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Results for the Grinning Demon Invitational held on the 8th January at my house.
Format was Golden Age Constructed, there were 7 entrants

James Warrener 4-0 (-2) Revenge Squad Ongoing PT Abuse
Amy Chizlett 3-1 (+4) Avengers Reservist
David Moakes 3-1 (-3) X-Babies
Cameron Macgregor 2-2 (+4) Green Lantern Curve
Graham Beadle 1-3 (+7) Migga City
Holly Humphrey 1-3 (+6) Superman Blue Abuse
Jack Rutter 1-2 (dropped) X-Babies

Round 1
Graham Beadle bt Jack Rutter
James Warrener bt Holly Humphrey
Amy Chizlett bt David Moakes
Cameron Macgregor bye win

Round 2
James Warrener bt Graham Beadle
David Moakes bt Jack Rutter
Amy Chizlett bt James Warrener
Holly Humphrey bye win

Round 3
James Warrener bt Amy Chizlett
David Moakes bt Graham Beadle
Cameron Macgregor bt Holly Humphrey
Jack Rutter bye win (dropped)

Round 4
James Warrener bt Cameron Macgregor
Amy Chizlett bt Graham Beadle
David Moakes bt Holly Humphrey

Tags: Vs System

UK Nationals
This is something I'm currently very proud about. A few months ago I was firing off random comments along the lines of "Isn't it a shame UDE don't run Nationals, I really used to enjoy the MtG County Champs and National events."

Now, a couple of months down the line and we have a pencilled in venue and date, a voted on format (BYOS), a trophy and a generally positive vibe re the game all around the uk.

The tournament has no official UDE backing but bragging rights are at stake.

2008
2007 was a good year for me and Vs. I posted a winning record at every constructed event I played, won the only Elite Series I competed in as well as a 1st and 3rd in the two City Champs.
2008 has started in a somewhat different vein though. In the first event of the year I succeeded in securing a last place finish with a 1-3 record whilst running a modified version of Migga City. This was a deck that I believed would be strong in the local meta and this would have been true if I hadn't failed to hit Hatter until turn 6 in two of my favourable matchups. Despite this poor finish I had great fun, partcularly whilst taking part in a great matchup with David Moakes X-Babies. Because of my decks inconsistency I got through turn 8 only by blowing four of my resources (Multiple Avalons and a Genosha). I then had the initiative on turn 9 causing buckets of breakthrough. After David had attacked back though the scores finished -26 me to -25 him, courtesy of Dazzlers burn.
Im the second event of the year I dug out an old school My Beloved deck, subbed in a four up to date cards from DWF and DCL and proceeded to kick some arse, going 5-0 (although 1 win by means of a bye) with victories against X-Babies, Shadowpact 'jump the curve', Avengers Reservist and Revenge Squad Ongoing PT Abuse. I will post a tournament report in the next couple of days.

DCL
The response to this set has been phenomenal, sales in the shop have been great, and people are enjoying deck creation with the cards particularly the 'legend' stamped stuff.
I'm loving Secret Society and plan to run out my 'All Monkeys are French' deck in the next tournament. All the teams got something though, although LoA did get short shift.

Bizarro World
This would appear to be broken now with Bizarro getting all identities whilst in play, meaning he can abuse any character stamped plot twist or equipment. Some of the decks that are popping up around the forums are obscene.
I'm hoping that if the Bizarro World decks prove dominant at the mega-weekend, players in the UK will refrain from playing it at the Nationals in the same way that Quickfate was boycotted in the last rond of Elite Series events.

Upcoming City Champs
Good news in that the crew from where I play, Maidstone, are heading up to a London event in February, en masse. As of now, we have 6 confirmed with a possible 2 or 3 more making the journey. This will be the first tournament at a 'foreign' venue for all of my local players except for me.

Thats it for now, I'll post tournament results and tournament reports over the next couple of days.

Tags: Vs System

Back on the 11th of November we held an Elite Series event in Maidstone.

Some of the event was filmed with the intention of putting together a youtube synopsis of the event.

It doesn't make for the most interesting viewing (a lot of pairings and results) if you weren't actually involved, although there are a few fun moments.

We are planning to put together a more polished production for future issues of the Lazarus Pit, which we are storyboarding and planning at this moment in time.

Hope you find it amusing/interesting or just enjoy mocking

Heres the link

THE LAZARUS PIT

It is in 3 parts so use the youtube links for parts 2 and 3

Results for the City Champs tournament held at the Style and Winch, Maidstone on the 26th November.
There were only 8 entrants....slightly dissapointing
Format was Golden Age

Graham Beadle 4-0 (+2) Random Waffles
Brendan Whiting 3-1 (+4) Common Enemy
David Moakes 2-2 (+4) JSA/Hellfire Lone Visible
Rob Mills 2-2 (+1) The Jokes on Doom! (AI/Doom - Joker Heavy)
Tommy Gibson 2-2 (-1, +5) Spiderfriends
James Warrener 2-2 (-1, -4) IG Burn
Andrew Palmer 1-3 (-3) Heralds Curve
Cameron Macgregor 0-4 (-2) LoSH/Titans Cosmic team attack

Round 1
Graham Beadle bt James Warrener
Rob Mills bt Cameron Macgregor
Brendan Whiting bt Tommy Gibson
David Moakes bt Andrew Palmer

Round 2
Brendan Whiting bt Rob Mills
Graham Beadle bt David Moakes
Andrew Palmer bt Cameron Macgregor
Tommy Gibson bt James Warrener

Round 3
Graham Beadle bt Brendan Whiting
David Moakes bt Tommy Gibson
Rob Mills bt Andrew Palmer
James Warrener bt Cameron Macgregor

Round 4
Graham Beadle bt Rob Mills
Brendan Whiting bt David Moakes
James Warrener bt Andrew PAlmer
Tommy Gibson bt Cameron Macgregor

Congratulations to Tommy for bagging his first ever, and second, competitive Vs victory, on his 26th Birthday

Despite the title of this blog, this will be quite a structured blog entry. The title does in fact refer to the name of the deck I ran at the Maidstone City Champs.

RANDOM WAFFLES
5 Shadow Creatures, Army
3 Ape X, Nina
3 Quagmire, Jerome Meyers
2 Human Torch, Matchstick
4 Black Cat, Nine Lives
2 Random, Marshall Evan Stone III
2 Punisher, Frank Castle
2 Valentina Vostok*Negative Woman, Bishop
4 Kiman, Chief Weaponer
1 Terrax, Harbinger of Ruin
1 Madelyne Pryor, Goblyn Queen
1 Mimic, Exile
1 Aquaman, King of the Seven Seas
1 Dormamu, Dread Dormammu
1 The Void, Robert Reynolds

4 Qward
1 Empire State University
2 Slaughter Swamp
1 Anti-Matter Cannon
2 Birthing Chamber
2 Negative Zone
1 Avalon Space Station

2 Ego Gem
2 M60's

1 Level 12 Intelligence
1 Rain of Acorns
4 What are Friends For?
4 Enemy of my Enemy
2 Misappropriation

The base of the build was my old Qwardian stall deck from the days of DC Modern competition. Then stealing some of the bits from the Qwaffles decks and adding my own twist from the MVL cards, plus some local meta choices, what we finished up with is an extremely janky pile which turned out to be a red hot performer on the day in question. The Rain of Acorns was a mistake, it was resident from my original build (Q-Stall) and I forgot to take it out. It was used as Avalon fodder in two games, but proved quite handy in another as it tapped down my opponents highest drop for just the exhaust of a Shadow Creature.

Practice- The Night Before
A couple of games against Camerons Titans/LoSH Cosmic deck saw my Random Waffles put through its paces. Two very one-sided wins later i was pretty much sure that this would be the build for the day. I would have liked another Random, but didn't own one, the same for Empire State Uni, although I did drop a Shadow Creature for an extra Ape-X. (This left us with the build listed above)

Match 1 - James Warrener
Silent-J. IG Handfill. It seems like every tournament I play I come up against James and his Injustice Gang. How I normally hate Lex, though today, with so few PT's in the deck, he wasn't quite so key. The game played out in an unconventional fashion, with me getting stuns by attacking rather than effect, but when Shadow creatures are taking down Scarecrow, you don't really mind. The game wasn't close and i believe that I only lost 8 endurance.
1-0

Match 2 - David Moakes
The Bear. JSA/Hellfire Club. David is one of the nicest guys to play against. I like the  fact that the deck is of his own creation and not influenced by netdecking. I was well down in the early turns although was able to get all the right pieces in place to come back into the game over turns 5 through 7. Final score had David at -5, me at 12. HIs deck is great fun to play against withthe two teams having good synergy, although the triggered effects are easy to bypass with good use of the chain.
2-0

Round 3 - Brendan Whiting
Ripclaw. Common Enemy. Brendan had been given short shift during the SA Elite Series where his deck of choice (renamed Dealing with the Devil in SA) was seriously weakened with the loss of Reign. Not the case today, where RofT was a nightmare for me. RAndom was bounced on 3, then again on 4 when he replayed Doom and a Boris. Turns 8 through 9 were headache city and the game went right to the wire with either player able to grab victory. The Void finally saw me claim the 3-0 record but this was the sort of game that I don't mind losing, cut and thrust, edge of seat stuff.
3-0

Round 4 - Rob Mills
Snake. The Jokes on Doom (AI Exhaust KO, Joker Heavy, Splashing Doom). In all fairness to Rob, he could have played this game a bit better, he ran into silly out of combat stuns that were, to be honest, unnecessary. This helped me in the late game as he was always short of characters. If he had played a little better, it would have been close as I drew inconsistently for the first time in the tourney, not hitting the desired drops and underdropping on a couple of occasions. The game was wrapped up on turn 8.
4-0

So four and oh, a tourney win, a t-shirt and some AofA cards. Nice! No real satisfaction though as the local playgroup are all fairly inexperienced and this deck was a bit like using a crowbar to crack eggs.

The deck is solid and as stated earlier, with a couple of alterations could be seriously competitive.

If I was to run the deck in a serious event I would make the following changes
-1 Rain of Acorns
-1 Shadow Creatures
+1 Empire State University
+1 Random

I, however, wont be running the deck again. It didn't feel like a comic related deck, just a set of game mechanics, and thats not why I play the game that I love so much. The cards have great synergy, but no emotional connection, so its back to more traditional decks in future events.

 

 

Sunday the 11th of November. A big day for Vs in Maidstone as we had got ourselves an Elite Series tournament. I headed down to the venue, accompanied by Garry 'HappyMoog' Hewitt and Holly 'Scorcese' Humphrey (who was filming the event for us). I was lugging folders of all the Silver Age legal sets down with me for people to borrow.

At our previous event at the Style and Winch I had succeeded in taking the wrong deck, which is how I'd discovered an interest in playing the Hellboy Lone Visible deck. On this particular day I went one better, forgetting to bring a deck altogether. A quick run, OK a brisk walk, home and back and I was ready to play.

The turnout was a little dissapointing, only 14, although this turned out to be the biggest Elite Series turnout in the UK. Eleven of the players were from our local playgroup, whilst three, Amit, Roy and Garry had travelled for the event. It was great to catch up with all three of these guys as I hadn't played any of them since early in 2006.

Round 1 saw me up against my chief rival within our local playgroup, James. His IG Burn deck had been proving to be incredibly consistent although it was prone to struggle against my deck of choice for the day. Some funky shenanigans on turn 3 had me a little worried as he shut down my stun with Liz ploy for turn 4, although the deck came through in the end and I won comfortably on turn 8. Some coverage of James turn 3 plays can be seen on our Youtube vid of the event which should go live tomorrow, hopefully.
1-0

Round 2 and I was playing Cameron, a regular opponent and an employee of our shop. He was running a Shadowpact Curve deck which had been seriously diluted with the loss of DGL cards from his decklist. To be honest the game wasn't that close.
2-0

Round 3 found me up against Amit, a great builder of original decks who today was running an X-Men team attack deck, which came out of the starting blocks like a rocket. Pancakes was all that kept me in the game through turns 4 and 5 but on turn 6 Liz started to make hay. Double playing her on turns 6, 7 and 8 decimated his board for Hellboy to cause some serious damage. I'm pleased that he wasn't running Finishing Move as that would have won the game for him early on. I felt good having come back from a 38 point deficit for the win.
3-0

Unbeaten going into round four paired me up against the tournament top-ranked player, also unbeaten, Roy Raftery. Piloting a JSA/Checkmate build I was apprehensive, but Liz once again proved to be a star in the later turns. Power Girl did prove to be problematic, but a timely JLA Satellite allowed me to get at his lesser hidden characters for big breakthrough with the big red dude.
4-0

Round 5 saw Garry and his Family of Four deck pitted against my BPRD guys. Early turns were fairly even, then the big changing point came on turn 5. We exchanged plot twists and power ups on an attack being made by Hellboy, which I came out the better of. I then proceeded to forget to attack with Abe, an additional stun which probably would have sealed victory. I dropped the big dudes on turn 7 and 8 but couldn't quite finish him off, reducing him to 5 END with me on 18. When Onslaught was droppped on turn 9 it was all over, game Garrry. Garry most definitely deserved the win as he had played the match flawlessly whereas I should have won, but snatched defeat due to play errors. I also forgot to activate a BPRD HQ to fetch another Hellboy for powering up, which may or may not have been significant.
4-1

Having played all three of the other players with 4-1 records my tie-breaks were enough to secure 1st place and the beautiful playmat.

The deck is incredibly consistent and also went 3-0 for a tourney win two days later. The lack of stun to KO effects in peoples decks at present definitely helps though.

 All in all a great day was had by all and everyone here is looking forward to our City Champs on the 26th.

Keep checking the blogs as we should soon have a link up for our Youtube coverage.

Results for the Elite Series (Vs) Tournament held at The Style and Winch on Sunday 11th November
There were 14 entrants

Graham Beadle 4-1 (+7) Hellboy Lone Wolf
Garry Hewitt 4-1 (+5) FF Defend
Roy Raftery 4-1 (+4) JSA/Checkmate
Amit Sharma 4-1 (0) X-Men Team Attack
James Warrener 3-2 (+4) IG Burn
David Moakes 3-2 (+1) JSA/Hellfire Club
Rob Mills 3-2 (-8) Brotherhood
Ben Waghorn 2-3 (+3) Good Guys
Jack Rutter 2-3 (+1) Morlock/X-Men
Brendan Whiting 2-3 (-3) Dealing with the Devil
Gareth Roberts 1-4 (-5) Good Guys
Cameron Macgregor 0-5 (-2) Shadowpact Curve

Other Competitors who dropped after round 4
Jordan Newman 1-3 (Brotherhood reservist), Vince Newman 1-3 (Hellfire Club)

Round 1
Roy Raftery bt Jordan Newman
Ben Waghorn bt Gareth Roberts
Brendan Whiting bt Cameron Macgregor
Amit Sharma bt David Moakes
Garry Hewitt bt Jack Rutter
Graham Beadle bt James Warrener
Vince Newman bye win

Round 2
Garry Hewitt bt Ben Waghorn
Amit Sharma bt Vince Newman
Roy Raftery bt Brendan Whiting
Graham Beadle bt Cameron Macgregor
Jack Rutter bt Gareth Roberts
David Moakes bt Jordan Newman
James Warrener bye win

Round 3
Roy Raftery bt Garry Hewitt
Graham Beadle bt Amit Sharma
James Warrener bt Jack Rutter
Ben Waghorn bt Brendan Whiting
David Moakes bt Vince Newman
Jordan Newman bt Cameron Macgregor
Rob Mills bt Gareth Roberts

Round 4
Graham Pool bt Roy Raftery
Amit Sharma bt Ben Waghorn
Garry Hewitt bt James Warrener
David Moakes bt Brendan Whiting
Rob Mills bt Vince Newman
Jack Rutter bt Vince Newman
Gareth Roberts bt Cameron Macgregor
(Vince and Jordan dropped after their 4th round defeats)

Round 5
Garry Hewitt bt Graham Beadle
Roy Raftery bt David Moakes
Amit Sharma bt Jack Rutter
James Warrener bt Ben Waghorn
Rob Mills bt Cameron Macgregor
Brendan Whiting bt Gareth Roberts

Just made a couple of last minute changes to the Hellboy Lonewolf deck for Sunday, swapping out Inner sanctums for weapons labs and Slaughter Swamps for Avalons (thus making it SA legal)

Also wondering about the addition of Negative Zone, Shadow dimension after T-Mans comments. I'm expecting to see some Hellfire club at the tournament and possibly BoP so could be useful. I'd have to lose a spill and and a kick though which i wouldn't be happy about.

We've managed to acquire the equipment necessary to film the event, (Thankyou Holly) and we're hoping to put the finished product up on Youtube on the 25th of November.

Also looking forward to catching up with Amit (Amitverse), Gary (Happymoog) and Roy again.

 

Last Monday I took part in our monthly Vs event here in Maidstone. It had been my intention to run my AI/Doom deck, however things didn't pan out quite that way.

Upon arrival I realised that I'd brought the wrong deckbox and had in fact brought the box containing Big Brotherhood, Hellboy Lone Wolf, Shadow of the Blackhand and Qwaffles. I had played SotB the week before so didn't want to run that, I had no experience with Qwaffles and my Big Brotherhood build needs work as the recent changes to it had reduced the consistency, so in the end I plumped for Hellboy, which I had originally built for one of our playgroup, Holly, a big Helboy fan. The deck utilised only cards from the Hellboy Essential collection other than a couple of Avalon Space Stations which I nabbed out of the Big Brother deck.

So the somewhat basic build looked like this.
4 Hellboy, Little Boy
4 Abe Sapien, Langdon everett Caul
1 Kate Corrigan, Folklore Consultant
1 Sidney Leach, Human Metal Detector
4 Liz Sherman, Pyrokinesis
2 Professor Bruttenholm, Father
4 Hellboy, Anung un Rama
4 Abe Sapien, Icthyo Sapien
3 Johann Kraus, Free Spirit
1 Roger, Homonculous
1 Liz Sherman, Uncontrolled Power
3 Hellboy, The Right Hand of Doom

4 BPRD HQ
2 Inner Sanctum
2 Avalon Space Station

4 Pancakes
4 Break off the Horns
1 Justice is Served
2 Nasty Surprise
3 Spill the Beans

2 Jetpack
3 BPRD Signal Device
1 Concussion Grenade

Now before people start ripping the build, I know it's rubbish. However despite choking in game 1 where I drew only 2 character cards in the first six turns including a mulligan (thats 2 in 20 cards), I managed to post a 3-1 record. It can be scary how good the 4-drop Hellboy can get. The MVP of the day however was surprising, Spill the Beans! In fact, in game 1, a combination of Spill the Beans and Inner Sanctum saw me stun all three of my opponents characters whilst just fielding a solo Liz Sherman. It didn't help however as I didn't make another drop until turn 6.

Anyway, what this all succeeded in doing was planted a little seed in my head, not as per Hellboy Vol1, a Seed of Destruction, but in fact a Seed of Construction.

Hellboy Lone Wolf has just become a contender to be my deck in the upcoming Maidstone Elite Series, as long as I can sort out the judging for the event. The other contenders are Cable X-Babies Attack (based on the article by Rian Fike aka Stubarnes), Dont you know who I am? (a Juggernaut based Brotherhood build) or a duplicate of fellow Team GD member, Silent-J's IG Burn deck.

So here it is, the pre-testing build of my Hellboy Lone Wolf deck.

4 Hellboy, Little Boy
2 Abe Sapien, Langdon Everett Caul
2 Kate Corrigan, Folklore Consultant
1 Sidney Leach, Human Metal Detector
2 Professor Bruttenholm, Father
4 Liz Sherman, Pyrokinesis
4 Hellboy, Anung un Rama
4 Abe Sapien, Icthyo Sapien
2 Johann Strauss, Free Spirit
1 Roger, Homonculous
2 Hellboy, The Right Hand of Doom
1 Liz Sherman, Uncontrolled Power

2 Avalon Space Station
3 BPRD HQ
2 Inner Sanctum

2 Mobilize
3 Flying Kick
4 Pancakes
4 Break off the Horns
3 Spill the Beans
2 Justice is Served
2 Nasty Surprise

2 BPRD Signal Device
3 Nth Metal

The deck still keeps the feel of a deck straight out of the Essential collection box, that utilises all the main BPRD characters whilst at the same time should, theoretically, be more consistent.

I've got six days till the Elite Series, so any tips would be appreciated, taking into account I wont splash in non BPRD characters as it changes the 'authentic feel' of the deck. PT's and locations are fine though.

Cheers
Graham
The Grinning Demon
www.grinningdemon.co.uk

I'd like a backup that puts someone from the hidden area to the visible area, akin to Cosmic Conflict, just to deal with players that move my Hellboy, but I don't know what to use that is SA legal, or what to remove.

 

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