DMF Philly was this weekend and was probably the last major tournament before the Worlds in December.

As the format is still much the same for Worlds you'd expect it to be a good indicator of what's to come. In some ways yes, in some no. Before Worlds, Winter Veil will hit and that brigs ten cards to the game. Ten doesn't sound a lot, but ti turns out some of those Winter Veil cards are meta breaking and meta defining. Imagine right after HoA a set appeared with Chipper, Surprise Attacks, Timeslicer and Loklor in it...

The obvious big change up for Worlds is Wondervolt. Tyrande - Wondervolt - Ritual Sacrifice is the first truly viable infinite combo deck to appear. Actually, it's not just viable it's pretty obscene. Hitting those three cards by turn five isn't that hard. Hitting them by seven is a doddle. It kicks off at instant speed the minute the last piece clicks into play, and prior to that the two pieces to disrupt are the hardest in the game to disrupt aside from quests (abilities).

What does this mean for the meta?
Mazar is the deck of choice to run the combo, and he wasn't a slouch to start with. Stalling out to five to seven was part of the game plan for current Mazar decks anyway. What he's got is a much more reliable kill mechanism about two turns earlier on everage. Mazar decks really don't take a lot of early pain as between Sarmoth/Igvand/Parvink/Kulvo/Korthas you've a pretty solid defensive line up for the first few turns, and it lots of redundancy. Toss in Steal Essence/Shadowburn and even if you don't hit a protector you can handle their allies if not their hero. Eye of Kilrogg becomes an 4x, and the canny Wondervolt player will Kilrog you before he sets the combo in motion to get rid of any outs you may have.

What gets hosed by it? Just about everything current.

The Nathadan/Aleyah decks made popular in Europe didn't have so good a day of it in Philly, not one made T8. Nor will they for a long time - Wondervolt rains on their parade big style. Up to around turn eight the Paladin isn't looking to deal damage, simply contain the threats on table from the hero and allies. Suits the Tyrande player fine. Play an elusive ally, don't attack with it, play your two abilities then  Tyrande and combo off. The Paladin wont have anything up his sleeve to disrupt you, you wont have any allies worth killing. His standard protection of protectors + HoJ + Blessing of Freedom + Holy Shield doesn't effect the combo in the slightest.
Well, Blessing of Freedom does mean the Tyrande player has to play around it but it's not a very hard game alteration.
There's not a lot the paladin can do to improve his situation. Devotion Aura stops the combo i its tracks as is - but Tommodae and similar up the damage per packet to two so it's only buying time - not to mention Tyrande will be playing their own Chipper/Kryton/Krenig to get around enemy abilities. Consecrate in response to Tyrande coming in might clear the board of the elusive allies the deck plays and halt the combo - but if I were the Tyrande player I'd be ignoring those and playing Igvand/Sarmoth for their large health totals specifically to stop that. So it's down to playing cards like Burn Away to try and kill the combo pieces. That's really not a good strategy.

All in all, the paladin doesn't like Wondervolt.

What about Omedeus?
Well completely on the flip side to Paladin, this deck does have the raw speed to pile on the damage and maybe kill the Tyrande player before they combo off. Sadly, MAzar just reverts to the old game plan. Drop Korthas/Igvand/Sarmoth/Kulvo and recur them till Omedeus runs out of steam. And it does. The old problem was Mazar blew all it's tricks surviving the first five turns then had to tough it out for another three until the finisher came in. In those three turns the Omedeus player was just a lucky top deck away from killing Mazar. Now, after those five turns are up Mazar just drops the combo and kills Omedeus before pressure can be rebuilt. Omedeus was never a bad match up for Mazar anyway, now it just rolls over him - as currently built.

However, Omedeus has the saving grace of Dispel Magic. If you were going to take Omedeus to Worlds, you would be main decking 4x. It's probably the best way to disrupt the combo - instant 1 cost ability denial to take out a key component. Throw some Confessor Mildreds in the side and you might have enough denial to break the combo. Certainly a better chance than the paladin has. How will it effect your other matches? Dispel is harldy ever a dead card in your matchups. Rogue/Paladin have targets in Surprise attacks/Blade Flurry/Blessing of Wisdom but they're not game breaking. Dispel on Searing Totem is pretty good in the Phad match up though, same for Master of the Hunt in Hoot and Shoot. Sure, you'd prefer another 1 drop in most matches, but that's the price you pay for hosing Tyrande. Shame then, that Omedeus loses out to the Paladin/Warrior decks...

Gorebelly Twig
Combo grudge match. Do you get yours before they get theirs? Odds are...pretty fifty fifty. There's not a lot Gorebelly can do maindeck to disrupt the combo. Lowdown sits their Elusive till the combos ready and is untouchable, and there's no disruption in the deck. Equally though, there's not a lot the Mazar deck can do about Twig - Heroic-Heroic-Mortal-Mortal. Escape Artist one of them is about it. My dry runs pretty evenly had it between them, and there's not a lot the Gorebelly can side in. Defensive stance buys a turn or two which could be enough to clinch it but ultimately is matched by Diplomat fetching Tommodae. Mildred/Burn Away are options, but they're expensive and detract from the deck even more than in Omedeus. As to the Jaton variant, I haven't tested it but suspect Manhunt/Chipper brings things more in favour of the Twig deck in terms of combo disruption but you lose the aggressive early allies that win you matches versus other decks.

Gorebelly/Jaton Combo and Bulkas/Fillet Cruelty
They're all dead in the water. They take too long to get going, by which time Mazar is laughing at the small amount of damage you've done waiting for your Wraith Scythe whilst he's mid Tyrande loop. The wall of protectors slow them down long enough for the pieces to fall in place and there's no disruption available aside from the tricks mentioned above. So, pretty much the same except without the capability to combo off for the kill yourself.

Hoot and Shoot variants
Not good either. Annoyingly I had a Kana deck similar to the Philly top 8 ready for Worlds. Eschew the typical ally based strategy and make a really big Steelsmith. People forget Hunter sits between Rogue and Warrior in terms of weapons and weapon pump items. Alas, not to be. You're busy buiding your board and pulling away in terms of board advantage from their protectors setting yourself up for a nice ride into the late game when the combo comes down and you've no answer for it. Down you go. Beating them around the face with a 9/7 Fury is all well and good when you finally kill that last Sarmoth, but not much use if the next turn they drop Tyrande and infinite out.
What can be done to the deck to tweak it? Chipper/Mildred are your disruption ally picks, but they fall to Essence/Shadowburn easy so you have to save them for your turn four play in its entirety. Trophy Kill is worth considering, but I found that trying to kill Tyrande as she comes in to stop the combo only works if the Tyrande player isn't wise to it. If they are, they'll just ensure there are two allies on the table before they drop her leaving no room for Trophy Kill to do its job.

Rotun/Daspien
Not bad, again you're fast decks so you can come out the gates and try and go for the throat before the combo happens. Around turn four you can hold three resources back for Kick/Torrent and hope your better board will carry the day. It's not an awful matchup, and Daspien probably has one of the better records versus Wondervolt of the current top decks I've tested. Moving to 4 interrupts and Mildred/Chipper after the side slows you up but the Mazar deck does so little damage before the combo it's really not a problem.

Phad
Slower version of Omedeus. Main decking 4x Purge, 4x Chipper gives you a reasonable chance of making sure the combo never happens. Phad hasn't been doing to well recently but its great strength is it's a survivor. I wouldn't be surprised if it came out of this as resilient as ever as unlike many of the decks above it does have decent disruption options that don't hurt to maindeck.

Ozzati
This is my current favourite versus the Wondervolt. Ozzati doesn't like a heavy solo dominated environment, but the meta has moved away from that hence a good showing in Philly. Most importantly versus Wondervolt, Fizzle is main deck worthy and Dampen Magic in the side offers a good way to stall till a Chipper turns up. Right now, I'd be looking at Ozzati for Worlds. Especially given thos solo decks it hates are hosed by that other meta defining Winter Veil card...


Hard Packed Snow Ball.
Warrior/Rogue/Druid solo got owned by Nathadan thanks to HoJ. Daspien/Gorebelly could sometimes eke it out thanks to Rak - but locking their only damage source out of the game for two readies was pretty huge.
Now everyone can do it. Okay, it costs one more, it doesn't draw a card and can momentarily backfire on you.
But ultimately I can see this one card being the reason you wont be seeing a lot of Rotun/Daspien/Gorebelly/Bulkas/Fillet/Jaton/Telrander at Worlds. Every deck will be running 4x HPSB in the side board, and it pretty much crushes those decks. It's not very nice versus Paladin either when it gets thrown at Tewa.

Multiple seperate damage threats will be the decks doing well at Worlds.
HPSB locks down large threats long enough to swing games, whilst Tyrande chucks out lots of 1 damage packets whilst protecting itself from single target threats.

I put the 'blame' for this squarely at the arms race between abilities swinging heavily back in the favour of abilities after DP/HoA was so anti.
If you look at the 'answers' to the Wondervolt Combo, many of them cost three or more. Chipper, Mildred, Pain Suppression, Trophy Kill, Defensive Stance, Burn Away etc.

That's not good enough. Many of them are specifically in there to counter the cards in the combo deck and are useless versus other decks. Those that aren't tend to lose resource advantage to play them - the price of ubiquity.

Those decks I rate as having at least decent chances - Omedeus, Phad, Ozzati - are the ones that can not only run Chipper/Mildred as part of their existing strategy but also have access to one cost disruption cards as well. Holding one resource at the end of your turn is miles apart from having to spend three during it. It's quite a difference tempo play, and what gives them the chance.

So, I totally pulled a Ted Evans at the DMF. Odds of him reading this are slim, so I can get away with that comment.

At least I beat Stefan's Boris in the final round of constructed to make day two. Ha, sucks to be you Brightbeard.

I could do a step by step breakdown of everything that went down during the DMF, I could report the matches, I could write up the Daspien list for critique and comparison to Van Der Laan's which top 8ed.

I'm not going to though. Suffice to say, I made a switch to Daspien as it had the much better matchup versus Paladin thanks to Rak + Arcane Torrent. It didn't work out. I lost strength versus other decks, Shadowfiend Priest in particular which wasn't a good match up to start with.
I hadn't playtested it as much as the Rotun deck for Nats.

I turned up, got paired Priest - Twig - Priest. Twig was the one deck Rotun lost to. I drew some awful hands.

So I went down in flames, only pulling it back from 0-3 to 3-3 and the second day by the skin of my teeth. In hindsight, more testing was an absolute must and would have revealed that it had weakspots tier 2 decks could exploit and  the capability to pull some absolutely craptastic opening hands.

Next day, I was in the second from last draft pod. Now, I went in thinking I'd take it serious because it was my first time drafting  Hoa, Hoa, DP, FOO in the 'wild' and thinking if I 3-0ed I might t16. Not impossible, I'm a good drafter and hopefully there'd be some not-so-goods on my table unlike the pod from hell.

Well sure. Out of the seven in the pod, turns out only three or four had drafted before. Job's a goodun I thought.

Packs gave some really bizarre signals, bombs getting wheeled, somebody rare drafting, someone ripping every low cost ally, someone switching twice...

In the end, I actually drafted a pretty nuts deck. Devilsaur + 2 bows + Sonic Spear, 3 decent six drops, 3 decent fives, 3 fours and bunch of quality twos and threes designed to stall out the game but no 1 drops to speak of. I was pretty happy I was going to at least 2-1. First round, I meet one of the other drafters who seemed to have a clue. What do you know - he had a pretty nuts deck too - except his was Horde Rush and the kind of deck you can only build when three Zorms wheel...
Ah nuts. Made him play the third game and nearly brought it back, but not to be.

At 3-4 I desicided to knock it on the head and call a bad deal a bad deal. The iPod (Gadgetzan to the US readers) challenge started, and I figured I might give it a go. People were billing it as draft so I was confident, turns out it was sealed. Oooo, not so good.

Well I registered the packs I opened (2 HoA, 2 DP, 2 FoO) and sniggered at the absolute pile someone else was going to get. Shadowfiend, but nothing else to support priest, Sunfury bow but nothing outstanding in any of those classes and Lock was pretty useless. An fairly even split on the allies of mediocre. About the only redeemer was a Norrund. When we came to pass packs, I passed it to the guy I'd travelled with. Sorry mate...

The one passed me was fair. Nothing absolutely exceptional. Class desicion was fairly easy as everything sucked and the only two weapons were Sonic Spear and Shanker. No kill spells in Lock, and Mage had only Arcane Missiles and Fireball. No forms for druid. Warrior it was for the hit points. Horde because the curve was marginally better. Would have liked to have had the Undead hero from MotL as Dramla would have been a bomb. As it was, nothing else specified race so Bulkas it was for the hit point and probably most useful flip.

Here's the sealed deck I ended up with...

Bulkas

Katali Stonetusk
Jazmin Bloodlove
Scout Omerta
Field Repair Bot
Brigg
Voss Treebender

Mias the Putrid
Guardian Steelhorn
Snig Feralsnout

Boneshanks

Nala Stalks-The-Night
Ophelia Barrows

Ashergi
Sister Rot

Drusenna the Vigilant
Bes'iah
Vanda Skydaughter

Kiana De'nana

Sonic Spear
Deathdealer Breastplate
Golem Skull Helm

Rend
Victory Rush
Lie In Wait
Malfunction
Shattering Blow

Battle of Darrowshire
One Draenei's Junk
Hidden Enemies
Counterattack!
Chasing A-Me 01
Finkle and Einhorn at your Service!

Lack of more than one weapon and no Sunken meant I had to play the Repair Bot just to get my Sonic Spear back if they canned it. It actually works out cheaper than using Sunken, but it's bad card advantage. Sonic Spear is one of the best weapons in Limited, so getting it back was nice. Similarly I'd hoped to use the helm and breastplate as interference for Malfunction.

The quests were pretty good, two recursion and decent card draw.
The ally curve was more bottom heavy than I would have liked, but the only Horde I wasn't playing was Dramla, Silvermoon, Korringar and Tanwa. Tanwa just isn't worth it, he's too easy for the opponent to take out. I was less than happy at playing Bes'iah, but it was that or Korringar and I figured I already had a seven drop so didn't want to extend too much into rowing just to hit seven than neccessary. Despite what some people commented at the end, Sister Rot and Bes'iah weren't there because of the hate - they were there because they were all I had.

What did work in my favour was the lower drops were heavy on the Protector/Stealth. This meant I was consistently choosing what trades happened. I suspect that was what did me well. It's not something I'd try and draft for - you're much more likely in draft to meet classes like Lock and Mage that make a mockery of allies like that.

Anyway...

Round one was versus Fidel playing Senzir
I win the die roll and open with Voss. Early turns see some ally trades where I'm pushing through one or two points of damage a turn by making sure the trades are in my favour to leave one ally left. Of course it doesn't all go my way, and Fidel puts out some guys I can't simply trade away. Bulkas gets his Spear and has to do the dirty work himself, but in the end Senzir is slowly being worn down. Time is called in Fidel's favour. He's cleared my board on his, leaving him in a good position to sweep in for lots of damage. End of his turn, I Chasing Kana. On mine I make Sister Rot, smack him for four with the spear and blow my resources for Kana. I've got enough to kill him next turn if he attacks me, not being able to kill me. If he trades with my allies, I win on life totals. Good game, but just slipped away from Fidel thanks to my decent start and a cheeky Rend being dropped on his Hero mid game.

1-0

Second game Jaoa playing Yanna Daishan
This is fairly brutal. Looking at my notes, Bulkas didn't take a single point of damage and Joao was killed on turn nine. Jaoa won the roll and laid a one drop. I made Jazmin and took it out. He made Rhone, I made Snig. And that's how it went. His was a fairly defensive deck leading to some big beaters, but it just got caught off guard by my deck that used Stealth + Voss to dodge his Protectors and make my trades happen

2-0

Peyman playing Nathadan
I win the die roll and lead with the Scout. Early beats and favourable trades see Peyman into the double figure damage with little on me and good board presence. He then drops Gauntlets of Vindication followed by the Unstoppable Force. At this point it starts smacking by board presence off the table with the hammer and a Gahrunt making trouble. Whilst he's taking damage, we're both depleting our hands and having been the person doing this often enough I know it ends up with him nearly dead but smacking away at my hero whilst I try to top deck an answer.
Before we get too far down that line, I've a decent hand. I'm staring at Drusenna and Kana, Malfunction and Sonic Spear. Now I could play the Sonic Spear and hope he has no item kill as I can't swing it the turn I play it at the moment. He's got a Sunken open, so even if I can the Force it'll come back.
See, here's where I think experience comes in. I know there's an awful lot of people who'd make the Spear and hope for the best. Problem with that is if he blows it up you're dead in the water with no way to recur it. Malfunction merely blows his Gauntlets up, which whilst bringing you closer to destroying the Hammer from your Spear still means you eat it for a turn.

My play order was Drusenna - Malfunction - Spear.
That way I forced Nath into Drusenna keeping the clock on him (put him on 17 taken) whilst I ate Gahrunt (for my first damage). Next turn, I row and blow his Gauntlets with Malfunction as he still has four open. He doesn't recur them so I simply take five to the face. Next turn I make and swing the spear in the same turn because I can see he's not got the resources to Malfunction me as I come in.
By taking the swings to the face, I waited till I could be sure to knock his weapon away without him doing it to me. Worst case sceanrio is he destroys my weapon and takes his to hand on his turn, I play Kiana and he's one hit from death just to take him out. Best case, he has no item kill and I simply knock his hammer off again when he equips it.

3-0

Karl playing Mazar
Last round was pretty tough even if the life totals at the end didn't show it.
This time round - not so tough. I curve pretty well - and fortunately for me I manage to take out Gallandra straight away with Rend. She could have made life exceptionally difficult for me as there was very few ways for me to kill her and locking my guys down would hurt my favourable trade strategy.
I took a few dings, but Mazar went down fast thanks to a string of big guys he simply ran out of kill spells for.

4-0

Chris playing Indalmar
I'll admit there were some fortunate top decks in this one. Rend at the end of his turn to kill one dude at the start of mine, then top decking the Victory Rush to kill his other was probably the most unlikely. I pretty much hit the Stealth curve all the way up and the game slipped away from him one turn at a time in multiples of three damage as Snig snuck past to face him each turn. He'd got a Berserk down for some really impressive damage by the end but it wasn't enough to push through and kill me so he ran into Kana Kamikaze style.

5-0

Axel playing Morova
By this point I was the only x-0 and aside from Fidel and Peyman hadn't felt threatened and even in those I felt I was in the driving seat most of the game. Now, I was sure to top four and get an iPod of some flavour. We still weren't sure exactly what the prize structure was, so I figured there might have been something to play for. I also reckoned that even if I beat Axel he'd end up t4 as well. So it was fairly relaxed as we headed off.
Well, turned out to be the longest and hardest fought game all day. I'd lost the die roll and had an appaling hand. No one from him. Repair bot was my one play. No two from him. My two was Brigg. His three was Veshral, I lost first blood.

My response was to send the Bot into Veshral and play Lie In Wait.

I'm telling you, nobody expects that play.

He hasn't played a lot of cards and his damage total is creeping up. Then bam, he heals for 10 off Healing Touch, Nynjah's my Helm and all of a sudden his board is better than mine. I drop Ophelia, abuse her ability to take a couple of his out partly thanks to the flip on Bulkas and things are looking better if not brilliant. careful play around his Chasing A-Me meant his Nynjah is eaten before it can be recurred. Things are swinging back my way when his Ophelia turns up, kills mine and proceeds to eat her. The balance turns again and we're both sitting on around ten taken with him on the better board. I drop some allies and get nervous because I can see I'm nearly in Morova's flip range. That's nasty as it'll take away half your remaining life in one flip. If they've got decent allies on the table they can sacrifice a turn to effectively kill you by going for the throat.
Fortunately, the Sonic Spear turns up just in time. Combined with the Helm I manage to take some of his guys down for minimal loss and start to build mine back but there's still no answer to his Ophelia. Well, eventually I get lucky and top deck the Deathdealer. It's the only game I've not rowed it, but equipping it gave Bulkas just enough to one-shot Ophelia and open the gates for my paltry army to ping away at Morova.
Good game, was touch and go till the end where we were both top decking looking for answers to a tricky boar state.

6-0

Pretty good for a random pile of cards. As I say nothing really stands out as something that 'won' me games. Stealth on Snig, Nala and Ashergi was darn useful, but only really applicable if you maintain the board presence to actually get their attacks off. Sonic Spear was good when it decided to turn up, but also prone to getting smacked away with the first item kill they lucked into. I might have gained a bit of appreciation for Stealth in limited, but really the only thing I learned from this was that funnily enough if you can maintain board control without over extending on card resoures - you win limited games. A drop every turn is good. Dealing damage before you trade is good. Taking out two of their cards with one of yours is good. Having enough quests to fuel a hand past turn seven is good.

Who'd have guessed all that?

So, you've bashed, sliced and fried your way past Geddon. You're halfway there.
Hopefully you've got a bit of board presence, your decks are ticking along nicely with the card flow keeping you in options and no-one's been killed. Ideally, you've stopped every Hotter than Goo landing, and haven't taken much pain.

Geddon's a bit of a reset, so it's not unusual to lose quite bit in terms of allies and health in taking him down. Fortunately next it's...

Shazzrah
Shaz is probably the easiest boss and a chance to get some breath back. He doesn't bring any allies to the table, he doesn't attack for big damage and his flip is hardly devastating. It's his rune that will cause you trouble.

If you took too long on Geddon, you'll have a horde of small allies to deal with - no different from usual except the majority of AoE effects wont help you here as they're ability based. Again, Panax shines here. Panax is the best method you have here to clear them out the way. Rammsteins/Flamestrike/Arnold Flem are alternates but wont always completely clear the field. You really can't really on Breton/Elithys as they'll get killed before they trigger.

Secondly, this is when a canny Core player will Hotter than Goo you. The vast majority of your interrupts don't work and if you haven't prepared that's one hero utterly reset and if the core player chooses wisely that's game. There's a couple of tricks to try and play around that. Silent Fang, Spellbreaker Shield and Tyrus Shenaven. Interupt capabilities not tied to ability cards. Of course unless you're playing Victoria Jaton the MC player will see them coming and try and sucker you out by playing other abilities/destroying them. Not much you can do about that, other than hope to kill him in one turn before the Goo turns up.

Of course, whilst all this is going on not many heals will be coming from the healer - again. Hence why it's kind of important not to enter Shazz too close to death. At least this time round you can use item/ally/flip based heals.

Generally, we try to last out Shaz as long as possible before killing him in order to rebuild a bit from Geddon or any Hotter than Goos that stick.

Sulfuron Harbinger
Again, not the most challenging of bosses but quite a grind, Sulfie takes quite a beating to get out the way. Your allies generally have to take a back seat in this fight, it's not worth wasting them on the MC allies so they do the odd point of damage or two to Sulfie. Who of course will be using the Healers to keep himself alive.

The Healers are the priority, shame there's so many of them. Get them out the way fast and you'll make progress. Let them hang around to long and you'll get bled by Sulfie and the flipped allies. Their own high health doesn't make this easy. Rogues Blade Flurry, or removal abilities such as Vanquish/Shred Soul are pretty good - and to be frank there aren't many better targets to hold on to them for in the latter cases. About the only thing in the course of the Core more dangerous that's an ally is the Molten Giants/Destroyers once the runes are adding up.

Sulfie's one of those boses it's not a bad idea to keep locked down with HoJ/Frost X/Cyclone/Gouge etc. Most MC players flip him early or save an Inspire till now, and then he's beating someone in the face for 8. Taking him out the game for a couple of turns is pretty useful.

Odds are you'll be stuck on Sulfie for at least three turns, then it's

Golemag
Golemag is where many combinations can come aground. He's always got two protectors unless you can lock them down with Polymorph/Freezing Trap or similar. So your two biggest attacks are unlikely to connect each pass round. He's got a lot of hit points so he takes a while to go down. Usually taking out one of your big hitting allies each turn just from his inbuilt flame effect.

Just like Geddon it's a good idea to do enough damage to avoid the flip. If you can't, take it on the chin of a hero. Otherwise, you'll lose allies in the run up to Domo.

Even if he isn't flipped Golemag deals out a lot of damage each turn. Five from him, and two sets of five from his dogs. So, yeah Polymorph/Roots etc to save you some pain isn't a bad idea.

Where it all goes to pieces for many people is they just haven't got the resources left on table at this point to beat their way through those hit points before someone gets eaten by dogs. Or they're running low on cards and no-one's got the stops for the dogs so a few turns of fifteen damage each takes their toll. It's another slow fight like the previous two - except this one's got some teeth to it so you can't let it try and drag the game long. Throw everything you've got at Gole save for your remaining AoE. You'll need that in a minute, but you wont need much else.

Majordomo
Domo is pretty easy if you've rigged your hands versus him. Rip off a total of three points of AoE as soon as his allies appear and you're set. His random coin toss is as the start of the turn, so wont be able to stop you clearing his board.

Ideally, a Molten Giant or Molten Destroyer will have been revealed when Gole died. Seems pretty odd to wish for the most dangerous allies, but what you want is to wipe every ally out except for one. Keep that ally controlled via armour/Frost etc and you can build up your hand/board presence to face Raggy after throwing everything at Gole just a moment ago.

When you're ready kill that last ally and go to Raggy.

Of course, sometimes things don't go your way and no giant is revealed. Do you blow them all straight away and progress to Raggy without recouperating, or try and save up? I say the former. If you hesitate to try and rebuild, the Core player takes the initiative and can easily deal out more damage than you'll take from Raggy unprepared. Worse, the initiative can swing their way leaving you enable to flip Domo the turn you want forcing another turn of pain. Get it over with right at the start.

Equally sometimes you're not going to have the resources to simultaneously take them all out. Healers are a priority take down as ever, but odds are you'll have to beat your way through the Protectors first. Try and get it over with as quickly as possible if you can, but without AoE you'll probably take a considerable amont of damage on both your heroes and allies which can leave you weak for Raggy. I'd suggest pulling ever bit of card draw you can out of the bag to try and dig for those AoE cards.

Raggy
Kill Raggy before he has three turns.
If you can't, you're dead.
Ideally Domo is flipped in his turn, Ragnaros appears submerged. That gives you a turn to build allies and equipment as much as you can.
Then, unleash hell for leather on him as soon as he pops up. Throw in the kitchen sink. Raggy doesn't do a lot on the defense, Elemental Fire is about the most devastating thing he can do on your turn so long as you stay nine or more health from death. Because of Elemental Fire, attack with your weakest allies/effects first, building up to your most powerful. Then play new allies.
Otherwise, Raggy will Fire on your early strong attack, probably kill your guys and save himself the attacks from the weak ones.

But in general Ragnaros' threats come from his turn. Even if you lock him down with a Cyclone or HoJ, he's still got enough resources and abilities to comfortably kill a hero. He'll try and take out the hero responsible for the most incoming damage.

You get your turns. Throw everything at him again. He'll have his turn and will quite likely kill another hero.

You're down to one or two left. You really, really should have killed him by now but you might be able to just squeek enough if you'd got him low and still had some threats on table. But generally, he's going to kick your arse his turn, submerge and it's game over.

You can't rely on the team having more than two turns in which to deal out the fifty damage neccessary. Save a lock down for Raggy, and you can hold any remaining interrupts for his kill shots - but accept you're probably going to lose someone in the take down.

And there you go.
How to take down the Core. If you can remember all that just from reading it, you're some kind of genius. A much better way is to play through it a few times, and you'll be able to see where I'm coming from for the various bosses.

Which three classes do I think could beat MC as a three some?
Which faction?
I've got some thoughts on that, but that can wait for another day.

The puns just get better.

Lucifron
So first up on your magical mystery tour of the Core is Lucifron. He's a bit of a push over really, Luci shouldn't give you any hastle.

Ideally you want to kill Lucifron before the end of his third turn, in order to avoid taking 6 damage to every hero. Letting it slide by a turn so you take that damage isn't actually a big deal, generally the healer will be able to catch up on the main target and six damage on the other heroes isn't a worry. More than that though and you have problems.

Lucifron doesn't actually do a lot, he's actually a set up for the next few bosses. Dealing six damage across three turns shouldn't be a problem. Because Lucifron has very few resources to play with, he's only going to be able to kill allies/abilities/items one by one. That means you should be able to make the damage stick - provided you've built decks that actually think about dealing damage in the first few turns. Hell, every deck playing 4x Apprentice Merry or 4x Jeleanne Nightbreeze is good enough to beat him. Oh, yeah in case you hadn't notice the vast majority of the cards in MC that deal with allies target - so Untargettables are good. Still, Omerta/Kalnuf is fine for horde. Alternatively, lots of cheap blast spells like Fire Blast/Lighning Bolt etc are good enough.

Lucifron's allies aren't a big issue. Their main purpose is to stop you protecting with allies when Lucifron attacks. Not a big issue right now, as Lucifron doesn't have a large attack. But if they survive to Magmadar they can be a real hinderance, so whilst not a priority straight away it's best to handle them whilst your mopping up the allies from the resource flip.

Speaking of which, the best time to flip Lucifron is in his third turn. That way, you generate three new allies but have the entire teams fourth turn to deal with them before they attack, and have four resources on line when Magmadar turns up. It's entirely possible to kill Lucifron in the teams first turn, this is actuallya really bad idea as you hit Magmadar low on resources and leads to a mauling. Better to hold out and take the extra pain from Luci and the extra resource flipped allies that hit the dog early.

Magmadar
Mags is fairly unsubtle as well. He has a very big attack, and will hit you hard.  He also runs a fine line in clearing your board of allies with his Rune and the Lava Spit speciality. We tend not to put out too many allies versus the dog (actually we run fairly ally light full stop) simply becaues they're going to get blown up. At twelve health with the heroes on four to six resources whilst dealing with him he can take a bit of time to wear down. Mags really doesn't like Hammer of Justice/Gouge/Cyclone, and isn't partial to Frost Shock/Frost Bolt either. Any of those buys you a turn to finish off the remaining allies from the death of Lucifron before collaring him. Of course Frost Nova would wipe Lucifron's allies, many of the flipped allies and lock Mags in place.

If you haven't got a hunter, keeping him tied up whilst you swing into him is probably a good idea. A couple of turns of +10 attacks and one of you is going to be in bad shape. Whoever is healing needs to clear as much damage as possible of everyone before the dog goes down, because Gehennas is next. Same as before, the best time to flip Mags is in his own turn.

Gehennas
Gehennas doesn't often kill anyone unless you carelessly killed Mags when one of the party was near death. Gehennas has a few resources to chuck around, and will deal out a small amount of damage. Nothing much you can do about that, and what's worse is you wont be able to get rid of any of it till he's dead. More annoyingly he's quite capable of stripping your hand. Gehennas actually casting Gehennas' Shadowbolt is a prime canditate for the party to interrupt. Did I mention it's a good idea to pack a fair number of interupts? Well, it is. Between the party it should be possible to have on hand a fair number of interrupts and always have at least one ready to go. It's not neccessary to interrupt everything the MC player does, but this is the first of the 'you really don't want to let that happen' situations.

By now each hero will have six or more resources. Taking down Gehennas' 11 health shouldn't be too much of a problem, but taking out his allies first is still a good idea. All it takes is for an Unexpected Distraction in the killing turn for him to live through it and heal, mitigating all the work done in damaging him. Similarly, there'll be a few allies lurking from Mags. It shouldn't have taken more than three turns to take Mags down so you've maybe six allies alongside Gehennas to deal with. Make sure you get them aout the way, Gehennas himself isn't going to be doing a lot of damage. Needless to say, any allies that came out of Mags on low health should be suicided into the MC players. There's no point saving them, Gehennas can board clear almost as well as Mags. All in all though, Gehennas is usually dealt with quite quickly, leading to....

Garr
Garr's where the MC deck starts getting serious and's often where you loose a hero. Garr spits out a lot of allies, and you'll pick up a couple when Gehennas flips his resources on dying. If you've got a Paladin, Consecrate right now, same if you have seven resources and a Panax. Save the Consecrate/Panax for this. Similarly, offload a Frost Nova and then back it up with another of Ozzati's flip/Thunderclap/Rammstein's etc. If you haven't got AoE, Garr is going to be real tricky. It's the first time you have to co-ordinate the takedown well. Kill too many firesworn too early and you'll flip him and he's then quite capable of taking down a mildly damaged hero in one turn. Oh - do not let him Inspire to flip himself early, that's a death sentance for someone if you haven't AoEed all the Firesworn away.

The Healer is back on line right now, so should be frantically spamming heals everywhere to get everyone topped up. The next Boss is Geddon who is fairly fast, then Shazz where things get very dicey. Garr can effectively be put on hold for a while with HoJ/Gouge etc but Geddon can't. So this is a good place to get ready for the next rush.

Of course, he's canning any ongoing abilities you have out which makes it tricky for some solo decks who find their source of dps dissappearing. That's why it's often just as Garr goes down those decks rip their Blueleafs to restock and try and rebuild. Also, you're about to lose a load of resources so playing expensive cards before killing Garr is a good idea.

Once you've stabilsed and set up, finish Garr off then progress to...

Baron Geddon
Geddon is real quick, or else you'll lose someone. Geddon is there as a partial reset. He puts you back to five resources, if you let him live a few turns he'll board clear your allies and if you're not careful he'll drop a ton of damage on you that might take someone out or at the very least make an easy target for Shazz.

Fortunately, there's no real reason not to simply pile everything into him and smack him out the way as fast as possible. Just be sure to take those last four points of damage out in one blow. Otherwise, there's pain all round. Geddon is one of the few places it's actually advisable to ignore the allies that appeared when the previous boss died and concentrate on the new boss. Take Geddon out in one or two turns and you will take less pain overall from those allies than you would in letting him hang around.

Right, that's the mid point and a good enough place to stop. I'll pick up the last half tomorrow.

Or perhaps, Core-Fu.
Don't all die at once from laughter.

Much delayed, and forgot about - something on Molten Core. Rather trickier prospect than Ony, which was a simple Tazo x2 + Grennan or Littori x2 + Graccus it took a while for us to get to grips with the Core rather than a single night of 'hey, this is pretty dumb'.

Okay, a big part of that is because you're going to meet a succession of different bosses who all do their own different thing (or not, Domo-Sulfuron and Lucifron-Gehennas similarities not withstanding) and no one strategy universally applies to them all. Two nice big allies will pound Magmadar into the ground fast, but aren't much cop versus Golemag. Also they stopped cheeky 2x or 3x of the same character.

I'm not going to talk about doing a 'light' Core run, as it's been shown that good decks placed competently should beat Luci + 3 + Domo + Raggy short of insane bad luck. It doesn't neccessarily matter what classes they are, so long as you have a bit of healing, a bit of AoE and a fair chunk of damage output.

Nope, I'm going to talk about the long haul - all of em back to back. Can you do it with just three heroes? Possibly, we've not done it but that doesn't mean you can't. There's a few basic strategies to use that aren't conceptually impossible to imagine a threesome performing, they're just much easier with four.

I'll do a step by step for each boss, but first of all some general pointers.

Graveyard recycle.
Blueleaf Tubers, preferably Poison Waters, is essential in every deck. Not a 4x, just 2x. Essentially, one or more of the decks is going to get in danger of decking itself over the fifty odd turns you might be playing. That means you need to recycle your graveyard back into your hand, but probably only the once.
Part of this means midway through you're going to have to very carefully consider what you put face down in the row if you have to, as after Geddon returns your resource row to five you really don't want to row your Domo answer say when discarding it will at least give you a chance to recur

Healing
One dedicated healer, or two decks devoting 50% of deck space to heals. There will be an awful lot of pain given out over the course of the game, unlike Ony where you could simply toss a few heals in as also rans the Core will see you needing to cast a heal every other turn or so, sometimes two in one turn. IF played well, the Core bosses can deal out very 'spikey' damage that means you might have nothing to heal one turn followed by a nearly dead the next.

Your heals have to take account of this, landing big heals when needed to take the wounded hero out of death range. No surprise, a dedicated Priest and usually Holy spec seems the best at this kind of thing. Use the off turns to fill up the hand and then sit there ensuring no-one dies. Not the most thrilling of roles but absolutely vital.

You could emulate this with two decks running between them a greater number of lower heals - say a Shaman and Paladin combo that deal some damage but also toss out Waves/Touchs continually. Whilst more fun for the guys playing the decks, even upping the total number of heals you're still not as consistent as a Priest who's just drawing into heals continually.

On a similar vein, if your damage is coming from decks that run their hero into allies again and again - it's worth considering tossing some Healing Potions in that deck. If you're not the deck the Core player is focussing on you can rack up a significant amount of pain before the healer has time to divert attention away from the primary raid target. Pop a potion to keep yourself in the safe zone and take the strain of your healer.

AoE
It was key in Ony, it's even more so in MC. The Core will regularly throw out a horde of allies that need to be dealt with fast before they swarm a hero. Sometimes they're part of the boss - Garr and Domo, sometimes they're formed from the resources that turn into allies. It's not unheard of to take down a boss on four resources to find yourself facing six or more allies plus any that come from the next boss.

Fortunately, the vast majority of these hordes are fairly low on hit points. Consecration will wipe out half those resource based allies and many of the tokens (very handy versus Garr). Frost Nova/Lightning Bolts/Adept Breton/Rain of Fire/Elithys Firestrom can be useful to whittle the field and many of the most damaging allies as they only have 1 health, but ultimately leave more alive than they kill. Still dropping a Nova as they attack partially clears the board, makes others easier to kill in the turn it buys you.
Panax of course is as ever the best solution, but finding the neccessary resources to use him can sometimes be an issue.

High DPS
Basically, from a standing start you need a deck capable of dishing out a lot of damage fast. Prime example of this is bosses like Magmadar. You wont have a lot to work with but if you'd take them out the game fast they'll pile up a large amount of damage. Resource wise it's easier to deal the damage to them than try and recover from it. Now, this can either be from a solo perspective like Warrior/Rogue/Feral Druid or sending in powerful allies/ally swarms. Doesn't really matter - but it should be persistent threats from table. Because you're going to have play for the long haul, trying to blast Bosses out the field with burn spells  from a Mage, Shaman or Warlock is just going to leave you out of cards.

Similarly it's not a good idea to use the Ony tactic to lock down the boss and whittle them away at your leisure. MC has a built in clock that you have to be wary of. As you let them pick up resources you store up trouble for yourself later when they put a swarm of allies on the field. More importantly, letting the MC player get to five resources is danger terrritory as you're open to Volcanic Lair simply killing Heroes and causing a wipe. Which leads to...

Always keep the momentum going.
Never, ever let an early Boss see six total resources if you can avoid it. Not only is that dicing with death due to Volcanic Layer but you're in Hotter Than Goo territory. That's a game ender if used wisely by the MC player and not interrupted by the Heroes. Further, the cost nature of the MC cards is such that keeping the resource lid at four or so means the MC player can play one minor effect plus interupt, two minor effects or one major effect. More than that, and they start tossing major effects and interuptting your interrupts - not good.

So, even if they've still got allies hanging on table, it's not a bad idea to take that boss out before the resources build up just to reset their resource clock.

Protectors
Either have a dedicated tank - at this point specifically a Warrior kitted out in a lot of armour packing Vigilance or run protectors in your decks. We often run both. Various Boss/card combinations can take a hero out in one turn. You need a protector or two on the field to intercept them coming in and save that player for another turn's potential healing. They don't have to be brilliant allies to do this, actually one or two cost Protectors such as Omerta/Tonarin/Igvand are fine. If they deal any meaningful damage it's great but the point is more to save lives. Still, Omerta in for the last two points on a boss has happened plenty of times.

Anyway, that's the general pointers. Tomorrow I'll start on the basic boss techniques.

So, 6 Honour points and you're in the World.

413 useless scrubs filling out my not-so-exclussive tournament!
Yay for greater inclussivity across teh hobby and recognizing those faithful players!


Actually, I don't give a damn. There's plenty of voices on either side of the argument and I've not bothered to comment. In Europe, you can probably count the number of 6 honour point holders in your head without stopping to pause. Most people over here will be qualifying the good old fashioned way - by beating the snot out of every man in their country in the Nationals. A few might squeek the ratings invite, but again lower tournament numbers compared to the States mean that's not so likely.

As for the Americans, well yes it's relatively easy to get the six honour points. On the other hand, unlike the Euro nationals I'd say it's highly unlikely a Yank would walk into his nationals knowing two thirds the people in the room. So, even with 400 odd people extra from the Nationals qualifiers relatively speaking it's about the same.

Does it make the blindest bit of difference? Not really. The same people will be making the cut to day two as would have otherwise, more or less. The top eight cut will pretty much be from Nats Qualifiers. Larger numbers do mean less variance about the top scores. The more their are, the less you can afford to let a loss slip in. But by now you'd hope everyone would be playing their top game anyway. Sure, their might be a lot of bitching about losing out on money thanks to tiebreakers because of tied win-loss balances - but the odds are if there were less people, hypothetically you'd have played one of those people with better tie breakers. 50/50 you'd have lost to them rather than beating that scrub you faced round one, and dropped a dozen places or more. Doesn't look so bad in that light.

Does it change the deck you'll be playing? Hopefully not. Nobody wins a big tournament with a glass cannon deck. Every deck winning has to be able to win consistently versus the vast majority of decks thrown at it. And the more dilute the tourney the more random decks you'll face. That glass cannon really isn't appealing. It's acceptable to rationalise 'my deck beats just about everything, it loses to purple cheesemongery though' even if purple cheesemongery is a relatively well played deck. 'my deck is so-so versus everything, it auto wins vs purple cheesemongery' isn't acceptable even if 75% of the field is playing it.

Been there, done that. You need to get lucky that you meet the purple cheesemongery in the first couple of rounds or you'll be bounced into the losing bracket whilst the purple cheesemongers are hanging out in the winners.

So Jack and 412 other no-names made it into Worlds Qualifications. After the various Nationals have come in and the final honour/ratings standings are calculated I wouldn't be surprised if we stand at 1000 people qualified to play.
So maybe 500 in the tourney if you're lucky. For those that like math that's 9 rounds of constructed before a clear winner in the first part emerges - at which point ~47 of ~92 6-3 will be in the top 100.

So if you want a sniff of the cash, X-3 and have good tie breakers. Top 8 cut after the draft by the way is pretty insane, I'm not going to publish those numbers as people will go mental.

Of course people could work it all out for themselves. The math is fairly simple, so simple I wrote a spreadsheet to calculate it. But I would wouldn't I?

This is a copy of the tourney report posted on the main UDE website for the UK Nats, saved here for posterity. All in all, I did rather well. Next up is DMF London. Might take Rotun out again, or there's a Shaman idea in the brewing. We'll see.

UK Nats 2007. First big constructed tournament I was going to play in for WoW, and to be honest I was expecting to do well. Not great, but well. Bit of history for those that don't know me – I'm a good player of card games. I've ten years of experience in it, I've had some respectable if not outstanding placings, I managed to break even on Vs. But I'm not a great player. I talk a good game, and I like to think I'm a very good drafter but bottom line my strengths are in playing the game and working with what I got. I'm not very good at predicting metas, I don't have a team of powerhouse players as support – basically I'm reactionary. That's meant in the past I've done well enough to make a good showing, but never had that deck that'll take me to the top.

 

This time round, I had some free time before the Nats so I figured I'd do a bit more prep than I normally would. Started right back at the FOO pre-release. This was the set that was going to make or break the UK Nats. Prior to actually seeing the entire set, feelings were that control looked to be seeing a resurgence over the mid game decks such as Phad or Gorebelly variants. Over the course of the pre-releases I went to though it became clear rush was coming back with a vengeance in FOO. Straight off the bat I saw cards like Shadowfiend, Broan and the resource destruction Blood Elves and thought – there must be an insane rush deck in there.

 

But I'm not a Priest player. Shaman/Hunter/Mage/Rogue are the classes I favour (and importantly have the cards for) – and Horde as well. I don't own 4 Leeroys, so don't bother asking why they weren't in my deck. Nothing Shaman received called to me that it was going to keep the dominance it had enjoyed HoA/TtDP. Yes, Phad got some nice alternate cards to play but fundamentally they were minor improvements to a deck that did not significantly gain an edge from its previous incarnations. Similarly I wasn't convinced Mage had got enough to propel it from the backwaters it had been languishing in since game release. On the other hand, the first time I cracked a Surprise Attacks it was clear Rogue had just received a meteoric step up in playability. 1 for partial Lionheart Helm and a pump to both weapons? That's strong. But at this time, what really called to me was the inclusion of a Draenei hunter – and survival at that. Traditional Elendril shenanigans, plus Draenei card draw engine plus Hootie? That looked an amazing combination. So I started messing about with it.

 

About this time German Nats happened and it showed that the Gorebelly dual wield deck had got an immense boost out of FOO and Rogues were indeed strong. Both decks were beating my iterative Hunter deck, so it wasn't hard for the lure of the Rogue to take me. I'd played a rogue in my WoW playing days and had always wanted to take one to good finishes. Here's my chance. After many, many, many iterations formed from relentless dry runs versus the various Nats and DMF decks, this is what I settled on…

 

Rotun Daggerhand

4 Steelsmith Joseph Carroll

 

4 Crippling Poison

4 Sinister Strike

4 Vanish

3 Blade Flurry

4 Surprise Attacks

2 Dismantle

 

4 Eskhander's Right Claw

4 Striker's Mark

2 Eye of Rend

4 Perdition's Blade

4 Timeslicer

3 Major Healing Potions

 

4 One Draenei's Junk

4 Big Game Hunter

3 Corki's Ransom

2 Sunken Treasure

2 Tundra MacGann's Stolen Stash

 

Side

3 Pickpocket

3 Grint Sundershot

2 Greed before Need

2 Jackknife

 

So, why Rotun and not Daspien?

Well, I feel whilst Daspien is in isolation a more efficient deck in dealing damage, Rotun offers advantages when considering the meta I was going into. What are the differences? Daspien has Rak, Rotun has Carroll, Leeroy. Main deck allies, I'd say Rotun has the edge. Unen could be included to mimic Rak but it's four times the cost. More importantly Rotun has Grint Sundershot – this guy is pretty dominating versus the other rogue decks or Gorebelly solo. Very rarely will they leave enough resources at the end of a turn to both Mortal Strike/Sinister Strike Grint and swing back on you as you attack in. It's effectively a turn's free attack if they failed to connect on their turn.

 

Flip wise, Daspien's is clearly better. It saves you a turn. Rotun's is not without use however. It can still be used to tag an incoming Leeroy, and there's neat tricks such as using it to complete Tundra MacGann's, lay a poison or kill an ally in combo with Devilsaur Leggings. But none of that matches killing their hero a turn early.

 

Finally quest wise, I'd say they're fairly equal. Swift Discipline lends itself well to combination with Counterattack (though I would play Standards and Practices myself) and Blade Flurry. On the other hand, Tundra MacGann's is just as good and in a high solo deck meta easier to complete. Corki's fits this deck perfectly, as often you'll stop at the four to six resources point as you frankly don't need many to keep the card flow coming.

 

All in all, going into a meta I anticipated heavily dominated my solo decks of one form or another, I felt Rotun had the better chances of carrying the day for me.

 

In a similar vein, that's the motivation behind the main deck Crippling Poison. And that's main deck not side deck. First turn Eskhander's-Crippling poison is a death sentence for any feral deck. And I knew there would be a fair few ferals played by the decent UK players. As it was, two made the t8 so on their own justifying its inclusion. It's also a pretty grim fate for the solo warriors and rogues. They at least can swing back when I attack in (unless I use Striker's Mark) until Grint comes in from the side, but it allows me to dictate when those mutual attacks are going to take place. Or, they're forced to accept a constant three turn deficit on myself just to keep attacking on their terms. Generally, that's enough to swing the games into my favour either way. Other than that, the main deck doesn't need much explaining. A simple case of rack up your weapons and pumps then go to town on their hero or any troublesome allies. Don't worry too much about incoming damage as the odds are you'll kill them before it becomes to much of an issue and a judicious use of a Healing Potion will keep you in the game.

 

The side might take a bit of explaining. Grint is already discussed. Greed before Need is there to counter other solo decks. If they use Healing Potion, Greed before Need effectively hands you the game. Otherwise, it can allow you to plug gaps in your own draws with cards they've discarded. Pickpocket was there mainly as hate against the Omedeus decks, it's a very efficient way to get rid of that annoying Shadowfiend and you might get lucky and take his backup too. It's also good versus decks that use Missing Diplomat, and in general you should be able to guess what a deck's mulligan condition is and strip that from their hand before they can use it. Jackknife was there just as a bit of added oomph versus any ally rush decks I might face – though ironically it ended up being the card that took me into the top four by just doing enough damage to Tyma before he ripped me apart the next turn.

 

So that's the deck. And here's how it went….

 

Round one – Chris Smithson playing Phadalus the Enlightened

Hadn't met Chris before, from his accent I guess one of the Scottish players I don't normally get to play against. Playing Phad I'm fairly confident, I've tested this match up a lot and even with FOO tricks Rotun puts out too much damage early on and pulls a swift one mid-late game just as Phad looks to stabilise. Funnily enough that's exactly what happens in both games. Early pressure, careful removal of his board and deploying large Steelsmiths means both games we get to Borovan/Magni with Phad taking hefty chunks and my own not so healthy. But at this point Vanish, kill Magni Flurry to you or simply strike your face and Potion mean that Phad goes down in both games without me taking a loss.

 

1-0

 

Round two – Tim Willoughby playing Phadalus the Enlightened

Tim I had met before. In fact some of our escapades are becoming notorious it would seem. Till UDE has an 18 rated Metagame page though you're not going to hear of them. Suffice to say sitting down next to Tim I was anything but confident especially as we'd never actually played each other, seeing Phadalus again after the last rounds fairly solid win made me feel better but Tim's tricky. You can read the write up of that game on the main UDE website. Suffice to say I take Tim down in two games. It has been pointed out I made a pretty gross play error that wasn't spotted by either Tim or the writer. I'm not happy about this at all, I wouldn't deliberately bounce someone I consider a friend and even inadvertently makes me sad. Sorry again Tim.

 

2-0

Round three – Andy Morgan playing Mazar

Again a face I know, though to be fair I suppose I knew two thirds the people in the room so it was always odds on I would be playing people I knew. Andy was playing Mazar and he confided he'd built it last night on a whim. Again, this was a pretty good matchup for me having tested against various Warlock builds I didn't feel anything was a major obstacle for me. Even more decisive than the Phad matches it's a case of stab, stab, kill Sarmoth, maintain empty board, stab, dodge late game allies with Vanish/Sin Strike to face. Andy good naturedly takes a 2-0 beating and I'm locked in for the draft already. At this point, I figured my luck was going to run out soon. I'd faced three favourable matchups back to back and hadn't seen a Omedeus deck that I was worried about.

 

3-0

 

Round four – Alex Mein playing Gorebelly

So I sat down expecting solo. It wasn't. Alex came off the gates fast with allies and caught me left footed having received a dodgy mulligan. That I had the die roll didn't help me. I never really get going and get swarmed. Game two, being on the initiative helped but I had a pretty nuts curve so I doubt would have mattered. Going into game three it's up in the air. Versus this Twig/Spear wielding ally rush old school deck I'm not so certain I've the advantage. This game draws out a bit, but ultimately Spear does for me when I have no answers for it after more than a little digging. I don't recall any glaring play errors on either side, the cards came as they fell and Alex played them for the win.

 

3-1

 

Round five – Stephen playing Daspien

Stephen got unlucky, being paired up against me in a rogue mirror match. Whilst he was hyping my play ability more than I thought absolutely true, I wasn't going to let on I'd deliberately rigged my deck for the mirror. I win the roll, compounding his misfortune. Not sure which way round the first and third games were, but I recall one was swung my dominating with large steelsmiths and the other what seemed a less than decent draw on his part. Both times it seemed the difference between running daggers on my side and swords on his meant I got the early pressure in. Second game he manages a devastating Vanish-Ambush-Attack that just tears my life total away and I enter a race I lost badly. I feel sorry for him that it was the worst point at which to be paired up. He badly needs one more to draft, I'm simply totting up the wins to try to secure a top eight.

 

4-1

 

Round six – Robbie Fergusson playing Kana Nassis

Robbie had beaten one of the guys I travelled with earlier so I knew what to expect. It's a pretty relaxed game as we both know we're drafting regardless of what happens. I'm also relaxed as the Kana matchup was one I'd tested a lot, and decided Rotun won too many times even going second for Kana to be a safe choice. First game sees a good curve for both of us, but my deck was pulling tricks at just the right time. Master of the Hunt powered Furys met with Vanish only to be stabbed in my turn and the damage Flurried onto Kana. Just as the damage level gets dangerous, multiple Potions bring it back to safe bounds and allow a kill shot on Kana. Second game I get royally served by big pets coming my way and equally big allies furiously pounding my face whilst I have no defence. Vanish just didn't want to show up for me and even pulling off double Potion didn't buy me enough time. Third game, Robbie mulligans into what appeared a horrendous hand. Slightly anti-climactic end of the constructed as Rotun coasts almost unopposed into the draft.

 

5-1

 

End of the constructed part and I'm very pleased with my performance. I was only looking for a 3-3 or 4-2 to get me into the draft where I perform better. As it is, a few lucky breaks have meant I've pulled a very respectable 5-1. Sadly, that means I was drafting in the pod from hell. Some of the best drafters in the country had also done well in constructed meaning I ended up sitting between Lammy and Paul, with Kevin and Stuart the other side of them. This was going to be a very tough draft, hardly the place for rare drafting…

 

First pack opened had three strong Horde drops, no decent equipment or class abilities and weak quests. The only Alliance card I rated in it was Gallhandra – who I rate exceptionally highly in draft. Wasn't much of a decision really, take Gallhandra and hope Lammy and/or Kevin take the signals and take Horde. Next pack from Paul was Alliance light, Horde strong but had a Blueleaf Tubers in it. So I figured I'd continue with the Horde signals and take the useful quest. I'm not normally someone who picks quests early, but Blueleaf can be essential to get the decent cards back into your deck and with Galhandra I might already be taking the games long. Next pack is still Horde strong, plenty of abilities and only Latro worth taking Alliance side. At this point I'm fairly certain I must have put either Lammy or Kevin into Horde and hopefully both. Not sure what Paul and Stuart are taking but figure one is probably Alliance. No items means someone's hoarding them, but plenty of class related cards going past. About seventh pick of the first pack I see a pack with both Grimdron and Corruption. So far I've built up a decent selection of 2/3 cost Alliance allies but haven't seen a 4+ alliance drop. I figure if they've made it this far it means no-one is taking Warlock and there's heavy Warrior/Hunter presence or similar. Further, highly likely Paul is in Alliance as I knew from Gencon he likes to take the big drops for late game beats. Anyway the pack finishes and I'm looking at a selection with strong early allies, decent quests, decent abilities. Overall I'm pretty happy, but want to solidify the top end of my curve.

 

Second pack opens and there's a Lady Kath who gets quickly taken. Over the next few picks a nightmare scenario starts to appear. It becomes clear both Lammy and Kevin were in Alliance as well. How Kevin managed that being fourth in a row I have no idea. On the plus side, I figured after Kevin-Lammy-Me Paul would be really hurting for allies this pack. Suffice to say only six cards from the dark portal pack make ii into my deck and most of it is spent hate drafting. Could I at this point have switched to Horde? Perhaps, but given the strength of my HoA Alliance I was very reluctant. Further, I feel most of the really good Horde draft cards are in HoA and Dark Portal wasn't so good for them so had already missed the boat on that one. Looking ahead, I probably had a FOO draft coming where I'd have good choices after Paul took the best. My plan was to draft allies like a mad man from that pack, wait for Warlock cards to wheel then try and balance it up with decent abilities in the last FOO pack which fortunately FOO contains many decent Warlock cards.

 

Third pack opens and there's not the Norrund I could have hoped for. So I take the Greenmother. It's pretty desperate but at this point I was starved of drops beyond two so needed so big plays. Well, this draft isn't so bad for me. Two Trogguns, a Kulvo and an Angrida later and I'm feeling okayish. An Immolate wheeled and I snagged a Death Coil before it got hated. My early game looks good from a stall point of view, and I've lots of cheap allies I can pump out whilst my Grimdron and Galhandra eat my resources up in keeping their board locked down. But still really lacking any decent long term plays.

 

Fourth pack and I have to smother the urge to jump up and dance around. Staring me in the face is a Chen Stormstout. Well, that's my late game sorted then. Chen doesn't quite end games on his own but he comes pretty close. As anticipated the pack isn't friendly alliance ally wise. Sal Grimstalker is decent and makes it to me, but Bitties and Porto are the only others to make it through. Meanwhile I scoop up a Jar Soul, second Immolate and Ultimate Triumph meaning I've a lot of ally kill to make up for my own lack.

 

In the end I debate between Dizzy and Mazar, deciding in the end that my health might be a resource I'll need to conserve whilst with three pets it shouldn't be too hard to get one into the graveyard for the flip.

 

Here's the deck I ended up running…

 

1

Grimdron

Piztog

Escape Artist

Death Coil

 

2

Galahandra

2 Latro

Aventhera

Porto

Eye of Kilrogg

2 Immolate

Corruption

Crimson Felt Hat

 

3

Kulvo

Parvink

Bitties

Angrida

Quick Strike

 

4

2 Trogun Smith

Sal Grimstalker

Jar Soul

Choker of Fluid Thought

 

5

Lady Kath

 

6

Breanna greenmother

Ultimate Triumph

 

7

Chen Stormstout

 

Leader of the Bloodscale

Blueleaf Tubers

In Dreams

TImbermaw Ally

 

I'd ended up with an Igvand in the side, which I brought in every game. Really should have just played him instead of Choker which got rowed every time. So did Breanna. Could have done with more quests but wasn't really complaining at the ones I got, oddly if I'd gone Horde I would have had more choice. Shame I didn't pick up a Corki's. But I was quite happy with the deck. There was some good early control, a mid game consisting of removing their field leading into a back breaking Chen. At the time, I thought this will be a 2-1 deck, lacking the late game punch I'd like.

 

Round 7 – Andrew Lam playing Kana Nassis

First game Galahandra in the Elusive and Aventhera in the clear work wonders at keeping Lammy ticking away to death. Ties my resources up to keep his largest threat locked down as well as keep enough open to stop all the attacks on Aventhera. Eventually the three per turn just grind him down. Game two he manages more pressure as double allies on a few turns is more than my Galahandra/Grimdron + removal can deal with. Eventually I manage to stabilise a bit and drop an Immolate on Kana whilst Troggun locks down his armour. Some good play from Lammy manages to clear near clear my board with a decent showing his side. Unfortuantely for him I'd been consistently building my resource row as I could see where the game was going. I brought Pandamonium and Lammy was left in a very precarious position about to beaten to death be a large panda with no decent attacks from his side. Lammy takes his first round loss and I'm feeling confident having just beaten the one person on the table I feared playing the most.

 

6-1

 

That was the end of day one. After game talk quickly revealed the nightmare situation had resolved. Lammy, Kevin and Paul had all gone Alliance as well as me. There was a straight 4/4 split round the table. I suspect Kevin and Paul suffered from alternately being the tail of that. Fortuantely for me, four people on the table had opted hunter. That's pretty insane, no wonder I never saw a single weapon save an early Silent Fang Lammy passed me. In hindsight, that so many skilled drafters all jumped into it and didn't spot it drying up beggars belief. It made me feel a bit more confident going into the next day.

Round eight – Oscar Gillespie playing Sen'zir

Oscar's pretty decent, but he was playing another Hunter so I figured he'd be dry on the actual crutch cards for his class. I don't recall a lot about this round other than his curve seemed fairly low. That meant I could get away with building my board fairly solidly. It seemed we played tit for tat quite a bit with him playing an ally for me to blow it away with an ability until I could lay something like Trogun and start a clock going whilst keeping his under control. Dropping a Corruption on his one drops was pretty nice when it kept occurring.

 

7-1

Round nine – Alex Mein playing something or other.

Sorry but someone walked off with my notes for the draft, so I'm going purely on memory and I can't actually remember what Alex was playing. Sen'zir springs to mind, but I'm less than 100% on that. I do remember it being a pretty jovial game and Alex mostly playing off a strong Horde ally base. Suffice to say, Chen appeared in all three of our games and he managed to kill it in two. Chen's almost a game ender but by canny play he showed it wasn't. Good job he did as it was a lesson I learnt for later. Still, I luck out and manage a 2-1 on him from winning the roll, and he seemed happy enough to let me get some vengeance from his mauling of me in the constructed.

 

8-1

 

New Draft, and feeling very, very pleased with myself. I just 3-0ed the draft pod from hell with a deck I personally felt was missing late game threats. At this point, I'm pretty much a cert for top 8, wanting just another win to absolutely clinch it. I'm grinning and laughing – I'm on top of the world baby.

This might have shown as I was drafting, despite being rather tired and suffering all day from bad after effects from the evening's meal. It was pretty amusing when I rolled up to the top drafter pod – the pod from hell, to find myself sitting between Lammy and Paul again, though passing the other way this time.

 

First pack opens and I'm determined not to miss out on late game threats like I did last draft. I figure having 3-0ed with Warlock the last draft, and the over abundance of Hunter's in the last I'll do my usual of waiting a while before commiting unless a bomb arrives. I certainly don't think another Warlock would be possible as they'd be hating me now.

First pack is actually fairly awful in terms of draft play. There is a big ally, Anika Berlyn. But every other ally is pretty dire and no decent equipment or bomb abilities. If I don't take Anika I'm going against my stated game plan, and if I do I'm not forcing Paul into anything. Oh well, think of your own deck first, others second as you'll be playing your deck every game and only half of theirs!

Second pick and Lammy has passed me Bone Bow. At this point I'm wondering what the hell was the rare he took over that. Or perhaps he's just signalling strongly to get me into Hunter so it leaves his class free. On past experience I know Lammy is a Mage drafter, but I'm not really thinking that much and just decide to hell with it and take the Bow. Good allies on both sides get passed to Paul, but I like Hunter just as much as the next guy and would be damned if I'd let that slide. Next pick coming round has a Liba in it. Okay, she's sub-stat for a five drop but if I perform my usual and end up quest light I'll welcome the draw. Next one sees nothing great so I take the Fortune. Next two picks are Arcane Shot, trying to freeze anyone else on the table who might be hoping they'd wheel. Amusingly, this time round big drops are circulating and it's the low drops that are short on the ground. Shame it was Hannah the Unstoppable twice though.

 

Rip the Dark Portal pack to see a Hootie. My current lowest drop is Ryn Dreamstrider so that was a wheelslam. Next one offers me Warden Ravella before a second Hootie. This was another point where yellow allies nearly made me fall off my chair laughing. Dark Portal ends up insanely good for me, I figure Paul's in Horde this time and at least the next two round from him.

 

First FOO pack and no Chen. Oh well. Norrund is almost as good. Lack of weapons other than the Bone Bow is worrying me a bit, but not greatly thanks to decent abilities and pets when a Warpslinter's Thorn turns up. The number of Hunter abilities being passed round puts me into believing no-one else is taking the pet-obsessed possibly scared off from last pods 4 of. Either way, some decent picks in this pack across the board lead me going into the second FoO pack with no glaring holes in my cards except no one drops and possibly another five or six wanted. Well, first pack offers a Neeka at the expense of passing some good stuff that I didn't really need. Well, I gambled. Next pack sees Paul pass me a Norrund, and the pack after that a Fugu. Pretty sweet, from here I grab a second Neeka and a Savina before the allies dry up.

 

So, here's what I ended up with

 

1

2 Neeka

 

2

2 Hootie

Shelly

Porto

Brother Rhone

Savina Greysky

2 Arcane Shot

2 Point Blank

Warp Splinter's Thorn

 

3

Tim

Warden Ravella

Ancient Bone Bow

 

4

Sal Grimstalker

Ryn Dreamstrider

2 Freezing Trap

Unwelcome Visitor

 

5

Fugu

Liba Wobblebonk

Rodrigo

 

6

Anika Berlyn

2 Norrund Grovewalker

Ultimate Triumph

 

The Perfect Stout

Your Fortune Awaits You

One Draenei's Junk

2 Raene's Cleansing

 

What that's not showing you is the 2 Take the Shots, the Readiness or the 2 Eye of Rends that also came my way. I was pretty happy with this deck, I felt that overall it was better than the previous even if it lacked some of the individually stellar cards the other hand. I was a bit iffy on the Raene's Cleansings, at best being four resources for two cards, but figured they might get used. Hootie/Shelly + Neeka is a pretty sick opening gambit if you pull it off, which is why I was quite happy to take them early picks.

 

Round one – Andrew Lam playing Ozzati

Poor Lammy. He's going into this on the back of too straight loses to me in Draft. Unsurprisingly he moans quite a bit about this. As I'd guessed by the end of it, he'd gone Alliance mage. Hating him out of that Frost Funnel and Arcane Blast seemed a good idea at the time…

Well, he wins the roll, locks my board and he wins. I go first up next and complete the reverse. We've taken a fair bit of time over this as both of us have decks that decimate the other persons board presence making it hard to push damage through. That card he took in the draft to pass me the Bow? Frost Nova. Yeah, he's got some board cleareres...Going into the third game he gets some early pressure with Scaramanga before I fourth turn lock it with Freezing Trap. Should have done that way earlier. At this point I believe a discrepancy in the damage accounting between us occurs, Lammy noting the 2 damage and me not. Goes another two turns and as no damage is being dealt we don't notice till time is called. Ironically time is being called as I pass the turn to Lammy. Well, that's a doozy. The judge watching sides in my favour meaning I'd get the last turn. Lammy appeals, Head Judge Ray Fong sides with Lammy. Of course whilst we're waiting for him to come the discrepancy in scores arises. Lammy is adamant it's 7-5 to him, I'm equally adamant it's 5-5. But frankly, I'd rather have a convivial game than raise a big issue out of it and sour things so let it pass before we have to get a judge involved. So 7-5 to Lammy with him on the last turn. Lammy has his turns, I completely lock his board taking no extra damage. I had a Norrund, but no point playing it as it would never attack. So I lose. Ironically, if Ray had ruled in my favour, I win. If I'm correct on the health scores, I win. And, if I win here I probably swap places with Lammy in the top 8 and get to the finals and hence free flight. Shrug. I'd rather have a game that's played out and all sides walk away happy and not sour my relations with Lammy than raise a stink. Despite pointing it out, I'm not bitter. Just an example of how the smallest things can have long reaching effects. Besides, in my mind I won that game :D

 

8-2

 

Round eleven – Simon Wood playing Dai'shan

I must admit, I made a complete idiot of myself this round. I was getting tired, but more importantly salutary lessons in just because several judges tell you a thing doesn't make it so. I probably came across as a right noob. Anyway, I botched Fugu in the first game trying to attack with an ally I just Fugued. Of course, if you're going to do that if you have to do it at the end of the previous turn in response to end of turn triggers. Anyway, Simon seemed pretty cool with it all. Game one I take the initiative and between protectors, Freezing Trap and Neeka manage to eke a slight ally advantage that allows me to drop Fugu safely to disrupt his attacks enough that eventually my board presence wins through. Game two, and pretty much the reverse happens. I make a bone head manoeuvre and at the end of a turn Arcane Shot a guy, who gets destroyed in response. I draw the card. Utterly thinking of a different games' rules on separate effects on a card here – it should have been a game loss. Ray's called over and kindly demotes it to a Warning as game state is not fundamentally altered as I was about to draw that card anyway. Not that it matters, Chen appears on the other side of the table shortly afterwards and I get to feel what it's like. Scoop. Game three and it's back to the touch and go between building board presence. Between us we have so many Elusive and Protector allies that combat decisions become a real headache. Turning point comes when he plays Chen. I ping it with Tim. My turn rolls by and I run Neeka into it then pass the turn. Chen tries to beat my face for the win, I ping it with Tim then Point Blank it with the last card in my hand. Chen bites the farm and Simon's board doesn't look so hot anymore. Few turns later and it's all over. Thanks to Alex showing me that Chen is not an auto-scoop and the warning for waking me up and keeping a cool head I pulled it out.

 

9-2

 

Round twelve – Keiran Thomas playing Fillet

Well, last round woke me up and good thing too as buy now it was clear I'd top 8d and hence was rather excited. The match against Keiran was purely to decide what the order of pairing would be. Keiran was playing Fillet and I suspected this was where all the weapons had gone. Both draft pods I'd seen very little item kill and hence was a little worried about this. It was after this match that my pad went missing, so details are hazy. We had a laugh. I won. That's about all I can remember I'm afraid. Think the first was close, the last pretty decisive.

 

10-2

And second place. 5-1 on both the constructed and the draft. Nothing I could do about the loss in the constructed, but did feel that the draft loss I probably should have won. Either way, it was a damn good showing for me and one I was fairly proud of. Even if I got no further I was off to worlds so mission accomplished for the day, and one of my best performances in a large tournament.

 

We posed for our photos, and had the genius idea of posing as our heroes. Yes, that's why look slightly less serious in our feature match write ups than other countries heroes. We already knew the line up and I knew I'd be facing Tyma and his Kitty deck. I was fairly confident that was a win for me. If I'd lost to Keiran I'd have been facing Stuart's Paladin which was an unknown.

 

The write up for my match with Tyma is on the main website. It was a barrel of laughs, Tyma's a fun guy even if he does consistently underrate his play skill. But I think after I won the die roll and led off with a turn one Eskhanders/Cripple he knew he was in for a tough one. Still we kept a good banter going despite the 'seriousness' of the situation. Nice for me, not so nice for Tyma I take the pair up 2-1.

 

Likewise the write up for my match with Stuart is on the main page. Having not played against Stuart before, it was a more sedate game less filled with banter. I was also getting tired and still felt a little ill. All of that to one side, I hadn't play tested versus the Tatta paladin as it didn't crop up again after the US nats. Stuart completely blind sided me and I had no answers in my deck other than trying to rush him fast. It just wasn't to be and by the second game I was resigned to my fate and made a few bad calls. So I take my 0-2 beating and hang around to watch the final versus Lammy. In hindsight my choice to take Devilsaur Leggings out of my side in favour of Greed before Need hurt me here. It was the only time I needed it, and I never once used Greed. Here, I might have been able to use it to better control those big allies if I'd been on the ball. Anyway, time to go back to the drawing board and see if there are better answers available.

 

Overall I am really quite pleased with the 3^rd place. It was considerably better than I expected though maybe not hoped for coming into the tournament. I've qualified for worlds and it seems eminently affordable. So watch out, I'll be making the trip Stateside and I'll be looking to take that title bake to Blighty

Actually, they came and went. Along with the Australians.

Au/De Nats this weekend were both the first and last big event with FoO legal before the UK Nats. I rate the De Nats as a better indication of the constructed meta. A lot of the Au final top 8 got there off the back of a solid draft performance rather than the strength of their constructed decks.
German top 8 though was dominated by those who'd top 8ed on the first day already.

What do we see?
Gorebelly-Gorebelly-Gorebelly-Rotun-Rotun-Daspien-Mazar-Senzir

6 'almost solo' dual weild decks, an almost solo hunter control and a revamped Dizzy deck. Pretty much confirms the post from a week ago, looks like I wasn't the only one who reckoned Gorebelly Dual weild was still strong and combat rogue was the new black.

I could get annoyed that my ace up the sleeve Rotun ideas have been splashed across the meta, but frankly it was so strong a deck chasis that everyone with half an eye on the rogue situation could have called it. I've been waiting since the game began to get a working rogue deck, here's my chance. I would have prefered a Troll Subtelty hero in homage to the original Zoroaster, but I'll take a Belf/Dwarf Combat if I have to.

The line between Daspien/Rotun to me is a fairly thin one. Both are almost exclusively solo, so ally choice isn't a big issue. Rak for Daspien, Steelsmith/Leeroy for Rotun is about it. Quest wise, Daspien probably has the edge. Counterattack/Swift Discipline is just a stupid engine that should fast become a staple of solo Horde decks - and it slides nicely into Combat as I believe every combat deck should main deck Blade Flurry. That could end up dead versus a solo deck for Rotun, but not for Daspien. Daspien also has the game ender flip. Double digit damage from the flip is quite usual, which can close the game an entire turn early.

But...
I feel Rotun is the better choice for the meta coming out of Germany. If siginificant numbers jump on the solo/duel wield band wagon I reckon Stoneform saves your bacon. Spirit Healer/Moira in the side and you're better equipped to deal with the heavy warrior equipment decks. Ironically though, that's not much good versus the mirror where it's Surprise Attacks that's the problem - in that case Daspien wins due to the better flip/Arcane Torrent.

You could go mad working through all that.

Ultimately, I'll probably bring both decks to the Nats and decide in the morning on a finger in the air decision as to what the meta is. As Jack mentioned, I'm a Horde player by nature. Nats would be the first time in a year I've broken ranks to Daspien has appeal. But if the meta says otherwise...

Well been messing around with FOO for a week or two now. Mostly on my own just tossing decks up on OCTGN and trying them out versus each other.

Clearly I'm not going to be spilling the beans entirely as to what I'm up to - not when UK Nats are round the corner and it the relativelyuntried territory of FOO. But yeah, there's a few general thoughts.

Right now the outstanding one is that non-armour based control decks are right out of luck. Warlock I feel didn't get enough out of FOO to keep it the control deck of choice, beacuse basically the low end rush got buffed so much there's too much to handle. Almost all the mass ally kill in FOO appeared in slots higher costing than existing methods, the only card to produce a cheaper mass kill than previously seen was Frost Funnel. Now, of course it's a bad idea to keep making mass removal cheaper and cheaper - and replacing existing cars with a slightly better version at their drop isn't something you should do regularly.

Problem at the moment is that nothing really controlling in terms of favourable trades kicks in until turn four. Until then you can manage one for one trades using abilities, unless you run smack into the popular untargettables. Merry - Jeleanne - Merry + Jeleanne puts any control decks on the ropes as without dropping a protector half your life total is gone before your turn four board clear turns up.

Did either faction get any decent low cost protectors capable of trying to eke a 2-1? No. Jasmin's the only protector Horde side on the low end and isn't much use aside from trying to steal initiative back on the second turn. Jadefist turns up on three for Alliance and you might get a two for one out of him in a Steelhorn fashion. But turn right before you board clear anyway - it's a step up, but really not a big difference. Christopher has a dodgy ability that frankly means Ravella is better for the same stats and Porto wont achieve anything more than a 1 for 1 - and probably their one drop at that.

On the flip side both sides are now swimming in decent playable 1 drops with a 2-1 body. Alliance get the better deal of it as Elusive and Untargettable are powerful abilities that mesh with an early game strategy better than anything the Horde have. Horde used to have the better utility 2-1 one drops so could better handle sidebarding around specific problems or catering to the known meta - not so any more. New one drops like Jospeh King and Tyler Falconbridge allow Alliance to have a 2-1 bodies in the board to replace Teep/Korthas in certain meta conditions. Though nothing great versus armour stall yet - but they frankly don't need it while they have Chipper and Moira.

And that's another body blow to the Horde - they still have no decent early drops to deal with equipment decks. Gartok/Esin just don't cut it - exhausting an armour is no good at all. I want to tie their rsources up in recurring or tie their card flow up in replacing. Simply exhausting it might get a bit more damage through but it functionally is costing me (in having to use that character not one with another ability) and not them. Jon is frankly lame. Blowing a weapon up on four would be acceptable - but not on a poor two drop body. 3/3 and he'd be playable. And seven resources to Chasing A-Me-replay makes it way over costed.

So. I look at FOO and feel Warlock/Mage/Priest control or any variant heavily reliant on abilities lost out. Horde didn't get enough to level the playing field in terms of early ally beats. They can  print all the three drop ferocity allies they like - but Untargettable rule the meta. So my predictions are you're going to see a lot of decks backing the early alliance strong line up of Merry/Teep/Jeleanne/Chipper/Parvink. Nothing really new enters the lineup apart from maybe Jezebel for a bit of added card fuel. Junk and Corki's go into the Quest row.

Kana Nassis means the Draenei engine of Survivors/Defias is opened up to Hunter - and frankly why play Elendril/Grumpherys when Draenei/Survival is availble. Compared to the Phad decks, you lose Chain, Earth Ele, Perds and Searing - but pick up Hootie, Fury, Krol and Frost/Freezing/Reflexes. Hootie is by now well known to be a back breaker especially versus early rush. Is it going to be the game swinger Chain often is?

Elsewhere Shadowpriest got a massive buff with Shadowfied. That card alone pushes Priest rush into viability. Again, I'm with the Alliance on this one and think Deacon has the odds on Omedeus. Not that you actually need to run the Shadow priests themselves especially - but Omedeus is clearly the nest pick Horde side thanks to Cannabalise. Alliance side Anchorite has the Draenei back up which I count more than having access to Shadowform et al.

Rogues might be the dark horse here, they gained ground in TtDP but only showed up at the US Nats. FOO might have given them enough toys to break out. Certainly the pleathora of decent daggers and duel wield mean they might be able to get some meaty attacks off. Coupled to a low cost rush engine and you might get some mileage.

Finally, the warrior variants that look to go long with the armour and high points such as Bulkas/Cruelty and Gorebelly/Dual got some slight boosts as well. They took the field at the end of the TtDP era in the US Nats and I can't say I see a lot that's stopping their game plan in FOO. yes, the early turbs have got more violent - but not enough that the Scythe can't kick in to save the day.

I'll not be heading down the warrior route. My classes are Rogue/Hunter/Mage/Shaman. I would love for a Mage Control or a Shaman mid game deck to be viable in FOO but I just don't see it. That puts me into either Hunter or Rogue. So Kana, Timmo or Rotun.

Unless something comes completely out of left field in the next forthnight or so that makes me change my mind. You never know, there might be a Thangal deck that'll stomp everything

So I've been kicking around with FOO a few days now. A rough OCTGN patch was compiled which got me something to test with, all the text but no images - not that that matters at all.

Yadda, yadda, Nationals, yadda, yadda, FOO legal.

Impresion from the pre-release was that rush had got a kick, aggro curve didn't really get much and control got a slight boost. Messing around with existing decks showed Phad, Telrander and the Warlock host got some new toys to play with but not a lot really of use to Bulkas and Gorebelly. Elendril got a boost, but ultimately you're probably better ditching the Nelf for the new Draenei. Crown of Earth doesn't compare to Rescue, and losing Aimed Shot is no big deal now there are plenty of allies to fill the gap.

How do things stand on the Blue/Red divide?
Horde rush got some boosts, but seems to me someone in design was trying to be too clever by half. Lets look at one drops.
What do you want from a one drop in a rush deck? Primarily the ability to kill your opponents 2 drop. Most cases, that'll  be something with a two health body.

Erytheis? If it's not Jeleane - sure. Run in, do the point, die and ping it for one. But you can bet 50% of the two drops you see are currently going to be Jeleane. Great if they've deployed multiple one drops - odds are you can run in kill one and top another with the ping, but at the moment that's the backup plan for many decks on two rather than the default. OKish - but Omerta, Wazluk, and the other 2/1 do the same and only lose out in the multiple one drop scenario - and can spank Jeleane.

E'sad - 4/2 but you get a resource. Further thought has put me off him. 4/3 and he'd be playable. As it is, if you're going second their one drop will trade and you'll look pretty dumb. Going first, he'll attack for four, they play their two, attack for four then they'll probably trade their two for him. Is it worth eight damage at best, possibly none, to reverse turn order? Hard to say, but I'm inclined to say no.

Faesha - 2/1 body so decent enough. If I go first, I can change turn order to kill your two without trading. Is that worth it? Even less likely than E'sad, but at least you get the option once she's in play rather than E'sad who happens right before he gets Fire Blasted.

Jasmin - 1/1 Ferocity and Protector. Wont kill their two drop, gets owned by the few playable 1/2 1 drops. No good on the defensive play - funnily enough they'd kill whatever 1 drop you played with 2/1 so you haven't chagned that. On the offense, well you get a point of damage on their hero. So does Waz luk, and he'll kill their two.

Sally - 2/1 makes her a decent one drop ni her own right. The ability lends itself to a swarm archetype whereby on turn five you're running out of gas and they're dropping bruisers your guys can't touch. If you can get a 1 or 2 drop swarm deck going with interesting one death (see Erytheis) effects she'll come into her own> Sadly, it's currently Alliance that has all the support for that.

Snarl - Yuk. I have to kill someone else just make him trade with two drops? Nowhere near as good as the kill ability on Sally, you'd really have to stretch some to make this decent.

Moving on to the 2 drops...

Borlis - 3/4 on two. Will smash any other two in the game and almost all three drops. Is it worth not readying? Originally I thought not, what's the point of big stats if you can't use them. Then I realised it's not that relevant whether he survives or not, the point is he will smash whatever you send him against short of Alliance protectors. There's not many two drops you can say will smack Steelhorn out the way without any restrictions of any kind. So I've come to like him better.

Ez'trin - 2/3 - those stats are the wrong way round. And in a rush game, I'm hoping they've haven't got a weapon on turn two to worry about swinging back on me as I attack with my one drop. Horde have no Eusives - if they could swing to kill my one drop (Eskhander's/Kris is about the only play I can think of) why haven't they?

Kagella - Minimum 2/3 on attack, not so hot on defence the turn she comes in. Again, another card that looks pretty good if you can get a swarm going. Unfortunately whilst the Horde are getting the Allies for it it's the Alliance that have the Quest/Hero enablers for it. There's potential here, I can see her attack getting pretty decent if you work at it and she's 1 drop immune.

Morlug - In the fine Horde tradition it takes a rare 2 drop to have 3 atk. 1 Helath is a little fragile. For pure beats Gellrin is better. His ability might come into play if you start monkeying with the resource sacing allies or in a Twig deck but ultimately even in those I don't foresee it doing much.

Nalonae - Mediocre stats. Worth changing turn order for an additional 2/2?  Certainly not on turn two, but later on perhaps. More playable than E'sad or Phaela I feel. Putting her down is going to give you a kick when things are running out.

Sentinels - It's Unlimited. Hence - crap.

Snig - 3/1 with Stealth. Lightning rod, this guy will get targetted and taken down fast. Still, they're one drop trading your two drop unless you kill it is pretty much standard play so no great change, probably slightly better than Gellrin on balance. Where he shines is in a Druid deck, add ferocity to him and he's an undercosted no-deviation Vesh'ral. That's pretty good even if it was your only turn three after a turn two Cat Form.

Tez Tez - 2/1 is bad stats for a 2 drop, but his on play effect means it's highly likely your 1 drop will take down they're 1 for no loss if your're going first two 2/1 going int otheir two and from now on in it's likely you'l always have a 2/1 extra. If you're going second, frankly it's weak. Basically, if you have a drop ready to attack, you'll get a trade for no loss and keep a 2/1 on baord. If you're gong second though that usually requires them to miss a drop on the game plan.

That's the new twos. So far, a lot of it has either been conditional on you going first - not so hot compared to vanilla stuff that is equally effective on the defense or building up to some kind of mass ally swarm. Which is the Alliance trick even if they don't have abilities (Kallis not included) trading off it. There's a lot of potential synergy here between the early drops - Erytheis is a perfect candidate for the 'destroy another ally guys' but is it as good as straight forward stats on guys? I'm not yet convinced.

Looking at the extreme end of rush, the three drops...

Broan - Now this fellow is very nice. 2/1 with Ferocity is possibly more deserving of a 2 drop, but it's not bad. Coupled with the ability to ready a 2 drop and you're probably looking at some meaty damage as a turn three play - probably better than Vesh'ral. Better than Morik? Well some people love Morik (me included) some hate him. And this guy turning up in the same set as E'sad and Borlis is hardly co-incidence. Borlis-Broan is a pretty strong turn 2-3. You're going to wipe their board with Borlis then two to the face from Broan who'll hang around for next turn.

Gahrunt - 3/3 isn't shabby on a 3 drop. You're out of 1 drop killing range and can take down over 3 drops. The ability has potential, is it better than Clara Graves? Posibly I would say so. Either way, a Horde 3/3 on 3 is not to be sniffed at.

Kelvor - Another 3/3, ability not so useful. Stops Korthas shenanigans and might find use versus pally/warrior but ultimately not going to matter much.

Malistra - Sarmoth just got very nasty when this is your four play. Hootie - Malistra is a pretty nasty sequence as well. If an aggro horde Warlock build turns up she's pretty nice. In pure rush terms though, there's better.

1000 - No cop to a rush deck. They'll just choose defense and let him chew on their expendables. Generally, you should be taking their guys down by attacking into them up the curve.

Sus'vayin - Brilliant for recovery, mediocre if you went first and things are going to plan. On the other hand, it's the first card I've seen that genuinely can addres the disadvantage of going second. I like Sus'vayin, but there's a lot of competition for the few 3 drop slots.

So there you have it. Four drops can find a place in a rush deck, but none of the FOO ones are screaming out at me as must haves. I'd rather use the resoures for a lesser ally and some card draw to keep my hand fuelled. You could include Magistrix and De'nara as rush - and there's the appeal of Zarg-De'Nara-Graves all on turn four, but are they really worth it? 2 resources gone for a 4/4 might be just what you need to clinch a win, but I can't help but think 4 for 6/5 is going to lose you the game. That screams 'Soul Shred me now'.

There's some interesting stuff there, but aside from Broan-Borlis I can't see a lot that's actually sped up the Horde rush. As it stands, the Alliance rush was better by a long margin in TTDP - simple traits like Elusive and Untargettable count for more than complex attempts to generate synergy amongst low drops. Is that neat trick enough to pull Horde on to at least level terms with Alliance for covering the board in low drops for favourable trades? I reckon it's not even enough to level with TTDP Alliance let alone FOO.

What did Allaince get for FOO rush?
Butcherson - Not for rush decks, it's a cheap Edgemasters on a 1/2 body. It's an enabler for Cruelty/Rapid Fire decks.
Josiah - 2/1 body with potential to be a 3 damage for 6. I would say he's your fifth one drop of choice after Teep/Merry/Korthas then Scaramanga replacing Kryton at that spot.
Sparroweye - Dubious if you have the first turn, it's a potential no loss death to their one drop for the cost of playing a one not two on your turn two. From then on, you've an additional 1/1 who might be able to swing things if you underdrop. As a defensive play he's horrible.
Neeka - Great for stall decks, no purpose in rush. Korthas is better for defensive action in rush, Teep is better for offensive.
Tyler - 2/1 is nice and Stelath is good, but a 1 drop with stealth is a little early to capitalise on it. Other than Omerta no 1 drop protectors see play, so odds are you're just going to use him to trade with their 2 drop - something you don't need stealth for. Later on, I'd rather have Josiah as I can guarantee the three damage where I want it.

On two...
Celee - Mill card for decks like Mage. Bad stats, and ally rush doesn't play a great deal of abilities.
Exodar - As per Sentinels. Marginally less useful.
Hailey - Horrific stats, irrelevant activate. You suck.
Nesmond - interesting stats but still loses to most equaltrades you're going to see, with an ability you are never ever going to use. He's not going to live till turn five - and even if he did no four drop is worth that much trouble. So he becomes '8-use a massively overcosted ability'.
Parren - The stats you want on a 2 drop. Jeleane is stil the two drop of choice for offence, Chipper for utilility. Latro next or possibly this fellow but most decks don't go that deep on two drops.
Porto - Great for Phad, I'd be tempted to drop a couple of Korthas for this fellow. Not worth it elsewhere.
Savina - Similarly great for Telrander, not worth it elsewhere. I'd consider dropping Teep for her as Telrander has plenty of viable one plays already.
Unen - Nice stats, and a maybe useful ability if you're backing Krol/Perditions but still don't see him pushing Jeleane/Chipper out.

3 drops
Bitties - Borlis but not as good. If your opponent doesn't do something dirty like Fire Blast him, he'll get traded with a lower drop.
Christopher - Ravella is better. Untargetable beats 'Spend a resource, lose an ally, make a bigger ally trade preferentially'
Izza - Nasty, in a rush deck you're not concerned so much with your own health just getting their down. Izza is Latro with a built in extra +2 atk they can'do anything about. Problem is there's a lot of contest for 3 drop slots, but she's definately a contender.
Zanaz - I R bad vanilla stats
Jubilee - Okay, this was insane. A 3/3 for three is always good. A 3/3 for three with untargettable kicks Kor and Durdin in the nuts big style. Oh, and is also a potential card draw engine? Of course Alliance rush needed this...
As it is 4 Jubilee in your deck and you'll hit her on a Kibler's/Junk one in every five times. That's not bad odds at all.
Kulvo - You are not rush
Shadowmistress - Nowhere near as useful as the horde version. Sarmoth doesn't need +2 health, though a +2 health Hootie/Fury puts them both outside the magic '3 damage' level and into a new world of scary.

So what did alliance get for rush?
Jubilee, and that's it. But it didn't really need much more Teep/Merry/Jeleanne are backbone enough to cause the Horde trouble. They certainly didn't need any more utility - Chipper is too much utility on a stick. There might have been room for a Korthas replacement, but ultimately he's solid. Nothing is going to shift Pavinnk from a three slot in a long, long time.

On balance - Horde still don't compete. Defias/Survivors baked up with Diplomat allowing one-ofs for bombs means the support for the Alliance rush is just better. As it is, if you're playing rush, you'll be playing Alliance. Same as you were in HoA and TTDP. Foo hasn't changed that at all.