ACO Top 8 – Cooking Blog Edition

This will be the Atlantic City Open (ACO) Top 8 – Cooking edition.

I was informed this weekend that Fifth Trooper should stick to food articles, so here you go. Sort of. I always aim to give the people what they want.

Each list will be accompanied by an appropriately arbitrary food choice.

Atlantic City Open was a 50(ish) person tournament held this past weekend, with two heats and the top 4 advancing from each heat to play on Sunday. These are the final cut players from Sunday.

Without further ado…

Final Table

1 – Liam Kelly

Dish – Cheese Board

With many different types of delicious cheese, the cheese board seems to be present at nearly every party these days. It pairs well with wine, though it is mostly your opponents that will be doing that.

It takes some knowledge and sophistication to put the different flavor elements together. Cheese boards often feature other non-cheese elements to supplement the palette, such as nuts, fruit, or crackers.

Somehow, this list has Maul, Kalani, two Ion Spiders, Magnas, and a sufficient quantity of E-5s B1s, all in one list. This list says, “can I take all the things? Yes. Yes I can.”

Liam is the fourth Kalani/Double Ion player to win a major tournament this year (the others being LVO, Adepticon, and Rocky Top).

2- Austin Miller

Dish – Steak with Lobster Mashed Potatoes

If the sophisticated and refined Dooku is the Lobster Mashed Potatoes, the Magnas are a giant, tasty slab of steak. No matter how many cuts you take out of it, it seems to still be there, daring you to keep trying to finish it off. Can your arteries handle it? There are some B1s here too, I guess. You probably need some asparagus alongside all that thick meat to make it look like you are at least trying to eat healthy.

Top 4 (in no particular order)

Kyle Chan

Dish – Beef and Beet Borscht

Even if you don’t really like beets, you have to admire how many tasty, healthy things get crammed into this soup. Celery! Carrots! Beef! Cabbage! Kyle’s list is basically a soup of very solid Rebel units that nobody really has cause to complain about, and it turns out it makes for a pretty good soup too, at the end of the day.

Jon Bushman

Dish – Simple Baked Chicken

It’s a lean, easy to cook, relatively bland staple. What can I say? It tastes like chicken.

Jon’s list has a little extra spice in here with the smoke grenades and binocs, so I found a baked chicken recipe with some creole seasoning, just for you Jon. So it at least tastes like mildly spicy chicken.

Top 8 (in no particular order)

Koray Satili

Dish – Poutine

What is better than french fries? French fries with cheese curds, slathered in gravy. The AAT is the french fries, the spiders are the cheese curds, and everything else is gravy.

The AAT is the lynchpin of this list, and it certainly can dictate the tempo of the game. If it goes down, though, you are in trouble. Who wants just cheese curds and gravy?

Kyle Dornbos

Dish – Peanut Butter and Jelly and Mustard Sandwich

Okay, I like Peanut Butter and Jelly. And I love mustard. They don’t really go that well together.

Vader is an amazing aggro force user. Nobody blenderizes a gunline quite like him. But you know what? He has to get in there to do it. Turns out that is pretty challenging when he’s doing it all by himself and the rest of your dudes want to hang out at Range 3-4.

Vader is the mustard that belongs on a hotdog (Dews) that actually make some space for him. He really doesn’t go that well with PBJ (gunline).

John Lopez

Dish – Turkey Stuffing

Stuffing is tasty and filling. Why don’t you see it all year round?

There is a proper setting for stuffing. It’s kind of weird to put on a table if it isn’t Thanksgiving, right?

GAR Wookiees are very table dependent; if you have nice, balanced tables with LOS blockers (like at ACO) you are going to be very happy. Otherwise, you are going to be very sad. Maybe ACO is Thanksgiving.

Evan Bulriss

Dish – Surströmming

I’ll fully admit I didn’t actually know what this was until my Danish colleague DrPowerSlam from Legion Stats enlightened me. For the uninitiated, it is described thusly:

During the production of surströmming, just enough salt is used to prevent the raw herring from rotting while allowing it to ferment. A fermentation process of at least six months gives the fish a characteristic strong smell and somewhat acidic taste. A newly opened can of surströmming has one of the most putrid food smells in the world, even stronger than similarly fermented fish dishes such as the Korean hongeohoe or Japanese kusaya.

It tastes, smells, and looks weird, but there are a few people that insist its actually food.

Summary

Another win for the clankers. Somebody is going to take it to them eventually, right?

Congrats to Liam, who piloted those clankers to victory. And no, Florida, you can’t have the podcast.