Alyssa's Finalist at JTL Escondido Planetary Qualifier at On-Board Gaming
2025/05/25: Alyssa made Finalist; I made #32 out of 110 players.
Table of Contents
2025/05/25 - On-Board Gaming (and Photo Dump)
(Short PQ experience video)
Format: Bo3, 7 Swiss rounds, 110 players, Top Cut to 8 players;
https://melee.gg/Tournament/View/289503
Alyssa made finalist; I made #32 (I went 4-3 overall). We stayed until the entire event was over at ~11:29PM. The Top Cut rounds started at about 7PM (that’s when they started doing the deck checks).
The Swiss prizing was expanded to where 17th-32nd got six JTL regular packs.
Quick Side Note of the Event Itself
This PQ event experience was overall great.
The Good Stuff:
There was a full prizing breakdown example in the listing!
The restrooms (at both the venue and the store) were pretty clean.
The table play space surface area was good and the seats were cushioned; I didn’t feel cramped at all when playing.
The time in between rounds was minimal.
The Not-So-Good Stuff:
No lunch break:
We were told to eat in between rounds and/or eat before the Top Cut.
The reasoning was that the rented venue had a time constraint.
Other:
There was a judge call involving Alyssa that happened during Top Cut:
During Alyssa’s Top Cut quarterfinals round vs SOR Palp Yellow, her opponent had a Poggle the Lesser on board. They tried to play Sanctioner's Shuttle with the intent to capture by first triggering/resolving Poggle the Lesser’s effect to enable the coordinate’s when played effect. [It doesn’t work like this, because the coordinate when played never gets triggered. Poggle the Lesser would need to trigger and resolve first, but by then, Sanctioner's Shuttle’s coordinate when played effect would have missed the timing window to trigger.]
I called judge and the head judge came over. While the head judge was looking it up, the opponent mentioned how they had asked about this interaction during the Swiss rounds and a floor judge ruled it as it working as they intended. After looking it up, the head judge ruled against it and stated the relevant rule section for it. So the play was rewinded back.
Jerry’s Deck - JTL Boba Yellow
Matchups
Vs Vonreg Blue 2-0
Game 1: I Disabling Fang Fighter’d their leader pilot on their deploy turn.
Game2: I basically had the right answers:
On the resource 4 turn, they had two readied Tie Bomber and Vonreg's TIE Interceptor:
They piloted JTL Vader onto their TIE Bomber, I No Good To Me Dead’d it.
They then piloted Vonreg leader onto Vonreg's TIE Interceptor, I No Good To Me Dead’d it.
This allowed me to base race against them.
Vs SOR Han Green 2-0
It was a base race for both games.
Game 2, I missed my turn 1 play, but still won.
Vs Qi'ra Data Vault 2-0
Game 1: they didn't ramp and didn’t Overwhelming Barrage on flip their flip turn.
I piloted Boba leader and Surprise Strike’d for the win.
Game 2: they ramped into Devastating Gunship to kill my Droid Missile Platform.
On their resource 7 (my 6) turn, they Traitorous my Elite P-38 Starfighter, but I had a Disabling Fang Fighter as a response. I eventually got one hit in with Lurking TIE Phantom + Boba leader, which later got killed by a Devastating Gunship with 3 damage on it (grit). But I had Devastator in hand for lethal.
Vs Sabine ECL 1-2
(Was played on their streaming table)
Game 1: I was super lucky, they had two misses from their For a Cause I Believe In. This was one damage off lethal and I had lethal that same turn.
The other two games I got pretty overwhelmed. They had too much action cheating via Fleet Lieutenant and Rebel Assault.
Vs JTL Vader Yellow 0-2
Base race both games.
They were very swarm-y, lots of 1 drops.
Vs Anakin Blue 0-2
I knew that this isn't a favorable matchup for me.
Game 1: I missed my Turn 1 play, and my only Turn 2 play was Daring Raid, which killed a Red Squadron X-Wing that drew a card, but that was it.
Game 2: This game was a bit closer, but they The Force is With Me their Anakin leader which forced me to claim initiative but had no answer for the following turn.
Vs Qi'ra Data Vault 2-0
Game 1: This game was a bit close. They ramped and after their flip, I was worried about Overwhelming Barrage, so I Surprise Strike’d my Guerrilla Soldier into their Qi'ra (questionable play, idk). They then played Devastating Gunship to kill my Allegiant General Pryde (damaged from Qi'ra deploy).
Game 2: They missed their turn 1 play and missed ramp.
I ended up using Unnatural Life to bring back a Droid Missile Platform and I had lethal via its when defeated effect.
Conclusion
I’m super proud that Alyssa performed well as she did. Because the champion was already a Set 3 Hawaii PQ champion (same one from my prior post), this means that the Day 2 bye for Galactics would get passed down to Alyssa.
My performance was kinda meh, started off with a 3 win streak followed by a 3 loss streak. I did eek into #32, which allowed me to get some prizing haha.
We got one more PQ planned at Fire and Dice at Northridge, California!
Congrats to Alyssa on a great run!