I posted my Athena deck with explanations of it in the Deckbuilding section, so I won't repeat it here, but check it out if you're interested.

I was pretty happy with the deck, even though I only had like 3 games of testing with it because (as usual) I came up with it at the last second. In theory, combining the best of Order and Evil into a pseudo 12+ HS character seemed like a good idea. It worked out well, but there were some close calls along the way...

Round 1 - vs. Alex Costa, Promo Alba Forethought/Arrogance lockout

...like this match. I wasn't looking forward to it, we had talked about Alba a lot locally but Alex's build was the best I had yet seen.

Game 1 - he set up early Forethoughts and Anti-K recursion with Fortune Teller way too early and after checking his discard pile, I baited out hacks and tried to Infiltrate...only to run smack into an off-resource KFT. Doh. I scooped soon after that and moved on to Game 2 to save time and salvage a draw.

Game 2 - this was a back and forth game establishing control on both sides, but I gained the upper hand when I got 3 Experienced Combatant in play and Murderbricked him with 5 minutes left in the round. We decided to just call it a draw and move on. Great match Alex, it's always fun to play against you man and it's always tight. 0-0-1, 1-1

Round 2 - vs. Cervantes Order/Chaos Haxxorz (Eithinis)

Another Forethought + Anti-K deck, and Immortality on top of it???

Game 1 - hey, Addes is a good card I hear. I manage to get 2 out past hax, establish control fairly quickly, Olcadan's away Curse Brokens and win on an absurdly large Ichi no Tachi, thanks to Murderbrick. It was fairly quick and my opponent was caught off-guard by the tri-resource combinations.

Game 2 - much in the same fashion, this time it was even worse because I get Lotus down so he can't use Cervantes' form to control my foundations or generate momentum for Defender loop, and with mulitple/Revenant's and Chester's on the board, I eventually rank Brick + Hammer and an Infiltrating to kill him. 1-0-1, 2-1

Round 3 - vs. Aulden Lloyd, Tri-Resource Deejay

Aulden is so creative, I love the decks he comes up with. The foundations are mostly off Earth, the damage redux like Rejection off Water, and the kill was massive Dread Carnival/KFT/Absurd.

Game 1 - this starts of kinda of bad, because even though I get really good starts in the first 2 turns he had triple Curse Broken (!) vs. ALL FOUR ADDES. So...yeah. Also, the first time I try to kill him I get hit with an unexpected Rejection, because there were none in his discard pile and everything at that point was either Earth or Fire. He irritates me further with two Armored Defense, but since he's not really attacking me either and he has stuff like Amy's that I can easily deal with without negating, I just play a lot of tapdown stuff, draw into a metric ton of attacks and Absurds, commit everything relevant and kill him with Murderbrick and a ginormous Chain Throw, BRt'ing the block.

Game 2 - Unlike the first game, he has zero Curse Broken this time and can't really deal with all my control. He decides to go for it, tosses a KFT'd Dread Carnival for 20 and destroys his whole staging area, I play Rejection, he Absurds it and I Rejection again just for kicks (I mean, what is he going to do after that, with no staging area?). He scoops at that point, and I show him that I would have killed him anyway next turn. 2-0-1, 4-1

Round 4 - vs. Air Adon (the new one)

This deck was exceptionally creative and had a lot of answers to my answers, especially the underrated Inhuman Perception, which is really a big boost to Air and Earth by itself. However...

Game 1 - ...I am playing with Revenant's Calling and Addes Syndicate, so even though my opponent has all 4 Inhuman Perceptions at one point I manage to fight through all of them and resolve a devastating Absurd that I had been holding since the first turn. I Rank back Murderbrick and he can't resolve broken Leg.

Game 2 - this one was far less challenging, mainly because I get 4 foundations + Addes and Olcadan's first turn (including Unrequited and BRT) and draw nothing but attacks the second turn, which ends badly for my opponent. 3-0-1, 6-1

I loved his deck though and we talked about it a bit after the round. Killing with Tsunami Sabre is always fun, it just didn't have quite enough juice. I told him that Daily Routine would be a great card to add due to early control of your opponent's turns and added Absurd/Rejection prevention. Air is really strong right now, with Feline Spike and Chain Throw along with really strong control/anti-control options, and it checks godly. I'm gonna give it a whirl in the next few weeks.

Round 5 - vs. Victor (5HS) Mill/Re-Animated shenanigans

I was going to ID with my opponent, but Ceejaybee had diversity with him so there was no guarantee that he was in with a draw, so we played it out. Carlos owes me one, heh.

Game 1 - this was a little different then I expected, though my opponent was using the older Victor he never once used the Form ability, which would have caused me severe problems at some point I'm sure. He tried to mill quick, with pokes and Gerdenheim's/Victor E but I really, really was not going to mill out anytime soon and I commited all his stuff, triple Hammered the Brick and killed with an unblockable Ichi No Tachi for 23 damage after. Eww...

Game 2- Again, same diff, only this time I board in Pull of the Tides and those along with Tag Alongs flat out ruin him. The actual damage part is elementary, with Addes canceling out two Broken Legs for the win. 4-0-1, 8-1

I've posted Top 8 in order of rank after Swiss and pairings on the other thread, so check it out if you don't know.

Quaterfinal - vs. David Leflett with Order/Good Seong Mi-Na supermill

Now this was pretty funny for a few reasons. One, it was my own deck; I created the build from scratch and honed it pretty tightly, but David modified it with some good tweaks when I got bored of it (she is REALLY boring) and adopted it as his own. Which is cool, but it became a severe disadvantage for him in this matchup because well, I know how to beat her. The other reason this pairing was hilarious is that David, in well over 100 total matches, has never beaten me yet. He's won a grand total of ONE game against me. I don't really care about this fact except that he keeps harping on it, so he was bouncing off the walls hoping this was his lucky break and convincing himself of it as I was non-commital.

Also, in testing with Zi Mei, she crushes Seong Mi-Na and Athena is arguably worse for him, so...

Game 1 - Basically, I draw Kiri and 2 Chain throws in my opening hand, never discard them the whole game, set up tons of control and ignore Seong Mi-Na's response or Tag Along/Addes it as needed, and when I know I'm setup for the kill I launch a retarded offensive that deals like 50-some damage.

Game 2 - I side in the extra Tag Along and KFT for Revitalize, another Chester's for whatever and side out my useless Rejections. Basically the same thing, this time my kill is even faster because my Order control elements come online real fast and he's overwhelmed. Murderbrick into something ends it. Sorry, David, you'll get me at some point. 5-0-1, 10-1

Semifinal - vs. Chris Barber with Death Cody into Zi Mei

Hey, this character is familiar. Tag and I were talking about this deck before the tournament, and he decided to go with Cody to avoid diversity and side into Zi Mei. this deck was all him and very different then my builds of either Cody or Zi Mei, except for my one small suggestion of Ichi No Tachi which paid off as he beat Harold's Talim in the previous round.

Game 1 - got a slow start and no Addes, while I had 2 early, but his Revenant's kept me at bay until I got some Combatants and Ranks out and fetched my own. On my kill turn, he made a critical error of not calling the breaker off a Rejection block, and I made him pay for it by tossing a lethal Kiri.

Game 2 - I think he stuck with Cody, not sure. I didn't really sideboard, there was no need. These kind of matchups mirror each other so much that it's all about the draws. Despite having 3 Soul Powers and stopping one of kill attempts cold with a well-timed Rejection, he can't capitalize or deal with MegaFest. I tap out everything useful and Murderbrick. Good match Chris, glad to see you back into the top cuts with Cody/Zi Mei no less! 6-0-1, 12-1

Final - vs. Jon Barber, with Order Donovan

God I hate Donovan. Oh, I'm going to draw a billion cards for no reason while never dying thanks to Injury Assets, awesome. And now he gets Forethought/Defender, yay. I thought I had the tools in my deck to win this match but I was nervous, because JB is yet another local player with amazing skill and his deck was rocking everyone hardcore all day...

Game 1 - ...and he rocked me hardcore in Game 1 as well. A very slow start for me turned into a control war that I was badly losing thanks to all 4 Curse Brokens on his side and my Mentorings under Experienced. With few options to recover, I got caught on the wrong side of an attack flurry with only Cutting Edge keeping me alive, but it still wasn't enough. I didn't even deal a single point of damage this game but I wasn't disheartened, only because I expected that it could happen. Also, I sided into additional Tag Along/KFT and Pull of the Tides, so I knew the next two games were in my favor. Turns out I was right...

Game 2 - You think I play control, eh? Whoops.

Turn 1 - BRT, Unrequited x 2, Addes, Olcadan's.

He played nothing really relevant except a BRT, which...

Turn 2 - ...I Owlfaced, played a Kiri, Hammered, Unrequted, then an Infiltrating + Unrequited for GG. Ouch.

Game 3 - Well after that little number, which shocked a few of the onlookers who had seen my deck play so slowly in Game 1, I was feeling confident but not overly so. He started with two solid turns of early control but I ignored Forethought and baited it out nicely when needed, and soon I had all 3 Experienced down, his Defender loop and Owlfaces locked down among other things and I ranked back 2 Absurds with Brick and an Infiltrating already in my hand, and killed him with those 4 cards while Addes'ing everything in sight, except his BRT which I let through only to use Evil Plans to pump the damage, to his chagrin. Great, tough match JB, and you followed it with second again the next day dude! Doesn't get much better than that and Donovan is really sick. Final record: 7-0-1, 14-2

So, I played a wonky, unorthodox type of deck with very orthodox cards and managed to pull off the victory. Big ups to Scuba for all his ideas and help as I struggled to come up with something, but I was in full-on kill mode all day and I just felt good with it. No autoloss matches, lots of degenerate interactions, a real efficient and vicious kill that can deal as much damage as needed without a lot of ways to stop it and the joy of cheating your handsize so badly. Try it out, you all might like it.