Ah, the tradition pre-report ramble. I would like to see I was prepared for this event and was fully confident about placing, but I wasn't all my prep time actually went into an Askalti Darksteel build I was fairly happy about, until I played Mage control. My deck just couldn't handle mystic denial as my cards cost too much and often it would a horrible 2 for 1 that gave them room to recover. So I came back from wednesday night looking at my rare folder and noticing I still had a velindra deck but I didn't like Kel'thuzad. Basically for me it turned to if you steal 2 or more Dethvirs you probably win, otherwise they work through your field especially with the huge interupt free turn you've just given them.
So I looked at Ysera, considering I'd recently got my 2nd. The draw and mend seemed good and meant I could probably rely on winning long games, the 40 health was great I've got to say and it tested really well on sat. Plus the extra draw meant I could tech in a netherbreath spellblade to sometimes just lock a game away. The one of regalia was because that was all I had.
Now the stash cards, the main reason I included them was because I needed some kind of free answers to aggro, as I was lending my Brodericks to Josh. I had 4 Sava'gin and 2 Cairne, so I decided to use them, probably would've preferred more Cairne than Sava'gin ideally. Amazingly this seemed to also help ysera be more consistent as mages don't have all the time in the world to be questing consistenly and that 15 health boost was great. Subsequently tho I went for draw 2 or easy to complete quests as well, to either help Ysera or help win the long game . Oh and the rituals of power was something to try out as well as extra insurance vs kel'thuzad.
Sounds like I had a plan eh? I should also mention this was done at 3am after I came back home after a night out at Post-Mortem and a few hours at the student union xD. So the next day I crawled out of bed, got into the shower and ambled my way across town to Fanboy3, where I tried a new hangover treatment of Dr Pepper which seemed to do the trick, and then i wrote down my decklist showed it to Josh and proclaimed "I've janked up a tier 1 deck".
After some chatting the pairings went up and we were off ....
......to a bad start apparently
Round one - Jonny (strawdonkey) Koo'zar (0-1)
http://phadalus.blogspot.com/2011/02/zapped-giants-open-ii-19-february-2011.html
I gotta say, when you haven't playtested a control deck before, seeing the fastest rush deck across the table to quite unnerving. Jonny covered the game in his blog but from my perspective I stashed sava'gin turn 1 to try and kill the rosalyne he played. It didn't :( and after some trading and stalling, i ended up losing to that same Rosalyne and a spell surpressed Ruby Flameblade.
Afterwards we played a friendly, of velindra vs lorala the dancing (from team rampage's blog the same deck oli was trying out today), the deck seemed powerful but ran out of steam quite quickly.
Round two - Ozzy (Treeborn Frog Emek the Equalizer (1-1)
Ozzy started off with a bloodsoul and i had a spider (cairne token :D) i took beats from the bloodsoul and replicated with my spider. i then played a dethvir and ozzy follows suit, so i do the standard velindra thing and stole it. The game carried on for a bit but ozzy just couldn't deal with the double dethvirs, especially once i had undercity on the field. Really fun game tho and i was constantly in fear of the holy talents that didn't turn up unfortunately for ozzy.
Round three - Scott Triton (All-in Rush) (2-1)
Scott started off strong with a broderick i believe but i have some removal and undercity to make sure my life never goes about 12 dmg. He went all-in on turn 3 i believe with a babaganoosh which i had to flip on and try and deal without using wubs. I eventually managed to wrestle control over his topdecking and dethvir locks the game up. I was genuinely frighted by babaganoosh plus men hitting field on turn 3 and I played rather poorly dealing with it. But fortunately going all-in also gives me a bunch of breathing room once I do.
Round four - Paul Velindra (3-1)
ah the control mage mirror match, a big ball of fun. My plan was around turn 10 to minise the amount of dethivrs he could take unfortunately he has a lot more targets in my deck than most velindra decks, but at least these targets die. First few turns involved some passing, i did at one point played a field of 2 Sava'gins and a spider (:D) which was swiftly dealt with. I resolved a mana sapphire however and paul doesn't. My hand contained nether fissure x2 which meant i was no longer worried about Kel T. The game was ended by me playing dethvir followed by Sava'gin and then protecting them during Paul's turn. I hit him once with both, he looked at his next card and offered the handshake. Funniest thing was WE FINISHED BEFORE TIME! :D Turns out the janky tech really helps the mirror match.
Round five - Keith Goblin Shaman (4-1)
I was worried about fancing goblin combo but it was a death rattle deck. This game went on for a while as Keith ran out of steam early, as he completed 2 copies of all things in good time and a lot of them were death rattle cards and I couldn't draw an endgame to help finish it off. Eventually tho i go Ysera with regalia and manage to beat down some goblin shaman. If he managed to get a saurfang out and get some death rattle shennanigans going I'm sure the game would've gone a lot differently.
Round six - Joseph Sadowski - Durzion (Searing Light Burn) (4-2)
This was a long game and Joe saw my Sava'gins when i played keith and was disappointed when i played none. I mull'ed into an interuptless hand and joe eventually had a field of 3 searing lights, 3 devouring plagues, 2 were spell supped but he oppressed one eventually. While i had a cinnamon roll. I eventually go ysera and then mess up completely by exhausting everything for a mana sapphire, joe then showed me his fourth great elekk and burned me with the remaining cards in hand. I was annoyed that I made such a silly mistake but moved on..... eventually.
Round 7 - Oliver Gehrmann - Erondra Frostmoon (5-2)
This was another long game and another that went to time. I spent most of the game drawing, occasionally interupting and making sure Oli got no usage out of the Lich King's effect. Eventually time was called I spent the turn i was on making Gladiator's regalia, then my next turn turning into ysera and my final turn was spell suppressing deathcharger so Oli couldn;t everfrost in response to the netherbreath spellblade i played next. i cracked open a manasapphire and healed for game. Not proud of this game, but since it was my only game that i did it, i was relatively happy with my deck now.
Round 8 Jack Fejer - Triton (5-3)
I gotta say scimitar scares me after this game, the recurrent threat of a krol blade is enough to completely throw off my game if I don't get to the late game, where cinnamon rolls really start packing value. But unfortunately we never got there. Jack resolved the scimitar on turn 5 and proceded to beat me with it, iirc he managed to army of the dead his guys and hit me with them again for game. I've gotta say Jack played well and I didn't, I was exhausted and did things like play a blizzard into a vuz'din xD.
Nevertheless I was happy with how I did as was Josh, so we watched some yugioh and prepared to hear how we ranked. After some pack launching courtesy of Ross at unsuspecting folk, we then got told there were 10 ppl on 5-3 :o. As Ross went ever closer to the top 10, I was pretty nervous then came 9th and Ross handed over the packs to Josh :( but I was pretty happy that I made top 8 :D.
Until I realised all 3 of my losses were in it and I was playing Jack in the first round xD.
Top 8 Jack Fejer. (0-2)
After Jack took a more awesome pic of myself, we shuffled up and began our games. Unfortunately never of them went much better for me than before. In both games a Extract of Necromantic Power hit the field early, and I occasionally got locked out by Vuz'din. I struggled to stabilise and wasn't able to either deal with threats or get a stream of cards into my hand. Nevertheless I was pleased to do as well as I did.
So i got some more packs and pulled another Sava'gin and some other stuff I'd been looking for. I really enjoyed playing so many people that I've never faced before, as well as seeing that the game truly is alive and well in the UK now :D.
So thanks to Ross, Dave and the other organisers for a great tournament and I hope the next one is just as fun.
Oh and here was the decklist
2 Ysera the Dreamer
4 Dethvir the Malignant
4 Sava'gin the Reckless
2 Cairne, Earthmothers Chosen
3 Spell Suppresion
4 The Taste of Arcana
4 Blizzard
2 Brittilize
3 Conjured Cinnamon Roll
4 Mana Sapphire
3 Nether Fissure
3 Mystic Denial
2 Roaring Blaze
1 Gladiators Regalia
1 Netherbreath Spellblade
4 Wubs Cursed Hexblade
4 A Question of Gluttony
4 Boon of Alexstraza
2 Everfrost
1 Rituals of Power
3 Undercity
So any comments and if you're one of my opponents and think I've left something out let me know ^^. Thanks for reading.
My favourite thing about your choice of Ysera was the number of times you had to explain why Undercity doesn't heal your hero any more :D
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