Yesterday was the Orlando Regional at Cool Stuff games. Kind of disappointed that we only had 6 people show up. There were three of us from Cool Stuff and three guys who have been playing over at Next Level (maybe we will finally see their tourney report). We ended up playing three rounds of swiss and then the top 2 played a final round. It was an interesting group, I think there were a lot of attempts to out meta the meta. I will list the capital boards/deck styles in the rough order they finished, then my deck and some comments on my three rounds.

1. Dark Elf: Dark Elf-Skaven rushy/controlly deck. Played by Brad one of my regular opponents at Cool Stuff. He may post the actual deck now that tourney is over. I am not sure he lost a game all day.

2. Dark Elf: ??? I never played this deck so I do not know much about it. Played by Boyd one of the guys from Next Level. He beat me out on the tie-breaker to make finals with a 2-1 record in Swiss.

3. Orc: This is my deck that I guess I would classify as Aggro-Control. I will detail below.

4. Chaos: Really interesting Destruction control deck played by MJ one of the guys from Next Level. Lots of surprises in it. More detail in my round report.

Not sure how things sorted out between 5 and 6 so I will arbitrarily list them.

5. Dark Elf: Pretty Pure Dark Elf control deck. Played by Scott one of the Cool Stuff guys but he does not play on Wednesdays so I am not sure what is in it. Never played it yesterday.

6. Chaos: Chaos/DE control deck. Played by Shea another guy from Next Level. Had a tough day, just never seeded to draw well.

Pre-Tournament Thoughts

I approached the tournament with an operative assumption that I would be facing a lot of rush decks. My regular opponents had built some incredibly deadly Orc rush decks and that heavily influenced my thinking. I do not really enjoy playing a rush style so I was looking to counter. I spent a lot of time trying to get a Dwarf deck to run but we found that it was just a little to slow to be competitive. So I went back to a deck I built a few months ago, namely my "Fat Orc" control deck. After a lot of testing and tuning here is what I ended up with.

15x Support

3x Warpstone Excavation

3x Contested Village

3x Cloud of Flies

3x Orc/Dark Elf Alliance

3x Grimgor's Camp

18x Units

3x Lobber Crew

3x Snotling Saboteur

3x Boar Boys

2x Ironclaw's Horde

3x Ugrok Beardburna

2x Bloodthirtster

21x Tactics

3x Innovation

3x We'z Bigga

3x Rip Dere 'Eads Off!

3x Easy Pickin's

3x Pillage

3x Troll Vomit

3x Dark Visions

54x Total Cards

I will end up posting this deck over in the deckbuilding forum with some of the thoughts behind it. Round report in the next post.

I'm kinda interested in the 4th deck you talked about. could you describe it a lil more?

So here is how my three rounds went.

Round 1 win 2-0

I played against Shea. He was running a chaos board and i had no idea what he had in his deck. Turned out to be Chaos-Dark Elf mostly control.

Game 1 Rex wins 2-0.

Long game as we each tried to figure out the others deck, probably last 35 minutes. I remember getting Ugrok out at least once with We'z Bigga and then immediately losing him to call of blood. I used Troll Vomit to reset once or twice and finally got some hitters in battlefield to win the day.

Game 2 Rex wins 2-0

Much shorter game as I played much more aggressively this time. Got a couple of Grimgor's camps out and then poured guys into battlefield. Shea spent most of the time countering that and did not develop much offense. I burned his second zone just before time.

Round 2 Rex gets stomped 0-2

I drew Brad for round 2. We have played each other's decks for weeks so there was no suprise factor here.

Game 1 Rex gets body slammed 0-2

I know against Brad that I really need a turn 3 vomit to stand any real chance of winning. My first draw did not look promising and I mulliganed. Then I got my second draw. My turn 1 play was Easy Pickin's to kill his turn 1 Greyseer. Turn 2 I beleive was a contested stronghold. Turn 3 was nothing (Troll Vomit requires 2 loyalty). It was pretty much over at that point.

Game 2 Rex loses when 83.3333333333 percent is not good enough.

I pulled my dream hand to start game 2. I had all three cards I needed in hand. Turn 1 I Grimgor's camp. Turn 2 I Snotling saboteur and something else (maybe a village). I am holding my Troll Vomit for turn 3 play. Turn 3 Brad drops a Shade. he attacks and pulls on of my 6 cards. So odds tell me that i have an 83.33333333 percent chance that I will still be holding my Vomit to go into my 3rd turn. Anybody want to guess what he pulled????????????Bye Bye Vomit, Bye Bye game.

Round 3 Rex wins 2-0

I ended up playing MJ's funky Chaos Control/Reaper/Scream deck.

Game 1 was an epic struggle. REx won 2-0

MJ was developing and dropping heavy in his kingdom zone. armories, treasure vaults, abandoned mines etc. I built a good base in my kingdom and got out a Boar Boyz and Ugrok (with no damage) quick 4 points to his quest zone. My next attack he counters with Nurgle's pestilence and uses Call of Blood to take Ugrok home. It did buff boar Boyz. My next turn I dropped another Boar Boyz and burnt his quest zone. However, he had a huge resource/draw engine set up in his kingdom and I felt like I needed control Fortunately for me my psychotic pal Grimgor Ironhide strode into my kingdom and nuked everyones developments and support cards. I was now holding a 6 to 3 resource edge. Next turn was coup de grace time. Snotling saboteur to kingdom as some insurance and 3rd Boar Boyz in the battlefield. I confidently declare an attack against his undefended battlefield and send my brain off for some well needed rest and relaxation. He plays Grasping Darkness to grab one of my Boar Boyz. Now I am not happy. I then stupidly play Easy Pickins' thinking that since Boar Boyz is his only unit it will die and I will at least get 6 damage on his capital. I am getting ready to pick up Boar Boyz when MJ looks over at my kingdom and says "how much does the snotling cost?" Well now that you mention they cost three so I guess I will sacrifice them instead. to add insult to injury I forget to spend 2 resources and response sacrifice them to at least destroy one of his supports he has placed back in Kingdom. The next few turns were hazy as I reeled from my misplay. At some point he Vomited to reset. Then he got the reaper out with a rebuilt kindgdom resource base. Things were grim. Fortunately, psychotic Orc Heroes are just drawn to battle and who pops in my hand but goold old Grimgor. I had to pop two innovations and a Wez bigga to pay for him but once again his kingdom was nuked. there was some more punch counter punch but I finally one with a unit and a ripped bloodthirster in the battlefield.

Game 2 Rex won 2-0

We started game 2 and I knew I needed to be much more aggressive to win. The details are less clear to me but the highlights were Ugrok twice and another appearance by Grimgor in the Kingdom to disrupt his build. I just went all out aggressive and got his second zone within 60 seconds of time.

I was a Little bummed that I did not get the tiebreaker for the rematch with Brad but it was still a fun time. Now that tourney prep is over, I am looking forward to playing around with other decktypes and exploring league play. Hopefully some of the other guys will post their thoughts.

Kragg said:

he used a Chaos capital. He dropped a development everyturn his kingdom. He would typically play Treasure Vaults, Armorys, Contested Strongholds and Abandoned mines inhis kingodm and save warpstone and contested village for his quest zone. I do not recall seeing any banners so he would often pay high for tactics like Tzeentchs firestorm, Graspong Darkness, Troll Vomit etc.

I do not recall him playing units against me but I saw him a Great Unclean one against another player. He had reaper bolt thrower and Cacophonic Scream to do damage to capital. One of those decks where you really had to think about everything out there possibly coming out of his hand.

RexGator said:

looks weird how he mix cacophonic scream/bolt thrower (both are essential cards for the destruction thrower archetype) with such expensive and big units like the Great Unclean.

anyway nice report I'm looking forward to read the ones from the other players.

Here is the deck that I used to win the tournament.

DE Capital

Clan Moulder Elite x3

Clan Rats x3

Deathmaster Sniktch x3

Greyseer Thanquol x3

Plague Monk x3

Poison Wind Globadiers x3

Rat Ogres x3

Shades x3

Vile Sorceress x3

Walking Sacrifice x3

Contested Village x3

Greyseer's Lair x3

Har Ganath x2

Warpstone Excavation x3

Call the Blood x3

Chillwind x3

Chittering Horde x3

Dark Visions x3

We Need Your Blood x3

It was developed primarily as an anti-rush build since I couldn't find anything else which could compete with my Orc rush deck. DE/Skaven really has a lot of synergy and can shift gears from control to rush and vice versa pretty smoothly. Of course, no one was running a rush deck in the tournament .

Round 1: Win 2-1

This was a matchup with a pure Dark Elf control deck. The first game began with two Warpstone Excavations and a Har Ganath to his Kingdom on turn one followed by Sack Tor Aendris and a Cold One Riders (questing) to his quest zone. Ouch. We traded Deathmasters and he pulled Greyseer from my hand while I frantically tried to figure out how to play against this deck since I never tested against it. Loss. The second game began almost identically to the first but a couple of early Clan Moudler Elites were able to put too much pressure on early and he was forced to play defensively and I squeezed out a win despite him stealing my Deathmaster mid attack . Game three was quicker. Early Greyseer and multiple cheap skaven put the pressure on early and a Deathmaster sealed the deal. Win.

Round 2: Win 2-0

This was the matchup with Rex that he already covered. One bad draw and then I pulled the Vomit in the second game. We spent some time preparing his deck and with a decent draw and early vomit things would have turned out very differently.

Round 3: Win 2-1

Played Boyd and his DE/Orc control/blitz deck. I got the feeling that his deck never really clicked in this match and I was able to control what he was able to do. For example, he Rips for a Bloodthirster and I play Chillwind to corrupt it, or I use the Globadiers to damage it and play Call the Blood to destroy it. It was a long match, with the second game going long as a result of a double Sorceress lock by him.

After three rounds of swiss we cut to the top two and I had to play Boyd again due to tiebreakers.

Finals: Win 2-0

The first game was quick. Something like turn 1 Greyseer in Kingdom, followed by 2 Clan Moulder Elites and a zone burn on turn 2. Win.

The second game was much closer and I was able to burn the second zone one turn before a Waaaagh would have finished me off.

Overall, I was impressed by the quality of players present and the variety of deck types. The lack of Order decks was disappointing but I think tha trend will gradually reverse as the next chapter pack set comes out. Skaven are certainly powerful, especially given how bumbling and incompetent they are in the "lore" but I suspect some answers will be forthcoming.