So we left off last time with Round 7 which was streamed. By now, you’ll know that I won the game, but some of it was on the back of my opponent trying to be super efficient and my First Order Stormtrooper surviving via my removal and taking his Sychronicity. It’ll probably be a lesson in just killing stuff when you have the chance to for him, but it’s something that we all do and if i had no answer then he’d have beaten me good by saving the extra damage for the subsequent targets. I just had all of the answers to what he was trying to do which made it look worse than it actually was. Win 6-1

Round 8 – Agent Of Zion (Artificery) – Kylo Snoke Holocron Package

So by this point I know that I’m already in the Top 16 for Heat 2 win or lose, but I want to both dodge my friends and also line up against the mill decks which were littered all over the bottom of Heat 1. We were informed that 1-8 of a specific Heat would be pairing up against 9-16 of the opposing Heat. “Rigging” (using the term loosely) your potential pairings via a win or a loss has always been an interesting thing. A lot of the time at events if you can get the perfect set of pairings, then you can steamroll your way further up. Realistically I shouldn’t use the word “rigged” there since it’s really just my own internal thoughts and I’m actually gambling on whether I’d get a preferred pairing or not, and also needed the win to get my preferred results so I was obviously playing it out. For a moment I had considered the concession since I quite like Agent of Zion and wouldn’t mind giving him a “free pass” into top cut. He was X-2 when we were paired so he wasn’t locked in yet.

I win the roll off and choose my battlefield because his was Emperor’s Throne Room and I wasn’t going to deal with that even though none of his character dice had a special side. I build up my board while putting some small damage into Kylo and he hits a 40% Kylo call on BLUE which is pretty obscene since my deck has 7 total blue cards in it if i’m not mistaken and I got stuck with double Dooku Sailor in my opening after keeping one. He ends up with an illusion on Kylo and Force Throw (hardcasted / paid for) on Snoke at some point at the end of the round and my team is pretty healthy. He lands a Force Wave on Snoke via Holocron and things look scary. I believe I had already switched targets in my mind, but my opponent may not have known because the only damage Snoke took was from a Bazine special. The opposing Snoke gets mopped up after Bazine’s death, FOST with a smidgen of damage, and Snoke being attacked. I go all in on FOST carrying the game and give up on Snoke since i put a Natural Pilot on FOST.

The MOMENT OF TRUTH!!! Kylo has 11 damage on him and is carrying a Holocron and what I believe to be a Dark Counsel. FOST has 2 damage and 2 shields, a DH-17 and a natural pilot.

Kylo rolls out into some terrible sides (a couple resources I think) but the Holocron is showing a special and he successfully hits my FOST with the Kylo ability. At this point, I thought Agent of Zion was Kylo JESUS with his soul reads and hitting every single time (except maybe once) but was always when he had 40% or lower odds. He’s been carrying Mind Trick and/or Beguile, and a Mind Probe in his hand for a ridiculous amount of time which I saw from Friends in Low Places prior to Bazines death. My 1st action is to discard a card to reroll 0 dice since he could Holocron special into Mind Probe and end me right there if i don’t since Kylo popped my shields. He Holocrons into said Mind Probe and it shows 3 for a Resource. I immediately know that I could be 3 actions from death and my best bet is to roll out FOST with his handy dandy DH-17 and Natural Pilot (this one doesn’t matter here) and i’ve got a 66% to show ranged damage and end him. I can’t remember if he took resources or rerolled the non-Mind Probes into poop again, but I activate my Dooku Sailor looking for removal of some kind instead of rerolling my dice and I draw the card. AoZ tanks for a bit and then casts New Orders to flip into Throne Room and resolve Mind Probe’s special for the 5 damage. LOSS!!!! 6-2

There are a lot of cards in the game that can give surprises and it isn’t very often that you can try to play around them the whole time. I could’ve played around that and his fate was more or less sealed. If i chose to skip the “may” on Dooku, I could’ve still rolled it out looking for Focus or Shields to end the game, but wouldn’t have put myself in the situation to die. I was so focused on Mind Probe being for 3 damage then it turning to special was outside of the realm of my thinking.

I believe I ended up getting 4th place and after looking at Heat 1’s Top 16 then I got my wish, I’ll be playing against Mill!! … unfortunately it happened to be against a fellow Looper, Justin Anderson.

Post Heat 2

Food

We are HUNGRY. We find a Mediterranean version of Chipotle. I’m not sure if I was happy or not since I got to eat that. I’m on the Keto Diet which is SUPER low on carb intake (around 20g of net carbs a day), but it was an event so I was just “cheating” (on my diet) up a storm. The available drinks sounded fantastic though. Watermelon Lemonade, Cucumber and Kale drink (i don’t know more), and one of the leftovers had Mango. I taste tested them before deciding that i thoroughly enjoyed the Cucumber and Kale and filled up my cup. It reminded me of Better Call Saul and the Nail Salon. I donate my pita bread to Craw / Lake since I shouldn’t eat it and enjoyed my meal. I got rice, double of a chicken meat I think, and loaded the hell up on Feta Cheese and Spicy Feta. I’m used to eating a bunch of cheese and meat on Keto and I was pretty happy. I refill my drink and it’s time to go. I’m going to go out on a limb and try to remember the posse for food. In order of seating: Lake, Dan (Obi Maz from top cut), Zardra (Jeff), Yodaz, TheoGrizz (Calomino) and Serdapi (Shane). You guys can shame me if I forgot anyone or messed up the seating. I should be opposite of Zardra. Someone tell me if I’m right or wrong! I have sneaking suspicions that Jake (Luke Rey) was there, but I don’t think he would’ve left his group and I’m probably just splitting my memories of Dan.

Chance Cube Panel

I’m way too early for the panel so the remnants of my posse at the time posts up on the tables where FFG was doing the play a designer events. I had played Zwirn back on Thursday and won my choice between 2 Hidden Motives or a Spot Gloss First Order Storm Trooper. I took the trooper until I was notified that it was TWO Hidden Motives. Jeremy talks so low that I can hear his ass half the time. So after a while I realize that I should show up to the Panel and that I’ve been close by but I’m late to the show up early meeting. They give me the skinny on whats going to go down and we joke about stuff. I clearly play the big mouth role in the group so I prepare myself mentally for some antics and hope to be funny and lovable as opposed to big mouthed jackass with my responses. I really consider going full on meme level but it’s pretty hard to try being Kanye without someone being my Taylor Swift. Ed Chen, where were you when I needed you?!?!?

We get into the room and people are setting stuff up and I’m just sitting on the ground trying to figure out how to hide behind the projector screen and make an appearance as it rolls up for my introduction. Panel gets started and I feel that I’m goofy throughout it with my answers and facial expressions, but I try to reign it in as to not be too cumbersome to the hosts and other content creators. If I’m allowed, I’ll take over and talk for days.

So some stuff went down near the end that I wasn’t too thrilled about. At the part where questions from the crowd came out a really great question was brought up, but it got muddled by emotion / personal feelings / what may or may not be a vendetta and I feel that we have to separate the two things. The important part of the question involved FFG’s stance on competition and not having a concrete way of dealing with “messier” situations. I’m not sure when The Chance Cube plans to release the footage of the panel, but the rough breakdown went like this: At our National and Continental level events, the overall expectation is that we’ll see clean play and top level play. What comes along with that is also people getting Disqualified, Game Losses, and Warnings according to what happened. At Gen Con NA Champs 2018 a few people got “passes” on incorrect deck lists and what I mean by a “pass” is that there wasn’t a game or match loss. At the same event, one competitor in Top 32 forgot to bring their entire deck and they got the match loss because they didn’t get it and get back in time. FFG runs things way too casually and they really don’t seem to plan on changing that. So sure, I can fumble a bit and not take a loss, that sounds very nice and lenient of them, but the dilemma is that what about if I or someone else decided to abuse that leniency to the limit, what then? So I can mess up my list by a card and swap my 1 of’s to potential 2 of’s for certain match-ups where it is great for me and get away with it when they see the deck submission. I’d be pretty upset if my opponent was found to be doing that somewhere down the line and realistically there is no recourse to “cheating” provided that it is very “soft” and capable of being labeled as an “oops, my mistake”. In general, they need to tighten up the tournament rules for the hugely competitive events, otherwise what reason do they give us to play tight and remember our triggers and payments for things???

I want to make sure that you aren’t mistaken by what I wrote. I’m not implying that we should be cheating each other or that it is even remotely fine or acceptable. It’s that we don’t have a Warning system for sloppy play or board states. If i forgot to maintain proper board state, give me a warning and at my 2nd or 3rd warning, give me a game loss. Most of the judges have said it themselves, if a mistake was made and can even be proven, if the game state has moved forward too far, then there is no going back since both players allowed it. There are players known for having messy board states and the tournament rules are just too lenient to punish their mistakes (whether it be in or against their favor), so what makes them strive to be better??

Day 2 – Top 32

Round of 32 – Justin Anderson – eYoda / Ani2 / Cass

Justin is a fellow Looper and on discord the day before the match (we knew our pairings), he decided to watch my recordings of my decks vs the mill match so he’d know what kinds of plays I’d be looking to make and my overall outlook on the match. This is what he said his face looked like during the videos:

I found that to be hilarious and I absolutely had to mention it. That’s a good one buddy!

So i fought over cutting AT-DP from the list and people swore up and down that I’d want or need it for mill. Low and behold the thing was in my opening and it did end up eating an Ani’s Pod at some point over the course of the game. Our Game 1 was an absolute slog and took forever, but things usually get really rough for the opponent when they are staring down Bazine’s control sides being snoked and I ended up pulling the game out.

Game 2 starts with Slave 1 coming down and that thing absolutely wrecked everything for him. I’d go as far as to say that Slave 1 eating Yoda dice is better than AT-DP eating the entire Ani’s pod. We end up finishing up Game 2 with like 10-15 minutes to spare of our 90 minute clock. There was a lot of methodical play going on since it only takes a single slip up to lose the game at this level.

I kept going for Yoda, but in one of the games I think I had 7 damage and killed Anakin as a consolation prize because he tanked up Yoda. Bazine ripping apart their hand or taking all of their resources is an utter nightmare for the Mill player. Win: 2-0

Round of 16 – Ben Cheung (sp?) – eTalzin 2x Commandos

Ben has small cards for each of his characters where he puts the health and shield tokens. It makes thing super visible and is pretty nice. Ben is the evil man who made the busted ass Nightcrawler from Hero Clix after he became World Champion in 2008.

We start on his Battlefield (Fort Anaxes) and I try pretty hard to take out his Talzin, but he really doesn’t allow it. I take a decent amount of ping damage and setup my ramp. One of the Commando’s ends up picking up a Force Power via Holocron and when I was doing my indirect damage Ben wasn’t too careful about spreading it out evenly so I ended up Sniping out the one carrying a Force Rend I think it was. I got to see his list and knew that he didn’t have any shield hate in his deck, so I just let Snoke take some damage and hid him behind a mountain of shields via Hound’s Tooth and the occasional Force Illusion. There was a point where he got out a Force Wave and in general was looking to kill my Bazine or First Order Stormtrooper and he was rerolling over and over for damage, but he had tunnel visioned into that and didn’t notice that I was representing lethal for his Talzin who happened to have 3 ranged damage showing in the pool, so he finally gets what he wanted, but then she died and her dice went with her. The lone Commando wouldn’t have been able to carry and we went to the next game. I now think that I’ve jumbled that up and that ending part was actually game 2. Game 1 I’m pretty sure, I dealt like 17 damage via a Natural Pilot in Round 3 or 4 to kill off the 2nd Commando and Talzin in the same round. This is what I get for writing this almost 2 weeks after it happened. I’m sorry! Win: 2-0

In both games I ended up killing off the Commando that was closest to his deck who we’ll call Fred. The surviving Commando is George. I’m not sure why Ben hated Fred so much, but he was fated to die. George usually got his ear take out by a Bazine special but lived to tell the tale for a while. If George and Talzin had won the match, i’m sure that they’d have a child and name it Fred for their fallen brethren’s honor! I really did plan to take out Talzin but she was always being pampered by shields and Force Illusion, so I did what any other villain would do, I take out who i can and move on.

We finished with a pretty good amount of time to spare so I went around and talked to people to figure out what was going on with everyone else. I got to watch my buddy Yodaz do silly noob shit against Agent of Zion and after the 3rd or 4th silly thing I had to walk away or I’d be like this guy trying to stop myself from yelling:

Round of 8 – NJCuenca – Rift Valley …. Dooku Talzin

In case the embed didn’t work, i left the stream link in the Round of 8 title. Nick coming out the cut with the King and Queen of consistency whilst also having their own equivalent to Frozen Wastes on tap. Watch the stream, because I can’t begin to tell you how frustrating Rift Valley is or how much of a load that thing carried. It ate me alive. I needed to play better to win and I didn’t. Nick probably also has some regrets, but he won, so those don’t matter lol. Talking about the match can be kind of pointless, but do know that Force Speed into Dooku rollouts is absolutely DISGUSTING!!! Nick, if you read this, then I need to know. Is this the first time you’ve beat me at the big events? Now that I think of it, we play each other in like every freaking National+ Level Swiss!!!

Watch 2018 US National Championship from TheChanceCube on www.twitch.tv

The following was done for the Looper Community and this article is so damned big that I decided to put it here as well since if you made it this far, you deserve some special sauce.

Fin

I thoroughly enjoy the mental battle during games and it’s the big thing that keeps me playing even though the prize structure is awful, but I also really like being able to hang with other like minded individuals and dork out so the whole weekend was a blast for me. I didn’t find time to hang out with Pearl Yeti and the Artificiery group like I was planning, but thems the breaks. Far too often I find myself in the grind and not enjoying the scenery around me. Would I change how I do things??, not one bit since striving to be at the top is in my genes, but I do wish that I got more testing in. It doesn’t matter how much I game on TTS on theorize, it’s super important to get the actual cards on the table against other good players so that I can properly work out the kinks. Broken stuff is really only BROKEN if it can continue doing the same things when fighting against another “Broken” deck. Much love goes out to the team, the Looper community, the content creators, the other teams, all of the other destiny players at the events and every one else who makes the whole experience great. Seriously though, how hard is it to get a damned MILKSHAKE there. I had to go to *cringe* Starbucks and even then it was all a sham!

Special shout out to Tommy Burns who I co-piloted with on the ride down to Nova and was also there to lend my friends cards because those bums were all missing random shit, like NJCuenca not having his Dooku dice and @everyone -ing our entire Looper community hoping to get them for Heat 1. Do i get to blame my mistakes, me borrowing dice for him, or Tommy having the dice for my loss??? No, I don’t??? I guess that is fair. Yall have a great one and thanks for reading!

~HonestlySarcastc

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