magnumcyclonex
Virus!
GenCon 2006 Experience
Day 1
So my friends (Josh Hansen, Simon Choy, and Jonathan Hau) and I planned this trip several months ago. We had decided to make the 6 hour drive down to Anaheim to play in Gen Con and the SJC. For what seemed like eternity, it was the longest wait in anticipation of the biggest trip we'd make together this year.
We decided to leave on Friday night at around 7pm and arrive at So Cal early Saturday morning. It was finally Friday morning and I could not concentrate in class. When the professor was lecturing, my eyes were always at the clock, and when I was supposed to follow a protocol under the laminar flow hood (it's a fluorescent microscopy lec/lab course) I almost screwed up big time. Needless to say, my lab partner was pretty pissed at me. I felt really bad I almost let her down that day. The 3 part experiment wasn't going too well ever since Monday and she was especially mad because she wasn't there that day either. I guess I somehow could not over react and jump up and down in joy because it was finally THE Friday we'd leave for Gen Con, and yet, my mind was already on a different plane.
So"¦after apologizing a million times to my lab partner, I watched some anime, played the only game I play when I'm nervously waiting for something (SFA3) and finally, Jon arrives past 5 at my place. We go to his place, I play Fifa 2005 on the XBOX. I load up the saved game (playing as Arsenal in the Premier League "“ currently 1st). I beat an average team 1-0 and then face off Man U. They take the lead early in the first half and I fight back but let another slip by in the 2nd half. I score a consolation goal and Jon's packed up and ready to go. Naturally, I don't save (first time I've done that "“ honest!) and we go to pick up Josh.
About an hour later, we're at Simon's place and we get his stuff and hit the road. The ride down was great. We shared jokes, told stories, listened to the radio etc. We had dinner at this diner (Red Robbins?), similar to Denny's. Our orders were screwed up several times and they still charged us full. We didn't make a big deal out of it and continued on to So Cal.
It's past midnight, we check into our hotel and we unpack and start playing. Simon wants me to convert to his Hydro deck, but I don't buy it. I'm running a Warrior deck with some tech. I make some changes and continue playtesting. Josh is running 3 Zaborgs, and in one game, I Confiscation-ed him having all 3 and Pot. Overall, we break even amongst each other, except for poor Jon. He's running "Tripping Clowns, Falling Bunnies" and since it was Simon's idea, he got destroyed by Mr. Choy too many times.
We finally get to bed at 3am and get 3-4 hours of sleep. I'm the first up, so I do all the morning stuff and wait for the others to wake up.
After breakfast is done in the hotel lobby, we go to the convention center. It's huge, and there is so much space for all the different card games and events there. I collect my FREE 4 day pass from the booth "“ Metagame special offer, and we all go to sign up for the SJC and write down decklists.
SJC doesn't start until 11am, so we wander around to the Exhibitor's Area and check out some cool things. There's lots of stuff to demo like Spoils, Pirates, WoW, and of course face off (Kevin/Justin) in a 2 on 2 Duel the Master event. The line was long so we just check things out (and I took some pics). Around 10.50, we go back to the YGO area and we are a little surprised Table Numbers aren't up. There are 5 minutes left before the SJC is supposed to begin and it was still clocking in with nearly 600 players. Then, Simon, being "The Man" is asked to help out. Apparently, the PES staff had not anticipated such a big turnout. So Simon asks us if we want to judge. We were like:
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm"¦"¦"¦"¦"¦"¦"¦..
Eventually, after much thought, Josh and I say yes, and we leave it to Jon to take his deck to play. The 3 of us had not anticipated anything like this, so I was in Jeans and Josh was in Shorts when we had out pics taken here:
http://www.metagame.com/yugioh.aspx?tabid=33&ArticleId=7496
(2nd pic from bottom. Yes, it wasn't the best of my days in terms of appearance) Oh, and Simon's shirt is supposed to say "I Scored Last Night"
So anyways, we're the pairings/standings/match-slips/extra hands judges and Round 1 is 15 pages long (each!) worth of Master Player List and Pairings. Considering all 600+ players were ready for the Jump, it wasn't very easy to get around to the Obelisks to post the papers.
Since I wasn't a player, I can't write about the round by round experience. From a judge's perspective, I managed calls from every corner of the area (despite being assigned to a general area) and got to see the full array of what people decided to run. I saw plenty of DW, Monarchs, and of course Stein. I estimate Stein had 70% to do with winning games that day.
It took a little while to get adjusted to the names of the different judges I had to work with. I'm glad for the name tags they had so by Round 3, I could call everyone by name.
As the day turned into night, Josh, myself and Simon had already questioned ourselves many times on why we said "yes" at 11am. Sure the number of remaining players depleted to less than 250, and sure the list of pairings only took 10 pages or less, but we were so tired, especially with all the trash and crowdedness of the whole place that we were ready to just give up. But we didn't.
Simon, with the help of John Danker, who is an awesome judge/person ran the 5pm regional, while Josh and I continued to toil on through the Jump. It didn't help that in almost every round, the End of Match Procedure did not lead to the swift ending of matches. Of course, emotions were very high for the players involved and their friends. But, it doesn't help when I as a judge have to tell players to sign the match-slips multiple times before they actually signed them.
If you don't sign it, what just happened in the last 40+ minutes didn't happen.
Having judged several Nor Cal events with Cascade Games in San Jose, a lot of the Nor Cal players know me. I'm rooting for them between the rounds and it is always fun to see some of them climb up and hover around the top tables:
Little Alex Hin (Nor Cal) was at Table 2 with +2 when Justin Trias (also Nor Cal) topped a Tomato for exact game. Sai Cha (Nor Cal) was supposed to play Matt Laurents (2006 Worlds Competitor) but Matt was removed from the SJC after a deckcheck. Sai then went on to play Theeresak Poonsombat (2004 Worlds Competitor) in the Feature Match but lost on a Game 3 technicality. Billy Ho (Nor Cal) ended up with an oh so close 9th. And even though he's So Cal, Kirk Leonhardt pushed a Macrocosmos/D fissure deck to a top 8 finish.
The Jump Swiss was over, but we waited for Simon and John to finish the regional. Most of the other judges and PES staff had taken off by midnight. We took Mr. Danker to dinner and had a good time together, sharing jokes, stories and the day's experiences. Dinner was alright but the best part for me was the Strawberry Milkshake.
After dropping John off at his hotel, the 4 of us crashed at our own place. We all decided to challenge Kevin/Justin in Duel the Master and Jon built a carbon copy of Simon's Hydro deck for a team up. They played and then we all slept. Day 1 was officially over for us at 4am.
Day 2 to come up shortly.
Day 1
So my friends (Josh Hansen, Simon Choy, and Jonathan Hau) and I planned this trip several months ago. We had decided to make the 6 hour drive down to Anaheim to play in Gen Con and the SJC. For what seemed like eternity, it was the longest wait in anticipation of the biggest trip we'd make together this year.
We decided to leave on Friday night at around 7pm and arrive at So Cal early Saturday morning. It was finally Friday morning and I could not concentrate in class. When the professor was lecturing, my eyes were always at the clock, and when I was supposed to follow a protocol under the laminar flow hood (it's a fluorescent microscopy lec/lab course) I almost screwed up big time. Needless to say, my lab partner was pretty pissed at me. I felt really bad I almost let her down that day. The 3 part experiment wasn't going too well ever since Monday and she was especially mad because she wasn't there that day either. I guess I somehow could not over react and jump up and down in joy because it was finally THE Friday we'd leave for Gen Con, and yet, my mind was already on a different plane.
So"¦after apologizing a million times to my lab partner, I watched some anime, played the only game I play when I'm nervously waiting for something (SFA3) and finally, Jon arrives past 5 at my place. We go to his place, I play Fifa 2005 on the XBOX. I load up the saved game (playing as Arsenal in the Premier League "“ currently 1st). I beat an average team 1-0 and then face off Man U. They take the lead early in the first half and I fight back but let another slip by in the 2nd half. I score a consolation goal and Jon's packed up and ready to go. Naturally, I don't save (first time I've done that "“ honest!) and we go to pick up Josh.
About an hour later, we're at Simon's place and we get his stuff and hit the road. The ride down was great. We shared jokes, told stories, listened to the radio etc. We had dinner at this diner (Red Robbins?), similar to Denny's. Our orders were screwed up several times and they still charged us full. We didn't make a big deal out of it and continued on to So Cal.
It's past midnight, we check into our hotel and we unpack and start playing. Simon wants me to convert to his Hydro deck, but I don't buy it. I'm running a Warrior deck with some tech. I make some changes and continue playtesting. Josh is running 3 Zaborgs, and in one game, I Confiscation-ed him having all 3 and Pot. Overall, we break even amongst each other, except for poor Jon. He's running "Tripping Clowns, Falling Bunnies" and since it was Simon's idea, he got destroyed by Mr. Choy too many times.
We finally get to bed at 3am and get 3-4 hours of sleep. I'm the first up, so I do all the morning stuff and wait for the others to wake up.
After breakfast is done in the hotel lobby, we go to the convention center. It's huge, and there is so much space for all the different card games and events there. I collect my FREE 4 day pass from the booth "“ Metagame special offer, and we all go to sign up for the SJC and write down decklists.
SJC doesn't start until 11am, so we wander around to the Exhibitor's Area and check out some cool things. There's lots of stuff to demo like Spoils, Pirates, WoW, and of course face off (Kevin/Justin) in a 2 on 2 Duel the Master event. The line was long so we just check things out (and I took some pics). Around 10.50, we go back to the YGO area and we are a little surprised Table Numbers aren't up. There are 5 minutes left before the SJC is supposed to begin and it was still clocking in with nearly 600 players. Then, Simon, being "The Man" is asked to help out. Apparently, the PES staff had not anticipated such a big turnout. So Simon asks us if we want to judge. We were like:
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm"¦"¦"¦"¦"¦"¦"¦..
Eventually, after much thought, Josh and I say yes, and we leave it to Jon to take his deck to play. The 3 of us had not anticipated anything like this, so I was in Jeans and Josh was in Shorts when we had out pics taken here:
http://www.metagame.com/yugioh.aspx?tabid=33&ArticleId=7496
(2nd pic from bottom. Yes, it wasn't the best of my days in terms of appearance) Oh, and Simon's shirt is supposed to say "I Scored Last Night"
So anyways, we're the pairings/standings/match-slips/extra hands judges and Round 1 is 15 pages long (each!) worth of Master Player List and Pairings. Considering all 600+ players were ready for the Jump, it wasn't very easy to get around to the Obelisks to post the papers.
Since I wasn't a player, I can't write about the round by round experience. From a judge's perspective, I managed calls from every corner of the area (despite being assigned to a general area) and got to see the full array of what people decided to run. I saw plenty of DW, Monarchs, and of course Stein. I estimate Stein had 70% to do with winning games that day.
It took a little while to get adjusted to the names of the different judges I had to work with. I'm glad for the name tags they had so by Round 3, I could call everyone by name.
As the day turned into night, Josh, myself and Simon had already questioned ourselves many times on why we said "yes" at 11am. Sure the number of remaining players depleted to less than 250, and sure the list of pairings only took 10 pages or less, but we were so tired, especially with all the trash and crowdedness of the whole place that we were ready to just give up. But we didn't.
Simon, with the help of John Danker, who is an awesome judge/person ran the 5pm regional, while Josh and I continued to toil on through the Jump. It didn't help that in almost every round, the End of Match Procedure did not lead to the swift ending of matches. Of course, emotions were very high for the players involved and their friends. But, it doesn't help when I as a judge have to tell players to sign the match-slips multiple times before they actually signed them.
If you don't sign it, what just happened in the last 40+ minutes didn't happen.
Having judged several Nor Cal events with Cascade Games in San Jose, a lot of the Nor Cal players know me. I'm rooting for them between the rounds and it is always fun to see some of them climb up and hover around the top tables:
Little Alex Hin (Nor Cal) was at Table 2 with +2 when Justin Trias (also Nor Cal) topped a Tomato for exact game. Sai Cha (Nor Cal) was supposed to play Matt Laurents (2006 Worlds Competitor) but Matt was removed from the SJC after a deckcheck. Sai then went on to play Theeresak Poonsombat (2004 Worlds Competitor) in the Feature Match but lost on a Game 3 technicality. Billy Ho (Nor Cal) ended up with an oh so close 9th. And even though he's So Cal, Kirk Leonhardt pushed a Macrocosmos/D fissure deck to a top 8 finish.
The Jump Swiss was over, but we waited for Simon and John to finish the regional. Most of the other judges and PES staff had taken off by midnight. We took Mr. Danker to dinner and had a good time together, sharing jokes, stories and the day's experiences. Dinner was alright but the best part for me was the Strawberry Milkshake.
After dropping John off at his hotel, the 4 of us crashed at our own place. We all decided to challenge Kevin/Justin in Duel the Master and Jon built a carbon copy of Simon's Hydro deck for a team up. They played and then we all slept. Day 1 was officially over for us at 4am.
Day 2 to come up shortly.
