It is getting annoyingly obvious that I am making my absolute worst results ever since starting writing on this blog. I played this deck. My reasoning wasn’t completely wrong but the deck is simply not strong enough to be reliable. It is going to be ridden of its red and yellow sleeves and placed in the pile for cards to be sorted.
13 players showed up for the tournament with Archibald showing up first for the second round so all my tables was 4-player ones.
Round 1
Me –> Isak Bjärmark Esbjörnsson (Kiasyd S/B w. Ashur and Liquidation) –> Robert Ekelund (Mistress Fanchon Baltimore Purge) –> Erik Cardell (CEL guns w. aus and pre)
This game my tooling up worked quite well but Robert took a lot of damage before he could start play his game and was ousted before I could make any serious attempts at getting Isak. I hopes for Erik to try and backoust to take the game win but he instead played both against me and Isak. He was one intercept card short of staying in the game when Isak launched and if that launch had failed I would probably have ousted Isak in my next round. With two Raven Spies and a handful of Earth Melds together with a little more than ten pool it looked pretty good for me but I made some mistakes, the most important one was not to think of Stone Travel so I got tapped out once and almost bled out. I managed to pull myself together and take him out but it was close.
Me 2VP
Isak 2VP
Round 2
Erik Cardell –> Robert Ekelund –> Jonas Alvdén (!Ventru grinder w. obf) –> Me
This game was a disaster. I drew no Earth Melds and since Robert had a slow build-up bringing out Carna and then Mistress Fanchon without crypt acceleration or a single action Jonas had an easy task in bleeding me out. I tried desperately to cycle cards, even convincing Erik to let me play Codex of the Edenic Groundskeepers followed by a Freak Drive just for cycling but it didn’t help.
Jonas GW 4VP
Round 3
Adam Esbjörnsson (Euralye and friends) –> Me –> Roger Carhult (Large cap ANI w. multiple MPAs) –> Isak Bjärmark Esbjörnsson
Also a disaster. No Earth Melds from the start here either. Adam influenced out Euralye and put Heidelberg in play. Isak also had a good start building up. I contested Heidelberg and Adam argued he needed it to use backwards to survive and I knew he was right about that. Still I sat in a poor position because I knew Adam and Roger could crush Isak together and I needed all defence I could get against Adam. Him stealing my Raven Spies with Spirit Marionette/Heidelberg was simply nothing I could allow. I made a deal with Isak to keep contesting if he would stop after ousting Adam and let me oust Roger for the duel. Isak soon got Adam and I started my long uphill trip towards ousting Roger. I was almost there so many times but when I got close he always had something to gain ground. Except for a lot of wakes and Cat’s Guidances he also played Golconda twice on his own minions. My deck were almost exhausted when there were three minutes left of the game and Isak had to deal break and sweep the table. I don’t blame him, he gave me more than one hour to do my job but I didn’t manage so the victory was his.
Isak GW 4VP
I think I need to think a little less before the tournament and a little more during it. Next tournament will be the Swedish championships and I should probably go for a fun deck and relax for once to reload my batteries. Maybe next Expectation Analysis Experiment will be a little different, time will tell.
Actually, I think your deck felt very solid on table one, at least defensively. On table 2 I messed up and for some reason got scared of being bled hard by Erik's CEL minions and therefore influenced Carna up first - total brain fart, and I basically gave that whole table away to Jonas right there. My bad, I'd say.
ReplyDeleteDidn't see much of your third table since I was feeling dizzy from the stale air, so can't comment there - I just feel it'd be a shame to scrap that deck, it feels quite solid and looks pretty fun to play too ^^
Robert
I have played it a lot and both the Deep Songs and Earth Melds are needed elsewhere. Solid, sure, but not solid enough.
ReplyDeleteI think that the deck should be resurrected at some point. I would drop the Sonar for 2x Underbridge Stray and 2x Forced Awakening for 2x Cat's Guidence(to bring it up to 4) or maybe Eyes of the Beast, since stealth doesn't matter. The 1x Forced Awakening left over could maybe be Robert Carter. I might include another Anarch Troublemaker. Make sure to kill everyone before it makes it's way around the table or your equipment will be burned. Drop PB: Montreal and Waiting Game for 2x Delaying Tactics. 1x Misdirection could be Archon Investigation. 10x Deep Song is plenty to take care of most of your tapping out needs in a ~77 card deck, especially with 1x Pentex Subversion, 2x Anarch Troublemaker and 2x Misdirection. How about some Dreams? It does crypt acceleration or gets you that Freak Drive you need. I'm not really sold on the Daring the Dawn, they could be more freak drives to get tooled up and bleeding faster.
ReplyDeleteUnderbridge Stray seems like a poor choice. Sure, in the right deck it is good (I use to play it when playing Garous) but it is simply a wake in this deck that your opponent knows about that takes an action to perform.
ReplyDeleteAdding some more Cat's Guidance is probably a good idea but I don't like to remove any wakes, they are very helpful and the amount feels about right. Robert Carter isn't really good since I use to run quite low on blood during the end game. The Montreal should probably be dropped, yes, and Waiting Game is corner case but needs to stay when encountering a lot of allies.
More Delaying Tactics is always nice but I don't think there is room for them. An Archon Investigation or two should be there and I can drop one Misdirection.
Dreams of the Sphinx is always good and I am slowly becoming one of those players who includes 2-3 in every deck. Problem is there is a lot of them in the meta and always one in game.
Daring the Dawn is mostly discarded but is key if encountering No Secrets from the Magaji or similar.
Good points as always Brandon, maybe I should email you some decks I struggle with for our upcoming national championships for review?