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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!

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.

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 , 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.

Is Joshua normally a big problem for you?

When is Joshua not a problem...

I’m surprised that King’s Weakness (LoC) isn’t included as it’s both purple and PG and is a strong battle winner.

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.   

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

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.