SFR, Inc.

[Skawilly]

Yo yo, just stepped in the door and that place was sick. I put in roughly 8 - 10 hours everyday for 3 days. Demo after demo. I feel between 2 full timers and a couple of helping hands every now and again we hit about 50 demonstrations.

Ill be post pictures tomorrow. Though a couple of things came up to hinder the finale I was hoping for. A: I was way to busy to host my team event, though I am more prepared of what to expect at these events so ill get it going next time. (This also includes getting the campaign going) I dont meant to be full of empty promises I am sorry.
And B: There was simply not enough table room and time to set up recording, even though I brought the equipment from my laptop.

We were able to fill the 8 player draft tourny, the 6 people "Our corner of the Worlds'" tourny and only 4 people for the first night standard 36 pointer. Again, ill post more details tomorrow on that. I think next year, rumor has it we will have a 2nd table, I hope so we were spilling over....
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Will
"There is more philosophy in a bottle of wine than all the books in all the world" - Some random wine cap -

[Skawilly]

Ok the tourny lists were as follows (I did terrible record keeping):

Single Race - 36 pt. Standard Construction (no expansions) 4 attendees:

NMcCoy and he of course brought his Feral. He was 50% magic and the remaining 50% were of Light Melee and Calvary. His star piece were his elephants.

Skawilly (Myself) I brought 25% magic and the 75% were also of Melee and Calv. And yes, I brought a troll.

DProman I believe brought his frostwing but I cannot remember for some reason, with certainty.

David, he was just a hard core dragon dicer (He spent almost as much time at the booth as the rest of us did). He fielded his dwarves. He went 50% Mages and 50% Light Melee.

The first round of team ups went with myself and DProman/NMcCoy and David. Then the victors faced and it was NMcCoy and I and as well DProman and David had a final last ditch match themselves.

Again, my recording keeping is poor but i can remember the epic fight I had with NMcCoy. He at on point rolled 45 pts. of magic and lightning struck me to oblivion. However, he was on a one face magic terrain and I was on an 8th face city. This is important for 2 reasons. A: He must have struck my troll down about 4 or 5 times and I kept promoting back into it, and B: my entirety of 5 units was able to hold out until time was called. Which was funny because literally right after the buzzer he came in and trampled them with his elephants, in roughly 45 seconds after the bell.

Standings:
Skawilly
NMcCoy
DProman
David
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Will
"There is more philosophy in a bottle of wine than all the books in all the world" - Some random wine cap -

[Skawilly]

Sealed Starter 'Draft' - 36pt. 8 attendees:

I personally have never done anything like this and let me tell you it went very unexpected. If anyone is unfamiliar with how DProman sets this up, here you go. For every single player 2 unopened starters are layed out. Basically out of 36 pts. of any race in a starter (Corals/Lavas/Dwarves/Goblins/Amazons/Swampstalkers/Undead/Feral) and they are all opened and laid out on the table, and then in random order people pick from the randomly selected rarity. You get 5 minutes or so of trading before you are stuck with your picks.

The attendees were as follows:
Skawilly
NMcCoy
DProman
David
Mitchel
Natalya
NMcCoy's Father (Sorry I forget his name)
Web

These armies were more of a hodgepodge so the setups arent too exciting, however the picks were very interesting. I went for as many SS's as I could grab. I got real lucky in that both the rares pulled happened to be ranged. I also ended up with a swamp beast, and I was very impressed and will be fielding them in the future. Out of all of us Mitchel was the only one who ended up with over 10 pts. of magic and he got 17, as well, he grabbed random ranged units to fill in because he was very much undead. Mr. McCoy dove right into the feral but he did a dirty move and grabbed the only rare monster on the field, the chimera, as he went first on that pick and sacrificed his feral owl folk for it.

All in all, it came down to McCoy and I, and it was exactly opposite of the previous day. I was hammering him with ranged but of course that is a mid terrain icon and he was holding out on his 8th face with just feralization. The funny thing about it, given another minute I would have K'O'd him but time was called. Due to the huge turnout he had a prize awarded to him as he ended up with a rare print blue zealot, special made and not for retail. It was definitely a gorgeous die.
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Will
"There is more philosophy in a bottle of wine than all the books in all the world" - Some random wine cap -

[Skawilly]

Our (little) Corner of the World Tournament - 36pt. Standard Construction (all tournament legal dice)

For the life of me I cannot remember anything about this event. Though it was the end of day 3, and after working hours and hours, and losing demo after demo its just a haze believe me. I cannot even remember if it was 5 or 6 people turnout. I do remember the victor though, and I very much remember his setup.

DProman walked away with this one. He is a nasty nasty Eldarim player. He went with blue Eldarim this time with 2 firewalker rare mages. Between him and I it was on a devils game and that did me in. I was enjoying the ranged magic setup from the day before, that when I ended up on a ton of melee I was a fish out of water. He won the horde roll also, which is where his vitory stood. He went right for an 8th face and in round one moved 18 pts. into reserve which is just fine as he was blue magic. Because I went 2nd by the time he had his 8 I was moving it to 7 and he just blasted himself with windwalks. We did not even confront each other it was just a couple of real quick rounds. Thats a downfall to SS's, you cannot control terrain from reserves or on a melee icon.

The interesting thing about DPromans setup is that he only uses saves Eldarim and Mages. Just be very careful when attacking him because they start to swell with dragonkin, and his seemingly harmless offense starts to turn ugly real quick, as A: he always packs in a ton of "counter" SAI's and B: he will promote his kin with every cantrip. With all those saves and the fly SAI on his mages, its near impossible to win attrition on him, as your single target SAI's do nothing with sacrafice kin as a racial.
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Will
"There is more philosophy in a bottle of wine than all the books in all the world" - Some random wine cap -

[Quickbeam]

[dproman]

PAX was Awesome!! My head is spinning with ideas of how to make next year better. I'm going to do the same thing that Cliff Wiggs did after GenCon, start asking for volunteers now (hint, hint).

Before I say anything about the "draft" tournament, I have to acknowledge that without the help of Skawilly (Will) and his wife, I couldn't have pulled this off. They were my right hand. Will is a natural when it comes to demoing. He has a confident, yet relaxed attitude that put so many people at ease instantly. I feel that I come across a salesman, Will doesn't do that. He has such a passion for the strategy of DD that he can't wait until the battle! Before you ask, no he is not a rep, nor does he want to become one.
We were also greatly assisted by NMcCoy, George Hunter, and David (a very enthusiastic follower of DD from last year's PAX). David jumped in to help last year and even ran a demo by himself on Sunday (because we were so busy). He had only learned the day before, but he is a quick study. Will enjoyed showing him more elements of DD, like Dragonkin and medallions. David entered in all 3 of our impromptu tournaments.

About Saturday nights draft, so, here's some back story and my solution.
I tried to run a draft tourney back in March at Gamestorm. Even though most of the participants enjoyed themselves, I felt that there were many clumsy elements to the event, as well as the draft taking a long time (28+ rounds to pick dice). The main point (from the draft back in March) was the picking order. There were a few unhappy players (as the draft wore on) because I had decided that we would start with the monsters, then rares, and so on. We had a few new players who were intimidated by the whole process (due to their lack of familiarity with the dice).
That was then, this is now:
Saturday night's went like this. I limited it to 8 players. 2 of each sealed starter were used. We dumped them all out on the table and sorted them according to type. I condensed the drafting of army dice down to 8 rounds. 2 rounds for Monster (1 each), 2 rounds for Rares (1 each), 2 rounds for Uncommons (3 each), 2 rounds for Commons (5 each). That way everyone would get a 1st pick (We just rotated down the sign-up sheet). What was random however, was what type of dice we were selecting. This was chosen by the person picking first in each round (they drew a name out of a hat, as it were). That added an element randomness that was just plain fun! Then there were 2 rounds of picking 2 terrains and 1 dragon. The selection order was done by drawing straws. After the selection process, I allowed 10-15 minutes of trading as an option (which very few chose to do, but it was fun to offer it anyway). Everyone's army (as you could imagine) was a very weird mix of dice and races. Very entertaining!
After the dust settled and the winner declared and prize awarded. I allowed every participant (if they wanted, most did) to pick out 18 points of dice (from the SFR demo dice box) that complimented their starter set.
I want to thank all of our more experienced players who understood my intention of having this be "learning" event as much as being a tournament event. Thank You!
I received feedback from a few of the new players, and they really liked the format. So, this idea is something positive to build on.

Quickbeam, I talked with a few people from California and I mentioned your group and Strategicon. So, you keep a look out for some new faces.

PAX was successful for the reason, that the 1 retailer who had product at the show, sold out of starters (of course he did, we needed 8 for the tourney).

Needless to say, we are being recognized at PAX, and our fanbase is growing. Now, all we need is a rep in Seattle to help get things going in that region.

Lots of fun, Lots of work, now I gotta rest.
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Rep (director)

[cliffwiggs]

[George Hunter]

I had a blast at PAX hanging out with the Dragon Dice folks. I've been collecting the dice since they came out in 1995, but it had literally been since 1996 that I had even played the game, despite having around 3,000 dice. Even with me constantly fumbling around like a newbie in the dark, Will and Dave were both patient and helpful and made the experience a lot of fun, to me and to every other novice I saw at the table.

It was rare for someone not to be at the table being given a demo, and often the table was full with friends hanging around looking on with interest.

As Dave mentioned, it was a shame that more retailers didn't have Dragon Dice in stock. By the end, Games and Gizmos was down to three starters, and their Frostwings and Scalders packs had disappeared by mid-Saturday, and their Tree Folk sold out early Sunday.

It was a great time at the Dragon Dice table, and I'm already looking forward to next year's PAX, and I'm sure there were many other players who will be enthusiastically looking for the Dragon Dice gang next year.

Great job, guys! You have me hooked all over again.

[Skawilly]

That is DProman on the left and myself (Skawilly) on the right.



Thats just a shot of us doing demo's. The gentlemen across from me was there last year with his dice and did not play since. He wanted to learn a bit more so I just crammed the 2 18 pt. demo sets together and he threw in 36 pts. of amazons. Feral do not mix well with undead....



My brother in the background on the left Demoing with DProman. And that is NMcCoy just dueling me with his feral and my undead.



More demoing. NMcCoy demoning in the middle row there, and myself and David in the foreground. Actually David was just swapping out units looking for a more solid build in his army and I was giving him advice. And of course DProman in the background giving his pitch.



First nights tourny. Dual black breath on DPromans frosties. That ended his day.



NMcCoy rolled 46 pts. of magic on me. 7 lightning strikes but thankfully time was called and I was on an 8. 45 more seconds and I would have lost. Those who are math junkies should know the little guy on the bottom left is on a different terrain.



The famous George Hunter on the left duking it out with Davids newly formed dwarves.



Picking from the draft here. There were simply too many folk to fit in one shot. My wife, Natalya, in the second row on the right with the purple watch and NMcCoy's father on the end there.

Thats it for this year. Next year with a 2nd table I should have space to record from my laptop. We will see.
_________________
Will
"There is more philosophy in a bottle of wine than all the books in all the world" - Some random wine cap -