Shadowfist Tournament Report: GenCon 2002

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[posted 31 May 2003; updated 10 Mar 2004]

Z-Man ran several tournaments at GenCon 2002, but I don't know all the winners' names. Here's what I do know:

Two reports for you from GenCon 2002. Thanks to Andrew Davidson and Gavin Edwards for their permission to republish. Also thanks to Jan Malina for the stats on his win in the Who Wants Some? tournament.

GenCon 2002 World Championship report by Andrew Davidson. This report was originally posted to rec.games.trading-cards.misc on 16 August 2002, you can read the original with a newsreader or Google if you like. For members of the Yahoogroups Shadowfist Forum, you can read the message in the archive.

GenCon 2002 report by Gavin Edwards. This report was originally posted to rec.games.trading-cards.misc on 19 August 2002, you can read the original with a newsreader or Google if you like. For members of the Yahoogroups Shadowfist Forum, you can read the 16 August 2002 message in the archive.

And one photo for you: that's Allen Hege in the middle, receiving the coveted Kung Fu Hamster supplied by Andrew Davidson as his prize for winning the sealed deck tournament. Clockwise from lower left: Andrew, Jim Sensenbrenner, Allen, Ron (?). Photo courtesy Allen Hege. Click the image to see a larger version in a new window.

GenCon 2002 World Championship Report by Andrew Davidson

This report was originally posted to rec.games.trading-cards.misc on 16 August 2002 by Andrew Davidson. I filled in Jim Sensenbrenner's deck type courtesy of Jim on 5 Nov 2003.

The world championship for Shadowfist started with 5 rounds of 4-player games. The time limit for each round was 75 minutes and the seeding was done using a Swiss system based upon match points and game points. These were awarded as follows:

Match points
------------
4 - outright win
3 - timeout win
1 - outright loss

Game points
-----------
3 - feng shui seized or burnt for victory
2 - own feng shui
1 - victory offsets like Power of the Great and Arcanotowers

We started playing upstairs in the overflowing CCG/Boardgame hall but then happily moved downstairs to an oasis of calm - a lobby with excellent feng shui and palm trees too. After the five rounds were complete, the Swiss rankings as follows. Myself, I reached the top table in the last round of the Swiss but was edged out of the cut by another Andrew - a player I got to know well as I played him in three of the five rounds.

The top 4 in this ranking then advanced to the final 4-player game. These were:

Jan Malina (Dragon/Lotus)
Gavin Edwards (Jammer)
Julian Lighton (Purist)
Andrew Kloster (Architect/Jammer)

Jan Malina continued his winning streak by winning this game too - an impressive 5 victories in a row. He won the dueling championship too for the third time and so is now the undisputed holder of the title "The Man".

What is the secret of his success? Well, here's his deck - see if you can figure it out...

[writeup by Andrew Davidson]

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GenCon 2002 Report by Gavin Edwards

This report was originally posted to rec.games.trading-cards.misc on 19 August 2002 by Gavin Edwards.

I got spanked in the designator tournament and the duelling tournament, so I don't know much about the results there, but I managed to make the finals of the Final Brawl multiplayer on Friday and the World Championship on Saturday. (At which point my brains were leaking out of my ears from too much Shadowfist, and I went to the Hilton for a nice quiet game of Princes of Florence.)

The Final Brawl attracted about 40 people or so; the finals featured four very tired players and started slowly, but turned into one of the best games I played all weekend. Tim Wong was playing Lotus (with lots of Eunuchs), Mark Wheelhouse represented the UK scene with a Dragon deck, Jeremy Stamer was playing Ascended, and I had a Hand deck built around the Peasant Leader. This was the game where Jeremy mentored Spencer's Beauties and then reasoned that this fit the storyline, since Spencer is actually a shadowy mentor, almost certainly Ascended. (Which I'm going to continue to believe, even if it isn't official canon.) All of us had enough thuggery on the board at various points to go for the win, but Tim was the one who actually pulled it off—congratulations!

The World Championship came after five rounds of Swiss play among approximately 35 players—boy, Swiss is great in a large tournament, I think. A game where everybody at the table needs one more win to get into the finals is just as exciting as the finals themselves. As the day played out, three wins would get you a seat at the big table. Anyway: Julian Lighton, who spent the entire day at table #1, taking on all comers, was playing a Purist deck with Misery Totleben, Chaos Spirits, and lots of other miscellaneous nastiness. Jan Malina had a tight Dragon/Lotus deck. Andrew Kloster, in his first year of playing the game (!), had a Jammer/Architect combo. And I was playing straight Jammers with monkeys, monkeys, and mo' monkeys. There was good geographic diversity: Jan's from San Francisco, Julian and I are New Yorkers, while Andrew's Midwestern. And for those who claim that the Brits got shut out: Julian and I are also both British subjects by birth, so we represented them too (if they don't mind us playing decks with fewer than 200 cards, and not playing on Andrew Davidson's trademark green felt).

We all started =unbelievably= slowly, having trouble getting out sites and foundation characters. Andrew jumped out to a pseudo-lead by virtue of having four sites down, but didn't really have any ability to defend himself, and so naturally got jumped on with what meager characters the other three of us could pull together. Julian then got his deck untracked, and got out Misery, the Mutator, and a lot of their Purist chums. There was some collaborative beatdown again, which left me with the whip hand, as I was bringing out Gorilla Fighters and had several counters on Entropy. 'Twas not to last: Jan, who had accumulated about a dozen power and had one site in play (plus one burned for victory), took one of mine, played another site, Kii-Yaahed the power Andrew was saving for denial events, slapped a Tortured Memories on Ba-Boom, and took the last site for a well-earned win. (Congratulations again.)

Honorable mention to the returning two-time world champion Steve Valladolid, playing a Monarchs Battleground deck; he and I were in the same first-round game, and when time was called (with a tie on the board), he clearly would have won on his next turn. (Yes, I know almost everybody in the tournament has a near-miss story like that.) He was a pleasure to play against at all points, and then settled in to watch the entire World Championship as a spectator. And thanks to the whole Z-Man crew for organizing the tournaments, particularly Julian for the Final Brawl and Paul for the World Championships. I was honored to take part, had an amazing time, and was glad that the finals were games worthy of the name.

[writeup by Gavin Edwards]

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