Torrance Fisting - November 1997 Report

by Stefan Vincent
November 18, 1997

11 players, in two games of 4 and one of 3, like so: 

Bill Uranga - ????
Garrett     - "Limberger"
Victor      - Lotus with some Hand
Corey G.    - Architects and Dragons, I think
Jeff        - Architects/Ascended
Stefan      - Dragons/Monarchs Johnny Tso/Claws of Darkness
David Guon  - A sealed deck???
Ray         - Dragons
Frank       - Hand mixed big hitters with Shadowfist/Fortune of Turtle
Matt        - Monarchs/Architects
Mike N.     - Hand/Monarchs

Round 1

Round one started with the random match-up as usual. Table 1 flailed around and eventually handed Matt the win on the tiebreaker :). Victor came out on top at Table 2, with Mike the whupping boy trailing badly. Jeff started strong with a win on Table 3. Scores like so: 
Matt (1) 7 Victor (1) 9 Jeff (1) 9
Garrett  6 Corey G.   5 Frank    7
Stefan   4 David G.   4 Bill     5
Ray      3 Mike       3

Round 2

The high scorers migrated up to table 1, where Frank's Hand deck kicked in (literally) and whupped everybody. Middle scores played a 3-player game on Table 2; with Corey taking the win here. And Ray took the win at the kiddie table to earn his place at Table 2 in the next round. Scores as such: 
Frank  (1) 16 Corey G. (1) 14 Ray (1) 12
Matt   (1) 14 Bill         11 Mike     9
Victor (1) 13 Garrett      11 Stefan   9
Jeff   (1) 11 David G.      6
Round 3
So Jeff moved down one table and Corey moved up one, where the game stopped on tiebreak, leaving Matt in first again with Frank second. Bill pulled off the clean win on Table 2, pushing Jeff further down in the process. And at the kiddie table, where either Mike or I had a shot at the semi-finals, well, Mike got the Queen-Queen combo going and there wasn't anything we could do to stop him... 
Matt   (2) 21 Bill (1) 20 Mike (1) 18
Frank  (1) 22 Garrett  18 Stefan   13
Victor (1) 18 Ray  (1) 17 David G.  9
Corey  (1) 18 Jeff (1) 14

Semifinal

With all those 18s floating around, we ran a semi-final round where Mike came up with the win, earning his spot in the final round.

Final

Final saw Matt, Frank, Mike and Bill vie back and forth (many times washing Mike completely off the table, but he always managed to put down a big hitter after a good Pocket Demon...). In the end, Matt got the win, unfortunately at low tide for Mike... 
Matt  1st
Frank 2nd
Bill  3rd
Mike  4th
So, how would this have been different if we'd done double elimination? We would have had 6 players with 1 win at the end of round two, and could have played two games of 3, winner of each then playing a one-on-one final (still ugly that way). But that would have given Ray, Jeff, and Corey at shot at the final, and would have kept Mike out.
We've decided to make yet another change to the tiebreaker rules, after watching how this played out. We're switching the 2nd and 3rd tiebreakers, and adding a bit to the now-3rd rule:
  1. Closest to victory
  2. Total number of sites burned for victory or seized from opponents
  3. Total body of all sites plus total fighting of all characters controlled at the end of the game. For this purpose, count any sites you burned for victory as their full body (that's the new part).
That's the story. Next time I'll try to bring a more effective deck and participate a little more, although I had great fun with my Power of the Great deck in the games we played after the tournament...

Last modified: March 11, 1998.
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