Shadowfist Tournament Report: Kublacon 2006

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[posted 15 Jul 2006; updated 30 Sep 2006]

Earl Miles once again organized several tournaments at Kublacon 2006 (May 26-29 in Burlingame, CA). Earl, Pete Bratach and Eric Lui judged the events. The winners were sort of announced by John Castellucci and Michael Stadermann in the Shadowfist Forum on Yahoogroups on 29 May 2006. Read the originals in the archive if you're a member. Earl tells me that some of the records were lost, including the winners' full names, so this is it unless some kind person with a good memory chimes in.

Two reports for you, no photos yet:

John Castellucci posted a report to the Shadowfist Forum on 29 May 2006, and also has it on his website [webjaw.com, 15 Jul 2006].

Michael Stadermann posted a follow-up report to the Shadowfist Forum. Reposted below, with Michael's permission.

Kublacon 2006 Report
by Michael Stadermann, 30 May 2006

Originally posted to the Shadowfist Forum on Yahoogroups on 30 May 2006 by Michael Stadermann. Republished with permission. If you're a member of the group, you can read the original in the archive.

I'm too lazy to post a full report of my own, so I'll just contribute to what John already wrote.

In general, my feeling about the Con was less negative than what John's sounds like. Sure, there were less people there than last year, but that still left plenty of great people to play against. Given that I played almost nothing but Shadowfist, I got in a lot of pick-up games (mainly against Tim), and I enjoyed those most of all the games I played.

I did play in the Memory Reprocessing and the Dueling. Dueling was 6 players, and I won with my multi-player CiA Hood deck. Memory Reprocessing was only 4 players (well, actually 5, but Earl sat out and judged), and Earl had us play until one player won twice (Dave ended up winning). I think this event burned me out on SF tournament games, because the games took long and it really bores me to play the same deck multiple times in a row, especially if the opponents' decks don't change, either.

I played in the draft event as well, and it probably was the highlight tournament for me, as it was for John. There were plenty of people who shared that opinion, and Eric L. said that if all tournaments had been draft, he still would have probably played in all of them (which, as a side note, would have moved around 1.5 cases of cards, reinforcing my belief that it is more important to make a base set that is draftable than trying to give every newbie all the power cards). As a side note, I tied exactly with John for match points and tiebreak points and was hurt by the time-out rules in a similar fashion. I also pretty much lost my last game (and thus my entry to the final) because instead of just sitting back and winning by default throught the time-out, I decided to make an attack for the win (which I knew wasn't likely to succeed, but it was the less boring option), and since I botched, the next player could take two sites and win the timeout. I really think something needs to be done here; I really hate games that are won by sitting back and doing nothing, like L5R honor running. That said, I really think Vinn (sp?) played a great last turn and deserved the win.

By Sunday morning, I was pretty burned out on Fist and dropped from the Final Brawl after losing 2 games to play pick-up games and get some lunch. I was going to play again in the CiA, but Earl's Feng Shui game (which was really great) ended about 45 minutes after the tournament started. I think Erik B. won this one with a Hood deck (which is the same designator I was going to play, but I think our decks were very different).

I have several comments on my observations of the current state of the game, which I'll go over in more detail in a different post.

In general, I really enjoyed Kublacon and want to thank Earl, Pete, and Eric again for running the events. I'm looking forward to next year to see everybody again; you're a great bunch of people!

Michael

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