Doubleheader #1 - August 31, 2018

Emperor's Throne Room

Just as the twin suns of Robinson, TX, were starting to sink into the horizon, twelve noble souls gathered to do battle, drink Yoda Soda, and eat Tie-Fighter Ties.

Did you know Jess made 120 Tie-Fighter Ties during the two games, and all but four were eaten?  THEY'RE SO GOOD!

The food was nice and all, but the Duelers were more hungry for a win!  So the spots at the table were selected, but then Rob found a new way to ratchet up the tension when it comes to character selection:

We may have to make the punch box a regular part of the Duel league...what do you think???  Another special feature for the Doubleheader was the playing boards!  Ryan brought in his three-dimensional surfaces, which means we got to play on the "alternate" Throne Room...Mustafar!

If you look closely you'll notice he added some smoke/fire/explosion elements to the board.  I prefer to think of them as the dreams of winning, slowly burning away...

Hey - Rob is finally in the opening shot!

The game started fairly normally - the light and dark side alliances began making overtures to lure the first flipper of the game.  However, this time around...the sides stayed loyal!  It became quite intense once both sides realized this would be a 6 v 6 slug fest.  Chris W.'s Obi-Wan Kenobi had the rough starting point of being out front, as did Kayla's Luke Skywalker.  The dark side took advantage as they concentrated their fire power on those two characters.  The light side returned fire but Mace and Yoda's Clone Troopers had a harder time finding a lane of attack.  JD, controlling Mace, kept rallying his side to advance and force the dark side to start moving their main characters forward.

That tactic had limited success, especially after Chris W's Obi-Wan got sent home from Chris K's Kyber Dart.  I'm going to assume it was only a coincidence that a Chris killed a Chris.  It would mess with my mind if there was something more to that...  Kayla's Luke was bleeding out too, and just as Ben H's Yoda arrived at the front line...he Force Pushed Kayla to her death!  Was it a flip!?  It was hard to tell.

From Force Push victim to Force Push perpetrator 

The light side was in free-fall after that.  Though they continued their attacks on the dark side they began to take stock and try to figure out how they were going to get themselves off the bottom of the food chain.  Ben H's Yoda once again made a bold move, Force Lifting and then Force Pushing JD's Mace to a dark side kill box.  JD was enraged, Ben was bashful, and Rob secretly giggled because he did the same thing to Ben last game.

JD, full of revenge, convinced his kill box to let him escape so he could go after Ben for the betrayal.  Ben H. was none too pleased when JD rolled in and killed him in tenth.  Shockingly, Yoda had no defense in his hand.

The reprieve for JD was short lived.  Rob's Count Dooku dropped a Taunting and then Ryan's Darth Maul unleashed a volley that sent the CL Training champ off the board in ninth place.  Ben and JD decided to go to In'n'Out between games to hash out their differences and discuss other theological conundrums.

Ben P., playing with Anakin and not to be confused with Ben H., managed to hang back as his light side compatriots got torn up but the dark side heavies slowly advanced on his position.  He made it a point to target Joel's Emperor Palpatine but Joel made it a point to kill him in return.  Not shabby for his first Duel!

Your final three

The dark side, still six strong, made a pact to finish off the light side before the infighting started, and that's exactly what happened.  Luke's Han Solo danced around the Throne Room as well as he could, but a final Storm Trooper shot from Alex C. closed his book for the match.

Now that it was only dark side characters Rob stuck his neck out and suggested Joel's Emperor should be the first to go.  He argued that You Will Die hadn't been played yet, and that was a frightening prospect to deal with.  The others reluctantly followed suit, and Dooku's Taunt killed the Emperor in his own Throne Room.

That left a final five of Rob/Dooku, Ryan/Maul, Alex/Vader, Grant/Jango, and Chris K./Boba.  With Joel gone nobody else knew what to do.  Rob moved next to Jango and Zam, more so for cover from Boba than anything else, but when he drew a Force Push he tried to create an opportunity by tossing Jango at Maul and Boba.  Rob had made an alliance with Ryan, but Ryan surprised Rob by not attacking Grant.  Rob knew he was in trouble, and sure enough, the other four started in on him.  His one shining moment before death was using his Force Drain to successfully dump Alex's All Too Easy and Throw Debris.  And then Rob died at Maul's hands, really annoyed at Ryan.

Chris couldn't believe it when he caught Grant whispering about Boba being next, but there was little he could do to save himself.  He was out when his attack on Maul got slapped back with a Blinding Surge.  Ryan tried to work with Alex against Grant's Jango, but neither Grant nor Alex liked the idea of going against Maul at the end.  They whittled him down before Jango got the drop on him.  Third place with Maul, though, is nothing to sneeze at!

Alex's Vader was in near perfect health while Grant's Jango was roughed up.  It didn't take long for Vader to chase him around the room, jacking him up even further.  Jango succumbed to his wounds, and Alex collected his second career trophy - congrats Alex!!!  That also marked Darth Vader's tenth career win, the most of any character and the first character to reach double digits.

Here's the final order of finish:

12.  Obi-Wan/Chris W.
11.  Luke/Kayla
10.  Ben H./Yoda
9.  JD/Mace
8.  Ben P./Anakin
7.  Han/Luke
6.  Emperor/Joel
5.  Dooku/Rob
4.  Boba/Chris K.
3.  Maul/Ryan
2.  Jango/Grant
1.  Vader/Alex

...and this was just game one!  Read on for game two...