Gen Con 2013

So after the warm ups we had the week before Gen Con, I decided that it was worth going to Gen Con this year even if it was for a very limited time.  My work schedule prevented me from taking Thursday off, and I had committed to babysitting my niece on Saturday.  My only time for the con was to drive down Friday morning, play in the World Championship in the evening, and drive back on Saturday morning.

I didn't have time to seriously tune or build a new deck for the tournament.  I decided to play the deck that got me through the Wisconsin State Championship a year ago: "Piece a the Action".  It can be played around to limit its ability to generate crazy power and is vulnerable to Discerning Fire, but I have fun playing it.  I did remove the Spin Doctor and the Plains of Ash and put in a Cry of the Forgotten Ancestor and Medicinal Flower Garden.

The tournament ended up being 3 qualifying rounds of 4-player games.  There were 20 players participating.  After the random seating for the first round, subsequent rounds were seated by Swiss format without substitutions to limit rematches.

Round 1:
Christian Green - Dragon Nomad Army
Josh K - Dragon Hitters
Ethan - Architect
Me - Ascended "Piece of the Action"

Ended in a time out tie between Josh and me.  Had the game lasted a few more minutes, I think I could have won this one.  Because we were within the last 10 minutes to play, I used The Golden Spike on Ethan's turn to get a Feng Shui back into play for the game points.  Time was called during my turn before I was able to launch an attack for the win.  If time were not an object, I would have been able to wait for my turn and then attack for the 4th site and use the Golden Spike to turn it into a winning attack.

Round 2:
John Merrill - Monarchs Fire deck
Josh K - Dragon Hitters
Ryan - Jammer / Syndicate Tech State deck
Me- Ascended "Piece of the Action"

Time was called as I launched my attack for the win using The She-Wolf, The Unspoken Name, and a Corrupt Bookie.  Fortunately I was able to use Jan Zvireci on John and pull out his Discerning Fire before the attack.  This saved my Pledged characters and I was able to use it to take out his Fire cards.  The attack had to go at John because he was the only one with only Feng Shui Sites.  There was an Endless Corridor in play that would make any other attack worthless.  No one had any denial left in hand.  After interceptors, the Unspoken Name was able to turn to heal and take the site for the win.

I'll give John bonus points for this game.  As far as I could tell, he was using a Modern deck.


Round 3:
John Wengler - ReAscended Arch / Asc, who had already clinched a spot in the finals.
Christian Green - Dragon Nomad Army
Chris Turner - Asc/Lotus "Terrible"
Me- Ascended "Piece of the Action"

Christian got out a Nomad Army early which I took with a Shadowy Mentor.  John followed with Anubis, which Chris Mentored on his turn.  John foiled it by sacrificing Anubis to Evacuation: 2066.  Christian had out a Big Bruiser and attacked my unrevealed City Square for the win.  The Bruiser was stopped with a Kinoshita House.  Christian played a Calvary Regiment and unturned the Bruiser and gave him Independence.  The Bruiser attacked with the Calvary Regiment.  The Regiment was stopped somehow.  I blocked the Bruiser who already had two damage with a Black Helicopter Squad to get his damage down to 5 which would not take the site.  Christian played Just a Scratch to heal the Bruiser.  I had to redirect the damage to another of my FSS to foil the attack.  My site was smoked.  Christian played a second Calvary Regiment to unturn the Bruiser again.  This time there was no denial and my City Square was taken for the win. 

The way it turned out, if I had let the first attack get through instead of smoking the FSS with redirected damage, I would have had 2 more Game Points in the tournament.  This would have put me in a tie with Josh to get into the final.  I don't know the tie break rules in that case.  I would have hoped that since I won one of my games with Josh and tied the other game with him, I would have gotten into the final.  Moot point anyway.

Congratulations to Christian on the win in the finals.