Ewok Village
It is official. We've now logged TWELVES years of play for our TWELVE-WAY Duel League. What an incredible journey!!! 202 unique Duelers have sat at the round table over the years, and 182 games have been played. It's absolutely bonkers. To all who have contributed to the madness over the last dozen trips around the sun...THANK YOU! PEW PEW!!!
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| May the 4th Be With You! |
This Duel was all kinds of kooky. Riley was playing her last Duel as a minor - she turns 18 next week! But she managed to log 72 Duels before reaching legal voting age. David C. joined us for the first time in...over ten years!!! His last match was the Valentines Duel back in 2016!
But the craziest character at the table was newbie Chris, a senior from Brooks who had played in the BRC games but never a 12-way. He had Migs and Q9-0 in the back corner of the dark side of Ewok village...and started shooting Riley/Beckett! All kinds of chaos erupted after that, and Chris was running his mouth and cracking jokes the whole time. Meanwhile, David C./K-2SO defected from the light side and high-tailed it across the big bridge. It was a lot to process!
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| Mark serving Sic 'Ems to everybody at the table. |
Chris' shenanigans couldn't be tolerated, so the dark side enveloped him and Jonah's KX Security Droid cruelly ended his night in last place by playing Hang. Ouch! But Jonah found himself in trouble when the light side concentrated shots across the bridge to his spot near the Ewok hut, including some pestering attacks from Rob's/Obi's maniacal Clone Trooper (bloody clankers!). It would be Junior, though, playing his first game as a professional who would do the most damage to poor Jonah. His Luthen emptied his own hand with Sacrifice Everything and Kleya made the eventual kill shot. Jonah was out in eleventh, but shout out to him for being our super-sub this semester, we're calling him back up to the active roster in the fall!
The main bridge saw a big standoff between the Jedi of the light side (Curtis/Yoda, Rob/Obi, Kat/Ki-Adi) and the rest of the dark side alliance. David M., playing the Clone Commandos, couldn't find his footing or choose a side. When he declined to detonate his well-placed Magnetic Thermal Detonator, the Jedi had enough and David M. was out in tenth, with the last Clone falling to Obi-Wan's Jedi Attack.
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| A CL class padawan's first Dueling action... |
Hans, playing Darth Vader, was also making his debut at May the 4th. He'll be a CL next year, but he was bent on taking down his CL class instructor, Rob! He did manage to Choke one of the Clones, but Obi's Force Control moved Hans into his first kill box. Is there anything quite as cute as a Dueler stuck in their first kill box?? Give Hans credit, he wrecked some shop during the game, but Curtis' Yoda struck him down in ninth. Play with us again in the fall, Hans!
The Jedi somehow managed to hold the bridge, but the dark side finally got wise and concentrated all of their attacks on a specific character. Unfortunately for Curtis, they chose his Yoda. His own son Miles, playing Reva, managed to knock his old man down to his last couple of health points. David C. used the card effects of K-2SO's Clear A Path to auto-damage Curtis into the night. It was eighth place for Yoda.
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| David using his "readers". |
Things were still very much up in the air with multiple characters carrying damage. But Mark/Dryden decided to flip sides and join Luthen and the Jedi! That was back-breaking for the dark side alliance, none more so than Miles. Miles passed on the chance to flip a round or two earlier, and despite a couple of expert uses of In The Gutter, Rob's Obi-Wan used a 5 point attack to finally eliminate the Third Sister. Congrats to Miles, though, who has been promoted to the amateur rankings!
With six Duelers to go, it looked like Riley/Beckett and David C./K-2SO would be the next two to go, but those two were still feeling sour about Mark's flip, and Rob and Kat thought they saw Mark trying to organize the shooters against Obi-Wan and Ki-Adi-Mundi, so Dryden became the new target! There were too many corners to defend so Mark was out. Sic 'Em Sixth Place.
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| The Tiny Titan all growns-up. |
It was deep into the night at this point, and that's never a good sign for sleepy Riley. Give her credit, she was the first person attacked in the game, and here she was still in the top five. But she and David parted ways, and the light side alliance used that rift to isolate her. Junior's Kleya got another kill shot and Riley was done in fifth. Give it up for Rob's first born - 70+ Duels, 3 wins (including the 2025 Championship!), and all before she turned 18. Next year she'll be a college student Dueler...where did the time go?!?!?!
Speaking of the passage of time...David C., with ten years of rust to shake off, was still in the game!!! He was the first defector and had a heck of a night, even if he spent too much time at the Pizza Hut. But the octave-raising Kat used her Binary Brain to strike down the program director in fourth. The early word on the street is that David won't wait ten years again to play his next Duel!
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| Just Jedi doing Jedi things. |
And then there were three! Junior/Luthen, Kat/Ki-Adi, and Rob/Obi. Poor Junior's Luthn had been stuck on his final two health points for hours, thanks in large part to Riley's Double Blasters. And he was bummed to discover the Jedi were going to stick together against the slippery founder of the rebel alliance. But Junior indirectly determined the outcome of the game when he focused most of his final shots on Rob's Obi-Wan. Rob got a little revenge by knocking him out with a Force Control. But Junior turned pro and had his strongest performance to date in the league. Well done, sir!
Rob knew he had his work cut out from him, because Junior/Luthen had roughed him up and Kat had wisely healed up over the past hour (and had Griffin make an In 'n' Out run). It took a few rounds, but Kat navigated multiple Force Balances throughout the night and emerged victorious against Rob - congrats Kat!!! She becomes the first female Dueler to win four games in the league - and did so after taking a year off from her last Duel!!! This also marks Ki-Adi-Mundi's first career win! He's quickly proving to be a formidable presence on the Dueling board.
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| New office decor! |
The final order of finish:
12. Chris/Migs & Q9-0
11. Jonah/KX Security Droid
10. David M./Clone Commandos
9. Hans/Darth Vader
8. Curtis/Yoda
7. Miles/Reva
6. Mark/Dryden
5. Riley/Beckett
4. David C./K-2SO
3. Junior/Luthen
2. Rob/Obi-Wan
1. Kat/Ki-Adi-Mundi
In all seriousness, for those members of the league graduating and/or moving on from the department, please know how much you are loved and appreciated and that you made such a positive impact in our little Dueling universe. May the Force be with you. Always!
And stay tuned - Rob will try and organize a movie Duel for the new Mando & Grogu movie. It looks like Dueling the afternoon of May 23rd and then headed to the movies for an evening showing could be the plan. He'll email more info on that soon!
