Blitzing For The First Time

Week 3 - Stepping up to a Skirmish

During the week I looked at the events coming up. We had Skirmish Season 12, Super Slam Pre-Release and Pro Quest Yokohama events all coming up over the next couple of months. Our LGS (Gateway Games) is hosting a Crack, Shuffle, Play for the Skirmish. With the packs picked up from that and Super Slam we should be picking up a bunch of Guardian and some Brute cards.

Depending on the cards that we pick up I’m thinking that we’ll be able to get the new Pleiades Armory Deck (if I can figure out how to say her name) and pimp it with the cards from these events to hopefully have a competitive deck. At this stage I didn’t know if this would be for myself or my daughter but more on that later.

The Armory

Unfortunately I had some issues with my car at the mechanics (yup that strapped for cash comment from my last post). That meant we were running late for the Friday evening Armory, we did get there and as we were a little late, my daughter and I faced each other in the opening round again. Add another loss to my tally and she’s now 3-0 against me. I was doing ok in round two until I let an attack through and tokens started building up. Round three was Oscilio AGAIN and I still have no idea what he’s up to with these cards bouncing around. By the end of the night my record was now 0-8.

Again the crowd were really friendly and Mike was especially amazing not only did he bring us 2 boxes of cards but he also gave us a playing mat. He’d been given the mat when he started and he just asked us to pass it onto a new player when we got our own mats.

With my dinning table already covered in cards we’d been given the previous week something needed to happen. A 5000 card cardboard storage box was the answer. Also I decided we needed different colour sleeves for our hero, weapon and armour cards. Add in 1 entry to the Skirmish Season 12 (there was only 1 space left so my daughter and I were going to have to switch rounds) and 2 entries for Super Slam suddenly another $200 had disappeared. This free game that I thought I was getting us into wasn’t so free after all.

Also we’re carrying our decks around in the Ira Armory Deck cardboard boxes that they came in, clearly we need deck boxes. But the leather 2 deck boxes that I liked the look of weren’t available in our store and also were $100 so that went into the future list.

The Skirmish

Another store (Card Merchant Hamilton) an hour and a half drive away, were holding their Skirmish the following day and they went for the Blitz format. I managed to persuade my 2 daughters (one doesn’t play……yet) that we could go by bribing them with shopping in a nearby mall. I told the Armory crowd that I was planning on using our Blitz decks that we had been given at the Auckland Card Show.

Apparently that was a bad idea, those decks are competitive against each other but otherwise weak decks and it would be really one sided. So the plan was to break down our Ira decks by taking 1 of each type of card out so that they would be Blitz sized and we were ready to go!

We get to The Card Merchant on Saturday and Mike is there too, it’s always good to have a familiar face when you go somewhere new. Sign-up, sit-down and start breaking down our decks ready to play. Someone notices what we’re doing and lets us know that Ira is Living Legend for Blitz…..

I thought that we were going to have to pull out and try to get a refund. However the group was really helpful. My daughter got lent a cool Fang deck and was quickly taught how it worked. Katsu was pulled out and a few cards were lent to me to quickly convert my deck. Technically I should not have been allowed to play Edge of Autumn as the weapon also gets banned with the hero. However that rule was over looked otherwise my deck would have had to be rebuilt completely.

Again the welcome of the group was great. Plenty of apologies from the Tauranga Armory crowd later for not realising when they suggested breaking down the deck. It’s not their fault though it’s totally mine, I should learn the rules properly.

I have been surprised how strictly the Living Legend rules are followed. I assumed it would only be for top events like the Auckland Calling that people would care about this. I thought that it would be much more a free for all at Armory level. However it is a competitive but very friendly culture that I’ve come across so far.

But how did I go? Opening round loss but I did get them down to single figures health. Then amazingly enough up against Scurv I got my first win!!!! I was brought back down to earth with two more losses including a whole bunch of arcane damage from Verdance (another matchup where I have no idea what was going on). Yes I’ve broken into double figures of losses but importantly it’s no longer preceded by a zero, I’m 1-11

My daughter enjoyed playing the Fang deck and having faced assassins is liking the reaction style of play. I think a Guardian Pleiades deck is not going to be her style…. Maybe we’re looking at the Arakni Armory Deck coming out in December….

Have you done a long trip to an event, only to find out you’re not legal to enter? Did you get the same wonderful help we did?