Gloom's Toronto Tournament Report:

We hurriedly jammed out the door into the awaiting van.  We were late, and as usual, it was my fault since I took too long in the shower.  I’d told Frank, the TO for the event and my fellow Gym Leader at the Emerald City Gym, that we’d be there between 9:30 and 10:00, and despite my delaying pure and I, we still managed to get to the theater within a reasonable proximity of ten o’clock, and that included a trip to swing by Nova’s place to pick him up.  Woo!

The tourney was being held at the 401 Morningside Cineplex Odeon theater.  The reason?  Frank’s wife is the manager there, and we offered to run them a tournament easily half a year ago to promote the fourth Pokemon movie.  So, six months, forty-some-odd league sessions, three message board blitzes, countless phone calls, and a trip to Seattle later, we were finally running the tournament.  And with a special guest as our Head Judge!

Yup, just scant days before the event, Purity confirmed that she could come to Toronto to perform the duties of Head Judge.  It was great to see her again, and all my leaguers that hadn’t gotten the chance to meet her at Worlds were thrilled to make her acquaintance.  The Saturday before hand, pure made some really great suggestions for the tournament – namely, that we could have ID cards and lanyards for the judges, and use a wrist band identification system for the players.  These both being absolutely great ideas, I got to sit and peer over her shoulder as she worked her magic, making some really great designs and generally reading my mind as to what I thought would look good.  We were surprised with a visit from Nova and another friend of mine, and that delayed the design a bit, but around nine in the evening they were completed in an über-spiffy fashion, and pure burned them to disc while I began frantically tearing apart the Yellow Pages trying to find a copy or printing place that was still open at 10 PM on Thanksgiving Sunday.  Hehe.  We managed to find a Kinko’s up in Markham, just a little bit north of Pickering, where I live, so we packed into the van and rode up there.  I really let pure take the reigns on the whole thing, from designing the judge badges and wrist bands while I bobbed my head and gave suggestions, approval, and impressed stares, to watching her as she bounded over to one of the computers in the copy shop and printed them all out.  I cut a couple of the pages out, but really, it was just the first of what would end up being a series of major contributions to the tournament from pure.  Man they looked great once they were all printed out and cut up.  ^_^  I believe pics of those are in pure’s report.

So, we returned to Pickering, new judge badges and wrist bands in hand, quite pleased with ourselves.  We tested a few decks, did some last minute phone calls to judges, and eventually hit the sack.

So yeah, back to the Sunday morning.  We arrived at the movie theater at about ten, I think, and Frank’s son Jake ushered us in while Chris (Kingdra325 on the boards) kindly helped us with our things.  We hefted our cards, and the printer we needed to run the tourney, onto tables that Frank had already arranged to be neatly awaiting us, and admired the set up.  Frank, Chris, and Dooley had all arrived a bit after nine, and had set up three long rows of tables for play.  Large rolls of paper had been taped across the tables since we couldn’t find a sufficient quantity of table cloths in time, but this turned out to be quite the asset.  See, a little after my arrival, Frank asked me where the table standees were.  To which I blinked and asked “I was supposed to bring those.”  To which Frank replied “Yeah!!!”  And then we both blinked, and Frank walked off.  :D

Soooo, I got Chris to write the table numbers on the paper.  That worked out perfectly, since it made us feel better about the tablecloth problem while also preventing tournament players from making off with my league’s table standees.  ;D
 
Shortly after our arrival, competitors actually started to arrive.  o_O  Now, this was interesting, because we’d said in all our flyers and posts that registration didn’t open until noon.  The reason for that was that the theater itself couldn’t open its doors til then.  The theater itself is surrounded by a ring of glass windows, so we were able to witness the plight of our poor early competitors as they slowly froze in the cold Canadian tundra.  We sent Chris out for a while and he kept them entertained, as well as explaining to them that we couldn’t let them in due to the theater’s policy.  He did a good job of that.
 
Nova got the printer hooked up – I kept paranoidally asking if it worked.  He kept patiently replying yes, and eventually printed out a rather hilarious test page to prove to me that, YES, THE DANG PRINTER WORKS!, and that I could stop asking.  ;D  It was about this time I think that Pure presented the wrist bands and judge lanyards, which everyone was really impressed with.  ^_^  They were so cool!

Dooley wanted to play pure, and pure wanted to try out her new Vileplume/Krow/Arbok deck for Modified.  Despite the fact that the deck had never been used before it worked really, really well, and pure was even able to play around the severe disadvantage she had to Dooley’s Espeon deck – poison doesn’t work very well against all free retreaters.  Still, after almost an hour of play, pure emerged victorious.  I’ll say one thing – that deck is really, really good.  o_o

Somewhere along the lines Nova ripped a table apart.  In an effort to lift it, he mistakenly employed his superhuman Incredible-Hulk-like strength and tore the top clean off the base.  I swear, right before I saw him rip it apart I heard him yell “DIE ACCURSED FIEND!  YOU ARE NO MATCH FOR ME!” and then grunt mightily while the sleeves of his shirt burst into tiny ribbons of onceashirt due to the massive size of his biceps.  So yeah, he was sidelined for a while before the tourney started, due to table-fixing duties.  ;D

It was getting to be about time to start taking registration, so pure visited the snack counter to get a drink.  Now, for anyone who’s seen pure, you know how small she is, and she normally eats tiny quantities of food.  So when she returned with a massive large drink and equally huge bag of popcorn, I must’ve stared in shock, because she blushed a little and said “It just made more financial sense!” in what appeared to be mild embarrassment.  That was the cutest thing all day.  ^_^

Soooo, we opened the doors, and a nice line formed.  Nova took cash, I took the registration book (we wanted to get contact info for all the players – no reason why, but it might come in handy), and purity did the name and number entry into the DCI Reporter program (laptop generously loaned out by Dooley).  It went really smoothly, and we had people registering right up until the last minute.  Kevin Lee, another professor, arrived just before the tourney started, and since we figured a 6:1 player:judge ratio was enough, we let Chris Turek pay his fee and enter the tournament instead of keeping his judging duties.  It was nice to see Kevin – I always bump into him at events down in the US and the Toronto GCs and QTs.  Players were quick to seat themselves and quite a few games and trades broke out as one o’clock rolled around.  Once it did, it was actually a really quick matter to get the pairings ready and posted, while Nova announced the play formats, and the sad loss of the Celebi e-card promos. (lousy Canada didn’t get any)  

So, after about ten minutes of announcements and postings, people paired off and got ready to play!  Competition was pretty heated and there were lots of ruling questions, but with so many staff, and such a high quality of staff, it went really smoothly.  By the end of the tournament we only had to issue one caution for a drawing error.  Pure did an incredible job as head judge, Frank was an awesome TO, and Nova, Dooley, and Kevin were all awesome.  Everybody really knew all their rulings, and demonstrated a great deal of expertise.  I can’t thank all the staff enough for doing such wonderful jobs, each and every one of them.  :D

 One game that I just have to mention was Greg Cresswell versus Beau Kelbert (a member of our league).  Because we wanted to be compliant with SC and Worlds standards, we didn’t use point-splits for draw situations.  Just a straight win or loss, or Sudden Death if it was required.  Well, after a tight game, Beau and Greg went into Sudden Death, and it was actually one of the most enjoyable matches I’ve ever seen, at least as a spectator.  It went on for quite a while, resulting in a flip to see if Beau’s Grimer could knock out Greg’s Active Pokemon.  Beau got tails, and Greg took the match as a result – it was really, really cool.

After four rounds of Swiss we cut to top 8.  After two rounds of heated battle it came down to Emerald City’s own Chris Turek against Branko Boskovic.  Chris was playing SneaselKingKrow, while Branko was playing a peculiar entei/cargo deck with a small amount of Unlimited drawing and some Gusts.  Branko played really, really well, and won the roll to see who’d go first, but Chris pulled off some third-turn Slowking action and just controlled the game from that point on out.  Both competitors played their decks stunningly well.

Sooo, prizes got handed out, and the six of us (Nova had left at this point, but Chris helped with clean up) collapsed the last of the tables and posed for a couple of pictures.  Those who weren’t getting a ride back with Frank said their goodbyes to pure, and we waited for a while for frank to close things up inside.  It was quite cold and pure was shivering, so I gave her my coat, and traded her for her jacket.  I don’t know how *I* looked…  hehe.  But pure looked warm and happy.

Frank eventually got us all piled in, and Chris happily tore through his box while Frank’s kids sat in the back.  They only required a few movie-poster beatings.  ;D  We were getting really tired – even though the tourney went really smoothly, it was still a surprising amount of work, so my home was a welcome sight.  Chris, I think, helped us get our stuff inside, and once we got our coats off we just kinda collapsed… needed… sleep.  Zzzzzzzzzz… Man were we tired.  Still, our first major tourney was under our belts, we got a huge amount of really great feedback and several people interested in seeing us run the Toronto GC (thanks to a third brilliant idea of pure’s), pure had her last Master Professor Point, and all our limbs were intact, so woo!  It was a total blast, and really couldn’t have gone any better.  :D

Again, I need to thank the staff who helped with the tournament.  Pure, for coming all the way from New York to perform duties as Head Judge, as well as for the “email Gills sheets” and the wristbands/lanyards.  Nova, for coming up from Waterloo to help us do announcements, set up tables, and when required, showing those tables who’s boss.  Frank, for providing the venue, distributing the flyers, contacting Kevin, and packaging up/sharing the cost of all the prizes.  Dooley, for doing tables, a great job judging, and keeping everyone in line.  Kevin, for surprising us all by showing up and having experience with Toronto tourneys before.  And Chris, for… uhhh… being a nice fella!  Everyone played an important roll in keeping the tournament running as well as it did!

Oh, and as a brief denouement, I was shocked and amazed at how many people recognized me as JDGloom.  I mean… wow.  People know who I am?  That was a shock.  Made me wish I’d thrown in my contacts and looked presentable.  But hey, we’ll do that next tournament.  ;D

 Thanks for reading!
  -JDGloom