(Jonathan's report resumes!)

Round 5: Xun Huang Chen playing Death Rattle Shaman

Chen is a friend of mine who I've played many times now. The last time we played, I was also using Shaman. He promptly ran me over, so he definitely has experience with the deck. As usual I'm worried about [Dagax the Butcher] and am looking for one of my eight Undercities.

He opened with a [Conversing the Depths] and then a [Ring of Blood: Warmaul Champion] that discards two [Incendiary Totems]. One offed my Cairne token and the other domed me. Grazzle after that gave my turn 2 Dreadsteed a fast target.

Turn 3 he attacked me with Grazzle (!?) and then played Talisman. I respond with an [Undercity], killing Grazzle, and then played [Drain Will]. He had [Feral Spirits] and I had [Sardok]/[Drain Will]. On turn 5 he destroyed his own 2 damage wolf for [Twisted Fire Nova], clearing my board. At this point I had a number of plays, but considered my best option to be [Munkin Blackfist], clearing out his talisman, which allowed me to play my [Tuskarr Kite] next turn.

He goes questing on 6 and I used [Hesriana] on the last dog and drop a Kite, which he swiftly [Wind Shear]s. He played a [Storm Strike Mace], to which my Nathanos/Kite seem far better. A played [Uruka the Cutthroat] is met by my turn 8 [Hesriana], Azamoth and Abysswalker tandem. Hi sboard cleared, he soon gets overwhelmed.

He kept an unfortunately slow hand I suppose. I'm not sure why he kept.

Aside:

I won't say that I've been to a huge number of tournaments, but I have been to my fair share. I can tell you that I've never quite experienced a tournament hall quite like this one. On each day, there was a number of entertainment shows put on every hour or so.

This included Raffles for Loot Cards, whose tickets were included in the Beginner Tournaments. This equated to a guy on stage interacting with a Succubus assistant and shouting at everyone in the room through his microphone. It was a bit distracting to hear people cheer every 10 seconds. I don't know how they do it, but Organizers always seem to find the people with the highest pitch for announcing like that.

There were also Costume competitions, three every day. Now I'm not sure why they were called competitions, since it was just an opportunity to show off the 10 or so Chinese cosplayers in their (admittedly) fantastic costumes. They would all stand in a semi circle on stage, with Classical WoW music blaring in the hall (all this while DMF matches are going on). One by one they'd stroll into the center of the circle, strike some pose, at which time a voice over from the Chinese WoW would play.

Three times a day. I wonder who won.

Finally, there was a group of five girls who would dance for the hall three times a day. When I first showed up to the hall and was getting ready to play, they started it up. I didn't know that I was seeing the future of things to come. The girls all danced to Beyonce's "Single Ladies" and then Lady Gaga's "Telephone".

It was actually quite enjoyable, the first time. All the other times I was trying to figure out if I should expose myself to Dagax or some other crazy card. It was distracting to say the least.

Aside over.

Round 6: Niao Cai (Sun) playing DK Tokens

At this point I'm 5-0 and feeling very confident. I should have known that my hubris would be my undoing. I won the roll and opened with a Cairne token. Cairne looks terribly sad against a turn 1 [Bronze Warden]. Sava'gin bailed me out against the dragon and I play [Dreadsteed]. The next turn he had [Twilight Citadel] and [Extract of Necromantic Power]. Turn 3 I had no kite and no action and shipped the turn back to him.

He had [A Question of Gluttony] and [Etched Dragonbone Girdle] and gave the turn back, giving me a chance to play Dethvir. Again he had no play as I have Broderick/Munkin. Yes, I'm a fool and played into Corpse Explosion. My turn 6 Dethvir helped me save some face, but I was simply not doing much damage to him. He had [Galvenize] and [Tuskarr Kite] on the next turn, I summon another Dethvir. He had Nathanos and used [Shalug'doom, the Axe of Unmaking] on all his guys for 5. At this point he knocked off all my Dethvirs one by one. Eventually I couldn’t withstand his beats. I was a large fool to row my second Munkin; should never have done it.

Round 7: Yu Zhang playing Undead Control Mage

This was a feature match. What I mean by this is that it was filmed by a man who puts all the videos on China's youtube: youku. Yu was playing standard control mage. I won the roll and opened with [For Great Honor]. [Everfrost] came down for him and he chose not to [The Taste of Arcana] my [Dreadsteed]. No turn two play from him.

Turn 3 I had Broderick and Undercity, let the beats begin! [Velindra Sepulchre] and [Undercity] threaten that plan. Nathanos for turn 4 turned the heat up. He killed a dog with Velindra, and then used [Meltdown] on my Broderick, spicy. Undercity prevents me from doing anything fun with my dead mage.

Dethvir on turn 5 upped the pressure and he looked for answers with [Mana Sapphire], breaking it for only 2. He got what he wanted, played [Britilize] and [Blizzard] in response to my turn 6 Dethvir. I thought about it, and threw one of my Dethvir's into the Graveyard. His [Britilize] went for my last dog but Dethvir stepped up, and I had Victimize and Broderick for him. He played [Roaring Blaze] for 2, killing my Dethvir, and then I had Broderick and another Victimize. He couldn’t recover.

Round 8: Niu Chao playing Warlock with [Backlash]

This is the game where I got wiped out by [Kel'Thuzad] and [Ritual of Summoning], although he had the kill without Ritual and messed up. I win the roll and opened with [Torch of Retribution] and Broderick.

He had [A Question of Gluttony] and I had [For Great Honor] and a Mount. On 2 he Abysswalker'd my Broderick and used Lesson. On my turn I play [Azamoth Deathfang] and Lesson’d him back. On turn 3 he played another Lesson. I had Dethvir and then he had Nathanos. Going back and forth basically, and eventually I ran out of cards, and he had Backlash.

Eventually I start to lose ground, and my notes become less coherent as I became more desperate, buried under discard and his better card draw.

Round 9: 逸宁 周 (Yi Ning Zhou) playing Warlock.

At this point my morale was plummeting and, again, my notes reflect that attitude. I played another Warlock this time and despite getting a [Victimize] off, I was still running low on cards. I went aggro and used Undercity to stop him from using his own Undercity. Eventually he wrested control and I couldn't finish him off. I had him at 21 but couldn't get that last presence on the board.

Round 10: Hao Tian Zhao Playing Death Rattle Shaman

At 6-3 I was feeling very long shot-ish. My notes only kept track of resource drops, although I do know that I played a Lesson at some point, seeing [Elemental Vision], [Incendiary Totem], [Squall Totem], and [Astral Recall]. I think I grabbed the Squall Totem].

Either way I had the Undercity I needed and slowly ground him down to a pulp. He asked me to give him the win since he was 7-2, I decided that I had an outside shot at getting top 8 so I declined his offer. I took the attitude that he should have won if he wanted the win. It paid off because I made it into the top 8 at 7th.

Having names read out for the top 8 should be exciting; a time of nervousness for all those who are on the brink. It's slightly less exciting when the announcer is speaking Chinese and I have only a slight grasp on what's going on. I do know that he finally said my name and a wave of excitement swept over me.

As I mentioned before, my friend and I went to Morton's Shanghai Steak House. It was truly the best meal I've had in months. We caught the metro back to my place and I truly took advantage of the 4 star digs.

My Chinese is decent. I can speak and I can hold a conversation. I can not read a deck list where half the cards are in Chinese. It is simply not achievable. My own deck list had two cards in Chinese because I could not remember the names for [Abysswalker Rakax] and [Azamoth Deathfang] (my friend's deck featured mostly Chinese cards).

This left me spending about two hours translating the Warrior deck list that I had taken a picture of. It was a warrior token deck where the win condition goes something like:

Standard [Death Wish] setup

and then...

[Conquering Shout]

[Leader of the Pack] / [Sinestra]

And Shalag'doom for 1 million after

Looking up the characters for Shalag'doom and Sinestra felt like homework. I actually went down to the lobby and had the desk clerk read the Chinese characters out loud for me. I finally had the idea of his deck and went to sleep dreaming of iPads.

I woke up, had a hotel worker microwave my steak (Haters go on hate) and split it with my friend. With a good breakfast and boundless confidence, we left for the Mall. Arriving early (and taking our service elevator to the tournament hall in the sky), I got to socialize a bit with all the people who I'd be playing. My friend took some pictures of me and the beautiful cosplayers.

We finally started and my match was the first feature match of the day! The video is actually online and here is the link.

I'm actually the first guy (solo shot) featured in that video. I'm so popular! I've unfortunately misplaced all my notes, but if the video works for you, you should get a good idea of what happened. The commentary obviously won't be helpful for you, but it starts out pretty funny, one of the guys thought I was from Singapore!

Game one was close and I made the mistake of not having one of my Dethvirs take a point of damage from Mortal Slash.

Game two I forget to attack with my Broderick fueled hero, and my reaction took a good 10 seconds to come out. I Lesson’d him at some point and saw [Sinestra]/ [Death Wish]/ [Greaves of Ancient Evil]. With a [Death Wish] in play already, I figured I couldn’t let him go with that. I think I had a Talisman which is why I wasn't worried too much about the boots. In retrospect, I should've taken the Dragon.

The next turn, I probably should have used Azamoth to dig for another card, two damage wouldn't make much of a difference, Victimize in retrospect didn't do much, it didn't change his game plan at all. He topdecked a Shalag'doom so it didn't matter anyways.

Game three is a great game. At one point I Lesson’d him and saw 2 [Edge of Oblivion], 2 [Bloody Ritual], and a [Sinestra]. I had Victimize in my hand, so I took his win condition and waited a turn to grind him out. I then hit runner, runner [Drain Will] on the next turn, and then a Victimize on top of that put him in top deck mode. I played Nathanos even though he had Marundal the Kindred, mainly because he'd only have 5 resources open after playing the 4 drop.

Won the match and felt great.

Round 12: Niao Cai (Sun) playing DK Tokens

This was the guy who ended my winning streak. Here's a link to a write up a someone did. If you can read Chinese, great! If you can't, use Google Translate and enjoy a laugh or two. This match was another annihilation. I couldn't kill him fast enough against Corpse Explosion or Army, and I couldn't stop his win condition while also stopping his Kite and/or Belt/Location.

I didn't put him over 10 damage in any of the games, and both games ended around turn 7 or 8. It was just not pretty. Sinestra + Galvanize + Shalagdoom = win.

I ended up finishing fourth and, unfortunately, could not stick around for the award ceremony since my flight was leaving at 630. I left the Mall around 430 and got to the Airport with 40 minutes to spare. At first, I couldn't find my flight, which left me confused and worried that I had somehow bungled my flight reservation. All was okay though, and I made it onto the plane with plenty of time to spare, with my new iPad tucked away between my legs.

I hope you enjoyed this little excursion into the past and the core format that was. If you have any comments or concerned feel free to point them out to me. I should have some pictures as well, hopefully those will be just as entertaining.

If you have any questions, you can reach me at jleemars88@gmail.com, or Potatowned on the forums.