Re: ¸,o¤°``°¤o,¸ OFFICIAL 2014 East Central Regional Tournament THREAD¸,o¤°``°¤o

[Prof Underwood]

We are excited to have the opportunity to host the
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2014 East Central Regional Redemption Tournament
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at Oakdale Christian Academy on July 11th and 12th
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¸,o¤°``°¤o,¸ INFO¸,o¤°``°¤o

Host: Mark ("Prof") Underwood
Address: 5801 Beattyville Rd.  Jackson, KY 41339
Categories: Type-1 2-Player ($5.00), Type-2 2-Player ($5.00), Type-1 Multi-Player ($5.00), Type-1 Teams ($5.00), Type-2 Multi-Player ($5.00), Sealed Deck ($10.00), and Booster Draft ($15.00).
Housing: FREE including the use of our shower facilities.
Food: FREE snacks Fri night, FREE lite breakfast Sat morning,
          Lunch on Sat for $3.00 (half a pizza and a soft drink).

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¸,o¤°``°¤o,¸ SCHEDULE¸,o¤°``°¤o

Friday Evening  //
                  7:00P.M.      TEAMS                    AND     Type 2, 2-player
                  Afterward     Sealed Deck
                 
Saturday Morning  //
                  8:00A.M.     Type 1, 2-player     AND     Type 2, Multi-player

Saturday Afternoon  //
                  Afterward     Type 1, Multi-player     AND     Booster

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¸,o¤°``°¤o,¸ PRE-REGISTRATION¸,o¤°``°¤o

As always we offer our out-of-state friends on the message boards an opportunity to pre-register for our tournament and put their name in a drawing for prizes (packs and/or singles usually). Feel free to pre-register anyone coming with you if they don't have an account on the Redemption Message Boards. All you need to do to pre-register is to post on this thread for each person pre-registering including:

Name:
Redemption Message Boards Name:
Events You Will Be Playing In:
Favorite Kind of Pizza:
Favorite Drink:

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¸,o¤°``°¤o,¸ WE LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU AT OAKDALE¸,o¤°``°¤o
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[EmJayBee83]

Most excellent bunting, sir.

[Knoxyouthpastor]

You mean 11th & 12th...

[Prof Underwood]

You mean 11th & 12th...

Yep, sorry about that.  Fixed

[Mr.Hiatus]

I requested leave for this. Depending on who is going I am either riding with Rex, or renting a car and hopefully bringing Jay and Clift, and possibly another.

[Knoxyouthpastor]

Not sure if Chris will be able to make it, but I will be there unless something comes up with my oldest son and maybe a few from the church.

[Prof Underwood]

I requested leave for this. Depending on who is going I am either riding with Rex, or renting a car and hopefully bringing Jay and Clift, and possibly another.

This is awesome news, Tyler.  I'll look forward to seeing you guys in a couple weeks!

Not sure if Chris will be able to make it, but I will be there unless something comes up with my oldest son and maybe a few from the church.

Awesome, Josh.  It'll be great to see you guys again and play some games together!

[Crashfach2002]

So unfortunately I will have to withdraw my name from being able to make it to any tournaments this year.  Life has had some major transitions this year.  I've had to work every Saturday since Feb. but I can't complain too much, it is the best paying job I've had, but more importantly it is where God has me right now.  It has also given me a chance to pursue another chapter in my life, so hopefully I will be updating that in the next 6 months or so which will hopefully make me more available for tournaments next year.  Sorry I'm going to miss all of the tournaments this year, but with Josh available at least we will have some representation from Knoxville!

[uthminister [BR]]

Hey Mark,

We will not be able to come down. Although we are not "busy" on the 11th VBS wraps up on the 10th and we leave for camp on the 12th. I appreciate you hosting and maintaining a strong Redemption community in southern Ohio  .

[Prof Underwood]

So unfortunately I will have to withdraw my name from being able to make it to any tournaments this year.

We'll miss you Chris.  However the rest of your post sounds very optimistic, even if purposefully vague

We will not be able to come down.

We'll miss you too Travis.  And perhaps the state of Redemption in KY (or Southern OH as you think of it) may actually be multiplying depending on how everything works out with my family.

[Knoxyouthpastor]

Mark, here is pre-registration for myself and my son. I'll have others for sure by Wed. if they are coming. And also, whats numbers looking like? Thanks. Josh

Josh Swinson
Knoxyouthpastor
Sealed; I can be a bumper so either, but I'd rather do T1; Booster
Meat
Mt. Dew

Isaiah Swinson
N/A
Sealed; T1; Not Sure, probably Booster
Cheese
Sweet Tea

[Prof Underwood]

Mark, here is pre-registration for myself and my son. I'll have others for sure by Wed. if they are coming. And also, whats numbers looking like? Thanks. Josh

We'll look forward to seeing you guys.  Please let us know if you get some people to join you Wed.  It's looking like we'll have a good sized tournament at this point.  Besides you guys coming up from TN, and Tyler bringing a group from GA, I've also heard from a youth minister in Louisville who's bringing a group.  I'm also still hoping that the Collins will be joining us from OH, Rex's group from TN, and possibly the Beers from PA.

If everyone shows up we'll be over 30, but I suspect that we'll end up between 20 and 30.  Either way we should have a good mix of less experienced players and also top-tier players.  I'm really excited about this weekend.

[cincyoldguy]

Sorry Mark but R and I both work this Friday and Sat.

Saw your pending move...are you still bringing a group thru here for Nats? My prayers for you finding where God wants you next. If you need a sleepover if interviewing in Cincy area you are welcome at my home. allen

[Prof Underwood]

Sorry Mark but R and I both work this Friday and Sat.

Saw your pending move...are you still bringing a group thru here for Nats? My prayers for you finding where God wants you next. If you need a sleepover if interviewing in Cincy area you are welcome at my home. allen

We'll miss you guys, but thanks for letting me know.  I also appreciate the offer in case I have any interviews in Cincy.  Currently I'm just applying in the area around Lexington (close to my parents) and around Purdue (close to my wife's parents) except for one job down in Miami (close to Dice Tower Games, Tom Vassal).

As for Nats, things are a bit up in the air right now.  I'm still hoping to go and bring a group, but we'll just have to see how everything is going as we get closer to that week.  At this point, let's plan on still going, but I'll let you know if anything changes.

[Knoxyouthpastor]

Mark- Sorry not to get this to you sooner, but here are two more that are coming...Oh & I'm dragging Chris with me too. 

Megan Bernin
N/A
Teams; Sealed; T1; Booster
Cheese


Meleena Livesay
N/A
Teams; Sealed; T1; Booster
Cheese


I hope you know the info for Chris. Anyway...see you in a few hours!!!

[Crashfach2002]

I hope you know the info for Chris. Anyway...see you in a few hours!!!

I'm going to come! 

Type 2 - both
Sealed & booster
Any kind of pizza is fine, prefer pep over cheese.

Oh and I drink the best drink in the world.  DR. PEPPER!

[Professoralstad]

Not sure if its too late to join the drawing, but Justin and I are 15-20 minutes away...we were going to surprise everyone, but as we had a flat tire incident awhile back were getting there a bit later than anticipated.

At the time we are both planning to play both t2 events, I'll play booster and Justin willlay either t1 or booster, whichever helps best for numbers.

Pizza is Hawaiian and pop is mt. Dew.

See you all soon!

[jbeers285]

Wow really wishing I coulda been there to see everyone
Hope u all have a great time

[Red]

GA/AL isn't making it at all.

[Prof Underwood]

Justin and I are 15-20 minutes away

Awesome to have you guys here

GA/AL isn't making it at all.

Bummer, we'll miss you guys.  Sorry it didn't work out after all.

Meanwhile the tournament is off to a great start.  We currently have 10 TEAMS playing, and 4 really strong T2 players going at it.  Then there's several others who are going to be joining us later tonight for Sealed Deck.  EC Regionals ftw!

[Prof Underwood]

RESULTS

Sealed Deck:
1st - Jordan Alstad
2nd - Luke Marshall
3rd - Joshua Swinson

Booster Draft:
1st - Chris Fachman
2nd - Meleena Livesay
3rd - Justin Alstad

T1-2p:
1st - Jordan Alstad
2nd - Luke Marshall
3rd - Mark Underwood

T1-mp:
1st - Brian Jones
2nd - Caleb Stanley
3rd - Alecia Underwood

T1-TEAMS:
1st - Mark Underwood / Brian Jones
2nd - Jason Waugh / Kyle Waugh
3rd - Caleb Stanley / Stevie Seidman

T2-2p:
1st - Jordan Alstad
2nd - Justin Alstad
3rd - Chris Fachman

T2-mp:
1st - Justin Alstad
2nd - Joshua Swinson
3rd - Chris Fachman

[Prof Underwood]

This was probably the last tournament that I will get to host here at Oakdale Christian Academy, and so I'm really glad that it was such a great experience.  It was a really great mix of players from multiple states and multiple levels of play.  We had players from KY, TN, and even MN.  We had 3 elders present who have been involved with the game for a long time.  We also had 3 players who were playing in their first tournament ever, and have just recently learned the game.

T1-TEAMS:
Overall we had 26 players, which meant that there were a lot of rounds and a lot of really great games.  We started with T1-TEAMS and T2-mp.  Brian Jones and I cruised to victory there, although Caleb Stanley and Stevie Seidman gave us tough match (on their way recovering from a rough start to a 3rd place finish).

T2-2p:
Meanwhile, the Alstads were taking the top spots in T2-2p.  I am very grateful for them driving all the way to KY for our tournament.  They figured that since Nats was at their place this year, they'd use their long trip for the year to travel to a different Regional tourney, and I'm honored that they chose the EC Regional.

Sealed Deck:
When both those events finished, some people went to sleep, but a bunch of people stayed up to play Sealed.  In fact so many people chose to play that I ran out of starter decks, but thankfully the Alstads had brought their own to play with.  I went with 3 Priests packs hoping to get some orange to add to my demon defense, and it worked.  My first round opponent (Kyle) also wanted to trade his black defense for my grey defense, so I agreed to that trade as well.  It was one of the most intense Sealed tournaments that I've ever played.  My first couple rounds were pretty easy wins where my opponent's got poor draws.  But then 3rd round I was playing Jordan Alstad.  He had Gabriel and his search card in his opening hand.  This led to a couple early walk-ins and gave him the chance to just keep looking at my hand, recurring his card, and filling his hand with awesome silver cards.  After breaking through again and playing Son of God, he had 4 LSs and it wasn't looking good.  Meanwhile I was slowly able to break through his defense to get to 4 LSs myself, and then the available souls ran out for both of us.  Neither of us drew a soul for a couple turns, but then I did.  Jordan came in two more times to take it, but was rebuffed each time.  Finally after 3 turns he was almost decked out, and he drew a soul for me to take, but also came in again for mine.  Unfortunately my defense finally gave out, just before I had a chance to win.  Then the last game was also a defensive struggle as I played Justin Alstad to a 4-4 timeout.  We did figure out that if we had kept playing that he probably would've won, so congrats to him as well.

T1-2p:
I think at this point everyone went to sleep for a couple hours before waking back up for T1-2p, early Sat morning.  We had 20 people playing T1-2p, so we played 6 rounds.  Round 1 I played against Jed Wills, who had a rough draw, and I won 5-0.  Round 2 I played against Luke Marshall, who is just starting a new playgroup over in Louisville, KY.  My opening draw seemed really great with a Jacob+Coth band, but he had 3 EC band in his opening hand as well and dealt me a tough early blow.  His first hand DoN also killed an artifact that I was counting on early in the game, so things weren't looking good.  I was able to take a few LSs, over the next several turns, but he was also breaking through my defense.  At one point I had a choice between ripping a Haman's Plot to get a block or giving a soul, but I was already behind, and it was early in the tournament.  I decided to just give the soul and hope to draw my Falling Away before he drew SoG/NJ.  Unfortunately I lost that race, and therefore the game.

Brunch:
After these first 2 rounds were done, we all took a break and went over for an awesome free brunch of homemade breakfast burritos.  The food was awesome, and I think some people were even more excited about the coffee.

T2-mp:
These gluttons for punishments started after brunch, and finished 2 rounds in the time that T1-2p finished 4 rounds.  I still don't get why people play this category, but I think they had fun

[Prof Underwood]

T1-2p (continued):
Round 3 was another tough match up as I had to play again Brian Jones.  After losing with my offense-heavy deck, I decided to switch to the defense-heavy.  I was able to shut Brian down, but unfortunately his defense is quite strong as well, and we ended up with a timeout win for him.  So after losing that game, I switched back to my offense-heavy deck.

Round 4 was against Jason Waugh, who has greatly improved over the course of this year.  He was playing a really unique deck and had me locked down for most of the game.  But their was a key battle where I was able to completely change the game all at once, and after that I was able to get to the win pretty easily.

Round 5 was against Drew Wills, who is another tough player in my playgroup.  We both knew that the winner of our game would have a chance to place if they also won the next game.  So we were both very motivated, but I got the better draw and was able to get the victory.

Round 6 was against Caleb Stanley, who has won some tournaments here at Oakdale before, and is always a tough opponent.  Strategically my defense-heavy deck would've been the smarter choice for this game, but the offensive-heavy deck hadn't lost again yet, so I stuck with it.  Early in the game another opportunity to tear the Haman's Plot arose, and this time I decided that it was indeed worth it.  That slowed down Caleb's offense enough and his defense never really showed up to stop me.  So with that victory I was able to work my way back up to 3rd place.  My biggest disappointment was that I never had the opportunity to play against Jordan Alstad, who ended up winning the event.

Booster:
We had 9 players in the Booster event.  The best deck that I checked in looked really good with CotH, PotW, Fallen Angel, Haman's Plot, and something else decent that I can't remember.  But it ended up finishing in 6th place.  Meanwhile, my fellow host from TN, Chris Fachman, piloted his way to victory in that event.

T1-mp:
We had 11 players in this event, and it was the only time all tournament where tempers finally got a bit raw (probably due to lack of sleep in the previous 24 hours).  The first round went quickly (other than a break for pizza), and had Brian Jones, Caleb Stanley, and myself all winning our games.

Round 2 was pretty sloppy.  Early in the game Caleb Stanley played SoG/NJ to take the only soul available to me as I was going for my 1st soul.  This was a hasty decision that would cost him later as he didn't have GoYS out, and ended up getting Falling Away played on him, and costing him 2nd place in the game.  Meanwhile, Brian Jones DID have GoYS out, and played the early SoG/NJ to get to 4 LSs.  The next mistake was by Wyatt Marcum who had the only LS available for Brian to take but went for a battle challenge against me to draw cards and pulled out a 2nd available LS.  The next mistake as by me forgetting that Brian was at 4 already and blocking Wyatt with TAS to create a 3rd available LS so that one would get all the way around the table for me to try to take.  But of course it never got around the table because Brian broke through Wyatt's defense and got the fast win.

Round 3 was also pretty sloppy.  This time Brian and I were joined by Alecia Underwood and Jed Wills.  They both targeted Brian and I mercilessly, and caused us all sorts of problems.  The artifacts in this game also really shut things down.  For a long time, the 4 artifacts up were Confusion of Mind, Hezekiah's Signet Ring, and 2 Darius' Decree.  Nazareth was also down, so things went really slow for a while.  There was one point when Jed tried to put a LS in Brian's LoR before taking either the GC or EC out of battle, which I pointed out wasn't legal, and also that he should ask for help before tossing souls.  I played CM on the hero, and no soul was earned (frustrating Brian, but not effecting the outcome of the game).  The game ended up timing out, and on the last round I took my 3rd LS.  My only chance to win was to get SoG/NJ.  I had each of them individually at times during the game, but they were underdecked before I could ever get them together.  So at the end of my turn, I said, "I am discarding my hand and playing Mayhem" while at the same time doing those actions.  Brian tried to play SoG between me discarding my hand and playing Mayhem, but I pointed out that it was slapjack and that I was clearly responding to my own action.  This also frustrated Brian, but also didn't affect the outcome of the game.  After shuffling my deck and drawing 6 cards, I was disappointed to see that I did NOT get SoG/NJ, and my chances of winning were over.  In the end, my daughter Alecia had the most LSs (with 4) for a timeout victory.  But overall Brian Jones still came out as the top player in the event.

[Prof Underwood]

Overall it was a great tournament.  We ended up having 13 different players place in at least one event.  We got to reconnect with old friends that we don't get to see nearly often enough.  And we got to make new friends that we'll look forward to seeing again in the future.

Speaking of the future, the plan is for the EC Regional next year to be down in TN, so if you want to get in on all this fun, please come join us there.  After that, Brian Jones will probably be hosting the next one, so make sure to come out and support him as well.

In the meantime, hopefully all of us will be able to play at Nats this year, and then as this next year begins, there could be 3 different playgroups just here in KY (Brian's, Luke's, and mine) so I'm excited about where things are heading.

Thanks again to all who came to the tournament.  You all made it a special way for me to finish my hosting here at Oakdale Christian Academy.

[Knoxyouthpastor]

Thanks Mark for the great tournament. Our crew had a good time. Keep us posted on your transition in the next few weeks.