The Dark Draft portion was my strongest format, I felt. I put the most practice into it, and I’m typically good at heads up drafts in any game I’ve played, so I came in with confidence.
My first Dark Draft round was against Paul Rietzl, one of the best Magic players in the world, and someone who I respected greatly throughout my Magic career. Right off the bat, I looked to push him out of any sort of strategy that allowed him to go wide, so I prioritized sweepers, evasion, and large, difficult to remove threats. Normally I wouldn’t do this because of how valuable 0-cost spells are, but I made an exception for Paul, as I knew that wouldn’t work if he’s just trying to overwhelm me. Things didn’t quite go according to plan, however, as the amount of absurdly powerful Wild cards kept on coming. I couldn’t pass up the raw power, so I decided to audible out of my initial plan, and just try to go bigger than he was going.
Going into the middle of the draft, I found myself with a big lack of spot removal, so I looked to cover that flaw. I never saw an opportunity to take good ones, though, so things started looking more and more like I lived and died by the big creatures and the pump spells to accompany them. I knew that Paul had a bit more evasion than I did, and his removal was a lot better, so as I went into the last few packs, I decided to commit to the inevitable: jockeying for position, then racing hard in order to end the game within one or two turns afterward.
During our actual game, it played out much differently. The positioning that the both of us were looking to get a hold of took much, much longer than both of us expected, and it ultimately came down to very nuanced, highly subjective judgement calls on my end, and his ability to get slight edges over what I was trying to do. Forty minutes later, I end up losing two incredibly close games, as my lack of experience showed. This was easily the toughest game of the tournament for me, and I picked up a lot from this game.
Unfortunately, the rest of the Dark Draft rounds were entirely uneventful, and this was where my tournament would come to an end. It really sucks to not be able to continue on with a good record, but my weekend was far from over. I had a 2017 World Championship qualifier to prepare for, and I opted to focus on that as much as possible.
As the night winded down, I immediately used the knowledge I had gathered from this tournament to look for new constructed decks to play. I knew what I had in my mind: A deck with cheap chip damage, and hard to kill big bodies. Some of the best players in the world were in my hotel room, and their help was the catalyst to what I had envisioned.
Having a hefty amount of untargetable and huge creatures that could also swing the tempo of the board was the basis. Your zero cost cards continued the pressure with damage that was hard to deal with. Graveyard disruption was key as well, and being able to do it for free, while also cantripping, further pushes the agenda. Lastly, free bounce spells completely punish your opponent’s use of their gold before you do, especially if you have initiative and are about to get in for thirteen or more damage.
Winds of Change is what brings all of it together. Most of your primary threats are untargetable, which also includes your own spells. Things like the heavily played Rage and Lash aren’t viable in this deck because they simply have no targets. The second mode of Winds of Change bypasses that, while also giving your threats breakthrough, completely crushing chump blocks and breaking the game wide open.
The issues with this deck were two-fold. Firstly, you weren’t faster than the burn decks usually, so you had to rely on getting Drain Essence, in combination with chip damage, to buy yourself time before you can burst them out. This was often tough to do, but playing extra carefully and maximizing each turn you do have is key.
Secondly, you weren’t as good at stabilizing the game as the Kark life-gain decks, which simply out gained any damage you could deal past turn three or so. For every ten damage you would deal, they’d gain ten back, while also gaining a card. This is a losing proposition every single time, and you essentially have to come out firing from the get-go.
Luckily, the only player in the qualifier playing the Kark deck was Tom Dixon. So if I dodged him then I would be ok.
I ended up x-1 through the qualifier, and placing in the top four. I didn’t play against a single Kark deck, but I played a whole lot of burn. I exercised what I knew, and played very well against each burn deck, barely edging them out. In the top four match, I played against who many consider to be the best player in the world, Hampus Eriksson, in what was easily one of the best games I’ve played in any card game. One of the key turns in the game was my having a Steel Golem on the board, and on his turn, he just passes with his gold up. I knew that he had multiple ways to advance his board with multiple huge threats, as well as a decent amount of burn, but I was at about twenty-eight, which is pretty healthy going into the late-late game. I had no idea why he would just pass with gold up, except for him trying to get me to use my gold first. I tank on this play for quite a while, trying to wrap my head around it. I decided that one of two things were happening. He was either trying to bait me into using my gold so he can kill me, or he tried to chump-check me, knowing that I was clearly the lesser experienced. In either case, I felt that if I used my gold at all, I would fall behind on initiative, so as long as I had a large threat on the board, I could dictate the pace of the game, and having say over the pace of the game was much more important than the gold at the time. So I just took my turn, with neither of us using our gold. This wound up being the biggest play of the weekend for me, and I think that my restraint caused me to win the game. I was pretty happy about not falling for it, and our match, which wound up lasting a little over an hour, was easily the most fun and thought-provoking match I’ve played. Hampus is an amazing player, and I hope that I can play him again in Worlds next year.
While finishing in the top four isn’t ideal, Tom wound up making the finals, and I knew for a fact that I simply could not beat his deck nine times out of ten. I’m really happy he wound up qualifying for next year’s World Championship, and hopefully I can join him and many of the other players next year.
The entire weekend was incredibly fun, and every single person I met, including players, judges, and staff, were amazing. Epic is an incredible game, and I am more than happy to have gotten into it. Coming from someone who has a difficult time giving games a chance, I can say with certainty that next year’s World’s will be something to look out for.
Anthony has been competing in games for the better part of his adult life and is dedicated to improving his game, improving his community, improving himself as a person, and most importantly having fun and enjoying himself while doing so. You can check out his stream to find out which video game is the latest to catch his attention.