KublaCon Report

KublaCon 2005

Friday

Not having had to drive through El Centro (heh), just Bay Area Rush Hour Traffic, I arrived at the Con around 5:30. I got to pick up my complimentary GM badge (Yay, thank you KublaCon) and the huge bag of Stuff that they give us, which this year included a full boxed game called Cargo. I've never heard of it so I assume it was remaindered, but maybe Wingnut is hoping we'll like it and buy all the rest of their products. Also a super thick issue of Dork Tower, which had some pretty good stuff in it. And the super thick KublaCon program, which is also full of good stuff. Or something.

Now, being me, I immediately forgot I was running the Array of Stunts, and thought Pete was. This is in part due to an earlier phone conversation with Pete wherein he was asking me all sorts of questions about the format, and somehow I got it in my head it was because he was judging. But, no, I just have the memory of an etch-a-sketch, and I'd been doing a lot of shaking that week. More on my memory lapses on Saturday.

The Array of Stunts got started more or less on time, with 12 players: Tim Wong, John Castellucci, Erik Berg, Max Hufnagel, Paul Myers, Jan Malina, Pete Bratach, Cavebear, Steve Valladolid, Quyen Lam, Eric Lui and Warren Snider. I was seriously rooting for Quyen's deck, but otherwise I really don't like this format, so I cut it to 2 rounds plus a championship. As someone on the shadowfist forum mentioned, Jan won simply because he managed to win a game without timing out, and that was basically due to a perfect draw.

I don't like this format, and unless people nail a notice to my forehead demanding it, I don't think I'll include it in the schedule next year. We can put it at GenCon SoCal if people really want it, and once a year is plenty.

After the game there was much friendly play, and the rest fades into a blur. I think I may've mentioned something about memory lapse earlier, but I don't remember that either.

I do remember trying not to fall asleep while I drove home.

Saturday

I woke up before the alarm and slipped out of bed before my wife woke up. Neither of us have any idea how this happened. The future wouldn't be this way. It gave me time to finish the unfinished work on the Feng Shui characters, though. This was a good thing.

Due to memory lapses that I think I mentioned earlier, I get the time wrong. Luckily, I'm not actually running the Memory Reprocessing. Unluckily, I actually passed this bad information on to Max. Worse, Max got stuck parking. I got kind of lucky on the whole parking thing, and made it right at 11, only an hour late! Luckily (again) everyone there was good natured, being as it was a Saturday morning and there were plenty of people to just do friendly games with.

The Memory Reprocessing ended up being run by Jan, which is who I expected to run it in the beginning, but who had declined to do so. Then did it anyway. Ahh.

The Memory Reprocessing had 12 players, which turned to 13 in round 2 apparently: Dan Oden, David Rakonitz, Michael Lasinski, Geoff Conn, Jeff Stroud, Eric Lui, Paul Myers, Steve Valladolid, Erik Berg, Max Hufnagel, Tim Wong, Earl Miles and Quyen Lam.

I ran the same deck I ran the year before, and the year before it stalled terribly and didn't do much. This year it actually did more, but that was only because I finally got The Hungry out and no one killed it. Hooray for fragile, broken combos. Boo for me not having time to do a real deck for the tournament. Erik Berg won. I think he kicked my ass pretty hardcore in this one last year, too. Erik Berg is my nemesis. I'd say it's Jan but I'm not quite good enough to rate Jan. And maybe I'm being really nice to myself to list Berg as my nemesis. But then again, maybe not.

After the Memory Reprocessing, which I didn't end up having to bail on early, I went to run my Feng Shui game. I posted character descriptions in an earlier posting, so I won't repeat them here; I ended up with a full 8, when it started to look as though I was only going to have 5. The game was a psychotic mix of characters shooting other characters, characters shooting bombs, the inability to share information amongst each other, and 2 sets of RPers who, I think, had very different views on what they wanted out of that kind of game. Some parts of the game were very satisfying, some parts left me quite wanting. I knew almost everyone in the game except for one person, who turned out to be a fantastic player. In true fashion, I failed to remember his name, so he will forever be known to me as "that guy who played Ash."

We did have one of the best moments in Feng Shui I've ever had.

The characters -- or at least, the remains of them (after Cavebear failed to defuse a bomb with a gun, failed the resulting death check, and the Inquisitor failed his healing roll, all sequentially) trace the people they're looking for to their secret lair. The people they were looking for were the Jammer Napalm Addicts. They all go into the cave, and Ash steps forward, intent upon negotatiating.

"Who the hell are you," asks Budda's Napalm, their leader.

Jubilantly, he answers, "I'm Ash!"

"Of COURSE you are!" And Budda's Napalm proceeds to hose down the entire group with his trademark weapon of choice. Perhaps wisely, they had the fire djinn of the group make them immune to fire, so what then resulted was a freaky combat in which all characters were basically fire elementals. That part was most fun.

Also, I broke, and needed a minute to get the tears out of my eyes. Yes, I'm easy to break.

It was great to get to play with lurkingowl and Van Horn (Does he have an LJ?) and I hope to play more with him someday. Perhaps it was just because he picked my favorite of the 10 characters I put together, but he did a fantastic job with it, and truly did it justice.

That evening, we had a friendly play block; I missed half of it, because I had to go get some dinner. I met my lovely wife at City Pub, and then I brought a bunch of burgers back for other people who were playing. One person showed up for the demo stuff, (and he later turned up in Storm Trooper gear) and got in a game or two with Pete. I think I may've played some other games, but that's all a blur. Fading, fading. If somebody mentions some details of the games I'm sure I'll remember them.

Then I drove home. At least, I assume so. I don't remember that part.

Sunday

Sunday I beat the alarm by 2 minutes, and managed to turn it off before it woke Lynette. Sadly she woke when I got up, and so she got up too, though it was hardly necessary. I beat feet and made it in time to run the Brawl, which I actually got started on time.

We had 22 players, and I was amazed. I had no idea that the later Draft would actually end up with more players, which I find even more amazing, and at the same time extremely wonderful.

The players: Allen Hege, Michael Lasinski, John Meyer, Quyen Lam, Robert Stetler, Jan Malina, Erik Berg, Steve Valladolid, Randall M! Gee, Geoff Conn, Daniel Lugo, Jeff "Cavebear/Lucky Flounder/Failed Bomb Defuser" Stroud, David Rakonitz, Dan Oden, Michael Stadermann, John Castellucci, Eric Lui, Alfonso Lopez, Paul Myers, Tim Wong, Pete Bratach and (catch breath) Max Hufnagel.

I actually kind of missed what happened in those games. It's not because I wasn't watching, but because my brain doesn't work quite that way; I'd go and look at the games, and I'd see snapshots of what was going on, but not participating there was no impetus to impart any of what I saw to memory, so by the time I moved to the next game, I'd completely forgotten what had gone on in the one before it. Did I mention that my memory kind of sucks? I don't remember if I did or not...

I do find it ironic that Allen Hege, who is from out east (Chicago is east, dammit. Denver is West and Chicago is East. This I decree) and Michael Lasinski (Indiana, I think?) are #1 and #2 in the West Coast Championship. Allen Hege gets a bye at GenCon.

We played 4 full rounds and a championship round, and I had a pretty decent time, despite the usual handfull of people normally not partaking in the tournaments and giving me friendly play while I judge actually being in the tournaments.

Eric Lui cut out early and Geoff Conn ended up taking his place. Now, the reason Eric cut out early is that he is foolish enough to drive all the way to Berkeley, pick up the best pizza the bay area has to offer and bring it back for us, gratis, accepting only our everlasting gratitude for this selfless sacrifice. And oh, did my stomach so appreciate that. Zachary's pizza is the only pizza in the area that I know of that the Chicagoans I know consider acceptable, and indeed occasionally better than the good pizza back home. I have yet to find a New York equivalent out here, and most agree that it's pretty much impossible due to the water. But I digress. Eric Lui deserves much thanks.

Then there was the Draft. This is the event that Pete was actually supposed to run, and indeed he did run. It was here that I realized something: Pete doesn't shout very well. I briefly tried repeating what he said so people could hear it, but that made things worse. So to figure out which of the 8 tables any given game was at took a while.

I thought my draft went really well, until I started putting a deck together. Then I realized I had fewer monarch resources than I thought I had, and ended up cutting most of the good monarch stuff I drafted, except for the Blood Lust and the King of the Fire Pagoda. I had plenty of Jammer resources, but not quite enough of the really good Jammer cards. I did get a Scrounging, but I almost never managed to draw it. I did get a Payback time, which I got about 50% of the time. I did pretty well in any game that didn't involve Jan Malina.

Jan, you see, picked up 2 Temple of Angry Spirits, 2 Big Rigs, and some stealthy ascended guys. He told us his deck was not good, but he made amazing, simply amazing use of the cards he had. Also, he successfully convinced me not to attack him when I absolutely should have, and it completely gave him the game. I admit my weakness, and I vow to be stronger, and spend more points resisting Jan's Jedi Mind Tricks in the future.

Because I had to play Jan twice, that put me at 2/2. Had I not gotten matched against Jan, I am fairly confident I would've gone 3/1 and been in the top 3. Alas, alack, and all that.

Players in the Draft: Paul Myers, Daniel Lugo, Dan Oden, Alfonso Lopez, Robert Stetler, Michael Lasinski, Robert Rossney, Robert Klemic, Max Hufnagel, Jeff "Cavebear" Stroud, David Rakonitz, Randall M! Gee, Earl Miles, Michael Stadermann, Jan Malina, Erik Berg, Warren Snider, Steve Valladolid, Miquel Hidalgo-Barnes (didn't even manage to say hi to him!) Tim Wong, John Castellucci, Quyen Lam, Allen Hege, Eric Lui, Zev, Joyce Jege, and Paul Gerardi. Whew. Jan swept that one, 4 and 0.

I think we played some more friendly games or something, then I went home.

Monday

Monday, there was supposed to be dueling. Of course, I scheduled it for 10am on Monday, which is a crazy time to schedule any event, really. Not that many people would've showed up for anything. But there it was, the duel. Eventually about half a dozen people showed up who kinda sorta wanted to duel, but nobody wanted to very dramatically, and we ended up doing friendly play.

We then went to Dim Sum. My table got everything. Erik Berg's table got the dregs. There are two reasons for this. #1) I have learned the secret to getting service at that particular dim sum place. It requires being very aggressive. If you see something you want -- even if it's across the room -- you make sure they know it. Of course, I also have the advantage of knowing what I want, which few if any at the other table did. The other reason was ethnicity. We at least had one person at the table who blended in with the patrons at the restaurant, they did not. As usual, Eric Lui was gracious and took items to their table from time to time.

That dim sum place is quite good, though not as good as I remember it. There's a few things they do very well. Pork buns, for example, are far better there than at my local place. But many things are much better down here. Also, at Dynasty, the place in San Jose I go to, they treat you like kings and you don't have to scream for them to come bring you food. In fact, you are more likely to push them away to make them STOP bringing you food already. Table's full! Come back later!

Then there was a last few rounds of friendly play, including that incredibly long game with Jan, David R and Geoff that got some mention on the forum. Jan was playing a fire deck, making great use of the king of the fire pagoda. I had my big demon deck out, which makes use of, well, big demons and the obsidian eye. David R had a nice dragon recursion deck, with all the best dragon hitters, and Geoff was playing a darkness/sacrifice deck, which I've found to be a pretty decent deck but suffers a bit from lack of punch-through.

The game stalled. No one was willing to break the balance of power, because the first person to twitch was going to be the one to go down. In fact, it sort of happened that way; I got tired of it, and had a plan. I unloaded on Jan. Of course, he discerning fire'd me into oblivian, which Geoff brain fired, and Jan brain fired right back. Poof, there went Desolation and Seven Evils. This would be the second time that we would see Discerning Fire / Brain Fire / Brain Fire / bye bye big demons! that game.

In any case, once I broke the balance of power things moved a little, but not really quite enough. Jan was going to deck when we picked everything up to go to dim sum. So actually I've now misremembered and gotten this out of order. Such as it is.

I do remember my last 2 or 3 games of the day. I remember these because I actually won them, and it's not often I pull off good wins with Steve V at the table. I was pleased

And then I went home, and I took my beautiful wife out to a very nice birthday dinner, but that's another story!