Donk, you're playing catchup

It's good, but it's not right. Oh Roy Walker, wherever did you go.

Say what you see.

My recent lack of success has driven me to dark depths. My deck projects have been put to one side and I have turned to... the internet. Decks of the internet, if you will. Deck-netting. Or something along those lines.

Net-decking is something that tends to divide opinion at our local playgroup - it seems to be a divisive strategy, second only to everyone's least favourite card, Corpse Explosion. Those who do it don't see the problem; those on the other end of it don't tend to be so accommodating.

As you've probably seen, as far as deckbuilders go, I'm not the best. When I have ideas, it's generally not a good thing - I don't tend to pick up on the important synergies between cards, instead picking up on stupid stuff that has already been discarded by those with talent and then wondering why I can't obtain blood from the proverbial stone.

This is why I netdeck. Well, that and for the odd week of enjoying hammering the opposition. It really is a learning experience for the most part though - quite often a deck will revolve around a main idea that you've already had, but the thing that makes this netdeck good is simply the other fluff that surrounds that main idea.

The Zaritha/Ancestral Awakening deck that won DMF Antwerp is a perfect example of this, and also a great argument for me to have a lobotomy. The DMF-winning deck featured these guys as targets for Ancestral Awakening:

King Varian Wrynn | Pappy Ironbane | Scrapper Ironbane | Weldon Barov | Iravar | Collidus the Warp-Watcher

You might notice they're all Unique, and they were backed up by Crusade Engineer Spitzpatrick for additional card draw.

When I first saw Ancestral Awakening, I built a deck around these allies instead:

Inventor Dorbin Callus | Zorus the Judicator | Spirit of Stormrage | Doomwalker

Admittedly this was a particularly bad error of judgement on my part, but I'm sure we've all done it - pushing an idea to its feasible boundaries and then well into an unfeasible and downright ridiculous area. I think the only reason I didn't think of using Varian is simply because I didn't own any at that point, but toolboxing a load of Unique allies and then theming the deck around the Argent Crusade was a stroke of genius that helped make the deck what it was, rather than a load of sub-par allies that probably won't draw you four cards when exhausted as they won't survive that long anyway.

This time, however, I've netdecked something that's quite unique. It didn't win a Darkmoon Faire, nor did it Top 8 a Darkmoon Faire. In fact, it 'only' finished 50th in the overall standings, which while still a respectable record, isn't quite the deck you'll pick for being 'the best deck'.

Take a look at it though. It rarely wins by killing the opponent; it wins by making them run out of cards. This appeals to me greatly, and the synergies in this deck are nothing short of insane. Your main milling machine for a lot of the game will be Shawl of Haunted Memories, which can be tossed in the bin to mill three off your opponent's deck; alternatively later on in the game you can play it, destroy it using its powers and take something on your opponent's board with it, and still mill those three cards. It's a hugely versatile card in this deck, and given how easy it is to recycle out of your bin using Ironforge, it's not uncommon to see the same shawl being fished out of the trash several times in one turn like that favourite, faded t-shirt that your mum keeps trying to make you get rid of.

The other stroke of genius in the deck is the sheer number of cards that cost 2. Concerted Efforts is practically a guaranteed hit here - and while it is quite galling that time you skip past a Tuskarr Kite, a Netherbreath Spellblade and a quest, you'll find you often have three valid cards to choose from off a single resource.

My absolute favourite thing about the deck also happens to be what is quickly becoming my favourite card in Worldbreaker - Oppress. Priest has many ways of destroying abilities that are cheaper than Oppress, but using it on your opponent's Turn 3 Tuskarr Kite, making them discard a card, and then flipping Martiana to make them discard another is utterly punishing. At first glance Oppress is pretty unassuming and run of the mill but as the only piece of discard in the whole deck, it can make quite a difference when your opponent stops expecting it.

Everyone should sleeve this deck up at some point just to see how you build a deck with real synergy. I feel very stupid when playing this deck as I couldn't have hoped to have conceived it myself!

I've taken it to two events so far, having made a couple of tweaks to the list I posted above. It went down... not quite as well as I'd hoped.

Ripley Battlegrounds, W2 L2 (+4 Magnus Longbarrel, -4 Gromble the Apt)

This was the first time I'd tried the deck, so I was quite in the dark as to how it'd work.

Round 1, vs Dave playing Death Knight

Due to shuffling and mulligans, the first round got started quite late, and the first thing I noticed was that the deck was pretty slow to get moving - I'd drawn well and established complete control of the board with kites, mounts, a Netherbreath Spellblade, and so on. My opponent was down to about 15 cards in his deck in about 20 minutes, and I was feeling good... until time was called.

While I was setting up my sheep and kite I'd taken a bit of damage before being able to play a Dispersion - not enough to be able to use Desperate Plea but enough to stop me from winning on health totals. Couple that with my opponent's complete blank on what he should be playing against this deck and the extra time it took to decide what to do each turn that resulted from that, I went from almost complete control of the game to a big fat loss due to not sealing the deal quick enough.

Round 2, vs Matt playing Worglock

This game was pretty much the opposite of the last - I was playing a Worgen Warlock/King Genn deck - and Genn had brought his buddies along. Mikael the Blunt became almost entirely useless as soon as that turn one Garet Vice hit the field, thanks to that lovely Aberration.

Wub's Cursed Hexblade came into its own here - I stole my opponent's Turn 5 King Genn and then dropped a Dispersion on the next turn after clearing out as many of the Aberration guys as possible. Later on in the game I fished it out of my bin and stole a massive Jhuunash, finally Misery-ing my way to an empty opposing deck whilst sat behind my new treacherous friend.

Round 3, vs Julian playing Zorks

My fellow netdecker that evening, Julian. He'd brought along a customised Zorks build featuring Cairne and Thrall. Perhaps luckily for me he mulliganed into a multi-Raptor hand and after killing his Tuskarr Kite and emptying his hand, I dropped a Netherbreath Spellblade and started working on milling him out.

Unfortunately that didn't last long as he'd managed to drop a dangerous number of dudes on his board, and I hadn't seen a Dispersion all game. Add to that the fact that I couldn't kill any of them with the Shawl due to the lack of any namesakes in the graveyard and things were looking dire. There was only one thing for it - Desperate Plea.

By this point we were both topdecking. I'd skip my draw, taking a Desperate Plea out of my bin; then I'd Ironforge a Shawl out of the graveyard, play it, destroy it with an Urn of Lost Memories and get a Magnus out of the bin. By this point I had already turned all of his resources face down, so they were merely good for whittling down the opposing horde. This continued for a few turns before I got to a low enough health total that I couldn't heal, and so drew a card!

The Fel and the Furious. Great - thanks. I completed it and drew ANOTHER fucking Desperate Plea.

I don't remember much after this but I think I eventually landed a couple of allies and manage to win by a sheer war of attrition in an entirely unconvincing manner. Still, a win is a win.

Hey - she looks female this time

Round 4, vs Phil playing Emek Aggro

Phil had picked up the DMF Orlando Runner's Up deck, Emek aggro. I drew a terrible hand and despite Oppressing a Devouring Plague, I quickly ran out of cards and didn't see a single shawl in the top 20 cards of my deck, and eventually died.

So! Highly unconvincing.

I had another chance to test it today at Beeston, for the Love is in the Air tournament. I registered one win and one loss, and one bye, which can hardly be attributed to the deck!

Round 1, vs Cerripha Sunstreak Slashdance Nonsense (deck changes: -1 Ironforge (necessity, couldn't get hold of a fourth), -2 Gromble the Apt, +3 Magnus Longbarrel)

The playgroup at Beeston are still pretty young as a group, and so are still building their collections. This worked brilliantly against me as I found myself staring down a turn 3 Tempest of Chaos with no way of destroying it... because it was the only one in the entire deck. Several turns later and I eventually get burned quite horribly by it after managing to play a stream of allies to soak up some of the damage on my behalf, then we Slashdance, then I get Cerripha burning my face off.

There were two key moments in this game. Number one was the surprise appearance of Mana Shift, stealing my Misery (which I swiftly Oppressed), Tuskarr Kite (which was amusing in an ally-less deck) and Dispersion. After that I was lacking severely in card draw, but at least had the Sheep/Spellblade combo to go on, enabling me to pick shit out of my bin.

The second key moment was having Meltdown played on the Spellblade. I didn't like that much.

Round 2, vs the car park and the coffee shop attendant

The cup of tea I got from across the road was pretty good actually.

Round 3, vs Repurposed Death Knight Raid Tanking Deck

Before we started the first round (and as we were waiting for Julian, who is perhaps the only person I know who is even worse than me for timekeeping) my opponent and I had a quick look through his deck and switched a few things out that would help focus the deck a little more on PVP. One of those things was the addition of a couple of Army of the Dead that I had in my bag, along with a few other bits and bobs donated by the rest of the group.

Basically I went second, and my opponent, a keen Magic player, had me sussed pretty early on - when I played the sheep and the boots and the urn he knew something was up right away. What he didn't expect was me to steal the Jaina that he played on turn 4 with a Wub's Cursed Hexblade. Turn 7 I was on the receiving end of a completely justified Army of the Dead, my opponent swung in for fatal and it was a good job I had a Desperate Plea in hand otherwise I'd have been buggered. I eventually managed to wrest board control back and the game went to time with me flooding the board with guys and eventually emptying their deck just in time for their final turn.

I came fourth, lowest of all the 2-1s, and wished I'd played Koo'zar instead.

It was really great to find that there are more players in the local area now, and hopefully we'll be seeing a lot more of them as time goes on. I have another chance to potentially test the deck in Stoke tomorrow, but I may also decide I want to finish some games within half an hour tomorrow. We shall see.

In other news, the Icecrown Citadel raid deck is coming out in the next couple of weeks, and there's a few previews of the Treasure Pack cards and also the raid deck cards doing the rounds. First the raid cards themselves:

Frostmourne is clearly crackers. It's discard-proof, it costs 1 and you can swing for four with it at a cost of no extra resources. And it gets bigger the more often you use it.

I just hope there are very few 'Ready Target Lich King' effects in the raid deck!


Blood-Queen Lana'thel is also pretty damn good, and is a nice balancer for raid parties with more members - gaining control of five five-drops? Feels good man.


Now on to the treasure, which is the part that piques my interest the most. For the first treasure pack since Onyxia's Lair, the format has returned to Uncommon/Rare/Epic treasure as opposed to the all-Rare distribution we've had recently. Mercifully the price of the solo treasure packs has been reduced to $5.99 (which will hopefully translate to a kinda-palatable £3.99 over here), which for nine cards is still pretty pricey but not quite as bad as the ten pounds charged for a Naxxramas treasure pack!

So, take a look at these bad boys then. A Totem! That's always good. Interestingly it's the first non-rare Interrupt for the Shaman class, though with it being part of a treasure pack, that fact will have little impact on anything.

Deathbringer's Will is interesting, but requires your hero to deal combat damage to an opposing hero. It's often good practice to swing in to your opponent's allies with your hero, so it will require some building around.

There's also some previews from the next set, War of the Elements! Take a look at the booster box at that link. Isn't that just the gaudiest thing you've ever seen?

Anyway, another Totem! The first thing that leaps out at me is that it is the first non-control Totem (i.e. Grounding or Stoneclaw) to have more than one health. I'm not sure what use that extra one health is going to be, four turns into the game; I'm not complaining though! This is basically Super Fire Elemental Totem, and judging by this there'll be plenty of fire allies to work alongside this card in the new set.

As for the rest of these cards, does anyone else see Marundal the Kindred increasing in price once War of the Elements is out?

Do I really have to tell you how good these two cards are?

Just fucking look at them!

I will personally be very interested to see Tol'zin's use in limited formats - he, along with the Blazing Elemental Totem, is an uncommon - which suggests that it is expected you will have a few tokens to use him with in your average six packs of cards. Could we be seeing a return to the Druid Treant nonsense from around Blood of Gladiators too? If nothing else Tol'zin is a great way to help you combo Alexstrasza into play using Nature's Vengeance...

Anyway. Until next time!