I left my house late Friday morning for Gary’s.  I picked up Brian and Shawn before heading over to pick up Gary.  We left his house shortly after 6pm and arrived at Doug’s a little after 10pm.  Doug was there this time, along with Phil Miller, Michael Guillerman, and Jon Land.  Doug and Jon left to pick up Matt Fell from California at the airport [And where exactly is your dedication to this game?] and then the Bertrand’s showed up with Mike Sutton.  Phil Keffer was the last to arrive tonight.  Just like the first CUP, games were played until very early in the morning.  Fortunately, due to my experiences from the first CUP, I had less to prepare for this event, so I was able to relax after the 8 hours on the road.

    We started just after 10am, a little late as usual, but this time we did not have a 2 hour drive to get to the mall where the event was held, so some of us had much more sleep than the last time.  Once again we had 22 total players, but this was after several players decided to drop out a day or two before the event [shame, shame, we know your names :)].  This event was not held at a comic shop, but rather at a former clothing store in the mall that has partially been emptied.  This gave us a lot of peace and quiet, as well as plenty of space to spread out.
    It was mostly the same crowd as the first CUP, but we did have a few new [they were new to me at least] faces as well.  The lower entrance fee may have helped to draw a larger crowd, but the time of the year most likely kept a few people from making the trip.  We hope that we will be able to have more of these events next year during the spring and summer when it is easier for most people to travel.  At least we will have a few of these under our belts so we can perhaps find an even better format.  By the way, if you attended either of these events and have any opinions about it please let me know.  Or, even if you have not been to one of these OP CUP events but have some ideas from other tournaments or even from other games, please feel free to let me know anything that you think we could do to make them more fun and more successful.  Personally, I would like to try to have one at a major convention.  Also, we could hold another side tournament for new players and for those under a certain rating level for anyone who may feel that it is not worth their time or money to compete against players of this caliber.
    Since we had 22 total players to start, we ended up with 1 player with a 4-0 record and 6 with a 3-1 record, after 4 rounds of play.  Derek Bertrand went undefeated, while Doug Simms, Darrin Simms, Matthew Puckett, Brian Hildreth, Myles Head, and Matt Fell each went 3-1 in the qualifier.
    There were 127 rare cards, mostly from Classic, that were given out randomly to the players that did not make it to the finals of the CUP.
    We began the Homebase tournament even later than we would have liked.  Because the mall closed around 9pm and we still wanted to hold another tournament after this one, we were a little pressed for time.  Since this was not a sanctioned tournament by itself, we seeded the players randomly, to hopefully get some pairings that would not have happened normally.  Phil Keffer and Derek Bertrand made it to the final and decided to play their game later tonight, so we could begin the last tournament of the day sooner.
    The last event was a DC only tournament, where Power cards and Teamwork cards were the only non-DC cards allowed.  Because we now only had 21 total players in this event, which is all single elimination, 11 players received a bye in the first round.  The remaining 10 players competed for the other 5 seats, so we could have a number of players equal to a power of 2.  We were allowed to finish this event in the mall, shortly after the rest of it closed.  The last two rounds were quicker than the first few, as there were fewer games to play and some of them could be played more quickly by two experienced players.
    We went back to Doug’s place to rest up for Sunday and to play the final game of the restricted Homebase event.  Phil Keffer defeated Derek in that final.

    The mall opens at 11am on Sundays, so we had plenty of time to sleep in, eat breakfast, and prepare for the second day’s events, but it also meant that we had less time run a tournament.  We held both the finals for the CUP and another sanctioned event at the same time.  I was very thankful for the amount of extra space we had, even if it wasn’t in a comic/card shop that could help give the game some more exposure, as well as perhaps sell some product for the shop.  One of the finalists could not make it today, so we only had 6 players, which is easier to seat than 7 players, and could be finished in 2 less rounds of play.  The secondary sanctioned event had 12 players.
    Matthew Puckett clearly won the final for the CUP, with a 4-1 record.  Myles Head and Derek Bertrand both had a 3-2 record.  Brian Hildreth and Doug Simms were 2-3 while Matt Fell went 1-4.
 Tyler Bertrand beat Phil Keffer in the final of the other tournament today while Chris Vezina and Howard Bertrand took third and fourth respectively.
    We left the event just before 5:30pm, which was nice since we had about 3 hours of driving to do to get to Gary's.

    Roughly, we had 4 players from Canada, 1 from Pennsylvania, 1 from California as well as 1 displaced Californian, 3 from West Virginia, and several from Ohio.  Oh yeah, I almost forgot, the CUP champion was from Alabama.