Alex Alcalde Gold 31
zonked@mama.indstate.edu

Well, as it has been hinted to on here the past weekend was, at least in my eyes a complete success--but Saturday Night and Sunday Morning are a LITTLE bit of a blur. Lets see...ill try to tell the story as best as possible from begining to end. This weekend rocked...lets do it again :)

Lets start...Wednesday 6:00PM
Im packed, waiting for the "Magnificant Seven" to leave Terre Haute by car. Well, there seemed to be some mixup with the van reservation. So there is no van, and im looking at a good chance of not even making it to the Convention (we know that would of been horrid). By 7:30PM we managed to find 2 cars to go in, not the ideal plan as we thought someone could get lost...oh well at least we are going. Yeah, Baby, yeah!!

Thursday 2:00AM (or there about)
Almost out of Kentucky and are filling up for gas in Morehead (yes, thats the name!) Run into a group of guys going back to Terre Haute, from Virginia Beach if i remember correctly...eerie!! Hills and more hills in West Virginia..finally roll into Virginia Beach at 9:30AM. That was 14 hours of Driving. Its been over 24hours since i last slept, im feeling goofy and i stink..Eeww!

10:30AM Within the past hour ive met alot of old faces, most of the Decipher Crew, including Kevin..You Stalker....Shoo!! I register in a 1PM YJ Sealed deck. I decided against playing in the Wild Card Open as i really didnt want to start the weekend by getting my butt handed to me on a platter. Still no sleep...tank is almost empty but im high on Caffine and gaming. It was an okay Dark side deck, i finished tied for 5th. Oh well, I walked around, played in yet another YJ Sealed Deck and this time proceeded to get wooped. Ya live, ya learn. Its now 9:30 or so and im seriously contemplating crashing for the night. but I discover at 11:30 that there is a 12:00 PM Sealed YJ, so i get myself another Coke and go down to play...Ill let the results speak for

Yeah....I win..time for sleep.

Friday
3.5 hours of sleep. Wake up, and get ready for the 1PM Progressive SW Sealed Deck Tourny. Im still tired, but cant fall asleep. I fart around take some pics of D-Con, and go to pick up the 68 Command Cards for the event I need to run. I run into Kyle and ask him if he could possibly send someone over to help me. So Charles "Lunch" Lund got the call. Is that a good thing? The tourny went absolutly grand with one minor problem. During the Final confrontation, I was approached by a player who shall remain nameless, and is very respected within the SW community that the top DS deck seemed to be a little "too good" and that i should examine the deck, which i did. I unfortuantly found 10 Premier rares in the deck. Now out of an OTSD how do you get 10 Rares?? The most being 8? After much deliberation with Decipherians a decision was reached to DQ him. He made no attempt to say he was innocent. Simply that he as a TD would of reached teh same decision. Hrm...now I understand that sometimes there is the odd chance that packs contain more then one rare. Now...if that was the case I should of been informed, but honestly the chances of that happening were slim to none. You all know the saying, "cheaters never win." Its now 7:30 i have 1/2 hour to eat and get my butt up to the Orions Lounge for a Constructed YJ Qualifer thats being run, being overseen by myslef & Sean Smallman (47 Entrants). Chris Gogolen Red 87 (i think) was helping Kevin Reitzel with the Sealed Deck YJ, running at the same time in the other side of the room. Of course, this one went off with out a hitch. I think one of the highlights of this tourny has to go to Omar Hassanein (finished 6th) and his impression of Apu (you know from the Simpsons). Omar is from Chicago and i think this is the Third Con ive been to that hes been at (Gencon and Wiz World being the others). Kyle comes upstairs and asks if I wouldn't mind helping with worlds since it seems they are a bit understaffed...Im not even supposed to work, but I jump at the opportunity, what an honor :-) Im finally done for the day...guys in the room are deck testing for Saturdays Invitational. They go downstairs at 2 and I hit the sack..

Saturday (AKA--The Day from Hell) I wake up and go downstairs wiht Josh Clark (Bravo 8) since he qualified for YJ Worlds. Things are smoothly, going to start pairing up the world finalists, when im asked to go upstairs to help out with the ECC+EPP tournament. I think that the total had hit somewhere around 176 Eeeck!! With over 6 SMs and of course Marcus running this massive tourny you would thing that youd be in good hands. So for those that dont know what happened let me explain. The reason that we were late in starting was soley lays in the fact that of the 176 people not all had been entered into the computer. Infact, any TD knows that it takes a few minutes to enter one or two command cards into the computer, over 100...egads! I think the problem was the fact that command cards were never used, other then simply to gather information to be entered into the computer. Well the fact that it was discovered after the 2nd pairings that the tournament had accidently been entered as a swiss rather than a sealed. Not really a problem for the second game as simply the sides were mismatched. But once the scores started coming in and the dozens of drops, it made for complete and utter CHAOS! Of course we have all heard this. Had the players remained calm and not consistantly interupted the volunteers the problem would of been fixed in a matter of minutes. All that had to be done was to revert back to the empty command cards. Some players understood this, while others had to resort to backhanded comments as to the inefficency of the volunteers. My only coment to those players is let me see how you fair under the same conditions. Then I had an unpleasent conversation with a number of the participants stating that Decipher was soley pushing Sealed deck events at DecipherCon. Basically, one was saying that Decipher had turned into a clone copy of WotC, not caring about their players. He stated that there players should turn in their decks in between rounds, as he could of easily gone downstairs to his room to find those cards he needed to win. Kind of hard to do with over 100+ decks. Oh well, with some of Marcus's inginuity the tourny progressed and was completed 9 hours after it started. Oh well! Time to get some food and then off to mingle for the night.

But whats this rumors of an all SM OTSD at roughly 11:30.....Now Im sure you have heard the stories of this, but you havent heard _MY_ story :-) About 11:30, 28 (i think) of the SMs meet in the lobby and we finally decide on what format we'd like. By the time a few of us had gotten our Juri Juices and OTSD/packs, we were all hyped some of us a little more than others, if that is the proper word now :) I know that there are photos out there. So I do want to see them..I do remember Ted falling out of his chair when I pulled a 7 during that Surprise Assualt...Though Ted wasnt as gone as Lunch and myself. I think Jim should of paired me up against Lunch...now that would of been a game to watch, lets see who passes out first. LOL BTW...you still owe me a Juri Juice :-)

Oh and to reflect on the SM OTSD here are some Dream Cards that have been thought up within the past week. I got a hoot out of them :)

* Alcal Baque 3
Corellian Native. Hired by the Alliance to oversee production at the CEC. Frequents the Cantina at Mos Eisley.
W
P2 A2
D3 F4
While at Cantina Power +2. During your turn, may use 2 force to "entertain" one Imperial present, character may not move or battle till end of turn.

* Lunch Katam 2
Cunning smuggler. Travels the Outer Rim searching for popular beverages. Often seen on Tatooine.
P
P2 A3
D3 F3
Adds one battle destiny if with Alcal. May use 2 force to retarget Juri Juice to another appropriate target.

Sunday
I retired around 2AM (I think) only to wake up at 8AM. With enough guys in the one room, I was extremely surprised that no one woke my sorry butt up. I was supposed have an Iron Man tourny start at 8. Course i was in absolulty no shape to get there. Many thanks Dan Bojanowski (Gold 95--i think). I got up and downstairs at slightly after 10:30, taking all the bags/luggage to the car. Many people were very surprised to see me standing, let alone being in good spirits (no pun intended). After the Team tourny my crew and i split...all is going well, up untill we get to Lexington, Va. Then one of our worst fears comes true...we loose the other vehicle, they were right in back of us. D'oh!!! That really sucked!! But what sucked even more was being pulled over outside of Louisville doing 81 MPH. Let me set the scene...

5 guys in a midsize car, doing 81mph....a Kentucky State Trooper walking up along the passengers side. He knocks on the window, asks the PASSENGER "Are you the Driver?" Kenny Roberts, in the passenger side, is dumbfounded. He asks for the Registration, License, etc and goes back to his car.

He comes back a minute or two later (feels like an eternity) this time along the driver's side hands the stuff back to the driver (which I will add wasn't me) and says "Drive carefully and slow down." With that he rushes off to his car puts on the flashers and speeds off we are dumbfounded.....a couple miles down the road we see two KSP cars lights blaring with a car pulled over....Of course there is alot of praising the Lord, and various exhaltations :) The rest of the trip is uneventful and we get home around 5AM Monday Morning. The pickup with Erik & Dave pull into town anhour later. I didnt hear from them untill 6PM so i was kinda nervous wondering if they had made it safely home..

Decipercon Rocked!!

I might have more to add....but isnt that enough for now????
Next stop...Origins!!