We Complete The Set
Week 35 - We Surprisingly Got To Open Gem Pack 3
Having the long weekend for Easter meant this was a very different FAB week. The public holiday on the Friday meant no armory at Gateway Games and no round of the SAGE precon league. Even if 2 players did manage to sneak in a game, but more on that in next week’s league round-up.
News
The main news of the week for us in NZ, was the release of the Calling Auckland schedule and prices of the packages.
Go Again Premium Package is $220 and for that you get $210 (or $245 with the early bird offer) of event vouchers and the 5 promotional cards.
Calling Premium Package is $270 and you get Calling entry worth $120, $140 (or $175 with the early bird offer) of event vouchers and the 5 promotional cards.
If you get the early bird offer then you’re getting more in side event vouchers than you’re paying, plus the cards on top. I think that’s a good offer and so we got ourselves 2 Early Bird Go Again Premium Packages.
Emptying The Wallet
Entry into the Card Merchant Armory this week so 2x$15=$30.
Obviously we’re not counting the petrol for the 3hr round trip….. At least with the pulls we got the gamble paid off.
Also there’s the 2x$220 for the Calling Auckland Early Bird Go Again Premium Packages that’s in 2 months time. I’ll write our thinking on this purchase below.
Events
Card Merchant Hamilton Armory
First up I faced Braiden who’s still mourning the loss of Mandible Claw. He was playing Rhinar and the turn that swung the game was when I was able to tower Cut a Long Story Short. I had confidence so he could only defend with 2 non-block cards. When I attacked it wasn’t high enough for tower however 2 Razor Reflexes took it over 13 damage and made him discard his hand.
Braiden has been enjoying the Pleiades build that I’m playing. I’m not playing the fatigue version or the standard aura build. I came across an Elly Bird build on YouTube that uses 0 cost attacks and auras of suspense.
I do still have a couple of issues with it but I’ll go through those another time I think.
Next up was Jayden who I’d not met before piloting Ira. My daughter plays Ira and it’s a matchup that I always have a problem with so I didn’t go into this with much hope. My hands were far from perfect for example there was 1 turn I couldn’t even swing the hammer.
In the end I was taken up by something that I’ve been doing to people. An Razor Reflexes attack reaction was enough to kill me after I’d blocked.
Clearly it was brute night for me as Ettie with Levia was my third round game. As you can see this one was super close but in the end I was able bash through. I was helped by Ettie having 2 non-block cards in their final hand.
I’m happy with how my new Pleiades deck is going even though I am a couple of cards short. Ironfist Revelation is the best arm piece for Guardians at the moment and hopefully next week you’ll be seeing on in the Cardboard section. Whilst I’m really enjoying playing Ravenous Rabble, Enlightened Strike provides more flexibility, punch and blocks better. Clearly the cost is that you have to put a card to the bottom of your deck. I’ll have to play with it a few times to see if I feel I can afford the cost.
I was happy to go 2-1 and it did feel like I could have gone better maybe even challenging for my first armory win. Am I actually improving at this game or just had a lucky night???
Cardboard
At Card Merchant Hamilton this week everyone got a Gem Pack 3 and Gem Pack 4. My daughter got a couple of very cool cards.
The Mechaniod was traded on the night for our second Command and Conquer.
Pulling the marvel Prism was cool as that means we have pulled the marvel from all 4 Gem Packs. We’d already pulled (and sold) Uzuri from Gem Pack 1, Riptide from Gem Pack 2 and Maxx from Gem Pack 4. I did think that we’d missed out on Gem Pack 3 and it was a surprise to get them to open them last night.
Meta Matters
There were 6 heroes across 7 decks at Card Merchant Hamilton this week. Even the 2 Ira decks were different builds with one being Edge of Autumn and the other Harmonized Kodachi.
Ira x2
Pleadies
Rhinar
Vynnset
Levia
Puffin
We are living in a golden age of diversity in the meta at the moment and we should enjoy it while it lasts. We might be heading for Lightning dominance in a few weeks time.
What’s Coming Up?
Calling Auckland
When Omens of the Third Age was announced I was a bit underwhelmed. I play Guardian and my daughter plays Ninja so I don’t really see that there’s going to be much for us in this set.
Then to hear that Calling Auckland is going to be Omens of the Third Age Sealed Deck…. Well this really was going to be a big ask for us to be anywhere near competitive. Runeblade, Wizard and Illusionist are a very different play styles to what we’re used to.
The sealed deck side of things does even the playing field in terms of cards available, we don’t own any Shelter from the Storms never mind fabled cards for example. However it also raises the skill level to “build deck” and “play deck” rather than just “play deck”.
My daughter and I have never done a draft event and we don’t have much experience in deck building. We normally copy a deck list online to be honest and if we did somehow make day 2 the draft would really have us out of our depth.
In the end we’ve decided not to take part in the main event and to enjoy the side events and atmosphere of the whole thing.
As far as the schedule goes I think that this is what we’ll try and take part in:
Fri
Razor Reflex PROMO - Sealed Deck: 18:00-21:00
Sat
Classic Constructed: 13:00-15:00
Razor Reflex PROMO- Silver Age: 18:00-21:00
Basically not trying to cram too much into our first big event whilst playing a good range of formats. I do however want to make sure we pickup a couple of Razor Reflex promo cards. I’m guessing that there’s also going to be a bunch of stalls and a trading area that we’ll want to experience, not just playing the whole time.
