LeftiesWillRule's brother Aaron, finished 4rth. You might say it was a family fued for in the finals. Well, if you DID say that, then Steve and Aaron's family won the fued, going 3-0 against the McNaneys. For me though, that wasn't the story of the tournament. First, here's my squad:
JimHatesOzzel
Scourge 55
Arica 31
Potty Palps 33
Admiral Ozzel 11
Thrawn 32
Mas Amedda 8
Lobot 27
Ugnaught 3
Reinforcements were Amanin Scout, Gran, Rodian if I had an activation advantage, otherwise I at least matched activations.
The reason I played Potty Palps was because of the shortened timeframe...I wanted to be in gambit and force my opponents to have to come to me. Since I learned of this before the tournament, I did share that via email and pms to anyone I thought was coming or at least thinking about it so that we'd all have access to the same information. Using Potty Palps took away an attack piece, but really opened the possibilities for not only Arica and Scourge but also the rest of the squad. Reluctantly I used Ozzel...I hate trying to run a swap squad with him, but in playtesting I just could not get results, and I was committed to Potty Palps being in there.
In swiss I went 3-1 and scored 8 points with 2 3pt wins. That got me the second seed in the playoff. Unfortunately Kris got #3 and we had to play each other, while Steve played his brother Aaron. I scored gambit in every round of every game I played.
Kris and I both started fast, with him moving Juno into gambit round 1 and me moving Arica up to kill Juno at the beginning of round 2. He sniped at her with Boba and yes, round 2 scored a disintegration on her. Down 36-18 after 2 rounds, I really had to work hard with only 1 power piece to catch up, but by round 4 it was 39-39. I moved ahead by 13 at the end of 5, then in the final round he killed Ozzel with a bothan-assisted Boba attack to draw within 2. But because he was out of position, I was able to go after an ERC with Vader and stretched the lead to 18. He had 1 activation left...Boba. He could not reach Vader, Thrawn was safe...he could only get to a pristine Potty Palps. With a crowd now at the table, he announced "I need a 20 to win." He got it, and I lost a game that I thought I had in the bag.
In retrospect, I think I'd MUCH rather lose a game like that than do something stupid and make a mistake myself. We've had a lot of laughs talking about that game already...I was proud of the way I came back even with the 11 pt mini from hell. We all had a great time there and I want to congratulate LeftiesWillRule for winning the regional and going undefeated. And I'd like to congratulate Joe for running a great tournament despite the time constraints. Unfortunately we only had 11, and a badge was not given out. The guys from Philly wanted to come, but had transportation issues and we sorely missed them. It was a pleasure meeting all of you yesterday and I know the central Pa guys had a great time. Spryguy...thanks for taking the initiative and posting...I was too played out after I got home to do anything but watch in dismay as my Flyers got crushed by the Blackhawks in game 5 of the Stanley Cup. Kris, of course, was rooting for the Blackhawks. He is SO grounded.
I was surprised at how well he did with no door control. We ended up going head to head twice in a row; we were matched up in the fourth swiss round, and then in the semifinals.