(1) Forcing myself to sleep, somehow, the night after the melee final so I didn't make myself look like such a mediocre player on camera during the joust final. I take solace in the fact that, unlike the game in the Swiss in which the cards fell in my favor rather than Bruno's, there was little I could do; John plucked my hand of what I needed to edge him out in that game. ~It's unnerving that we here in DC will never be able to prepare against decks like that; our allergy to inefficient cards is too strong, and Bruno definitely gave yet another awesome demonstration that there are certain such cards that, when piled together, can result in a masterpiece of a deck. (~In keeping with this amusing and enjoyable “prince of darkness” image the community has bestowed upon me, I'd like to announce that the DC meta is willing to negotiate the payment of a monthly stipend with anyone able and willing to regularly and accurately report on Bruno's playtesting activities over in LA. Offer extended, too, to MO residents regularly playing with Greg.)

(2) ~Actually engaging in an act of “collusion” to predetermine placement in the melee final table. Hell, if I was destined to be wrongfully accused of fixing a game ahead of time despite doing my absolute best to attain the highest placement possible at that final table, perhaps the game would have ended faster and more favorably for me by actually making such a deal. Alas, once FFG made it clear, after Corey and I thoroughly dominated the melee in 2011 with a final table performance for the ages, that predetermining a strategy before a round was distasteful, Dennis, Rick, and I didn't even think to have the conversation. (A quote from a certain FFG employee-judge after the 2011 table rendered subsequent modifications to the tournament rules, and the snap judgment made during this year's final table probably for reasons other than those stated, amusing in some dark sense: “Well, if you and Corey each are good enough at the game to make it to the final table of an 80-person melee tournament on your own merits, I think you guys have the right to play it however you like, even though the controversy is unfortunate [very close, but not verbatim].”)
 

Such are the woes of being judged, in real time and during tense moments, by players without a live, simultaneous feed of the thoughts in your head, and the overwhelming majority of whom don't have four years of unreasonably successful competitive melee experience – including four or five large melee tourneys in which I sat with a metamate exactly once (who smashed me with the two other players), and in which I had to fight tooth and nail for higher placement in a few games in which genuine acts of “collusion” between well-known members of other metas played out unsuccessfully in the face of strong opposition. Woe, too, due to the varying degrees of ambiguity of:

• the melee sportsmanship rules in the situation in which the DC meta found themselves in (bringing a melee deck that was the best deck we could cook up, feeling forced to play it after I repeatedly beat them with it solo, at tables of three rush decks, during playtesting this September; and that also happened to have a combo which we understood we could be abused, even though abusing it was equally possible if sitting with a player outside the meta who simply had a pile of locations to kneel during the challenges phase and could be convinced, in the course of natural melee dealmaking, to work with the Martell player; and that, by itself, did nothing to guarantee that a metamate would actually want to work with you in that way even if two players of that deck sat together – which was the case for me in every single game I played all day, having been screwed twice by the combo myself that day and not having even tried to pulled it off in the two Swiss games in which I was partnered with exactly one other metamate);
• of the “warning” our crew received from FFG after round one (a closed-door session in which the FFG guys agreed with me that it was an awkward situation given that the deck works exactly the same if not sitting with a metamate, and many rounds after which Nate said that the talk that the FFG guys asked me to give to my group must have been effective given that they received not a single complaint again for the rest of the day); and
• of the complete lack of viability of melee as a competitive format, if it is expected to be played in accordance with this weird but somewhat understandable ideal some people hold (an ideal which, unfortunately, runs contrary to the competitive nature of many of the other people who play in melee tournaments with the goal of, and capacity for, consistently winning them).

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In any case, props to the DC meta, including all “satellite” members of the crew, who distinguished themselves this weekend as the most successful meta in the history of the AGOT: LCG. Of the ten of them who came, a solid majority conquered:

• seven placed in the top 16 of the melee, with three in the top four; and
• eight of them placed in the top 16 of the joust, with two in the top four.

The identities of these ten brave and mighty companions:

• Steve/kr4ng (DC)
• Ben/beej? (DC)
• Rick/branagan3 (OK)
• Dennis/dcdennis (DC)
• Wilson (MD)
• Chad J/Chad J (WI)
• Chad B/chadwick537 (WI)
• Kid/Kidd/kidlet (WI)
• Brian/HoyaLawya (DC)
• Erick/finitesquarewell (DC)

Additional props:

• my many opponents throughout the weekend, in both tournaments -- I greatly enjoyed the many satisfying games the lot of us had the opportunity to play;
• Bruno/mathlete, for winning out against one of the most competitive AGOT Worlds fields yet; and for adapting so quickly to the DC Stark/Winter joust deck, taking only a single loss to the thing over many games against it that day, even though it devastated most the rest of the field;
• Greg/dobbler, for yet another top joust performance;
• Derek/SirDuck and Matthieu/maeker, for performances worthy of the titles they received over the weekend, even if they were received under some rather awkward circumstances;
• Matthieu/maekar, for the three particularly excellent, if laborious, games we had the opportunity to play;
• Chad B and Kid for continuing their “just crush” tour in both tournaments;
• Dennis, for being Dennis, and also for owning the crazy Spanish Targ/Maester/Demon's Dance deck we all feared, after being paired up from the 4-1 bracket into the 5-0 bracket of the joust;
• Brian, for performing so well as to come within a hair's width of making the melee final a four-way, all-DC death trudge;
• Steve and Wilson for incredible performances both days, despite having played the game far less than a year;
• Ben, for playing a joust deck he himself engineered to rack up a good few wins, despite being as new as Steve and Wilson
• Rick and Chad J, for incredible performances despite rarely playing the game between tournaments;
• Zeiler, for checking in on Sunday to make sure that Rick, Kid, and Chad B all were still alive after the previous night's debauchery;
  the FFG employees whom, on Saturday, tried to make amends for the craziness of the night before, and whom I assured I held no grudge;
• Penfold, whomever, and wherever, you are; and
• Dan/twn2dn, perhaps most of all, for insisting that I take seriously the melee decklist he skillfully guided, completely on his own, to 10th place at GenCon.

~Additional slops:

• Corey/baragwin, for largely abandoning the DC Meta for almost half a year in his meaningless quest to pile up electronically rendered “loot” in Diablo III;
• Me, Chad B, and Kid, each for failing to derail the Bruno express in the top 16;
• Brian, for failing to make the melee final a four-way, all-DC death trudge;
• Matthieu/maekar, for letting me kick is butt in the joust after the crap he talked the previous day about any potential joust matches we might play;
• Dennis, for being Dennis;
• Rings, for forgetting to make good on the pledge I weaseled out of him early Saturday to buy me, Rick, and Dennis drinks for making mock of the competitive melee format he so detests;
• twn2dn, for not warning me of the explosively controversial potential of the melee decklist he skillfully guided, completely on his own, to 10th place at GenCon.
• everyone who, from game one of the melee tournament, destroyed each and every one of my Hellholt Engineers as they came into play, in a few games dropping me on the wrong side of my terrible and awesome creation; and
• </~> the bartenders and managers at Joe Senser's, who cut off way too many AGOT players way too early Saturday night.

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~TL;DR: The typical long-winded, arrogant, inflammatory trolling you expect from one of finite's few forums posts; replete with the near-run-on sentences he's usually too lazy to edit. Plenty of defensiveness, including admissions of ethically ambiguous actions but denials of doing anything strictly outlawed by the rules, including predetermining the melee final. Indeed, states what could pass for honesty concerning DC's actions in the melee, but who knows? Overall impression isn't one of repentance; clearly plans to continue to kick ass and take names at AGOT. And clearly doesn't care about convincing anyone of anything. Plenty of juicy stuff to misinterpret and misquote; sustenance for any conception held, of good or of evil, concerning him and/or the DC Meta.

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One final suggestion: Allow, for a moment, your head to explode at the thought of how the melee might have turned out had Corey decided to skip his long-planned trip to the wine country of Virginia this previous weekend.

finitesquarewell said:

Don't make me regret inviting Rick to drive a few hours to play with us on any of his free weekends.

Otherwise, thanks for writing a post that will allow the community to continue to see you as the villain.

I see I get slops and props for the same thing. Unfortunately, I hadn't quite figured out the power level of Hellholt Engineer at GenCon, until I was in the semi-finals round and went for 5+ rounds without drawing into one (still reached 13 power). I kept kicking myself for not using my Summoning Season to grab the Engineer when I had the chance. The other three rush players together had 7-8 locations that knelt during the challenges phase…it would have been an easy win with just one copy of that Engineer, and assuming I took that lesson to heart, I think I could have pulled out an overall win at the finals as well. (Ugh, live and learn.)

As for the slops, sorry for the failure to warn you. I honestly didn't at all predict a popular negative reaction to the appearance of good control decks in melee. In fact, my prediction for Saturday's headline would probably have been something like: "For the First Time Ever, Control Deck Wins Melee Championship!" Boy, what a disappointment when I checked the FFG threads on Saturday morning.

finitesquarewell said:

QFT

finitesquarewell said:

Or even if Brian made the finals. A 4-way Martell fest? If they DQ'ed four players, who would win?!

 -----

While I am sad that I didn't make it this year, I'm more sad I didn't make your prop list; but at least I didn't get slopped. :(

Twn2dn said:

note the "~" in front of the whole slops section, ending in front of the last point; there was no way you could have known

Dobbler said:

it's pretty clear that some subset of the community enjoys having a villain to counter-troll, as is evidenced by the volume of personal attacks and hypocritical posting; ~history has shown again and again that where there is market demand, producers gleefully supply

Twn2dn said:

same here, but, whatever the vitriolic say about worlds, you can take solace in the fact that, perhaps for the first time in the game, control solidly is viable in melee (at least when combined with a rush component) (~and plenty of metamates)

I give props to Butzlaff for not taking a whip to us for losing… Nice one Dobbler and Mathlete. At the end of the day we are very good friends.

I also give props to Ryan Jones for just straight up being a man. Patron tequila… Chilled… Delicious

And the whole party at the Hotel. Very happy I went to that. Was a blast.

One more prop to Rachel for driving us around that night and hopefully you didn't get into trouble.

Sorry for party rocking!

Dobbler said:

i don't think there is anything he could write that would sway us from that opinion. :P

widowmaker93 said:

Perhaps he's more of a foil for the protagonist. It let's people cheer more for John Bruno. When I watched the live stream, I thought Erick should be wearing a black hat, and Bruno a white. Although, in reality, maybe he's more Chaotic Neutral than True Evil(?)

widowmaker93 said:

QFT

@Erick: Jeez, you really do like to fan the flames. /shakes head

@Everyone else: Maybe we can just ignore the ridiculous posts and discuss the more serious stuff? Not sure that's possible anymore, but one can hope….

Twn2dn said:

Agreed. Ridiculous is not quite the word I would have used but I do agree with you on both points. Let's try and make something constructive rather than continued flaming and counter flaming.

As much as Erick likes to be the villain and feeds off of it, there is one thing that you cannot take away from him…he is one of the games best players.  I commend him for his performance at Worlds.  He was the only player to make the final table in Joust and Melee and had it not been for the DQ, he would've been Overall World Champion for a third time (~and a third time without winning an individual event).  Erick (and Corey) have some great ideas and are 2 of the 3 (long with Greg Atkinson) deck designers that I know.

~well, thats karma for you xD. Now it will be better for Erick not to go to Europe!!

I posted a question in another thread for you Erick (not directly cause i thought you wouldn't read it)…..Did you consider the posibility of having almost 25% of the field with your deck?? If you did you are a far better strategist that what i thought ;) 

Francisco G. said:

It will be interesting to see if anyone at Stahleck "stoops to conquer" now that his decklist is spoiled. Everyone will be running location hate and Dissension, just in case…

Almost 600 views and only 14 responses?! I'm sure Erick wanted a bigger splash than that. lol