How not to win the World Championships: Part 1

First things first: I hate tournament reports – or at least most tournament reports. Don't get me wrong; I love reading about all the cool stories that involve a couple of silly bets, a few pool parties, a good number of embarrassing moments and some more of that fun stuff. However, the majority of tournament reports I've come across reads something along the lines of "In round 1, I faced this guy from Jersey and I smashed him. In round 2, I was paired against this guy from China and I smashed his face, too!” etc. I'm not into that kind of article and I'm not going to write that kind of article.

Instead, I'll try to focus on the plays that were crucial to me not winning the World Championship or the Darkmoon Faire, for that matter (turned out this article ended up being so fricken’ long I had to write another article for that).

I think you'll enjoy reading about my screw ups a lot more as it helps you improve your own game. Be warned; this article only deals with Constructed and it's easier to prepare for this format as you'll often end up in similar situations. Therefore, you won't find as many huge screw ups in this article. Then again, the DMF report should really deliver when it comes to those.

So without further ado, let's delve right into my:

Worlds Tournament Preparation

I've attended several tournaments in the past year where I was only little prepared. I set a personal record at DMF Poznan by not playing a single match in the weeks leading up to the tournament, resulting in me getting outplayed by opponents that were putting their money on almost identical decks (ironically, I still won that match as my opponent drew into 4 [Dreadsteed]s and only 1 [Tuskarr Kite] which I could handle all the while drawing into nutty cards like 3 [Dethvir the Malignant]s and 2 [Bloody Ritual]s – gotta love card games!).

I was mad at myself after each of these events and I considered focusing on doing coverage once again instead of playing. I hate losing in these ways; whatever I'm doing, I always want to do it right. That wasn't the case when it came to playing my favorite pastime on a competitive level anymore. I also thought of not attending the World Championship as I found next to no time to prepare for that tournament either. I kept getting asked about my leet tech, my deck choice and my thoughts on the Core Constructed. I couldn't comment on either as I simply didn't know.

Fortunately, I'm a member of one of the most amazing WoW TCG teams on this planet, so I travelled to Leipzig the Sunday before Worlds and spent the better part of 3 days playing a few games. Christian told me that their testing sessions revealed an aggro Paladin deck to be among the best choices as it can simply out-aggro most of the other fast decks and outdraw most of the more control-ish games. It certainly didn't sound like the new Core Constructed was my format, however, I was willing to give it a try. By the end of Wednesday, I had a pretty good idea of how the deck worked and how you had to approach most match-ups.

Here's the list I was running:

Hero: [Rohashu, Zealot of the Sun]

8 Abilities:

4 [Grand Crusader]

4 [Hammer of the Zealot]

36 Allies:

4 [Rosalyne von Erantor]

4 [Telor Sunsurge]

3 [Onnekra Bloodfang]

4 [Bronze Warden]

1 [Emerald Soldier]

3 [Alecia Hall]

1 [Trade Prince Gallywix]

4 [Faceless Sapper]

4 [Dagax the Butcher]

4 [Bronze Drakonid]

4 [Cairne, Earthmother's Chosen]

8 Equipment:

4 [Etched Dragonbone Girdle]

4 [Bottled Light]

8 Resources:

4 [Twilight Citadel]

4 [Seeds of the Their Demise]

I didn't feel like exploring new ideas for Classic; I passed on the chance to pick up any of the popular decks that require you to have a lot of skill as I would probably mess up too many moves and instead picked up an improved version of the Bunny deck that didn't feature a single quest costing more than 1 resource, so you could always go off as early as turn 3 if you drew into a mount and [Unending Breath]!

Additionally, from what I gathered the past few days, I couldn't help but think that Core would be 6 rounds of mind-drain as we expected lots of Paladins in the field, so I figured it would only make sense to play 4 more rounds of mind-drain. So much for my preparation.

Confusing Core

Although this year's Worlds was one of the largest in history (not much of a surprise, considering it took place in Europe), I was getting paired against my teammate Sven in round 1. On the very last table, nonetheless. Talk about good omens...

Sven played an Alliance Hunter and I kept a hand featuring [Rosalyne von Erantor], [Etched Dragonbone Girdle], [Bronze Warden] as well as [Grand Crusader]. The other cards aren't that important. I knew that it would be best to have your draw engine online as early as possible, as the Hunter can deal with a lot of aggro. Then again, I didn't want to watch my field getting torn apart by [Boomer], so I started with [Rosalyne von Erantor]. This was a huge misplay as a Dragonkin on turn 1 together with [Etched Dragonbone Girdle] on turn 2 would have been a much better choice. Even if Sven's hand would have featured a few traps, I could always just sack my little guy to draw into more cards and dodge his bullets.

Basically, the misplay on turn 1 lead to me losing the game. Sven had no trouble picking my army apart with a few traps, an empowered Hunter and [Boomer] and I never had a chance to really get my draw engine going. I also didn't apply any pressure and the game was soon over.

I walked outside, realized that I royally screwed up a match that might have been winnable and cursed myself for my lack of preparation. I really wanted to turn things around, but I was already nervous and kept thinking of the tournaments I participated in during the last season. Did I mention I only qualified for Worlds via honor?

Lessons learned: Know your match-ups and which cards to play in them! If you have to take defeat, try to leave it behind and focus on the following matches.

In round 2 I was paired against Kim. I first got to know her back in her Vs. System days when I was doing coverage and it was great to meet her again! She was also playing [Rohashu, Zealot of the Sun], but her version was trying to control the game while I wanted to aim for the kill as soon as possible.

If I remember correctly, Kim had no [Grand Crusader] and I had everything: [Grand Crusader], [Twilight Citadel] and [Etched Dragonbone Girdle]. She wiped my field once with [Gnash] and a second time with [Holy Wrath] (I had 2 Dragonkin on the field, she played the ability and I thought: "Well, that's not doing much... they all got 5 or more health.", but I still asked her: "Everything takes 4, right?", to which she responded: "No, the Dragonkin take 10." – I reminded myself of another of my imaginary rules: "Always double check if a card's actually doing what you think it is doing!" and destroyed one of them for [Etched Dragonbone Girdle]). Since I could easily outdraw her and find a [Dagax the Butcher], I was still able to win this match.

I really felt like I knew what was going on in that match (for once!) and I hoped the momentum would carry me all the way through the Core rounds, however, that wasn't meant to be.

I got paired against Matt Walsh in round 3. He played a Shaman deck and I remembered that [Erunak Stonespeaker] could be quite a blowout. [Mazu'kon] and an Empowered [Zudzo, Herald of the Elements] were able to tear my field apart, but not before I could get some damage in early and followed it up with [Dagax the Butcher] and [Bronze Drakonid] on turn 4. Did I mention I also had [Grand Crusader] out?

It must have seemed to him like he had recovered, but on my own turn 6, I had a [Bottled Light] on my side of the field together with [Etched Dragonbone Girdle] as well as [Twilight Citadel]. All it took were 2 more attacks by [Dagax the Butcher]. I had [Hammer of the Zealot] in my hand and a second [Grand Crusader], which were both more or less useless. I placed a 6^th resource, delved and saw 2 [Bronze Drakonid]! I announced that I had probably won the game. I thought that playing the second [Grand Crusader] would help me to play a [Bronze Drakonid] without any open resources, but for some reason, I first activated [Twilight Citadel] as I figured it would be a good idea to draw into both copies of the Dragonkin.

Immediately after I drew into them, I looked at my resource row in astonishment, realizing that I couldn't play [Grand Crusader] anymore and still have enough resources for [Bronze Drakonid]. The better play would have been using [Hammer of the Zealot] and drawing into one of the Dragonkin so I could then trigger its effect after playing [Grand Crusader]. The shock wasn't meant to last, however, as I eventually realized I could simply play both copies of [Bronze Drakonid] to exhaust all of my resources and trigger the effect of the second one. I also somehow managed to use [Bottled Light] to return [Dagax the Butcher] to the field and attack with him before I played the second Dragonkin and this meant game for me. Matt seemed extremely pissed that I was lucky enough to draw into 2 Dragonkin, but I didn't feel like explaining to him what a scrub I was by not playing [Hammer of the Zealot] first and the second [Grand Crusader]. I feared he would jump me if I revealed my hand at the time.

Lesson learned: Think BEFORE you're doing something and don’t, “just do it.” A tournament isn't a Nike advertisement!

Some more neat advice: Don't give away what a royal scrub you are if you want to have some kind of credibility in this community.
(I obviously don't care too much)

Two mirror matches against Stephen Boyle and Xavier Raul followed where my opponent would always win the die roll and eventually manage to get 2 [Grand Crusader]s online, which always meant I was fighting an un-winnable uphill battle. A 2 – 3 record certainly wasn't what I was originally aiming for.

I got paired against another Paladin in the last round of Core, this time an Alliance version piloted by Alexander Verkin. I had been told during the testing sessions that this deck doesn't really stand a chance against the much more aggressive Horde version and this match certainly didn't change my opinion on the matter. Before long I had the opposing hero on 27 damage, allowing my hero to take him out personally thanks to its flip. 3 – 3.