against a deck type I'd never seen before, so I wasn't sure what to expect. The first game had a bit of back and forth, but an early play decision by my opponent left him in a weaker position than he anticipated. It also helped that a few of the cards in my deck were the perfect foils for some of the cards he was running. The second game, however, was all me. I was getting the right cards when I needed them, and my die rolls were spot on (sometimes just barely, but they were good enough to work). When I started the day, I hadn't expected much. Eight games and four rounds later, I was the only undefeated player.
Once everyone was finished, it was time to hand out prizes. Everyone got some cards just for participating, including a card that could only be earned at this event (which is a series of events going on in the KC area this month). After that, the tourney organizer was handing out extra rares to everyone, then extra rares to the top 8 players (out of the 16 that attended), then yet more to the top 4, then another few cards for the top 2, and then a few more for me. That wasn't all, though. After that, he had to go to his car to get the grand prize.
An uncut sheet of rares from the last set.
This is the first card sheet I've ever won. I remember seeing them as prizes back when I played L5R, but never expected to win one myself. There's 2 of each rare from the set on the sheet, and 3 of a few others, for a grand total of 110 cards. Theoretically, I could take the sheet to a card company (there's one in Blue Springs) and have it cut, but I think I'm going to frame it and hang it on the wall -- it's about poster-sized, maybe a bit larger. I think it's a nice trophy, really; it's something that I can show to people who don't play and say, "This is what I'm into," and something for people who do play the game to admire. ^_^
So, yeah, I'm pretty happy with how things went. I don't know how likely a repeat of this performance is, but there's just something about knowing that I can do it. I'm looking forward to trying again, though.
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on 2005-03-08 12:00 am (UTC)I don't know values of warlord cards (( not our thing )) but an uncut sheet of magic cards is a huge rarity and wildly valueable.