First round
The first round started off pretty slow too. Garrett took a site early
on from Matt for power with Johnny Tso or Jack Donovan (AKA Sean Archer
- hence "Face Off" against the Golden Gunman, Castor Troy). Unfortunately
he was only at one sight at the time amd so he needed the power. =P At
any rate, the hitter was promptly shown off the table and into the smoked
pile. While this occurred, Ray managed to pull out 6 sites and Matt sat
at victory conditions of 4 sites with no characters. Garrett managed to
pull out either Johnny or Jack with the five power, but they were taken
care of by Jeff and Matt's architect attacks. So, with Ray at 6 sites,
he was the new target and everyone picked on him and forced the revelation
of the dreaded Fox Pass. At any rate, that pretty much stalled out most
of the game resulting in the final deadlock with Matt emerging victorious
with the largest body total on the table.
Second round
Matt, Jeff and Garrett almost got the chance to keep all of their seats
warm by staying in the same spots, but then that was recalled and someone
ended up moving to Ray's spot. Ray was replaced by Corey. So, now the table
looked like two architects and two dragons at opposite corners. A good
mix. The game started off pretty quickly this time. Matt once again managed
to pull out four feng shuis and no defenders for a while. Corey looked
like he could have used a couple more sites to get power. Jeff wasn't doing
too well in terms of big characters. Lots of little DNA mages and such.
I think Matt made the first moves toward victory and got stomped, hence
the no defenders. Garrett followed up with Castor Troy (the Gunman) and
managed to take one site for a victory counter which put him at victory
conditions. Of course, the Gunman's not an event target made him a pain.
At any rate, he too was quickly shuffled off to the smoked pile. Once the
Gunman was taken care of, Corey managed to pull a site for power which
he saved for Matt's next attempt at victory. Corey pulled out a Redeemed
Assassin to stop Matt's King of the Fire Pagoda, but got taken out shortly
after that. So, with the table pretty much clear, Garrett made his next
attempt at victory by playing either a cop or Johnny and attacking Matt.
This attack got stopped an with the two remaining power, Garrett made the
Gunman comeback for the win.
Third round
This game, Frank made it to the table and Corey left. Once again, Matt
and Garrett managed to keep their seats warm and remained in the same spots.
This game started off really slow with only a couple of sites and foundation
characters popping out all around. Matt and Frank were the only really
viable entities to win, but always managed to get stopped by interceptors
or Jeff's architects. Frank was a little upset with Matt's Fox Pass which
kept him from winning more than once. But Garrett liked it, because he
followed Frank's attakcs on Matt for easy sites at the end, which eventually
gave him the 2nd place once time was called. Matt continued to fight Frank
for victory until time was called with Matt's three sites and one in victory
taking 1st, Garrett's one and two for victory taking 2nd and Frank's three
on the table taking 3rd. Jeff was then demoted to the semi-finals after
which he would return.
Finals
So, in the finals, the table was a repeat of the third round with Matt,
Frank, Jeff and Garrett all looking for prize money. This time however,
Matt switched seats with Jeff and Garrett got to keep his seat warm. So,
in the finals Garrett was forced to lay a Proving ground for his first
site. Jeff decided to reveal this prematurely, leaving two damage on it
and Garrett in a bad position. With him out of the way, everyone slowly
built up and tried to take away the damaged proving ground. While everyone
fought over his site, Garrett managed to put down a Police station to annoy
all those drug labs. Eventually he got a Whirlpool in the back row to start
generating power. Frank finally manged to take the Proving ground away
after Jeff and Matt stopped him for three turns and each person not pulling
characters that could attack. Jeff was kinda stuck for a while too, having
not found a DNA mage until midway through the game. So, Frank and Matt
once again sat poised for victory with Garrett playing suckage and having
to throw states on other people's characters to help prevent wins and Jeff
slowly and secretly building up. After about six rounds of Matt and Frank
trying to win and end up killing each other, Jeff managed to sweep up the
win with a bunch of puds and a Queen of the Ice Pagoda.Frank pulled down
second with a victory counter and Matt took third. Garrett ended up fourth
because he could never manage to get more than one feng shui in play at
any given time. =P
Last modified: March 11, 1998.
Please send comments to nickolof@scf.usc.edu.
Send server comments to durrell@innocence.com.