By tomorrow I of course meant next week.

Well, after scrubbing out of the Worlds I had enough time to quickly enter a Nano draft that Friday.
I wasn't walking blind into MotL draft, but hardly the same level of experience as I did for HoA/DP/FoO. Still, we sit down and off we go.

Strange comparisons between UK and US drafts. Talk all you like in a US draft, even obliquely tell people what you're drafting - but don't for one minute have your hands even close to below the table...

You know, excuse me for pointing out but even with my limited legerdemain I could skew a draft all in plain sight. Or perhaps switch decks between actually drafting and deck registering. Well, just good luck that the vast majority of people playing this game are above that.

So what did I draft?
Ended up with a Deathrattle deck. No Leggings, but did pull Runesong. Two Bloodeye's was my late beats, and the middle was a smattering of protectors plus some Aldor Inspire:Ally backup.

Round one, I face Ed. My memory elludes me and my notes for the match aren't hot. All it seems to suggest is I had the board control for both games and saw the opponent down with me in the teens of damage done.

Round two, Shane. Well, a name I recognise so I figured a tough fight. Shane was packing the new Alliance mage and seemed to have picked up a ridiculous number of the rather scarce direct damage abilities in this set. Everything was going down to Magma Spikes. Both games are backwards/forwards affairs, in which I narrowly keep possession to take them with my damage taken in the twenties. Useful flip there, Deathrattle.

Round three, a different Ed. Now Ed had been taking the longest in the draft pod so I assumed inexperienced. Well maybe, maybe not. Either way he punked my ass. Waldo the Decoy.
That was it, he hit Waldo both games and it completely wrecked my attempts to push anything through. First game was flawless on his part, second I pulled ten damage on him before taking beats to the face.

Oh well.
Second place and no nano for me. Nevermind, I learned a new trick in Waldo. Hadn't really registered when I read him, but in a non-weapon deck he's a hyper efficient Gallahandra - a card I rate highly in HoA formats. Sure, he's hardly got enough health to avoid most direct damage - but in a pure MotL format theres just not enough of that floating around that every deck can have an answer, especially if you hate draft them. I'll be keeping an eye on him from now on.

On to Saturday
Gadgetzan day. Two hundred competitors, eight rounds. Cut to top eight.
Oooookay. I didn't even need to break out the pen and paper to realise there was going to be an awful lot of unlucky sods missing out on the top eight just because of tie breakers. I personally think it's kind of sucky when that happens, but it was happening in the Worlds, no reason they should expand the Gadgetzan to a top sixteen just because of the bad breaks here.

So it was sealed, random luck don't fail me now. Well, both Devilsaur and Runesong were in the packs I opened, so somebody somewhere was going to get lucky. Actually, their deck was going ot be pretty good. They had decent allies all the way up to a Weeble, Shem and Gabble. Not bad for someone.

Ironically I got handed back a better deck. Devilsaur and Runesong of my own, along with a Syluri to try and counter opposing items. More importantly I was given a ton of protectors, Thulthuns and healing allies. Aldor provided a Darynus.
So I ended up in Warlock with a solid curve, and ridiculous healing potential if I could keep my board. Late drops weren't exactly bombs, but hopefully I'd have a huge board by then.

Round one - Dan, playing Urrth
Both games ended with me having healed back to 0 damage taken. Pretty decisive board control sweeps him away.

1-0

Round two - Luca, playing Deathrattle
Well, he's got the better flip. Me winning the die roll into Jav - Thulthun - Alhas - Piana/Llanowar didn't help. Second game it became battle of the protectors, till I was out of tricks and got wiped. Third game goes close where I take a lot of pain trying to stabilize then pull it round for massive beats.

2-0

Round three, Scott Hunstad playing the new alliance priest
Another face for a name. First game I get absolutely steam rolled - Anguish hurts. Second game I pull the reverse. Third game is touch and go, life totals are yoyoing on both sides when time is called with Scott with the advantage. Nope, nothing I can do is going to bring the totals round in my favour.

2-1

And then some games happened.
I've the notes, but frankly it's uninspiring. Nothing notable happened, if I won it was generally with 0 damage taken and if I lost it was an avalanche where I just couldn't stabilise. In the then end I ended up 6-2, but with pretty rough tie breakers. Scoop some packs and that's it. There was something like seventeen or eighteen of us on X-2, of which five made top eight. That's harsh.

For once, I managed to get out of the hall at a reasonable time so had some food and an early night. Of course, I couldn't sleep at all again so was pretty drained for Sunday. But thankfully all I had planned for that day was trade in some crafting mats and then the Dev sealed event. And cheering Stefan on from the sidelines.
I've decided Stefan is my jinx, both DMF London and Worlds I've ended up next to Stefan in the player briefing. DMF London was when I started scrubbing out. Clearly it's him to blame.

Anyway, Dev challenge.
Managed to pull a pretty retarded deck. 2 Gabble, 1 Stonedeep, 1 Darynus, 2 Weeble, 1 Shem. Pretty nuts late game bombs. No five drops of note though, no Devilsaur, no Runesong. No weapons. Decent quest selection. My MVP from the day before - Piana/Alhas combo. Nothing in Warlock, Mage hade Arcane Explosion, Nether Fracture and 2 Touch of the Arcane. Seemed strong.

Basically, if I could get to the late game I reasoned the game should be mine. I had card draw in spades to get me to big guy after big guy. I could happily trade mine away knowing I was going to see another soon.

Round One - Julia playing Deathrattle
UDE employee, so my chance for a Bounty. Not the chocolate bar kind. Seemed to make the mistake of attacking my hero rather than the board presence I was developing and missed using Deathrattle's flip to kill Piana before she undid all her hard work. I pointed this out after the games, maybe she'd go on to do better.
Either way, they were fairly relaxed and I hope fun.
I was about the third person to cry out Bounty!. For my victory I got an uncut sheet of HoA heroes, a Warlock figure and another copy of the book and comic that came with the Worlds entry. Not bad, just for playing a sealed tournament same as usual...

1-0

Round Two. I'll admit I'm typing this on memory having lost the Dev notes.
Not a UDE employee, again playing Deathrattle.
First game looked like he'd backed me into a corner, when I arcane Explosioned into six cards, cleared half his board and proceeded to Weeble - Stonedeep - Gabble into decking him. At which pointed he remarked, that's a pretty good selection of high drops...
Game two - he saw all those plus every other one. Just couldn't capitalise on his early pressure and I ground him down.

2-0

Round three - Ken Ho playing Deathrattle.
So, another UDE employee this one from R&D. Probably going to be a bit of a challenge and oh look he's playing Deathrattle - again. I was anticipating Devil-stiched/Runesong shennaigans and I had zero counters to items. On the other hand during the game I was sitting surrounded by UDE R&D staff all joshing away - and their perspective was that the pants aren't that bad. Well, in any of the previous sets or as a rare I would agree. The lack of widespread item destruction in MotL means that as an uncommon I can't help find them unbalancing. Their is a single unconditional method of getting rid of items in MotL and that's Puncture. Syluri does not count - she has to live the turn. Acid Hands doesn't count - he has to die which is not always something you can finesse. Bringer of Death doesn't count - for starters it's rare and secondly it's a board clearer not a targetted item kill. Wreck/Nether Fracture don't count - interrupts are not as useful in combating troublesome items as destruction abilities. Antonio de Rosa suggested sabotage - come on, have you seen the sabotage abilities? Half the bodies will die long before they get to make a strike, half the remainder will get a protector in the face, finally exhausting Devilstitched/Runesong does nothing to stop their effect. Please, not a answer. Puncture really is your only answer, and that's only available to one class.

Ahem. A little bit of a rant, but everyone in the Gadgetzan on the top table seemed to have a Pants/Runesong.
Ken however decided to beat me round the head with Warlock Training (the reason why the Pant/Blade brigade take Warlock not Mage/Priest). Turns out having tons of late game drops doesn't really help you if every turn they're bouncing your largest guy to hand. Just couldn't find my direct damage spells in either game to take his Training enabled dude out. Oh well, taking two bounties would be greedy.

As it were we finished fairly early. UDE guys were in fine ribbing form, figuring I'd just sit and take it. For the most part correct, however I had an ulterior motive and I've swum in these circles before. Sure enough, eventually the opportunity came and I cast my line - Antonio bit and from then I had their attention.

I got passed to Danny Mandel, who gave me his card. Shame I lost when I mislaid my wallet in Manchester Airport.

Anyway, the topic was that favourite rant of mine on randomly deciding who gets to go first in a match rather than the Chess system. I wrote it up and sent Danny a PM last week as well as using the 'send to user's email' function. Whether he'll get it or not is another matter, the boards are notoriously flaky on this. No responses yet, and frankly I wouldn't get your hopes up. It's a bit of a bug bear of mine but many people aren't that bothered by it and it's extra coding effort to get it rigged into Mantis.

Maybe we'll see a change of system, maybe not. Either way, after another week I'll put the mail up here so people can see what I was suggesting.

2-1
Now, three rounds - two UDE employees. Chances of that are pretty slim. So I was a tad surprised to see Paul Ross as my round four opponent. Still, nice to actually meet the guy I'd seen around since Vs days.

Honestly, I can't remember much of the game. No idea what Paul was playing aside from Deathrattle (yeah, that's right 4 Deathrattles) and the annoying eight drop Aldor. The games were fairly relaxed and fun, by this time I wasn't really caring what the result was going to be. I was on the wind down from the weekend, and was fun to play with UDE rather than random guy from somewheresville. First game, Paul hands out the beating. Second game I manage to pull out of nowhere. Some truly inspired play on my part manages to take down Ishanna purely through ally play having no kill spells in hand. Third game, we're running low on time and it's him on the off with the better flip.  He curves, I get mediocre. Not good enough. Still much was fun was had (too bad , UDE 2 for 1ed me). Turns out he's a cheater anyway, not having registered a deck.

Just means if a rematch ever happens I'll have the moral high ground (plus an Ishanna up my sleeve).

Hung around to see the Worlds play out. Not really much interest though once Stefan had been knocked out and the Mazar went down. It was pretty clear at that point Guillame was going to win. Having been the Rotun player at the UK Nats in Rotun vs. Aleyah semi - I know how it ends. I couldn't even pull one game of Stuart.
Was fun meeting a ton of old acquantances and making new ones. Bottom line, whilst 100K would be nice it's the people I come for. That's both the guys behind it all UDE who deserve thanks for running a good show and making a great game, and the guys playing the game for so far being a cracking bunch of people it's a pleasure to play with.

At which point the UK plus Dutch players rolled into a restaurant. Ate, were merry (or as merry as you can be when only half the table is over twenty one) and talked much trash about card games. Was Stefan's gamble worth it?....

I arrived back home after only minimal tribulation to lose my wallet. December actually has been pretty horrific for me, but Worlds was one of the highlights of my year - I guess karma swings both ways!