So, as mentioned in my previous post, Kris and I took a drive down to New Jersey on Saturday to participate in round 1 of the 2009 ‘Ard Boyz tournament at Maplewood Hobby.

We had originally planned to attend the tournament at Time Warp Comics, also in Jersey, however they (along with many other stores) had deferred the tournament until Sunday due to the simultaneous release of the new Magic: The Gathering expansion. (Earth to GW: don’t schedule major events that coincide with major events of much larger, directly competing hobbies.) Our second choice was Dark Tower (again, NJ), but they moved the tournament to a local comic convention which included a $45 entry fee, despite GW providing prize support and explicitly stating there would be no charge to participate. We also briefly considered going to Brothers Grim in Long Island, where we attend tournaments every other month, however summer weekend traffic to LI is just too brutal.

Maplewood was choice #4. We had known in advance that turnout was going to be poor, but this was a little silly. Only 3 players showed up, including Kris and myself. Talk about easy pickings. Free passes to the semi-finals and everybody takes home loot. We decided that the only fair way to determine placings would be to conduct a round-robin tournament in which we each played the other two participants once over the course of 3 rounds (sitting out for one of them).

I should add that the store itself was great, with tons of space for gaming. The guys felt bad for the turnout and let us do our own thing, but seemed willing to bend over backwards to accommodate us. Hell, they even stayed open over an hour past their closing.

As an aside, it seems that turn-out across the country was poor, at least judging by forum posts and first-hand accounts from our other club members. Toywiz only had 12 players, the store in CT also had 12, and Maplewood only had 3. Probably has to do with the fact that it takes place in the summer this year and therefore conflicts with scheduled vacation, as opposed to previous years when it started in September. Another bad move on GW’s part.

I brought my camera to the event with the intent of taking pictures, however I’m not experienced with my list and therefore tend to play more slowly than I’m accustomed to. As a result, I decided not to take pictures of my games, though I did document the round 3 game between Zach and Kris. I’ll hold off on that battle report in case Kris is interested in writing it up, despite the retardedly loltastic rolling.