07/04/2024
Match Report: Sealed Set 1 at The Gaming Arena April 7 2024
Another fantastic experience at this store again this afternoon! The enthusiasm of the staff towards this game and the pristine and spacious gaming environment make for a powerful combo hard to challenge elsewhere in Melbourne.
We had 3 players including myself so our good friend and shop employee Ash sat in so our event could fire. Here’s a link to view the final standings and fuses: https://events.solforgefusion.com/event/JVYMLQF0GV?active_tab=placings
To kick things off we cracked open a display and all took turns pulling a display kit out each. I went last and was thrilled when I cracked open my Uterra deck and found a Kindred Necromancer (the 8th copy ever printed and 1st opened in the wild): https://solforgefusion.com/decks/a3veqhgg0i1smqandvoj5p3lsafsbz
I also quickly fell in love with my Tempys pull for its ability to go wide with spell sprites from the lightning tamer and summoning caller and then dump a bunch of spells to pump them up (lightning brand into burnout was particularly good for this): https://solforgefusion.com/decks/bjbbxohaoipnk7qo69o7poupqrwrea
The Oros forgeborn was an easy choice for this pairing with the +3 health to all creatures and player at cycle II clutch for interacting with the kindred necromancer to keep it on the table, as well as my gaggle of spell sprites. And darkforge drain level 3 was often a big play with my pile of spells churned through thanks to lightning tamer.
I had a great game against James round 1. Despite me having a hearty lead on health the first couple cycles, by the time cycle 4 came around and after a massive 18 dmg breakthrough hit I’d taken we were both into single digits. This was my closest match of the day. I managed to close out the game with the assailing lasher, which has now become one of my favourite lashers with its dual abilities to damage both a player if it’s unopposed and a creature, and have a body on the board.
Round 2 was against my fellow AusForge team mate David, who is also my persistent nemesis for top ranking on the South Pacific Bronze leaderboard: https://events.solforgefusion.com/rankings/players?league=62942a3aeead165c9d69afb3
I got off to a great start with a wide board of buffed spell sprites and my sated basher in play with the extra deploy damage trigger in effect. I got him playing defensively but one thing I always admire about David’s game is that he never gives up, he never goes on tilt, and if you give him an inch he’ll flip the game 180 on you. He was doing a great job at filling the lanes with his Nekrium/Uterra fuse so that my huge attack sprites weren’t pushing much actual damage through to his health. I eventually managed to start to reach a critical mass of lanes with large creatures and removal for his creatures faster than he could keep the chump blockers in place.
One fun moment near the end was darkforge drain level 3 on a level 3 kindred necromancer which pushed it up by 18/18 due to the large mass of spells in my banish (his Talisan helped a lot with that). That pretty much guaranteed it stayed in the game till the end and the snowball of continued free spells from discard finished in a blaze of lvl3 scorchmane dragon fire to completely clear his board and let the floodgates open.
Ash kindly put up with my deck but it was a quick game to finish since we were the only two left who hadn’t played. I can’t appreciate enough how this store is willing and able to put staff in to help a tournament fire - and he’s such a lovely player as well - I enjoyed the game.
So I went 3/0 and have continued my streak at this store of always coming top 2 in all their sealed and semi-sealed events they’ve held so far.
A special shout out to Jurch and Nathas for their recent episode of the Charge Plated Podcast discussing the KETO model of evaluating decks in limited formats for SolForge Fusion. Their discussion is of such high quality and utility to me that I’ve ended up listening to it a few times and keep finding new insights each time I do: https://overcast.fm/+7GKv8mSyg
Prize support was excellent as always - although I’m still slumming it with a paper playmat and dreaming of neoprene won in the tournament gauntlet one day - they had 6 deck halves (4 from one kit and two arbiters) and they let me pick the four I wanted and the other 2 went to David for his 2nd place. My highlight pull was a Blight Witch + Stout Shambler Nekrium with an awesome sounding name which I’ll be looking to pair with another deck with lots of spell and minions: https://solforgefusion.com/decks/01rbxsf62f6hfjzgblibeivmk8clwy
Overall a fabulous afternoon of gaming with friends and I’m so grateful that me and my other AusForge founders picked this game last December - and that we have a local store so supportive of the game - and that the game can provide such interesting moments and pairing decisions when we participate in sealed events like these.
