I'm Jeremy, the new Warhammer champion (thanks Timothy for letting someone else win one of these ). I want to thank FFG for running a fantastic event and thank each of my opponents for being great competitors, especially Oliver. I realize there's controversy over the tournament and I really don't consider myself "The World Champ". To earn that title I feel one must go through Europe. I played a cheesy but powerful High Elf deck which can be found here: http://deckbox.org/sets/263636

First, I'd like to clear a few things up. There are rumors going around that I played Building Plans for Judgement of Loec. This is untrue. Each Judgement was found via Valorous Mages which weren't seen because the video wasn't wide enough. I also took damage each time from Temple of Vaul - I prefer to use dice instead of damage/resource tokens However, I did forget to corrupt Envoy from Averlorn via Warpstone Excavation but it had no effect on the game. My mistake.

Instead of doing a play-by-play recap I'll discuss how I came up with this version and my thoughts on it.

I started playing Warhammer about six weeks ago. While browsing these forums I read about a Gathering the Winds combo and was intrigued - I hadn't realized combo decks were viable in Warhammer. I searched for a decklist but couldn't find a single one, so I threw together a crude list. It had Heroic Task (hiding Star Crown Fragments), Prince Althraan, Lore Seeker and many control cards like Mage of Loec, Drain Magic, Echoes of Magic and Flames of the Phoenix. I didn't have anyone to playtest with so I would repeatedly goldfish it to see how fast it could combo out. It was slow, inconsistent, and unable to mulligan because of Heroic Task.

For my second version I cut most of the previously mentioned cards and added more spells. Gathering the Winds is the heart and soul of this deck and I needed to focus around it. I still used Innovation as my restricted card and it worked fairly well, but I figured it was too unreliable. Desecrated Temple and Long Winter are highly played cards that counteract it, among more niche cards like Grimgor and Will of the Electors. I decided to try Warpstone instead and never looked back.

I came across Building Plans while looking through some cards and immediately added three copies. This underrated card fits perfectly in this deck - there's nothing like hitting two Gathering the Winds off of it. I cut the Contested Villages and replaced them with Watchstones. A single Watchstone and GtW let you win out of nowhere and make the deck truly explosive. I cut all the control cards and distilled it into pure combo - instead of controlling my opponent I would just kill him. With this version I would consistently win on turn three and second turn wins were not unheard of.

I added three Master Rune of Valaya because the American metagame is notoriously random. I figured there would be many rush decks (there were at least four Call the Brayherd decks) and the Runes would be insurance. I trimmed it down to six total units to prevent DE and Chaos from picking too many of them off and to make room for more supports for Building Plans.

Besides facing the mirror match, the only deck I feared was DE with Jealous Eyes, Hate, Maranith, and random discard. The Eyes can shut GtW down and are difficult to play around. First turn Hate can be a Time Walk against this deck. Maranith will mess up your Scroll of Asurs and if all three of your Eltharions get discarded you can't win. I was confident against Chaos control since this deck can win from an empty board in a single turn.

I would consider this deck one the most powerful Warhammer decks of all time. I've never played Christmas Tree, VTHC, or Reclaiming the Fallen but I think Arcane Winds would definitely hold its own. That being said, errata for Gathering the Winds is coming and justifiably so. This deck warps the metagame and is unfun to play against. I'm sorry if I tainted the World Championships but sometimes it takes winning at the highest level to force changes, and now change is a comin'.

I had a great time hanging out with Lukas, Christian, Thomas, and Michal after the tournament and envy the Warhammer scene in Germany and Poland (maybe someday they'll fly an american to Europe for a big tournament ).

Thank you all!

thanks for this report and congratulations for your results.

an erratum for Gathering is coming : great! but limiting Arcane power could have been better, as polish players asked when the card first appeared…

Congratulations and thanks for the deck building explanation. Very well played combo, one of the fastest i have seen with arcane power. It's a pity that i could not try my deck of DE with some modifications against the combo, but anyway my options were few against it, too quickly. Good news to get Gathering or Arcane Power restrictions but too late for me.

I find it sad that you could win a US World Championships with a card the polish community already restriced five month ago.

It is rather poor taste to try and take away a victory by talking about house rules. Hats off to the new Champ and thank you for sharing your deck and thought process behind it.

Congrats on the win. It was fun to watch the deck in action and your report fills in what wasn't seen very nicely.

Congrats on a great weekend Jeremy! You really put it to us here in Iowa City over the weekend, replacing me as W:I Champion as well as beating Ben in the Net Runner Finals =)

Just like with Repeater Bolt Thrower and Visit the Haunted City, it seems an over powered deck just wont be dealt with until it makes a big splash at an event that FFG is running (even if the player community feels it will be a problem).

This is one of the best versions (if not the best) of this deck I've seen so far. Again congrats on the big win!

TL

Congratulations! I would say there is no need to feel anything other than pride for winning with a deck that was allowed under the rules.

… What the hell is a Christmas Tree deck? is that what the cool people called Bolt Thrower decks?

Christmas Tree - the name polish community has given to Kurt Helborg because of the art

Congrats on the win! The Polish players house ruled it…HOUSE RULED it. You played a legal deck at Worlds following all legal rules. You deserve the win. I'm glad it went to the U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A.! hehe.

Philos said:

I know you guys house ruled that card because you felt strongly that it was warping the competitive scene in a bad way, but having 2 AP decks face off for the Polish championship might have been enough proof that it needed more errata/restrictions before Worlds.

Congratulations again from your opponent in the finale

I didn't notice that you missed increasing your damage and if you missed to corrupt an envoy.. I guess I'd have won with that corrupted envoy

All I can say is, that Jeremy played very well in our games (we met in the prelims, too), gave me time to react and even considered my eventually echoes of magic before drawing a card for planning for war - One time he even asked for it after playing the quest. He is a very calm, deliberate and friendly player. I appreciated our games.

See you next year

Timothy marked my point. Too often FFG's ears are not close enough to the communities' experiences; therefore big tournaments become the stage for broken cards. By the way I do not intend to put away anything of anyone. And I'm not even a polish player but a german one. On Deckbox I posted a very similar deck to the 2nd on the 4th of September .

Hi Jeremy,

Your deck is very good but I m not sure you won the first round. You didn't have the combo on the table as you thought, there was only one GtW with tokens when you drew the legend and you needed two to launch the combo. You had only one acrcane power in you discard pile so you needed another one in your hand to get the combo but you didn't show it

Djibi said:

Maybe it has something to do with the camera angle as he suggested earlier, or maybe you're the only one that caught him making a mistake, or maybe it's just that haters gonna hate. Who knows.

Doc9 said:

Nah, Djibi isn't a hater, he's just legitimately interested to know what happened. I didn't catch anything myself, I was too in awe of the titanic battle.

HappyDD said:

OK, well if your not a hater, I do apologize. I guess I'm still thinking of the other post that said the win was "sad" because of the cards used.