Montreal Days 4, 5 & 6
Tuesday woke up to find Daria AKA Turtle battling a migraine, so shortly after 15:00 I set out on my own.
Headed down to the V:TES Mini Q to play the first round just to get a game in. Ended up forgetting my Crypt, borrowed a different deck, and died like a sack. A very inauspicious start to the day.
Departed to Gamers World where they had 8 players for UFS. I played my :Bishamon: deck that has more holes then swiss cheese, because I was asked by Dave to really power down my decks since they had a bunch of new players.
I was treated to Kula Secret Project + Final Destruction, followed by Reduced difficulty attacks that flushed my foundations.
In warm up games, I was treated to a Xianguha Multiple attacks boosted in damage into 8th bill repeatedly, which would kill 2nd or at worst 3rd turn.
Then there was a random 6 handsize deck that chucked kitty spike after kitty spike, after kitty spike.
Finally while playing a mill deck I ran into :.:Bison:.: who when we were both at full when time was called launched a Widow Maker for the Vitality tiebreaker and win.
So for all of Dave's concerns about Montreal's ability as players, the ones who I faced certainly deserved me brining them a tougher match up. So a big 0-4 on the day. But this wasn't about the winning. This was about me coming to play some UFS, and getting a chance to enjoy playing. Which I got to do.
Wednesday.
Turtle was finally Migraine free, so we headed off to play in the last Mini-qualifier. I decided to play Turbo Barron. It's a deck that either works really well, or chokes and dies really quickly. In my first game, only my prey had never heard of the deck concept, but none of them had ever seen it work.
I had the perfect cut, where the Barron was in my opening crypt, and my had was the perfect hand for making the deck work.
Worse for the rest of the table both my predator and prey were unable to find any intercept, and the deck went off like a gun.
I dominate the table, but have to oust a player by directed bleed to get my 2nd VP. So rather than the sweep, I collect 4 VP a table win, and we call it game.
In a perfect world that 1TW + 4VP will net me a seat at the finals.
Round 2 my predator was a gentleman from France who knew Turbo Baron, played rush, and as soon as I brought him out, knocked the Baron into Torpor, and then I sat there for the rest of the game as the table wouldn't help me, which is fine. My predator eventually bled through me, but not before my prey had so much momentum from having no pressure he too got 4VP and a game win. Mental note - in V:TES if you have no pressure from your predator, and see none from your prey, you have a good time setting up to waltz through the table.
So I squeak into the finals in 4th spot, with tied with the prey from Table 2, and then proceed to get my head ripped off by my predator. Literally. He ripped the heads off of by my minions in the first round of combat, and ousted me by the third turn.
Great start, crappy end, but it was turbo Barron, at least it went off once, and I got it out of my system.
Then we drafted, and I rare/ vampire drafted since they were a bunch of cards I didn't have. Which means I died quickly. very quickly.
So yeah... by the end of the day, I was ready for something better.
Thursday - Turtle and I grab a quick lunch sushi, and head off to the event.
This was the end of the most recent storyline event.
For more on the Miracles and Black Lies story line, click here.
Before flying out this past Saturday I threw together a quick Menele & Helena deck. It got me 2 VP in the first round, where sadly I had to prey on Turtle to start the game. It netted me 1 VP 2nd round, before my Grand Prey cross tabled me to give my predator the game win in round 3. Did it do better then I thought? Yep. If I had a chance would I make a mountain of changes to the deck? Absolutely.
Now I'm back at the friends place who we're staying with, and soon to head to bed so I can get up and be bright eyed and all that jazz for tomorrow.
Grady tomorrow night, then the actual North American Championship starts on Saturday.
Later folks.