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I wanted to write a real tournament report, you know the kind that gives you a round by round recap, I even took notes. However that’s not what this is, here’s a spoiler: I played in the DMF and got 24th. Translation: I lost a lot of games this weekend. I guess I could give you a round by round recap of losing, but that wouldn’t be fun for you or me. I can do that with the DMF because at least some interesting things happened and I can tell you some interesting stories from draft camp and the weekend of NACC, so here we go.
Thursday June 9th
The Vegas Crew usually gets together on Thursday, sometimes for drafts, other times for board games. Tim Rivera and Kirk Buckendorf usually host these events because they have understanding female companions and they also have a good amount of space. Every once in a while I’ll also host them; the problem is that I live about 30 minutes away from everyone. Since visitors were staying on the other side of town this was the one opportunity we had to game at my place. Wings were purchased and packs were cracked, I think we had 13 drafters.
The first draft I drafted Paladin. The first pack I avoided class cards and mostly only took allies and quests, and in the second pack I was rewarded for staying open by getting passed a [Holy Wrath]. My deck had 3 [Inquisition]s, 2 [Vengeful Crusader Strike]s, [Blessing of Faith], and the [Holy Wrath].
Tim and I had been discussing the Worldbreaker, War of the Elements, War of the Elements draft format. Since you get the one-of pack first we theorized that you wanted to take quality guys and quests in the first pack leaving yourself open to feel out the next two packs since that’s where the majority of your class commons are going to come from. The classes also dramatically changed, Paladin is now good and Warrior got bad. I could go on about what changed from three packs of Worldbreaker but that is for another article. I lost to Andrew and I was able to draw [Holy Wrath] all three games, [Rend and Tear] was able to smash me in to little bits. I won my other 2 games, with little trouble. Having that much removal makes the games easy.
The next draft I was able to draft druid but I can’t remember too much about it. Druid got a lot quicker and with 2 less packs with [Rejuvenation] and [Lockjaw] combined with [Vanira Raventhorne]’s flip and [Savage Cat Form] you want to be more beatdown than the super control Druid decks we saw before.
After all the drafters leave, I put away chairs and throw away plastic cups and do a quick cleaning. I look at the room and say to myself you can hardly tell there were 13 guys in here drafting. I go to bed and my girlfriend says that she needs to move her car now that everyone is out of the driveway, being the great guy I am I offer to do it instead. As soon as I open the bedroom door I get hit with a wall of man stink, which was unnoticed before. I guess you can tell there were 13 drafters in here after all.
Friday June 10th
No gaming for me. Instead I went to see the Cirque show, Viva Elvis. It was enjoyable but there were no WOW drafts before the show so it wasn’t as good as it could have been.
Saturday June 11th
Saturday was a day to kick back and not play any WOW, just BBQ, swim, and Tichu at Kirk’s place since he has the pool. I decided not to swim because I was feeling a bit under the weather but that didn’t stop others. Ben Isgur, Brad Watson, Phillip Martin, and Stu Wright all got in the pool at the same time. I thought it was an albino convention out there. After a game of Tichu the swimmers decide to come in, Ben and Pip forget how to dry themselves and leave a portion of the pool on Kirk’s new hard wood floor. This makes Kirk post a sign on the sliding glass door that had me laughing pretty hard.
Even though there wasn’t supposed to be any WOW cards flopped, a draft spontaneously broke out. This time I drafted Priest, a very under-drafted class for sure. After the first two packs I was Horde and felt like I really read the faction signals well. The third pack confirmed it by passing me two straight [Timriv the Enforcer]s after opening [Azure Skyrazor]. At that point it didn’t matter what class I was, but I still had three [Shadow Word: Death], [Leap of Faith], and [Power Word: Endurance]. [Power Word: Endurance] was a card I wasn’t sold on until this draft, it seemed so clunky but it really shined and convinced me it deserved a spot.
After drafting but during our matches Bettye cuts up some ice-cream cake for all us fatties to enjoy. I eat my piece in the other room and when I’m done I walk back in to the main room to play, where I see Stu looking at his cake a bit confused. After a few seconds he picks up his piece, WITH HIS HANDS, and starts to chow down. I say so everyone can hear, “Stu, you know we have forks right?” The place explodes in laughter. He mutters something about not wanting to be wasteful. “It’s a plastic fork; you won’t be breaking the bank.” Now he has to “waste” some napkins wiping the whipped cream off his hands. After going 3-0 I have to leave to catch Cake (the band) put on a show at the Cosmopolitan, Tim finishes the last round smashing poor Stu with...you guessed it...TimRiv.
Sunday June 12th
I wake up nice and early at 8am, clean the house, do some shopping, and then head on over to Tim Rivera’s place. I suppose I should do some constructed testing so I play some Vorix, Midrange warlock, Spellweaver Jihan. I can’t seem to find anything that I want to play. I actually wish that NACC was six drafts, three the first day and three the next. It’s not so much that I think I would crush or that I would have a better chance at doing well, it’s that I hate playing constructed. It’s just not my thing to brew decks or grind out testing hours. I can do it but I don’t find it fun. Tim grills up some amazing ranchero that makes the testing go a bit better.
At one point Stu spills a small amount of water on one of his cards. He starts to wipe the card on the table when Tim informs him that there are paper towels in the other room. Stu gets up, comes back with a paper towel, dries the card, crumples up the paper towel, and drops it on the floor. Tim looks at Stu in confusion, is this British dude trying to punk me out? It’s time for Sheriff Tim to lay down some law. “You can also throw it away.” Stu responds “Well of course, I wasn’t going to leave it there.” Funny cause that’s exactly what you did! This story gets retold about a dozen times to friends and complete strangers, I’m not sure Stu has ever had his balls busted as much as he did hanging out with us. Welcome to Vegas!...don’t forget to wear a cup.
Monday June 13th-Tuesday June 14th
I have to work…lame I know. I do manage to get over to Tim’s place after work for some more constructed grinding.
Wednesday June 15th
I ask my boss for a half day as the waiting was killing me that week. I get to Tim’s place around noon and the place is hoppin’. A few more people came in to town that day, two of which are “Bus Driver Dan” Clark’s friends. The first guy was a bigger guy (Basem Alsalah) I took one look at him and immediately called him Big Ern, a King Pin reference. I don’t know why I called him that, it just sounded cool; apparently he hasn’t seen the movie because he was asking me what Ern was short for. The other guy you might recognize, 2011 DMF Las Vegas Champion Jason Newill…to me he was Mop Top. Nothing too creative there, but I must say I’ve never seen anyone more disappointed to win a DMF than him. The guy never smiles! Seriously I thought when they handed the trophy over he had just found out his dog got ran over by a truck.
I grind some more games of Core and start to interview what others are playing. A few are sold on Warlock, some are on the Mage route and I am getting a bit more comfortable with [Vorix Zorbuzz].
We end up getting a draft in. I pick up a mage deck without much going for it. I get crushed by Mop Top and lose to Brad before winning my next two. My ally base was weak and that will doom any draft deck.
We decide to do dinner at the M Buffet. While standing in line Dane and I get each other excited for the ox tail soup we are going to plunder. I do some more core interviews, just looking for a good suggestion on what to play since I have no idea. Finally Dan Clark comes to the rescue. He says that I should play [Vorix Zorbuzz] because it can be so powerful at times and can beat most decks out there with the right draw. He says that he can look at the stock list I’ve been running and tune it up. From this moment on Dan Clark will no longer be know as Bus Driver Dan, he is now Deck Doctor Dan. After sitting in line for about 30 minutes, a lady comes by and informs us that the buffet closes at 9 and the food starts to go away at 930. It is 830 when she says that and we have a good number of people ahead of us, we come to the conclusion that we won’t make it and we head off to a local bar/restaurant instead. After we get done eating Dan does tweak the deck a bit by adding [Fan of Knifes] and [Conversing With the Depths]. I just wish we had a couple more days of testing to find [Hailstorm].
Thursday June 16
I head over to Tim’s place yet again and I am greeted with a great breakfast prepared by him and his lovely wife. I play some games with [Vorix Zorbuzz] against Tim C and Matt Spreadbury and I lose 10 straight games. I start to question going [Vorix Zorbuzz], but I stay strong and keep playing. Now I’m starting to turn the match ups around and I go on a 5 game win streak. I think two things were working against me here. One I needed to shuffle the crap out of that deck because it was just sorted. Two I needed to learn when to go after allies and when to start burning the hero. This should have been a sign that I needed to practice a lot more.
We head off to the Paris and register for NACC, while there I see lots of the WOW player community that I love so much. Everyone is friendly and says hi, such a change from my Magic playing days. Jim even takes my “I didn’t know they made shirts that big” joke in stride. Tyler and Michael Reggio are there, two of my biggest fans and great players. The three of us chat about drafts and what we are playing in core, seems like they and a lot of the room is playing [Emek the Equalizer]. We leave and this time we get to the M buffet plenty early, and gorge on ox tails.
Friday June 17th
The main event finally! The first round starts off rough; my opponent is playing [Souldrinker Bogmara] and gives me no space to breath. He keeps dropping ally after ally and I’m doing my best to kill them before dying myself. On turn seven I flip [Vorix Zorbuzz] play double [Slay the Feeble] and double [Deathblow] for the full amount killing him. It was close but it’s good to start off the tournament off with a win. The next two rounds I win making me the only one in our group that is 3-0, everyone else was 2-1. That is where my tournament takes a turn. I play 2 mirror matches and get blown out, both of which I had to watch them draw double the cards I drew. I play against a blue Mage deck that saw me draw my first quest on turn five. I make about 5 mistakes against another opponent and die quickly. And I row the wrong cards against another opponent, more mistakes. I end the day 2-6 after starting 3-0, losing every way that you can, playing bad, drawing bad, not knowing certain match ups. Well at least there is a sealed deck DMF tomorrow.
On a side note if you haven’t met Tim Corzine he’s a riot…unintentionally. Tim C has a habit of switching around card names so that you know what he’s trying to say but he’s not getting it quite right. A couple of years ago he was telling a story about Rot John, or [Johnny Rotten] to you and me, he also likes to call Tichu, Teachings. It never fails to get a good chuckle out of me when he messes up a name. Between rounds he comes up to me and starts telling me about his latest loss, with everyone else within ear shot. “My opponent plays Silver Town and sets it to Fire then three turns later when I have lethal damage on board he top decks another Silver Town and sets it to Shadow totally stopping all my allies!”
I can’t hold it in, I start cackling with laughter after he says Silver Town. After a full minute of this I say “you needed a Bag'go Skumm for that Silver Town”, now everyone is laughing. I can’t stop laughing and soon I begin to cry it’s so funny. I love me some Tim C… but Silver Town, LOLZ!
Saturday June 18th
DMF time, and on to some limited play. I would rather the whole event be draft, but sealed pack is fine and I understand that running a sealed event is easier. Rather than give you a card list of everything I played and didn’t play I just give you the highlights. I opened good allies in both Horde and Alliance so I was torn on what faction to play. I did however know that I would be playing Hunter since I opened [Boomer], double [Donatello], [Tesla], and [Stakethrower]. Since my pool had four pets the tie breaker for me was [Baxxel Geartooth]’s flip. Looking at the abilities I didn’t have much to choose from. [Wild Fervor] was an easy include. [Track Dragonkin] is a fine trick. And I decided to go with [Cobra Shot] and my third and last ability. Reading the card it seems expensive and hard to cast, but with four pets and the [Stakethrower] I thought I would have a reasonable shot at making it work, especially with my flip. The quests were very substandard, I was forced to play double [Breaking the Bonds] and a [Putting the Pieces Together]. The problem with this deck is that with 4 pets, 3 abilities, and 1 equipment, all you end up doing is play guys and hope you don’t lose tempo. There aren’t many tricks and no bombs to get you back in to games you are losing.
Round one I play against Niles Rowland who is playing Alliance Hunter. I win the die roll and the games play out where whoever went first won easily. He did play [Gerana Sparkfist] first game and was able to kill my board so the next two games I played around it.
1-0
Round two I play against Damien Dufresne, I guess I’m not going to have an easy path in this tournament. I can’t remember much about this match but he was playing Alliance Hunter. Sorry about the lack of details on this one.
2-0
Round three I play against the third hunter in a row. Game one he wins the roll and goes first. He played a second turn [Boomer] and I match it. He runs a [Cadric Talworth] in to my [Boomer] and finishes it off with his [Boomer] ability. From there on it just keeps going downhill and the problem of just having allies in my deck shows up. The second game I get to go first but I didn’t have the second turn [Boomer] and he did, my tempo slips away quickly because of this and I take my first loss. After the game my opponent says “You didn’t draw Boomer?”
…I drop my deck on the table and stare at him. “Well you were there for that game; did you see me drop Boomer?” I couldn’t believe this guy, I mean what a stupid question, it’s not like he said “it sucks you didn’t draw your Boomer and I did” he actually asked me if I drew my Boomer. He mutters back “Well some people like to talk about it”. Now I know he must be messing with me, he just smashed me and now he’s twisting the knife, Rob don’t play that. “Look buddy, I’m generally a nice guy but you are trying to shove it in my face. You just smashed me two straight games, take the win and don’t twist the knife, alright?” He then starts to apologize but at this point I’m hot, so I sign the slip and walk away. I really got the impression that he was trying to get a dig in on me, for reasons I was unaware of. If he wasn’t then that was a really stupid question to ask, of course I didn’t draw Boomer…you were there.
2-1
Round four was against a Paladin deck, immediately I go on the defensive. Paladin isn’t a class you generally play in sealed deck. The other classes usually offer better tricks and removal; even the weapons are better suited for Death Knight or Warrior. The one exception to this is if you open a [Holy Wrath], which is card that would make me play Paladin any day. I win the die roll and curve out with my best allies and beat him pretty easily. The second game I’m on the draw but play first turn [Telor Sunsurge] and second turn [Donatello] making him resource a few allies with one health. I have the advantage but I hold back some of my bigger allies, opting to complete quests instead. I wanted to pad against a [Holy Wrath]. I think this is something people miss in sealed deck, there are reasons people choose the class they do and you should play and side deck accordingly. If you see Warrior across from you, chances are they have at least one good weapon, even if you play the first game without seeing a weapon sideboard in your equipment removal. I win the second game without him playing [Holy Wrath], but he does show that it was in his deck.
3-1
Round five I play against a local friend, Porkchop. As is the theme, I win the die roll and out-tempo him. The second game he goes first and passes his fourth turn without laying a resource, right after I draw my card he realizes his mistake and says he messed up. A few turns later I attack and kill a dragonkin of his and play [Azure Magus], knowing he has [Challenge to the Black Flight] and two ready resources, I was in full beatdown mode. He doesn’t complete the quest, but does complete it the next turn after he casts a dragonkin of his own. After winning the match I point out the quest mistake and the forgetting to resource as mistakes he is making because he’s rushing too much. You need to keep a steady pace, but that pace does not need to be breakneck speed. Slow down and observe the board.
On a side note, Porkchop came up to me during the day and had this to say.
“Dude, I know you already know this but your girlfriend is awesome!”
“Yeah, she is very awesome man”
“Like she’s one of those girls that is one of the guys.”
“Yep”
“And I have to say, I find tattoos very sexy”
-Silence
“When I went to Amsterdam I kept going to the same girl ‘cause she had all these tats. To me she was like…a 14 out of 10. I even checked out other girls and none of them measured up to her”
-Awkward
I share the story with Tim and he says that Pork Chop is going to kill me and steal my identity. I can already see it now. He’s standing over my dead body covered in blood. He reaches down grabs my glasses, and slowly puts them on. He smiles knowing that his transformation is complete. That’s some creepy stuff.
4-1
Round six I get paired up, which I’m pretty excited about. My tiebreakers should be pretty good with this pairing. The one problem with this is that my opponent is undefeated for a reason, a reason I’ll soon find out. He is playing [Kadus Frosthand], a powerful flip but now I don’t have to worry about [Arcane Barrage]. He wins the die roll and plays first, but I am able to play bigger allies then him on almost every turn. I even play [Ruby Skyrazor], a great ally against his flip. On his turn six he casts [Korialstrasz] and he doesn’t have a lot of damage on his hero so I’m forced to trade my [Ruby Skyrazor] and [Valytha Colton] for it and cast [Emerald Acidspewer].
On his turn seven out comes [Ragnaros the Firelord] to kill [Emerald Acidspewer] and leave me in shock. Well time to dig in and kill that fire lord. My turn seven I play two allies and I brace for his attack. He readies, makes a fire elemental token and attacks my hero for 7. I am able to ready and kill the fire lord so now I need to draw some good cards to help rebuild my board. At the end of my turn he completes [The Essence of Enmity] showing me [Soridormi], he readies, plays [Soridormi] and kills me soon after. So to recap I killed [Korialstrasz] and [Ragnaros the Firelord] but was unable to kill [Soridormi], I should learn to play better.
The second game I know that I have to kill him quick so I mulligan with that in mind. I come out with both guns blazing and put a lot of damage on him quick. He casts a turn six [Korialstrasz] but I am able to kill that and him shortly after that.
The final game he gets to go first giving him a pretty big advantage seeing that the way to beat him is through quick damage. [Boomer] does pop up on turn four to help kill off an ally with the help of [Wild Fervor] and his ping ability. Turn six he plays [Korialstrasz] but [Stakethrower] and [Boomer] make short work of him. Turn 7 he plays [Ragnaros the Firelord] and now I have to actually trade some cards for it. A [Bronze Skyrazor] with ferocity turns the tide in his favor and then out comes [Soridormi] with three ready resources. His side of the board is [Soridormi], [Bronze Skyrazor], a 2/1 fire elemental created from [Ragnaros the Firelord] and three ready resources. I have out [Stakethrower], a 2/1 elemental created from [Putting the Pieces Together], [Valytha Colton], and eight ready resources. He has lethal damage on board so I need him to mess up here. I try and attack [Bronze Skyrazor] with my [Valytha Colton], he gives his ally elusive. I try and attack his token with my token…and he gives his ally Elusive.
That was exactly was I was looking for. I cast [Tesla] with four resources remaining. I try and attack [Soridormi] with [Tesla], and he exhausts his last resource to give [Soridormi] elusive. With the rest of my resources I play [Cobra Shot] on [Soridormi] with [Tesla] and [Stakethrower] for seven damage. His mistake was not allowing the tokens to trade, his reason at the time was he had lethal damage on board and the only way I could kill it was with that rare card. The way I look at it is why not play around [Cobra Shot] and kill me in two turns instead of one, your hero has very little damage on so you aren’t in trouble of dying and every ally you cast can be a protector with [Soridormi] out. He didn’t want to admit it because he won and that must be right but after explaining it to him slower he admitted he was wrong and I felt a little bit better inside. Yeah…he won. He was able to attack me next turn with his allies and sneak through damage until I was in [Arcane Missiles] range, a timely [Frozen Nerves] helped stop my protector. Stu comments that it looked like my crappy quests killed me that game. I point to [Soridormi], [Ragnaros the Firelord], and [Korialstrasz] in his graveyard and say “I don’t think it was my quests that killed me this game.” At least I’ll have good tie breakers.
4-2
Round seven I play against future black belt Tyler Reggio. I know he has two [Timriv the Enforcer]s since we showed each other our decks earlier in the day. The first game I played [Zakis Trickstab] to try and keep an ally out to trade with [Timriv the Enforcer] and I also make attacks with this in mind. I end up winning thanks to [Stakethrower] and [Wild Fervor]. The next game things got worse for Tyler, he only drew TimRivs and was never able to keep allies on the board to put damage on mine.
5-2
Round eight, I look at the standings and see that I have second best tiebreakers for my record so I have a chance. That is until I see I am paired down. At this point I know I’m sunk, I suppose technically I might be able to get in but 100 things need to go in my favor now. I do ask my opponent if he would like to concede to me to at least give me that 1% chance, he declines as he is here for the playmat and foil [Dethvir the Malignant].
Game one I win easily by outclassing all his allies, however I can feel that my head is not in the game. Since I was paired down and have almost no shot at top 8, I had little to play for and my actions proved it, making lazy trades, not completing the right quests, not thinking much about what card to lay in the resource row. The second game I continue to play on auto pilot and before I know what’s happening I’m getting beat down by an 8/8 [Avatar of the Wild] token. I can not recover and we are on to the next game. The last game was an embarrassment; I still can’t come out of the funk I was in. At one point I play a pet when I already had one on the board. I lose :(
5-3
Sunday June 19th
I show up to the site early with hopes of Tichu battles only to find Ben Isgur, Ray Tautic, Glenn Jones, and someone else in some epic race to -1000. I’m not so sure they know how that game works, you’re supposed to get to 1000 not -1000. I end up watching a few of the Top 8 games before the ipod draft begins.
In the draft I open up [Grim Campfire] and get passed double [Entangling Growth], I do note that the two [Wrath]s do not come back so there is at least one other Druid at the table. The second pack I open [Azure Skyrazor] and get passed [Tyrygosa] and another [Azure Skyrazor], well those cards certainly can work together. I don’t see many druid abilities in the second pack and that theme continues in the third pack. I do pick up all the elemental abilities so I can have eight abilities to work with my [Azure Skyrazor]s. After the draft I find out that the other druid deck was picking up [Maim]s like they were going out of style, he ended up with six I think. Brad, who was also in my draft, showed me his sideboard of the two [Wrath]s and a couple of other druid abilities. Oh well.
The first round I play against [Fraznak the Furious] and he starts off the action with first turn [Rosalyne von Erantor] second turn [Burom Bladeseer] and third turn another two drop with one resource ready. When I try to attack my two drop in to his ally he plays [Peerless Guard] and then on the next turn he plays another [Peerless Guard]. Needless to say I die quickly, sure would like those [wrath]s right about now.
The second game goes much like the first with him starting off with [Rosalyne von Erantor] and [Burom Bladeseer], but this time I’m on the play so I am able to keep the damage to a minimum. On turn six, with my hero [Arturius Hathrow] flipped, I cast [Grim Campfire] and [Cadric Talworth]. I attack in he saves one of his allies with [Peerless Guard] but I end the turn with 3 damaged allies and my hero damaged. I start to say what I’m going to shoot with my flip by saying “…two here and two there” when he stops me and explains that I only get to do one damage. I explain that they are all the first time and that it’s an old ruling, he calls the judge. Well the first judge gets the ruling wrong so I appeal to the head judge and he gets it right. My opponent starts to argue about it and I sit back at watch. Finally the head judge lays down that law that the ruling stands and that’s final. My opponent quickly scoops up his cards like a child who had his favorite toy taken away. He goes on to argue with the players around him saying that complicated rules make people want to quit the game and the crazy part is that they agree with him. They ask me what I think and I say that I think they are over exaggerating that people will quit the game the first time they encounter a card interaction that they don’t understand. Well all three of them agree that I’m wrong and I feel like I’m in a mental institution.
The third game goes exactly the same as the first and for the third game in a row he cast first turn [Rosalyne von Erantor], after smashing me he says something about not needing rulings to go his way when he wins the die roll, way to win graciously. The one thing I did take away from this match is that the aggressive warrior deck might be worth drafting to at least try it out.
That my friends, is all I have for you. Not a good weekend for cards but I had great times with good friends and I hope you enjoyed reading the non-WOW stories. Let me know what you think in the forums.
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