Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Game 1:
Jonathan Wagenknecht
5-0
I do not remember much from this game, just i had a little concern on how the deck would run since i built it pretty late the previous night, and switched half the offense last minute.

Game 2:
David Arrowood
5-1
This game my defense decided not to come out at the very beginning so i gave up two quick ones. The train went back on the tracks and the Samuel Offense drew quite a bit(occurring theme through out the day).

Game 3:
Andrew Harrington
5-3
Andrew is actually in Kentucky as well which i found out at Nats. He was also coming off a good win against John Early, so i was excited to see what he was running. He ran an Soldier of God deck with all the Armors, he got them all out pretty quick. The game really came down to two blocks. I blocked one with Rabshekeh with Two Thousand Horses, then played DOU to shuffle my souls. The other block he came in and did not clarify how many souls he was protecting which in that case is a given 0, so I shuffled them all once again. One if not both of those blocks shuffled away a tapped liner.

Game 4:
Connor Magras
5-0
I have seen Connor around for a while, he is a really good player. This game my offense came out really fast, and i was drawing like crazy. It was to much for Connor's defense to keep up with. It also seemed like he didn't have the best draw.

Game 5:
Chris Egley
2-5
Chris handed me my first loss of the day. From what I remember he was running the typical meta offense. My defensive characters were a no show for the majority of the game. his offense was getting through with ease. I was drawing a bunch to find an evil character, but no such luck. His last turn, he seemed a little nervous, and was playing a little rushed(we had plenty of time). I was hoping he made a mistake to give me a chance to get back in the game and sure enough he dropped a mayhem, when he played it he was going to just walk in like he did the turn before since I still had no evil characters . Now i get another chance to draw an answer for his offense, but once again no such luck. So with the 15 cards left in deck i had 5 evil characters and 4 evil enhancements. That is just how it goes some times.

Game 6:
John Cunningham(JD)
5-0
Coming off the loss i knew i could not afford to lose again. JD and I have played at every major tournament i have attended. He has been a formidable opponent, and each game we played has been a nail biter. This game surprised me, it seemed like I had the perfect answer at the perfect time every turn. What really hurt JD was i got rid of his set up character on the first turn. He was not able to really set much up after that.

Game 7:
Blake Maust
5-0
This was the last round before top cut. What i remember about this game was once again my offense was rolling. I pushed through pretty quick. Blake just seemed not to have the answers he needed at the time he needed them.

Top Cut Game 1:
Luke Marshall
5-1
I do not remember much about this game. What i can say is Luke is a humble winner and gracious loser, an all around great guy. He has been awesome to see at the last couple tournaments.

Top Cut Game 2:
Noah Wagenknecht
5-3
Playing Noah was a great experience of Christian competitiveness, very respectful, and a delight to play. His game was my funnest game of the day. We were going back in forth. I looked at his hand and i seen mayhem, i had SoG,TSC, and DoN. my deck was getting pretty small so I knew he was going to play mayhem now while he can  try to get some card advantage. Before he could do that though I played all 3 dominants. On his next turn he drew a liner, so he could potentially get back in the game. So on my final turn i made a rescue with Ehud to make him block with Goliath, which forced me to bring someone else in. I brought in Samuel banded to his Ahimelek with foreign sword. I then returned goliath to hand CBN and top decked the liner for the win.

Championship Game
Gabe Isbell
2-5
The game started, and i was excited when i seen what he was playing since i did really well against that style of deck all day. He had a Lost soul drought for around three turns while he was drawing quite a bit. My only hope to recover from that was to play confusion, which i never got to get off. That is just the way the cards fall sometimes. The play that stands out in my mind was when i made a rescue, Gabe blocked with Lions to discard his own paralyzed Samuel so he could play his dominants, he then immediately followed that up with Grapes. It was great to finally play against Gabe, unfortunate I came up short this time. I am looking forward to the next time we get to play so I can redeem myself.

Congratulations on an outstanding performance!!! You rode the top table through most of the swiss rounds. There's something to be said for that! You probably played the toughest opponents available all day, meaning that you did more to earn your victories than most of us.

Championship Game
Gabe Isbell
2-5
The game started, and i was excited when i seen what he was playing since i did really well against that style of deck all day. He had a Lost soul drought for around three turns while he was drawing quite a bit. My only hope to recover from that was to play confusion, which i never got to get off. That is just the way the cards fall sometimes. The play that stands out in my mind was when i made a rescue, Gabe blocked with Lions to discard his own paralyzed Samuel so he could play his dominants, he then immediately followed that up with Grapes. It was great to finally play against Gabe, unfortunate I came up short this time. I am looking forward to the next time we get to play so I can redeem myself.

I just rematched our game on Twitch. Keeping in mind that I was very fatigued for all three rounds of the top cut, it appears you must have been too. It looks like you were only soul doughted for one turn (obviously it felt like 3). I'd attribute the outcome more to mistakes.

For starters, with that Punisher LS on the table, if I'm in your position I do everything I can to get my Moses off the table so it starts working. In fact, the turn you chose Gideon to follow Grapes, if you'd chose Moses I was going to give you the LS. I couldn't afford to CM him since he was helping me so much. I was tickled when you chose Gideon instead.

I realize that you didn't know about Holy Grail when you played Rabshakeh/2KH, but you did when you played Siege Army/Everyman's Sword. Since you appear to have no other blockers I think you have to hold those.

The choice to band to my converted King Saul with Faith of Samuel is questionable too. If it was card draw you wanted I think your Rabshakeh gets you 2 instead of 1, but the better play is probably to band to my Joshua and use my SotS to negate and discard Messenger while Moses prevent ability is interrupted. I was obviously digging for TSC so forcing me to put back my 3 cards is probably the best option.

I hope that you don't take this as overly critical. It's reflecting on things like these that make us better players. I do this for myself any chance I get. My top 8 game against Daniel involved a lot of terrible play on my part that I won't get into here. Or just watch any of the HLP videos John and I have done for LoR.

At the end of the day you played a LOT of really good Redemption and did really well. Excellent deck and excellent job taking 2nd!!

So just watched the game. When I was referring to soul drought, I was talking about through out the game of a total of three turns. Not necessarily the very beginning only, sorry for the confusion.

matyr gideon after going in with auto and grapes was played where it works because it's a new battle phase and gideon was no longer protected.. brutal