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The past two weekends I participated in both the MN State tournament and the MW Regional tournament. As far as my enjoyment goes, both were immensely fun and I had a great time. As far as my performance goes, however, it was basically the Tale of Two Tournaments (best of times/worst of times is a very apt description).

I'll start with MN State, as that happened first, and it just makes sense that way.

Friday Evening: T2-2P

I had done a fair amount of testing with my deck (which was given the name Creepy Priests by The Guardian, and I adopted it) but this was the first live tournament to use it. As expected from the name, it was a Temple Priests offense and a Creepers defense (with some Babylonians, along with my fairly typical SoT x2/SSS x2 Orange splash). The biggest obstacle to Creepers within the last few years is clearly Covenant with Death, which made Priests (with Kidron Valley--a Site that can discard a Curse) a natural choice. Temple Priests is also a boss in T2, as he stops chump blocks like DoU/SSS/Banquet Hall/Uzzah, and Temple can instead most of the other stuff that can happen to him. I used Jehoram and Elishama to recur/preload enhancements. My non-ST Heroes were Aaron (for banding to Moses), Moses (for btn banding off of Jehoiada's Strength on Amariah), Ezekiel (to recur Forest Fire and anti-Horses tech), King Jehoshaphat (for Elishama and banding), King Solomon (for fetching ST/Glory) and Phinehas (to make Zeal CBN). I will try to post a decklist later.

Round 1: vs. Nathanael Love

Nathanael is a younger player from our group who is always bold enough to take on the much older and more experienced T2 players in our area, and usually makes a good go of it. He was using a Prophets/Assyrians deck, which made me automatically think Covenant with Death. But it also is difficult for Assyrians to do anything vs. Temple Priests, since he stops DoU, and he's just big enough for Survivor to not be able to use FH effectively. He never drew into CwD after all, and he also had a hard time getting his Isaiah w/ Call for Site access, so he was never able to do much vs. my defense. My offense drew very well, and he didn't have very many effective blocks. I did have to be careful of captured Survivors, since Creepers can't protect them, but my sites were pretty effective even without Creepers for most of the game. Final score: 7-1.

Round 2: vs. Mitch Stewart

Mitch and I always have great games, and the last time we met was at NC Regionals, where he handled me pretty well. This time was different, and I got set up very quickly. His only site access was Dragon Raid, and I got two occupied Pergamums within the first few turns of the game. He did have multiple colors in his Judges offense, but I was able to keep the souls generally out of reach of his Heroes. I think he had a Pharisees defense, which held me off for awhile, but after a few recursions of Jehoiada's Strength with Jehoram, which allowed me to use his Heroes (once I forced him to Scatter almost his whole offense) as well as mine, I was able to overcome his defense. Final Score: 7-2.

Round 3: vs. Pat Wester

Not to diminish the skill of the father of one of Redemption's most well-known faces, but I was very surprised to be facing Pat in this round, considering he was fresh off of a match with (and defeat of) Nathan Voigt.  I didn't really know what to expect. He had a Disciples offense with a Philistine defense. I got off to a fast start, and it took him awhile to get any site access. My Satan's Seat came early, so Thaddeus wouldn't be a problem, and I was rolling easily to a 6-2 lead. Then the wheels almost came off. He was able to get access, and was slowly killing off my defense, all the while he seemed to have the one card on defense he needed to stop me for several consecutive attacks. I thought I had him when U&T had revealed no ECs in hand, but after I attacked, I realized I had no Nazareth, and he had Outpost. He narrowed the gap to 6-5, and I was running out of options on both offense and defense. All I had in hand to win the battle was a Trumpet Blast, with His Name is John. He had Goliath and Fallen Warrior, and a battle winner in his hand along with Bringing Fear (I had used U&T). I attacked with Phinehas, hoping he would come out with Goliath assuming I had Zeal. He did, so I came back with Jehoram from my hand, played HNiJ and TBlast, and was able to pull off the win. It was definitely the closest game of the evening. Final Score: 7-5.

Saturday Morning: T1-2P

After sweeping the T2 events the night before, I was excited to just have fun in T1 with my 70-card Watchful Servant Deck Discard turtle (which has been given the name, A Typical Jordan Alstad Deck, as posted in the deck advice forum). I didn't go in expecting much more than a fun time, and to see how well my turtle could match up against some of the best T1 minds in the country.

Round 1: vs. Simon Miller

Simon was using a Ruth/Judges offense and a Syrian defense. I got a great initial draw, and my defense had mostly locked him down the entire game. He did ironically win one battle with one of the Ruth withdraw enhancements (as my defense relies on HTs instead to stop good battle winners) but my Falling Away had come soon after he had used the big two. Once he decked, he had no answer for my Watchful Servant, so I was able to get the win. Final Score: 5-2.

Round 2: vs. Mitch Stewart

I basically got the draw I needed to beat Mitch's Disciples/Pharisees deck, which pretty much consisted of just Gifts. He continued drawing trying to get what he needed to get past my defense, but the more he drew, the better I was able to get set up. At one point due to Gifts and my Egyptians (TDP and Baker) I was only able to draw 2 on my turn due to the hand limit (not exactly common with turtles). His fast drawing also allowed WS to start working fairly quickly, and I was able to walk in for the win. Final Score: 5-3.

Round 3: vs. Jacob Arrowood

My Herods defense was the perfect answer to Jacob's FBTNB deck, and what made matters worse for him was that my deck discard got going early and I was able to take out 5-6 of his Heroes off of his deck (including 2 BTN Heroes and Ishmaiah). I was even able to use Strife to break up an Aaron/Moses band, and defeat the hapless Aaron by the numbers. WS had no trouble going in for the win after he had decked. Final Score: 5-2.

Round 4: vs. Levi Peterson

With 4 undefeateds left in the field (inlcuding Levi with 1 timeout win) my low differential paired me up with him. He was using a rather eclectic mono-Silver offense with a black Abom defense. On turn one, he puts down High Places, Goat with Horn, and Abom, and with me having not included any counters to Abom, I figured I was dead to rights. As it turned out, he didn't have any forced draw in his deck, and I just had to be careful. I did end up drawing a few times to try to generate some blocks, and he was able thin out my defense (Caesarea Phillipi was nowhere to be found most of that game). His Angels were pretty relentless, and my defense was running out. Eventually he decked and WS was starting to operate, but he had the LS advantage with having used SoG/NJ (I had SoG in hand, but no NJ in the deck). Eventually the score was 4-3, and he had both TSA and Captain, with my only blockers being Herod Philip II and Herod Agrippa. The last two cards in my hand were Escape to Egypt and Son of God. He attacked with TSA and I played Escape to Egypt on Agrippa to capture him. I was able to get another soul with WS and play SoG ftw, but would have had nothing to stop Captian his next turn. Very close game. Final Score: 5-4.

Round 5: vs. Nathan Voigt

Nathan had just beaten Tim to have us be the two remaining undefeateds. The game lasted 4 turns, and I was only able to draw 1 EC (out of 13 in my deck) during those 4 turns. Of course all turtles are susceptible to bad draws from time to time, and it just so happened that it happened when I could least afford it. Final Score: 0-5

Round 6: vs. Josh Brinkman

My low differential once again placed me at the bottom of the 5-1 players. I still had a shot at placing, but despite two earlier losses, Josh is another one of MNs premier T1 players, so I knew it wouldn't be easy. His Disciples/Magicians deck could give me problems, but fortunately I was able to soul drought him a bit early (even his Fishers of Men came up empty) and my defense was able to get setup. He used his last battle winner in a last ditch effort to thwart my defense, but it was just too much. Rather than prolong the inevitable and go through the motions of WS, he conceded so that I could have more time to finish tweaking my Teams deck, and he could go home and get some sleep). Final Score: 5-2

Result: 5-1, +8, Tie for 2nd Place (with Tim Maly)

MW Regionals

I was hoping to capitalize on some of my successes from the previous week at MW Regionals, so I traveled to Madison with a full Chevy Trailblazer (bringing along several siblings and all our stuff). We arrived about 15 minutes before the tournament began. The first event was T2-2P, and I was using the same Creepy Priests deck from last week, with a couple of changes: King Josiah as a King of Judah that could fetch Temple, and Throne of David to help with some drawing. I took out Glory of the Lord (which I realized might hurt in case I wanted to trash a Temple to kill Iron Pan) and a Pentecost (since it seemed everyone is playing Darius' Decree nowadays).

Friday Night: T2-2P

Round 1: vs. Bill Voigt

Bill was using a fairly typical Bill Voigt deck, with an orange/brown soul hiding/battle ending defense, and a TGT/Samaritan hybrid offense. As is pretty common with Bill, speed wasn't a big part of his deck, and that ended up hurting him. He was able to make a few early stops (ripping a couple of Plots) and he did frustrate my strategy a bit by using 2 of his Water Jars, but fortunately they didn't do too much damage (one time he forgot to put his Samaritan down before activating it, so he only got 3 cards instead of 9). But eventually my Temple Priests were too much for him. He tried to use an SSS with TP in battle, before realizing that it didn't work due to TPs protect. He also didn't have a lot of site access, so once I got setup, he didn't have much to get through my defense. He was able to get one rescue after the first Jar, but that was it. Final Score: 7-1

Round 2: vs. Nathan Wagenknecht

This game was intense. I don't know if the Wagenknechts are going to make it to Nats, so I won't say anything about his deck, but it was very back and forth. My deck didn't draw well early, and his defense seemed to be hapless and ruthless on alternating turns. Eventually the score was 6-4 in favor of Nathan. I had been able to use Golden Cherubim to get a few blocks the past few turns, and was hanging on by a thread. He attacks, and I was able to pull off a SoT to band to one of his characters that was causing me problems, and play SSS. I figured now I would have a chance. I evened the score at 6-6 the following two rescues, but he had managed to generate an LS that I couldn't put in a site. He attacked with a BTN character, and my only block was to use Nebuchadnezzar to try to find something, but nothing was to be found. I'm pretty sure we were both out of options at that point, so I think I would have won next turn. Very intense game, and always a pleasure to face off vs. the tripleplays. Final Score: 6-7

Round 3: vs. Kirk Dennison

There really isn't much to say about this game, other than I got stomped. My first rescue attempt was blocked in one of the most ridiculous ways possible, and while I was able to manage a rescue attempt on the next turn, after that my deck kind of just rolled over. It wasn't pretty. Final Score: 1-7

Round 4: vs. Matt Sinclair

At this point I knew I couldn't place, so I was mostly hoping that Josh Knitt (who had borrowed my Multi deck from the week before for 2P, and was currently 2-0-1) would be able to beat Kirk, so that at least my deck-building skills could get some credit. I also wanted to see how my deck fared against Matt, who as usual was using his Babylonians/Judges deck, which meant Iron Pan (which is nasty against Creepers). I don't remember much about this game, other than I had to give up a few freebies in the beginning, and my defense never really caught up. I trashed Throne and Solomon's Temple to get rid of 2 Iron Pans, and never saw the third, but it was pretty much too late, and eventually it just became a race for Matt to get his SoG/NJ to win. He did so a few turns later, and I added another loss to my record. Final Score: 4-7

Result: 1-3, -4, No Place

Saturday Afternoon: Teams

Matt and I had planned a bit over the last week to improve our decks to be able to beat Nathan and Martin. The biggest problem was Nazareth, so we switched to mostly Philistine defenses with 3x Land Dispute each, in addition to some other techs like Wastelands and Foreign Sword. I had switched to a Disicples offense, and Matt stuck with TGT.

Round 1: Noah Wagenknecht and Ari ???

This game had an interesting start, as Ari rescued one of our six 3-Liners before the game even began with SoG/NJ. I was reasonably confident that they wouldn't get the full win at that point, but it was up to us to try to get to 5. If my offense was weak, however, Matt's was non-existent. We got Gates up pretty early, so our defenses were both rolling, but we did give up an early LS before getting setup. The game progressed slowly, with few attacks between our opponent's lack of site access, and our lack of Heroes. Eventually we were able to get to 3 totie as time ran out, and we likely would have won in the following few rounds, as our opponents' decks were mostly exhausted. My favorite play of the game was when I knew that Noah's only card in his hand was an enhancement that he had recurred. And despite the fact that Matt had several ways to block him, I really wanted to make my block. So I go out with Foreign Spearman, and toss a spear, and Pride of Simon. Noah tossed his enhancement as well, but it wasn't enough to defeat me. Final Score: 3-3

Round 2: vs. John Earley and Britta Alstad

Interestingly, this was the first game at the tournament in which I played vs. one of my siblings, which is pretty rare three categories into a major tournament. Britta and John were using larger than standard Genyptian decks, which made for a long game, as they both had a lot of ECs we needed to take out before we could do anything. Our sites gave them plenty of issues for access, as their only way to get into the green sites for most of the game was Joseph, and we were able to take care of him pretty quickly. Eventually, we got rid of enough ECs for TGT to be effective, so we were able to walk in for a few resuces before time ran out. Final Score: 4-2

Round 3: vs. Martin Miller and Nathan Voigt

At 1 TO win and 1 Tie, we still had the potential for first if we were able to get the full win, and this game actually was pretty good for awhile. We got setup early, and we were also able to use Wastelands to keep Nazareths away for awhile. But they also knew exactly how to beat our decks, so it seemed they had unlimited blocks from hand. It went on for awhile, with all defenses working well, until finally they broke through and we didn't have an answer. I think if we had made one more successful block, we would have at least been able to tie if not win, as both Nathan and Martin were pretty depleted at that point, but alas, our plan for revenge fell just short. Final Score: 2-5

Result: 0-1-1-1, -1, No Place