I WIN!!!!!!
Sorta long overly descriptive entry about my trip to:
So uh... yeah....
I left Wednesday morning for Indianapolis to enter the 7th circle of Geekdom/Hell: GenCon Indianapolis. Hitched a ride from one of the guys at the card shop (never really met him before) and talked the whole way about the card game that he plays and also listened to him reminisce about high school etc on the trip. After some interesting driving experiences (I never want to ride with this guy again, he tail-gates like a fiend) we get to Indianapolis and wait to meet up with Bobby, whom Steven and I were to room with (but not the guy who drove us, he was staying elsewhere). A short trip to Plainfield, Indiana would bring us to our hotel room, but not yet.
Already being in the city, we decided to head to the convention center connected to the RCA dome in order to obtain our badges. After a short wait, we got our badges and our bag of free goodies (a pack of The Spoils cards, a starter deck for the WoW TCG, a booster pack of Axis and Allies miniatures, an issue of both Scrye and Inquest, and some random coupons). We then stood in line for even registration, where I snagged a GenCon event guide and I was ready for an 11pm Sealed event (top prize: Nintendo Wii), a 3pm draft event (top prize: DS Lite), and a 5pm draft event (top prize: iPod Nano). After this, Bobby was determined to kill another 3 hours around Indianapolis so that he could meet up with some of his Crane Clan buddies from the forums at the RAM Restaurant and Brewery (Crane Clan is a reference to another card game: Legend of the Five Rings, he plays pretty hardcore). After a somewhat disappointing turnout at the restaurant, and a coke with a fly in it (when I ordered ginger ale), we leave and head back to the hotel, try to get some playtesting in, and crash.
In the morning, I'm all excited to play cards, and we head into the convention center, which is pretty full with people playing all sorts of games and running into the convention hall to see the vendors. After a short wait, my tournament begins and I feel confident with my card pool, and build my deck. The tournament starts running behind schedule, starting an hour late, and also requiring a 1 hour deck building/registering time slot that wasn't originally planned for. I play a few rounds, and when I get to the point where I no I can no longer earn any sort of prize, drop from the tournament. I look at the clock and have one minute to register for the next event (bad times). I rush over to the desk and register, barely making the deadline, and then wait half an hour for the event to start (the set the pace for the whole convention, everything was behind schedule by at least half an hour, yet you need to be there half an hour early). I play through the first round of this event and drop because I'm already pretty drained. I then trade in my ticket for the next event for cash, and visit my friends after they've finished their tournament. Neither did well enough to make it to the Emerald Championship, but they have another 2 tournaments to try to make it. (I don't get to finally eat until about 6pm this day).
Day 2 starts with me getting to GenCon and preparing for the $2k draft event. Without getting into the nitty gritty of it all, I play through the first two rounds and get REALLY lucky. My first round should've been a loss, but the other player was nice enough to let me take back a mistake, and the second round I lose, but the opponent already has a loss on his record and intends on dropping, so he concedes to me anyway. I guess he just wanted to play. At this point I consider dropping the tournament, because I feel like I have only won by luck this far, and that I have a shitty deck anyway. If I drop here, I'll have enough time to enter into the next tournament and hopefully earn some prizes, but one of my friends talks me out of it and tells me to keep playing (thanks Steven).
Round 3 I play against one of the judges, who makes some big play mistakes, which I take a great advantage of, and I end up beating him, although he drafted some ridiculous cards. The round ends quickly though, and I wait over an hour for the next round to begin. The head judge tells me there's only 10 minutes left in the round, and I decide I don't have time to get food, setting the mood for yet another day of starvation. Round 4 is even worse, where the opponent has debatably the 2 best cards in draft format in his deck, and plenty of others to support the theme. Being the top player in my pod, I go to the top 8 for the tournament.
The Top 8 round begins, and I see this chick again. There's this somewhat cute chick dating one of the guys who won a spot on the summer bus tour (so he's pretty good) at the draft. She didn't make it in, but her b/f did, and I spend the whole top 8 tournament watching her talk to him while he builds his deck (which is pretty illegal, most judges require that the top 8 be kept apart and isolated from the remainder of the tournaments) and I also watch her massage him throughout all of his rounds and whisper to him while playing (also illegal as she could be giving him tips). Regardless, I build my deck, and pray that it works. Round 1 is a tough slogging victory where I come tearing out of the gates, and my opponent's only hope to win is destroyed pretty early in the game. Encountering little resistance, I go to the semi-final rounds.
This guy is tough, I come running out of the gates once again, and he eventually drops a big guy on the field, slowing down my assault. After a few sacrifices I break through, bringing him down to 10 life, and he drops another big dude. This brings my assault to a full halt until I can establish either a better offense, or kill off his guys. With a little finesse and a lot of luck, I figure out the math to get the final damage through. On the turn before I plan to finish him off, he takes about 10 minutes to make his decisions (I'm freaking out that he may foil my plan the whole time, which would mean the difference between me being 1st/2nd and me being 3rd/4th (also a minimum $200 difference)). He taps out to draw a card, hoping he can get an answer, and he has no resources left with which to do it. With no resources left to change the field, I reconsider my plan, making sure that all my math is correct. After another 5 minutes of him making decisions about how he will block, I finally finish him off.
The other semi-final round is still rolling though, and the g/f-b/f pair are playing. The b/f makes a terrible play mistake and loses (after I watch for about 20 minutes, so I can learn what my future opponent will be playing and I can adjust my plans accordingly), and I realize that the matchup will be incredibly difficult. If the b/f had made one decision differently, he probably would have won... it was a tough one though. I look at the winner, who offers me a prize split. Now, the winner of the final match would have walked away with $800 and 50 points (50 points being necessary to get a spot on the world championship cruise next summer). The split he offers is that I take home second place money ($400), but first place points, while he takes the remainder ($800 and 20 points) as he already has enough points to be on the cruise. I accept gladly, knowing that the chances of me winning outright were slim. I technically win the whole tournament (of 77 people), walk away with a cruise and $400.
To be continued, hopefully with pictures....
So uh... yeah....
I left Wednesday morning for Indianapolis to enter the 7th circle of Geekdom/Hell: GenCon Indianapolis. Hitched a ride from one of the guys at the card shop (never really met him before) and talked the whole way about the card game that he plays and also listened to him reminisce about high school etc on the trip. After some interesting driving experiences (I never want to ride with this guy again, he tail-gates like a fiend) we get to Indianapolis and wait to meet up with Bobby, whom Steven and I were to room with (but not the guy who drove us, he was staying elsewhere). A short trip to Plainfield, Indiana would bring us to our hotel room, but not yet.
Already being in the city, we decided to head to the convention center connected to the RCA dome in order to obtain our badges. After a short wait, we got our badges and our bag of free goodies (a pack of The Spoils cards, a starter deck for the WoW TCG, a booster pack of Axis and Allies miniatures, an issue of both Scrye and Inquest, and some random coupons). We then stood in line for even registration, where I snagged a GenCon event guide and I was ready for an 11pm Sealed event (top prize: Nintendo Wii), a 3pm draft event (top prize: DS Lite), and a 5pm draft event (top prize: iPod Nano). After this, Bobby was determined to kill another 3 hours around Indianapolis so that he could meet up with some of his Crane Clan buddies from the forums at the RAM Restaurant and Brewery (Crane Clan is a reference to another card game: Legend of the Five Rings, he plays pretty hardcore). After a somewhat disappointing turnout at the restaurant, and a coke with a fly in it (when I ordered ginger ale), we leave and head back to the hotel, try to get some playtesting in, and crash.
In the morning, I'm all excited to play cards, and we head into the convention center, which is pretty full with people playing all sorts of games and running into the convention hall to see the vendors. After a short wait, my tournament begins and I feel confident with my card pool, and build my deck. The tournament starts running behind schedule, starting an hour late, and also requiring a 1 hour deck building/registering time slot that wasn't originally planned for. I play a few rounds, and when I get to the point where I no I can no longer earn any sort of prize, drop from the tournament. I look at the clock and have one minute to register for the next event (bad times). I rush over to the desk and register, barely making the deadline, and then wait half an hour for the event to start (the set the pace for the whole convention, everything was behind schedule by at least half an hour, yet you need to be there half an hour early). I play through the first round of this event and drop because I'm already pretty drained. I then trade in my ticket for the next event for cash, and visit my friends after they've finished their tournament. Neither did well enough to make it to the Emerald Championship, but they have another 2 tournaments to try to make it. (I don't get to finally eat until about 6pm this day).
Day 2 starts with me getting to GenCon and preparing for the $2k draft event. Without getting into the nitty gritty of it all, I play through the first two rounds and get REALLY lucky. My first round should've been a loss, but the other player was nice enough to let me take back a mistake, and the second round I lose, but the opponent already has a loss on his record and intends on dropping, so he concedes to me anyway. I guess he just wanted to play. At this point I consider dropping the tournament, because I feel like I have only won by luck this far, and that I have a shitty deck anyway. If I drop here, I'll have enough time to enter into the next tournament and hopefully earn some prizes, but one of my friends talks me out of it and tells me to keep playing (thanks Steven).
Round 3 I play against one of the judges, who makes some big play mistakes, which I take a great advantage of, and I end up beating him, although he drafted some ridiculous cards. The round ends quickly though, and I wait over an hour for the next round to begin. The head judge tells me there's only 10 minutes left in the round, and I decide I don't have time to get food, setting the mood for yet another day of starvation. Round 4 is even worse, where the opponent has debatably the 2 best cards in draft format in his deck, and plenty of others to support the theme. Being the top player in my pod, I go to the top 8 for the tournament.
The Top 8 round begins, and I see this chick again. There's this somewhat cute chick dating one of the guys who won a spot on the summer bus tour (so he's pretty good) at the draft. She didn't make it in, but her b/f did, and I spend the whole top 8 tournament watching her talk to him while he builds his deck (which is pretty illegal, most judges require that the top 8 be kept apart and isolated from the remainder of the tournaments) and I also watch her massage him throughout all of his rounds and whisper to him while playing (also illegal as she could be giving him tips). Regardless, I build my deck, and pray that it works. Round 1 is a tough slogging victory where I come tearing out of the gates, and my opponent's only hope to win is destroyed pretty early in the game. Encountering little resistance, I go to the semi-final rounds.
This guy is tough, I come running out of the gates once again, and he eventually drops a big guy on the field, slowing down my assault. After a few sacrifices I break through, bringing him down to 10 life, and he drops another big dude. This brings my assault to a full halt until I can establish either a better offense, or kill off his guys. With a little finesse and a lot of luck, I figure out the math to get the final damage through. On the turn before I plan to finish him off, he takes about 10 minutes to make his decisions (I'm freaking out that he may foil my plan the whole time, which would mean the difference between me being 1st/2nd and me being 3rd/4th (also a minimum $200 difference)). He taps out to draw a card, hoping he can get an answer, and he has no resources left with which to do it. With no resources left to change the field, I reconsider my plan, making sure that all my math is correct. After another 5 minutes of him making decisions about how he will block, I finally finish him off.
The other semi-final round is still rolling though, and the g/f-b/f pair are playing. The b/f makes a terrible play mistake and loses (after I watch for about 20 minutes, so I can learn what my future opponent will be playing and I can adjust my plans accordingly), and I realize that the matchup will be incredibly difficult. If the b/f had made one decision differently, he probably would have won... it was a tough one though. I look at the winner, who offers me a prize split. Now, the winner of the final match would have walked away with $800 and 50 points (50 points being necessary to get a spot on the world championship cruise next summer). The split he offers is that I take home second place money ($400), but first place points, while he takes the remainder ($800 and 20 points) as he already has enough points to be on the cruise. I accept gladly, knowing that the chances of me winning outright were slim. I technically win the whole tournament (of 77 people), walk away with a cruise and $400.
To be continued, hopefully with pictures....