Shadowfist Tournament Report: Origins 2001

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[posted 27 May 2003; updated 1 Jan 2007]

Z-Man ran a bunch of tournaments at Origins 2001. I don't have the full story, but here's what I do know:

Two reports for you from Origins 2001. Special thanks to Andrew Davidson and Benjamin Barnett for their permission to repost these reports.

Shadowfist at Origins 2001 by Andrew Davidson, originally posted to rec.games.trading-cards.misc on Jul.12, 2001. Read the original with a newsreader or Google if you prefer.

Shadowfist at Origins 2001 by Benjamin Barnett, originally posted to rec.games.trading-cards.misc on Jul.12, 2001. Read the original with a newsreader or Google if you prefer.

More reports were published in Kiii-Yaaah!! issue #2, but that is no longer on-line after Shadowfist Games reworked Shadowfist.com in late 2006.

Shadowfist at Origins 2001 by Andrew Davidson

Originally posted to rec.games.trading-cards.misc on 12 Jul 2001 by Andrew Davidson. Republished with permission.

I played in four Shadowfist events at Origins. The first of these was Who Wants Some? but I never found time to build my deck, let alone play. Then there were two duelling events - Who's the Man? and Both Guns Blazing. The latter was much the same as the former and I used the same deck in both cases - "Making the Cut". This is a remix of my Kung Fu Student deck and, while it held its own, it needs a little work to deal with Dragon/Brawl decks. More Confucian Stability, perhaps?

My W/L record for these games was 5/6. The Final Brawl was more my style. I used the deck that I built for an animal-rights politician here - it's called "Pigtails". He's coming to Gencon and I wanted to give the deck a good workout following some recent tuning. It performed quite well and the results of the first three rounds were:

Wins

2 Andrew Davidson - Pigtails - Ascended/Jammer
2 Andrew Sackett - Booby Trap - Dragons
2 Yuit Sum Vong - Tea for Two - Dragons
1 Jeremy Stacey - Draco - Ascended

------The Cut-----------

1 Holly Mayland
1 Jason Woychesko
1 JR Sullivan
1 Mark Denny
1 Sean Henrickson
0 Benjamin Barnett
0 Cave Bear Stroud
0 Cliff Yahnke
0 Greg Zimmerman
0 John Merrill
0 Glen Diaz
0 Bill Sconge

In the final, several sites were burnt for victory and I took a fair battering from the other three players. Jeremy then made a big winning bid which only just failed - he forgot to use Draco's ability to cancel a couple of Brawls which Andrew used to stop him. Checking Draco's wording, I'm not sure that this would have been legal anyway. Yuit went next and delivered the winning blow to win the event - well done. Her prize was a set of Year of the Dragon starters while I got a saucy Sting, yum.

More saucy art could be seen on Ed Beard's stand and I bought a fine print of the new gunslinger Katie Kincaid - expect to see this as a prize at some future London event. Other art from Shaolin Showdown was on display at the Z-Man stand and this looked good. Pat Morita has got the role of Kinoshita in this movie while Toshiro Mifune has a part too.

Thanks to Z-Man for organising all these events and I look forward to trying them all again at Gencon.

Andrew

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Shadowfist at Origins 2001 by Benjamin Barnett

Originally posted to rec.games.trading-cards.misc on 12 Jul 2001 by Benjamin Barnett. Republished with permission.

some further impressions of shadowfist casual and tournament play at origins:

I was only there for 2 days out of the 4 total, so I can't speak to thursday's and friday's action, but one thing that struck me right off the bat when I arrived saturday was the higher level of attendance at and interest in shadowfist events this year over last. the demo table at z-man's booth was usually well-attended, and often eric lui and paul gerardi were strugglling to demo the game to all the people interested in learning/relearning.

events were similarly well-subscribed, with 8-10 players signing on for the dueling events and 16 showing up for constructed multiplayer saturday afternoon. Who Wants Some?, the traditional convention-long sealed dueling free-for-all, drew over 25 participants.

steve wampler and andrew sackett, down from ithaca, dominated dueling throughout the weekend, schooling the rest of us in some serious smackdown and, between the 2 of them, grabbing up 4 of the possible 5 top spots in saturday's and sunday's 2player events. andrew won Who's The Man? and Most Games Played in sunday's Both Guns Blazing; steve took Most Games Won in BGB and first in Who Wants Some? as well.

tellingly, each of them played very fast very simple very lethal dragon decks much of the time (brawl/dirk gambits/ting ting and dr. john). steve brought out an extremely tight (25 cards!) lotus corpse/kun kan deck for sunday morning's speed duel event, and reminded everyone just how effective pocket demons, corpses and proving grounds can be.

after being forced out of saturday's Who's The Man? in the semi-finals, I managed to squeak through sunday with a Best Winning Percentage for my Monkey See, Monkey Do deck, which adds monkey boys, scrounging and bandit hideouts to the classic Spawn/Battleground deck, with dramatic results. most of my games ended with 10-12 columns on my side, a fighting 10-12 ambusher (the spawn), 4-5 backup monkey boys and boboes, and nothing at all on the opposing side of the board. andrew sackett handed the deck its one defeat of the morning, with an overwhelming dose of dragon speed plus booby traps.

best defense trick observed during the weekend's tournament play: booby trap with carnival of carnage. andrew cleared my entire cast of characters, current attackers and homebodies, during a probing attack against a proving ground, all for only 2 power. nice.

yuit sum vong and andrew davidson, in from london, again dominated multiplayer. yuit took top honors, but as I didn't observe any of her games directly I can't give details of deck design or unfolding game play. yuit and I were definitely swimming at opposite ends of the ability pool. in any case, they brought company with them this year (sorry, I've spaced on the 3rd londoner's name) and the participation of the UK faction added a lot of luster to the weekend's events. special kudos to andrew for gritting his teeth and wading in for some bare knuckles dueling, a format he ordinarily eschews as sub-par -- thanks for mixing it up with the rest of us 2player scrappers. next year maybe I can extract some multiplayer tips from 'the master' so I don't suck quite so hard in that format.

second greatest distance covered to bust heads and swap lead probably goes to jason woychesko, from Toronto. jason was definitely the most gracious winner and loser I faced all weekend, and everyone who sat down across the table from him could look forward to some good play and pleasant table talk. glad you could make the trip, man.

hardest sucking in multiplayer was, as mentioned, pulled off by yours truly. seriously. I'm pretty sure I came in dead last in each game of 4 during ALL FOUR ROUNDS of swiss play. that's the last time I bring a knife to a gunfight, i.e., a 100 card Dr. Ally deck to a tournament full of tight 60 card fighting machines. now somebody's (okay, actually THREE sombodies) got to move to cleveland so that I can hone my multiplayer chops for next year's festivities.

anyway, that's all I've got. I'll post Monkey See, Monkey Do to the zman site and shadowfistHub.com later today -- I [Benjamin's deck list is here] hope some of the other tournament winners will consider doing the same, along with whatever nuggets of strategy and methodology they can bear to part with. thanks everyone, and especially paul gerardi and zev shlasinger of zman, we had a blast!

schmeee (benjamin barnett)

p.s. shaolin showdown! no, I mean SHAO! LIN! SHOW! DOWN! those of you who weren't there, and haven't seen the card art yet, have absolutely NO IDEA how hard this set is going to rock your world. I could tell you more, but then paul gerardi would have to kill us both. you have been warned.

p.p.s. I forgot to mention before: 2 of the decks that dominated dueling play on sunday packed 0 rares. that's right, zero rares. steve wampler's lotus deck and yours truly's jam/arc battleground deck took it to the streets with only commons and uncommons to apply the beatings. food for thought, before you trade for that fifth golden gunman. schmeee

ladies and gentlemen, take my advice....

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