Author Topic: 2021 Teams 1st Place -- Hidden Throne  (Read 4277 times)

Offline TheJaylor

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2021 Teams 1st Place -- Hidden Throne
« on: August 26, 2021, 02:10:22 AM »
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Teams with John Earley (check out his report here).

I won't be going into nearly as much detail about Teams as did the Type 2 categories since I didn't really make note of anything after the games, but instead I'll just do a quick summary. John and I had floated around a few ideas of decks to play, the first of which being Daniel Eyes to go for decking out in intro-prep, which would have been fun but probably not quite as competitive with how frequently people are playing counters that they can access pretty easily in intro-prep. Closer to Nats we were thinking of revisiting the mostly white, pre-battle protect (Temple Dedication, Faith Unbowed, etc.) offense Justin and I ran last year. I think that offense is pretty strong but also fairly slow and Teams is a fast format where you don't always get a third turn and sometimes not even a second. We did briefly consider Postexilic since, in my opinion, it's the fastest offense other than Daniel Eyes, but the main combo is Impartial Judgment which hits "each other player", not just each opponent. We thought it might still be worth it and we would just play very little/character-heavy defenses, but we still thought it might have been a little awkward and John wasn’t very familiar with piloting PostEs. Still worth trying at some point, but maybe not fit for a Nats level debut. With that in mind we went with the tried and true Hidden Throne offense that Justin and I piloted to victory in 2019. The deck took a little bit of a hit after losing Samuel, but David, Outcasts' Refuge and a few other cards replaced him well enough. I am fully convinced that it's the best offense in Teams and definitely a competitive one in two-player. Choosing the blocker in Teams is incredibly strong because not only do you get to choose the defending character, but at the same time you're choosing the defending player. With the amount of hand knowledge available in the game right now, many times just figuring out which of your opponents you want to have block is all it takes for a successful rescue. I'm sure that a 2-player version will appear on my channel sometime soon. I'll try to remember to link it here when it does.

Jayden’s Deck: 50

Lost Souls: 7

Covet LS
Darkness LS
Exiles LS
Hunter LS
Prosperity LS
Remnant LS
Wicked LS

Dominants: 7

Chronicles of the Kings
Angel of the Lord (O.T.)
Glory of the Lord (Promo)
Guardian of Your Souls (RoJ)
Son of God (Promo)
The Second Coming
Valley of Dry Bones

Utility: 6

Treacherous Land
Solomon’s Temple (RoA)
Sheol
Hidden Treasures
Golden Cherubim
Delivered

Heroes: 11

Moses (Promo)
David, Outcasts’ Refuge/…
Jehoshaphat, the Seeker/…
Jeremiah, Hope Bringer
Joshua, the Conqueror
Paul
Samuel (CoW)
Ishmaiah, the Gibeonite
Mighty Men
Elijah (PoC)
The Angel Under the Oak

Good Enhancements: 6

Faith (PoC)
Offering Your Son
The Emmaus Road
Gathered Together
Faith of Samuel
Virgin Birth

Evil Characters: 7

King of Tyrus (PoC)
Outsiders (Bl/Go)
Abimelech, King of Gerar
Commander Phicol
Philistine Commanders
Distressing People
The Deceiver

Evil Enhancements: 6

The Wages of Sin
Scattered Sheep
Stricken
Betrayal (PoC)
Joseph in Prison
Overwhelmed by Philistines

Reserve: 10
Book of the Covenant (PoC)
Covenant with David (PoC)
Oath of Purity
Ahimelek, the Hittite
The Widow at Zarephath
David’s Proclamation
Solomon’s Dream
Foreign Wives
Sisera
Philistine Chariot and Horses

John’s Deck: 50

Deck Size: 50

Lost Souls: 7

Awake LS
Dull LS
Escape LS
Forsaken LS
Humble LS
Lawless LS
Oppressed LS

Dominants: 7

Three Woes
Christian Martyr
Destruction of Nehushtan
Doubt
Falling Away (CoW)
Shipwreck
Vain Philosophy

Utility: 5

Treacherous Land
Babel
Storehouse
Hidden Treasures
Delivered

Heroes: 11

Moses (Promo)
David, Outcasts' Refuge
Jehoshaphat, the Seeker
Jeremiah Hope Bringer
Joshua, the Conqueror
Paul
Samuel (CoW)
Ishmaiah, the Gibeonite
Mighty Men
Elijah
The Angel Under the Oak

Good Enhancements: 6

Faith
Virgin Birth
The Emmaus Road
Offering your Son
Faith of Samuel
Gathered Together

Evil Characters: 9

King of Tyrus (PoC)
Outsiders (B/G)
Abimelech, King of Gerar
Commander Phicol
High Priest Ananias
Philistine Armor Bearer (PoC)
Philistine Commander
Distressing People
The Deceiver

Evil Enhancements: 5

The Wages of Sin
Scattered Sheep
Stricken
Betrayal
Overwhelmed by Philistines

Reserve: 10

Book of the Covenant
Covenant with Adam
Covenant with David
Noah's Ark (Ark of Salvation)
Ahimelek, the Hittite
The Widow at Zarephath
David's Proclamation
Foreign Wives
Doomed Canaanites
Philistine Chariot and Horses

Offline TheJaylor

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Re: 2021 Teams 1st Place -- Hidden Throne
« Reply #1 on: August 26, 2021, 02:11:01 AM »
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Round 1 vs Jeremy Chambers/John Hendrix:

It was kinda nice to get this game out of the way in round one but at the same time it was a little worrying because we hadn't really tested our decks yet and my test draws the night before were all a bit concerning because the deck didn't seem very fast to me. Without the typical AUtO -> Sam -> Dave start, I was worried it wouldn’t quite have the same consistent card advantage. After we started, we were even more worried about it since John had no Heroes to start and I didn't have many good attacking options, but I do think we both had Scattered Sheep so we were able to hit some Heroes from their hands to level out the playing field a little bit. We pretty quickly figured out that they were running King Noah (I'm curious to see their full lists so hopefully they post ‘em), which we more or less prepared for by preparing for Throne and building our defense around Overwhelmed by Philistines. Since meek Noah is purple then ObP is CBN against him. While we didn't have much offense in our opening hands, we did have defense and John's Teacherous Land. TLand is undoubtedly the best card in Teams and drew so many cards throughout the day. That, plus our opening draws got us to the offense we needed to start rocking and rolling while our defenses held them off before they were able to get their combo going.

Full win: 5-1


Round 2 vs Rob Smith/David Smith:

Rob and David ran some counter-heavy Genesis decks which certainly would have stomped Daniel Eyes with intro-prep CwD and I think All the Curses. After that game John and I were pretty glad that we decided against Daniel Eyes. It was still a little difficult to play around, but a lot of the offense works around CwD and we also had some Doms for early answers when we needed them. David also dropped a Mayhem early on that, in hindsight, they realized probably hurt more than helped since it shuffled away some of Rob's defense that would have been helpful. They were running some animal stuff on defense which can't really be taken advantage of by Elijah. Counter-heavy decks like theirs rely on having a bit of time to fully set up the offense, but we got going so quick that they didn’t have much time to do so.

Full win: 5-1


Round 3 vs Shon Seivers/Owen Dong:

Shon did a great job of helping out Owen, who is a newer player, and the two of them ended up taking third which shows how good Shon is to play his own deck while helping Owen learn and how good Owen is by picking things up pretty quickly. I believe they ended up adjusting their own Type 1 decks for Teams so Shon used his Teal offense while Owen ran some prophets. Of course there's a good amount of overlap there so the decks naturally fit together to some degree. Shon and Owen had a strong start with The Tabernacle, Storehouse, and House of Prayer all out by Shon's first turn, which meant both of them had access to most of the GEs
they needed and they also both had some counters out too. Shon also got out The Afflicted and False Prophets + Birthing Pains right away to make putting down characters costly. Again though, TLand put in work in this game and gave John and I significant card advantage as the game progressed. Elijah is also a pretty big fan of TC ECs like The Afflicted and False Prophets so once we got him going, there wasn't much they could do.

Full win: 5-2


Round 4 vs John Michalizsyn/Emmanuel Echavarria:

John and Emmanuel were running Daniel decks (no surprise there Emmanuel... ;) ) and I believe one, if not both, of them was/were running a Daniel Eyes version. Fortunately John E had Moses in his opening hand, so after Emmanuel decided to go first, he only got to Foretelling and then Moses came down on John's turn right after. Emmanuel was able to pick up a few cards from it throughout the game, but I don't think John M was ever able to get to Foretelling. The funniest part about this game that I remember was when John E blocked John M's lone Michael with Ananias, so John M couldn't play any of his enhancements and was being ignored. John E decided to take the opportunity to reserve Emmanuel's Foretelling with Stricken, but he realized the next turn that Ananias was also ignoring Foretelling so it was protected from Stricken and we brought Foretelling back out. I'm pretty sure that was the first time I've witnessed a benefit from a character being ignored while in territory now that ignore is essentially mutual protection. Anyway, we got some other blocks similar to that one thoughout the game and our offense worked pretty well to avoid their defense or at least limit their options enough.

Full win: 5-1

Final Results: 4-0, +15 LS Differential

I get why some people don't enjoy Teams, but I personally think it's a lot of fun and I really enjoy synergizing two decks to see what combos you can come up with.

 


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