Cactus Game Design Message Boards

It definitely is different playing than running a tournament. You have a lot less time to interact with people because your busy playing. And now I can give a tournament report from a player’s perspective.

I always try to play different decks then the current popular ones to try to challenge the better players with a little different look. The whole deck concept was designed to hide lost souls. The only way I have a chance against the gang around here is if I don’t have any LS up for them to rescue. I manly used Demons and Musicians on defense, using Divination, Death of Unrighteous and Suicidal Swine Stampede. On offense I used Susana to put LS on the bottom of my deck and John Promo to look at my deck and see where the souls were. Adding Garden Tomb and AoCP to get LS’s.

First Round: I played Kirk who always tries to come up with some kind of unbeatable combo. I drew Nazareth’s early so he couldn’t get all the parts early and managed to hang on for a 6-5 timeout win. Kirk drew almost his whole deck without getting son of God. I think his combo will have to be banded somehow because he wins a LS without you being able to present a blocker. Not much different than pre block ignore which still allows you to be able to present a blocker just not certain blockers. But I don’t think you should have to give up a LS if you don’t have a chance to block. Garden Tomb is, “Block me if you can”. Kirks combo is “You can’t block me, Ha-ha”. All that being said it was a very fun intense game and I was the only one to beat him that day. So I felt lucky. Besides I had these cool deck sleeves that Jayden Alstad let me use.

Second Round: I played Tim Drown who came with Craig from MO and usually places in the top 5 at the type 2 only. My deck worked pretty well and I was able to hid LS’s enough to come away with a 7-4 win. Everyone in type 2 seems to use drawing abilities to draw their deck faster which I like because there is usually a LS for me to rescue.

Third Round: I played David Carlson a good young player who complained a lot about me not having LS for him to rescue. The weakness of my deck is against by the numbers which I have addressed a little bit using Legion to play SSS on. Again he drew almost his whole deck and I was able to win 7-5. I never win by a lot with this deck. But a win is a win.

Fourth Round: I had a fun game with Jayden Alstad who is coming in to his own as a good player. He has beaten his older brothers at some tournaments this year and is getting harder and harder to beat. He also did a lot of drawing and always had a ton of cards in his territory including LS. He drew his whole hand, so he had SoG and NJ but I never had more than 1 LS for him to rescue. I whipped out his whole defense with  ET – AoCP and was able to cruise in for the win with Garden Tomb. Almost timed out. I did a lot of trash talking and abused him at the end by burying a LS so he couldn’t play SoG. I won 7-4 and I’m sure he will pay me back sometime soon. Jayden ended up playing Kirk for First place in round 7 and I think they tied 5-5, so I also gave Jayden his only lose.

Fifth Round: I get to play the dreaded Creeper deck for the first time, run by the notorious Jordan Alstad. I think it was my best game of the day. I usually make mistakes when I played but I played a good intense game and tied it 6-6 on my last turn. Jordan went for the win on his last turn which allowed me to create a LS to rescue outside of the protection of his creepers. I had to be creative to get LS since creepers aren’t ignored by Garden Tomb. All the Alstad’s are fun to play because they are humble winners and good sports when they lose.

Sixth Round: I was still ahead of the pack so I was ready to go home but the fun part of the type 2 play tournament isn’t winning but who you play and I got to play Gabe next. I kept drawing LS without a way to hide them and Gabe jumped out 4-1 with a good play using SoG to kill my Legion and get 2 LS’s. I was glad he didn’t have NJ in hand. I made a mistake that gave him # 6 and it was over pretty quick. I was able to drop an AoCP on him and made it a little close but the result was never really in doubt. (a Doubt would have helped me this game maybe I will work one in the deck.) Final score 5-7. My good run was over. It was fun while it lasted. Gabe had to leave and didn’t get to play the last round since the tournament was running a little late.

Seventh Round: Mitch Stewart, always competitive. I drew a lot of LS again early without being able to get rid of them. Mitch’s Abigail was bothersome and before you know it he won 7-4. I didn’t give him too tough of a game. He had a very nice deck that worked well. I shouldn’t have traded him the cards he needed before the tournament. He ended up taking 2nd.

Last 2 rounds were quick game. I need slow games to win. But it was a blast being able to play 7 rounds against the top players in the game. Thanks Matt for letting me play.

Round 1: Gabe 7-5?
Tough game.  Got off to a rough start, down early.  Hit a Mayhem to reset and game shifted in my favor.  Came down to whether Gabe could get to SOG at the end.  Got hand to 16? but no dice.  Always great playing Gabe (usually goes the other way.)

Round 2: Josh 7-6
Combo I couldn't block but had the best defense in the game on my side (soul drought).  Props on the combo, luck was on my side.  Always great time playing Josh. 

Round 3: Justin 6-4
Solid defense that I had a tough time breaking through late.  Got an early lead (thank to any early soul drought), and hung on.  My defense set up after the drought and their wasn't much he could do to get through without helping my offense.  First time playing Justin, hope to play again in the future, great patience keeping cool during drought. 

Round 4: Jordan: 2-7

Got locked out.  Could get much going offensively early with mismatch of enhancement and characters.  Always struggle with his defenses.  Always great playing Jordan.

Round 5: Jayden 5-5

What a defense.  Learned from the best.  Probably the best defense I played all day aside from Jordan's.  Got off to an early lead, and confusioned his sog.  My offense was decimated late by a few enhancements, and I made a couple dumb mistake with some search cards.  Jayden would of had a full win in about 3 turns.  Again props on the defense, sick combination.  Always great playing Jayden.

Round 6: Sam 7-4?

Pretty back and forth game.  Sam held off attacking early in fear of his sog getting confusioned.  I got his SoG late in the game anyway.  I think he might have gotten another soul or two had he been more aggressive early to eat up my blocks.  Always great playing Sam.

Round 7: Bill 7-4
My SoG got hit early with a confusion but my defense had no issue block do to hitting tgt early, and playing same primary defensive color.  Abi gave his d issues.  Prop to Bill on the great run.  Ended in 2nd with 15.5 points.  Glad to play Bill again (first time since IA state a few years ago)

Great tournament always a good time at the T2 only.  Glad I was able to get off work during tax season for it. 

Best Moments of Saturday for me:
1) Bill's run.
2) Being with friends, meeting new ones. 
2) Playing three straight Alstads.
3) Playing Gabe opening round.

I am hoping to have a tournament report written sometime this week. 

Round 3:
vs. Caleb Brinkman, Pat Wester, and Justin Alstad
This game was weird. Caleb was able to take a surprising early lead due to the fact that he got an early King David, and my only blockers for the first few rounds were Jezebel and Shechem (the second of whom I forgot was royalty, so I didn't put either in Tower to negate David). Pat's defense was brutal, and his Fallen Warrior got up to the 20s, and his TFG was able to defeat my Captain+Striking Herod+Birth Foretold+Consuming Fire in a classic by the numbers battle. In the process, he used up a few valuable Overwhelmed by Philistines (with me being the only person at the table not playing with a Purple offense) and Justin and Caleb were able to take advantage of it better than I could. Pat couldn't draw Heroes, and was playing from behind most of the game. I had a few nice tricks, such as stealing Justin's Provisioned Samuel with Stalks of Flax, and attacking Caleb with Sam banded to David. Unfortunately, the only ECs available were higher than */4, and I had no good enhancements in my hand. I went for it anyway, hoping Justin wouldn't use his Writ on David for fear of it being wasted, but he did and Samuel died to an Entrapping Pharisees. The rest of the game was rather uneventful, and I think it turned out 6-5-5-3 in favor of Justin, with Caleb and I at 5.

Result: 4.667 points, 2nd Place

Captain Kirk’s T2 Only Wrap-Up

*Update* - Due to the new ANB errata I have now revealed the deck I used.

Background
I haven’t attended any big Redemption tournaments since Nationals 2010 (meaning I have only played in locals and districts) so I was very excited to play against some great competition at the T2 only. I also didn’t know if I would play Redemption again after getting married so I hadn’t touched my cards since early December until 2 weeks before the tournament. With all that in mind I had a lot of unfinished deck concepts in mind that I wrestled to choose between for the tournament. I knew I wanted to take a different deck than what I played with most of last season (Judges – Magician/Assyrians). I played a good 8 or 10 T2 games in the 2 weeks leading up to the tournament against some stiff decks piloted by Matt Sinclair, Clift Crysel, and Justin Alstad. I felt pretty good about my chances at the tournament based on my test games. However, on Wed evening (only 3 days before the tournament) I stumbled upon a great deck concept that I knew I should use at the tournament. Based on my late requests to friends to test it out on Wed night and going to a concert with my wife on Thurs night I ended up not testing out my new deck at all. So I was really nervous my deck was going to be a complete flop based on zero playtesting. I made sure that I had 2 capable backup decks that I had tested more extensively in case I needed to switch 1-2 rounds into the tournament. I figured that with 7 rounds I had a little bit of buffer in case I made a bad deck choice.

T2 Multi – 14 players
I arrived with my wife (Emily) about 45 min before the tournament. I hadn’t built a T2 multi deck so I tweaked my 3rd T2 2p deck by removing dominants to get down to the 3 good and 3 evil limit. I was running Judges/Ahimelek and a solid defense with a fun twist.

Round 1: David Carlson (Nameless) , Jordan Alstad (Professoralstad), Kirk (Captain Kirk)
Both of these guys have placed in T2 multi at nationals so I knew they meant business. We all started with 2 LS out and proceeded to draw plenty more. At one point we had 14 LS on the table between the 3 of us. Unfortunately for all of us we drew minimal defense to protect our lost souls from rescue. Our game must have finished in 35 min with Jordan winning 7-5-5 (I believe that was the score).

Round 2: Justin Alstad (The Guardian), Nathan Voigt (The Hobbit), Gabe Isbell (Gabe), Kirk (Captain Kirk)
With 10 top 3 national tournament finishes (6 1st place, 4 3rd place) in T2 categories at the table between us it made for quite the formidable table on paper. Compared to my 1st round, souls came out more gradually and soul drought reduced our turns to hand thinning time. I made a crucial mistake by setting aside 5 heroes when I knew Gabe had Darius’ Decree. One of them was Ahimelek w/ Foreign Sword and another was David (and I had copies of Deborah’s Directive in hand) so I imagine I would had nabbed at least a soul with those.
I believe the game ended 4-4-3-2. I don’t remember who had what score except that I was in last.

Round 3: Matt Brinkman (EmJayBee83), Sam (no boards name), Kirk (Captain Kirk)
Matt has won in T2 multi at nationals before but his deck seemed more geared on humorous play than winning. I finally drew my defense and held Sam at bay early on but I didn’t draw any good enhancements. So I kept battle challenging against Matt (who had no souls) to draw cards. Eventually I got off my big defensive combo to lay waste to Sam’s hand. Needless to say – he never attacked me again. Matt banded to my defense to block Sam a couple times but he did let Sam get one more. My Ehud picked apart Sam’s defense after discarding several battle winners out of his hand. We hit timeout as well and I won by a soul, although I do not remember the score. Sam ended up placing still.

Craig Fountain won T2 multi and left us all scratching our heads as to how that happened. It was a very humorous moment. Good job Craig. However, we reminded him that big boys show up to play on Saturday, not Friday.

Round 6: Jordan Alstad (Professoralstad)
At this point I was firmly in 2nd place and half a point behind Wild Bill. Since of our first game, Bill and I had been sitting one chair apart from each other and moving up the standings together. However we started spreading out to make more room for games and Bill and I stopped sitting together. I wonder if that played into Bill’s last two games (we had been trading cards with each other as needed beforehand). I figured Jordan was using one of his always tough defenses and knew I might be in for a long game. The only 2 times we have played in T2 2p at tournaments our games have been extremely close. (Jordan won in timeout at the only other T2 only I attended – 2010, and we tied 6-6 in a district last year in which I won the tournament). I imagined this game would be the same. We both had great opening defensive draws. I did some early searching while I had a chance. Then he used a counter to my offense that gave me fits for a while. I attempted to counter his counter, only for him to respond with a counter to my counter to his counter.  My defense was stout and his offense didn’t have any answers so Jordan didn’t attack for the majority of the game. I took a few educated guesses on the build of his defense and made some RAs to exploit a hole that I saw. On my 3rd attempt I finally hit pay dirt and got rid of his powerful counter along the way. My offense never looked back from there and cruised to grab my 7tth during the final round. We had somewhere between 1 and 3 LS between the two of us with less than 30 min left so Matt was surprised to see we didn’t timeout. Final score: 7-1 me.

Round 7: Jayden Alstad (KoalaKingoFA)
At this point I was in sole possession of 1st place. I needed to score half a point to hold off 4 pursuers who were 2.5 points back (my +18 differential was by far the largest) – so I needed to not let Jayden get to 7 and I was golden. Gabe and some others needed to leave as it was really late so there were less games in the last round – only those that affected placing played (with the exception of Gabe, who left with 13 points). During my 4 years of playing T2 2p at nationals, I have had 1 bad draw in 6 games in 3 of the 4 tournaments. Through the first 6 rounds of this tournament I had yet to have a “bad draw” and thought I had a pretty good pulse on how my deck came out. My only hiccups were how quickly my opponents drew counters. This game Jayden jumped out to a quick 5-0 lead as my defense hid in my deck. Not only was my defense hiding but my offense was hiding as well. Bad combination when you keep drawing LS and the championship is on the line. There was easily 45+ min left in the game so I didn’t think I had any chance of winning the game, especially with his defense all set and ready to lock me out. Thankfully A New Beginning bailed me out and wiped out his large card advantage (at least 10 more cards on table than I had). On the redraw he grabbed Guardian before I could reach FA, which was a real bummer. I thought I was hosed at this point knowing he only needed the big 2 and he had plenty of drawing. However, the restart did miracles for my deck, both offensively and defensively. His draw was not as kind to him. Up until this point, I never went more than a round of two without drawing LS for my opponents to rescue. This time was different as I lasted several rounds without drawing a LS and Jayden was left cringing as I clawed my way back for 3 LS. I ended up drawing the big 2 to bring myself to a 5-5 tie before the timeout as I held on to place. Final score: 5-5.

Final result: 16.5 pts, + 18 LS, 1st place

Thanks to all for a great tournament! I was glad to be able to play Redemption and fellowship with new and old friends. I was also glad that many of you could meet my new wife. It was an extra blessing that my deck worked and God allowed me to place. Thank you to Bill and Matt for hosting and judging and to Jordan for hosting my wife and I on Saturday night.

Kirk

Round 3:
vs. Jayden Alstad
After two rounds, there were four people with 6 points, and three of them had the last name Alstad. Mitch was the lucky one to join Jayden, Justin and I at the top table. I knew that I would be playing Jayden, and I knew that my Zebulun wouldn't work well against his defense, so I tried my TGT deck. It worked about as well as it had vs Jayden the previous weekend, which was not well. The defense held up for awhile, but the offense was slow, and largely ineffective. His defense was unconventional (which is why I was not prepared to use Zebulun vs. it) but brilliant, and I give him credit for coming up with it largely on his own. He was able to break through the demon wall with a battle that included Deb's Directive and a couple Edicts if I remember right, and it took me awhile to recover. Eventually, the game kind of came to a halt when both defenses were too strong for the offenses, but I got the short end of the stick, which left me at 4 to Jayden's 5. Score: 4-5

Round 4:
vs. Mitch Stewart
I figured that since I had a timeout loss, and Mitch had a timeout win vs. Justin, that Mitch and I would basically switch spots. What I didn't realize was that there was a Dark Horse player who had been hanging out just below the top spots due to his early timeout win vs. eventual winner Kirk Dennison. So Jayden and his yellow Jersey got paired up with Mild Bill (he gets a bit more sedate when he is doing well apparently) and I faced Mitch. I used Zeb/Creepers again, and while my opening hand vs. Nathan was nearly perfect, my opening hand vs. Mitch was absolutely perfect. I got two sites to hide my souls, a Creeper+ Wolves, Gates of Hell, Goliath, Zebulun, and another Gen Hero. I put everybody down and walked in for a free LS. I never had too much of a hiccup getting past Mitch's defense, and his lack of early access allowed my Creepers to put a stranglehold on his offense. He did get the big two pretty early, which helped him avoid the shutout, but it just turned out that he didn't have an answer for me on offense or defense (as he stated below). Score: 7-2

Round 5:
vs. Mild Bill Voigt
Bill came off of a win vs. Jayden to take the lead after four rounds. I had played similar versions of his deck, and had always had trouble, but usually could come up with a way to win. His decked worked wonderfully, and LSs were sparse, and he had few answers for my defense. His Holy Grail threw off Zeb's groove when he converted my I Sammuel EC, so I had to rely on Jacob+RTC and Joseph+JBP. We traded blows when I sacrificed one of my Hormahs to his Siege Army in a Battle Challenge in which I used JBP to generate an LS. Bill was also able to give me some OT Souls, complements of his Assyrian Survivors. On my last turn, I was ahead 6-5, and Bill had an LS available (finally!). I attacked with Zebulun to see if there was anything I could draw, and Bill very smartly blocked with Assyrian Survivor and used DoU. The resultant capture produced a LS for Bill to rescue the following turn, and sure enough, he was able to tie it up to remain in the lead after 5 rounds. Score: 6-6

Quote from: Professoralstad on March 06, 2013, 11:08:40 AM

Round 1:
vs. Kirk Dennison and Jayden Alstad

It was David Carlson, not Jayden.

Kirk

True that...glad Jayden didn't have another snow day today and won't see my mistake...Owait. 

Craig's Tourney Report:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hpop3qFHcKY&safe=active

I'm so cute.. Round 1- Don't care who was at the table...I won.
Round 2- Annoyed that everyone played so slow, cause I'm so good. I tied.
Round 3- See Round 1.

Saturday..It was rigged.

Too all the little people who showed up...I won.

Thanks to TheHobbit for the Offense and Jayden Alstad for Defense. Thanks to Justin Alstad for suggesting putting in Darkness, probably made the difference in Round 1. Thanks to ANB, by far the best card in Redemption. Thanks to Matt for not judging any of the Multi-player games on Friday. Thanks to Bill for not playing on Friday.

Did I mention that I won and that everyone had to say "Count is better than Me"?  I'm sure therapists everywhere had their day booked with those guys. What a scar that will leave on them?

Do I remember the deck I played with? Nope

 

I guess most of my games have been accounted for but I'll do the other 3:

Round 1: Craig (T2-MP) vs. Me
Can't remember exactly what he was playing but you might as well assume the worst. I got a pretty decent draw and would've whooped him 7-0 but with his puppy eyes staring at me so intently I caved and let him get two. Final score: 7-2 Me 

Round 2: David Carlson
He was running a pretty standard T2 version of the deck which got me pretty quick with a first turn Jacob, Seraph w/ Live Coal, Isaiah band that I guess scared my defense into my deck and he got a pretty good lead. Fortunately, I eventually drew some defense to get rid of his band and it was kinda downhill for both of us from there. His Jar of Water from Samaria got a couple decent unique characters that would've helped quite nicely but it was only a matter of time before we were tied 6-6 and neither of us had played SoG. So, basically it was just a race to see who could get their's first. On his second to last turn he Water Jarred again which was risky for him but he got quite lucky. He would either hit SoG or get me closer to it and sadly, it was my top card... He finished his turn and couldn't get past my beastly defense that was very well setup and so my turn came around and I still didn't have enough juice to fuel the rescue but I had to try and couldn't get it. He took one more turn as I cringed my teeth and crossed my fingers, hoping all the way that he wouldn't draw SoG, but unfortunately........... for him, he didn't. It was my turn again and I could finally pull off the final rescue for a 7-6 win in my favor.

Round 3: Jordan Alstad (see his description above)

Round 4: Bill Voigt (see his description above as well) Disappointing 7-4 loss caused mainly by soul drought(which made his deck work quite well), a ET AoC that I couldn't recover from and that it ended while I had SoG NJ in my hand but didn't have any Lost Souls to target...

Round 5: MitchRobStew (see his description)

Round 6: Justin Alstad
I figured this was going to be a tough game after our game the previous weekend down in Rochester but after 5 rounds with my new deck that I had constructed around 2 in the morning the day before had playing very well and significantly better than I had thought it would. My defense came out fast and furious and was too much for Justin's inexorable draw to combat with. I believe I ended up winning 7-2 or 7-3 (can't remember if he had SoG at the end).

Round 7: Kirk Dennison(see his description above)
As he said, I had a quick start but couldn't catch up after an ANB. After the ANB the game was going slow and I couldn't draw enough due to a well-played 7 Years of Famine that stopped me from drawing on 3 Provisions. He was able to catch up with 3 rescues and SoG/NJ and we ended up tying 5-5 which was enough for him to win the tourney.

I believe I ended up in fourth which is the best I've done at a Type 2 only besides 1st in multi in 2007.
Great games and I'm looking forward to playing again next year.

Quote

I couldn't draw enough due to a well-played 7 Years of Famine that stopped me from drawing on 3 Provisions

I thought if the provisions were played before famine then u could draw? am i wrong?

I'm not sure but I think I played them after anyways.