Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Welcome to the Bluegrass State.  My wife and I are graduates of Asbury College.  So if you're deciding on a place in the Wilmore area, we can give you the scoop if you need advice

We'd also be glad to have you join us on Sat for an event, so I hope it will work out for you.

P.S.  For anyone driving to the tournament and using internet maps to get here, the last mileage is usually wrong on the web for some reason.  After you turn onto Hwy 52, it is about 5 miles to Oakdale Christian Academy, and you can't miss us on the left side of the road.

    Here, here....my first time, I told Laurie, "I'm going to give it one more mile and we're going to turn around."      The school was a mile on the button from me saying that (I had already traveled 4 miles of the 1 mile and was quite confused.)  I don't get lost and couldn't understand when I had made all the correct turns.  Boy, that was an adventure!

Here's a little rundown of my tournament experience:

T2-2p:
This is not an event that I feel very confident playing, but I had success at OH State, so I was a bit hopeful.  My first game was against Jacob Stroh, who was trying out a game for another player.  It didn't seem to work very well for him and I think he is going to try his own deck idea for Nats.
7-0 win

Second round I played Rod Stewart, who I also played in that round at OH State.  He has a devastating orange defense (yes orange can be good) and consistently demolishes my banding offense.  The question is how many LSs do I rescue before everyone is dead, and can I completely lock him out of my sites.  The answer this game was only 2 LSs for me, and "no" to the lock-out.
2-7 loss

T1-2p:
First round I played against Ramone from Virginia.  He has only been playing for a few months, but is learning quickly.  We had a fun game and he played SoG/NJ early to keep things close at first.  But his offense didn't seem to show up until too late.
5-3 win

Second round I played against James Taylor who was also from Virginia and has been playing for a couple years.  Ramone was a great encouragement to me as he asked me to demolish his friend James (I assume so that he could catch him in the tourney).  I suppose his moral support was just what I needed as I jumped to an early lead and kept going.
5-1 win

Third round I played against Ben Holeton.  He said that he had just built his deck the night before and hadn't been to tournaments in around 4 years.  However, it must have been like riding a bike, because it came right back to him.  He went undefeated through the tourney and won all of his other games 5-0.  Thankfully our game was closer, but it still came down to who drew SoG/NJ first.
4-5 loss

Fourth round I played Steven Shyers.  This was a rematch of my only loss at the OH state tourney in this category.  I was not looking forward to the game as I remembered Steven's deck from the last tournament and it was basically the same as the one Ben had just beaten me with.  And I knew that Steven is a tough player with any deck.  However, it turned out that Steven had changed offenses since last tournament and it didn't seem to work as well for him this tournament.
5-3 win

T1-mp:
This has traditionally been my favorite event as well as the one in which I've had the most success.  This year has been a little down for me though as I went into the tournament #11.  The favorite was Jonathan Pequinot, who went into the tournament #2 and who had finished 1st place at OH State.

My first game was with Rod Stewart and Ramone.  I played a speed deck (to show our new player how annoying they are) and raced to a quick victory, 5-2-1.

My second game was with Jonathan (who won his first game) and Andy Wills (who was playing in his first tournament ever).  I knew Jonathan was playing a speed deck, and doubted whether Andy's deck would have enough MASK qualities to help me slow Jonathan down enough.  However, I had to try.  I was successful at slowing the speed deck considerably, however in this end he still basically decked out while we had half our decks left.  This one ended in a close loss, 5-4-4.

The final round was between Jonathan (with 2 wins), myself and Rod Stewart (with 1 win apiece).  I knew Rod had a pretty strong defense and so I thought that MASK had a good chance to prevail.  However things did not go well at the start.  The evil dominants seemed to be focused on me despite my deck being slow.  I was CM'd twice early on and also fell victim to Falling Away.  Rod also caused my defense against the speed deck to be severely hampered by causing me to discard evil cards on multiple occasions.

But this was one of those games where I really saw the providence of God being responsible for my victory.  I drew David's Harp very early so the multiple CMs only cost me a turn.  I also drew the Hopper at a time when there were no available LSs.  I also drew Harvest Time when there were no available LSs from the player who couldn't defend them.  Finally, I drew SoG and NJ when I had to get an entire new hand due to Hur.  This not only gave me 2 more LSs, but also left none available for Jonathan's speed deck.  And due to my DoN of his GoM, he didn't even get cards out of the deal.  Of course I had no control of being able to draw all those cards right when I needed them, and I give all credit for my success to God.  5-3-3.

Great meeting all my Kentucky/Ohio/Virginia friends.  I had a lot of fun.  thanks, mark for hosting!

I had a great time at the Kentucky regional!

Unfortunately, I am still recovering from the 5:00 a.m. finish to the events on Friday night

Thanks for hosting!

Rod

I just wanted to let anyone know who was planning on coming to our tournament tonight or tomorrow that we have gotten a decent amount of snow around here over the last 24 hours.  The roads are pretty clear really, but please be careful as you travel

We've missed you guys from Ohio.  Most of my playgroup is pretty new this year, so we could really benefit from having some experienced players join us.  Hopefully you'll be able to make it to one of our 2 tourneys in the spring semester.  Meanwhile, here's the results from our most recent tourney.

I was most pleased to see some people place for the first time (Charles Henry and Elvis Arnold) and some people place their highest ever (Andrew Wills 1st in Closed and Doug Fargo 2nd in the main event of T1-2p).  There were a lot of really close games, there were some sweet cards pulled out of packs in Booster, Closed, and prizes, and I think everyone had a lot of fun.

Closed Deck:
1st - Andrew Wills
2nd - Mark Underwood
3rd - Drew Wills

Booster Draft:
1st - Mark Underwood
2nd - Andrew Wills
3rd - Charles Henry

T1-2p:
1st - Mark Underwood
2nd - Doug Fargo
3rd - Michael Saucedo

T1-mp:
1st - Mark Underwood
2nd - Charles Henry, Drew Wills, Elvis Arnold

T2-2p:
1st - Mark Underwood
2nd - Charles Henry

T2-mp:
1st - Mark Underwood
2nd - Charles Henry
3rd - Andrew Wills

I wasn't able to get anything set up for a district in January so it looks like I might be shooting for one in February then.

I noticed that it wasn't showing up, but we'll just look forward to joining you whenever you get it ready.  Remember I can provide supplies for the Closed Deck / Booster Draft if you need them.

I'm not sure at this point.  The only people to host tourneys here in KY this year are Rob Mulye (in Lexington) and myself (in Jackson).  We both held multiple tourneys in the fall, but both had a lack of attendance, which meant that we're both a bit strapped for cash at this point.

Our playgroup here at Oakdale is also down this year with the loss of all of our best players.  Robert Harrelson, Tim Schiro, and Tina Ehret all graduated.  Nate Schiro, Doug Fargo, and Matt McNally  moved away.  And Michael Saucedo has decided to focus on other things this year (like the basketball team).  At this point, the only people playing are brand new players, and even they can't play much of the time due to grade restrictions.

At this point, I would guess that I'll probably do a local in the spring.  Districts are just more expensive this year, and I don't have any T2 players here.  Locals have the same prizes, and for my new players, that is what will be the most exciting and helpful for them anyway.  So I would guess a local with T1-2p, T1-mp, and either Closed or Booster.  That would only cost less than half of the cost of a District, for the same prizes.

Rob has talked about doing more tourneys this spring, but I don't know when they'll be.  Our other KY host, Ben Huntsman, hasn't been heard from in a long while.  But perhaps he has something planned.

Hey Mark, When are you planning on doing a KY State tournament and is there any plans to go for the regional there this year?

I've got a fever and the only prescription is more Redemption...

Hey all Rob Mulye here,

Simple answer "I don't know when I will be able to host."  My wife and I have also moved to Nicholasville to be closer to Asbury Seminary where I go to school.  I would like to be able to host in a couple of month, right now we just don't have the money. I have the space to host locals and district but I don't have the tables or chairs for it anymore. One possibility would be to see if I could rent out a room at Asbury Seminary for a tourney.