_________________ The Consortium: Crapmaster 2013, Crapgiver 2014; 1213 ADM graduates (40+ manager IDs) including 176K+ fights and 118K+ wins plus 4 teams with 1500+ wins (Animal Farm DM11 @2085; Bulldogs DM11 @ 1976; Lenpros DM30 @ 1792; Fandils DM46 @1727
DestNoble Unchartered Poster
Joined: Mar 02, 2016
Posts: 19
Posted:
Thu Jan 11, 2024 4:14 pm
Pizza on Friday night??
Greetings! As a local here in AZ, I'd be willing to take "indications of interest" on bringing pizza back to the hotel on Friday night around 6:00ish.
The pizza joint is Sal's Gilbert Pizza and I would get enough pizzas for all involved to get two slices and garlic knots which is more than enough for most appetites.
I would get some of Sal's specialty pizzas (ziti, taco, margarheta, desert heat as examples) as well as a few standard pizzas (supreme, pepp/sausage) - dependent of course on how many folks go in.
Last year, I think we got away with like $10/person...I think we can get pretty close to that again this year knock on wood.
The link to their website is below if you wanna check it out. I will try and have a final count by 4pm or so - so get sound off here if you want you (and or you and buddies) included in the count.
I only sent sandbaggers and some 15 FE Adepts looking for cheap tourney prep. Those 6 Adepts were designed to not reach R11 (and were prepared to throw the final fight if they reached 7-2). I had 8 non-ABs in Primus who were hunting for stylemaster prizes. And 3 of my 6 Challengers were barely over 30 FE and were just beginning the long prep for the class. So that was 17 warriors who had almost no chance to TV, leaving 27 warriors who were supposed to be competitive. Despite that handicap, my warriors did pretty well.
Record: 129-143-1-0 (47% win), with 3 TVs and 2 stylemasters
Contenders proved to be the highlight for me. My group of sandbaggers did well overall in the class, going 41-21-0, with two getting TVs. THIRD COURSE got her 7th Contenders TV, landing in 3rd-4th place. FISHWIFE got her 2nd TV, which will probably bump her up to Primus class for a spell. THIRD COURSE gave me my biggest hope of the tourney, as she kept winning and winning and I thought I might be able to to sneak in a TC. No such luck, as Earl of Lemongrab had her number and gave her two losses (with the other loss coming to Alucard in the semifinals).
The other TV came in Challengers, with a 9-3 performance by CAPTAIN COOK. My two other competitive Challengers did poorly, but it was nice to get a TV. Its a tough class, especially when you run a low volume like I do.
Adepts turned out great. I entered six 15 FE Adepts. Two of them went 5-3 to pick up 4 FE, and four of them went 3-3 or 2-3 to pick up 3 FE. Money well spent.
I also had a nice run with a sandbagging Eligible, who started out 7-0 and finished up at 7-3. That's a pretty good sign that the warrior is ready to bust-out and go for a TC soon.
Congrats to all the winners, TMM and HW especially for their 4 TCs, but also TUM, Doc Steele and Vlad for snatching one in the hardest tournament of the year. Thanks to Assur for being a great proxy, once again. I have booked my flight and hotel for the summer FtF in Minnesota, and will hope to make better showing in April before then.
Welcome to my second tourney writeup. The first one I wrote after the Cincy F2F and promptly forgot about it. I am posting it in the Cincy F2F thread even though it is 2 ½ years late. I usually don’t have a lot to say but this tourney surprised me. Here goes.
Having my funds crunched by car repairs left me with sending 4. 2 WS, 1 BA and 1 PR. By class, one each from Primus, Eligibles, ADM and Champs.
Cardinal Biggles, my Primus WS, has been disappointing lately getting a bunch of very high ranked matchups and playing second fiddle to The Perfect Drug for Stylemaster. This time, with a solid 2-3, he just squeaked by TPD for his first Stylemaster prize.
I know BA’s get worse as the classes get higher but I figured WtH. A small gateway skill bust led Old Man (Scene 24) to a 3-3 Eligibles tourney and that works for me.
I didn’t know how ADM would turn out but it was now or never for my PR, Dead Parrot. I needed to get him up to Primus for KoP this year and the split in April was his last chance to make it up there. Luckily, the turn before the freeze, she trained to 20 ST and got great damage. Now was the time. At the freeze she stood at 20(8 )-15(5)-7-20(3)-20(7)-4-21. The WT to 21 and DF to 25 bust propelled her to a 9-0 start and a 10-3 TV.
I had been looking looking for another WS to climb the ranks. Mason Fruitbat seemed to be the one going 7-3 in Rookies and 13-3 Runner Up in Inits in Cincy. Then, he was killed by Nicht (SL) at Halloween ‘21 and I thought him lost forever. Then, at Halloween ‘23 at 25fe, he proved he was indeed the one, going 8-3 to return to the living and at 30 fe, ready to take on Champs. He carved out another beautiful 7-3 and took home the Stylemaster.
Overall, with only 4 warriors I didn’t expect much. But 22-12, 1 TV and 2 Stylemasters makes this my best tourney ever. I want to thanks Riff Raff for proxying for me. He was a great help. I am praying that I can make it to Minneapolis. Congrats to all of the winners.
_________________ "Once the number 3, being the third number be reached, then lobest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who being naughty in my sight, SHALL SNUF IT!!!!!!!"
Managerr ArchMaster Poster
Joined: Jul 12, 2002
Posts: 4287
Location: Omaha
Posted:
Wed Jan 17, 2024 10:42 pm
I was literally planning this to be my worst tournament ever. I had have not been doing any prep. My goal was to win a stylemaster since in the last Mail-In, I had a solid 8 TVs, but 0 of those were stylemasters. (All the TVs were AB/LU/ST and none were the top style in their class) So this time I tried to send a representative of each style that was within the top 10% of the skill line in all of the ADM classes. So in Primus for example, I have 8 styles maxxed, so I sent 7 styles other than my AB's. A similar story
with Contenders, Eligibles and ADM too. However, most of these warriors were not very good and I was expecting the worst, but
sometimes you hope you are the only to enter a particular style in a particular class. Other than that my prep consisted of trying to bust an Eligible and an ADM out, but both had missed their hard trains and had to be put back in the box for another time. In basic I had to put together my
tourney roster by just searching "10 FE" and "4 FE" etc, which is not a good thing especially when this wasn't the first time I had done this lol.
So I felt I was pretty much feel like I was scraping the bottom of the barrel here.
Primus: Well the highlight of my Primus tourney was my 0-5 Striker winning the stylemaster! Normally when this happens, your warrior is the only one to enter that class, but he had to fend off 4 other Strikers who also went 0-5! So he's the best of a style that went 0-25 in Primus.
Other than that my stylemaster entries were pretty much a disaster with my non-AB's going a total of 9-23 in the class. As far as the tourney went,
I thought people were pretty optimistic it could be competitive, since other than maybe OAB, every manager with a greater than 0% chance to win the tourney was in attendance. But the results were still pretty brutal, after round 11 only TMM and TUM were left. TUM did manage to make it to the TC fight despite having about half the number of TVs, but Frankenberry pulls it out in the end. (TMM always seems to pull these 2 loss to 2 loss fights when its for the TC!)
Contenders: My 5 guys went 8-20 with no stylemasters. My 25-25-5-25-25-3-25 TP continutes to be a disaster going 0-5 this time. Anyway,
I thought TMM did a clever thing in advancing his WS to the finals knowing that it was a rougher match up for Alucard. I was hoping Alucard
would win, if only so we don't have to deal with him again 6 months from now.
Eligibles: I sent 6 warriors of 5 different styles, I thought all were pretty close to the line but no one did better than 2-3 anyway.
Didn't fight the TC but he looked overwhelmingly good.
ADM: A litle better, at least my stylemaster attempts are coming back with winning records. I did lose a few due to the unlucky bounce
of the split (I think) and I wonder how those guys would have done. It looked like a competitive group but the Jalon bustout was a class above
the rest of the field.
Freshmen: A little surprised that there were only TP's and BA's in the end. Was expecting some power style bustouts but I guess they couldn't
overcome all of the old guys in this division. My Freshmen squad was young but performed well. Tied for stylemasters records wise but didn't
have the FE to come out on top. But that's ok their time will come. (hopefully)
Challengers: A large portion of my crew was Challengers. I feel like they mostly did their job here with 3 TVs and 2 more 7-3's. I had a few
Challengers in the high 90's FE that I ended up taking over the skill line because it was their last hurrah. But the influx of dead challengers
combined with a few godlings made things really tough at the top and I was unable to break through Howling Wolf (and others) wall once again.
Champs and Adepts: I just sent mostly prep guys and it looked like I wasn't alone. Of the 155 Champs that were in the class, looks about 60 of them had less than 29 FE. Of the 187 adepts, look like around 70 of them had under 19 FE. So you had the opportunity to have good match ups if you were prepping and perhaps and easier run if you weren't.
Inits: I found 3 Strikers who actually had 10 FE, and one of them (who had been sitting idle for years) actually TV'd! The other two did pretty
well but it's a good style for that class. (Even if the finals came down to some AB's)
Apps: Only 4 Apprentices for me--I think 3 of them were under achieving rookies from previous FtFs. (And one decades old scum I brought out from the vault) The good news is that one of the common strikers I sent, I think I found his possible favorite weapon (and it was a good one), which gave him pretty much an auto-win against anything he could jump. The bad news is that he got jumped in the TC fight and runner-upped.
Rookies: So I didn't buy that many roll-ups since I decided to spend most of my roll-up money DA'ing warriors off my old basic teams that had Primus warriors on them. The bad news is that I didn't really get any stylemaster potential roll-ups on them but I did get some ok AB type warriors. I had a lot of 6-3 and 7-3's warriors here and to my dismay, I had only one TV after Round 10--a totally normal 11-9-11-17-17-8-11 LU (named "Normal"). (Keeping in mind I got the 11-10-5-21-21-x-11 roll-up in my sheets that didn't TV) While I did feel I had a good strategy package for Normal, he somehow kept winning a lot of coin flip battles including a fight where the beat a Fist AB with only parry damage. He somehow makes it to the TC fight and I'm like "Winning with bleah warriors is something that happens to managers like Crip and Floyd, could it happen to me?"
Apparently not, because he got toasted in the TC fight. And now he's likely headed to my "possible Frankenstein half" graveyard retirement home.
Bloodgames: Yuck. (But Congrats to the winners!)
Crapmaster: Let's not talk about it.
Grudge Fight: BOB stages a dramatic come from behind victory over the World where they had to win out to win the match and pulled it out!
Overall: Somehow I ended up with a winning record 284-280 despite being awful at the top. It was way way better than I deserved because of the lack of prep time but on the downside my Runner-Up Streak is now extended to 5, and that needs to be taken care of before it gets too high. I still don't know if I should invest in more stylemasters or not. I didn't really care about bonus potions, but zap potions can be signficantly better especially if you can be patient with them. I think while I was thinking about it the
last time RSI offered zap stylemasters, they switched back to bonus potions (which I think they probably will next time too) I'm planning on going to the Minneapolis FtF because it's driveable for me and in an actual Midwestern location this time. Hope to see all of you there!
The Consortium ArchMaster Poster
Joined: Nov 23, 2002
Posts: 10142
Location: on the golf course, in the garden, reading, traveling, and now Consulting
Posted:
Fri Jan 19, 2024 7:40 am
A Consortium Tourney – So Much More Than A Normal FTF
1. #70! Is it really possible that there have been 70? Really! Amazing! As best as I can tell, I have only missed 6 or 7. What many friends I have made. What fun I have had. What an investment. (A big one at that!) But I did get a really neat FTF70 Tee Shirt.
2. I almost did not make it due to my own imbecility. Seven days before the event, I examined my long-ago made reservation only to realize the ticket was for exactly one week later. No FTF for me! Luckily, I caught it and was able to get a revised ticket, even though flights were awfully full by then. I arrived around noon Thursday and got our room.
Rooming with Mannequin was a hoot! Well, when he finally decided to show up. His flights were cancelled (Alaskan AA – door issue) and he was on last-minute alternatives which weren’t on time or going so well. I kept texting to see where he was but by 9pm I texted I was going to bed and locked up. I woke up at 1:30AM – no Mannequin in the room yet. I got up at 5:30, showered and went down to eat. (By then I was wondering if I should call the police thinking he must have been in an accident.) I waited. I was seriously worried! After breakfast I sent a text again asking what gives and expressing my serious worries. I almost immediately got a reply – “I’m here”. I called and then I opened the door. He came in and I heard the story.
He arrived at the motel around midnight after getting in late, taking a long time to get the truck (for our golfing) from the rental. He got his key to the room and tried it, getting a “yellow”. He took his faulty key back and got another key. Yellow again. He went back and quizzed the clerk. The key was working correctly. “Yellow” means the inside safety latch is set and they can do little except break the door down! So Mannequin, thinking the old man in the room asleep wouldn’t hear a phone call or text ping, went back to the truck and SLEPT IN THE TRUCK all night. (Washington State people are so silly!)
I had not realized what setting the safety latch would do, or I was too tired or too old-minded to realize what setting that lock would do. I apologized and felt bad. But, it did make for one heck of a story. (I am still chuckling about it!)
3. The most exciting resultant of the tournament for me was winning BOTH the Crapmaster and Crapgiver in the same tournament. It has never been done before!!!!! I had before won each, but this was special. My three warriors were 3-3-0 basher, 3-3-0 striker, 11-3-1 basher. A TV! A pretty deep rookie TV! Who, but me, would have thought that I could make a 15-5-12-7-20-18-7 warrior successful? Thanks to Howlin Wolf for giving me that crappy team sheet, and thanks to Managerr for managing the crappy team sheet I gave him to a one win resultant. Eighteen roll-up sheets and 4 potions later I celebrated! Yes!
4. Other than that, I did pretty mediocre with only 2 TVs, quite a few 7-3s and 6-3s for a 55% w/l record. I only ran Rookies through Challengers and only one Challenger at that. My Crapmaster Basher carried my day. It was a well-run event, with 30 Managers there Face-To-Face.
5. In the Bob-Vs-The World Grudge Matches, the Bob was behind 2-3 but Managerr won the last fight (which was worth 2 points) to carry the day. The Dirtbags! We have been doing these grudge matches since way back in the days of The Fonz. (Managerr and I are the two carry-overs who have kept the event alive for many years.)
6. Golf-wise I did poorly with high 90+ all three rounds. The team of Jerman/Vlad smoked Mannequin/Consortium in the return grudge match. Kudos to Jerman for a one-over 73! Wowser! Sandbagger!I did manage to squeak out a win over Vlad that Friday. In my third 18 of the w/e (Mannequin and I played 36 Monday.) Vlad came back and beat me in the afternoon round. I won’t congratulate him for that win, but I will congratulate him for a fine, fine TC! Way to go, Hokie!
7. Very early Tuesday (4:45am) I went down to the lobby to check us out and get a receipt prior to Mannequin delivering me to the airport. The clerk asked me if I had checked my flights as several visitors had extended their stay due to flight cancellations and changes. Oh, my! The stress was rising. I had not done the on-line check-in the day before. I rushed back to the room, and tried to do so, but the site notified me I had to check in at the desk. (Unusual) Here I was carrying a computer bag, a 29 pound suitcase and a 39 pound golf bag! I told Mannequin I knew I was in trouble. and was quite stressed. When I got to Delta, the check in lines were L O N G. Luckily, being a Million Miler allowed me to enter the express check line only to find all was well. In the end, both of my flights (PHX/ATL/GSP) were on-time and arrived slightly early. (I learned later that Mannequin did not have such good luck on the way home Wednesday.)
It was a great event, a fun time, a reunion of friends. Thanks to you all.
_________________ The Consortium: Crapmaster 2013, Crapgiver 2014; 1213 ADM graduates (40+ manager IDs) including 176K+ fights and 118K+ wins plus 4 teams with 1500+ wins (Animal Farm DM11 @2085; Bulldogs DM11 @ 1976; Lenpros DM30 @ 1792; Fandils DM46 @1727
One Armed Bandit ArchMaster Poster
Joined: Apr 15, 2004
Posts: 2958
Posted:
Fri Jan 19, 2024 8:25 am
Finals of each tourney class for easy reference:
200: Frankenberry AB (TMM) over Pepp AB (TUM)
201: Earl of Lemongrab WS (TMM) over Alucard AB (Chief I)
202: JMJ AB (HW) over Worth The Wait LU (TMM)
203: Happy-Go-Linty AB (TUM) over Divinity PR (Mannequin)
204: Steaming Earl TP (TMM) over The Professor TP (HW)
205: Whowhat AB (HW) over Clever Stab LU (HW)
206: Hornswoggle LU (Doc Steele) over Pestilence LU (DMobster)
207: Cruel Steel LU (HW) over Talorin Redfeather WS (Mannequin)
208: Major Lilywhite AB (TMM) over Furry S. Mason AB (TUM)
209: Freight Train ST (HW) over Bamob ST (Mgrr)
210: Tremors Backlash AB (Vlad) over Normal LU (Mgrr)
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