The Road Less Traveled

Living the #RoadWarrior Lifestyle

By: Eric Goodhart

I am a big fan of games. I have a large board game collection (that I rarely have the chance to dive into), and I used to collect a lot of different card games throughout the years. I was the Tournament Organizer for a few different FLGS (or comic shops that ran events) and I was trying to play the Legend of the Five Rings TCG competitively back before Fantasy Flight bought the license. When I was playing that game, I was very accustomed to making multiple 3+ hour drives out to the different locations that were hosting Koteis and I traveled out to GenCon a few times to participate in the largest tournaments that the game had to offer. I loved living what has been deemed the #RoadWarrior lifestyle. I loved showing up and seeing some of the same faces that were living that same lifestyle, showing up for the community and the love of the game we were invested in.

I met my wife during the last Kotei season that I would attend. They announced that AEG sold the license for the game to FFG and I was no longer working at a store that provided me with several regulars who I could play against when I wanted to try something out or keep my competitive edge sharp. I had never really done particularly well, but I loved playing the game and I made some of my best friends because of L5R.

This is where Transformers TCG comes into play. I had tried in vain to find a replacement for L5R in my life. I tested the waters in a few different games while I was waiting for the new L5R to come to market, but I couldn’t find the community support around these games locally.

When WOTC announced their Organized Play plans for Origins and further into the Energon Invitational, I didn’t realize that I was about to become a #RoadWarrior. My brother-in-law, Rich, and I had a discussion and decided that we were going to try to play the Transformers TCG and re-start our YouTube channel in order to get better at the game, but we made that decision months before the announcement. I had reached out to The Only Game In Town, a store I had a history with and was the Tournament Organizer for their events while I worked there to see if I could start to build a community for the game. When Vector Sigma announced their Patreon to help people looking to improve in the game and become more competitive, I decided to back their endeavors, partly because I had met a bunch of them at some of the events I had driven to, and because I could see the value in improving my game play experience. When the announcement went live for OP, I figured I wasn’t going to be able to take advantage of the two conventions that invitations were going to be available at because of the timing of the announcement versus when the conventions were taking place. I was already enrolled in some summer classes so I knew GenCon was out of the picture, and Origins was only 16 or 18 days away. I talked to my wife and explained the whole picture of OP as I saw it at the time and told her I thought it would be the best opportunity for me to qualify for the invitational at PAX Unplugged (which I already had bought passes to attend the day those went live). I only had to make the Top 8 of a tournament (which I hadn’t been able to do at the local events yet) and then win 1 round after that in order to get that invite. She saw the logic in that decision and told me I should go. I didn’t hesitate and started my prep. I was looking for people to stay and drive with, but I couldn’t coordinate a travel buddy, though I was able to find some people to share a hotel with. So, I made the 9+ hour drive on my own right after finishing my shift at work.

Origins was such an amazing experience. I was able to make the Top 8 in the first qualifier I entered, playing the Vector Sigma Sentinels list, and I was elated. I had just made this entire trip worth it. There was only one more hurdle and it was winning one match on Sunday. I played in the Friday Qualifier, just barely missing the Top 8.  I chose to concede to my opponent in one of the later rounds to help him make the cut. I chose to take off the Saturday events so that I could help one of the guys I was sharing a hotel room with tune his deck for Sunday, and so that I could check out the rest of the convention. Fast forward to Sunday, and I get paired against someone I had dinner with the night before and he’s a part of my extended local scene (being in NJ is a double-edged sword), Brian from Wreck N Rule. All I had to do was beat him and I was qualified.

And I failed. I also knew I couldn’t make it to GenCon, and at the time neither could Mark Kinney, which is where the #RoadWarrior comments started. We both looked at this as we’d have to hit as many Qualifiers as we could at the local stores, and even some of the not so local ones, in order to get into the Invitational in December. My hiccup is that I have a 2-year-old child and a wife who would also like to spend time with me, so trying to make it out to things every weekend was not going to be possible.

*Cue the #RoadWarrior entrance theme*

From Origins, my journey took me to a little shop in Connecticut, which was almost a 2.5 hour drive, with Rich being kind enough to drive. It was the weekend of GenCon, and I had been messing around with a Shockwave build for a few weeks after Siege I released, and I had the thought that it might be an easier time because the hardcore players were probably going to be at GenCon and not trying to make it to this qualifier. I ended up making the Top 4 and I ended up paired against someone playing Dinobots. I can’t recall this opponent’s name, but he was a very pleasant person to play against, and even though he wasn’t as solid on all the rules and interactions his deck could do, he was able to take me out of the tournament. I was disappointed, yet invigorated at the same time. It’s the first time since I started playing this game that I broke into the playoffs of an event. I knew my next opportunity was going to be the next week at The Only Game In Town, and I also knew that I was going to be able to bring something a little unexpected to the table.

I had managed to get a copy of Blaster vs Soundwave brought home from GenCon by a coworker. I planned on giving the box to Rich for his birthday in October, but I decided to give it to him early and then ask if I could borrow Blaster to build the deck that Vince from Vector Sigma played and made Top 8 at GenCon with. He agreed and I went forward with playing as many games as I could fit in those 5 days leading up to the tournament. I was excited that I was going to have the opportunity to bring something that most people probably hadn’t seen, let alone played against (even though Vector Sigma released a deck tech video going over the deck the Thursday before the tournament) and it was at the store where I TO for the game, so it was one mile from my house and Rich and I were going to record at a feature table to get content for our YouTube Channel at the same time. In my head we were going to get a large turnout, which isn’t what happened. We managed to get 9 players, which led us to having a 4 round, cut to Top 4 event. I ended up making the Top 4 for this event, getting paired against Kyle Gant from Wreck N Rule and his Aerialbot deck, and he was able to eliminate me. Kyle is a great guy, we’d hung out at Origins and he came up for the Siege I launch event I hosted, so it was bittersweet when he won the invite, but I was glad that someone I knew got the invite. Granted it was another Wreck N Rule member that knocked me out, so there’s that.

The next event that I was going to be able to attend was being hosted at The Comic Book Store in South Jersey. This is the shop where most, if not all, of the Wreck N Rule crew plays out of so I was expecting a pretty large turnout for this tournament, and after a few discussions on what I should play amongst the rest of Team RTFC, I settled on Blaster since I had the most practice with the deck so far and I felt comfortable assessing what the deck could do in a lot of the matchups. I made a last-minute decision after playing a few games on OCTGN that I should main board a Daring Counterattack, but I was otherwise running the deck that I had seen through the Vector Sigma Patreon. The turnout for this tournament was the largest I’d seen aside from Origins and GenCon, with 31 players coming out to compete so we were looking at a 5 Round, cut to Top 8 event. I ended up going 3-1-1 in the swiss rounds, making the decision to draw with Joe in Round 5 after looking at the standings and figuring most of the other people at 3-1 would need to play it out, and I wasn’t sure I could beat Joe’s deck.  Joe already had his invite to the invitational so the only thing at risk for him was the prizes. If I lost to Joe there was virtually no way I’d be making it in. He and I played it out after deciding to draw and I was able to beat him 2-1, but my wins were close calls and by no way definitive. I made the Top 8 and proceeded to win my Top 8 match against what I believe was the Secret Sentinels deck 2-0. I was back at the Top 4. There were two Wreck N Rule members now in the Top 4, Joe and Kevin. I had faced Kevin in Round 4 and I figured it would be my luck that I’d have to play the guy that beat me in the Swiss. That isn’t who I was paired against though. I was paired with Joe once again, and this time the games did not go the way I would have wanted. I ended up going 1-2 against him this time, he had been awarded the decision on who would go first based on standings going into the playoffs, and in both games he won he went first and was able to kill Blaster while Steeljaw was still under him. To top it all off, Steffon was recording the game so I got to go back and relive that crushing defeat.

There was now less than a month available to qualify without needing to resort to the Last Chance Qualifiers (which at the time we had no details on how that was going to work). I was constantly keeping an eye on all the events within a 2 to 3-hour drive from me just so that I could pass the information onto other people even if I couldn’t attend the event. There happened to be a store, Comic Fusion in Flemington NJ, that is rather close to where I live that announced that it was going to host a tournament at 7 pm on a Saturday evening. The expectation was that turnout was going to be low and I knew it was close to the house so Rich and I took our families to dinner and then drove over to play in the event. Ultimately there were 20 people at the store for this event and we started the very long night of a 5-round cut to Top 8 tournament. I ended up losing the first Round against Henry from Matrix of Gradelock and went on to win the next 3 to set myself up as being 3-1 going into Round 5. Looking at the standings I figured my opponent and I could draw into the playoffs, and he already had his invite to the invitational from playing at GenCon, so we did and we both made the cut. In the Top 8 I was paired against someone who also plays primarily out of The Only Game In Town, and someone that I’ve known for almost half of my life, Dan Antony, and ended up losing to him in three games. I stuck around to help be a player judge as it was getting later and later and the play mistakes were starting to creep up. I watched Dan face Henry in the finals with Henry taking the win and the invite.

There now were only 2 weekends left in the EIQ season, and a store I’ve attended tournaments at, Top Deck Games in South Jersey, was hosting an EIQ the following Saturday, but I already knew that I couldn’t make that tournament because it was announced rather late and my wife had made plans for that day. However, I also could see that there were at least 4 different events happening that Sunday that were within 3 hours of my home. I talked with the other people from my local area, Dan and Tom, and we discussed that it didn’t make sense for all of us to show up to the same event and all fight for the same opportunity. We agreed that we were going to split up the events and Tom and Dan would go to the same location because Dan doesn’t drive, and Rich and I would also go to different locations. Luckily Tom and Dan were able to attend the Top Deck event and borrow some cards which put Tom in the position to win the invite at that event, so the Sunday event meant they weren’t competing for the same invite.

They went to the event being held at Nova Games in Brick NJ, I sent Rich to the Harrisburg PA event at The Adventurer’s Guild thinking that there would be a lower turnout because that event had just been announced a few days beforehand, and I chose to go to the event at Deal Me In Games in Boyertown PA. My event ended up kicking off with 8 players, the one Rich was at had 7 players and the one Tom and Dan attended had 4 players.

The plus side for the event I attended was that I knew a few of the players that were at the event, particularly Mark Kinney and Adam Bixler, and I got to sit and talk with them a little before getting started and they helped me tweak my deck slightly. I had decided against playing Blaster for this event. After playing in 3 events and making the playoffs with the decks, I was getting a little burnt out. I also was very intrigued by the deck that had knocked me out at Comic Fusion because it looked fun to play. I had built it on OCTGN to see how I felt about the interactions, and because I was loaning some cards to Tom and Dan for the Top Deck tournament, we had talked over some tweaks Friday night that Tom told me he really liked in the deck. I decided I needed to play something different, and if I couldn’t do well at this event, I’d switch back to Blaster and there was a very small window where I could still pull off earning an invitation. I ended up going 3-0 in the tournament, and I was able to pull off the win against another blue deck in the Top 4. The winner of the other Top 4 game was Mark Kinney, who had earned his invitation at GenCon, so now my #RoadWarrior quest could be complete until December.

Unfortunately, Rich was not able to earn his invite at the event he attended. We talked on the drive home and I knew about one more event in Lebanon PA being hosted the next Saturday, and he had found a store when he was on vacation over the summer that had just announced they were hosting their EIQ Monday, the absolute last day of the store qualifying season, in Rhode Island. We also figured out that his parents were traveling up from Florida for his 40th birthday, so the Saturday event was not a possibility. I told Rich that if he was going to try to make it to that event, I was going to accompany him in a last-ditch opportunity to help him qualify, partly because I wasn’t positive, they could get the minimum number of players without me, and because it was the evening before Rich’s birthday, so I was more determined to help him qualify, even if it meant taking a 4-hour trip into Rhode Island. I decided to play the Blue Cars deck again, because this time it didn’t matter, but I assumed it was something that most of the players at this store probably hadn’t seen, since it didn’t seem like they had a very large local community. We got 5 players for the tournament, and the organizer decided that the tournament would be a 3-round cut to standings event, which is how the last event Rich played in was run, and the fact that there was a person with a Bye in the first round made the math fall into that person’s favor. Rich and I both went 2-0 and were paired in the final round. Looking at the round math, if we were to draw we would both have 7 points and the other match would only result in the winner having 6 points. I was also on the verge of falling asleep due to going into work at 2 am, then making the 4-hour drive and waiting more than 2 hours for the event to start (telling someone on the phone that a start time is one time and then changing it after the fact can negatively impact people’s plans), so I decided I was going to scoop to him and that way two things were going to happen. The first was that he was going to get his invitation to the Energon Invitational, and the second was that he could get a copy of the final standings and his name would be at the top of the list.

So, what did I learn from all of this? The first is that playing the same deck over and over will help you learn the interactions of the deck, but you can also burn yourself out playing it too much. Second, even if you have a preferred play style, sometimes branching out to other styles of decks will help you become a better player. Rich and I played a bunch of different decks leading up to and into the EIQ season, and every time I switched up decks, I felt like I was learning something new, and I was paying attention rather than running on autopilot. Autopilot can lead you astray if you aren’t careful, leading you to make subpar decisions or even outright play mistakes because you aren’t fully engaged in what you are doing. Third, listen to feedback from other players and be open to admitting they might have ideas that you didn’t think of initially. Rich and I started the EIQ season and we decided that we were going to work on improving his skills in the game, and rather than just playing a card because it might be fun, we agreed that we would make changes to decks after discussing the reasons for why the change should be made in the first place. It is a great feeling when you hear someone exclaim “You run that main deck?!?” and you know that it was a card that was added for exactly that reason.

I will admit that I am somewhat of a hypocrite. I gave some players advice that I was not taking myself, where I told them that they should not just sit down at a tournament without knowing how the deck they are piloting actually works. Sometimes there are interactions that you didn’t see before putting cards on the table, or sometimes a card doesn’t work exactly the way you think it does. Can I mention the first time I played Incoming Transmission in Blaster, to agonize over what card to put on top, just to realize that my attack with Firedrive was going to draw me the card? Despite the lengthy and grueling grind, I have learned quite a bit. And most importantly am proud to be a #RoadWarriorNOMORE…