Author Topic: 2021 T1-2P 3rd Place -- The Mighty Meeks  (Read 8520 times)

Offline TheIrishman

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2021 T1-2P 3rd Place -- The Mighty Meeks
« on: August 30, 2021, 05:22:17 PM »
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The Mighty Meeks
56 Card Deck
10 Card Reserve

Lost Souls (7)
“Hunter”
“Humble”
“Exiles”
“Wicked”
“Dull”
“Orphans”
“Distressed”

Doms (7)
Son of God (Nats 20)
The Second Coming
Angel of the Lord (Nats 20)
Christian Martyr (Nats 19)
Falling Away (Wo)
Three Woes
Mayhem (Nats 20)
     Artifacts (3)
You Will Remain
Golden Calf (FoM)
Endless Treasures

Sites/Cities/Forts (5)
Treacherous Land
Babel (FoM)
The Throne of David (LoC)
Gates of Jerusalem (LoC)
Storehouse (Promo)
     Heroes ( 8 )
David, Heart After God
Jehoshaphat , the Seeker
Jotham, the Mighty
Hezekiah, the Devout
Josiah, the Restorer
Asa, the Upright
Melchizedek (PoC)
Joshua, the Conqueror

Good Enhancements (10)
Day of the Lord
Faith of Barak
Royal Parade (LoC)
Valley of Salt (RoA)
Bravery of David
Counsel of Abigail (LR)
The Lord’s Charge
Your God Will Be My God
Jordan Interrupted (PoC)
A Soldier’s Prayer
     Evil Characters (9)
The Rab-saris (LoC)
The Rabshakeh (LoC)
The Tartan (LoC)
King Sennacherib (LoC)
Assyrian Siege Army
Assyrian Camp (LoC)
Profane Daughters
Foreign Wives
The Deceiver

Evil Enhancements (7)
Achan’s Sin
Forgotten History
Scattered
Offer of Exile
The Rabshakeh’s Threats (LoC)
Hired Sword
Two Thousand Horses
     Reserve (10)
Damascus (LoC)
Majestic Heavens
Covenant with Abraham
Confusion of Mind (LR)
Unsuccessful (PoC)
Achim, the Complier
Mary, Faithful Servant
Solomon’s Dream
Foreign Horses
Delivered
« Last Edit: September 05, 2021, 03:16:04 PM by TheIrishman »

Offline TheIrishman

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Re: Nats 2021 T1-2P 3rd Place (The Mighty Meeks!)
« Reply #1 on: August 30, 2021, 05:23:19 PM »
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What more can you ask for than Nats in Texas since everything is bigger in Texas...except the attendance this time:(  Although I was excited for a Texas Nats I was not excited by the possibility of facing LAFS decks left and right.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that was not the case (at least for me).  The several anti-LAFS decks floating around probably helped.  Despite the threat of LAFS, however, I was confident I could repeat last year’s topcut finish.  Sure enough I did just that and even wrestled my way into a top 3 finish.  I made a couple of misplays that led to some games being more difficult than they needed to be, but my deck did just about as well as it could have in all of my games.

The Mighty Meeks
Last Nats I snuck into “topcut” running an Esther-focused offense with an Assyrian defense.  That deck taught me several important lessons: 1) lone ranger decks (decks that center around a specific lone hero for rescues) are very hard to pull off, 2) soul protection is just as important (perhaps even more important) outside of battle as it is during battle, 3) the hero(es) you rescue with should ideally be either invincible or able to utilize battle extending abilities, and 4) LoC Assyrians are amazing.  All of these lessons led to the creation of the Mighty Meeks.  As the name suggests, the offense of this deck revolves around meek heroes, specifically the meek purple/red kings from LoC.  LoC Gates gives me a reusable add-to-battle ability along with the bonus of protecting my kings of Judah in territory.  Mary, Faithful Servant protects my meek heroes in battle while there is no good enhancement in battle.  Achim the Complier negates my opponents’ neutral cards which is still such an underrated ability!  SOOO many games both prior to and during Nats Achim stalled or even crippled my opponents because they couldn’t use their neutral cards, particularly their artifacts.  Regarding soul protection, PoC Melchizedek and the “Orphans” soul gave me the round the clock protection Esther could not.  LoC sports 5 negaters (4 can target evil or neutral cards) that are CBN if used by meek heroes.  I was running 4 of them for a good portion of the tournament season, but a tournament or 2 before Nats I swapped out 2 of them for speed cards like Soldier’s Prayer and Jordan Interrupted.  I ran all 6 meek kings of Judah for the best chance of utilizing those negaters, Achim, and Solomon’s Dream.  I ran Enoch in Reserve for a while as extra soul-gen which came in clutch a couple of games during the last months of the tournament season, but I had to cut him to make room for more consistently useful resources.  After running the LoC Assyrians last year, I knew they had great potential, but I actually ran Philistines until early July because I really liked the speed engine of Ashkelon and Wages of Sin.  After NY States in late June, I was looking through the remnants of my Esther deck and realized that I could fairly seamlessly move the Assyrian defense into my Might Meeks deck.  I played a couple games each week in July with my playgroup finely tuning it and feeling better and better about my decision.  Siege Army’s CBN utility discard and Rab-saris to Rabshakeh CBN good card underdeck are very powerful abilities.  Combine those with the Rab-saris to Rabshakeh to Tartan band that can equip a weapon to play first (Forgotten History or Scattered) and The Deceiver to Profane Daughters to Unsuccessful and you’ve got a formidable defense with some nice perks!
« Last Edit: September 05, 2021, 03:19:10 PM by TheIrishman »

Offline TheIrishman

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Re: Nats 2021 T1-2P 3rd Place (The Mighty Meeks!)
« Reply #2 on: August 30, 2021, 05:24:28 PM »
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Record: 5-2
14 win points
+6 differential

Josh Potratz (5-4 loss) (KS)
I think I gave Josh more of a challenge than he was expecting.  He was running a prophets-gray anti-LAFS deck.  If I recall correctly one or both of us soul drought the other for a turn or two, but when there were souls to rescue, we had some good battles.  Josh pushed with Jeremiah as much as he could hoping to burn through the very limited number of evil enhancements he was expecting me to have.  My play group, however, is big on defense so I had 7 evil enhancements which is probably higher than normal for most of the top players.  This paired with the Assyrians’ strong abilities (Siege Army’s CBN utility discard and Rab-saris to Rabshakeh CBN good card underdeck) forced his offense to work really hard for each soul.  Meanwhile, my offense was battering his defense as well.  Gates of Jerusalem came in clutch as expected since I used it to extend and then win at least one rescue.  We threw a lot at each other, but Josh was ultimately able to get the win just before last round was called. 

Terry Markoff (5-2 win) (TX)
I don’t remember to much about this game.  I think I was still trying to process everything that happened in the previous for the purpose of improving my gameplay.  If I remember correctly this was the first of 2 (maybe 3) games where I had to deal with soul drought.  I think Terry only drew 1 or 2 souls the entire game.  I know I fished out at least 3 souls from his deck using Josiah, and I might have needed to generate a 4th soul using Majestic Heavens as well.  I don’t remember what Terry was running, but I do remember that his deck didn’t draw or search, hence the soul drought.

Jonathan Steckmann (5-3 loss) (TX)
Jonathan was running a postexilic offense with an orange defense.  After the last game, I was feeling REALLY great with how well my deck was able to handle soul drought...but God certainly has a sense of humor.  This game I also ran into soul drought, but this time it ended quite differently.  Jonathan got his Achim up before I was able to get out “Distressed” or Golden Calf.  This slowed slowed me down quite a bit because I wasn’t able to use “Exiles” to get Covenant with Abraham to then get Damascus which was one of my main speed engines.  I also really wanted to get out Confusion of Mind because that definitely would have been useful since he had Storehouse out and couldn’t have done the discard on CoM.  That same Storehouse, however, stopped me from using Josiah to fish out souls like I did last game.  Drought out on offense, it was only a matter of time before my defense gave way.  I held him off quite effectively for the first 20-25 minutes or so, but my poor Assyrians could endure no more by about the 40th minute.  Frustratingly, I was sitting on SoG and TSC in my hand since I believe turn 2 so if he had drawn into or I could have generated 2 more souls I would have easily won that game.
« Last Edit: September 05, 2021, 03:23:04 PM by TheIrishman »

Offline TheIrishman

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Re: Nats 2021 T1-2P 3rd Place (The Mighty Meeks!)
« Reply #3 on: August 30, 2021, 05:24:52 PM »
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Brayden Babij (4-3 win) (FL)
Going into this game with a 1-2 record I knew I had to win every game from here out if I was to have a chance at making topcut.  Despite knowing this, I made the mistake of underestimating Brayden and I believe that cost me the full win and nearly resulted in a tie.  I wasn’t as aggressive as I should been in setting up my speed engines and particularly my counters which gave Brayden the chance to get some nice resources early on.  One example is not getting Babel out early.  This enabled Brayden to use Profane Daughters to grab Unsuccessful.  I played AotL for a successful rescue during that battle before he could use Unsuccessful, but he obviously still got to keep it and used it to block what would have been my winning rescue on my last turn of the game.

Royce Anagnostou (5-3 win) (TX)
Royce was running a deck he got from Roy which is apparently the Frankenstein deck that Derek Tirado ran at 2018 Nats.  As the name suggests this deck is a conglomerate of different powerhouses on the offense.  TheWatchman lost with this deck in the first round of topcut in 2018, so the deck definitely has topcut potential.  Royce, however, is a fairly new player and was not very familiar with the cards in the deck and what they were trying to do.  This enabled me to get a 5-3 win.  If my defense had showed up earlier, that win would likely have been 5-1.

John Hendrix (5-3 win) (AL)
John was running a LAFS deck.  His opening hand had the wrong heroes in it, so he wasn’t able to combo right away.  He used Scattered Sheep’s STAR ability to reveal each hand and underdeck a hero. I saw he had ANB in his hand and he saw my Foreign Wives.  Since the one hero underdeck wasn’t enough to get the combo to work, he went for a rescue and drew some cards probably hoping to bait me into blocking with the wives so he could reset his hand with ANB and potentially get the combo.   If I hadn’t seen ANB, I might have blocked, but seeing ANB and all those heroes in his hand told me exactly what he was trying to do, so I let him walk in for that one soul.  On my turn I emptied my hand as much as I could putting down Storehouse, a hero, and several blockers leaving only a couple of enhancements and woes in my hand.  The rest of the game he was trying to get the combo off, but my counters and each passing turn made doing so more difficult and less rewarding if successful.  The only EC he drew the entire game was Foreign Wives.  This enabled me to get to 5 souls without too much trouble, but not before he dropped SoG and TSC to get to 3 souls.

Jacob Arrowood (5-4 win)
Jacob was running a martyrs deck with I believe a Syrian defense.  His martyrs were neat but I wasn’t terribly scared of them.  I believe we both rescued successfully our first turns.  He played both his dom rescues early on which got him to 3 souls.  A turn or 2 later I played SoG to tie him and then he punched through my defense again to get to 4 souls.  I then held him at 4 souls for a good 2 or 3 turns until I was able to punch through his defense for soul 4 while getting Solomon’s Dream from Reserve via Jotham which I then played after battle to get TSC for the win.
« Last Edit: September 05, 2021, 03:32:18 PM by TheIrishman »

Offline Xonathan

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Re: 2021 T1-2P 3rd Place -- The Mighty Meeks
« Reply #4 on: August 31, 2021, 09:39:05 AM »
+1
Thanks for the deck and game review and good job on finishing third! I'm was surprised that not only did LaFS didn't place as high but also that the top three decks all were very balanced in terms of offense and defense. That's kinda refreshing in a sense that hyper-aggro/drawing builds with small chump defenses aren't always gonna be the ticket to win. Just my :2cents:, I would definitely cut one of those good enhancements for ends of the earth to help you with both soul gen and getting to your enhancements since you prefer so many for your extended battles. Faith of David seems like a good card for you to add too to help with your theme of extending battles.
Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always.
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Offline TheIrishman

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Re: 2021 T1-2P 3rd Place -- The Mighty Meeks
« Reply #5 on: August 31, 2021, 12:44:35 PM »
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I'm was surprised that not only did LaFS didn't place as high but also that the top three decks all were very balanced in terms of offense and defense. That's kinda refreshing in a sense that hyper-aggro/drawing builds with small chump defenses aren't always gonna be the ticket to win.
I was surprised as well with LAFS relatively poor performance.  My playgroup is very defense focused so our decks are definitely more balanced than the types of builds that usually make it to the top, so I was very happy to successfully pilot a "conventional" to the top 3 (and a 56 card deck at that).

Just my :2cents:, I would definitely cut one of those good enhancements for ends of the earth to help you with both soul gen and getting to your enhancements since you prefer so many for your extended battles. Faith of David seems like a good card for you to add too to help with your theme of extending battles.
I thought about putting in Ends of the Earth for a while, but I felt like 3 sources of soul gen (Ends, Heavens, and Josiah) would have been overkill; also Ends can easily be underdecked by Joshua; the same is true for Heavens though.  However, Ends probably would have made my game vs Jonathan Steckmann end quite differently.  Faith of David is a card I went back and forth with so many times.  Oddly enough, I don't think I ever regretted not having it in the final build.  The main reason I ultimately cut it was that despite being a little more restrictive (meek king of Judah vs any royal hero), Gates was reusable and much more easily accessible than Faith of David.  Faith of David being purple meant that I couldn't fish it out with Soldier's Prayer and it being N.T. meant I couldn't get it from Reserve with Storehouse.  Sure I could have added Faith to the main deck to get it (along with David and Joshua), but I couldn't justify cutting 2 cards to give me that one shot battle extender when I had the reusable one on Gates in addition to YWR.  Nevertheless, I was a little worried that I might regret not having another shot at using a battle extending ability, but as it turns out, not one of my games did I feel like I needed Faith of David.  Any turn that I had enough enhancements and/or doms in my hand to make extending the battle worth it, I was able to use Gates or YWR.

Offline Xonathan

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Re: 2021 T1-2P 3rd Place -- The Mighty Meeks
« Reply #6 on: August 31, 2021, 01:17:38 PM »
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Well you've clearly have put a ton of thought into FoD and using ends! It is a bummer that FoD is NT but if you also had Faith in the deck you could use it twice and give you more consistency with the cloud cards you already have like Joshua, David, and Faith of Barak. Is Joshua normally a big problem for you? 
Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always.
1 Chronicles 16:11

Offline The Guardian

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Re: 2021 T1-2P 3rd Place -- The Mighty Meeks
« Reply #7 on: August 31, 2021, 05:21:08 PM »
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Is Joshua normally a big problem for you?

When is Joshua not a problem... ::)
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Have you checked the REG?
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Offline TheIrishman

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Re: 2021 T1-2P 3rd Place -- The Mighty Meeks
« Reply #8 on: August 31, 2021, 07:17:56 PM »
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Well you've clearly have put a ton of thought into FoD and using ends! It is a bummer that FoD is NT but if you also had Faith in the deck you could use it twice and give you more consistency with the cloud cards you already have like Joshua, David, and Faith of Barak. Is Joshua normally a big problem for you?
I actually forgot that Faith of Barak is a cloud card.  That would give me a total of 4 targets for Faith if I put FoD in.  Interesting...I'll have to think about that a bit more then.  If it wasn't for YWR's interaction with end-the-battle abilities, I would have put FoD in for YWR in a heartbeat because I could use FoD twice but YWR only once. 

When is Joshua not a problem... ::)
Amen to that!

Offline Watchman

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Re: 2021 T1-2P 3rd Place -- The Mighty Meeks
« Reply #9 on: September 01, 2021, 07:24:16 AM »
+2
I’m surprised that King’s Weakness (LoC) isn’t included as it’s both purple and PG and is a strong battle winner.
Overcome satan by the blood of the Lamb, your testimony, and don't love your life to the death!

Offline Watchman

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Re: 2021 T1-2P 3rd Place -- The Mighty Meeks
« Reply #10 on: September 03, 2021, 03:43:49 PM »
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I don't know, after reviewing your good enh choices I feel you could use just a couple more interrupts/negates.   ;D

It looks like a powerful deck, for sure, Patrick. Great job on its build and your high ranking! 

How did you handle Coliseum for all of your CBN enhs (I'm assuming Woes or ASA)?  Other than Majestic Heavens and Josiah, what was your soul gen?
« Last Edit: September 03, 2021, 03:50:27 PM by Watchman »
Overcome satan by the blood of the Lamb, your testimony, and don't love your life to the death!

Offline TheIrishman

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Re: 2021 T1-2P 3rd Place -- The Mighty Meeks
« Reply #11 on: September 04, 2021, 12:44:20 PM »
+1
I’m surprised that King’s Weakness (LoC) isn’t included as it’s both purple and PG and is a strong battle winner.
The versatility of King's Weakness definitely tempted me a little bit, but I wanted battle winners that actually did damage to my opponent's characters and didn't just withdraw (or bounce) them.  In looking for offensive battle winners I found that red offered a lot more punch than purple (for the most part).  Royal Parade is the only battle winner that doesn't remove the ECs from play; I know bouncing technically does remove the ECs from play, but since they just go to your opponent's hand that kinda doesn't count in my opinion.  Another thing I wanted my battle winners to have was a built in interrupt or negate ability; 4 out of my 6 battle winners currently have that.  The ability to get rid of an artifact was also tempting, but I had Joshua and Woes to deal with that.

I don't know, after reviewing your good enh choices I feel you could use just a couple more interrupts/negates.   ;D

It looks like a powerful deck, for sure, Patrick. Great job on its build and your high ranking! 

How did you handle Coliseum for all of your CBN enhs (I'm assuming Woes or ASA)?  Other than Majestic Heavens and Josiah, what was your soul gen?
Regarding the interrupts/negates, I can tell you it was with great sadness that I took out 2 of those LoC CBN negates! :(  I LOVED running 4 of them for most of the tournament season, but I ran 4 of them only because my playgroup is so heavy on defense.  Going into Nats I realized that I probably needed to cut back on those.  In doing so, however, I made some changes to the battle winners to I end up with 4 of them having built-in interrupts/negates with Jordan Interrupted giving me a 5th.   That made running only 2 dedicated negates a lot easier.  Also, running Gates of Jerusalem meant that I didn't always have to negate my opponent's battle winner; if that battle winner was a bounce or withdraw ability, I often passed on special initiative and just used Gates to bring another hero right into battle!  I loved doing that!  It caught so many people by surprise :D

I really wasn't worried about Coliseum at all because I had at least 3 ways of removing it from the table: ASA and Josiah could discard it and Joshua could underdeck it.  Then I also had Woes, of course, to negate it.

I didn't have any soul gen other than Majestic Heavens and Josiah.  I really wish I could have kept Enoch in the build and/or put in Namaan's Servant Girl.  I really wanted to put Ends of the Earth in, but that card failed to produce a soul for me several times during several games at Nats last year, so I wanted ways to generate a soul more directly.
« Last Edit: September 05, 2021, 12:40:11 PM by TheIrishman »

 


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