MN T2 Blowout Summary

[Gabe]

I’m finally stealing the time to summarize my experience at the 2nd biggest Redemption event of the year – the MN T2 only blowout hosted by Wild Bill every March.  I attended last year for the first time and had such a great experience that I intend to go back whenever I can.  It’s like a mini Nationals.  The people are great, the fun and fellowship is non-stop and the competition is strong.

This year I had company on the four and a half hour trek.  Josh (Tracer Burnout), one of Iowa’s newest Redemption players, has already waded into the deep waters of T2.  He’s far better at the game than I was after playing for only six months.

We drove to MN Friday night and arrived about midnight, just in time to participate in the second T2 draft of the weekend.  I had the pleasure of playing with Brad Coverdale, Britta Alstad and Alan Rice.  I got 2 copies of RoA tin XVIII, Judges and Sadducees.  I usually draft offense heavy because, well, it’s multiplayer.  It was somewhat challenging to draft a balanced deck.

T2 Draft

I was able to stick with gold on offense and added a little silver and teal.  I didn’t have anything amazing but I also didn’t have to play any filler cards.  Three Angels, Fishers of Men, Cov w/Moses, Battle Prayer and Shield of Faith were all nice.  I wasn’t all that happy with the defense.  Someone else at the table was also gobbling up the black.  I was able to get High Priest Ananias and Joseph in Prison.  My defense was all black with four big number stand alone guys like Lahmi and Prince of this World.  I also opened a Mayhem in my Treasures pack but never drew it during our game.

As Bill predicted the round started off with lots of souls being given away.  Then people started to solidify their defense and the fight really began.  Britta had an amazing Genesis offense so nobody wanted to block her.  Fortunately there wasn’t a soul available for her every turn.  Alan got off to a quick lead but was trading some of his Heroes for souls via mutual destruction so he lost steam.  Brad had Gabriel as well as the RoA angels tin.  There’s not much in draft that’s going to stand up to a 10/10 with Protection of Angels and Striking Herod backup!  I was able to get a couple early souls, and added to my numbers with Capturing Caanan and a couple Ehud choose the blocker rescues.  I won soul number seven from Brad by using Three Angels to add his Gabriel and another angel to battle.  I was so tired I really don’t recall what the final score was.  I think it was 7-6-5-5 but at 3:30 AM, who knows.  I was too tired to play another round against the winner of the other tables.

The next morning I got to talk to John Early for a while and got some breakfast with Josh and Brad.   Matt Brinkman helped me find some coffee.  Then I was ready to play some more.

T2-2P

I’ve tried a few different T2 deck concepts this year and none have worked out the way I thought they would.  I wasn’t really happy with anything I had but I decided to use a Genesis/Philistine site lockout deck.  It had been losing to the FBTN/ANB decks like the one that took 2nd at Nationals 2009 so I tweaked the defense to give it some help against FBTN and hoped for the best.

Round 1 – I got paired up with Gabe Franta (franta012).  This turned out to be my toughest match up all day.  He was using Blue/Silver banding on offense.  He wasn’t very well prepared for Sites so I didn’t have much of a problem locking him out.  However his gray Romanesque defense had answers to everything I wanted to do on offense.  The game went to the time limit and I was able to get my 7th Lost Soul at the buzzer for a 7-2 win.

Round 2 – I had the pleasure of sitting across from Matt Brinkman (EmJayBee83).  I always look forward to playing Matt.  He has a lot of great ideas that are outside the box.  I’ve really learned a lot about T2 and Redemption in general from Matt.  He’s got a very light hearted attitude that makes him fun to talk with.  That came in very handy this game because it couldn’t have been more one sided.  He drew one Evil Character the whole game.  He didn’t have a shortage of Lost Souls though.  If I didn’t have access to his Site I took it.  My offense kept walking in each turn to rescue a soul against his helpless defense.  To add insult to injury, after I’d rescued 5 or 6, I drew the deck discard Lost Soul which discarded his SoG off the top of his deck.  The game ended 7-0 but I really don’t feel that the score even comes close to reflecting the capability of Matt or his deck.

[Gabe]

Round 3 – I had to face my nemesis, Alan Rice (rawrlolsauce!).  Alan is a fun young man to play and very good at Redemption.  He probably has one of the highest winning percentages against me of anyone (except my wife).  He seems to pull out a win against me in some pretty key situations so I call him my nemesis.  He’s the yin to my yang… the rain on my parade… the vending machine that took my money and didn’t give me a soda pop…  well, you get the idea.  Alan grabbed a LS from me on the first turn with his Captain of the Host.  He got another one later with Jacob + RTC.  It took him a while to draw some souls but when he did I was able to rescue them.  He must have felt a little desperate at one point because he decided to discard about ¼ of his deck to Gate of Hell in an attempt to find a character large enough to stop my banding chain.  He did stop my rescue but it cost him 2 Captains, 4 Uzzah, 2 Dominants plus a bunch of other cards.  It also gave me plenty of souls to rescue over the next few turns.  I got past Alan this time, 7-2.  Next time I probably won’t be so lucky.

We took a break at this point for lunch.  Before we all ate, Josh held a push up contest.  He gave away three really nice ultra rares to the three people who could do the most pushups in 2 minutes.  After the contest, Bill challenged Josh to beat Gabe Franta’s record.  Josh got off to a blazing start but stopped to rest and couldn’t get going again.  Bill, being the generous guy he is, gave Josh a better consolation prize than he wouldn’t have gotten for breaking the record.  Words really can’t describe it so I’ll let you watch:

Watch: MN Annual T2 Blowout - Pushup Contest

Round 4 – Nathan Voigt is always a challenging match up.  We had sat next to each other for the first three rounds so we both had a pretty good idea what the other one was up to.  I happened to get one of the fastest draws my offense could possibly have.  Nate didn’t get much for defense but he had enough to keep pounding away at me with his Nathan to keep my defense down to nothing.  Fortunately for me my sites kept him at bay long enough to pull off a 7-2 win.

Round 5 – How does it happen that I drive all the way to MN to play the guy I rode up with in the final round?  Josh and I both knew the other person’s deck because we’d played a few games together already.  His defense didn’t scare me but his FBTN offense with ANB resets was going to be very tough on my game plan defensively.  He got a couple quick souls and pulled out to an early 2-0 lead.  After a ANB he finally started drawing some souls of his own while I was able to hide mine in Sites.  He didn’t find another ANB to reset when my offense got rolling but he did stop drawing souls for a few turns.  He got 2 more souls from me while I was waiting for him to draw something I could rescue.  The game reached the point where Josh only needed SoG/NJ and an easy soul off an ANB reset to win.  Fortunately for me he drew something I could rescue before that happened and I pulled out a 7-4 win.
Check out this table from T2-2P.  How can these guys even tell what’s in play??!!

[Gabe]

T2-MP

I don’t really have a multiplayer deck that I’m very excited about.  I hadn’t come up with anything new so I tossed together a banding offense with some gray defense for the ability to search.

Round 1 – I got paired up with Jordan Alstad, Nathan Voigt and Josh Aydelotte.  Talk about a tough table!  The game started off very defense light.  After three times around the table the score was 3-3-3-3.  Then people started finding defense.  I played my Mayhem at a bad time costing me several cards, including a Falling Away that I should have used first.  I guess I like Mayhem so much that sometimes I just get too excited when I see the glimmering elephant.  I also rescued against the wrong player at least once, probably twice, which cost me another soul or two.  When you’re facing guys as skilled at these you can’t afford to make any mistakes.  Jordan suckered Josh into giving him initiative to Search which got him SoG/NJ for the win.  I was at the bottom of this table 7-5-5-4.

Round 2 – This table consisted of Andrew Wester, a great guy from KC who name evades me at the moment, a new kid and myself.  Between Holy Grail and a couple Meeting the Messiah, Andrew wasted my defense before I ever got to block.  The new kid drew tons of souls and everyone just kept rescuing from him.  He may not have made many blocks but that didn’t stop him from keeping pace by rescuing just as many souls as the rest of us.  It finally came down to the guy from KC rescuing with Ira when he didn’t realize I had the CBP soul in play.  I was able to use False Peace to complete my SoG/NJ combo to win.  My brain was getting pretty fried at this point so I don’t know what the final score was.

Round 3 – In the final round of T2-MP I got to play with three people I hadn’t had a chance to play all day, Martin and two guys from KC.  I think one was Jacob Fountain and the other was Scott (maybe?).  Sorry guys, I’m terrible with names.  I’m lucky to remember my own.  Things stayed pretty even up to three or four souls apiece, except for Martin who couldn’t seem to draw any Heroes except a lone Hur.  One of the KC guys was using Raiders camp so I really didn’t want to mess with him very bad.  What I didn’t realize is that he wasn’t drawing any evil characters.  Martin was kind enough to Hur me which helped me find SoG/NJ.  I used False Peace to grab GoYS, then played the pair of Dominants to go to 6.  I banded 2 Heroes in an attempt to get to 7 but received two Christian Martyrs instead.  That only held me off for one round before I was able to rescue Lost Soul number 7.

At one of the other tables they kept playing ANBs like it needed another errata.  I don’t think any of them had intensions of finishing the round within the time limit but they sure were having a lot of fun.  At some point one of them got carried away with counters on his Micah.



Tournament highlights for me really equate to seeing all the great people again.  I always look forward to playing with all the fine folks from MN.  I won’t try to name them all because I’d miss someone and that simply wouldn’t be right.  Bill runs one of the best tournaments anywhere.  We were extremely blessed to have Brad and Kirk join us from other parts of the country.  It’s always great to see Tim, although I wish he would have played, it was nice to have two knowledgeable judges.  The KC guys bring a new dimension to T2 than what I normally see which keeps things fresh.  Craig Fountain will liven up any room.  I’m rather disappointed that I didn’t get to play a game with him - maybe next year.  Orange is now a legitimate brigade in MN.  It only took four years.

Thanks, Bill.  I’m already looking forward to next year.

[Red]

can you post more pics please? love the report!

[Gabe]

can you post more pics please? love the report!

I took those two pictures and the video with my phone.  That's all I've got.  Sorry.

[Red]

kk who's the people in the first photo?(good pics for a phone)

[Warrior_Monk]

kk who's the people in the first photo?(good pics for a phone)

I'm the guy with the super buff Complainers. I think I had 6 counters on him... that game ended 6-1, although we finished about 30 minutes before the time limit. I locked him out quickly and he chipped down my heroes until I had nothing left. I don't remember his name. He was Mike's (don't remember last name) cousin though... his Head of Gold captured a ton of my heroes, causing his LoB to be super cluttered. mine was already cluttered with nearly all 15 of my souls (and some captured heroes from Writ) and my sites... I also had a ton of evil characters, as I primarily used Complainers to block, and didn't have a chance to use 2 of my 3 AoCP's...

oh, and MN only uses orange because of how much fun Gates is. I'm tempted to try it...

[Isildur]

Wait is this a type 2 draft? That sounds MASSIVE O:

[EmJayBee83]

kk who's the people in the first photo?(good pics for a phone)

Young Master Carlson is the person playing against the Wraith. I predict he's going to be a really good T2 dewd someday, but he was a bit overmatched at this tournament.

oh, and MN only uses orange because of how much fun Gates is. I'm tempted to try it...

It's too bad J-dizz had to take a break for college. It would have been fun to see what he would have come up with on the Orange front.

Wait is this a type 2 draft? That sounds MASSIVE O:

There was indeed T2 booster. It took four complete sets of RoA and some spare FoOF to pull off, but we managed.

[Red Dragon Thorn]

Don't forget about going through an entire box of unlimeted's and having to dig around in Bill's car for more!

[The Guardian]

RDT, please stop dropping hints about the next set...
Since you already spilled the beans on this one, I might as well let people know now so they can start preparing for it.

"Digging in Bill's Car"

Lamb Dominant
 
"If used by a random little kid (RLK), this card becomes a copy of any Redemption card ever printed that is not in RLK's deck. RLK may play the next card regardless of initiative."

Matthew 25:40

 

[Gabe]

Wonderful.  There goes the neighborhood.

[EmJayBee83]

Matthew 25:40

I think you meant 2 Kings 9:20.

(Having ridden with BIll to tournaments, this may be the first card to use the NIV translation.)

[Red Dragon Thorn]

Oops, sorry Justin. I guess you guys should imprision me to stop me from making anymore leaks. I'm just going to wash my hands of the whole matter. Save you guys even more trouble. It simply wouldn't do for them to learn of the counterpart to that card. Oh, shoot, there I go again.

[Gabe]

Wow, John, you're like a leaky wash basin...

[The Guardian]

Matthew 25:40

I think you meant 2 Kings 9:20.

(Having ridden with BIll to tournaments, this may be the first card to use the NIV translation.)

We're saving that reference for a special "Riding with Bill" promo... 

[everytribe]

You guys are dead in type 2 multi now. I get name on name bonus.

[Warrior_Monk]

You guys are dead in type 2 multi now. I get name on name bonus.

actually, I hear that Wild Bill is a good dominant, not a hero.

[everytribe]

Thanks, Bill.  I’m already looking forward to next year.

We defiantly will do it again next year. We'll pick a date so Guardian can make it for sure. Its all his fault. We started the tournament to provide him some good mid season competition.

Make sure you give some credit to Matt Brinkman. He sort of hides in the shadows (if that is possible). I just reserve the church show up with cards and delegate. He picks up people from the airport, invents type 2 booster draft, brings other games, brings food for supper and stays to clean up. And than he kicks his wife out of the house so that everybody that wants too can stay over Saturday night.

Delegate Bill

[franta012]

It really was a great game.  As soon as I laid down Terrifying Beast, I knew I made a mistake!  My anti-ignore LS was worthless.  But the offense I used for 2 player simply wasn't strong enough.  I actually hadn't played any redemption since the T2 tournament last year, so even though I made a few mistakes, it was a great time getting back into it.  I'll never underestimate Land Dispute OR Zeb, that's for sure.