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[jsh357]

Here goes nothing.

So, to start off I should explain that there were actually two Dominion tournaments running at PAX over the weekend.  The first was in the League Block, the second was a focused tournament held on Saturday for a few hours.  The League block was advertised as a 'more casual' tournament while the official tournament was 'more serious.'  Personally, I think the EXACT OPPOSITE turned out to be true.  I had fun in both (well, aside from the very first game, which you'll see)

Also, I met a lot of awesome people playing these games.  Didn't get everyone's contact info/usernames, but I would love to play everyone I did again.  If you read these forums, hit me up!

So I'll cover the games in the order I played them.

First, here's how the League worked:
- You had to play six 4 player games, each using a different expansion with a predetermined Kingdom (Base, Intrigue, Seaside, Alchemy, Prosperity and Cornucopia)
- Your score was a combination of your placement in all six games
- The four finalists were those with the highest scores.  We played a "draft" match combining the cards from Base and Hinterlands.  By turn order, we each eliminated one card until only ten remained, then played that set.  It was like Veto Mode on crack.

So, on Friday I managed to get four of my games in.  Let me tell you, it was a wonder I did.  Finding 3 opponents who needed to play all the same rounds you did?  Not always easy.

First round: Seaside
This was one of the most grueling games of Dominion I have ever been in, and it didn't go well from the beginning.  The kingdom's cards: Sea Hag, Ghost Ship, Ambassador, Wharf, Tactician, Lookout, Militia, Warehouse, Caravan, Bazaar

I'll try and describe my opponents for each match, but PAX is kind of a blur so I may forget some.  First was a man who was very eager to play a match, get done, and move to the other League game he was interested in.  We soon discovered he was very new to Dominion and didn't have much grasp on the rules just yet.  This was a BAD, BAD board for a new player.  Second opponent was a nice, older gentleman who I remember having pleasant conversations with throughout this game.  Before the game started, he looked at Ambassador and said it seemed like a weak card unless there were Curses.  I could tell right then he had little experience with Seaside, though he had a good grasp of Dominion otherwise.  Probably only plays IRL.  Third opponent was a bald man who feigned being mediocre before we started, but was clearly better than he let on as he dominated the entire match.  I never saw him again after this game, but he was good for sure. 

So we rolled the turn order.  I was going last.  Shoot.  Due to our seating, the bald man was going first.  As expected, everyone purchased attacks right away.  I opened Sea Hag/Ambassador, which turned out to be a fatal mistake in this game as I didn't get a $5 hand for at least 15 turns.  Ambassador/Silver or Ambassador/Ambassador or even Lookout/Ambassador probably would served me better since everyone got Hags and I didn't have a prayer of winning the Curse war due to table position. 

The bald man got a Tactician between turns 4-6, then loaded up on Wharfs and Caravans, ending his turns with a Ghost Ship eventually.  I say eventually because this game ended up dragging on for at least 25 turns, as Sea Hag is wont to accomplish.  Halfway through the game, the man who was unfamiliar with the game ran off for whatever reason, leaving us with extra Curses because of his original presence.  Fantastic!  After over an hour of play (seriously), I ended up placing third, in part due to my refusal to purchase a Lookout.  No kidding, it probably would have been a godsend in hindsight.  My deck was so cluttered from taking 2-3 attacks per turn that if I wanted any chance I needed to clear the dreck.  I played poorly, but again, I also got incredibly unlucky. 

It's amazing how much more clear Wharf and Tactician's powers are in a real game.  When you see that table side full of orange, you KNOW horrible things are about to happen.  I got off to a lousy start, but things started going better for me soon enough...

To be continued

[jsh357]

Second round: Intrigue

Probably because the previous game ran so long, nobody in it wanted to do a second round.  I didn't blame them.  Fortunately, almost immediately after the first game, I found another group of three ready to play.  What luck!  This set ended up being a lot less complicated.

Cards I remember being in the Kingdom: Courtyard, Pawn, Great Hall, Masquerade, Steward, Bridge, Upgrade, Harem

My opponents this time were a little more chill about the whole thing.  First, a woman named Shree, who I would run in to again in the bigger Dominion tournament the next day.  Very nice person, also an Isotropicer.  We talked strategy a bit the next day.  I had never done this offline, and it was a lot of fun to talk about the game at a high level with someone.  There was another woman playing (I can't remember her name) so I'll just call her Sunny.  I hate to say it, but for the life of me I cannot remember who the third opponent was.  There's a reason I don't remember too much about this game, though.

As you can probably guess, Big Money was huge on this board.  I once again rolled fourth table position, fearing for my life, but my opponents all opened with stuff like Upgrade, Bridge and Steward.  I opened Silver on a 3/4 split so they wouldn't be on to me right away, then got Masquerade as my last buy.  Nobody else picked up a Masquerade or a Courtyard. 

Shree went for some kind of Upgrade/Great Hall thing.  I don't recall asking her what her eventual plan was.  The other players seemed to be focused on the Bridges and Harems.  I bought nothing but money (Harems after the first Gold),  Provinces and a Courtyard, maybe a Great Hall toward the end.  I think I won by an 11 point margin or so.  Needless to say, it lifted me quite a bit after the previous game.  I was feeling good about this again.

Sunny asked me why I went for the Masquerade and I explained some of the theory behind why it's so good.  You just can't always have rational conversations like that online!  I didn't find any other games for a few hours.  (I must have gone to a Panel or something)  When I came back, there was another group ready and we played two games.

To be continued...

[dondon151]

Ambassador/Silver or Ambassador/Ambassador or even Lookout/Ambassador probably would served me better since everyone got Hags and I didn't have a prayer of winning the Curse war due to table position.

Active defense against attacks, particularly as 4th player, is a strong move in a 4-p game. I'd definitely open with a Lookout and maybe even grab 1 or 2 more, and would ignore Sea Hag completely. Ambassador is a maybe, but one of its drawbacks is that it usually cuts your buying power if you're attempting to thin your deck, whereas Lookout isn't as bad of an offender.

[jsh357]

Ambassador/Silver or Ambassador/Ambassador or even Lookout/Ambassador probably would served me better since everyone got Hags and I didn't have a prayer of winning the Curse war due to table position.

Active defense against attacks, particularly as 4th player, is a strong move in a 4-p game. I'd definitely open with a Lookout and maybe even grab 1 or 2 more, and would ignore Sea Hag completely. Ambassador is a maybe, but one of its drawbacks is that it usually cuts your buying power if you're attempting to thin your deck, whereas Lookout isn't as bad of an offender.

Yeah.  I mostly play 4p against my friends, who don't take the game too seriously.  I guess I just assumed that Sea Hag would be a killer open like it usually is.

[jsh357]

Third round: Alchemy

In the third round I met Isotropic user ccasin, who would prove himself be one of the best players in the League, as I'll get in to when it's appropriate.  Very nice fellow.  I believe the other two players were friends of his, one of them a MTG vet who was only kinda-sorta familiar with Dominion but played well regardless.  He had never played with Potion cards.

The Kingdom Cards I remember: Herbalist, Familiar, Transmute, University, Alchemist, Thief, Mine

So from the very start, the four of us had a nice rapport going.  I guess I let myself relax a bit too much as I started playing poorly. 

Yet again, I rolled fourth.  Criminy.  I didn't complain too much about it this time since it would seem like I was whining (ok, fine, I WOULD be whining).  All of them opened with a Potion, and since they had explained how good Familiar is to the new player, I knew exactly what was going to happen.  I figured there was no chance I could win through traditional means, so I decided to get silly and try to throw them off.  I opened Herbalist/Thief (Had a 5/2).  What was I going for, you might ask?  Well, it was a poorly handled attempt at running a Transmute deck.  The Thief was just for the first few shuffles.  I wanted to get any Potions out of the way that I could, and I knew from experience Thief is often underrated in four player games, but needless to say this backfired on me.  I didn't hit a single Potion, and was forced to buy one on turn four.  By then at least one player had a Familiar ready to go. 

I got a lot of bad draws here, but decided to stick with the Transmute thing for a few reasons.  First, it seemed unlikely I would hit Provinces in my situation, so grabbing Duchies was the way to go.  Unfortunately for me, I'm not too experienced with Transmute (go figure) and didn't focus enough on cheap actions to make it work.  I only got 2 Duchies, and something I never would have expected happened.  See, because of my Thiefing (I did hit lots of Silver, and nobody else had built up a good economy) and the Familiar spamming going on, everyone else started buying Transmutes and mimicking my strategy.  It backfired on me BIG TIME because they all had Familiars to turn in to Duchies.  In the end I was buying Estates and Coppers, desperately trying to scramble together VP to avoid last place and not qualify for the finals.  ccasin won the game, deservedly so, and I came in dead last.

So I lost a game by focusing on two of the worst cards in the game because... everybody else bought Transmutes.  Dear lord.

I needed a win after that, and I needed it bad.  The same group wanted to play, and I liked them so I said "screw it."  We played on.

To be continued...

[Sinfrax]

These are really good write ups, looking forward to the next parts. 

[jsh357]

Fourth Round: Prosperity

Same group as last time, only now I was out for BLOOD.

9 of the Kingdom Cards: Goons, Grand Market, King's Court, Bishop, Watchtower, City, Mountebank, Venture, Peddler, Colony/Platinum

Guess who went fourth?  Guess!  Guess!!!

I wasn't feeling good about it, but since this was a Colony game I figured I'd have more time.  The newer player opened Bishop, while the others went for Silvers and something or other else.  I went for Watchtower/Silver, aiming to combo with Goons and counter Mountebank. 

In an extraordinary turn of luck, I picked up the first Mountebank in the game, which as usual gave me excellent leverage to mitigate the fourth-player disadvantage.  New Player went for a lot of money, if I recall.  He ended the game with 3 Platinums and no Colonies.  Too bad for him; he did great for someone new to Prosperity.  Everyone else, of course, went for the Goons and KC.  I had a few theories about how the game might roll, and I don't remember all the specifics, but I'll try and summarize how things ended up for me best I can.

I eventually got something like this:
- 1 Goons,
- a second Watchtower
- several Cities (Figured at least one stack would run out, Curses)
- and 3-4 Grand Markets. 
- 1 Platinum
- 2 Colonies and a Province
- Enemy Bishops got rid of nearly all my Coppers, Estates and Curses. 

I've said it in the past, but I think Bishop is one of the most consistently misplayed cards.  If they had gone for Peddlers and trashed them for chips, it could have worked, but my deck moved too fast.  I would lower my hand sizes with enemy Bishops and the Mountebank, then Watchtower up, using the usual Copper Buy with Goons/Tower trick at times.  Eventually the City pile ran out, and then it was ON.  One of the craziest endings I have ever seen occurred. 

Because everyone had jumped on the Mountebank and Copper-buying trains, the Copper pile was fixing to run out.  I set my sights on an unstoppable City turn where I'd finish off the last 2 piles (Copper and Curse).  It took a little luck, but thanks to Goons and my City advantage, nobody else could really finish things off quickly.  I bought out the Copper and Curse pile, ending the game with my score about 18 points up.

I never picked up a KC or second Goons, even thought I figured I'd need to at the start.  It just goes to show you should always end a game before it gets ugly, even if you can't pull off what you had originally intended to.

I didn't find anymore games that day, and decided I'd look on Saturday.  But before I could continue with the League, the "serious" tournament stood in my way.

To be continued...

[Razzishi]

I'll have to say from my experience playing 4-player that trying to do something tricky that you normally wouldn't do in 2p is probably not a great idea unless it involves ending the game very quickly and you can accomplish that without others helping you.  Even if you're in last position and facing a bunch of attacks, if you remain calm and play a strong BM-based game you can easily get ahead of mediocre players who are focused too much on doing cool things.  Additionally, you can sometimes ignore the attacks completely and take your extra 2 (instead of 5) Curses while they have their cursers and less Silver.  With Ambassador on the board too, there's some very real danger of never even being able to buy Silver past the first few turns regardless of whether you're attacking or not.  While not attacking will make your deck in the long term comparatively larger, no one's deck is going to be any good - there isn't anyone who conceivably will "win" the Curse/Ambassador war.

[jsh357]

The Main Tournament

So remember how this was supposed to be the serious one?  Well, here were the rules:
- All Base
- Randomizer deck determines sets
- Village banned from the first game ()
- The players are ranked each round (Swiss rounds) and the top 4 players play a game, the next 4 play a game, and so on.  Thus, you'll end up playing the same people a lot if you win a lot.

Yeah, I have no idea either, man.  Now I'm gonna level here.  These games moved a lot faster than the League matches, and I didn't get to chat so much in all of them, so if I didn't mention you here and you're reading, please don't feel bad.  Pure Base games are just so formulaic after a while that I kind of autopilot them.  It's a bad habit.   

So the cap for the tournament was 32 players.  I arrived at 10:15 to the area and signed up.  There were already 16 people signed.  By 10:50, it was full.  Tons of people missed the cut and were disappointed.  I remember theory saying that PAX Dominion tournaments have been horribly organized in the past, and I'll agree this could have been handled better.  That said, the tournament chugged along very quickly and ended well ahead of schedule.  I think it evened out to being a good experience and I met some cool folks so I was happy.

Before the first game: I got in a sort of heated argument with a guy who was saying first-person advantage doesn't exist because there are cards like Moats that can block attacks and so on.  I wanted to apologize if I offended you, but since you rubbed it in my face that the third position player won your first game, I don't feel bad.  Also, I won.  And I went first in the last round.    Sorry we didn't get to play!

Main Tournament, First Round

http://www.jshgaming.com/pax/IMAG0178.jpg

Key cards here: Militia, Library, I think Festivals were a big trap for one player

I took pics this time around!  They're not the best, but this was my deck in the first game.  I went for Militia/BM and got a Library later on to counter Militia'd hands.  There were none of the typical BM enablers on the board.  It was kind of a boring match to start with, but I came in first, putting me in the top 8.  This one was a little close.  The woman across from me was an "at work" Isotropic player, and she only lost by a few points. 

[jsh357]

Main Tournament, Second Round

http://www.jshgaming.com/pax/IMAG0179.jpg

Key cards here: Chapel, Thief, Spy, Remodel

I rolled third for this game, which wasn't ideal but Thief on a Chapel board looked appealing immediately to me due to this placement.  In this game, I met Keith.  Really cool guy, and he went on to win every round of this tournament until the final one! 

Keith went for a Chapel/get a lot of Gold strategy here.  I forget what the other players did, but essentially Keith and I ended up dueling in this one.  There was just one problem.  My Thief never hit ANY of his Golds.  I picked plenty of money cards up from the other players (One was seemingly buying cards at random--probably just inexperienced) but never Keith, so I never slowed his deck down.  Bad luck I guess, as he was swimming in Silver and Gold the entire game.

I bought 3 or 4 Spies, running a Thief/Spy "engine" after Chapelling my trash cards and strove to eventually Remodel Spies, but Keith's deck moved too fast and he won with a nice Province lead.  I ended up Remodeling the Thief for a Duchy and eked out a second place score.  A minor upset, really, but he played well and I knew I had found some major competition in this thing.  (Not to say anyone I won against was bad.  All manner of things could have happened) 

[jsh357]

Main Tournament, Third Round

http://www.jshgaming.com/pax/IMAG0180.jpg

Key cards here: Gardens, Festival, Woodcutter, Witch

A hodge-podge of strategies were on the board: Festival/Library, Witch, Smithy-BM and Woodcutter/Gardens.  I decided to pick up a Witch immediately (standard procedure), get two +buy cards and then piledrive Gardens.  It worked.

I played Shree again here, from the earlier Intrigue League match.  She opened Woodcutter/Silver and bought 2 Gardens, causing me some worry to say the least.  However, she deviated and went for a few festivals afterward.  We chatted after the game, and Shree agreed she should have gone for the Festivals first or ignored them entirely. 

Was a pretty textbook Gardens game in the end, I guess.

[jsh357]

Main Tournament, Fourth Round

http://www.jshgaming.com/pax/IMAG0181.jpg

Key cards here: Gardens, Festival, Woodcutter, Witch ... Again

This board was practically identical to the last one, and this time I was matched against Keith again as well as a few other players.  At this point, because of the way the tournament was structured, I was playing the winners.  You could feel the tension for sure. 

Like a fool, I decided to approach the board differently.  I opened 4/3 and went for Smithy/Silver, thinking maybe I could throw a curveball and run BM fast enough, but Keith used the same deck I did in the previous round and pulverized us.  I came in a distant second, as he got 6-8 Gardens to my 4 and also had more cards in his deck

On the bright side, the two of us had gotten chummy at this point.  It's great that Dominion players in general seem serious but not so serious that there's animosity between them.  Boy was I getting sick of Gardens at this point!

[Razzishi]

Do unsleeved Dominion cards not wear out particularly fast?  Do they cycle which Coppers and Estates are used in the starting decks?  Do they put the bought Silver and Gold on the bottom of their stacks?  In 8 round Sealed Deck Magic tournaments people playing without sleeves will generally have noticeably worn cards and generally only shuffle 2-3 times per match, so I'd think over by the end of the weekend that you'd be able to pick cards out based on how played they looked.

[jsh357]

Do unsleeved Dominion cards not wear out particularly fast?  Do they cycle which Coppers and Estates are used in the starting decks?  Do they put the bought Silver and Gold on the bottom of their stacks?  In 8 round Sealed Deck Magic tournaments people playing without sleeves will generally have noticeably worn cards and generally only shuffle 2-3 times per match, so I'd think over by the end of the weekend that you'd be able to pick cards out based on how played they looked.

ALL of the cards were visibly worn, actually.  Even the freaking Chancellors.  It's amazing to me because I play my own cards sleeveless and they show no wear whatsoever.

[jsh357]

Main Tournament, Final Round

http://www.jshgaming.com/pax/IMAG0185.jpg

Key cards here: Chapel, Witch, Remodel

It turned out all of us were bored of Gardens, so we all agreed to ban it.  The tournament organizer suggested we play until one player buys 8 Provs out of an infinite supply (...) and naturally we all said "let's play boring Dominion."  The other players were Keith (Who had the highest score of everyone and had won every game), Chris (A strong player, also an Isotropicer), and Cal (Who had never played online but was pretty darn good at the game regardless!). 

I rolled first table position and opened 5/2, Witch/Chapel.

Do you really need a summary of how this went?  Yeah, I cursed people, gained a second Witch, and took some names.  Maybe bought some Provinces.  It was pure dumb luck and I don't know if I would have won if the wind had been in somebody else's favor.  Good game to all of them.  I won a badge!

http://www.jshgaming.com/pax/IMAG0187.jpg

Left to right: Keith, me (the 25 year old who looks 15), Chris, Cal.  Keith and I are both big JoCo fans.  That means we're the good guys.

Here were the final point totals:
http://www.jshgaming.com/pax/IMAG0188.jpg

And here is a Wario cosplayer:
http://www.jshgaming.com/pax/IMAG0189.jpg

[Lekkit]

Awesome write up, dude!

[jsh357]

And now, back to the League

So, in order to qualify for the League final, I had to finish two more matches before Saturday ended.  I went off to panel and came back with very little time left before the concerts (JoCo was playing, I had to go, man).  In a pure stroke of even more dumb luck, I ran in to a group of three teenagers who were also competing and needed a Base game.  They agreed to also play Cornucopia with me afterward.  Huge thanks to these guys.  I never learned any of their names.

Round Five: Base Set

The 9 Kingdom cards I can remember: Chancellor, Chapel, Village, Workshop, Militia, Remodel, Throne Room, Laboratory, Witch

I was in a hurry, so I played as fast as I could.  Got another opening 5/2 and did the same as in the final round of the tournament.  I built up my economy to 1 Gold, 3 Silvers.  Enough.  At that point, I got 1 Village so I could Witch and Chapel at the same time, then bought nothing but Laboratories.  Eventually I was drawing my whole deck and even trashed the Witch!  I won by 20-30 points.  Not much to say here, the group didn't seem to know it was coming though.  I was worried they wouldn't play Corn with me, but they were cool with it.

To be continued...

[jsh357]

Round Six: Cornucopia

Kingdom I can remember: Hamlet, Fortune Teller, Horse Traders, Tournament, Horn of Plenty, Hunting Party, Jester

So uh, Jester is a card you don't want to underestimate in 4 player games.  Now, I got 5/2 again here and decided to try running a Hunting Party deck using Jester as the terminal Silver to throw out Tournaments I could block with Provinces.  Since I won the previous game by so much, I'll admit, I got arrogant.  BIG mistake.  They started groupthinking, and 2 of them also opened 5/2, grabbing Jesters.  8 Jesters ended up in play, and soon all of our decks were loaded with Coppers, Curses, and all manner of things.  I tried to backpedal in to Tournament/HP.  Even picked up the Followers, but one of the Jester players managed to keep hitting Golds over and over, and he built up an unstoppable economy, winning by a nice fat stack of Provinces.  I bought Duchies like crazy to vie for second place, now worried that my previous losses would hurt my chances for the final qualification.

The next morning, the results were posted.  I had placed third in the League despite all of my mishaps!  Was shocked.  The other top seeds were a guy named Mike who had also scored #1 in Puerto Rico and another game, ccasin (the guy I had played Propserity and Alchemy with) and isotropic user TheGrinch, who had also been in the big tournament but run across some bad luck.   

The Four HorseTradersmen stood across from one another.

To be continued...

[jsh357]

League Final: Hinterlands

To all of our collective glee, the final round was Hinterlands with a twist.  We each had to veto out one card from Base and Hinterlands at at time and play the resulting Kingdom.  I planned to do a mean IGG/Gardens Rush, perhaps with Trader, but of course that didn't pan out.  The final Kingdom can be seen here:

http://www.jshgaming.com/pax/IMAG0201.jpg

Cellar, Oasis, Nomad Camp, Spy, Moneylender, Highway, Market, Haggler, Cartographer, Mandarin

We were placed in order by overall League rank.  ccasin was first, me second, TheGrinch third, and Mike fourth.  Mike wasn't happy about it, but after my experience in the first four rounds, I didn't have a lot of sympathy to be honest. 

Now I have to explain something about myself.  I play quite often with my good buddy GozerGomez, and his favorite card is Highway.  He frequently beats the crap out of me with said Highways.  However, I am terrible with Highway.  My Effect With is -.73.  Why do I mention this?  Because, of course, Highway ended up being the key card here and I totally thought it was going to be a trap. 

I went Oasis/Moneylender, aiming for a Haggler strategy. ccasin did the same, TheGrinch went for money, and Mike, thinking he had no chance, decided to buy Mandarins.  Suffice to say, this was an excellent little board for Highway/Market, as the Moneylender sped it along nicely.  I didn't think of that particular card being helpful to the combo, but it of course was and my own Moneylender only clashed with my Haggler over and over again.  I got one Province/Gold buy out of the thing and that was it.  In short, I played horribly in the last round of the League and came in third.  ccasin scored two nice megaturns and put us all in our places.  It was fantastically done.

The final result: ccasin (who was ranked fourth initially and had to tiebreak with Zombie dice to even get in), TheGrinch, myself, and Mike (originally the top seed). 

Here was my final, pathetic deck:

http://www.jshgaming.com/pax/IMAG0202.jpg

ccasin and TheGrinch both got the same medal I did as first and second place prizes, so you know what?  I was happy with that.  I met some fantastic people, playing some interesting games, and have an experience I think I'll always look back on fondly.  Big thanks to everyone at PAX for running this and putting up with the chaos, and thanks to you if you read all the way down to here. 

If I ever get to go back to PAX, I'll definitely enter again.  Sadly, I may not get to, but that makes me all the more glad this year went so well. 

The End

[ftl]

Sounds epic!

I'm so going to go to any Dominion tournaments that are near me in LA or San Diego that I hear about... they sound really fun.

[Wolphmaniac]

Thanks for capturing; I skimmed it.  You should definitely be glad you had such an awesome Dominion experience at PaxEast 2012!  I was there only on Sunday and my Dominion experience sucked.  I only found 1 game, and it was with some guy who was demoing 4 different games at his table and he had only learned Dominion in the past 48 hours.  He barely knew the rules and was disinterested.  I was joylessly slaughtering him when he took a cell phone call with 2 Provinces left and stopped playing altogether, at which point I walked away.  Man did that suck.  I was at PAX by myself and circled the freeplay tables a few times to try and find a game, but of course the few tables I could find where people were even playing Dominion were mid-game and the people just wanted to play with their own friends anyways.

My only Dominion success was scoring Prosperity for $30.  That's a nice discount.  Other than that, just remember...you could have had my Dominion experience at PAX and not the rich one you had!  I made up for it in the retro console room though.  All the Torturers in the world have no chance against Mega Man...

[jsh357]

Man, that's too bad.  Friday and Saturday were definitely THE days to play Dominion there!  If by chance you can make it to Carnage Con this year (In Vermont) I'd be happy to play you there.

[Kirian]

Left to right: Keith, me (the 25 year old who looks 15)

Wow... yeah, dude.  Grow a beard... it was the only way I could stop being mistaken for a high school student... while teaching high school... at age 26.

Keith and I are both big JoCo fans.  That means we're the good guys.

JoCo FTMFW.  Got to see him with TMBG and hope to see him on his next go-round.  Totally jealous that you were at PAX and congrats on the tourney win!

[Geronimoo]

Good write up! Playing live is so different and it's amazing how you can get sucked into group thinking even when you know the group thinks on a much lower level than you

[jsh357]

Left to right: Keith, me (the 25 year old who looks 15)

Wow... yeah, dude.  Grow a beard... it was the only way I could stop being mistaken for a high school student... while teaching high school... at age 26.

Keith and I are both big JoCo fans.  That means we're the good guys.

JoCo FTMFW.  Got to see him with TMBG and hope to see him on his next go-round.  Totally jealous that you were at PAX and congrats on the tourney win!

I was also exposed to him via a TMBG show.  He meshes so well with them; he's like the third Giant.

The funny thing about the beard... when I do start growing one, everyone tells me I actually look YOUNGER because now I look like a high school student who doesn't know how to shave properly.  On the bright side, I met a guy at PAX who was 32 and looked even young than me.  Crazy world.