The Road to Worlds, Week 9

by James Hoskin, Director of Organized Play

27th May 2010

Regular readers should know that this is a weekly series that aims to preview upcoming Regional tournaments, review Regional tournaments that have just taken place, highlight winning decks, interview players, and more. Last week's article was The Road to Worlds, Week 8.

How can you contribute to this series? First and foremost, I am relying on results and deck lists being promptly entered into this site. I can't write about them otherwise. Other ways you can help include: taking photos, interviewing players, writing previews, and providing background information. Any other way to help the community be a part of your Regional tournament would be appreciated, too. Contact details are at the end of this article.

Week 8 Review

Saturday 22nd May		Sunday 23rd May
Second Edition (Standard) Sci-Fi City 6006 E. Colonial Drive Orlando, FL 32807 United States [Results]	Second Edition (Standard) Outpost 2000 & Beyond 504 Northdale Blvd Coon Rapids, MN 55448 United States [Results]	First Edition (Revised) Cranberry Cafe 115 W 45th St New York, NY 10036 United States [Results]	Second Edition (Standard) Hirter Botschaft Bahnhofstrasse 44 9020 Klagenfurt Austria [Results]

The Prize Table

Sci-Fi City: This tournament in Orlando, Florida attracted eight players. Despite Geoffery Peterson (Madred) announcing his "retirement" from the game in September 2008, he has continued to play sporadically. Having shown up for this tournament, he played his Next Generation deck titled "Amalgamation", and was undefeated over four rounds to become the Cardassia Regional Champion for the third consecutive year. Second place went to John Kinney (Kivas Fajo). John was playing a Klingon / Next Generation deck, and his only loss was to Geoffery Peterson. Joe Bazemore (Cmdr Xym) gets an honorable mention for playing a Maquis deck. Joe also suffered only one loss, to Geoffery Peterson, but a true tie in the first round against Rick Kinney (T-Ricks) meant that he finished third overall. Other decks played on the day include Deep Space 9, Bajoran, Dominion and Klingon.

Outpost 2000 & Beyond:
Kris Sonsteby (LORE) reviews MinnMania:
In what can best be described as the old adage "expect the unexpected," the MinnMania Regional this past weekend saw a dramatic influx of Allegiance-themed Original Series builds, roaring revivals of the infamous Far-Seeing Eyes Romulan decks, and the least recognizable former World Champion taking down the title with a design that only consisted of Decipher released cards. Further proving this point, we had a fourth place finisher that went undefeated, some turmoil surrounding the number of rounds that were to be played, and an epic albeit grueling decisive match featuring two main-event-calibre players who had never won the event. To plagiarize two of wrestling's best commentators...
[J.R.] "welcome to T2E Entertainment, where anything can happen!"
[King] "And it probably will!"
Thanks Kris!

And for those that don't speak "wrestling":
Out of the 18 players, six decided to play Original Series decks. The highest-placed finisher among them was Barry Windschitl (JamesValEson) in sixth. Two players, Mike Harrington (Ajnaran) and Michael van Breemen (The Ninja Scot), played Far-Seeing Eyes Romulan decks. Mike won all four of his games, but two modified wins meant that he only finished in fourth place. After three rounds; Matthew Frid (bandana8472), playing Next Generation; and Zach Magnuson (MrOberth), playing Cardassian; both had three full wins, and they faced off in the final round to determine the winner. Former World Champion Matthew Frid (whose deck didn't contain a single virtual card) emerged victorious to take his first Regional title in the Continuing Committee era. His (very brief) tournament report can be found here. The 18 decks being played featured six Original Series, three Romulan, two Borg, two Cardassian, two Next Generation, Klingon, Starfleet, and Maquis / Terok Nor. No fewer than 10 of the 18 deck lists have been entered, including those played by the top five finishers. You can view them all from the tournament results page.

Cranberry Cafe: The sixth First Edition Regional tournament of this year's Championships was attended by six players in New York City. Matthew Chandler (noach83) may have begun the day with a 25% winning record, but that didn't stop him from winning all three games to take the title. No deck lists or affiliations have been entered on the tournaments page, although a quick check of the discussion page shows that Matthew was playing a Mirror Mirror Terran Empire Deck. Austin Chandler (DarkSabre) required a 100-0 victory over Edward Dykstra (annoyedgreatly) in the final round to take second place, while Edward finished third. Special mention goes to Tim Staines, who was playing in his first Continuing Committee-sanctioned tournament. I hope you had a great time, Tim.

Hirter Botschaft: Eleven players, currently the fourth biggest attendance at a Regional tournament this year, turned out in Klagenfurt, Austria. As with the Regional tournaments in the previous two years at this location, no player managed to win all of his or her games. Peter Machovits (Pille1701) did the best, though. After the setback of a loss in the first round, he won his four remaining games to win the tournament. Jeronimo Mitaroff (Kangaxx), playing Klingon, took second place; while Stefan Slaby (Winner of Borg) was third. Unfortunately, very few of the affiliations being played have been entered and only one deck list, "Wall-E" played by fifth place finisher Johannes Klarhauser (Kaiser), has been attached. Fortunately, Johannes has written a tournament report. You can read it here.

Byes

This week, the following players won a Day One Round One bye into the Continental Championships:

• Geoffery Peterson (Madred), winner at Sci-Fi City
• Matthew Frid (bandana8472), winner at Outpost 2000 & Beyond
• Zach Magnuson (MrOberth), second place at Outpost 2000 & Beyond
• Matthew Chandler (noach83), winner at Cranberry Cafe
• Peter Machovits (Pille1701), winner at Hirter Botschaft
• Jeronimo Mitaroff (Kangaxx), second place at Hirter Botschaft

Congratulations to all players, and I wish better luck to anyone who didn't make it. These bye winners have been added to the list of current bye winners for the Continental Championships and the World Championships here. There are now only 16 Regional tournaments remaining this year for those players still looking to win a bye.

Deck Statistics

Only 26 First Edition decks, out of the 41 played in total, from this year's Regional Championships have declared which affiliations were being played. Participating players as well as judges can enter deck affiliations on the tournament results page. If you have played in a First Edition Regional tournament this year, please enter your deck affiliation and help reduce the "unknown" statistic.

The most popular First Edition affiliations are currently:
1.	Unknown	Used by 15 (37%) players	2 Regional wins
2.	Federation	Used by 6 (15%) players
3.	Multiple Affiliations	Used by 5 (12%) players	1 Regional win
4.	Hirogen	Used by 4 (10%) players
5.	Dominion	Used by 3 (7%) players	1 Regional win
5.	Klingon	Used by 3 (7%) players	1 Regional win
7.	Borg	Used by 2 (5%) players	1 Regional win
8.	Cardassian	Used by 1 (2%) players
8.	Kazon	Used by 1 (2%) players
8.	Romulan	Used by 1 (2%) players

37 players at this week's three Second Edition Regional tournaments brings the total number of Second Edition players to 185. That is an average of 7.7 players per Regional tournament. Just two weeks ago, no one had won with Next Generation, but now three players have in the span of eight days. This week's biggest riser is Original Series. It was tied for fifth-most popular last week, but it has jumped up to third this week, as a result of its popularity at the Coon Rapids, Minnesota Regional. While Terok Nor has been used in two decks alongside another headquarters mission, it has still to be played by itself.

The most popular Second Edition affiliations are currently:
1.	Next Generation	Used by 22 (12%) players	3 Regional wins
2.	Klingon	Used by 19 (10%) players	3 Regional wins
3.	Original Series	Used by 17 (9%) players	1 Regional win
3.	Multiple Affiliations	Used by 17 (9%) players	4 Regional wins
5.	Borg	Used by 15 (8%) players	3 Regional wins
6.	Starfleet	Used by 14 (8%) players	1 Regional win
7.	Cardassian	Used by 13 (7%) players	1 Regional win
8.	Romulan	Used by 10 (5%) players
9.	Voyager	Used by 9 (5%) players	3 Regional wins
10.	Bajoran	Used by 8 (4%) players	1 Regional win
10.	Dominion	Used by 8 (4%) players
10.	Unknown	Used by 8 (4%) players	1 Regional win
13.	Earth (Home of Starfleet Command)	Used by 6 (3%) players
13.	Deep Space 9	Used by 6 (3%) players	1 Regional win
13.	Maquis	Used by 6 (3%) players
16.	Ferengi	Used by 5 (3%) players
17.	Non-Aligned	Used by 2 (1%) players
18.	Terok Nor	Used by 0 (0%) players

Week 9 Preview

The complete schedule can be found in this article: Regional Championships Series 2010 Schedule. There are three Regional tournaments this week:

Saturday 29th May		Sunday 30th May
First Edition (Open) McDonald's Kallangur Anzac Avenue Kallangur, QLD 4503 Australia		First Edition (Open) Arbys #532 4219 W Saginaw Hwy Lansing, MI 48917 United States [Discuss] [Pre-register]	Second Edition (Standard) Universal-Card-Tools Bismarckstr. 87 28203 Bremen Germany [Pre-register]

McDonald's Kallangur: This will be the first Continuing Committee-sanctioned Regional tournament in Queensland, Australia. The tournament map only shows two players in the vicinity. One of those players has no First Edition record in our system, while the other has a record of 'played three, tied one and lost two.' This looks to be a wide-open tournament that anyone could win.

Arbys #532: Last year, the 2009 Qo'noS Regional attracted eight players. After four rounds, there was only one player undefeated. That player was three-time World Champion David Bowling (tomek), and he played a Hirogen / Vidiian deck. Second place was taken by Ben Hammond (Benjita), playing Starfleet; and Andrew Bowling (hpotter) placed third. At the time of writing, only two players have pre-registered for this year's tournament, but the area has a rich history of First Edition tournaments, so I would expect more than two players on the day. The tournament is being played using the Open Format so, in the words of judge Nick Fancher (whitestar29), "Bring your broken decks."

Universal-Card-Tools: This is the first Continuing Committee-sanctioned Regional tournament to be held in the area of Bremen, Germany. There may only be one player pre-registered on this site, but over on open-cards a further eight players have pre-registered. Of these nine players, it appears that only Tobias Rausmann (garetjax) has won a Regional tournament this year. That, and his impressive 76% winning record in over 200 games, should make him the favorite on Sunday.

Next Week

A review of the results from Week 9, more statistics, and a preview of the events in Week 10. The weekend of June 5th and 6th sees a First Edition Regional tournament in California, and Second Edition Regional tournaments in Iowa, Austria and Germany.

Have an opinion about this article? Post it here, or contact the author!

-djl-

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