Love Is In The Air - Ripley/Stoke

In which we read about my shortcomings at playing cards.

February means that Love Is In The Air, which has nothing to do with Valentines day, and has more to do with giving me another excuse to play cards.

For the Stoke event, I played the Alliance Warrior deck from my previous entry and for the Ripley event, I played Grand Crusader Dragonkin Rush WTB Drawpower Thing Medley.

 Stoke event:-

Game 1, vs Ben Dunbar

A quick game. A starting hand featuring Mekkatorque, Magni, Polished Breatplate of Valor, Golem Skull Helm and Triton Legplates was what sealed the deal.

Ben played a monster Shaman deck revolving around Ogres+ Colossal Totem to spam the field quickly. However he couldn't deal with a 10/10 Mekkatorque and Assault 10 from Triton Legplates

I got a good hand of equipment, including Triton Legplates and Polished Breastplates. Combined with a lucky Magni draw, I quickly got my health into the 40s and managed to mitigate damage. Turn 6 and 7 were spent dealing with his allies whilst I got the rest of the equipment I needed to pump up Mekkatorque.

Game 2, vs Jonny Roberts

Being as good at this game as I am, I attempted to target the Untargetable whilst Jonny was quite happy to ignore me and continuously play Harmonize allies and Muln Earthfury. Whilst I was expecting Mazu'kons to come out quickly, I was more surprised by the Keeper Remulos + Karkas Deathhowl that I didn't see coming. Jonny quickly made 11,000,000 tokens and then smashed my lifeless corpse with them.

To top things off, I had a terrible opening hand, even mulliganed. There was a Magni in it, which made me think I might be able to do something, but I drew into too much high cost armour and not enough allies to deal with his quickly building swarm of Harmonize allies.

Game 3, vs Aiden Laycock

Well, I didn't expect to beat Jonny but I thought I might here. Aiden was playing Token Druid rush with Crown of the Heavens cards mostly. Whilst I managed to lay down a silly amount of armour quickly, he had an answer to every single one of my high-threat cards. Burly Berta got Entangled. My 14/14 Mekkatorque that was about to swing for game was suddenly Entangling Roots'd. 

It was a Wild Cascade that sealed the deal for Aiden though. Whilst I can handle about 10 separate packages of damage, I can't handle it if it keeps doubling the amount of damage packages with Wild Cascade.

When he got to 20 tokens with ferocity, that was game to Aiden. I reckon that if I'd dealt with his Ancient ally giving his tokens ferocity, then I could have done something with the extra turn or two it would have bought me.

Game 4, vs Eddie Skelson

Long, drawn out game. Opening hand featured lots of armour and a Bloodied Arcanite Reaper and a Bromor, but little else.

Ed was playing an amalgamated Hunter deck with Ysera, dragonkin, Eranikus, Tesla and various other things.

Advantage was all over the place in this game. I was happily dropping armour after armour to mitigate the Steady Shot and few allies he was dropping, but Ed was resource ramping quickly with Lifewardens and Eranikus. By turn 7 Ysera was on the table with her mend and draw, but I had a Bloodied Arcanite Reaper with 2 heirloom counters on it. At this point though, I didn't have any allies of my own so I was relying on the 11 damage a turn I was swinging for to pop his big threats before they lowered my health. All the while Ed was healing down the damage I'd dealt to his hero whilst trying to get through my wall of armour.

A late Tesla with a pair of Azure Skyrazors managed to get him to push damage through. I was sweating at this point since I hadn't seen a single ally since my starting hand to help deal with the opposing swarm. And thats when Ed started dropping abilities to ramp his allies up with an additional Assault 4 on 4 allies and his hero. The extra 20 damage was way more than I could handle and that was my defeat, putting me in last place in the standings.

Just to take the piss, my next card was Mekkatorque who would have come out as a 20/20 and put me over the top to win.

Oh well, the things you can do if you had just one more turn.

Ripley event :-

Game 1, vs Adam Parsonage

Pars showed up to give me a lift to Ripley and accidentally wound up registering in the tournament itself. He was playing a Heal and Deal beatdown out of Alliance Priest. Unfortunately for Pars, my opening hand was what I like to call "Taste The Rainbow": Drax Felfuse, Emerald Captain, Azure Magus, Bronze Drake, Ruby Stalker and a Seeds of Their Demise (So many colours...).

Turn 1 was my normal Bronze Drake drop for the extra turn of damage. Turn 2 was Drax. Turn 3 I swung with an 8 attack Drax and filled my field out. A Bronze Warden saved me from his Burly Bertas whilst I spent the next 2 turns finishing his health off with my filled field.

Game 2, vs Oli Ward

Oli was playing Rogue, featuring Boundless Thievery and Poison The Well to hamper Grand Crusader.

My opening hand featured 3 Drax Felfuses and 2 1-drop dragons. I played the slow game and went for the turns 2-4 Drax drops, and turn 5 to drop the dragons I'd drawn into. I managed to make a massive swing for 30 damage, but a Sap stopped me from winning there and then. My turn 6 draw was Grand Crusader, buffing my field of Bronze Drakes, Bronze Guardians, Drax Felfuse, Ruby Stalkers. I used the stealth from Ruby Stalker to swing past his protectors and win.

Game 3, vs Julian Harse

Things went wrong here. Julian was playing an Alliance Hunter, which I wrongly assumed would be a control deck. My hand was an actual Grand Crusader hand, Bronze Warden, Bottled Light, Grand Crusader, Telor Sunsurge; for once there was no sight of my Drax Felfuse or my dragons. The first few rounds were played strategically, comprising of trading off allies for other allies.

Then from turn 4 onwards, I stopped drawing quests and started running out of cards. A lack of Girdle left me in an awkward place and Julian outpaced me quickly. I lost succinctly.

Game 4, vs Jonny Roberts

An average hand, and a close game (As far as I was concerned). I feel that if I hadn't made a small mistake on my third turn, then I could have won this game. I had a Bronze Warden, Bronze Drake and Ruby Stalker in hand. With 2 resources on the field, and 7 damage on my Hero from Jonny's Ice Barrier, I should have played the Stalker followed by the Warden to heal for 3, then rowed another resource and played the Drake for that precious Assault 1 on my Hero. I missed the middle part and played my resource first, not healing the 3.

Turn 6 Jonny got a Mazu'kon down and bypassed my field of Drax, Stalker, Drake and Azure Magus. The hit from Mazu'kon left me on 6 health exactly, meaning if I didn't kill his Hero there and then in my turn, then I couldn't win. A quick Delve showed me that my next 2 cards would both be Censure, dealing with the Mazu'kon problem for 2 turns. I couldn't find any drawpower in my hand or on my field. With less than 12 attack on the board, I couldn't deal with Mazu'kon threatening my health in that turn. It was a win in Jonny's favour, making me wish that I hadn't messed up my resource/ally order back on turn 3 so I'd have a chance to draw the first of those 2 Censures.


The 2/2 win/loss ratio put me in 4th place of 8 players, which was acceptable, especially compared to my poor performance in Stoke.