Shadowfist at Origins 2001
Andrew S. Davidson
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
benjamin barnett
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 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....
Peter D Bakija
>>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. >>
Those of us from Ithaca were so proud :-)
Which is good, 'cause is Star Fleet Battles, Steve got killed by a 12 year old.
Apparently, Steve and Sackett drove 500 miles so they could play eachother for
the title of "The Big Man", and apparently, Sackett is the Big Man Now.
Peter D Bakija
PD...@aol.com
http://www.geocities.com/bakija6
"She's a hero you see.
She's not like us."
-Giles