The Importance of Playtesting

Before I get into the meat of today's post, I would like to again ask anyone who is playing in Regionals this weekend to pass along results if they can. I still only have the winners from last weekend in Collinsville and there are more events this weekend in San Diego, CA, Birmingham, AL, Brooklyn, NY, and Thornton, CO. If you attend one of these events or just know the results please pass them along to me. You can email me at blyonsmagic@yahoo.com or post them here. I will try to keep a running tally here on the blog as I get the results in, but I can do much without a little help from everyone.

Ok, with that out of the way, I want to talk a little bit about how important playtesting is if you are looking to qualify for Nationals. I haven't played as much in the last few weeks as I did right before Regionals last time, and when I have played it's been more for fun than getting ready for Regionals again. We've just started our playtesting for the next round of Regionals. The first one I will be attending isn't until the end of March, so I've still got plenty of time.

Last night we were testing out a new deck. I found myself losing games that I should have won but lost because I wasn't playing the deck well. More playtesting with the deck would have given me a better knowledge of how the deck works and what I could have done to win some of the games I lost. Playtesting, especially with the deck you plan to play, gives you a lot of very valuable information.

The most important thing, in my opinion, that you gain from playtesting is simply the experience of playing with the deck. You will learn how the deck works which will in turn help you win games that you otherwise may have lost. If you know how your deck should perform, you will be able to operate it at peak efficiency. Gaining experience will also help you to just become a better player in general. Eliminating play mistakes will go a long way toward winning matches, and playing is the best way to eliminate those mistakes.

Playtesting will also help you learn the strengths and weaknesses of your deck. This will allow you to make any necessary changes to help make your deck better. Is your deck strong against Hunters, but weaker in the Warlock matchup. Try to change a few cards to make that matchup better. Also, just knowing how each matchup plays will improve the matchups for you most of the time. For example, let's say you have a deck that most people would say is 40-60 against Shamans. If you know that matchup really well, your knowledge may make the matchup closer to 50-50 or even swing it into your favor.

When playtesting, I'm a firm believer that in addition to playing your deck against the main matchups you expect to face, you should play those decks against the one you're planning to play. That may sound a little redundant, but I mean you should play the matchup from both sides so that you not only understand how your deck plays against them, but also how they play against your deck. Playing as the enemy may give you new insight into how to better combat that particular deck. I would say for Regionals right now, the main matchups to know would be Hunter, Alliance Warlock, and Shaman. That would be a good starting point and if you get those down, you can move on to some of the Tier 2 matchups.

Having the best deck at Regionals isn't the recipe for success, but contrary to what some people would have you believe, neither is playing the deck you feel most comfortable with. If the deck you feel most comfortable with is based on Eviscerating stuff or using Boris Brightbeard, you better be playing that thing on a whole other level from the rest of the tournament or you just won't have a chance. The best bet for success is playing the best deck that you play well. So even if you think the big three are the best decks, if you play a Paladin deck better than you play those, that's probably your best option. A final note on deck selection, whatever deck you play you should have fun with it. If you're going to be playing 7 rounds of Swiss, you don't want to be miserable at the end of the day because you don't have any fun playing the deck you picked. This is a game after all.

Well, what are you waiting for? Get out there and start playing.

Collinsville Regionals

For anyone who attended the Regionals this weekend at the Mega-PCQ weekend in St. Louis, if you have the top 4 results for the 2 World of Warcraft events, would you please pass them along to me. You can e-mail at blyonsmagic@yahoo.com or leave a comment here. I've been able to find the winning decks from each day so far, but the entire top 4 would be nice to have. For anyone who is interested, a Graccus deck won on Saturday and an Elendril deck won on Sunday (at least this is the information I have right now).

Preview Day

Well it's Friday and you know what that means, Dark Portal previews. Today's previews are the new heroes everyone wanted to see, the Alliance Shaman and the Horde Paladin. I'm not going to spend a lot of time covering the cards themselves as they are rather unexciting being heroes. But I do want to talk about the new options available to each faction before we know what else is available in the set.

The first hero is the Horde Paladin Aleyah Dawnborn. Her flip ability might seem strong at first, but I just don't think it's going to be that good. The best use would be the combo with Panax the Unstable. The problem here is it costs 4 to use the ability which means to deal 3 with Panax you have to have 7 resources available. It seems like there are just significantly better things a Paladin can be doing that late in a game than setting up this very gimmicky combo. If you're playing Panax anyway, it's a nice possibility to heal a bunch of damage, but it's not a reason to put Panax into the deck. It seems like a lot of fun, but I just don't think it will be tactically feasible.

The more important thing about Aleyah is her class and faction. Giving the Paladin access to Horde allies and quests is going to be a huge boon to the Solo Paladin strategy. The biggest weaknesses in the strategy now are rush decks and Moira Darkheart recursion. Gaining access to Horde allies will allow the Paladin pretty good answers to both problems. I have never had as many problems as many other people seem to have had with rush decks playing a Graccus solo deck but adding Guardian Steelhorn will do a lot to stop the early rush long enough for Aleyah to get set up for the mid game. The real problem right now for me with trying to play solo is Moira Darkheart. Right now, the only way to stop Moira from being basically infinitely recurrable with Medoc Spiritwarden in Ophelia Barrows. On a completely different note, I think that the fact that Ophelia is the only graveyard removal in the game right now is the main reason she's such a powerful ally since she is the only thing keeping Medoc Spiritwarden from running around completely unchecked. Getting Ophelia into a Paladin deck allows the Paladin player to move Moira + Medoc from almost certain defeat to more of an inconvenience. And don't underestimate how strong getting Counterattack will be for the Paladin.

The other hero today is the Alliance Shaman, Phadalus the Enlightened. His flip ability is really nothing to write home about unless there are some really special totems in the new set. The only totem seeing widespread play is Searing Totem. Most of the time you want it early game and while getting it back later is nice, I don't think you would ever target is with Chasing A-Me if it were legal. This seems like a play that would probably be reserved for those times when you really have nothing else to do.

The more important thing in regards to the Shaman is how can it make use of the Alliance allies and quests that are now available. I have thought for a long time that the Alliance generally plays better beatdown than the Horde. An Alliance Shaman will get access to all those really good allies like Teep and Latro while also gaining the Shaman's high health and ability to use heavy weapons. The Alliance already had those with for Warrior and Paladin, but the Shaman abilities are very good for beating down (or controlling for that matter). Frost Shock and Lightning Bolt are both very efficient burn spells and Searing Totem seems a little scary when it is used as an aggressive weapon tacking on extra points of damage instead of a controlling one picking off allies. The difference is when it is a control weapon it's generally one of the biggest threats to the opponent so they try to remove it first. But when it's a supplementary source of damage, removing it falls to the backburner while you try to remove those allies that are more actively beating you down. I think there is a lot of potential for an Alliance beatdown deck from the Shaman. I don't think that the Shaman being available to the Alliance will mean as much as the Paladin being available to the Horde however.

Well, I'm getting more excited about this set as it gets closer. The Sneak Peek is now just a little over a month away so get ready for some new Warcraft.

Premier Event Weekend-Sydney

Coming up in just over a week, we are going to see our first event since GenCon that can be classified as bigger than Regionals. At VS. System's Pro Circuit Sydney there will be a huge selection of World of Warcraft side events. On a side note, this may be a way to get some of the players who will no doubt be dropping VS. given the recent developments in that game to switch over to WoW. While we haven't officially seen a Darkmoon Faire yet, I think this is unofficially DF-Sydney. There is a Dream Machine Championship which is a Faire event, so I'm going to call it DF-Sydney from here on out. For anyone who hasn't heard about this event yet, head over to UDE's main World of Warcraft page. There is a big link at the top of the front page.

For anyone who doesn't want to head over there, I'll post the events that will be held that weekend.

Thursday

Two-Headed Ogre
Beginner's Tournament
Lazy Peon
Only One May Rise

Friday

Regionals
Beginner's Tournament
Lazy Peon
Gadetzan
Triple Threat

Saturday

Dream Machine Championship
Beginner's Event
Regionals
Lazy Peon
Two-Headed Ogre

Sunday

Regionals
Only One May Rise
IPod Draft

That's a lot of events. I would like to say that whoever came up with this schedule did an absolutely incredible job. The only way I can think of to make this lineup better is to steal the $50K idea from VS. run it on Saturday and move the Dream Machine tournament to Sunday replacing one Regionals. But that's just because of my insatiable greed. But seriously, I think that schedule would make Darkmoon Faire the talk of the gaming community. Not that they won't be already, but that would put them all the way over the top. Ok, enough of my rambling about that, let's look at what we do get.

There are events here for everyone from total noobs to seasoned veterans. There is a beginner's tournament that uses starter decks each day. This is a great tool to get new players into the game. I don't think any tournament veterans will be playing in these. It would be nice if there were some restriction on entry. Something like, anyone with more than 5 sanctioned WoW tournaments can't enter. One of the biggest complaints other games have had about getting new players is that good players show up to tournaments they really shouldn't be playing in and crush the new players, so they get discouraged and quit. I think given the amount of other events going on, there will be enough to keep experienced players out of these tournaments so it's probably a moot point for a Faire. Just to repeat, I think these tournaments are great for the game and getting new players involved without having to play against the "sharks" right off the bat.

The next step up on the competitive chart is going to be the Lazy Peon. There are three of these over the course of the weekend. This is the next step for someone who has advanced past beginner but doesn't necessarily feel like he or she has the collection to really move up to the big tournaments yet. For anyone unfamiliar with Lazy Peon, it is Constructed using only commons and uncommons. Uber-expensive Mage decks need not apply. I think these are also great for the game as they are the next step up for someone who feels like they have the basics down and are ready to move out of the beginner level, but not quite ready to jump into the big time yet. They will have a better chance of competing here where there is no Trinity control or 4x Leeroy 4x Fury to contend with. These tournaments are great for honing tournament skills while you continue to build your collection. The competition in these tournaments should probably be slightly weaker than Regionals, so they're still a place where most players will feel like they have a shot and aren't just there getting crushed by better players. I think it's also great that, again, there are other tournaments at this event that will likely be targeting the more competitive players giving slightly more casual players a chance to see what's it's like around the top tables at the end of a tournament.

The next step up in competitive level is going to be Regionals and there are three at this event. This is where the games start meaning something a little bigger as this is the first event on the road to Worlds and the $100,000 grand prize. For players who feel like they're ready to take that next step this is where to start. Everyone knows about Regionals already so I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about it here.

The main event at the Darkmoon Faire is the Dream Machine Championship. First place will win a custom designed $5000 computer (I believe from Alienware, but don't quote me on that). For anyone who may have noticed, if you just place that value in terms of cash, it's more than either a Magic Grand Prix or VS. $10k. In Sydney the rest of the top 4 get iPods, although they seem to be saying at real DF's there will also be XBox360's and Wii's, but again that's not necessarily confirmed. This is the big event at the Faire and this is the one everyone wants to win. These will be the biggest events in the game outside of National and World Championships. This is the event (combined with 3 Regionals) that will draw the competitive players to the Faire.

Now let's check out some of the other events that are there for their fun factor instead of where they rank on the competitive ladder.

The first of these "fun" events will be a Two-Headed Ogre tournament. For anyone unfamiliar, players will be in teams of 2. Each team will play one match against one other team where all the players play. When both heroes for one team are eliminated that team loses. Allies can protect for the other team member. This format is very similar to Magic's 2-Headed Giant with one major exception. In Magic, it's one team, one life total. In WoW, each hero will be eliminated individually. I plan on talking about some of the strategies of this format next week, but it is loads of fun. It's a great way to spend gaming with a friend and brings an extra sense of comraderie and accomplishment at the end of the day.

The next "fun" format is Only One May Rise. While I've never played this type of tournament in WoW, I have played it in Magic and it is tons of fun. The way it works is, each player gets three boosters and has to build a deck out of those packs. After each round, the winner gets all the loser's commons and uncommons and can rebuild their deck with the new cards added to it. As the tournament goes along, the decks will morph and keep getting better and better. At the end of the tournament, the player who wins will end up with all the commons and uncommons from the entire tournament. This format is an absolute blast.

Next up is the Triple Threat Challenge. This is a three-man team sealed deck event. Each team will get twelve boosters from which to build three decks. Then each team member will play a match against a member from another team. First team to win two of the individual matches wins. This is another great event for building comraderie. Team Sealed events are one of the most fun (funnest?) events I've ever played in. One recurring theme, you may notice throughtout this post is the word fun. That's what the game, any game for that matter, is really all about. Good times and good people. Now that I think about it though, I would make one other change to the lineup. There should be raid events in here somewhere, but I expect they will be when it's a REAL Darkmoon Faire.

Overall, I have to say that I am really impressed with the way that this event looks like it has come together. If all the Faires are like this, I think it will be a great asset to the game. Whoever was in charge of this did an absolutely wonderful job. I hope everything in the future will be this good.

Almost time for Regionals again

The next two months look to be a pretty busy time in the World of Warcraft TCG. The next wave of Regionals kicks off this weekend with two events being held in Collinsville, Ill. The week after that we will see four Regionals and the season will really get rolling on March 10. Toward the end of the season the next expansion, Through the Dark Portal will be released and April 7th will see this round of Regionals wrap up. Just a few short weeks later will see our first Darmoon Faire in Austin, TX. We've got a lot to cover, so let's get down to business. My articles the next couple of weeks over on TCGPlayer.com will cover what the metagame looks like right now compared to what it looked like back in January. So today, I want to address a question that will be answered in the next couple of weeks. Namely, what should we expect out of Alliance Mages this time around?

Leading up to the last Regionals on 1/13, everyone knew Hunter decks would probably be the most popular decks and that if you beat them, you would at least have a chance. There was a lot of discussion as to what decks would rise up and challenge their supremacy and one of the decks that everyone pointed to as a contender to the crown was Litori control. But as the numbers rolled in, Litori was nowhere to be found. She took a few spots, but the results were decidedly udnerwhelming. So what happened? Let's take a look at a couple of possible explanations and see what they mean to us as we prepare for Regionals again.

The first and most common reason given for Litori's lack of success is the sheer price of building the deck. Cards in general were in short supply and pack prices were grossly inflated before the last Regionals. The Litori control deck specifically was quite expensive to build. The Alliance Trinity of epic characters were required along with a playset of Frost Novas and Counterspells which were fetching prices near $50 back in January. Most people simply hadn't bought enough packs to come into the deck naturally and didn't want to spend $300 on singles to put the deck together. This is a very valid theory. If it is indeed one of the precipitating factors in Litori's lackluster Regionals I, what does it mean now? Well, first of all pack prices have come back down as the supply has started reaching more acceptable levels. As a secondary result of lower pack prices and more available cards, the price of many singles has also come down. On a side note, the underperformance of Alliance Mages in round 1 probably contributed somewhat to the decline in prices of their singles as well. So now, people will have access to more cards from packs and cheaper singles. If Litori underperforms again, I don't think the price of the deck can still be used as an excuse. So, if the deck is really as good as so many people claim, it should show up in greater numbers the second time around.

The second major reason people gave for the low qualifying spots of Litori players was the high degree of difficulty involved in playing the deck properly. While the deck isn't easy to play (I don't think any deck is truly easy to play in WoW as it's actually quite easy to screw up a Hunter deck if you don't play well), I don't think it's considerably more difficult to play than a Dizdemona Trinity deck. Which brings us to what I consider the real reason Alliance Mages didn't do well at Regionals. In an environment where your number one priority was to beat Hunters, Warlocks just did that better. Sarmoth, Infernal, 28 Health and Netherwind Crown I think prove to be better than Frost Nova. But now, the metagame has shifted and control dominates the top tier while Hunters struggle to hang on to the success they enjoyed at GenCon. What does this shift mean to Alliance Mages? Let's look at an environment where Shamans are Warlocks are now in the crosshairs.

In an Alliance Mage deck more focused on beating other control decks, the Shaman deck can become a good matchup. In this matchup, your superior card drawing will hopefully come into play to power you to a late game victory. One of the biggest advantages of the new metagame will show up here, and that is the lack of Inventor's Focal Swords currently being played. Focal Sword plus Polymorph essentially means you will always be able to shut down their best ally. Unless they remove the Focal Sword, there best ally will always get turned into a sheep. This has a nice added bonus of forcing Shaman players to leave in Zygore Bladebreaker against you or letting a Focal Sword go unchecked in games 2 and 3. Since Zygore is a minimal threat as an attacker this is generally good for you. If you can make it to the endgame your superior card draw and more powerful allies should propel you to victory.

The next matchup that really matters is against Alliance Warlocks. This is a spot where the new metagame will really benefit you. A lot of Alliance Warlock decks have dropped their Focal Swords because the card just isn't very good in the most important matchups. A Focal Sword that survives into the late game will ultimately seal their fate allowing you to turn their big allies into sheep. These two decks both have a lot of card drawing power, but I think the Mage has an advantage in the ability department. The Warlock makes up for this with Infernal. I think the Alliance Warlocks are designed with beating Hunters in mind, but the Alliance Mage is better suited for the long control on control matches. I haven't tested this matchup a lot, but it will be one of our primary focuses in testing this time around.

The third important matchup is Hunters. I think the importance of this matchup is lower this time around than the first, but don't underestimate the Hunters. They will adapt and come back. This is usually a good matchup for Hunters, but your one weakness is your low health total combined with no healing. Saving Counterspells is very important to keep Aimed Shots at bay. The general goal here will be to take as little damage as possible early trying to turn the game into a war of attrition between their allies and your removal. If you can fight off the initial onslaught your superior card drawing will start to kick in and your win will be inevitable.

This time around, there won't be any excuses for Litori. Either she shows up and produces numbers worthy of the power of this deck or she is relegated to a middle tier hero until the next set comes out. I think the metagame is lining up favorably for Alliance Mages and wouldn't be at all surprised to see a lot more Litori players punching their ticket to Nationals this time around.

Naolin Sunsurge and Ka'Lai the Uplifting

Well, it's Friday and you know what that means, preview cards. It's nice to get to talk about something new, which we don't get to do a lot of right now in World of Warcraft, being between Regionals and between sets, so it's nice to get to spice things up a bit. Today's preview cards are both pretty good. Before I get into the specifics, I'd like to say that if the preview cards so far give us any inclination of the power of Dark Portal as a whole (I know, when is that ever the case with preview cards) Heroes of Azeroth better make the most of its time in the sun because it's going to be sitting out for a while. Ok, moving on to this week's cards, for those who haven't seen them yet and are too lazy to go over there I give you

Naolin Sunsurge
Cost 4
3/2

Blood Elf Hero Required
When you play an ability for the first time on each of your turns, draw a card.
At the end of your turn, if you didn't play an ability this turn, destroy Naolin Sunsurge.

Ka'Lai the Uplifting
Cost 5
5/4

Draenei Hero Required

Other allies in your party have +1 ATK and +1 Health.

These two allies give us our first taste of racial spec'd allies. These guys are so powerful, they will only play for their own race. If the other Racial Spec'd allies are on this power level, deckbuilding is going to get really fun in about a month and a half. Ok, enough gushing over how powerful the next set is going to be based on 6 cards, let's talk about these guys specifically.

First up is Naolin. His stats aren't good enough for him to go into aggressive decks so he's going to be relegated to some kind of control. The addiction to abilities means he will probably want to go into a deck with a caster hero. The most likely races are Mage and Warlock. It's a good thing too, because those classes are sorely lacking in the card draw department. Oh wait, that's not right. The only real problem I see with this ally is that 2 in the bottom right corner. If they had simply switched his ATK and health he would be an easy inclusion in any kind of ability based Blood Elf deck. As a 1/4, he might have been reason enough to build such a deck, but 2/3 would have left him balanced. I think that he is a very well designed card. He has a pretty powerful effect but a small body for it. I think the Blood Elf requirement was probably restrictive enough to let this guy be a 2/3, but even as he is, he should still see play assuming the Blood Elves have anything playable.

Today's other preview card is really good. I'm going to say it right now, if this guy weren't race stamped, he would be in every Alliance deck except solo Paladins. The thing that makes this guy an absolute beast is his stats. His ability is very good, but when you combine with a 5/4 dude for only 5 resources, it's a flat out steal. His ability is good in either a rush deck or a control deck. In fact his ability can be pretty sick in conjuction with some pretty commonly used control cards. Rescue the Survivors makes guys that can actually deal damage? Nice. Ancient Cornerstone Grimoire makes 2/2 ferocious protectors? Seems good. Barov Peasant Caller and Are We There Yeti make 6 ATK each? Sign me up. Magni Bronzebeard? Yeah, that's fair. This guy is a beast. I actually think Ka'Lai could be just as powerful as Fury in a rush deck. Let's look at what you lose. Obviously you lose the 5 ATK of ferocity on turn 5. Or do you? For every ally you have in play, you get one point of ATK back. Obviously you will rarely have enough allies to get all the ATK on five that you would have with Fury, but you don't necessarily lose it all. But look what else you get. 4 Health. This is above the critical High Water Mark and pulls Ka'Lai out of the range of many commonly played abilities that will generally kill Fury. Here's a thought that might make you shudder. Just think what the Draenei Agrro Shaman deck is going to look like. No kidding.

Well, that's all I've got for today. Let's hope the previews keep getting better like they have each week so far.

A Fun Deck

It's a bit of a slow time for World of Warcraft right now. We're in the lull between Regionals and between sets, so there isn't very much new to talk about. Today, I want to show you a shell of a deck that we had originally been working on for the first round of Regionals but decided to scrap it once we realized it wasn't very good against Hunters. I've made a few changes to the original list here, but it's still far from perfected. It's probably a little better vs. Hunters now and I would say it has some game vs. control decks. One thing about this deck, though, it's really fun to play. Here's the list:

4 Warden Tonarin
4 Crazy Igvand
4 Parvink
4 Acolyte Demia
4 Freya Lightsworn
2 Medoc Spiritwarden
2 Moira Darkheart

4 Resurrection
4 Flash Heal
4 Spiritual Healing
4 Chastise
2 Halo of Transcendence
2 Hide of the Wild

4 Your Fortune Awaits You
4 Kibler's Exotic Pets
4 A Donation of Wool
2 In Dreams
2 Battle of Darrowshire

The basic idea of the deck is to survive long enough to set up Acolyte Demia plus the incredible healing ability of Boris to make her a tommy gun. The deck's biggest problem when we tested it for Regionals was the early game against hunters it just didn't do enough to slow them down so by the time Demia came around you were basically dead before she could affect the game. I've added Crazy Igvand as a way to hopefully slow the hunters down some more even though I don't really like the card. What's actually a little surprising is that this deck played really well against Warlocks, since they're looking for the game to last well past turn 10 most of the time and Acolyte Demia doesn't have to attack. With the amount of healing in the deck, Demia can regularly take out Magni without so much as a scratch when she's done. I wouldn't recommend this deck if you're looking for something to play at your next Regionals, but if you want something that is fun and plays differently than the rest of the decks in the game right now, definitely give this a look. It's a blast to play.

Update coming, I swear

Loyal readers,

I just wanted to let everyone know that just in case you can't get enough of me here, I will have a weekly article on TCGPlayer starting in the next week or so. I have been holding off on updating here, while that was taken care of. I do not plan on abandoning my blog here just because I'm writing over there as well. I will not post any of my content from TCGPlayer here or vice versa. I will continue to update this site 2 to 3 times a week and my next post should be up later today. Also, for anyone who is interested, I have started another blog for VS System since World of Warcraft has become the focus here. That blog has been there for a few weeks, but I have started updating it as well. You can find it here. Thanks for reading and you can expect my next post later today.

Rescue the Survivors! and The Perfect Stout.

Today's preview cards were more dealing with defining the races in the World of Warcraft TCG. They are both quests, so there's not a whole lot exciting going on with them. I'l talk quickly about the cards themselves, but today I also want to talk about how I'm hoping the next set affects deckbuilding.

To see the preview cards go here.

These two quests are pretty similar. Rescue the Survivors is pretty good. If you could complete it during your opponent's turn, I think it would be the best quest in the game as you would almost be assured of always getting two cards out of it. As is, you will always get one card and then have an ally left over. Your opponent will usually get to decide whether that extra dude becomes another card in your hand or soaks up an attack. Either one is not bad. One of the nice things about this card is it gives your opponent another opportunity to make a mistake. Does he need all of his attacks to go through at the expense of giving you an extra card or does he attack your ally and lose tempo to deny you the extra card. In control matchups, this card will almost always mean your opponent will try to kill the extra ally, but because most control decks will play defensively through the early and midgame they may not be in a position to kill that extra ally. I really like this quest. Of course, it depends on what Draenei heroes we get, but I think this card is pretty solid.

The second quest previewed today was The Perfect Stout. This card will make Your Fortune Awaits You completely obsolete in Alliance decks unless players want them in addition to The Perfect Stouts. If you're not playing a Dwarf hero, this card is still strictly superior to YFAY. Most of the time they will have the exact same function, pay 3 to draw a card. But the simple fact that this card has another power to use if you need it for no extra cost means there is simply no reason to put Fortune in an Alliance deck before it maxes out its Perfect Stouts. If you're playing a Dwarf, you get Litori's flip ability with a card tacked on for good measure. Another solid card.

Judging by these two cards, I think that Through the Dark Portal is going to be a good thing for World of Warcraft constructed play. One of the things that is a little bothersome for tournament players right now is the fact that most of the decks are really defined by the allies that they use. There is essentially a rush set of allies for Alliance and Horde, the Horde mid-range allies, and the Alliance control allies. You can also play solo. Each set of allies generally has a hero that plays that set the best. For instance, the mid-range Horde allies are best utilized by the Shaman. Right now, when you build a deck you basically pick which set of allies you want and then pick your hero based on just a few abilities. I'm hoping that Dark Portal will make hero selection more important and allow some more creativity among the deck types. Right now a lot of the constricted feeling of deckbuilding is because of the small amount of available cards. That is why I'm pretty happy the next set is another big set. It should give us a nice cardpool to build from. After Dark Portal, I would like to see the set sizes drop down a little, but the game will be more settled in then and can stand smaller sets. Overall, I'm starting to get excited for Through the Dark Portal and it's still 2 months away.

Doomguard and Arcane Torrent

For anyone who checks the main World of Warcraft TCG page, you have surely seen the 2 preview cards from the upcoming expansion Through the Dark Portal-Doomguard and Arcane Torrent. For anyone who hasn't seen these cards yet:

Doomguard
Warlock Pet
Cost 7
ATK:8 Health:8

When Doomguard enters play, choose at random a friendly hero or ally other than Doomguard, then destroy that character.

At the end of your turn, destroy target opposing ally.

Arcane Torrent
Instant Ability (Horde only)
Cost 3

Blood Elf Hero Required

Interrupt all other abilities. Opponents can't play abilities this turn.

With no knowledge of other cards in the set, let's take a look at how these may interact with cards we already have and the metagame we are in right now.

The two most important words to remember on Doomguard are hero and random. The first time I read him, I conveniently skipped over the hero part and immediately thought the guy was incredibly busted. Then I re-read it and saw the part where he can cause you to just randomly lose. That's not something I'm a big fan of, but let's look at what he can do should he stick around. If you don't immediately lose the game upon Doomguard's arrival, you should win it pretty quickly afterward. The guy is a Vanquish machine trapped in an 8/8 body. If your opponent doesn't deal with him quickly, he will see his best ally killed at the end of every turn. Doomguard also gives the Horde a true top-end ally to combat the big hitters the Alliance currently has, though only for the Warlock. From an Alliance Warlock perspective, I just don't see this guy getting much play. At a cost of 7, he is in that upper echelon of game finishers. The problem of course is that the Alliance already has several high-end allies that are gamebreakers and don't have the ability to randomly kill you. Some Warlock players who like to push the envelope may play Doomguard as a one-of to tutor for with The Missing Diplomat in games that look like they're slipping away. In this situation, Doomguard can take a game it looks like you're about to lose and swing it back in your favor. The problem with this theory is if you're losing you probably don't have many allies in play. He might actually have a better home on the Horde side, where you can play the somewhat gimmicky Valthak Spiritdrinker to make sure Doomguard doesn't off your hero, and where the Horde is somewhat lacking in high-end allies. If two control decks go long, Doomguard definitely has the ability to win stalemates over any of the Alliance biggies. I think this card is incredibly powerful, but the drawback is probably significant enough to relegate to mostly casual decks and a few high-risk, high-reward Warlock builds. The biggest problem here is that you need a lot of allies to make his drawback as minimal as possible. The more allies you have, the more likely you are to be winning. If you're already winning, why risk the game by playing this guy. If you're in a game that you feel like you need Doomguard to bring you back, well you probably only have one or two allies meaning Doomguard will end these games in favor of your opponent at least 1/3 of the time.

Now let's move along to Arcane Torrent. This one is racial spec'd to the Blood Elves. So far, we have no idea which races the Blood Elves will represent in this set. We do already have a Blood Elf Mage from the Burning Crusade cards. First let's look at the card itself. It interrupts an ability (maybe more than one if you're lucky) and shuts your opponent out of abilities for the rest of the turn. Right now, there are only two interrupt abilities in the game, Shield Bash and Counterspell. IMO, Shield Bash is far better since it can be played for free and is more active in the deck that plays it. The Shield Bashes are in Gorebelly decks to force through their Mortal Strikes and Heroic Strikes when the time comes to combo the opponent. The Mage generally plays Counterspells as a catch-all to stop deadly abilities. 90% of the time this card will be inferior to the 2 previous interrupts when used as an interrupt. The majority of the time it will interrupt one ability. The block on abilities is unlikely to have a major impact on the turn since they can still play instants in response. The overlooked ability here is the chance to use this as an Abeyance. For instance, a Hunter could play this first and then know that his opponent has no answers for his Aimed Shot (assuming all those cards can legally go in the same deck) This versatility will make this card a lot better. The ability of aggressive decks to use this card both reactively and proactively will make it a staple in aggressive Blood Elf builds essentially allowing 8 cards to be put into 4 deck slots. Since I don't play the MMO, I don't even know which races the Blood Elves could be. A quick trip over to the official site though shows us that the possibilities are Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Warlock. Now the question is what would each of these classes do if given an interrupt ability. The Mage (which is one of the heroes we know will be Blood Elf) already has access to the more efficient Counterspell. The only reason I could see them running Arcane Torrent too is if some ability based combo deck comes out of the next set. That would give the Mage 8 interrupts, one of which could stop abilities from being played the rest of the turn. The Hunter could so some scary things with an interrupt. Shutting off Frost Novas and other spells that decimate their board could really give the Hunters a boost. The Paladin (the other hero we know will be a Blood Elf) doesn't really look like it will need this card. It already really has enough prevention. It doesn't stop the Paladins current worst enemy, Medoc + Moira. It could be sideboarded in vs. Warrior combo decks, but other than that the Paladin really already has better tools at his disposal. Horde Priests could probably put this card to pretty good use in a decent mid-range type deck. Rogues are awful and will need a lot of help before they become playable. The Horde Warlock could make good use out of this card as it will make the Gorebelly matchup so much better.

There should be a new preview card every Friday. I will try my best to review each one the next Monday from now until the previews either get more frequent or the set gets released. Until then, take care.

Swiss Rounds and Tiebreakers

There has been a lot of discussion recently around the Internet about tiebreakers and the Swiss pairings system used at Regionals last month. Today, I want try to help everyone understand how Swiss pairings work (and more importantly where the number of rounds comes from) and what the tiebreakers really are.

First let's address Swiss-style pairings. In any World of Warcraft TCG tournament you will get one point for each match win and no points for each match loss. Each round, players are paired randomly with another player with the same amount of points, e.g. everyone with 3 points will play someone else with 3 points, 2 points plays 2 points, etc. If there are an odd number of players with the most points, one player will be "paired down" meaning they will play someone with the next highest point total. When there are an odd number of players with a certain point total, the highest amount of points always get paired down first. If there are an odd number of players in the tournament, a player with the lowest point total get a bye.

Determining the number of rounds to be played

The easiest way to determine how many rounds is to take the number of entrants and go up to the next number that = 2^x. Whatever x equals is the number of rounds to be played. For instance, if there are 45 players, you would go up to 64 which is 2^6 so there should be 6 rounds. Some organizers don't always follow what should be followed and have adopted their own number of players for each number of rounds. The originial intent of Swiss pairings was to get down to one undefeated player who would be the winner. However, since most card tournaments use the Swiss as a means to get to an 8-man elimination sometimes the numbers are varied. Let's take a quick look at how the Swiss would work for a 64-person tournament. If you're not interested in seeing how this works, scroll down past it.

64 is a power of 2, so we'll be playing 6 rounds in this exercise. Round 1 all players are paired randomly, so we'll have 32 player at 1-0 and 32 at 0-1.
In Round 2, all the 1-0's will play each other and all the 0-1's will play each other. We will have 16 winners in the 1-0 bracket for 16 players at 2-0. The sixteen 1-0 losers will pair up with the 0-1 winners to make 32 1-1's, and there will be 16 losers in the 0-1 bracket for 16 0-2's. So now our standings look like this.
2-0 16 people
1-1 32 people
0-2 16 people
I'm not going to detail every round, but I will show you what the "standings" would look like after each.
Round 3
3-0 8 people
2-1 24 people
1-2 24 people
0-3 8 people
Round 4
4-0 4 people
3-1 16 people
2-2 24 people
1-3 16 people
0-4 4 people
Round 5
5-0 2 people
4-1 10 people
3-2 20 people
2-3 20 people
1-4 10 people
0-5 2 people
Round 6
6-0 1 person
5-1 6 people
4-2 15 people
3-3 20 people
2-4 15 people
1-5 6 people
0-6 1 person.

As you can see, if we were looking for one winner, we would have it as only one person is 6-0. If we were cutting to top 8 we would have close to a clean break here as the one 6-0 and the 6 5-1's would make up 7 of our 8 with one 4-2 getting in. The problem with Regionals was we were playing for top 4. Top 4 is a little messy here after 6 rounds. The 6-0 is obviously in, but then you've got 6 5-1's tiebreaking it out for 3 invites. The 2 possible solutions here are a top 8 cut with a one round playoff, or one extra round of Swiss. UDE chose to play the extra round of Swiss. If you extrapolate out our mock tourney from above you can see that in round 7, the one 6-0 would get paired down, then we would have 2 5-1 vs 5-1 matches and one of the 5-1's would get paired down. Unless the 2 5-1's who are paired up and down respectively both win, we will reach our desired number of invites. If they both win, we will have 5 6-1's battling for 4 slots. Even this one small problem only comes up when the number of players is very near the maximum for the number of rounds.

So, why were so many X-1's left out at Regionals?

The simple answer is not enough TO's ran the extra round of Swiss to ensure the X-1's got their invite. One thing to note about the extra round of Swiss. It is actually slightly more fair to the person who goes undefeated as even if they lose that last extra round, their tiebreakers are all but guaranteed to get them the invite in the rare situation that there is one extra X-1. If there isn't, their last round is basically irrelevent to them and they're not given the opportunity to lose the one round playoff to someone who lost 2 matches on the day.

So now let's talk about tiebreakers. There are 3 tiebreakers. One thing to note before I talk about how the tiebreakers work is that the 1st tiebreaker almost always is the deciding one. I have looked through all the final standings of PC's and many 10K's to see how often the 2nd tiebreaker came into play. No one has ever missed a top 8 based on the SECOND or THIRD tiebreaker, and only one player has ever missed the money based on these tiebreakers. The time they most often come into play is deciding placement in the 30's through the end of the money and even those times are rare. So now that we know that the first tiebreaker is the most important, how exactly do the tiebreakers work?

The first tiebreak is opponent's win/loss sum. What this means is that each for each opponent you played, you take their wins and subtract their losses. This gives you that opponent's sum. You then add the sums of all your opponents. One thing to note here is that no one opponent can contribute worse than -3 to your tiebreak sum. This means if your first round opponent plays all day and loses every match, he is still only a -3 to your sum. The point of this tiebreaker is to determine who played the better opponents during the tournament. If player A and player B are both 6-1, but player A loaded up on people who didn't win very many matches while player B beat several other players in the top 8 then player B's 6-1 is considered better than player A's because he had to beat better opponents to obtain it.
The second tiebreak is an extension of the first. It is your opponents' opponents' win/loss sum. To get this you take the first tiebreak of all your opponents and add them together. What this tiebreaker is saying is your opponents seem to be about the same in quality but let's see who they played to see who's really better.
The third tiebreaker is the sum of the sqaures of the round you lost in. So if you lose in round 1 your third tiebreak gets a 1. Round 2 is worth a 4 and so on. This says the later you lose the better.

There has also been a lot of outcry that Magic's tiebreaker system is better, so let's look at that system quickly and compare it to World of Warcraft. Magic's 1st tiebreaker is opponent's match win %. Essentially the same as opponents win/loss sum. They're both factoring in the quality of your opposition. Since we know that the first tiebreaker is almost always the one that actually breaks ties, in over 90% of scenarios, Magic and World of Warcraft use virtually the same system. Magic's second tiebreaker is where the systems diverge. Magic's second tiebreaker is personal duel win %. Basically, this says "Well your opponents were about the same, so..." and instead of using your opponents' opponents to guage the quality of your tournament work, they say since your opponent were about the same, how bad did you beat them? The third Magic tiebreaker is opponent's duel win %. This one basically says "Ok, your opponents are about equal and you beat them equally bad, but how bad did they beat (or lose to) their opponents?" This one is wildly different than World of Warcraft, but in all the past tournament research I did, I only found a handful of cases in VS. System that went to the third tiebreaker and none in Magic. One thing to remember about WoW is that TO's use the MANTIS software which UDE supplies for all their games. VS. System, Yu-Gi-Oh and WoW all use the same system. Since VS. only plays one game per round, the game win % can't be used in MANTIS.

I hope this helped clear up what happens in a tournament and the likely cause for much of the confusion and tiebreaker madness that occurred at Regionals.