Well, the Fist BBQ was in Toronto yesterday, and I did manage to attend,
along with Erik Bjarnar (also from Ithaca). Boy was it a long drive. In
fact, perhaps I shouldn't be posting this, as it may lead others to question
our sanity in driving such a long way for such a (relatively) small amount
of Fist...
But anyway. We actually left Ithaca (in upstate New York, for those
of you unfamiliar with it) around 9:30 in the morning, which was somewhat
later than we had initially planned to. So we drove for a while, stopped
in Niagara Falls for a while along the way, and drove for a while
longer. We got to the actual BBQ site in Ettobicoke (just outside Toronto)
right around 4 pm; the fun started at 2, so we missed some of it due to
our lack of preparedness.
There were I think eight people there when we arrived; I'm afraid I
no longer remember all the names, but Jose was there, along with a number
of other Toronto-area residents. So we showed up, introduced ourselves,
and Erik produced his food-related item of goodwill, a large supply of
Ting Ting Jahe ginger candies. They're quite good by the way; if you like
ginger, you should try them. Jose was immediately taken with Erik's gift-giving
ways (he bestowed the first package directly on Jose, in addition to the
other bags full of candy he opened for general consumption) and returned
the favor with a promo White Ninja. Evidently he encourages people giving
him stuff. Those dying for lack of a Ninja take note. ;-)
Well, when we arrived, there were two 3-player Fist games going on,
and the other two people didn't seem to be up for games right that instant,
so Erik and I played a couple duels to get into the spirit (not to mention
getting fed - and the food was quite good as well) of things. After not
too long, the three-players ended, and we were going to start a pair of
four players now that Erik and I were there, but then Jose suggested that
he'd like to gunsling against one of us, so I took up the gauntlet and
somehow I think the rest ended up with the bright idea of playing a five
or six player game.
Jose, as you may have heard, gunslings for White Ninjas. He'll put
up one of his Ninjas against one of whatever you're using for Power-counters
- cool dice, funky glass beads, amusing little plastic chips (what I had),
he even has someone's tooth that evidently they had removed specially for
the occasion. So I put up my purple chip and he put up his Ninja and we
went at it; I had brought three decks to play: a mono-Dragon fatties deck
with seven hitters in sixty-cards, plenty of sites, but perhaps a little
low on two-player comeback potential; a mono-Lotus Feast of Souls deck
(although it only has 2 Feasts; it also has 30 characters in 60 cards,
5 Glimpses, 5 Pocket Demons, 3 Hungry, some Kun Kan, lots of Walking Corpses,
all the obvious fun stuff); and a mono-Jammer deck that is fun to play
but not entirely effective.
If I'm remembering right (which is hard to say at the moment), I first
played my Lotus Feast deck; Jose was playing what I think he called MuzzleFlash,
a very good Dragon/Monarch guns deck. I got off to a less than ideal start,
fought the good fight for a while, and eventually succumbed to the neverending
rampage of multiply-Claw-of-Darknessed Ex-Commandos. This may have been
the game in which I almost but not quite did some coming from behind just
before Jose won; I wanted to use the single Tortured Memories in the deck,
which I had just drawn, to take his Ex-Commando, take away one of Jose's
Feng Shui, and blow up another Commando (or maybe it was Johnny Tso) with
a Fusion Rifle drive-by. Sadly, I knew before trying that it wouldn't work,
as he had already revealed a Festival Circle (which had previously (to
my surprise, that time) kept me from Discerning-Firing 2 or 3 Claws of
Darkness along with a Darkness Priestess), and also had a Whirlpool he
had earlier seized from me. The single Whirlpool I could muster just
wasn't quite enough, so that was that game. I played the same deck again,
and Jose brought out the Juicer for a change of pace; I put up a little
red plastic chip this time against the Ninja.
As Jose said, the Juicer (at least as he was playing it) was not optimized
for gunslinging; it probably performed better in multiplayer (I only say
probably because I didn't get to witness it doing so yesterday; the only
multi-game I played with him and the Juicer, Rob (whose last name I didn't
get, but not Heinsoo) won instead, after a couple failed attempts by Erik
and myself. But to get back to the point... this time my deck was doing
pretty well; I was killing off some Midnight Whisperers and Arcanotechs
with a White Disciple and a Purist Sorcerer (I know I could have stolen
the 'Tech, but it wouldn't have done me much good so I figured I'd be better
off just killing it). I believe this game ended when I burned probably
my third site for victory, with one Hungry in play (getting me to 1 away
from victory) and 4 Power already in my pool - Jose played Bite and then
Bull Market in response to my burn, but as his interpretation was that
I was allowed to play characters since presumably the attack was over,
I spent the 4 on an 8-Fighting (or so) Kun Kan, and then the 3 from the
Hungry (which didn't get stolen, since the Power didn't hit my pool till
after the Bite resolved) for an Evil Twin of Kun Kan. Jose had no denial
in hand, so that was the game (and a Ninja, woohoo!).
We went on to play about three more games, of which I believe I won
one or so, playing my Dragon-fatties twice (they won), and my Jammers once
(they got off to a blazing start, getting up to two feng shui in play and
two burned for victory, but then fell behind to the consistent hammering
produced by MuzzleFlash). All this, mind you, while everyone else played
that one big game. After the last of our five or so (oh yeah, the rest
of them after I got the Ninja were just for fun, I didn't want to steal
any more of Jose's Ninja supply ;-) we stopped and watched the end of the
big 'un. It was about how you might expect such a game to end; there were
big piles of characters on the board, (I guess no one had any Neutron Bombs
handy) and a number of attempts for victory were made until Erik got off
the one that succeeded. By this time, it was nearly eight in the evening,
so a number of our new Fist-playing acquaintances had to take off and do
whatever it is they do when they're not playing Shadowfist (not to mention
it was getting a little dark). Erik and I got to hang out with Jose and
co. for a little while longer; we helped move some of the BBQ stuff back
to Jose's place, and then went over to a lovely Canadian joint called Apache
Burger for some further refreshment and a well-lit playing surface for
Shadowfist. (There for the fun were Jose, Erik, me, Rob, and a nice guy
whose name has unfortunately slipped my mind, very sorry about that, who
was not playing Fist as evidently he was all Fisted out.)
The Apache Burger lived up to its billing as quite the good retro-decorated
fast food burger restaurant, and Erik got to take his turn doing a little
duelling with Jose. I think he got in only two duels; sadly he didn't win
either of them (of course, he was already up one Ninja..). Of course, Erik
doesn't always build his decks primarily around winning (no offense Erik)
which could have something to do with it. I'm not sure if he was playing
any of his more winning-oriented decks; at least one of them was a no-faction
Hood deck which I suspect could be improved by adding a faction or two.
;-] I didn't actually watch their matches closely as I was doing a little
side dueling with Rob at the time - oh yeah, in Erik's favor, I think he
was playing against MuzzleFlash both times, and from what I saw and experienced
of both decks, it was a far tougher duelling opponent than the Juicer.
For the duel, Rob was playing a mono-Architects deck featuring many
of the usual suspects, based primarily around ambush, characters costing
no more than 3, and Buro Officials, and Tactics, along with guns and some
Architect denial. I was playing my dragon-fatties deck (the deck is almost
sort of based around Johnny Badhair, except that I only have 1 copy of
him - it has about 7 Dragon States, two Kar Fai's Crib to make those more
useful, and about 14 resource-requiring characters with a slightly-light
10 foundations in the 60 cards; it also features Dragon event recycling
via Fighting Spirit, a very excellent card); he had me pretty well on the
ropes not too long after we started. He never put more than 2 Feng Shui
in play I think, but he did have 3 of mine burned for victory I believe.
I had played a Ting Ting and a Jason X in the big-characters department,
but they had both gotten themselves smoked pretty quick going up against
those Reconstructed fellows. So I believe it was the turn before I looked
like losing; Rob had a Reconstructed and I think it was a Whisperer and
a Test Subject as well, both of those two with Buro Godhammers. I drew
three cards that turn - in a fit of odd distribution, they were all
three of the Golden Comebacks in the deck.
To make a long story short, monkeys flew out my butt and I won the
game by strategically using the Golden Comebacks in conjunction with Jane
Q. Public, Dirk Wisely's Gambit, and Scrappy Kid, following up with Ting
Ting, a Claw of the Dragon, and a Back for Seconds to blow lots of stuff
up. It was a very cool game. Probably the most unlikely comeback victory
I've had.
So by the time we finished that game, Erik and Jose were just about
done with their second, so we waited for them to finish and went on to
do one last game as a four-player with Jose switching to the Juicer, Erik
playing what may have been his everybody-that-costs-1 deck (or not), myself
playing the Dragons again, and Rob switching to a cool Hand/Monarch deck
featuring Orange Monks. It was a slightly silly and otherwise fun game;
after a few Bull Markets, and some funny stuff involving Jose Shadowy Mentoring
away Rob's Orange Monk and Windmill-Kicking-Instrument-of-the-Hand, there
were a number of sequential attempts to win, starting with Erik who
accidentally didn't attack with the Queen of the Ice Pagoda as soon as
he played her, then I tried, but didn't have enough characters to quite
manage it, then Rob succeeded (I think that was with his reclaimed Orange
Monk, who had had some sense talked into him by Rob's Ice Courtier). By
that time, it was after 10:30 pm, so the Torontoans were ready to call
it a night. Erik ended up with *another* White Ninja in exchange for a
further supply of Ting Ting Jahe (Jose really liked 'em), and we set out
for good ol' New York State.
We didn't end up getting out of the Toronto metropolitan area (due to one planned stop at a drugstore for some refreshments, and one unplanned session of getting lost by going the wrong way on Kipling St.) until 11:45 or so; we drove with minimal stopping and ended up back in Ithaca right around 5 am. Which wouldn't have been so very bad except that I had to get up at 7 for class, and Erik had to work at 9. Eccch. So it was a little on the gung-ho side as it turned out (not that I hadn't expected it to be), but it was lots of fun anyway, and we got to meet Jose which we had never previously done, in addition to a bunch of other Toronto area Fist playing folks. (As it turned out, we were the only non-Toronto people who attended the BBQ. I guess everyone else within 250 miles was just too wimpy.)
So Jose also mentioned that he's planning to spend about a week in NYC toward the end of October for a bunch of Fist and Feng Shui events. I think we might have to send an Ithaca delegation. (Peter Bakija, for example, will be jealous and probably also want to go. He couldn't make this event because he's in Europe for two weeks visiting family. Some excuse.)
Anyway, hope this didn't drag too long for any of you brave enough to make it all the way through. I had a great time, even though I'm paying for my foolishness now. But that's okay, I'll just go to bed real early tonight. Yeah.
Last modified: January 23, 1998.
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