Hey folks, Dr Daman here.

Semis have finished so here are the results!

Dr Daman beats Aaron (Sharron) 200-38 on Jabbas Palace
Paul (Darth Moore) beats Mike (Mike Moore Smuggler) 200-70 on Gangster's Vault

The final is going down in about 15 mins. Dr Daman vs Darth Moore!!!

Final has finished.

Dr Daman's Imperial was too powerful for Darth Moore's Vong taking the game 200-0 (played on Jabbas Palace).

Daman is now the 1st person to win three National titles!! #Ballislife

Cad Bane was a much better piece at this tournament than Boba would ever have been. In the final he was able to take out 2 of Darth Moore's Lah Warriors per round. Boba would've only got one and a half. I personally much prefer Cad over Boba on most occasions.

And yes, only one VSet piece in the squad (Morrigan Corde), but a few times I did bring in salacious crumb with Lobot

The morning after the night before...

And, with that, the Opunake Experiment is over. And a rather successful one too. This was the first National tournament outside of the SWM metropolis of Wellington/Lower Hutt and, as a result, we made travel a touch chancy for some of our more regular folk, but it allowed us to expose a new region to the wonder of SWM, and they responded in kind with 7 new players placing as high as 6th (in fact, Team Opunake won the Masters of the Force having the highest total points!). While I think that we wouldn't get all seven players travelling to next year's nationals, we've made some minis-4-life players, and that is a special thing indeed.

Congratulations once more to the incomparable Dr. Daman who showed that he didn't need Daala (his other squad choice for this tournament, the one he said he would have brought if he really wanted to win...) and could slum it with Stealth and Blue. He's now champion for the third time running and it was well deserved as he didn't drop a game all tournament. Special congrats to Paul who was playing in his first national final. Couldn't match Dave's squad in the end, but great tournament for him.

The Opunake first-timers did a great job across the board. Hone, Kade, and Brody all finished 2-2 and were in with a chance to make the knockouts. They had a big learning curve and will take away a lot from this experience. In fact, they've already started talking up their next year's worth of Minis plans (Brody moving to Rich's Hamilton, and Hone moving to Wellington), including a possible date for HamilCon 2017 around January 21ish. Jacob, finishing 10th, and Jamie, unlucky in 15th, had good squads too. Jacob teetered on bringing a Spacetrooper, tech-heavy, swap squad, but we convinced him that, despite the rawness and apparent lack that his Wat Tambor squad had, it was actually very tough to run over. A little more experience with the squad and he could have done better. And Jamie perhaps has a lot to learn, but he showed us just how good Seethreepio is as a piece. *sheesh!*

Our fifth tournament in the can and we now have four players who have played all five, five who have been at the lot. Daman, Paul, Aaron, and Rich have played all five now, and while I didn't play the first one, I hosted and judged it. In total, we've had 38 different players contest the nationals, 14 of those being at three tournaments or more.

Late last night, and throughout the morning, some tired travellers return home. Mike and Aaron left last night to drive back to the Hutt (four and a half hours), Dave, Stuart, and Paul left for the same location this morning, Dave and Kahu (who played Xwing/IA alongside the minis tournament) head back to Wanganui, and Rich and Zakk will leave later today for Hamilton (about five hours drive).

In time folk will add in their experiences of the tournament (I'll do a playreport too), and I'll flesh out some of the stats a bit, but for now, I have to get breakfast and work out what songs I'm playing at church this morning. Mauri ora, mauri mate - may the awesome be with you.

Just can't Stump the Dave. Congrats once again!

It's also interesting that in the Top 4, there was very little from recent sets. Domain Lah Warriors are from Set 8, but I didn't see many pieces post-Set 8.

Imperials in with another win!!!!!!!! Definitely in the conversation as one of the best factions in SWM history................................


Honorable mention: Vong with the Lah Warriors....................10pt warriors with access to crazy boardwide special abilities and commander effects, and Force Immunity, which highly deflates and diminishes Jedi's powers. They haven't won it all yet, but are consistently tier 1 now!

Ha! My intention by saying he was "slumming it with stealth 'n' blue" was that he passed over one dominant squad for another. I completely agree that Dave could win it with most things.