Tournament Report - GLQ #2 Milwaukee, WI (4/22/06)

High Museum of Art, Milwaukee Recap
Great Lakes Qualifier #2
April 22, 2006

My apologies for the extreme lateness of this report. Due to some
personal issues, and my hope that this might be posted on the website,
it have take much longer to post this thank I would have liked. That
being said, on to the report.

As has become tradition in the Great Lakes region, the Great Lakes
Qualifier rotates from city to city, giving different Princes the
chance to host the event. It also allows players who haven't yet
traveled to the host city the chance to meet and play with some new
competition. This year was no exception.

This year, Milwaukee played host to the second of two Great Lakes
region qualifiers, drawing players from Ohio, Illinois, Indiana and
Minnesota to Brew City USA. Oscar Garza, our organized play
coordinator even made the trip to Milwaukee from the White Wolf home
base in Atlanta. The venue, Derry Hegarty's Pub & Grill, seemed a
big hit with everyone, providing easy access to food and beverage for
the day.

Once registration was completed and first tables were assigned, 2
players (Bear Weber and Andrew Strack) announced their decision to not
try to qualify. Neither player they would be able to attend the
championships later this year and wished to give the opportunity to
someone else. Taking into account the three already qualified players,
there were 6 slots available for the other 20 players attempting to
qualify to fight over.

Combat seemed to be the order of the day with many tables turning into
the proverbial slugfest with appearances from such heavy hitters as
Angelo, Beast, and Lambach. The kindred calmed down and things were
pretty even first round with 1 tied table and the other 4 tables won
with only 3 VPs each. Business picked up a little second round with 2
GWs with 4 VPs each (one to Ankur Gupta and the other to David Setty)
and the other GWs going to players without GWs that day. The field was
spread out pretty good, allowing the opportunity for someone to make a
move.

Make a move is exactly what Bear Weber did, sweeping his 3rd table,
taking him up to 1 GW, 8 VPs for the preliminaries, edging out Ankur
Gupta (1 GW, 6 VPs) for the 5th place slot. Jonathan Morris, Boris
Zaretsky and Eric Chiang also had GWs in the 3rd round, adding to their
GWs in the previous rounds, placing them high enough to make the final.
In the 3rd round, David Setty had the unfortunate position of being
seated as Weber's prey, being the first to fall to his table sweep.
However, Setty had played well enough in the previous rounds to rank
him in 1st place going into the final table.

After the dinner break, table seating was made. 4th and 5th seeds Eric
Chiang and Bear Weber were seated across from each other, and Jonathan
Morris chose to sit as Weber's prey. Boris Zaretsky chose to seat
himself upstream of Jonathan Morris, leaving David Setty to choose to
sit as Weber's prey once again, this time preying on Eric Chiang.

It was clearly not a political game in the final with things not going
too well for either Setty's Rebekka, Chantry Elder of Munich vote
deck or Morris' crypt 2 Ahrimanes vote deck, both being ousted with
no VPs. It seems that Weber's Akunanse were once again too much for
Setty to handle. Chiang's Brujah Princes also seemed to get the job
done against Setty's politicians. But the star of the final was
Boris Zaretsky's Tupdog deck. (Decklist below) After Weber and
Chiang ousted their preys, Zaretsky was able to finish them off in turn
for the game win.

The top six players qualified for the championship, but as Weber
declared his intention to not attempt to qualify, and Ankur Gupta and
Oscar Garza were already qualified, the qualifier slots went all the
way down to 9th place. 10th and 11th places missed qualifying by only
tournament points. In fact, 9th (Mike Ooi) and 10th places (Daniel
Martinez) were only three minutes away from timing out in round 3. If
they had done so, 11th place (Catrina Ahlbach) would have moved up to
9th and qualified instead.

Here are the names of those who qualified:

Rank Name
1 Boris Zaretsky
2 Eric Chiang
4 David Setty
5 Jonathan Morris
7 Tim Arehart
9 Mike Ooi

Overall, it seems that everyone had a good time. All those in
attendance received a special promo card from the Milwaukee Home Brew
expansion entitled "High Museum of Art, Milwaukee" in honor of the
day. All those who qualified, would have qualified, or were already
qualified received the other Milwaukee Home Brew expansion card of the
day "Make the Cut." I was going to post pictures of the Home Brew
cards with this report, but I just can't get the image hosting to work.
Oh well. Those who didn't make the final (including myself) were
able to play a few pick-up games with people outside of their play
groups and test their decks against some other metagames. Compliments
were given by the hosts of the venue and some of the players as to how
smooth the event went. I would welcome all those in attendance back to
Milwaukee anytime.

-David A. Robins
-Toreador Prince of Butler, Wisconsin

Final Standings
Rank Name V:EKN # GWs VPs Final VPs TPs
1 Boris Zarestsky 2120132 2 7 3 144
2 Eric Chiang 2100014 2 6 1 138
3 Bear Weber 2210014 1 8 1 156
4 David Setty 2660014 2 7 0 150
5 Jonathan Morris 2060010 2 6 0 144
6 Ankur Gupta 2060001 1 6 138
7 Tim Arehart 2100003 1 5 144
8 Oscar Garza 1000655 1 3 102
9 Mike Ooi 2030008 0 4 144
10 Daniel Martinez 1000411 0 4 132
11 Catrina Ahlbach 1005105 0 4 120
12 Eric Simon 1001067 0 3 126
13 Tony Carroll 7730004 0 2 108
14 John Bell 2750008 0 2 102
15 Connor Bell 7110009 0 2 96
16 Christian Herro 1000722 0 2 84
17 David Buerger 2750013 0 1 96
18 John Flournoy 1000447 0 1 84
19 Ryan Johnsen 7730020 0 1 78
19 Tom LaCorte 4710002 0 1 78
21 Jake Williams 4710001 0 0 72
21 Josh Whelan 2120137 0 0 72
23 Steven Williams II 7730000 0 0 66
23 David Bowles 2660015 0 0 66
25 Andrew Strack 2060022 0 0 60

Winning Deck
The Hand of Tupdog
by Boris Zaretsky

Crypt (12)
8 Tupdog POT VIS 1, Gargoyle (3)
1 Brooke dom tha 3, !Tremere (2)
1 Saiz aus dom 3, !Tremere (3)
1 Selena AUS DOM THA 6, !Tremere (3)
1 Reverend Blackwood obf DOM THA 6, !Tremere (2)
1 Kurt Strauss aus tha DOM 5, !Tremere (2)
1 Pugfar aus for vis POT 5, Gargoyle (2)

Library (90 cards)
Master (13 cards)
1 Hungry Coyote
2 Powerbase: Montreal
1 Life in the City
1 Mob Connections
1 University Hunting Ground
1 Heidelberg Castle
1 Fame
3 Blood Doll
1 Carver's Meat Packing Plant
1 Dreams of the Sphinx

Action (8 cards)
1 Magic of the Smith
4 Grave Robbing
3 Govern the Unaligned

Action Modifier (4 cards)
4 Conditioning

Reaction (14 cards)
4 Patrol
6 Wake with Evening's Freshness
4 Deflection

Combat (47 cards)
4 Rockheart
4 Taste of Vitae
11 Immortal Grapple
3 Undead Strength
7 Raking Talons
10 Torn Signpost
4 Thrown Sewer Lid
4 Roll

Equipment (3 cards)
1 Leather Jacket
2 Hand of Conrad

Retainer (1 card)
1 Mr. Winthrop