After the success in the Ultimate Peon event two weeks ago, things went a bit awry. I started testing Zaritha using the Leggings of the Tireless Sentry with mixed results - most notably I was running out of cards far too often. I picked up a separate list without the leggings which fared a little better, sleeved it up and arranged to borrow the remaining cards I needed from my playgroup on the Wednesday before the event while at our Battlegrounds.
Tuesday night we find out the store is not opening on Wednesday. I have no more time to test and a deck missing some of the most important cards with no real way of getting hold of them, so I sleeve up ol' faithful [Witch Doctor Koo'zar] instead and cross my fingers that everyone will be bored of Death Knight after the humping it's been giving me recently.
 |
| I don't have these :( |
To cut a long story short, we had a turnout of 33, played seven rounds, and three of those were Death Knights.
Round 1: vs Damio playing Erondra Frostmoon
Luckily for me Damio led off with no Extract, so I went fast and dropped angry guys. If you don't know what the deck does by now, have a read of the previous Zapped Giants Open entry, or the Realm Champs one. [1-0]
Round 2: vs Duncan Tang playing Paladin Lava Dredger
I've not really tested Koo'zar against Paladin simply due to the difficulty in finding anyone playing one to test against! I was initially unsure as to what his deck did but as soon as he played a T1 Pirate Bob Machine I twigged, and simply vomited my opening hand onto the table including a wonderful turn 4 Flameblade -> Flip -> Enforcer -> Babagahnoosh which all but sealed the deal.
The deck revolves around Repurposed Lava Dredger and about a billion stash cards - it's a cheeky way of accelerating yourself into an early Ysera and then hopefully a way of actually winning the game, which judging by the friendly we had afterwards, is easier said than done! [2-0]
Round 3: vs Will Booker playing Zaritha
This is my favourite matchup! Honest. It's one of those unfortunate matches where I can have the Best Hand, but if the Zaritha player has the Best Hand too then theirs beats mine and I get salty.
I opened with a Cairne Token and a one-drop, Will opened with A Question of Gluttony; I dropped a Shadowfiend, clattered in and left the resource open to play the Shadow Word: Anguish I had in hand, and Will followed with another Question; after drawing a stack of cards, he followed with a third Question (if I recall correctly), then I went ahead with my third turn, planning to leave a resource open as always for the Mikael that was surely going to join the board shortly, but either I screwed up and played stuff in the wrong order or something but I got caught out with no ready resources, my board Mikael'd to death and then a Voice of Reason entered play and that was basically it. [2-1]
Round 4: vs Chris playing Erondra
Another Death Knight! Erondra is probably the worst of the lot - Grumdur is a nightmare, her flip is a nightmare and the Extract is a nightmare. I think I did about eight damage in the face of double Grumdur and extract. [2-2]
Round 5: vs Stevie playing Death Wish
This was probably my favourite game of the day simply due to all the faces Stevie pulled during the course of the match. I had a great hand and got to work, winning the dice roll - his T1 was a quest, his T2 was a facedown resource, and then instead of doing anything proactive he completed A Rare Bean. "If I don't hit with this I've lost" he told me, calling Rare and hitting Tanks for Everything, Dalaran along with a set of Greaves. At this point he tells me he has eight cards in hand, so discards a Hailstorm, killing my Cairne Token, Broderick and Ruby Flameblade.
I have the turn three to end all turn threes - another Flameblade, flip, Ruby Enforcer, Babagahnoosh discarding Uruka for five points of damage, and the game is over shortly after.
If Marko hadn't hit with A Rare Bean I'd have had him on 38 damage by the end of turn 3. [3-2]
Round 6: vs Josh Lowe playing Baeltor
"The thing I like about this hero is that nobody knows for sure what spec you're playing", Josh told me after our game. While technically he's right, I'm still not convinced that there is a good enough Blood or Frost deck that's worth bluffing for at present.
Either way he merked me with double Extract and I failed to find a Talisman in either my opening hand nor my mulligan. [3-3]
Round 7: vs Joe Sadowski playing Vorix
Vorix is another deck I've not had chance to test against, though I am aware that Rogues are in general a pain in the arse for me, along with everyone else. When he played Raze removing one card to kill three of my guys on his second turn, then Annihilate to kill my Babagahnoosh, then a second Raze for nothing, to kill my second Babagahnoosh, I was out of options.
I even topdecked like a champ - after playing Babagahoonsh for the first time I then drew a second, then the next turn offered me a Sava'gin - so I dropped both of them only for Sava'gin to eat a Deathblow and Baba the aforementioned Raze, followed by a last-ditch Shadowfiend which hit a second Deathblow. [3-4]
Not my finest hour overall then, finishing in 22nd place - and not helped by the fact that after every game, I offered a friendly due to the amount of spare time we had - digging out my Hunter BM Control deck that I was considering playing. Out of all the opponents I played against, it fared very well indeed, and if I recall correctly it only lost to Death Wish and Vorix (after Vorix stole a gun and a pair of trousers using Steal Steel and shot me to death with them, the bastard).
We had a quick tournament afterwards too, and I finished 3-1 with the Hunter, winning the final game with an Avatar of the Wild off the top for 11, followed by a resource then Planned Assault for another 11/11 tiger. Fun times.
Despite the poor result, it does give me the perfect opportunity to tackle a subject that I've been itching to write something about for a while - Metagaming, what it is and what it does. I'll come to that in a separate post shortly as I want a cup of tea and a sandwich. I'll do all the mouseovers later. [edit] done!
--
Big ups to Ross Silcock for running a tight event, and to everyone that came down from the far reaches of Scotland, Middlesbrough, and any other playgroups I may have not realised were in attendance; further big ups to Lammy for turning up on time and taking the top spot. This is what happens when you turn up on time Lammy! You win shit.
No comments:
Post a Comment