Editor: Webmaster. Monday 9th Mayl 2005.
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Editor: Webmaster. Monday 9th Mayl 2005.
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Nearly a month ago now and I'm boarding my flight for the long, long… long, long, long flight to Amsterdam from Sydney. I think that most of the rest of the world really has no concept of how long it takes to get from Australia to pretty much anywhere. I've heard many a person, whilst rubbing their neck and making stretching noises, lament on their ‘horrible' 7-hour flight from Atlanta to London or some such trivial trip. Were it only that easy - As per my Itinerary: Sydney to Singapore – 8 hours 15 minutes Layover in Singapore – 2 hours 10 minutes Singapore to Amsterdam – 13 hours 30 minutes So – just getting to the PC, it seems, is no mean feat. Of course we get there a few days early to ‘get over the jetlag'. And it's Amsterdam , so when I say ‘get over the jetlag' *nudge nudge wink wink*, I mean… walking around Amsterdam and drafting 4-mans at the hostel. It may have been a different story if one of our more experimentally-inclined crew hadn't decided to stay home a week or so before the trip, but as it was, we were the picture of constancy Amsterdam is cool. There is old stuff there. You know, like buildings and streets and really old Bikes that everyone insists on riding around whilst singing to themselves. That was kind of odd. So was waiting 3 minutes to cross the street at a bicycle crossing. They love their bikes. And their potatoes. I asked three different people there – locals – “So… what's like the ‘traditional' food to eat in The Netherlands?' Person 1: Potatoes Person 2: French Fries Person 3: Potatoes Of course. So on the first night we eat Italian. And then Greek, Spanish, and pretty much anything but Dutch. In fact I still don't really know if there IS a Dutch restaurant in Amsterdam , barring the plethora of tiny shops selling nothing but French fries. I'm also not sure what it is, but their French fries are really, REALLY, yellow. Like neon. We do a lot of the things people do when they go to Amsterdam . Like go to the Van Gogh museum, where they have every Van Gogh painting there except for the one that everyone knows about and expects to see when they go there. And of course the Anne Frank house, or at least her dad's place anyway. And the Red Light Disctrict, which, during the daytime, is more than a little surreal and somewhat creepy. I found it interesting that the whole area is purpose-built. Like they had some architects in there and some city planners talking to them, discussing how to build ‘mini-brothels', for lack of a better term, all along the streets there. Sitting around some board room table somewhere – with comments like, “We can fit in a few more stalls if we make them a bit smaller…” Anyway, it's a cool city and definitely worth going to check out. We stay at a Hostel at the outskirts of the city.
We had already paid heaps of money for the plane tickets and being there, so why spend another $50 to stay at somewhere, you know, clean. And sans-mould. Somewhere where you can't lay in your ‘bunk' on your back and touch both sides of the floor. Someplace not populated by drunken Irish, ‘the guy who likes to watch movies while standing up', Minnesotans and Mustachio. Someplace that isn't run by dodgy Moroccans. Someplace where turning the shower on doesn't make the whole room smell like urine.
But hey, good times. We were told the event was being held at the airport. We didn't realize this meant AT the airport. Like IN the airport terminal. Terminal 3, actually. We registered for the tournament at an airline check-in gate. At this stage a definition of ‘we' is probably in order. ‘We' consisted of: Scott Hunstad – me – ssteven on the forums. Luke Bartter – Like (left below) Paul Van Der Werk – vanwolfgang (right below) Danesh Jogia – djogs (middle below)
And sometimes later on, ‘we' may also include: Paul Ross – MPM – Australian there already in judge capacity Ben Seck – TBSDash – Australian ex-pat given up the happy-go-lucky gamer lifestyle – went all ‘corporate' working for UDE now. UDE do a fine job at these events to make sure everything looks cool and to make the competitors feel like they're really at something ‘special'. This is something that definitely doesn't go unnoticed. The last Magic PT venue I was at basically looked like an airplane hanger with a bunch of chairs and tables chucked in. I can really appreciate UDE's notion of making a VS community. I seriously recommend that wherever you are, if you have the opportunity, try and make it to at least one PC at some point in the near future – it's definitely worth the effort. Even coming from Australia . Marvel Modern Age Luke, Paul, and I are all playing a deck built by Luke and Alex Brown (aka guy who bailed from above). Luke has dubbed the deck “Get in the Pit” for a variety of reasons, none of which were mentioned in the Metagame coverage. It's a version of mono-MK that relies on concealed characters and KO effects to get early board control, and follow through with lots of pumps/damage. It likes even initiative with the aim of winning on turn 6. Many, many games during the course of Day 1 involved one of us going to about 5 or less endurance at the end of turn 5 with opponent on 25 or so, and then wrapping it up on turn 6. It's an explosive deck, but the main reason I at least chose to play it, was consistency. With a full compliment of characters sharing the same affiliation, 4 Wild Rides and 3 Weapons of choice, I was virtually assured to never miss drops – something my opponents managed to do on more than one occasion during the day. With 12 rounds I figured I could win 2 or so simply because I wasn't holding a hand full of daggers and Midnight Sons, or being unable to team attack 4 and 3 into 5 etc. Also, 12 rounds is a lot. A hell of a lot. At PC Anaheim, I was playing Titans and after 8 or 9 rounds of that, I was making major mistakes. I didn't want that to happen again and this deck was both quick and straightforward enough to ensure I wasn't going to fizzle around Round 10. The only difference between the version I played and the one Luke played was I had one less Moon Knight and Daredevil, opting for an additional Weapon of Choice, and I chose to play two 7-drops in Doc Ock and Doc Strange, in case of a forced late game option. On with the show. Day 1 – 12 rounds of constructed
It's nearly a month after the event and I usually forget most of my matches the day after an event. So – I'll highlight. Round 1 – I play a Spanish guy. He was extremely nervous and jittery, and was obviously displeased with his draw. I know now a few Spanish swear words. He was playing an MK/SF deck and had to costume change twice for Spiderman 3 and 5 or miss drops all together, which meant when it came time for turn 7, his play was Scarlet Spider 6. That was that. 1-0 Round 2 – Going into the event I expected to see a fair bit of Sinister Syndicate (or SS/x). I hypothesized that there really couldn't be more than 20-25 percent Syndicate there (there wasn't), so I thought perhaps I'd run into 2, maybe 3 SS decks. My opponent of course plays Vulture on Turn 1. I sigh. Our deck's worst matchup is SS, and I have nightmares about Turn 2 Hammerheads. Our optimal play is:
Turn 3: Elektra Turn 4: Luke Cage Turn 5: Daredevil This often meant we'd be dead on turn 4 against an SS deck that really went off. This matchup is all about getting rid of their Hammerhead and/or otherwise dismantling their board enough so that you can survive until turn 5/6. If you DO make it to turn 5, you can often push through enough damage on the counter attack (assuming you're evens) to not need a Turn 6. Overall though, it's like a 75/25 matchup at best. Vulture is bashing me and Hammerhead follows and it looks grim but I manage to make it to turn 6 on single digits. His play then consisted of a Goblin Glider and a couple of Lion's Dens pumps, which weren't enough to stem the MK tide. Opponent was really nice guy from Ohio . So I'm quite happy – I've already played one of my ‘2 or 3' Syndicate matchups and I came out ok. 2-0 Round 3 - Feature match. Sigh. I think this one got covered on Metagame for more info. I have a fear of that Feature Match area. Not really sure why. I had 3 Feature Matches at PC Anaheim and I lost all three of them. 2 of them to Italians. So I glumly make my way there. I play a German guy who was as nervous as my first round opponent. He chooses odds and of course I am faced with Turn 1 Vulture. Sad, sad times. I get pummled in the first 4 turns and make it to Turn 5 on 13 life but with good board, as compared to his lone Doc Ock. He recruits Vulture with Glider but ‘forgets' to show me another SS character. He didn't have one, so Vulture is in hand and Glider goes onto Doc Ock. My Daredevil is there to act as damage soak but when Doc Ock swings into him, opponent uses last 2 face down resources (both Spider Slayers) and one remaining non-Vulture card in hand (No Fear) to bring me down to exactly zero. Such is the way of the Syndicate. 2-1 Round 4 - Metagame says I played Jason Dawson and I won. That's about all I got on this one. I'm thinking this must have been an SS/x deck as well, because I remember playing 5 during the day and this is the only one unaccounted for. 3-1 Round 5 - Needing an even record now for Day 2. I play Portugese guy who also played another Australian later on in the day. He didn't fare well against either of us. He's playing another MK/SF deck, which is generally a good matchup for us. I will say that luck was on my side in relation to Nice Try that day as out of 7 or 8 attempts at either Quick Kill or Judge, Jury, Executioner, I got Nice Try'd exactly zero times. Mr. Bento missed drops and on Turn 5 couldn't play his Daredevil because he didn't have a teamup and scooped. 4-1 Round 6 - Gordon O'Keefe. Gordon was playing an MK/Crime Lords deck (assuming I'm remembering correctly) and this was quite a tight match. We fear, fear, fear Geraci Family Estate as that turns Turn 6 wins into Turn 7 losses. It was my initiative on Turn 6 and I opted to play Luke Cage and Iron Fist, giving me 4 to 3 character advantage. 3 of our guys traded and my last went to the dome for enough to win this one 5-1 Round 7 - Steve Horowitz. He plays: Turn 1 Dagger Turn 2 before draw pitch Dagger form hand get Midnight sons. Play MS and recruit Hammerhead. Bash me for 8. Nothing goes according to plan and he ends the game on something like 43 life. But 3 SS decks out of 7 now, so I can't hit anymore right? 5-2 Round 8 – Carl Perla. Carl is I'm sure sick of hearing about his 5-0 start and subsequent failure to make Day 2. I'm unfortunately one of the ones who helped him on his way. He commented that he'd been Quick Killed/JJE'd 3 or 4 time in the last two games before we started our match. I drop Hannibal King on turn 2 and he sighs. I kill some of his stuff, he misses drops, not much of a game and I'm one win away from Day 2. Carl is a really nice guy – we drafted with him again on Day 3. 6-2 Round 9 – Obviously want to win this one. A lot. Playing TJ Holman. TJ is one of those guys who looks like he'd be seriously cocky. He's not at all. He's playing mono-Underworld (i.e. cheap.dec) with something like 4 or 5 rares in it. It's a cool deck that we (wrongly) dismissed early, as it did very well for him. I'm light on details on this one, probably because I want to win a lot. I do, and I'm in to Day 2 with a sigh of relief 7-2 Round 10 - Matteo Paolucci. I played Matteo in one of the feature matches I lost at PC Anaheim. In fact in every feature match I had, I either played against, or was covered by an Italian. So I've developed this VS Italian-Phobia of a sort. It's of course in jest, as Matteo and all the other Italians I've met playing VS are quite cool. This was perhaps the most fun match of the day as we were both into Day 2 and could take a bit of a breath. He's playing a teched out mono-Xstatix deck – one of the only mono-Xstatix getting doing well. After talking much with Danesh during the day (Australian also playing mono XStatix) he continually lamented about how he got killed on Turn 8 with boosted Strange. I opted to go for this plan as well against Matteo. We trade some early beats and he Fights to the Finish my Luke Cage. This was fairly unexpected, but Matteo definitely had a toolbox version of Xstatix. His init on turn 7 and I play Doc Ock. He's surprised. We go to turn 8 and I boost the other Doctor. He's got Zeitgeist in front of Prof X, with Anarchist to the Professor's side. I get him to move the two big guys to the concealed area. He puts them both.. in the back row. I pause for a while here as either he has some insane defense for Zeitgeist… or he doesn't know what Doc Ock does. I have a few tricks of my own and swing Ock into Zeitgeist. He thinks and goes away for a second to ask a Judge ruling. He comes back.. Matteo: “OK, I take 9?” Me: “…sure…” Matteo: adjusts endurance total. Me: “I'll stun Professor X?” Matteo: “Huh?” I point to Doc Ock Matteo picks up Doc Ock and reads him Matteo scoops It turns out I probably had enough damage to finish him regardless, but it was certainly amusing. Well at least for me. 8-2 Round 11 – Alex Tennant – Alex was playing SS/MK. I believe I quick killed his Turn 2 Hammerhead and it went downhill for him from there 9-2 Round 12 - At this stage I'm hoping for a good draft table. I finished 76 th at PC Anaheim, with money going down to 75 th . I definitely didn't want a repeat of that. It's the last round of the day, and I get another Italian in Andrea Santin. Andrea is playing Wild Pack, and while we didn't test this matchup very much, Luke assured me that it was in our favour. He'd played a few during the day and had won both times. Andrea got the ESU straightaway, and it's all about the ESU. He started his draw engine and got things going fairly well. Turn 6 he has about 10 cards in hand and recruits a Wild Pack (I think) and passes… I make a 6-drop. He debates a bit and is obviously distraught as he swings two wild packs (w/Sable in play) into my Moon Knight. I have 2 Moon Knights in my deck, and the other one is in hand. I power up. He passes. It's all over from there. His hand is full of seven and eight drops.. and more ESU's. So I finish the day at 10-2 in fourth position. I find out that Danesh has made a massive comeback from 3-5 to also make 2, and Luke gets in comfortably at 8-4. Alas, it was not to be for poor Mr. Van Der Werk however, who finished one out on 6-6. A good overall result by the Australians in attendance. Day 2: Draft The theory goes that the Australians are good at the Limited aspects of this game. With 3 of the 4 Aussies in attendance playing in Day 2, this would be put to the test a bit. I am seated at Table 1 for the first draft – the coverage of my picks and such can be found here ( http://metagame.com/vs.aspx?tabid=46&ArticleId=1749 ), so not a lot more needs to be said here on the subject. I drafted an average MK deck at best, and I was quite happy with the result I had with it Round 13 – Jacob Rabinowitz. Jacob had what was essentially a constructed Mono-Xstatix deck. Multiple copies of Spin Doctoring and Mind Over Matter, multiple Xstatix characters at every drop, including the good ones like Sluk, U-Go-Girl 4, and the nightmarish Zeitgeist meant that he totally destroyed me in this match. He went 3-0 with his deck – I wasn't surprised at all. 10-3 Round 14 – Kristian Kockott. I think. Metagame's pairings/standing section is currently down so I can't access it, but I played Kristian either round 14 or 15. This game was a corker that nearly got away from me. I started very strong and was in a solid position on turn six, when my team attack of 22 power into Nuke blew up in my face, as Kristian had multiple Rough Houses, Dracula's Castle, and just about every other trick in the book to keep Nuke from going down. The game ended on Turn 7 after time was called and I only won because I had top-decked a Glory hound off the top that turn, negating Kristian's final attack, and allowing my Bullseye 7 to swing back for the win. 11-3 Round 15 – I have no recollection of my other match in this draft. Suffice it to say that at 2-1 I was quite happy, given the strength (or lack thereof) of the the deck I had drafted, and the table I was at. 12-3 Draft 2 – Men of Steel MoS was one of my favourite draft formats. The different affiliations were all quite playable, and I had a tendancy to try and force New Gods. This draft was going to be no different as I sat down with that inclination. My 2-1 record meant I would be drafting at Table 1 again. The draft itself went well – according to plan. The Australians that went to PC Anaheim noted how everyone seemed to not value Female Furies very highly. This held true again at Amsterdam , as we all managed to get multiple copies of this Plot Twist in our drafts. In this particular draft, I even wheeled one! My second draft deck was approximately: 1 Vykin Essentially about as good a New Gods deck as a person would want. I was quite confident with this deck, assuming I could easily go 2-1… Round 16 – Michael Dalton Barring the ending, this was a great match. I had the upperhand until Michael had a great Turn 5 with Lois Lane , Lana Lang and Metron all hitting the table. This caused me lots of problems with regards to who to attack and I can only assume I made a mistake on this turn by not trying to take out Lana. My Metron kept his counter, and I had Big Barda for next turn. Of course Michael had Orion, which held his counter until Turn 7, my initiative. On turn 7 time got called, and I could have gone for the win if Michael didn't have a Boom Tube. However he had a single card in his hand and from his body language, I didn't think it was a good one, while I had another 7 in Eradicator, so I played it safe and went for Turn 8. Michael gleefully rips and plays Superman 8 off the top, which ended up sealing the victory for him. 12-4 Round 17 – Stuart Wright This was pretty much a non-game. Stuart missed a few drops, I hit mine with the Blue to back them up 13-4 Round 18 – Dustin Pidgeon This match constituted the worst draw of the tournament for me. I missed my 2 drop to his Encantadora. On turn 3, his Encantadora swung into my Big Bear, and he played both a Super Strength and a Paths of Destruction from hand to take him down. I had the power up – so did he. My 3/3 could only now gain a Slig on turn 4 to keep him company, despite 5 4-drops in my deck. And with that my 2-1 or better deck finished off 1-2. I was quite disappointed, but shook it off for the third draft 13-5 Draft 3 – Squeaked into Table 1 The seatings were posted and I was happy to see that even after that dismal performance, I was still seated at Table 1 for the final draft. This was rather important, as it meant I would be playing the higher ranked players and it would increase my chances at resistance going into the Top 8 cutoff. My deck in this draft was a bit of a mess. It was all over the place with affiliations and was held together by an array of good offensive plot twist and Locations. I had a mainly Darkseid Elite deck, which started out as a mainly Revenge Squad deck until I opened an Armagetto in pack 2. Pack 3 saw the RS Location Suicide Slums come rather late, which was due to an abundance of them in the draft. Stuart Wright, who was also at Table 1 for all three drafts, was sitting to my right and it turns out he already had 2 of them when he passed it on to me. This deck's success would boil down to whether I got the right Blue/Green with the right Affiliations at the right time. Round 19 – Blank. Won. 14-5 Round 20 – Stuart Wright. A win here would mean a shot at the Top 8. This time, however, it was Stuart that had the upper hand, as he ran me over on his way there. This meant I needed a win in the last round… or else. 14-6 Round 21 – Jacob Rabinowitz. Jacob came to the table with one less point than me, so a win here for him was not as crucial. My deck decided to be nice to me in this game. I don't remember a lot of it, barring the Stopped Cold which took down his attacking Kalibak for the win on Turn 7. 15-6 And now the waiting game. I am not the best person to figure out the maths of top 8's and such, but I was assured that there would be ‘at least a couple' of people on my record in the Top 8. Cool. Of course sitting there and waiting for others to finish their last round in this situation has its own agonies. So I wait. And wait. And the last matches finish. Well after time is called. And I wait. Birds fly over, suns set, you get the picture. Top 8 is called and I'm in and it's great – mainly because I beat Ben Seck.
Definitely good times. At this stage we take some pictures and do a little profile thing for Metagame.com and we get given the decklists of the other people in the Top 8. I'll be playing Stuart Wright for the 3 rd time bright and early on Day 3, and his deck makes me a bit nervous. We did a reasonable amount of testing against Crime Lords but hardly any against CL/UW. The pivotal card in the CL matchup always seemed to be Geraci Family Estate. Additionally, Club Dead could be a real nightmare as it negated the KO factor of our deck, if not played properly, and at best would be a Rock/Paper/Scissors – does he have it or not – when going into a 2-character stunned situation. Our intentions were to get food, get back to the Hostel, build the deck and test it a bit, to see what we were looking at for the first round at least. As it happened however, by the time we got to our Hostel, far-far-away, it was late and I/we couldn't be bothered doing anything like that, so we just went to sleep. I mean the first match is only $7000 or so… heh… Day 3 – Top 8 9AM was the time to get there. We'd gotten about 15 hours sleep in the last three nights so that was a hard pill to swallow. In fact only Luke dragged himself out of bed to come with me to the venue in the morning. Paul and Danesh opting to sleep rather than support their fellow Australian on his day-of-days. Wankers. The match is covered in detail by here ( http://metagame.com/vs.aspx?tabid=46&ArticleId=1799 ) on Metagame.com
In short form – it was over fairly quickly. Game 1 saw a dreaded first turn Roscoe, followed up by the usual suspects. Turn 5 saw me mop up the board starting, unconventionally, with Deathwatch, when we both neglected to take Kingpin 3's ability into account until many attacks later, something that surely would have put the pressure on me, if it didn't lose it for me all together, were we to roll back to that stage. We didn't (as ruled by the HJ) and that was that.
Game 2 saw us both miss optimal drops, but I managed to get my kill cards, taking out Bullseye with a Quick Kill on turn 4, and Deathwatch with a Judge, Jury Executioner on turn 5. It was all over from there and I was into the Semi's I was to play the winner of Adam Horvath and Dustin Pidgeon. Dustin was playing a somewhat similar deck to ours, with a few modifications – Hounds at 2, and Elektra 5/Death Stalker 3 as a CL option. Adam was playing Honor Amongst Thieves, so I was seriously hoping Dustin would pull it out. He was up one to nil when I finished my Quarter, but my luck ended there as Adam won the next two straight. Semifinals can be found here ( http://metagame.com/vs.aspx?tabid=46&ArticleId=1805 ) This was probably the least interesting match I had in the entire tournament. I really needed to: • Not miss curve, and not only that, not play any non-hidden characters at all. Adam played both No Fear and Uprising, which meant that any revealed characters would be additional targets for his Blue. • Draw kill cards. Quick Kill is essential in this matchup, as it's imperative to take out Hammerhead, as previously stated. • Get lucky. SS based decks have to draw well, as they have no tutoring mechanisms. Honour decks are doubly so. Even so, the explosive nature is usually pretty devastating. In Game 1 Adam gets 3 Honors, I get no kill cards. In Game 2, only 1 Honor is shown, but still no kill cards for me. I go down in very short order, with nothing to really do on my side of the board except, well, lose. In hindsight I definitely preferred to lose this way. If it were a case of me thinking back on the game an hour later and realising there was something I could have done to win – well that would be the cause of much grief. So, I finish the Tournament in 4 th place, scoring some cash and a bit of a trophy, which currently resides at the Sydney Games Centre (sydneygamescentre.com) Barring a pickup draft with some Italians and Americans, this pretty much ends the tale. There are of course, a few pictures, for example, the following day in Rotterdam
And to end with something I found amusing. The last night I was in Amsterdam we finally found a Vegetarian, if not Vegan, restaurant – we'd been looking around for one the whole trip as Danesh, being Vegan, had a supremely hard time finding Vegan-esque food in what seemed to be the Dairy Capital of Europe. So we head to one. It's a little café-like place on a side-street off a side-street that you wouldn't really believe would be big enough for an actual car to go down but somehow they managed to anyway. It looked more like a terrace house than a restaurant, and I swear that unless you knew it was there and went looking for it specifically, there is no way you'd actually find it. It was dark inside, a bit smoky and somewhat less than clean. The place had a few customers, which would probably be the typical vegetarian-restaurant types, if I were being stereotypical (which, it seems, I am). Continuing on that vein, there was a large, manly woman taking orders and a skinny guy with long gray hair in a pony tail who seemed to be the cook (‘chef' seemed a bit optimistic here) The food was surprisingly good, and was followed up by what became a ritual trip to the Australian Ice Cream shop in the city proper. That was Monday night. Cut to Tuesday night. I'm driving up I-29 North, approaching Watertown , South Dakota , USA . It's dinner time and I pull into the off-ramp exit to a place I'm all too-familiar with, as it was always the place to stop on road trips in my youth. The place, which for some reason is entitled “The Granary” – perhaps to attract a more up-market clientele, is what is typically known as a truck stop. Now when I say truck stop, I MEAN truck stop. Not some trendy look-at-my-Von-Dutch-cap-worn-slightly-askew place. Truck Stop. With surly, thick women named Marge and suspender-wearing thicker truckers named Jim Bob or Marlin. This is not even exaggerated for effect. My waitress' name was Marge. It said so on her name tag. This is a place that has showers in the bathroom that would rival the ones at the Hostel in Amsterdam . A place where “Hustler” is the most prominently displayed magazine and ‘a can of Skoal Wintergreen (look it up)' is the most purchased item there. I get a booth (Truck stops always have booths) and ordered a Burger, Fries and a coffee. Gave me a bit of time to ponder the previous week. It wasn't unpleasant. I leave sans Skoal or Hustler. Probably the only one who did. So it Goes. I-29 just outside Watertown , SD
Scott Hunstad
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