The Noonday Ride of Jon Longstride

Before anything else, a big thank you to Lapp, the entire Pine Box crew, and all the players who make this game such fun to play!

Next, credit to jordan caldwell for the inspiration for this deck! I played with a version of his Civic Corral for ages and moved off of 2 and to 5 as a main value after seeing someone on Discord say how fun Jon Longstride on a Mustang was to play. Adding Hellstromme Plant #9 with Morgan Regulators just made the idea better. As much as I thought Buckin' Billy Ballard would be the MVP, it was definitely Jon – hence the name of the deck.

While the deck didn’t do great in the tourney, only going 1-3, those three losses were to three of the semifinalists – so at least I had strength of schedule going for me!

Match 1 vs Prodigy: Concerning the overall strategy, Prodigy couldn’t draw studs and I couldn’t draw spot removal. The game devolved into a running game of cat (aka Jon) and mouse with Prodigy’s influence total never really putting him in danger. Prodigy won, easily, at time. My favorite day of the game came early on when Jon moved, from OoT, to Prodigy’s Cliff's #4 Saloon, became a stud and regenerated his Mustang via his ability, moved to my Hellstromme Plant #9 to remove an interloping Anarchist and regenerated his Mustang with Hellstromme, moved to my Circle M Ranch to remove another interloping Anarchist, moved to Town Square via Regulators to send Gabriel Prior back home, and then moved back OoT to deny an Anarchist deed.

Match 2 vs Doomdog: I made a couple of early blunders by trying to cover his CP deeds when I should have been covering his GR deeds vs his slide deck. By the time I figured that out, his production was running well. He put me away, near time, by getting my Irving Patterson to move to boot, moved a wanted dude to that deed, and Bluetick’ed in a dude with a shotgun before I could get anyone there to protect him. The coolest move of this match was his use of Frank Stillwell to prevent the Regulator 5 Inf at any one location without a shootout that day coming into effect.

Match 3 was a default.

Match 4 vs Dragonhatter: What I remember most about this match was how bad Dragonhatter’s luck was. Early on, he hit me with a This'll Hurt in the Mornin', knocking me down from a cheating 4oaK to a full house – and so a donkey died. He also caught Maggie Harris flat footed, a 5/1 draw after actions, and she top decked a legal full house! She was able to sacrifice another donkey and run home. In the last shootout of the match, when my THitM was played, his cheatin’ 5oaK was chopped down to a 3oaK. Doomtown is as fickle as Mother Nature!

Match 5 vs TybarSunsong: Things didn’t look good for TybarSunsong early when he played a cheatin’ 5oaK into an unbooted Quickdraw Handgun early in the match, costing him two dudes. From there, he managed to keep his influence just ahead of my control until he was able to gadget up and come out blasting.

Unfortunately, this deck was thrown together at the last minute and I would suggest several changes as the deck is too tight and I missed some of what I considered the main cards. Changes I’d make, remove 1x The Gomorra Gazette, 1x Pinto, and 1x Quickdraw Handgun and add 2x Peacemaker and 1x LeMat Revolver.

Thank you, once again, to everyone and I hope to see y’all in Deadwood, and maybe a convention or two, next year!