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Spoils Spring Limited Championship
May. 1st, 2007 05:31 amSunday I went to the local Spoils Spring Limited Championship at Pandemonium Books in Cambridge. I was surprised by the number of people that were already there, including a few people I know from tournaments at Milford. Things rapidly went downhill when I asked who was running the tournament. “Aren’t you running it?” Um, no. I wasn’t even sure I’d be going at all, so I certainly wasn’t planning to run the event. I was there hoping to win a cool play mat that I have little practical use for, and hopefully even a gift card to Gamestop that I had no use for whatsoever…I figured I could buy videogames for friends who actually play them and sell them to them at a discount or something. Anyway, it rapidly became apparent that no one was running the event, and that the store owner thought that I was.
In the end, a store employee who had showed up to play ended up running things. I feel bad for him both because that means he didn’t get to play, and also because he wasn’t prepared to run things and therefore was the recipient of a lot of criticism from those in attendance. I also wasn’t happy with the store for failing to make sure they had someone to run things, but I don’t think Keith personally deserved any of the blame.
So, no official judge, no tournament software, and the person running the event has no knowledge of the floor rules. They tried to install the tournament software, but it gave them some kind of wacky error message and wasn’t working. They borrowed a laptop that already had it installed, and that worked for the first 3 rounds…until the battery ran out. No charger on hand, so the last 2 rounds had to be done on paper. Also, we had a couple of people show up late just before we started, and that pushed us over the limit of 16 people for whom they had product. They managed to scrape together enough stuff for all 18 of us to play, so that’s something at least. Since we were already running late they skipped over deck registration, which would have meant each player writing down the contents of a starter and 2 boosters and then randomly reassigning them to players. This is to keep people from cheating with their deck contents. There were a lot of complaints afterwards that we didn’t do this, though, so I’m not sure which would have gotten more complaints. The guy who had a 5-0 record at the end of the Swiss rounds apparently had a suspiciously awesome deck, though. = P
I managed to scrape my way barely into the top 8 with a 3-2 record, so I got to play in the top 8 draft. This was only my 3rd time drafting The Spoils, but I did a much better job of it this time than the previous 2 outings. My deck was good enough to get me past the first round of the top 8 by the narrowest of margins – I dealt lethal damage to my opponent with a character that also hit me whenever it inflicted damage. We would both be killed but for a timing rule that says he loses the game before the effect triggers and kills me as well. Alas, my next match went downhill quickly and should have ended about 20 minutes before it actually did. My opponent missed an opportunity to kill me, and I spent the whole rest of the game trying to figure out how he missed it, or whether I was wrong about the card I was sure he’d drawn, since I was using a card to muck with the top cards of his deck, and it wasn’t there anymore.
So I got 4th, which was enough to get me my play mat, 6 packs, and a couple of Top 8 foil resources. Not too bad, I guess. Pity the tournament wasn’t organized better and run more smoothly, though. Lots of people complained at the event and afterwards on the Spoils boards, so I don’t know if Pandemonium will get another event or not, and how many people will show up if they do. I would think that for some people there would have to be a pretty awesome prize on the line for it to be worth the trouble.
In the end, a store employee who had showed up to play ended up running things. I feel bad for him both because that means he didn’t get to play, and also because he wasn’t prepared to run things and therefore was the recipient of a lot of criticism from those in attendance. I also wasn’t happy with the store for failing to make sure they had someone to run things, but I don’t think Keith personally deserved any of the blame.
So, no official judge, no tournament software, and the person running the event has no knowledge of the floor rules. They tried to install the tournament software, but it gave them some kind of wacky error message and wasn’t working. They borrowed a laptop that already had it installed, and that worked for the first 3 rounds…until the battery ran out. No charger on hand, so the last 2 rounds had to be done on paper. Also, we had a couple of people show up late just before we started, and that pushed us over the limit of 16 people for whom they had product. They managed to scrape together enough stuff for all 18 of us to play, so that’s something at least. Since we were already running late they skipped over deck registration, which would have meant each player writing down the contents of a starter and 2 boosters and then randomly reassigning them to players. This is to keep people from cheating with their deck contents. There were a lot of complaints afterwards that we didn’t do this, though, so I’m not sure which would have gotten more complaints. The guy who had a 5-0 record at the end of the Swiss rounds apparently had a suspiciously awesome deck, though. = P
I managed to scrape my way barely into the top 8 with a 3-2 record, so I got to play in the top 8 draft. This was only my 3rd time drafting The Spoils, but I did a much better job of it this time than the previous 2 outings. My deck was good enough to get me past the first round of the top 8 by the narrowest of margins – I dealt lethal damage to my opponent with a character that also hit me whenever it inflicted damage. We would both be killed but for a timing rule that says he loses the game before the effect triggers and kills me as well. Alas, my next match went downhill quickly and should have ended about 20 minutes before it actually did. My opponent missed an opportunity to kill me, and I spent the whole rest of the game trying to figure out how he missed it, or whether I was wrong about the card I was sure he’d drawn, since I was using a card to muck with the top cards of his deck, and it wasn’t there anymore.
So I got 4th, which was enough to get me my play mat, 6 packs, and a couple of Top 8 foil resources. Not too bad, I guess. Pity the tournament wasn’t organized better and run more smoothly, though. Lots of people complained at the event and afterwards on the Spoils boards, so I don’t know if Pandemonium will get another event or not, and how many people will show up if they do. I would think that for some people there would have to be a pretty awesome prize on the line for it to be worth the trouble.
