The idea behind this tournament was to familiarize Quebec players with the draft format before the Canadian Championship in June. Also it gave a break to all those who have been travelling across the province from one constructed tourney to another for about a year now.
The idea to use Sabbat War was mine... (ouch!) I thought it would be cool to pick-up new cards and to be forced to use clans often neglected by players...A few weeks before, I had probed Princes from around the World about my idea, asking if anyone had done it... The few that responded seemed to think it went well...
With 20 participants (4 tables of 5!) everything was set... We were using 8 boosters each since I wanted to keep the cost at 20$. The draft took close to 2hrs in total (shuffling included), a bit long in my opinion(my table seemed to be one of the slowest ones!)We had to play rounds of 1.5 hrs and a 2 hrs final. The half hour cut didn't really seem to make a difference in my opinion since most players were out of cards by then (or close to it).
I was very surprised by the SW boosters, I had really studied the expansion and its cards distribution before the tourney and had realized that many cards were not found in the boosters (ex. conditionning, bonding, other handy stealth cards and combat cards were also missing). I had already decided to bank on the rarity of cards, I honestly thought that a deck built with commons that worked together would do fine...(in THEORY!) I had already decided that I would build a Nosferatu! deck using animalism/potence/obfuscate and add some dominate masters (commons) to spice up the bleed.Common cards like Carrion Crows, cloak the gathering, dominate masters were never found at my table and seemed to be absent from most tables...this really hurt my strategy (I had to rely on my untaps and combat instead)I had a Nosferatu! deck able to defend but with very little attack (no ambush)
My deck faired not to bad (3vps), I found I had trouble finishing off my preys, who saved themselves with Tribute to the masters or with Greta the Toreador! that guzzles down 1 bleeds faster than Rafid does with Molson Canadian...(oops) I had fun like always but the card selection from the morning really bothered me all day...Many games never finished because of the time limit but I really believe it was because many players didn't have much to do (except for stealing Powerbase Montreal!)
The tournament was not sanctionned, this gave the chance to some "new" players to get used to the tournament environment. Personally, I saw many players make mistakes with their cards (myself included!)and I was happy to give them a chance... I've noticed that lately, our tournaments, the rankings and the personal rivalries seem to raise the tension more and more around our playing tables.
Everybody left a winner from the tournament: 9 SW boosters (8+1 for each participants)
Congragulations to all finalists and to the Winner!(they really deserved it)
Before the final:
Rafid Armani with 7vp
Samuel B�langer with 4.5vp 166tp
Olivier Jackson with 4.5vp 162tp
Danny Hall� with 4.5 vp 126tp
J-F Mayrand with 4 vp
The final was a long and laborious affair, time finally prevailed!
Samuel B�langer 6vp (1.5 in the final)
Rafid Armani 7.5vp(.5 in the final)
Olivier Jackson 5vp (0.5 vp in the final)
J-F Mayrand 4.5 vp (0.5 vp in the final)
Danny Hall� 4.5 vp (0 in the final)
Congragulations to Samuel B�langer for winning the Tournament
NICX facing the music against Rafid and Eloxian
Danny Hall� studying his cards and Olivier Jackson refusing to die in the final
Rafid's hand during the final(another Mind Rape!!!) and The Finalists
