Shadowfist Tournament Report: Australian Nationals 2010

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[posted 18 Feb 2012]

GenCon Oz 2010 was canceled, and with it the official Australian Nationals of 2010, but the Brisbane playgroup threw together the Queensland State Championship on short notice in Brisbane on Sep.25, 2010. The winners were announced by Leonard King in the Shadowfist Forum on Yahoogroups on 26 Sep 2010 (read the original in the archive if you're a member).

Report from Leonard King. Thanks!

Queensland State Championships (Australian Nationals 2010) report from Leonard King

Originally published in the Shadowfist Forum on Yahoogroups on 26 Sep 2010, and in Inner Kingdom Update Vol.1, Issue 4.. Republished with permission. Members can read the original in the archive.

There are some things you can prepare for - like packing Secrets of Shaolin and Confucians when playing against the Ascended.

Then there's the things you can't really prepare for - such as the organisers of GenCon Oz cancelling this year's event due to a lack of support from sponsors.

Thankfully, Australia's gamers are not so easily held back. The result, an event called Uprising where the local gaming community held the games that had already been planned for GC Oz.

Unfortunately, with all the messing around and hastily convened organising, the Sydney contingent were unable to make new plans to attend, so the National Titles suddenly became the Queensland State Titles. This meant numbers were down for the games, but it didn't stop a heap of fun being had.

Saturday afternoon saw the inaugural New Heroes tournament hit by cancellations and drop outs as various attendees found themselves dealing with personal issues and previous arrangements. Thankfully, enough players arrived to run a tournament. Running four rounds with the winner decided on points, the competition saw a surprising draw, as veteran Brad Daniels and relative newcomer Randal Wales had two wins each and found themselves on the same game points.

Sunday was the big one - the Final Brawl to decide the state champion. This year saw a good mix of factions, including the Seven Masters, but surprisingly for the first time in many years the Architects and the Lotus were not in attendance.

Running three rounds and a final, the final three were all relative newcomers, or newly re-acquired, to the game - Randal Wales with his Fire Woman/Jayne Insane deck, Gareth Willcock and his Monarch Fire deck and Mitch Haggman with a Dragons/Purist build.

As the first three rounds were all decided in under the allotted time, the final was allowed to run 90 minutes.

With Gareth's deck not playing particularly well, despite having won two of the three rounds, Randal made a play for the win after 45 minutes only to be thwarted at the last gasp by both opponents.

However, with both opponents tapped out, Mitch took the opportunity on the next turn to take his final site for the win.

So, congratulations to Mitch Haggman, our 2010 Queensland State Champion. What makes his win particularly gratifying for us all (apart from the fact that he's a naturally cool guy), is that Mitch came back to the game in 2008 after spotting Shadowfist on the event list at the first GenCon Oz. Despite rocking nothing but his old Ltd/Std and Netherworld 1 cards and doing pretty well in his first game back, he's built up enough of a collection to create his tournament winning deck this year.

Congrats also to Randal, who vowed after last year's event he was no longer going to be anyone's site monkey and backed it up this year with an incredibly impressive showing.

GenCon Oz have confirmed they'll make another attempt at running the event next year, so hopefully we'll be back then to resume national hostilities with the Sydney crew. With any luck the newly forming New Zealand playgroup may be able to send over a representative or two as well.

As always, this event couldn't have been run without the tireless efforts of Brad Daniels to promote and nurture this game. Thanks also to the IKG guys for helping us put the event together and supplying prize support.

Deck lists and pictures will be made available to Stefan to put on the Chimpshack and to Daniel if he wants them for an IKG Update newsletter.

Bat On.

[writeup by Leonard King]

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