Of course, that was as nothing compared to the next match where I not only punted it into the stands, but it was probably out the arena and into the next town. I flipped Kil’zin when the only ally on the table was Richard’s Roon Plainswalker. With a Roon Plainswalker of my own I had played the turn before thinking ‘well Druid’s sometimes deal nature damage’. Well yes and Shaman’s also produce nature damage such as via methods like Kil’zin’s flip, so predictably Richard looked a little bemused before saying ‘okay, Roon takes the damage and reduces it to zero’. For all my rattling on about how the resistances could be potentially game deciding, it seems I failed to heed my own lesson. If nothing else this anecdote should show you everyone is capable of some truly spectacular errors. As much as I would love to take you through my deck selection, sadly to add insult to injury I returned home, went to bed and found by the next morning one of my non-card playing house mates had ‘tidied’ them away.

Ah, but fortunately for my public I also went to the Sheffield pre-release the next day and learning my lesson I kept the cards carefully secluded before writing this article. I also did somewhat better, but I’ll leave that to the blow-by-blow accounts. Here’s what I cracked from my packs...

Alliance
1 cost: Routeen, Quigley Slipshade, Defender Nagalaas
2 cost: Rahn Grimstaff, First Responder Margan
3 cost: Alhas, Waldo the Decoy, 2 Talian Bladebender, 2 Bimble Blackout, First Responder Avaressa, Wildwatcher Elandra, Lord Cindervein
4 cost: None
5 cost: Liandra Rustshadow
6 cost: Domona the Everwatchful, Stella Forgebane

Horde
1 cost: Matalo Trailfinder, “Eyeball” Jones
2 cost: Lillith Smythe, Ra’waza Stonetusk, Wysko, Shadala
3 cost: 2 Kam’pah, Roon Plainswalker, Blood Knight Kyria, Sha’kar
4 cost: Kaelos Sunscream, Tatulla the Reclaimer, Ja’zoona
5 cost: Illia the Bitter, Dawn Ravensdale
6 cost: 2 Lu’ka de Wall, Roger Mortis

Aldor
1 cost: Vindicator Ostrakron
2 cost: Vindicator Kentho, 2 Instructor Giralo
3 cost: None
4 cost: Vindicator Melina
5 cost: None
6 cost: None

Scryer
1 cost: Retainer Salvan, Arcanisr Renaan
2 cost: Retainer Zian, Arcanist Bartis
3 cost: Magistrix Valthin
4 cost: None
5 cost: None
6 cost: None

Other Ally
2 cost: Sunseeker Astromage

Quests
Akama’s Promise, I Was a Lot of Things..., Tabards of the Illidari, Return to the Aldor, Hellfire Fortifications, Orders from Lady Vashj, Preparing for War, The Path of Conquest, The Root of All Evil, Shutting Down Manaforge Ara, 2 Return to the Scryers, 2 The Secret Comprimised, 2 Against the Illidari, The Cipher of Damnation, Skywing

Equipment
Axe of the Legion, Vindicator’s Brand, Demonslayer, 2 Netherwing Protector’s Shield, Medallion of the Lightbearer, Armwraps of Disdain, Abyss Walker’s Boots, Coif of the Wicked

Druid
2 Energize, Stormfire, Brace or Mace

Hunter
Stable Master, Bait the Trap, Patient Shot, Ice Trap

Mage
Touch of the Arcane, Astral Grief, Brain Lock

Paladin
The Light’s Largess, Crusader’s Sweep, Righteousness Aura

Priest
Prayer of Mending, Woe or Grow, Lesser Heal, Shadow Word: Agony

Rogue
Feint, Cloak of Shadows, Cut to the Chase, On the Brink

Shaman
Chill, Magma Totem, Exemplar’s Blades

Warlock
2 Clinging Curse, Demon Armor, Aftermath

Warrior
2 Disarm, Slay or Stay, Taunting Blows

I don’t know about you but, the first thing I do is get rid of everything I know is not even in the running. Straight away that included most of the classes, first because I consider classes based on how they help me kill the opponent’s allies. Classes with a low ratio of direct damage, removal spells or weapons don’t often get played by me. I’m looking at you Rogue and Hunter. In this case the second point was I needed AOE damage. Karl from Lincoln pulled Maiev Shadowsong and decried that she was rather strong. Thus, I entered games where I knew a good player had got lucky enough to pull a card for which only a narrow set of answers exist. I had already received a beating from Maiev in previous limited tournaments with Illidan, so I was well frequented with her. Maiev, in case you haven’t seen her yet, has almost every keyword yet printed on a 5 attack, 1 health body. That includes Stealth, Elusive, Untargettable and Long Range so your possible methods of killing her are almost exclusively to deal damage across the opponent’s board. If you cannot deal with her she will take down one of your allies a turn until you have none left. This is perhaps not as powerful as Ishanah, High Priestess of the Aldor’s powe,r but for the same cost Maiev is nigh on unkillable versus many decks. I needed area of effect damage of some kind, and my only options were Paladin (Crusader’s Sweep), Shaman (Magma Totem) and Warrior (Taunting Blows). Coupled with my Demonslayer and Vindicator’s Brand, I decided Warrior was the better choice. And of course having the largest health total possible is an added advantage, and one that can often be forgotten when choosing your class. I seldom go Mage for this very reason — you as good as give your opponent a free attack on turn six. Item-wise, I stuck with the three weapons available to use. Demonslayer or Axe plus Brand both produce attacks for five, and cheekily using the Demonslayer to replace the Vindicator’s Brand could even ‘enable’ the destruction removal.

That’s a simple way to make your life easier by lowering your options. Also a lesson for the future - this was a pre-release and not really high stakes, so it didn’t matter that Karl telegraphed that he’d pulled Maiev. At larger tournaments, you still here people announcing the powerful cards they got lucky on. While you’re deck building, stop and think if you hear this. Do you think said player is good enough to make the top tables? If so, you might want to rethink your deck if it currently lack answers to their broadcast bomb. More to the point, turn the question around from the other angle. In a fifty person tournament, it is more likely than not someone has opened a Maiev Shadowsong. Given that is the case, it is reasonable to assume they will make it to the top tables. Further extrapolating from that, if you intend to be up there yourself you need an answer to her. Previously it was actually quite simple as most of the bombs could be handled by a deck packing a) ability removal b) equipment removal and c) ally removal or at least direct damage abilities. Now though, those traditional answers that are fairly common across classes and allies do nothing against Maiev. Almost every class has an AOE from Legion through to Illidan, so it is a far cry from the dark days of many classes lacking an answer to the Devil-Stitched Leggings or Runesong Dagger troubles of pure Legion. I would expect to see the people at the top tables in forthcoming major limited tournaments all to be running at least one solution to the Maiev situation.

Next up was the difficult decision between Horde or Alliance. Unless I have a truly astounding number of one and two drops, I favour decks that lead to a strong late game. I also rate ferocity and protector as the best things any ally can have in Limited — stealing the opportunity to place damage where you not your opponent wishes and before your next turn can swing games. Looking at the line ups, Alliance has an impressive early game line up, but really lacks anything from turn four onwards. Waldo the Decoy is normally a major player in any Limited game and in a lot of cases practically forces me into Alliance. Here though he just doesn’t work well with the three weapons we have available to use. Your enemy is not going to attack your hero while Waldo is in play, so you cannot rely on swinging your weapons on the defense. Equally, if you attack into them then Waldo’s power is wasted. On the other hand, Horde has a much better balanced curve and also more allies with the magic protector word. Lu’ka de Wall is in doubleton (that’s a bridge term — it means I have two) and is not only a sturdy body to hide behind, but his on damage power to exhaust an ally can stop opposing attack plans in their tracks. Luka can also open up routes of attack previously out or reach by locking down protectors. The star though is Ra’waza Stonetusk. In this era of low attack vales and high defense values, opponent’s can find it almost impossible to kill him with a single ally until turn five. At the same time if you have curved out with them, they wont have the two allies necessary to remove him — meaning you consistently save your hero from the damage of one ally and later on save your larger allies from death due to small opposing allies finishing them off. Some people prefer protectors that kill their attackers in trades, but in the decks I favour — those with many late game options — I prefer to keep both the protector and the attacker on the board. Next turn my higher drop kills the old attacker, their new drop has to take on my protector. If they fail to kill that protector (as is often the case with Ra’waza) then I’m better off than the simple trade scenario.

This leaves only the choice of Aldor or Scryer, in which I opted for Aldor as neither had anything impressive so I plumped for the high attack on four given by Vindicator Melina and the inspire tricks from the Instructor. Having decided on Horde — Aldor — Warrior, it was a case of chopping it down to around thirty cards. I seldom cut to exactly thirty as I like my card draw and decking out is a bad way to go. I also don’t like relying on single bomb cards for my win, so diluting ‘height’ in the favour of ‘breadth’ doesn’t bother me. Of the Warrior cards I cut one Disarm, figuring that I should leave one in for problem weapons. After all, I was using three so it’d be foolish not to cover my back from that angle. Of the Aldor cards, they all went in. From the Horde cards I cut Ja’zoona, Sha’kar and Shadala as they all had mediocre stats and marginal abilities. In a best of three format I felt Tatulla the Reclaimer and Kaelos Sunscream would be enough to deal with problem abilities versus most decks, and Shadala was best as side deck material along with the second Disarm. Lillith could be used also, but be to be completely honest she’ll be dead long before the problem abilities either arrive or give her chance to activate her power. I go for reliable card draw on my quests, with one recursion card to further prevent deck out and also cover against enemy graveyard tricks. I took the first seven quests in my list, figuring that both The Path of Conquest and Shutting Down Manaforge Ara were unlikely to meet their conditions of no enemy allies on board and an item destruction that turn respectively.

All that remained was to choose a hero. Having the choice of all the Horde heroes from the latest block, I decided Lionar the Blood Cursed had the best flip power that could combo with Dawn Ravensdale. Can you spot the unintentional error here?*

So into round one, and who do I get but Karl from Lincoln. Karl’s the storeowner in Lincoln and is kind enough to drive the rest of the Comic Culture lads around to the tournaments in the mid-east of the UK. He’s also one of the better UK players, and pulled the Maiev Shadowsong I mentioned earlier. Sitting down, he displays his chosen hero of the new Alliance Priest, Marta Spires. With built-in resurrection I would either have to force him to flip early in each game or face Maiev twice. As I only had the one AOE card, and the odds of seeing it again next turn after a Preparing for War were slim - that just wasn’t going to work. Hence, I settled on trying to rush him as fast as I could.

That just didn’t happen in game one. I had the choice of blowing my AOE to pave the way to more damage before Maiev hit and maybe forcing the early flip of Marta or holding on to it and lasting through a late game showdown. I went with the early damage plan, and did indeed force an early flip. It was a shame my weapons were dealt with and Karl lasted long enough to drop Maiev. Staring at her almost out of cards with no solution, I scooped hoping better luck on a match I started with. Karl was on seventeen and I was almost untouched but there just wasn’t any way future allies were going to stay on the field long enough to attack. The second game goes pretty much exactly to plan. A consistent damage battery from my allies and weapons scalps Marta before Karl draws into Maiev. It’s tit for tat in the third game with big swings going down on both sides and all sorts of cunning tricks such as abusing “Eyeball” Jones on manoeuvres you wouldn’t contemplate were you not aware it was going to come to a damage count. Karl is timing the round separately to the judge and reckons it’s elapsed, so we slow up and go into the end of match procedure. It turns out it hasn’t and we speed up again, progressing the game to a finish one turn each ahead of that point. There are big allies a-plenty on both sides plus heals and AOEs to clear the healers. Unfortunately for me, if it had been when we accounted it, end of turn procedure would have handed me the win. Or, if we had had one more turn each I think (I have no idea what was in Karl’s hand or what the top decks would be) I end up ahead again. As it was, nothing I could do would prevent Karl from getting the edge by four points of damage on the final accounting. Not the best start to the day, but I had lost to one of the best players present with what I considered one of the best deck. Maiev was a great finisher to a deck running multiple first responders and protectors. I reckoned the odds were good he would make it to Maiev every game.

Game two pitted me against one of my travel mates from Fanboy 3, Kevin. Kevin was playing Chaigon Steelsight, and I was wary of the new pet Shadow. Seven attack and seven defense on an elusive body all for only six resources seems a good deal. It turns out Kevin was playing four pets in total, his primary reason for ending up in Hunter. Game one I took an absolute beating as the only time I managed to even have a whiff of board dominance, my Illia the Bitter ran into Ice Trap and then was killed by the Patient Shot I just couldn’t get off the board. Shadow turned up, and my only way to kill him was on a swing back with Demonslayer twice. It was all irrelevant as Kevin had the other allies to smash home for my death the next turn. Game two degenerated into a grudge match as we both missed drops that let progressively larger and larger allies clock each other round the head. After making too many play errors the day before, I decided this too and froing was not going to be lost due to an error on my part. Lo and behold, a slight misplay on Kevin’s part allowed what we term ‘onboard tricks’ — in this case an on table Roger Mortis, Demonslayer and Wysko with full health remaining. The correct play would be to send Shadow into Roger to kill him, but Kevin opted to send him into my hero instead. Given that put me on 25 damage and he had allies to attack and kill me next turn perhaps it was a gamble. Either way, the fall out was I attacked in with Demonslayer and Roger then played Kaelos Sunscream which had just enough health on him to allow me to kill Kevin with Roger Mortis activations. I drew the Vindicator’s Brand early in game three and used it plus my flip to swing into Chaigon to put him on more damage than the few allies that survive can inflict on me. After only four turns or so time is called and I take the win on end of turn procedure. Afterwards Kevin relates that he didn’t feel confident in the matchup thanks to knowing I had lots of weapons and he had absolutely no equipment destruction available.

The third match is another Lincoln resident, whom I’m afraid I’ve totally forgotten the name of. I’m rubbish with names; I write them down then can’t read my own writing. I create amusing anecdotes in my own head to help me, then remember nothing but the punchline. If I ever meet, well anyone, please don’t be offended if you know mine but I don’t know yours. I meet an awful lot of people and names get ascribed to the wrong people and I’m petrified I’ve got it wrong. This doesn’t mean I don’t remember you or everything you’ve ever done in my presence — that I remember. To be honest I actually see this in many other people too. Think about this way, your average Darkmoon Faire has around a hundred different names. Some of us have been playing card games for over a decade, with half a dozen or more Faire level events a year. If you average half the names at each event you’ve seen before it’s still three thousand different names potentially. On top of whatever other interests and more mundane acquaintances you have. Maybe we should all have name badges...

Now, I had seen my opponent play before and he isn’t a scrub. He didn’t make any memorable play errors. However, we only played two matches and between them I took two damage. Playing the new Horde Paladin, he just walked into the wrong match up. Low on equipment kill, he was high on protectors and with a curve lower down than mine. This meant in both games he was stone walled by Ra’waza Stonetusk into a late game where my superior big drops cleared his board then beat his hero into submission over three or four turns. Double Retribution Aura against the other decks no doubt allowed his low drops to achieve parity to quite late game, but Naelos, Tatulla and a sided in Shadala meant his unbalancing power ups never stayed in play long enough. I had answers to his bullets, he had none to mine.

Into the final round and I was playing a local. (Again the name eludes me.) Another Hunter, this time the new Beast Mastery Alliance Hunter, Elumeria Wildershot. I’m afraid to say he was a fairly new player and made quite a few mistakes. Missing a heal Shadow with the flip ability of the hero when he had the spare resource was fairly decisive. Also, he did not realize I made Illia the Bitter a protector by inspiring her with Instructor Giralo then proposing an attack with Luumon (Luumon deals fire damage, Illia has Fire resistance). Being unaware of the mechanics for using Kathia the Quick meant he missed on a potentially favourable exchange as well.. Finally, he made the classic beginner’s mistake of concentrating on the hero rather than dealing with the allies on the opposing side. It’s neither satisfying nor interesting to write about matches such as these; the best you can do is hope they still had fun and point out their mistakes so they can learn from it. New doesn’t equal bad, and who knows he may be the player to knock me out of a top eight in the forthcoming Nationals with a bit more practice.

So at the end of the day I was 3-1 and my ‘loss’ was to time. Not bad! I felt and made up for the less than stellar performance the previous day. I had expected Karl to win the tournament, but just to show you never can tell, he lost the final round to the third Lincoln player. Apparently Maeiv doesn’t like the new Warlock power Crush Soul that interrupts her entering play. That’s not a bad solution to the Maeiv ‘problem’ actually.

Overall, I quite liked the Hunt for Illidan sealed experience. There certainly seems a lack of the ‘do or die’ nature of some of the uncommons from Legion, and it also plays further into my preferred deck style of late game dominance. Sadly it looks like I will be missing DMF Antwerp on account of my new job, but I’m looking forward to future Gadgetzan tournaments. In the mean time next week I’ll take a look at the Two-Headed Ogre format we’ll all have been playing for our Ogre Suits. Till then, good luck ripping bombs from your packs.