Shadowfist Tournament Report: GenCon UK 2001

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[posted 11 Sep 2003; updated 13 Sep 2003]

Summary of the winners:

Several reports for you from GenCon UK 2001. Special thanks to Andy Holt and Andrew Davidson for their permission to repost these reports.

GenCon UK 2001 multiplayer championships by Andrew Davidson, originally posted to the Shadowfist-uk group on Yahoogroups on 8 Oct 2001. The group is open to the public, so you can read the original in the archive.

GenCon UK 2001 final round play-by-play by Andrew Davidson, originally posted to the Shadowfist-uk group on Yahoogroups on 8 Oct 2001. The group is open to the public, so you can read the original in the archive.

GenCon UK 2001 metagame analysis by Andrew Davidson, originally posted to the Shadowfist-uk group on Yahoogroups on 8 Oct 2001. The group is open to the public, so you can read the original in the archive.

GenCon UK 2001 booster draft by Andy Holt, originally posted to the Shadowfist-uk group on Yahoogroups on 9 Sep 2001. The group is open to the public, so you can read the original in the archive.

GenCon UK 2001 Multiplayer Championships by Andrew Davidson

Originally posted to Shadowfist-uk group on Yahoogroups 8 Oct 2001 by Andrew Davidson. Republished with permission.

Below is a summary of the players and their decks at the UK Championships at Gencon UK 2001. We had a good turnout of 30 players though Tom couldn't make it because he had to keep his wife happy and Ryan was a mysterious no-show. The Challis party showed up late as usual and paid the price this time, forfeiting the first round. This probably cost Jon a place in the final - commiserations.

I made everyone write out a deck list at the start. There was some grumbling about this, especially from Ivan who had a 446 card deck. But it is useful to guard against illicit sideboarding and, when analysed, the results make great reading.

We played 3 rounds of 4-player games using the Z-Man modified Swiss format. The four top-scoring players then played a final while the others played a consolation round for a promo card prize. As it happened, we had two players tied for 4th place on match and game points. I used the MP record of each players opponents as a tie-break. Commiserations to Steve Siddall who didn't quite make it by this measure.

The field was heavily dominated by the Guiding Hand who represented almost one third of the whole. They are thought by many here to be the strongest faction and the newly released Shaolin Surprise didn't hurt them. There was some doubt as to whether this set would arrive in time for the event but it arrived on the second day of the convention and dozen of boxes were sold. This set also features the Ascended and they were the second
most popular faction. Again, it's not clear how much of this popularity was due to the set and how much to their existing strength.

I'm publishing other articles detailing the final and will also be analysing the overall metagame. And there are photographs of the event at http://content.communities.msn.co.uk/PhotographerShop/PhotoAlbum [note: this website is gone - srv 11 Sep 2003]. Note that the Shadowfist photos are at the end of the Gencon UK album, after the Doomtown snaps. The one thing I'm not sure I'll do are the detailed match-ups. I have all this info in a spreadsheet but it'd be a devil to present in text format. Is anyone interested?

Thanks to all of you who came. Special mentions go to the French players who coped well throughout and to Julian Lighton's mother who spent much time watching the proceedings. The atmosphere seemed quite relaxed and pleasant though some players have told me that they found the tension to be much greater than normal because of the special prize - a trip to the US Gencon next year. Many thanks to Z-Man for sponsoring the event to this extent and for providing other tangible prize support in a timely manner. The uncut card sheets for Shaolin Surprise were of great interest when put on display.

So, now some details. The following table lists the 30 players, their decks and their score. The columns are:

Name - the player's name
Deck - the name of the deck
Size - the number of cards in the deck
Factions - the main factions in the deck. Peacock signifies a
deliberate mix of all factions.
MP - the number of match points scored
GP - the number of game points scored
Opp - the total match points of the opposing players
Won - the number of games won outright inside the time limit.

average deck size = 105 cards

Metagame
--------
9.5 Hand
6.5 Ascended
3.5 Lotus
3.0 Dragons
2.5 Monarch
2.0 Architect
1.5 Peacock
1.5 Jammer
---
30 decks

Andrew [Davidson]

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GenCon UK 2001 booster draft tournaments by Andy Holt

Originally posted to Shadowfist-uk group on Yahoogroups 9 Sep 2001 by Andy Holt. Republished with permission.

This booster draught started at 6pm on the Friday (and finished shortly after midnight!).

We had 16 participants - we played 3 rounds (mainly 3-player) followed by a final. As an experiment this time, instead of my normal "anti-swiss" matching or Z-man's "swiss", matching for each round was made independent of results - simply making sure that no player had to play 4-player more than once and did not meet any other player twice. The finalists were the only 3 players to have won at least 2 games out of 3.

1st round:
John Davis beat Andy Holt & Ivan Hartley
Jon Pickles beat Stephen Biggs & Andrew Trickett
Tom Kassel beat Yuit Sum Von, Ron Wheelhouse, & Inaki Puigdollers (sp?) on timeout
Michael Rogers beat Mark Wheelhouse & Brian "Woody" Woodfine
Andrew Davidson beat Tony Adams & Callum Finlayson

2nd round:
John beat Yuit & Tony
Stephen beat Ron & Woody
Michael beat Callum & Inaki
Andy H beat Tom & Andrew T
Ivan beat Jon, Andrew D, & Mark on timeout

(4 players withdrew at this point as it was getting rather late - Ron, Mark, Tom, & Inaki)

3rd round:
John beat Stephen & Andrew D
Tony beat Jon & Andy H
Ivan beat Yuit & Michael
Andrew T beat Callum & Woody

Final was John, Michael, and Ivan ... won by ** Michael Rogers **
3 players withdrew (Andrew D, Yuit, & Stephen)
2 "Consolation games":
Callum beat Jon and Andy H
Andrew T beat Tony and Woody

As the tournament was not run by "official" SWS rules in two respects (matching of opponents and timeouts), results have not been submitted for rating.

Andy (Holt)

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