FTF 2012 Tempe Comments and Thoughts

Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2012 10:39 am

Brief random comments from us Consortium folk .........

1. Same fine motel accommodations; the place is like home
2. Pre dinner Thurs night with early birds and RSI folk was a great idea
3. Right at 28 attendees (a GOOD turnout)
4. Mannequin brought his son (age 11) and Mini-Mannequin seemed like a great kid - not at all like his father Wink

5. The Crapmaster was a new and fun event. Thanks to Otto for "running" it, and congrats to Buri for winning the title CRAPMASTER
6. Was really great to see Assur again at tournaments after a long hiatus.
7. Do not know all the winners (BG, TC, et al) but surely Manneger will post at a later date. Do know it was a proud day for The Consortium to claim the Adepts TC. (Note on Manager's prediction list that there is no mention of us old folk; hmmm.)
8. Have to congratulate The BOB for overwhelming "The World" (including The Consortium) in the long, long after-event grudge matches. (Since BOB won we are SURE that Manager will post a very detailed summary of this event!) Have to also tell TGG just what we think of him Evil or Very Mad

for killing our great damage godling aimer - that went 10-3 in rookies - in the grudge matches. Have to admit the KD's were very low, it was fair and appropriate, the aim points were limbs, and our warrior did not at all fight like a godling. Oh, and it was an infirmary death. Nevertheless, TGG, you *&#@!!!!
9. Was pleased to lead one of our proxies to three TV's in Challengers. Love those warriors, LP! (Sorry Crip and Slugbait.)
10. Was a solid tournament for us - sent 50 (includes 3 in Crapmasters), was 63% W/L, had 6 awards, one of which was a TC.
11. Had great fun and appreciated everyone who attended. Had some great conversations with "the family".
12. Bought Dark Arena from Mark Manley. Looks good. (not read yet) Looking forward to the read. Intend to give him feedback.

Advanced Master Poster Joined: Mar 08, 2004 Posts: 440

I wish I could attend once, seems like the place to be Very Happy

Congrats for your TC, you got the TC feeling again, didnt you ?

And finally, thanks again for guiding my guys, one day the Challengers TC will be ours Rolling Eyes

... it was great fun to read the newsletters with the heart racing like always. With 4 guys standing after turn 9, and even more when Perce Poitrail beat Balcony, crazy hopes were born, but the incredible 0-2 start was too heavy on his shoulders.

Advanced Master Poster Joined: Apr 11, 2011 Posts: 309

LePentarque wrote:

I wish I could attend once, seems like the place to be Very Happy

Dude it is the place to be. If you love this game, F2F's are the best part
Lee and Sandy do a great job.

Congrats for your TC, you got the TC feeling again, didnt you ?

And finally, thanks again for guiding my guys, one day the Challengers TC will be ours Rolling Eyes

... it was great fun to read the newsletters with the heart racing like always. With 4 guys standing after turn 9, and even more when Perce Poitrail beat Balcony, crazy hopes were born, but the incredible 0-2 start was too heavy on his shoulders.

9-0 run after 2 losses is very impressive, congratulations

And hopefully when I get a job I can return, not only to regular arenas, but possibly a F2F in the near future.

Site Admin Joined: Jun 20, 2002 Posts: 1300

The face was really very nice this time out. The room felt a little small and it got a bit hot form time to time but it was very fun.

For whatever reason I had no extra time to go down to happy hour for drinks this time out. Maybe turns were just moving along too quickly. I would like to have had an hour to go hang out and have some drinking/talking time on Saturday. There was a dinner break of course... but that time was spent catching up on turns and scarfing down food Smile

Some thoughts on my tourney:
Primus - Final 3 but foiled by Webbed Toes again. I don't know how to crack that nut.
Contenders - I still have no clue how to do well in this class. I guess I just need more guys and more prizes to throw at it.
Eligibles - Nothing to speak about here. My guy that went 10-3 last time chumped out at like 1-3 this time. Odd that.
ADM - I busted out a long time parked AB and picked up the TC. I really wanted some max damage pots and this was my best shot. I busted out some wing mates as well and I had one AB go far deeper than I expected possible. Maybe I should 'fix' him too sometime in the future and make him a sandbagging contender.
Freshmen - Nothing to speak of here.
Challengers - My old STer sandbaggers no longer make the cut. Need some TPs, ABS, and LUs to park here.
Champs - Nothing to talk about. No prospects.
Adepts - Same
Inits - I thought I had a ligitimate shot here. If I had had a Favs potion for my guy he would have won for sure. I think I will park him at 20 FE till I can get a favs potion for him. He will be getting damage to go along with the bonus.
Apps - A total surprise here. A 'filler' STer TCs for me. I ran him as a rookie at Tempe last year and he chumped out early. But he came back and was able to TC with only an Adex decise. I was stoked for him to win!
Rooks - I was crushed. But I suppose I should have know that from the get go this time.

Absolute highpoint - Getting my first blood games warrior out. It was a WS in the MI version. It only has a single 21...and I dont know how to run WS in AD... so I'm not sure exactly what to do... but I will figure something out!

Absolute Lowpoint - My AB in the face version of the blood games ended up in the #3 spot. But the guy just above me was an AB... so I didnt get out. This is the last thing on my 'to-do' list in the game so it was painful.

This is probably my most successful tourney of all time. I have TCd 3 times at a face before... but I've never gotten a BGer out so I am weighting that higher than a TC (for now anyway). So the 2XTC + 1xBG > 3xTC.

I ran right at 65 entrants, had about a 60% WL. 8 TVs with 2 going on to TC.

Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2012 1:54 pm

It was great to come to another face. I intend to show my face much more regularly than in the past (probably once a year for now).

I had no clue how well I'd do. I suspected not well at all, simply because more than 80% of my entries (80+3 crapmaster entries total) were in the Inits or lower. I had no real expectations, mainly hoping to not embarrass (or even worse - discourage) myself. With a Runner-Up, 7 other TV's, and a 54.5% win percentage, I was very, very pleased and achieved as much as I'd hoped for.

Highlights:
- Seeing everyone!
- Crapmaster contest. All those years as an arena manager running true junk have clearly given me insight into what crap really looks like; the team I submitted was the crappiest performing team! Huge fun, hope to see this become a tradition.
- Sitting in a chair with my own warrior (All my prior TC's and RU's were in mail ins). And if I'm going to lose, I'm glad it was to Wayne - he's just lucky I didn't use one of my super secret strategies, but if I'd used that strategy, everyone in the room would have seen it and it wouldn't have been a secret anymore. (Good fight, Wayne!)
- The excitement of the later rounds. Sunday was pretty intense and even though my warriors started dropping quick, the thrill of fighting for a TV or to go deep into the runoffs is intense.

Lowlights:
- My lone primus entry only faced a single AB. I was hoping to be able to try out a unique strategy against Fist AB's. Instead, he faced 4 Lungers in his 5 rounds. The strategy worked as expected (possibly better than expected), but is not going to overthrow the fist domination we all love (He lost the fight).
- 7 deaths, including a champ and a 9-0 rookie. Nothing that is hard to replace, but I'd always rather not see the deaths. I did give as good as I got, killing 7 of my opponents.
- I was mostly too busy to enjoy things along the way. Next year, I can't see running so many. I don't regret it, but I was very busy. I can only remember one mistake I made in strategy, so at least I wasn't making errors from going too fast and furious. (Other managers may consider the strategy choices I made mistakes, but the mistake I'm talking about is a strategy that shouldn't have been used for the fight - the others were decisions I made to run my warriors in the silly ways I do, sometimes for no other reason that it will give me more personal pleasure)

ArchMaster Poster Joined: Apr 15, 2004 Posts: 2466

I had a great tourney and it was good to see everyone, as always. I ran 51 warriors and won 10 awards, going 219-148-4-3.

The highlights:
- Champs TC with Urchin in a ST on ST bout. Khisanth and I split the prize beforehand and I don't regret it as our warriors appeared evenly matched.
- ADM RU with Prisoner 0118, an AB bust-out similar to my TC from this past summer. She lost to a superior warrior in Turd Burglar and there is no shame in that.
- Challengers RU with my TP, Prisoner 1371. That is his 2nd runner up and he gave TUM's AB a run for his money.
- ADM TV with a Basher! Hortator has just become my most successful BA ever, having picked up two Freshman TVs prior to this. Pretty cool.

The lowlights:
- Lost a 21 WT/21 DF +4 Defense AB on round 1 of the Adepts. At least he is timed for the Dead Adepts!
- Lost a 21 WT/21 WL max damaged LU in the Rookies. I can't find the silver lining in this one.
- I did horrible in the Bloodgames. The great SZ 7 experiment of 2012 is officially over. I'm back to SZ 3 warriors for this summer.

All in all, a great tournament for me, despite the casualties. Sorry for the brevity, but I'm posting from my tablet while visiting my parents in Arizona.

Congrats to the Consortium, Floyd, LHI, TMM, and TUM on their TCs! I will see some of you in Philly this summer. My warriors hope to see all of you in the Spring Mail-in!

Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2012 8:15 pm

I had a great time in Tempe! It was by far my best tournament of my career, despite not netting a TC or RU. 10 TVs total (1 frosh, 6 app and 3 rookie) and a BG winner from the FtF bloodgames. Out of 67 that ran (including 3 from the Crapmaster contest), that's 15% award rate. Overall W/L is around 56%.

I made a point of running someone in every class and at least one warrior of every style. It probably hurt my W/L% because there were a few that were run just for giggles.

Primus - Ran my maxxed WS and went 1-4, only win coming via some LU nobody'd heard of.
Contenders - Ran two here for the first time. My previous hopeful managed only a 2-3 but did hand a loss to the RU. The newbie went 3-3.
Eligibles - Tried busting out a LU that was already part busted. Didn't do that well, and exited at 5-3. Also ran an AB for the first time, not busting, and went 6-3. Gotta love those ABs!
ADM - really had no business running in this class. 'Nuff said.
Freshmen - TV'd with a TP, and also ran a few long-retired guys just to see what the new dynamic is like.
Challengers - Ran my remaining perennial sandbag LU and managed yet another 7-3 (grrr). Also broke out a new crop of future sandbaggers with surprisingly good results. Might be a good tourney for me in a couple years.
Champs - The 21/21 WT/WL lunger with 146 skills going in pulls a pathetic 1-3. The 25 FE scum I'd run just to pick up some FE goes 4-3.
Adepts - Only one guy in this class. Did well but not great.
Inits - I was supposed to have a very good LU running but it wasn't entered and I missed that fact before the tourney started. Oh well.
Apprentices - possibly the most amazing run I've had. I'll have to figure the W/L for this class because I entered 11 guys and 6 TV'd. Another went 7-3. Two of the TVs went 14 and 15 rounds respectively. I did beat the eventual TC but couldn't put togther the right combo of matchups and strategies to get into the finals.
Rookies - Ran a lot of fluff and some experiments and a few paid off. Three TVs - an off-the-shelf garden variety WS, a little damage AB and a brick-with-a-brain TP.

Rookies was also home to the first ever crapmaster tournament. I'll do a separate writeup on how that went, but everyone was quite surprised on how well the unwanted warriors fared. The best were two 6-3s. I had matched my regular rookies against six of the "crap" warriors and lost to four of them. Maybe that speaks more to the low quality that I run in rookies.... My best crapper was a 9 WT, 9 WL AB that went 4-3.

Bloodgames - won the FtF bloodgames for the second consecutive tourney, this time graduating a PR, of all things, at 6-4-4. Probably not a whole lot of AD potential there, but he may become a fixture in the ADM tourney in the years to come.

ArchMaster Poster Joined: Apr 15, 2004 Posts: 2466

Did a little more analysis of my tourney, and I'm pleased with the diversity of my award winners.

The 3 warriors who were in finals fights were of 3 different styles: AB, TP, and ST. While they are arguably the best tourney styles, its nice to have 3 different ones represented.

Of my 10 TV/TCs, 6 styles were represented: 2 AB, 2 ST, 2 TP, 2 SL, 1 PR, and 1 BA. The most notable absence from this list is LU.

Overall, I am quite pleased with the diversity of styles, even if the vast majority of TC/RUs in this tourney were STs and ABs. I definitely feel like I can continue to be competitive with the less popular styles.

Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 5:23 pm

One Armed Bandit wrote:

Did a little more analysis of my tourney, and I'm pleased with the diversity of my award winners.

The 3 warriors who were in finals fights were of 3 different styles: AB, TP, and ST. While they are arguably the best tourney styles, its nice to have 3 different ones represented.

Of my 10 TV/TCs, 6 styles were represented: 2 AB, 2 ST, 2 TP, 2 SL, 1 PR, and 1 BA. The most notable absence from this list is LU.

Overall, I am quite pleased with the diversity of styles, even if the vast majority of TC/RUs in this tourney were STs and ABs. I definitely feel like I can continue to be competitive with the less popular styles.

While I agree that those are 3 of the 4 easiest styles to have success with, LU being the other. Do not discount success with an AB. While they have become dominant at all levels over the past 4-5 years there must be a particular way to run the AB as I've had some really good ones not even come close to TVing. I've had at least 3 go 5-0 only to miss out on a TV. You obviously had to do some work finding out what that way of running them effectively is.

Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 6:40 pm

Just wanted to pop in and say it was great to see everyone! I had a good time...

I've got my FtF Journal about half done, but life's a little busy right now--so it might not be this weekend until I finish.

Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2012 2:26 pm

So as usual attending the FTF was a blast! It's always great seeing the usual suspects and chatting about Duelmasters and life outside of the game. It's also great putting faces and personailities with names you see on the DM boards and in the chat room. I had the pleasure to meet Assur, Seraphim, Destitute Noble and the Gervais clan for the first time which was a nice treat.

As far as tourney performance goes, I can't be upset with 6 TVs out of 65 warriors run (slightly lower than 10% TV percentage), especially considering I was skill/stat farming with 2 of my 5 Contenders, FE farming with 4 of 9 Adepts (having 14/15 FE each), and FE farming with 2 of 5 Champions (one having 21FE and the other 25FE). Given that, my overall win loss pct. still stood at a solid 53%.

Some highlights:
Contenders - Lethal Injection began the tourney a solid 5-0 only to end up 5-3. Going in I was hoping he'd get matched up with Gringold (a perennial Contenders TV threat) so I could assess his worthiness as a viable option in this class. I was lucky enough to get the matchup and the victory, so that was a feather in my cap. I also entered the only ST in this tourney who wound up 3-3... again, content with that outcome given the strong competition here.

Eligibles - Only two warriors entered here. Skitzoid Snoopy made an early run to 7-0 only to get outmanaged vs. TMM and Manager in rounds 8-10 to finish at 7-3 (oh so close to that TV!). I still have some wiggle room with him in the class, but I'll be taking it nice and slow here for a while. I also entered 1 of the 5 SL in this tourney and managed to pull out a 5-3-1 here which made me proud.

Champions - Lots of fizzle.... my two "big guns" in this class went 3-3 and 4-3, and my 25 FE warrior goes 5-3 which is promising for the mailer.

Adepts - A big surprise showing from my 14 FE warrior who started off 8-0 and made me think long and hard about what I was going to do for the next few fights. I decided to go for it and let it all hang out in this tourney, because you don't start off 8-0 that often... only to finish 8-3 and give me my only TV in this class. So, he's going into the spring mailer at 20 FE which is promising. 30-25 overall W/L here.

Initiates - 2 TVs relatively happy with the 34-27 W/L.

Apprentices - 2 TVs here, 1 of which made it to the final 4. In the semi-final fight I got the jump on the eventual TC winner and got him desperate, only to pull defeat from the jaws of victory. This one was bitter sweet as I was one win away from sitting in the chair again. Went 48-36 here.

Rookies - 1 TV here who started out 10-0 and showed some ridiculous knack to hang tough and make those WL checks. I couldn't believe the hits this scum was taking and still trucking along. Finished 11-3 due to some unlucky matchups against the wrong styles which I couldn't overcome.

Some interesting stats for my warriors by class:
ST went 75-54
TP went 32-20
AB went 50-45
WS went 14-9

The rest, well.... under 500.

Even though the holy grail of a TC wasn't in the cards for me, I was pretty content with the performance of the overall squad. I'm looking forward to the upcoming mailer and seeing everyone again in Philly this July!!!

Keep that pipeline piping!

Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2012 4:18 pm

I had a crappy tourney (pun intended)! Let's just say that I had a lot of time on my hands Sunday, and ironically (or appropriately) the last fight I recieved was one of the crapmasters.
Obviously, the highlight of my tourney was winning the first ever Crapmaster title. I finished 13-9-1 in that, running a Basher (5-3-1), a Striker (2-3-0), and a Scum (6-3-0). In hindsight, I wish I'd sent the other striker... the one I sent had tremendous damage but little endurance. I might have gone further with the other one, good/poor. I also sent the Basher into the grudge matches! I figured what do I have to lose... whoever matches him SHOULD beat him, but if he didn't, more bragging rights for me! If only I'd sent the scum instead, he probably would have won that fight.

Advanced Master Poster Joined: Apr 11, 2011 Posts: 309

MarmaDuke wrote:

So as usual attending the FTF was a blast! It's always great seeing the usual suspects and chatting about Duelmasters and life outside of the game. It's also great putting faces and personailities with names you see on the DM boards and in the chat room. I had the pleasure to meet Assur, Seraphim, Destitute Noble and the Gervais clan for the first time which was a nice treat.

As far as tourney performance goes, I can't be upset with 6 TVs out of 65 warriors run (slightly lower than 10% TV percentage), especially considering I was skill/stat farming with 2 of my 5 Contenders, FE farming with 4 of 9 Adepts (having 14/15 FE each), and FE farming with 2 of 5 Champions (one having 21FE and the other 25FE). Given that, my overall win loss pct. still stood at a solid 53%.

Some highlights:
Contenders - Lethal Injection began the tourney a solid 5-0 only to end up 5-3. Going in I was hoping he'd get matched up with Gringold (a perennial Contenders TV threat) so I could assess his worthiness as a viable option in this class. I was lucky enough to get the matchup and the victory, so that was a feather in my cap. I also entered the only ST in this tourney who wound up 3-3... again, content with that outcome given the strong competition here.

Eligibles - Only two warriors entered here. Skitzoid Snoopy made an early run to 7-0 only to get outmanaged vs. TMM and Manager in rounds 8-10 to finish at 7-3 (oh so close to that TV!). I still have some wiggle room with him in the class, but I'll be taking it nice and slow here for a while. I also entered 1 of the 5 SL in this tourney and managed to pull out a 5-3-1 here which made me proud.

Champions - Lots of fizzle.... my two "big guns" in this class went 3-3 and 4-3, and my 25 FE warrior goes 5-3 which is promising for the mailer.

Adepts - A big surprise showing from my 14 FE warrior who started off 8-0 and made me think long and hard about what I was going to do for the next few fights. I decided to go for it and let it all hang out in this tourney, because you don't start off 8-0 that often... only to finish 8-3 and give me my only TV in this class. So, he's going into the spring mailer at 20 FE which is promising. 30-25 overall W/L here.

Initiates - 2 TVs relatively happy with the 34-27 W/L.

Apprentices - 2 TVs here, 1 of which made it to the final 4. In the semi-final fight I got the jump on the eventual TC winner and got him desperate, only to pull defeat from the jaws of victory. This one was bitter sweet as I was one win away from sitting in the chair again. Went 48-36 here.

Rookies - 1 TV here who started out 10-0 and showed some ridiculous knack to hang tough and make those WL checks. I couldn't believe the hits this scum was taking and still trucking along. Finished 11-3 due to some unlucky matchups against the wrong styles which I couldn't overcome.

Some interesting stats for my warriors by class:
ST went 75-54
TP went 32-20
AB went 50-45
WS went 14-9

The rest, well.... under 500.

Even though the holy grail of a TC wasn't in the cards for me, I was pretty content with the performance of the overall squad. I'm looking forward to the upcoming mailer and seeing everyone again in Philly this July!!!

Keep that pipeline piping!

Despite not getting the TC, sounds like you had an awesome tourney. I found your post here very encouraging, getting back into the tourney mood again.

Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 3:22 pm

I finally went thru my tourney and logged everything .....

I sent 86 ..my most ever by a mile .. My squad was very bottom heavy as I had very little viable challengers up. I also decided not to bust anyone in eligible or ADM.

So .. 266-255 ( just over 51% ) .. I killed 11 and lost 8 myself ( the most painful being my first ever +4 att , +4 def , +4 par Aimer in 20+ years of playing )

I had 1 TC ( in inits with a waste) and 8 TV's ( including the apprents runner up at 14-3-4 ) .. also 4 7-3's. ** Forgot to mention I got an AB out of BG .. pretty pumped about that !! ***

A shout out to the Gervais clan who Marty ( Destitute Noble ) and myself sat with ...also a shout out to Lo Lo's chicken and waffles .. Thanks to Sandy and Lee ..Great to meet Assur for the first time and Buri as well.

See everyone in Philly.

-Floyd

Advanced Master Poster Joined: Apr 11, 2011 Posts: 309

FLOYD1 wrote:

I finally went thru my tourney and logged everything .....

I sent 86 ..my most every by a mile .. My squad was very bottom heavy as I had very little viable challengers up. I also decided not to bust anyone in eligible or ADM.

So .. 266-255 ( just over 51% ) .. I killed 11 and lost 8 myself ( the most painful being my first ever +4 att , +4 def , +4 par Aimer in 20+ years of playing )

I had 1 TC ( in inits with a waste) and 8 TV's ( including the apprents runner up at 14-3-4 ) .. also 4 7-3's.

A shout out to the Gervais clan who Marty ( Destitute Noble ) and myself sat with ...also a shout out to Lo Lo's chicken and waffles .. Thanks to Sandy and Lee ..Great to meet Assur for the first time and Buri as well.

See everyone in Philly.

-Floyd

so who did you dupe....i mean get to take you to Lo Lo's? Razz