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| The box reads 'Open flaps and munch' |
There was a turnout of 8 at Stoke-on-Trent for the Realm Championship Qualifier, which meant I was guaranteed to hit my second Top 8 of the weekend! They feel slightly less special when you can only miss out for getting disqualified though. Either way I decided to give Koo'zar a rest and picked out one of the other decks I'd sleeved up for the weekend in case I decided against using the angry Troll - eventually settling on a straight netdeck of the successful Emek the Equalizer deck from DMF Orlando.
Eight players means four rounds - something I mistakenly called out as wrong during the tournament, but reading the official policy documents tonight shows that 4-8 players in Core means four rounds. It seems a little odd for a format with such a small player pool to go past the point of having an undefeated player but we'll get on to that later.
Round 1: vs Philip Craker from Southampton, playing a pile of cards that do things (1-0)
Philip has the best Poker Face in WoWTCG, and because I can't actually remember what happened in our match I'm going to talk about that for a moment instead!
For my sins I am all too happy to concede when faced with fatal damage on board but both times I played Philip this weekend he let me do all the work, and that had this horrible unnerving effect of making you wonder whether you're missing something obvious. It's a trait I really should try and adopt for myself, as well as remembering just what my opponent's deck was...
Round 2: vs Ozzy Ward, playing Emek the Equalizer (2-0)
Holy Priest was by far the best-represented class this weekend, with Ozzy and myself repping the Horde, Amy bringing Tilly Fiddlelight to the table and perhaps one more too. My deck potentially featured 'better' cards but Ozzy had tech and wasn't afraid to use it - giving his Shadowfiend some Blue Suede Shoes to make my Searing Light miss, and frequently digging up annoying dudes with Uncatalogued Species.
I managed to swing the game my way with a steady stream of threats before some fresh wounds were opened - we judge-called to get a clarification on A Taste of Divinity vs Nathanos Blightcaller + Hounds*, the judge ruled against Ozzy with the exact opposite ruling that had been ruled against Ozzy the previous day; we agreed to rewind to before the Taste was played but after this I just drew all the right cards and eventually held two Divine Fury in hand as we went to time, dumping them both on his hero one turn after another to seal the deal.
Round 3: vs Kev Richardson, playing crazy Elemental Goblin Shaman shenanigans (3-0)
The match started off pretty slowly but the major turning point was Kev playing Lightning Overload on turn three or four, hoping to untap for a large Thunderstorm or Fork Lightning. It never happened; I held an Oppress in hand right from the start of the game, methodically emptied Kev's hand and eventually he died a slow and painful death.
I was feeling pretty good about this, Kev had just taken the arguable scalp of the day, beating Jack Fejer in his previous game, but it appears that the deck struggles a lot with the two D's - discard and Dethvir. It's an interesting deck though and I'm interested to get a decklist if you're reading!
Round 4: vs Jack Fejer, playing Ashnaar/Gift (3-1)
Rounding off the weekend's play I kept a decent hand containing Divine Fury, Dethvir and some other powerful but expensive cards, based off my knowledge of the average Ashnaar/Gift deck as not having the most explosive of starts. Unfortunately this didn't work out for me as Jack curved out beautifully and killed me on turn four, barely breaking a sweat.
We shuffled up Koo'zar vs Jack's Death Knight from Saturday in something of a 'what if?' scenario - I'd been one point of damage away from a semi-final match with Jack yesterday so I wanted to try and find out what might have happened.
It didn't go well - Jack had a single Extract in one game and double in the second, and after a Uruka of mine hit the bin he started to giggle as he revealed a hand containing a third Extract. I scooped up, grumbled a little bit and then proceeded to get angry at the tournament software for dumping me into second place overall on tiebreakers following my loss to Jack. He took home the foil Freezing Band and nine packs; I took second place getting five packs; Amy recovered from a first round loss to take third place, and in her three prize packs - a Mottled Drake!
Jack and Amy disappeared, citing "PPV Wrestling" and "Sleep" as their terrible excuses to not stay around and draft; I nipped out to the pie shop and on my return, six of us sat down around the table and pretended we knew what we were doing.
Notable things from the draft itself:
- My first pack contained a bad rare, a couple of decent quests, and Frek Snipelix. I took Skinned Whelp Shoulders.
- I drafted a Polished Breastplate of Valor quite early on from a particularly terrible pack, eventually started taking Warrior stuff including an Execute and a Gerana Sparkfist, which makes for a nice little combo
- My second pack also contained a terrible rare, so I drafted a Ruby Flameblade first pick
- Philip 'Poker Face' Craker outright told us all he was drafting Paladin as it was so bad nobody else would bother, so I hate-drafted a load of Paladin stuff in the third pack when there was no other card I wanted, just to be a dick
- We were rare-drafting the rares at the end of the event, where you lay all the rares out on the table after all rounds are completed and pick them one by one in order of finishing at the end. I was drafting using three of my prize packs from earlier; I opened an Alexstrasza (a card I've been after for ages) which meant I now had to win my own card twice before I could get to actually keep it. Alexstrasza wheeled twice before I drafted her to make Dan sad
I ended up with a passable Blue Death Knight deck that, while not exactly synergistic, looked like it could do the business, with or without rares. Notable cards:
Eranikus, Polished Breastplate of Valor, Unholy Ground, 2x Bayner Cogbertson, 2x Grip of the Damned, Aresha Thorncaller
I won the draft 3-0, but it was a shaky start. First up was Philip with all the Paladin cards - he won the roll, played a turn 2 Zulanji, and on turn 3 the Frek Snipelix that I'd passed, and then spent the rest of the game taking my table apart while I failed to find anything to deal with him! The second and third games were more straightforward as I won the card advantage war thanks to my high net cost of allies - I like to have a good top end in my limited decks simply due to the lack of card draw in these formats making their value much higher in a top-deck-off.
Next up was Peter Ward, who had quietly been going about his business drafting all the Shaman cards, which seemed like a much better plan than drafting Paladin. His deck contained at least two Rolling Thunder and a Nature Resistance Totem, and five (!) Lightning Bolt. He was initially fearful of my blue deck being packed full of Worgen with Aberration, but as I only drafted two, that turned out to not really be much of a problem in the end!
This was definitely the closest match of the day - Unholy Ground swung the first game but Philip side-decked in an Ancestral Purge and put it to good use, flipping Bragvi Stormstein and then causing havoc with the ensuing AoE.
We went to time in the third game - him with a Bayner Cogbertson, me with my own and another six-drop. He ate the six-drop and I needed an answer fast as he could easily top-deck a Lightning Bolt to swing the damage totals - I drew Grip of the Damned, attacked his hero with my Cogbert and buried his on the bottom of his deck, sealing the game off.
In the 'final' I faced a bewildered-looking D. Knight, who ironically was playing Hunter. He had originally not wanted to draft but following sufficient peer pressure drafted a Prized Beastmaster's Mantle and as many Dragonkin and Tesla as possible, as well as a fistful of quests and a Ceraka. I only knew this due to the constant telegraphing Dan does while playing - it has been suggested his talking himself through every move is the reason he went 1-7 on Saturday!
The Beastmaster's Mantle is something of a pain in the backside, but luckily for me I'd snagged a Terina Calin early on in the first pack and put it to good use where possible to stop his fleet of Dragonkin living forever. Eranikus finally showed his face after performing the role of a face-down resource so many times in the previous games; I was initially quite down on him due to the chances of seeing all your best cards enter the resource row, but faced with a fifth turn of 'Play Eranikus' or 'Do Nothing Whatsoever' I chose the former and rode the card advantage train for a few turns, thankfully seeing nothing of note hit the row and enjoying the 'free' card I was drawing each turn.
Much respect for another decent day's cards and for having a kettle and teabags available!
*http://forums.wowtcg.com/showthread.php?t=5774&highlight=taste+nathanos
If you'd seen the rares I'd opened in those 9 packs you wouldn't have been upset.
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