0:00

Hello Underworld Underground listeners, this is Sylvia speaking,

0:02

Thomas' wife, editor of this current episode. I just wanted to provide you guys with some context.

0:07

It was recorded on January 27th, as well as the Pink Slip episode that they

0:11

are trying not to spoil later in the episode is currently available through

0:15

the Shade Glass Reflections YouTube channel. Enjoy!

0:24

Welcome back to Underworld's Underground,

0:26

the only Warhammer Underworlds podcast where one of the hosts,

0:30

one lvo 2024 rivals please

0:33

join us again as we discuss four hammer underworlds our favorite competitive

0:36

miniature game tonight where we will try to attempt to

0:39

stay true to our casual nature but we did all just spend last week

0:42

trying to win a major tournament my name is thomas and joining me today is mike

0:46

or sleeks bowl author of the sleeks bowl series how's it going mike i have been

0:50

sick for like two months i feel that my children keep just bringing home the

0:57

death i'm I'm sorry, and I hope you feel better soon.

1:00

I am very excited to be on this podcast, however.

1:04

I'm just glad he made it. I mean, we were... The day before,

1:08

he's like, I got to get an x-ray. I don't know. They might tell me I have to go to the hospital.

1:13

It's true all of it is true but yeah no

1:16

he he survived he made it and he thrived so you're

1:19

paying the price now i'm sure but we're glad to have had you and this

1:23

other voice is that of other mike

1:26

or fish mode author of the spent glory series how are you this evening other

1:31

i am not sick i was not sick and i remain not sick and i definitely have not

1:35

jinxed myself just now i'm doing pretty good had a lot of fun and get a bit

1:39

of a post event hangover kind of dragging a little a little bit going back to work,

1:43

but you know, all that considered it, it's going pretty well for me.

1:46

So can't be absolutely glad to hear it. All right, let's dive right into,

1:50

we're going to start our helping hands segment.

1:53

Mike, do you want to kick us off with that one? Yeah, I do. So the people that

1:57

I feel very grateful for, number one is my wife for taking care of our kids

2:03

and holding down the fort while I was gone for four days straight playing games.

2:08

And then the second group of people I wanted to shout out was the What the Hex crew.

2:13

One of my purposes in going to LVO was to meet some of the people that are playing

2:17

the game that are involved in the community. And I was a bit of a rescue dog there in that I didn't come with anyone from my meta.

2:27

So I just kind of tagged along with everyone else. and on

2:30

one of the nights i was with the what the heck's crew eating dinner

2:33

and they just decided to buy me dinner and i

2:36

said why are you buying me dinner are you guys rich and they're

2:39

like well collectively we are and ended up

2:42

buying me this really nice dinner so i just want to shout them out and say thank

2:45

you for that that's very sweet of them they definitely have this atmosphere

2:50

when you hang out with them that they just automatically have included you as

2:55

part of their group and it It really feels amazing to just be included when you're with them.

3:01

All right. Other Mike, you want some shout outs? Yeah, for sure. I'll echo Mike Prime.

3:06

I want to thank my wife as well. I think, you know, we talk about all these,

3:10

oh, we're going to travel for this event. We're going to do all these cool things.

3:12

Here's what my deck is going to have. A lot of stuff that you'll hear on other

3:15

podcasts, other shows, and you're here to talk about the game,

3:18

but we can't do that without people back home supporting us, people who can come.

3:23

And my wife stayed home, ran the fort, took my cats to the vet.

3:26

Made sure my daughter stayed healthy and all that stuff and allowed me to have this experience.

3:30

And I just can't thank her enough and be grateful enough that I have a partner who will do that for me.

3:35

So if you listen to have a spouse or a partner or a friend who backs you up

3:39

and lets you live to the fullest, be appreciative of them and let them know how you feel.

3:43

And then much like how Mike had fun with the What the Heck's crew,

3:47

I got to hang out with Cabanas actually from Arizona.

3:50

He and I both had very late flights back on Monday.

3:54

And so we had had an all-day Monday to kill, and we just hung out at a Starbucks

3:57

and took over a table for, I think, six hours.

4:00

And so it was good to have someone to hang out with instead of just reading

4:02

a book or scrolling my phone the whole time. So it was nice to have companionship, make a friend in a post-competitive scene.

4:08

And so I was glad to have him too. Did you play Starbucks Underworlds? Is that what I'm hearing you say?

4:13

Yeah, we played Starbucks Underworlds. We did two Mrs. Games and a Rivals game.

4:17

Just chatted and we tried out some malevolent masks and he got me with it.

4:21

So it got me thinking and I tested it out tonight myself.

4:24

And actually the deck's not as bad as I thought it was at first.

4:26

So, you know, give it a try. Very cool. All right. Keeping with the theme, I would also like to thank my wife.

4:33

My wife actually took our two kids with us to Vegas. I guess we drove there

4:39

with both of them and then she took them to the aquarium and the children's

4:43

museum and stuff like that while I was at the tournament.

4:46

So she is a superhero and my sister-in-law accompanied her. That was very sweet of her.

4:51

So like you said, my family for

4:54

supporting this, you know, what is at the end of the day a game, right?

4:58

But it's something that I'm passionate about, something that we really care about.

5:01

And so them being able to see past

5:05

the silliness of the toys and see

5:08

it for something that we genuinely are interested in

5:11

my wife supports me in everything and she's very very sweet and i additionally

5:16

would like to shout out antihero or chris is the to the judge and the event

5:23

organizer for the underworlds events at lvo and he puts in a lot of work to

5:28

make sure that that they actually happen. And this year was quite a lot bigger than last year. And last year,

5:34

I know he was throwing a bunch of curveballs and it barely got off the ground.

5:37

So for dealing with the headaches, that is everything that comes with getting a tournament going.

5:43

I want to make sure Chris knows that we absolutely appreciate him making it

5:47

possible for us to get out there and play. Yeah. Can I just comment on that for a second?

5:52

And I posted this on discord, but many Many people didn't know that there literally

5:56

was no prize support for Underworlds. He was telling me on Sunday,

6:00

he said, well, what happened was Games Workshop sort of said,

6:03

Frontline Gaming, you're going to do the prize support. Frontline Gaming kind of said, Games Workshop, you're going to do the prize support.

6:08

And what ended up happening was no one did it.

6:11

And so Chris got on email and sent out an email basically saying,

6:16

look, I'm running this event and you guys have provided nothing.

6:19

I expect you to provide prize support for our contestants. and on Sunday,

6:25

the table was full of stuff. Not only that, but I watched him a couple times.

6:29

Most of the games, 99.9% of the games were super chill.

6:35

People were having a good time just playing. But there was a handful of times

6:39

that he needed to come over and make a determination.

6:42

And I happened to be close to a couple of those determinations,

6:45

and he was spot on every time. So he just did a really, really good job running this tournament.

6:51

And he's incredibly nice, too. So those times where he does have to like step

6:55

in and give a determination that obviously one player isn't going to be super happy with.

7:01

He's very level with it. He's very, yeah, he's very sweet about it.

7:05

And he's able to deliver that in a way that I think everyone walks away happy

7:09

and just chit chatting with him. He's just super fun to talk to, too. Yeah, I got to talk to him a little bit about the event.

7:15

And he's travels a long way to do this. Like it's not super convenient for him.

7:19

He's a teacher, he has to find ways to get coverage for his classroom while

7:22

he's out here doing this stuff. And it's so easy to just talk about, oh, here's someone who won the game.

7:26

Here's somebody who won the event. We're all so cool. But like, this doesn't run, you know, much like we don't

7:30

go without family support. It doesn't happen without administrative support. And he does this totally unsung,

7:37

lots of work job that at the best of times, he's just bored because no one needs him.

7:41

And at the worst times, he has to go ruin somebody's day and possibly boot them

7:45

from the tournament because they lose a game based on some rules interpretation. That's not nothing.

7:49

Absolutely. It's really nice to have him willing to do that for years in a row

7:52

and to see it go from, what, eight or nine players last year to 24 and 22 this

7:57

time. Like, that's really cool. So hopefully we can kind of get it off the ground next year and really take

8:02

off and watch his baby grow. Absolutely.

8:05

Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Chris. All right. With that, let's jump to our

8:09

making a statement and we will actually begin to recap our experience at LVO.

8:14

I wanted to begin with, let's talk a little bit about what went into choosing

8:19

what warband and deck pairing that we actually took to the Grand Clash and how

8:24

much was the overall meta a consideration in making that choice.

8:29

So, Mike, how did you decide what you were going to take, and how much were

8:33

you planning around the Boogeyman, Eflum, Damatan, this Headsman's Curse that

8:39

we keep talking about but never seeing? Yeah, it's a good question. So, I have a short answer.

8:45

I didn't consider it hardly at all. And let me tell you why.

8:49

I mentioned at the top of the podcast that I had been sick for quite a while.

8:54

I hadn't played a game of Underworld since November.

8:56

And that was against me. Yeah. Yeah.

8:59

And so what I did was I said, look, Domiton and a film are problems for me.

9:04

I'm aware of the problem. I'm going to need hot dice or a good card draw in order to beat them,

9:10

but I'm going to choose to play what I know.

9:12

And so I ended up playing Iron Souls Condemners with Tooth and Claw.

9:17

And that was a deck I was very familiar with.

9:19

I knew if I have two objectives left, I knew which ones I hadn't seen.

9:23

And I thought that would give me my best chance at winning.

9:27

So it wasn't a decision like, oh, I give up. I'm just going to play whatever.

9:31

It was, well, what's my best shot at winning? And it was the deck I knew.

9:34

And that's why I chose that. For sure. And we've talked about it a bunch and

9:38

I'll continue to hammer it in. But I will always tell people to play what you know and play what you like,

9:44

and you'll get good at it.

9:46

This game has so much nuance in it that you can play something that's quote unquote bad.

9:51

But if you play it enough times, and you know it inside and out,

9:54

you're good at it. And then you're good at the game. Yeah, we're not going to do a strong start segment this time where we talk about,

10:00

you know, hey, a new player, here's what you need to learn. But that's what the topic would be is pick the one you like and take it to 11.

10:05

Because it's It's possible as we go through the stories from LBO,

10:08

you'll see that it's not necessarily that the best quote unquote things out

10:12

there are going to be the ones that win all the time. And we also saw it just in the diversity of the field before the tournament even started, right?

10:20

There was a huge variance in the warbands people took and we will see it in the top 16 too.

10:26

How about you, Other Mike? What went into deciding what warband and deck to

10:31

bring, and how much did you think about what you might see at the tournament?

10:34

So I had no illusions going in that I was going to be the event winner.

10:38

I didn't think I was going to get a golden ticket. I thought I was going to

10:41

go to have fun. I was going to go to meet some people. And while I was at it, I mean, if you're heading to Vegas, you're there to gamble, right?

10:47

So I took Grisel's RNI and I took them with breakneck slaughter.

10:50

And in part, it's because I've actually been playing a lot of RNI since we started

10:54

our secret project that has yet to to conclude. But I fell in love. They're a lot of fun. They roll a lot of dice.

10:59

And so much like Ripa's used to be for me where it's okay if you missed the

11:03

first attack because you've got a second one, right? Yeah, sure.

11:05

There's ways to get combo attacks. There's ways to throw out seven,

11:08

eight attacks during a round if you get lucky. And so obviously you want to hit consistently and all that stuff,

11:13

but I just enjoy rolling dice. And I thought, let's do this. I played a couple of games back at home and I

11:19

was winning a lot and winning by pretty large margins.

11:21

I did a store tournament and I won all my games there

11:24

and that kind of sealed the deal for me that I guess this is what I'm going to

11:26

take and I know breakneck is not necessarily the best it's

11:30

a pretty strong rival stack and Griselle's RNI is better now

11:33

that they've done the errata but it's not you know a world dominating thing and

11:36

I knew going in to the tournament there was a huge risk of the best players

11:39

in the world want the most consistent deck and consistent performance and you're

11:43

going to eventually if you bet it all on dice there's going to be a game or

11:46

two where dice don't go your way and there's nothing you can do the best deck

11:50

doesn't roll any dice it It just knows what's going to happen.

11:52

And that's not how I wanted to play. So since I wasn't necessarily trying to win, I thought, let's go have a lot of fun.

11:57

And when I win, I'll win big. And that is what happened. Right.

12:00

You'll hear more about just just yeah, it's you get the highs and you get the lows.

12:05

But I got to roll lots of dice. And so I had a good time. I have to say,

12:08

Fish, I was really excited to see you put that deck through its paces.

12:14

I might have been more excited to watch you play that deck than to play my own

12:19

deck because Because I knew the potential of what you had concocted.

12:23

And it was really cool to watch it play out.

12:26

Another thing that was interesting, and we don't have to dwell on this forever,

12:29

but the warband diversity we had talked about was pretty widespread of 24 players.

12:33

There were one warband that had three and three others that had two,

12:35

but everything else was a unique representation. And that warband that had three people playing it was Griselle's Iron Eye.

12:41

That was the most popular choice. So I was not alone in that decision. And one of the other two also paired them

12:47

with Breakneck Slaughter. So I wasn't the only one who had this idea. yeah but it was cool to

12:50

see maybe i'm not this crazy guy ranting in a corner

12:53

somewhere that no one listens to that this has actually got chance

12:56

to do well and it was fun to see someone else take it to the

12:59

event too the other deck just went cold hard rivals yeah shout out bill bill

13:05

made the cut bill made the cut with rivals christoph's r9 so anybody who continues

13:11

to hate on yourselves check yourself because they're good i will say my nemesis

13:16

decks for them are are probably like 70% of their rivals deck.

13:19

Other than their objectives, I think are a little bit rough in some places.

13:24

Most of their upgrades are amazing and a good chunk of their ploys are really, really good.

13:30

Yeah. I mean, that's how I came to my, what do I think I'm doing here?

13:34

What am I going to do? And for the last little bit, consideration that I gave

13:36

to the meta, I knew having played them a bunch that if you are running three

13:41

or four fighter semi elite, I could just pile on the attacks and take you down.

13:45

And if you try and hide in the back, I have the speed to reach you and breakneck helps.

13:49

I've been longboarded a couple of times and said, that doesn't bother me at

13:52

all. I can get to you and you can hide and there's nothing you can do about it.

13:55

And what I ran into trouble with in preparation and in the event itself is actually

14:00

horde warbands and hold warbands, which is not really the meta thing.

14:03

And so I wasn't so concerned about that because that was what I was running

14:06

into the most trouble with is stuff that I didn't think I was going to see.

14:08

And we'll hear more about that later. All right. So for me, I actually kind of panicked a little bit when the errata

14:16

dropped because that was what just more than two weeks before the event.

14:20

And I'd been practicing my storm coven seismic shock deck a lot,

14:25

right? I've been playing them since they came out. I've been playing that deck pretty consistently over the last like five ish months at this point.

14:31

And so when the errata dropped, not three weeks before the event,

14:35

I definitely spiraled a little bit and was really thinking about doing a whole

14:39

last minute warband swap into something that I hadn't been practicing.

14:42

And you guys helped calm me down and bring me back to earth.

14:46

And ultimately, a lot of people told me to just play what I knew,

14:50

even if the warband changed a little bit, I still have at this point,

14:53

probably 200 reps on them. I know how they work.

14:56

I know how their deck works. i did over the those two

14:59

weeks scramble to get probably like 10 to 15 practice

15:02

games in with the inspiration timing change

15:05

and at the end of that felt like i'd calmed

15:08

back down it was back to i knew what i was doing and so

15:11

ultimately i was always going to take what i knew they aren't quite the boogeyman

15:16

that they i think were before especially with force of frost also taking some

15:21

hits in the errata i was never going to play them with force of frost anyway

15:24

i just really like the The way my Seismic Shock deck works for them, it's...

15:29

Consistent when it is we'll talk about that a little

15:32

i'm sure too but that deck's fun to play

15:34

it's the only whole deck i've ever enjoyed playing it's

15:38

consistent and i know how to play it as far as like what consideration

15:41

went into the meta i dropped a couple of cards out of my deck maybe

15:44

mostly because of the way the inspiration timing changed

15:47

i can't just throw some buffs onto the

15:50

fighter that i want to stay inspired and then leave them that way

15:53

anymore so a couple of cards came out of my deck because of that

15:56

one of which i think may be the most important change i

15:59

really only changed two or three cards but the most important was i

16:01

dropped thundershock and so losing a ping hurt for sure

16:04

but it's not a terribly reliable one and adjacency is hard

16:07

and that adjacent fighter isn't going to be level two wizard anymore but

16:10

also it allowed me to add in azurite halo.

16:13

Which is a defense buff against attacks

16:17

made from adjacency and so now that i

16:20

have to dangle that fighter that isn't going to have to

16:22

block anymore giving them a little bit bit of a defense buff is nice

16:26

it's a more consistent spell to cast and one thing i

16:29

was most worried about was running into an aggressive

16:32

headsman i didn't spoiler but i was

16:35

a little stressed about that so the range upgrades

16:38

and defense tech that i added made

16:41

me feel a little more comfortable about that potential matchup so

16:44

i think i went a lot more in depth about my thoughts about

16:47

what i might see coming out of the meta but i put a

16:49

lot of time into thinking about it i as much as other

16:52

mike was not trying to win i really kind of wanted to

16:55

try to win but that's how i landed on what to take

16:58

and it basically is also just what i'd been practicing

17:01

you guys want to say anything else in this segment before we move on to the

17:04

next section good yeah i don't think i have anything to add other than you and

17:08

aaron played a practice game in my hotel room the night before and it didn't

17:12

seem to me like you had any trouble with the timing of inspiration or any of

17:15

that stuff i felt like you it looked to me like you've been playing them for years like that So,

17:19

you know, obviously you did your homework and made it work. So props to you.

17:22

Thanks. All right. So let's start talking about the tournament itself.

17:26

Mike, how did your day one matchups go? Yeah.

17:29

So just in case someone's listening and doesn't know, what's going to happen

17:33

on this Nemesis Grand Clash that happened on Friday and Saturday is on Friday,

17:38

you play games for seeding, basically, in the top 16,

17:43

play on day two, and then a single elimination bracket.

17:46

And so my goal going into this Nemesis Grand Clash was actually pretty conservative, I think.

17:53

My goal was make it to day two. That was my primary goal.

17:56

I didn't want to be out day one. So my first goal was to make it to day two,

18:00

and my second goal was to provide each of my opponents a competitive experience.

18:05

I wanted to be a great sportsman, and I wanted to offer good competition to

18:10

my opponents. So each of us played three games on Friday.

18:13

My first game was against Aaron, who was playing Void Curse, Drom.

18:18

And this is not something that I've seen in my meta at all.

18:23

I don't think anyone in my meta plays Void Curse. And the only person who played

18:27

Drom didn't like playing Drom, and it showed in the way they played.

18:30

So this was a very unusual matchup for me. That's kind of funny for me,

18:34

because Aaron is one of my most regular sparring partners.

18:38

So I've played against his void curse score chosen deck countless times at this point. Sure.

18:43

Yeah. And that was one of the cool things about this event is you meet people

18:45

from totally different play groups that have totally different experience.

18:49

Oh, yeah, we run into this all the time back home. And I'm like,

18:51

that's not at all what I ever see. So there's one drum that gets played in rivals maybe every four months back

18:57

home for me. So it's just not been my experience.

19:00

It's cool to come to LDO and see that kind of stuff. Yeah, it was really cool.

19:03

And Aaron is just an awesome person to play against.

19:06

We had a ton of fun. We were hooting and hollering on crits and like it was just a blast.

19:11

But basically, ultimately, his maneuverability was a problem for me.

19:15

Iron souls aren't that maneuverable. They want to get toe to toe. And often what I would find is I'd get toe to toe with him.

19:21

And he'd sprint away. And it left me sort of in the lurch.

19:25

And so I couldn't get all the great swings on him. So in the first game, it went pretty well.

19:30

He ended up winning. I forget what the glory score was, but it was at least,

19:34

I think he was up at least five by the end of the game.

19:36

So it was a good, solid win. In that game, I had gone into round two.

19:41

Drom had three wounds left on him, and I had pinned him.

19:45

I had knocked him back into the corner of his zone. I win the roll Olaf to go first.

19:50

I charge with Brodus, who's doing lethal damage on Draum. I roll two successes.

19:56

So that's a total of three successes because he's trapped in the corner and

20:00

he rolls a crit. Of course. And at that point, it was just so outrageous and so ridiculous.

20:06

We both just started screaming like crazy. It was just so fun.

20:10

Now, I wish Draum had died, but he didn't. And so it was fun a a little bit, and then I cried.

20:16

So I ended up losing that game. I have to say that if that attack had gone through,

20:20

I don't know that I would have won, but it would have been much, much closer.

20:25

And so that was game one. Game two, his maneuverability really got to me.

20:31

I kept getting toe-to-toe with him, and then he would sprint away into the middle and score.

20:35

And so I just never really got a hold of him in game two. Now,

20:39

with that said, I cleared the board.

20:41

I had I tabled him by round three, but my only fighter left was Void Cursed,

20:46

and he scored Reshaped Realm. And so that did me in. Now, and he made a comment about halfway through the game.

20:52

He was like, oh yeah, Thomas told me you had a lot of healing in your deck.

20:55

So Thomas, please stop spying on me and sharing my deck information with your players in Arizona.

21:01

No, truth be told, that had nothing to do with my loss. I go down two to zero against Aaron.

21:07

Awesome games, good competitive games, doing well so far. My second game was against Bridget.

21:13

Bridget was playing Starblood Stalkers and Daring Delvers.

21:16

Another one of my most frequent sparring partners. So I've played against that deck a lot too.

21:22

Now, the thing about this is I know this deck because I play it.

21:25

I play this exact pairing. She had a few different objectives than me, but she is a very smart and tight player.

21:33

She doesn't make mistakes. If the dice go bad against her, the dice go bad,

21:37

but she doesn't make errors. She really doesn't. And our first game started off, I got rid of Clack Trock and two activations.

21:43

So the one hit two hit clack truck is

21:46

gone but we had the board squared up and she managed to

21:49

get some people in my territory and just start scoring like mad

21:52

i end up losing that game she scores great plan and i end up losing that game

21:56

by three glory her deck is really smooth it frequently i'm surprised at the

22:02

ability she has to just score like 15 points in a row without making an attack

22:08

Yeah, she just played very smart. Game two, I set up boards and I do something that I've never done before.

22:14

I did an offset. And my thinking was, let's limit the amount of space that the

22:18

skinks have to get into my territory.

22:20

And if Clacktrock wants to go in and fight me, he's going to have to fight all

22:24

three of us. And so I did an offset and it worked really well.

22:28

I got Clacktrock out again into activations and the skinks didn't have a lot

22:32

of wiggle room and I end up winning that game by three glory.

22:35

So if anyone's counting at home, that means we are exactly tied and we go into round three.

22:42

So we go into round three. I win the roll off for boards. I do the same thing. I do the offset.

22:47

And Bridget at one point in time goes, oh, spicy offset.

22:50

So she acknowledged what I was doing. and then same thing happened.

22:54

Platt trucks out in two activations. Skinks don't have as much wiggle room to

22:58

get around and I'm able to get my hands on them.

23:00

I end up winning that one by three glories. So we play best of three.

23:05

I win two to one, but the glory differential is three.

23:09

So that was a super close set of games and she was a great opponent.

23:14

My third game, I play Brendan. Now Brendan is a friend of Chris who's the tournament organizer.

23:19

And again, fantastic opponent, just like my first two. you, he's playing Kanan's

23:24

Reapers with Tooth and Claw. And some people might look at that pairing and say, oh, I'm not sure what you

23:29

do with that pairing. Let me tell you what you do with that pairing. He has Kenta with Empowered Natterite and Cleave.

23:36

So that means he has lethal damage on all three of my fighters.

23:40

He puts Brutal Transformation on Hakkor with Unnerving Synchrony.

23:44

Again, lethal damage to all three of my fighters.

23:48

And then he has Kanan with Cleave and four damage. Again, lethal damage. So he's got three...

23:54

Elites essentially on the board and a ton of these little guys.

23:58

And I'm looking at my war band going, what am I supposed to do?

24:02

Yeah. That's not scary at all. You know, exactly.

24:07

There's nothing to fear about three, four damage fighters. Right.

24:11

Right. So my decision was I didn't show up to Vegas to dance around.

24:17

I showed up to swing some hammers. So I went right after Kanan.

24:20

And I was able to delete Kanan the first round.

24:24

And on one of the charges, it was Tavian, who's a three hammer attack,

24:28

charging into Kanan while he has full supports.

24:32

So anything's going to succeed except a dodge. And Brendan rolled a dodge. Of course.

24:37

And that was a really critical moment. At one point in time,

24:40

he pushed me out of his territory, which was a smart move.

24:43

But I had to outflank. And I pushed right back in. And that scored me Hurricane

24:47

Force and Focal Point for five.

24:49

So there was a couple really critical card draws.

24:53

He whiffed a couple times and that was essentially game one.

24:57

I did manage to avoid being killed in game two and closed that one out as well.

25:03

Same thing, killed Kanan, went down the line, right? Killed Kenta,

25:06

killed Hakor, and then tried to clean up the rest of the Natterite.

25:09

So I ended up winning that one two to zero and that

25:13

puts me two for one for the day

25:16

and squeezes me in to a

25:19

slot number nine so i'm ranked number

25:21

nine which means i get to go to day two awesome yeah i have played against that

25:27

kanan pairing a couple of times recently and i almost always focus in on kenta

25:33

the combo shenanigans that kenta can do especially if you give him empowered

25:37

natterite and Unnerving Synchrony just gets out of control too fast.

25:41

So I'm more afraid of him than I am of Kanan. Yeah, I was frightened of Hakor

25:45

with Brutal Transformation and Unnerving Synchrony. Oh, for sure.

25:48

He's just gliding around the board doing four damage. No big deal.

25:52

Yeah that's a really good combo actually and he

25:55

played it very very well like i said there

25:58

was a card and a dice roll or two that really swung

26:01

it in my favor which is what happens with iron souls and it

26:04

ended up giving me the win so all right very cool the

26:07

mic you want to tell us about your day one yeah so day one starts and we get

26:12

our pairings and i am matched up for the very first game against none other

26:17

than mr derrick legendary they call him derrick traquar the leader of the the

26:22

Canadian Upper North Tier 1 Shadesmire homies. Captain Murder.

26:25

Captain Murder. You may have heard of him. He was the undefeated LVO champion

26:28

last year, and I get to begin our tournament playing him.

26:31

So obviously I'm in a very optimistic place, not scared at all.

26:34

Slow warm-up, slow warm-up on the day. Yeah, I know. It's good to get a practice

26:37

game out of the way, just kind of easy win under your belt so you can feel good

26:41

moving forward. And he is playing... He's going to listen to this.

26:43

He is playing Eflum's Pandemonium paired with Force of Frost,

26:47

which are two of the scariest things to face. And I knew I was going to run into this at some point if I succeeded,

26:52

I was going to face one of these spellcasters who's really good at defense.

26:55

And I'm going to just be running into a firing squad as I go.

26:57

And you know, that's why I have five fighters. So I went for it and I start

27:00

the charge and I get fighters in and I'm doing my thing.

27:03

And for the first game, he across, I think like six or seven defense roles gets

27:09

four crit defenses to open the game.

27:12

And so I just don't, I just can't kill anything. I'm not saying he wasn't playing

27:15

well, but like, I just could not get the ball rolling and I need to get a kill

27:19

to get glory to get some upgrades, to do my thing.

27:21

But I managed to stick into it and I put some good damage on FLM and I keep him busy.

27:25

And by the very end of the game, I have a single fighter left in the back of

27:29

his field, staggered and up against the wall.

27:32

And he is rolling some spell dice. And if he kills her, he wins.

27:37

And if he fails, then I win by five.

27:40

And unfortunately, just that dice roll did not go my way, tipped it over and

27:44

I couldn't beat two successes. So I thought, okay, I almost had him. If only luck had been a little better,

27:50

I'm going to totally get him next game. But that was the game that I set up the boards. And so now he gets to orient the boards for game two.

27:55

And so I ended up losing 12 to 15. I'm down by three. I'm down one game.

27:59

I feel like I could possibly do that. He can't roll four crit defenses again, right?

28:03

So this time we begin to play and And he rolls three or four more crit defenses

28:07

again, and just stifling. Like I said, I set my deck up to gamble and I was not hitting by gambling.

28:12

So I got into this trouble with the max offset kind of blocked me getting into his territory.

28:16

And so I held on to some cards that I couldn't realistically score.

28:20

I had out of control where I score if I pass impetus off or if one of my fighters

28:25

gets staggered. And he had already seen it in game one and said,

28:27

I'm not staggering you ever until I see that card.

28:30

And so I waited way too long to score that.

28:33

And I I didn't actually discard it at the end of round one and I kept it for

28:36

round two, which was a poor choice on my part. But I think what really lost me the game is I had arranged him in a way that

28:42

I had a nice scything pocket for Griselle to charge into and she can hit three of his fighters.

28:46

Two of his changers will die and Eflin will die if I can get these hits.

28:49

And I'm going to possibly kill three fighters in one activation,

28:52

right? And this is just going to be, it'll win me the game. So I charge in and I go on roll my first attack against Flamespooler and he

29:00

crit defenses, of course. I also got a crit so I was able to at least push him out of the way.

29:04

So he gets pushed out of the way and now there's two fighters left and I have Kindlefinger on guard.

29:09

And then ephelim and i think okay i'm gonna go for kindle

29:12

finger so that maybe i can kill them and then i

29:15

will have less supports on ephelim and more likely to guarantee

29:18

this kill right mathematically that's what i should do in this scenario and

29:21

so i do the scythe into kindle finger and i kill him but he had the upgrade

29:26

spiteful mouths which i knew was on there from two rounds prior and forgot and

29:31

spiteful mouth says if you do damage to this fighter you take damage back and

29:34

Griselle was on her last wound. And so she died and could not attack Eflim, who I had now guaranteed no supports on.

29:41

And I had a bunch of upgrades on Griselle to allow her to do this.

29:44

And so that was a misplay on my part. And I'm not saying that I necessarily would have won that game because I did

29:49

end up losing seven to 23. So it's not like I was right in it until that moment. But I had a chance to

29:54

kill all three and I did my order wrong. And the card was down. It wasn't like he did anything deceptive.

30:00

I just played the wrong order. And so, you know, that was a bummer. I kind of bad dice early in both games

30:04

and that's just how it goes. But so I ended that first game, I lost two to zero total glory differential

30:10

was, you know, negative like 17 or something like that, which is pretty rough.

30:14

And so then my second match, I go into Frank Calabretta, who's from nearby.

30:19

I forget exactly where New Mexico, I think. And he was bringing beast bound

30:23

spike claw swarm, which is a really cool pairing.

30:26

And we talked a little bit about how like, you know, you love the old guys and

30:29

you wish you could make them work. His deck was the kind of of deck sort of like mine where once it got off the

30:32

ground you could really do well but you had to get off the

30:35

ground he needs denizens to score glory but he needs glory

30:38

to score denizens and if he could just get that early glory he's he's

30:41

off to the races but unfortunately for him my dice luck turned around and instead

30:45

of my opponent getting all crit defenses and me not able to hit it went the

30:49

other way this time so i killed scritch pretty early in both games he couldn't

30:53

really get the kills i had damage reduction successes so multiple times i had

30:57

fighters vulnerable who didn't die because of acrobatic.

31:00

And so it was really rough for him. And I hit five surges in the first round

31:03

of game one. I was just tearing off and there was nothing he could do.

31:07

And so I won 22 to five and then 20 to three. So I was up by a lot.

31:11

My glory differential had turned back around and I'm one in one.

31:15

And so I head into the final match of the day and I play against Brian from

31:18

what the heck's listeners of that show may recognize that he was interested

31:22

in going to the top cut and had to get through me to do it because he had just

31:26

lost a pretty tight match to Skylar, one of his teammates.

31:28

And he says that every time that they play online, he wins.

31:31

But every time he and Skylar play in person, Skylar beats him.

31:34

And so that's what What happened to him again? And it was just devastating the way that that game went, I guess.

31:39

And so he was sort of, I don't want to say tilted, but definitely on edge when

31:42

we met up because he knew he had to win this game to get in.

31:45

And my glory differential was so good in the last one that I could hold my own

31:48

here and maybe still squeak in, but Brian needed a win.

31:50

He was playing thrice full discord paired with seismic shock.

31:53

And his plan was to hide in the back and do some shuffling of tokens and hold

31:56

two or hold more and just outlast me, which is precisely the kind of thing that

32:02

I came in prepared to face. Almost all of my practice games were against Thricefold Discord,

32:07

just because that's what people in my local play, he longboarded me and it did

32:10

not save him. I hit a lot of attacks. His card draw was just abysmal. He would have a card that if only he had a different

32:17

upgrade, he could score, or if only the positioning was slightly different, this could happen.

32:21

And if only I had drawn that other card, and I have this kind of like trademark

32:24

thing where when I cut my opponent's deck, I take only a single card, put it on the bottom.

32:29

And in one of the games, that card that was at at the bottom of his deck was the one he needed.

32:34

And so it was nice to know that I had done that, but I beat him in a pretty

32:38

brutal fashion, tabled him in round two of both games, and we're just drawing cards to finish it out.

32:42

So I won 14 to three and then 15 to two in part because I ran out of stuff to kill.

32:47

And so I wasn't able to score a lot of surges, which is a good problem to have.

32:50

And so at the end of the day, the way that the tournament scoring worked was

32:53

match wins were worth however many points, but your glory total also went into

32:59

it and not not just differential, but your total glory scored.

33:01

It was actually weighted pretty heavily. And so despite the fact that I lost a game and I was two and one going into

33:08

the final cut, I was ranked third out of 24 players because my glory total was just so high.

33:13

I was actually ranked, Derek who beat me was ranked fourth.

33:16

And so that was kind of weird because he was undefeated and had a head-to-head

33:19

win against me, but I was ranked above him. And that's just the way that the

33:22

scoring packet was designed. And that was the thing people knew coming in. I don't know that but that's how

33:26

I would do it next year. But that was the way it was designed and it really

33:29

worked in my casino deck's favor. I was ranked third going into a final single elimination bracket,

33:35

and that felt pretty cool. And rank number one actually was Damien, a guy from the Northwest as well.

33:40

So he, despite being a Canadian, is considered one of my borderline teammates.

33:44

So that was cool to have the two of us right there at the top.

33:46

It felt like, you know, that's Pacific Northwest, baby.

33:49

Your last two opponents, where you scored like 21-3 and like 15-2.

33:55

Those scores are legend.

33:58

Legend when i saw your glory total on those

34:01

two rounds i was like oh my gosh his deck just

34:04

went off i was excited for you and

34:07

i was excited to see your plans kind of come together

34:10

and place you third in the rankings and i

34:13

think it was well deserved i mean i know people were like oh

34:16

how you know glory total seems weighted pretty heavily i'm sorry

34:19

but to score that much glory in a

34:22

round takes quite a bit of skill in addition

34:25

to whatever wins you might create for yourself it

34:28

also a lot of luck though it's not like it's not like i'm

34:31

some big brain genius who made this happen i mean i did roll to

34:34

chris when i needed him no yeah it's true it's true but you also had a deck

34:38

that could play when you rolled well right so the combination of those things

34:43

it was pretty fun to watch that happen we did spend a while talking to chris

34:47

about the amount that glory GloryTotals factored into tournament scores,

34:52

and he said that he's very open to discussing changes to the tournament packet

34:56

for next year if people feel it's necessary.

34:58

I personally think that Glory's score is not great as a baseline tournament

35:03

point. I don't even really like it as tiebreakers.

35:06

I think that it really hurts hold decks in particular, or control decks.

35:12

If my opponent only scored two points and I only scored five,

35:16

I still got to win. But I'm not saying I know what the right answer is.

35:20

I think the Italians sevens thing is pretty high on a lot of people's list right now.

35:25

And a lot of American tournaments are testing that out to decent success.

35:28

So the point is, Chris said he's open to talking about what the people would

35:33

like to see on next year's tournament packet.

35:36

So we'll see what changes might be made. And I made this comment once I saw

35:40

some of the feedback that he was getting in general.

35:44

And yes, in your case, Mike, where Derek was placed ranked under you,

35:50

that was a bit of an anomaly. But in general, people were playing the next day that should have been playing the next day.

35:56

I mean, there wasn't anyone on there who I'm like, oh, you know what?

36:00

They shouldn't have been in there. Or someone who was ranked like 10th when

36:03

they should have been ranked first, right? In general, it basically approximated the success of the day.

36:09

Yeah, there was only a couple of places that, like you said,

36:12

Mike and Derek probably would have been flipped in basically any other...

36:16

Any other calculation and then yeah maybe a few other small shifts here and

36:21

there i didn't do the math but you're right i think basically everyone that

36:25

moved on would have anyway well the good news is it doesn't really matter because

36:28

uh day two is where you determine the real words.

36:32

And stay tuned fans because you're gonna hear how the deck goes do you want

36:36

to tell us about what you did after day one real quick other mike yeah sure

36:39

so after day one we're all hanging out thinking most people are sitting there

36:43

being like oh what a brain burner i worked so hard and i said said,

36:46

yeah, point gun at bad guy, kill.

36:48

So I didn't have to think too hard, just who's the closest to my knife and put it in them.

36:53

But the part afterward, I went to hang out with the What the Hex crew and they

36:57

were playing this game called Blood on the Clock Tower, which is like a social

37:00

deduction game if you've ever played Mafia. It's kind of like that.

37:03

Anyway, long story short, there's a demon in town and he's killing people in

37:06

the middle of the night and you got to find out who he is and kill him.

37:08

And I was the demon and nice.

37:11

The first and only person I got to kill before I was assassinated was Brian.

37:16

So to twist the knife a little bit, not only did I eliminate him from day two,

37:20

beat him pretty bad, but I also then killed him in this game.

37:23

So he just got to sit on the couch and watch what else played.

37:27

So sorry, Brian, but that's just two insults in a row. And that's the way that that went.

37:31

But it was a lot of fun. We were just hanging out, having a good time, got to meet some people.

37:35

We played it kind of fast because they were all going to go to the Penn and

37:38

Teller show afterward, I think. But yeah, I mean, it was cool to just socialize like it's not

37:42

just rolling dice here like we get to hang out and meet some people and

37:45

make friends and that was a lot of fun for me i'm just going to interject right

37:48

now and summarize what i did after every single

37:51

game day i went to my room i took

37:54

a shower i fell asleep very nice

37:57

efficient yeah well on uh after saturday

38:01

you did something but we'll talk about it when we get there we will we

38:03

will talk about that that was something i've heard a lot of

38:06

good things about blood on the the clock tower i've really been wanting

38:09

to try it and i'm you know a little sad that i

38:11

didn't get to with you guys but friday and saturday

38:15

my children are still young and so bedtime was a

38:17

little bit of an adjustment and so it took a little longer than usual so i just

38:21

spent a little more time getting them settled in but at least i got to join

38:25

you guys on saturday but we'll talk about that so for my day one i started off

38:29

against jesse who was one of the nicest people i think i I met that weekend.

38:35

Glorious human. Yeah, he's very, very nice. He had told me that he wasn't terribly

38:41

familiar with the Nemesis format, that he has played a decent amount of Rivals.

38:45

He was playing Crimson Court with Force of Frost.

38:48

Honestly to watch him play you would not know that he wasn't as

38:52

practiced as the rest of us he absolutely has

38:55

a great handle on the game and he definitely knows

38:58

what he's doing so games with him were very

39:01

fun especially i've never played in

39:04

like a major event like this so i had

39:07

a little bit of nerves opening the first day so to sit

39:10

down across from someone who's very sweet just chatter

39:14

with him was very enjoyable i appreciated that

39:17

our games one of them was very close it

39:21

ended with we were tied i believe it was

39:23

12 or 13 to 12 or 13 whatever it was so we ended the game tied and the whole

39:30

last round was basically him running away from me and me having a range four

39:35

attack that would one shot him and score out my hand and so he moved faster

39:40

than me but i outranged him and and we were longboarded.

39:42

So he found that his best case for scoring his objectives and me not scoring

39:48

mine was just kind of running away.

39:51

But that ended up with us tied and me standing on an objective.

39:55

So he was kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place of me getting the tiebreaker

39:59

if our hands tied at the end of third round, or trying to score more of his

40:04

hand and getting killed and then me scoring on mine. So that game could not have been closer.

40:08

Our other game was a little less close and i got a

40:11

little bit more of my killiness online earlier

40:14

and took out more of his warband faster if i

40:17

remember right there was i want to say at the end of round one if i remember

40:22

correctly he had one fighter dead and two fighters vulnerable and then i was

40:28

i believe it was the beginning around two able to just ping ping those two vulnerable

40:33

fighters and then he suddenly had had one wounded fighter very alone.

40:37

And so I ended up winning that set 2-0, but it was closer than it looked.

40:42

My second match for the day was against Kobanius. He's one of my best friends.

40:48

He's been my best friend since middle school. So we've been playing this game

40:52

together since it's existed with just kind of a lull in the middle because of COVID.

40:56

But so we have a ton of practice against each other. Even before we see each

41:00

other's warband, we have a bunch of practice just like like reading the other player.

41:05

And I was laughing because...

41:08

I've been playing my Seismic Storm deck for, like I said, five or six months

41:12

at this point, right? So he's seen it dozens of times.

41:15

He built his Loon Court Passive Prophecy deck at dinner the night before,

41:19

and I had not seen it until this morning.

41:22

So he knew every card in my deck and how to play around it, and I knew almost

41:27

nothing of what I was looking down the table at, other than he played against

41:32

his Loon Court a couple of times, but usually with Fierce and Fortress.

41:34

So these games the first one was not at

41:37

all close it was very quick i was able to get some very strategic

41:40

some very lucky i'll say attacks off really

41:43

early and pick apart or move some

41:47

key fighters to his like positioning strategy there were

41:50

a couple that he put right where he needed them and then i was able to cowling

41:53

gales them into oblivion and then i believe it's this game that i was able to

41:57

i slapped blades of azir on domitan and then gave him positive charge and and

42:03

just blitzed him all the way down the board and killed Grincrack in one shot,

42:08

just like way back in his little fortress that he'd built.

42:11

And so that game at that point was already kind of one-sided and it was basically just over.

42:16

We very quickly moved into the next one. The next one was much closer,

42:19

but a lot of similar things where even if I didn't land the attacks,

42:22

I was able to push in lucky ways, or I got Hal and Gales off again in a way that really mattered.

42:28

So that one was much closer, but I still took that set 2-0.

42:31

So at this point, I'm feeling pretty pretty good. It doesn't feel great to beat

42:35

teammate and my best friend that I brought with me to the tournament,

42:38

but I am feeling pretty good about being 2-0 for the day at that point.

42:43

But then I learned that my third round pairing was against Derek.

42:47

So I'm very excited to play against Derek for the first time.

42:51

I was not excited to play against Captain Murder.

42:54

And with Eflim and Force of Frost, that's one of the big boogeymen that I still

42:58

don't really have a good plan for. That deck deck is so smooth and of course he

43:03

played it amazingly well but there's so much going on in that deck that

43:06

is just so very strong that i don't know where to

43:08

start a lot of the time i get overwhelmed with the options

43:11

like there are no good options there's just what five

43:15

very interesting very versatile strong fighters that

43:18

i'm looking down the barrel of and they all feel like the wrong choice so

43:21

game one he got me i kept

43:24

it close-ish but he definitely was able

43:28

to do f1 of things and cast spells and score stuff

43:31

a couple of my key spells failed in key moments and it

43:34

went his way game two i don't remember if i long

43:37

boarded or he did but game two i'm pretty sure it was on a long

43:39

board and again there was a moment in that game where i just dropped a handful

43:45

of buffs onto domitan and positive charge cruise missiled him halfway down the

43:50

other board and was able to finish off eflum before he could really get him

43:54

like hyper voltron and that managed to to squeak out a win in game two for me.

43:59

So I actually felt really good about, at the very least, I took a game off him

44:03

and I still, going into game three, felt like I had a chance at the set. I never felt shut out.

44:08

In game three, I had much worse luck than in the first two games,

44:13

and especially game two, I was feeling pretty good. This might become a theme.

44:17

So in game three, I held it together for a while and I kept it as close as I could.

44:21

I lost one fighter relatively early and kept the other two alive for longer than I expected,

44:28

but wasn't able to claw back any significant

44:32

amount of scoring and just the way efflem scores too

44:35

i saw it several times with people playing against derrick

44:38

over the weekend people would be up in score going into

44:41

round three and then end phase round three he would score like five to seven

44:46

points and just make this huge swing and that's just kind of how efflem works

44:51

it's really hard to plan for but

44:54

so he got me i'm very happy to say that i didn't fully dropped the set.

44:59

I took a game off of him and it felt like I was in it the whole time and it

45:03

felt all the way shut out. So I end the day 2-1 and I end in the eighth seed, which I feel pretty good about.

45:10

Going into day two in the top half of the bracket feels as good as I could have asked for, really.

45:17

Yeah. And that means that all three of us end up 2-1.

45:22

Obviously, there's a big glory disparity and there's some disparity.

45:26

But all of us end up 2-1 going into day two.

45:30

I was also really proud that I took, I say I took, but a good handful of my

45:34

local and my friends went with me and they all made the cut as well.

45:39

So I was really happy for all of them. And I felt kind of this sense of pride

45:43

that all of my friends did really well and we all got to move into day two together.

45:48

That was kind of a neat feeling. Yeah. Especially since talking to them at lunch that first day,

45:52

like some people had had some pretty rough opponents and tough matchups

45:55

it wasn't like they got to walk in to the top cut like they

45:58

had to earn it and it looks like everyone did so that was pretty cool absolutely

46:01

it was also cool to see how many people you brought i

46:04

mean this is a tournament of 20 plus people and

46:07

what five of them that were part of your local community yeah now i'm on the

46:13

spot and i got to think about it for a second but yeah it's bridget cabanas

46:16

aaron you am i missing anyone that might might be it okay and then you two guys

46:23

right i consider you guys my teammates. Yeah, we didn't put your team name on our best guys pairings, though.

46:30

That's okay. I didn't get paired into either you round one, so that's fine.

46:33

All right, so I think that's the end of day one, right?

46:37

Mike, do you want to talk about how we started day two? So I've accomplished the goal of day two.

46:43

I've accomplished the goal of providing competitive games to my opponents.

46:47

Now is probably a good time for me to mention I did have a plan B.

46:50

I thought I hardly ever go to conventions. If I come to this convention and

46:55

I'm out in day one and I have nothing to do on Saturday, I'm going to feel real bad. add.

47:00

So I brought War Machine with me. It's another miniatures game that I only play two.

47:06

I play Underworlds and that's my primary. And then I play War Machine. It's just for funsies.

47:10

And I thought, you know, if I don't get to day two, I'll just join the War Machine

47:14

tournament. But I get to day two and I'm like, okay, well, I have to see this through.

47:18

I get paired up, number eight pairs nine. So I get paired up against Thomas.

47:22

Now, before I talk to you about our set of games we

47:26

have played online before and when we

47:29

played online they were very close very

47:32

competitive games he won one and i won one with with essentially the same decks

47:38

as we're using i mean right we were basically practicing for lvo exactly yeah

47:43

my practice game against him was not close so so i go into this game feeling

47:48

relatively confident i'm feeling like Like, you know what?

47:51

This is going to be a good one. It was not. It was not.

47:55

So what happened is this. All of the things that you might look at at face value

48:00

and say, oh, Iron Souls has to run across the boards to get to them.

48:06

And they're going to be undergoing attacks the whole way there.

48:11

And there's not a whole lot of movement buffs to get them there.

48:14

All of that played out exactly as you would expect.

48:18

Yeah, I'm not against longboarding you. and deploying as

48:21

far away as possible and you should i had practiced this

48:25

before i thought and the truth is it's

48:28

a problem for irons it really is yeah but i

48:31

practiced it before and i knew given a certain card

48:34

draw and given a few early crits i can win the game for sure and i've seen what

48:39

you can do even with basically just taking three moves in round one two yeah

48:44

that doesn't shut you out like you said a lucky crit here or there inspires

48:48

just the right fighter you get some Get some stuff online and yeah,

48:51

you've got some murder machines. But it did not go that way. One of the interesting moves that happened is,

48:56

what's that gust of wind? What's that card called?

48:59

Howling Gales. Howling Gales, thank you. One of the first things he casts is

49:03

Howling Gales, gets it off, slams two of my fighters together so that they're both staggered.

49:08

The first move I do is I take one of those fighters. I move him into Thomas's territory.

49:12

Thomas does his turn. And then on my turn, I play Call to Heal because that

49:16

other fighter is Savage. And I slingshot him all the way up the board.

49:20

Yep so now i have a fighter two

49:23

away from his two of his fighters from

49:26

domiton and sarpon and i'm

49:30

in attack position and in my mind i'm thinking excellent i

49:33

have closed the gap and it's time to start laying the

49:36

hammers down unfortunately i missed my attack and i was standing next to domiton

49:42

and sarpon who were dealing three damage and one had cleave and that was a difficult

49:49

round I was tabled at the beginning of round two.

49:54

At one point, Thomas looks at me and goes, man, I'm not sure what to do.

49:59

Should I just kill your fighters or score my objectives?

50:02

And I'm like, thanks for that, Thomas, you jerk. Go ahead and just kill my fighters

50:06

and let's just call it a day. And he's like, yeah, that's probably what I should do.

50:10

So he kills my fighters.

50:13

And I mean, the glory differential wasn't big because he chose to just destroy

50:17

me instead of score his objectives. So he ends up winning the first game like

50:21

10 to 3 or something like that. I forgot what it was.

50:24

My objectives did that to me a couple of times over the tournament where I look

50:29

at the board and be like, I could attempt to score objectives or I could just

50:33

kill stuff and score when they're dead. And I want to say it was that game.

50:37

One of the only times I scored claim the prize and I scored it in your territory,

50:41

right? I don't remember that, but it's probably true.

50:44

I might be misremembering. I did not score claim the prize very often,

50:47

which was kind of surprising because in practice, I score it fairly consistent.

50:51

Yeah. So we go to game two and I mean, game two is the same as the first.

50:57

I'm slogging across the board. I'm not rolling what I need to roll or getting

51:00

the draw that I need to get. And I go down pretty fast.

51:03

I ended up taking the pass action for the majority of round three and Thomas wins pretty handily.

51:10

So at the end of these two games, anything you you

51:12

want to add thomas before i move on no i think

51:15

you covered it like you said in practice we were

51:19

fairly close so i was also a little bit surprised to see

51:22

just kind of how lucky i got to see my attack succeed and yours fail but you

51:27

played well and like i said i need hot dice or good card draw or both to make

51:34

it competitive and that just didn't get it and then you played super solid and very well.

51:39

And this is what happens in this game. But so the game ends and I realize that I have two problems.

51:45

The first problem is, after those two games, I feel like I didn't accomplish

51:50

my goal of providing a good competition for all of my opponents.

51:55

Because Thomas just, I think I looked at Thomas at one point and said,

51:58

dude, this is a shellacking.

52:00

And then the second problem was, my plan B was shot because the War Machine

52:06

tournament had already started. So I shook Thomas's hand and said, dude, I hope you do awesome today.

52:11

And I bolted because I was hoping maybe I could get into the War Machine tournament.

52:16

Well, I didn't. But the TO, this is just a shout out to this TO,

52:20

the TO of the War Machine game said, I'm so sorry, we can't add you in.

52:23

And then he starts texting people and people start coming down and asking if I want to play a game.

52:28

So he arranged a bunch of games for me throughout the day, even though I couldn't join the tournament.

52:32

So I had an absolute blast that day. I lost a bunch more, but I had an absolute blast.

52:37

So that's awesome i'm glad you were able to get some

52:40

games in for another game system i

52:43

had really debated taking some work i stuff and

52:46

decided against it figured if i had the extra time

52:49

i'd probably just spend it with my family or or

52:52

spend it with the what the heck's guys yeah mike you actually

52:55

left so fast i i was like oh where did

52:58

he go he must have lost he must be in his sleep you know at

53:01

10 in the morning and stuff like that i was honestly i

53:03

was trying to bolt over there to to get into the tourney but i

53:06

didn't get it but like i said i still played a bunch of games yeah i

53:09

don't know what people's perception of me was at that point

53:12

because i just bolted it was all because i was trying to get over there and

53:16

play some more games for sure all right other mic how did your day two go so

53:19

my day two opens and i am thirds i'm paired into number 14 and you know you

53:26

don't want to look past anybody but i'm playing grand cracks loon court and

53:29

i'm playing paths of of Prophecy, and these are both like jokes, right? There's no way I'm losing this game.

53:34

Yes, can I just interject, Fish, before you continue?

53:38

If someone told me the next day I was playing Grincracks, Paths of Prophecy,

53:42

and the guy built his deck the morning before, I would be feeling all kinds of confident.

53:48

Kobanius will be so happy to hear you say that. I didn't feel all kinds of confident

53:51

because I had literally never played against Grincracks, Lincor,

53:55

and I'd played only against Paths of Prophecy twice.

53:59

And while I won both games, they actually were not easy wins for me.

54:03

I ran into one of them, Sepulchral Guard, standing on tokens that I couldn't just knock him off.

54:08

And it was tough. I won that game, but it was barely right at the end when I got a good crit.

54:12

And so I thought, okay, one of these things I have no evidence about at all.

54:15

And the other one I have only limited and it's kind of scary,

54:17

even though it's not a popular deck, maybe it's not good for me.

54:21

But whatever, I have the possibility to score 42 glory across one match.

54:25

So let's go get him and i did basically no homework i

54:28

reached out to george kairos and i said hey you

54:31

have any tips for me going into this and he said no i don't i

54:34

would never consider this pairing i have nothing to

54:37

offer you and so i was like all right i guess we're gonna do

54:39

it live so i go in there and it's cabanas and

54:42

he's funny guy and we're he's like hey i made it to the

54:45

second day i'm happy too so whoever wins this one is going to be doing

54:48

just fine and we set up and the board

54:51

he chooses is moltscape which if you're not familiar with has

54:54

lethals in two spots which is not great for my impetus

54:57

and two wound fighters but the most important thing

55:00

is that the starting hexes are arranged in a way that there is no safe landing

55:05

place for me if i want to attack his rear guard fighters i have to run into

55:10

double supports that's my only choice if i want to hit the guys he's hiding

55:14

in the back double supports are the only options that i'm going to give him

55:17

and so that's so smart on Caban.

55:20

I'm not going to hit these first attacks, or I have to take them against the

55:24

frontline fighters that he doesn't care about. And so I'm kind of in a tough spot. I said, okay, am I going to jump over your

55:28

mooks and hit your good fighters before they get the dub inspire?

55:32

Or am I going to fight these little guys in the front and play right into your game plan?

55:36

I ended up choosing to go for the back dudes and didn't hit them.

55:39

And that didn't work out for me. And so when I gave up on that and said, okay, let's get the little guys who

55:43

are on some tokens that I think I can kill. I just didn't get the dice that I needed.

55:46

And much like in that first game against Derek, it was just,

55:49

if you don't roll any successes, then you can't even push him off a token.

55:53

And so he ends up winning that first game 17 to nine.

55:57

So I lose by eight, which is a pretty big hit. And I think, okay, that's one game.

56:01

I figured out I can't dive into the middle of your goblin pile.

56:05

I need to actually focus on the guys I can kill. And obviously my dice luck is going to come around, right? Like I've made four

56:10

attacks with Griselle and hit zero of them and that can't happen again, right? There's no way.

56:15

So we lined up for game two and this time, I forget who oriented the boards,

56:19

but it was kind of a similar story. He got a good board selection and oriented things in a way that I had low probability

56:26

of hitting the characters that he wanted to protect.

56:28

And it was smart play for him and lethals were there.

56:31

So I had to be careful about where I put my fighters because impetus was going

56:36

to hit me. And it was really the same story. Yeah.

56:39

Did not roll successes on so many attacks. You open the game with Riala the

56:42

Lash, she charges in, I combo to inspire, but I miss both.

56:46

And now she's sitting there, two wounds, two dodge adjacent to an enemy.

56:49

That's a bummer, right? And then Gribb comes in and just munches her.

56:52

And that kind of thing just played out again. It was the same story. I don't think I was making poor choices the second game

56:57

like I was the first, but I just did not have the dice to do what I needed.

57:01

And if you don't drive him off a token, then he's going to score after your power step.

57:04

And so I end up, Griselle did finally hit an attack on her eighth attempt of

57:09

the match to do one damage in a follow up.

57:12

But I did eventually get a positive hit. And that was great.

57:17

And so I lose that game nine to 18.

57:20

So even though I felt like I played better, I lost by one more glory than four.

57:23

So that ended up getting me knocked out at the end of the first single elimination

57:28

and Cabanas advanced to the top eight, which for Grin Crack,

57:32

Paths of Prophecy, some guy out of nowhere, Arizona, that's pretty cool.

57:36

Well, it was a bummer that I didn't advance. I made it to the top cut. I got to play some fun games and I had a good time.

57:41

So that was, I think overall a win for me still.

57:44

And like I said, at the outset, if you take a war band that you know,

57:47

and you spend the time and get to figure them out, you can succeed.

57:51

And nobody in their right mind takes Grin Crack to a grand clash, right?

57:55

But he did and he made top eight. So it's possible.

57:58

If you think, oh yeah, these new stab

58:01

lads people say are not going to be any good but like that may not

58:04

be true like there's going to be someone out there who stab lads 50 games

58:07

and figures them out and you can commit to that kind of

58:10

thing this game has that sort of depth that you you can master it and he

58:12

definitely did green crack is something he understands and i

58:15

will say it was good i think green crack is in a pretty good

58:18

spot now after their errata true for

58:21

sure that did help i think a lot we'll see perception change

58:24

on them a little bit yeah another surprising thing is

58:27

like i said going into the top cut i was ranked third the number

58:30

one ranked player was damien from vancouver bc

58:33

not too far from seattle and so i played against him a couple times

58:36

and see him all over the place and i think you know this is great right like

58:39

work he went to worlds right he made top eight at worlds we interviewed him

58:43

about his experience there he's ranked number one coming into this thing and

58:47

he also gets eliminated by the number 17 seed who substituted for the 16 seed

58:51

so he He gets knocked out and takes ninth,

58:54

which puts me in 10th. But 10th out of 24 isn't so bad.

58:57

You go in ranked third, you want to end up around somewhere third,

59:00

but I took the gambling deck and sometimes you lose.

59:03

That's how my tournament went. Yeah. And let's talk about Jonas too,

59:07

because he was like, oh, you want me to hold it? You want me to hold it?

59:11

Yeah. Yeah. It's part of the story coming up.

59:13

So I'll hold it. Yeah. So as I'm eliminated, I did not have a war machine game

59:18

to go play. So I just kind of hung out. And then Damien was also eliminated, like I said. So he got some coffee.

59:23

We took a moment to clear our heads. And then we played a rivals game to warm

59:26

up for the rivals event the next day. So I brought out by Velmore and he brought out Crimson Court paired with Breakneck.

59:31

And we had actually a really close game that I won by just one or two, but yeah, 19 to 17.

59:36

And then Alex was also there, a guy from the Hex periphery, not on the show

59:41

very often, but one of their friends. And he brought these beautifully converted Cagris Ravagers.

59:46

And I also happened to bring Cagris Ravagers just for funsies.

59:49

So we had a mirror match where I won in the last activation to score a couple

59:54

cards to get 17 to 16 win, which was a really tight, really close match.

59:58

And I know a lot of people don't like mirrors, but we both had a really good

1:00:00

time. We're both Kagura fans. And so it was good to like share that love with someone else and to really be

1:00:06

able to experience a thing that not a lot of people play at a pretty high level.

1:00:10

I watched a little bit of that game and that one was really, really fun to watch.

1:00:15

Watching the symmetry of your guys' plays was really neat. Yeah,

1:00:19

no, we had pretty much oriented our boards same way, placed our fighters in

1:00:22

the same spot. They all died at the same time in the same order.

1:00:26

And we got down to like basically the same upgrades on each other,

1:00:29

even though he was playing breakneck and I was playing tooth and claw.

1:00:31

It was like the same idea on Razik God Blessed.

1:00:34

And it was just who's going to hit first is kind of what it came down to.

1:00:37

And it was me. So that was cool. And then that was the end of the tournament

1:00:40

day and the chilling day. And we'll get to the main event after Thomas. So we already talked a little

1:00:48

bit about that. Mike and I got paired up first.

1:00:50

One thing that I thought of that's kind of important to mention is that we knew

1:00:55

our first round pairings on day two at the end of day one. Right.

1:00:58

So at the end of day one, I knew that either Mike or I were going to be out.

1:01:04

In the first round of day two. And like, that sucks. I did not like the idea

1:01:09

that one of us had to knock the other out.

1:01:11

I felt actually pretty fortunate that the three of us didn't play each other on day one.

1:01:18

I was feeling like, you know what, if we hit ourselves day two,

1:01:21

that's a good thing, right? Because that means we made it to day two and we play each other.

1:01:27

But you're right. You know, I mean, it's, you never want to bump a friend,

1:01:30

but Thomas, as half of the field were your friends so you you

1:01:33

were gonna run that's true well and the other way to look

1:01:36

at it is one of you guys is going to top eight no matter

1:01:39

what exactly that's that's the plus side yeah and

1:01:42

so at this point you know after my game with mike i

1:01:45

moved on i'm feeling pretty good at that point about that i'm

1:01:48

in the top eight i'm also feeling that sense of

1:01:51

pride that i was talking about the three of the four of

1:01:54

my locals that went with me i guess me included

1:01:57

me being the the fourth three of the four of us made the

1:02:00

top eight and bridget is the one that did not

1:02:02

but she lost a i believe a narrow game to davey who is an all-star player right

1:02:08

so she gave davey a run for his money barely missed top eight and then me aaron

1:02:13

and kovanius all made it through so i was feeling pretty good that half of the

1:02:18

games in top eight included me or one of my locals.

1:02:23

My game, my second game for day two, my game for top eight was against Jonas,

1:02:29

who was, again, another incredibly sweet player.

1:02:33

I really enjoyed just hanging out with him and chatting with him.

1:02:36

He was playing Dripers with Fearsome Fortress, which is actually a little bit

1:02:42

smoother of a pairing than I had anticipated, I think.

1:02:45

They scored pretty well, and I think,

1:02:49

I want to say the first game i longboarded him and then

1:02:52

the second game he longboarded me but i might be misremembering

1:02:55

that but both of the first two games that meant that

1:02:58

there was only one objective in no one's territory or within

1:03:02

one of no one's i mean and so there's an objective in

1:03:04

a fearsome fortress that's hold all objectives yeah within

1:03:08

one so you got to just move on to one

1:03:11

and then surge to for holding one is pretty strong

1:03:14

and then the patrician makes bold sortie yeah pretty

1:03:17

pretty seamless academic yeah so a handful of

1:03:20

surges in that deck that basically just happened our

1:03:23

first game i won it i think with

1:03:26

a positive four or five differential

1:03:29

but it's really close he was joking about we mentioned

1:03:33

briefly that he was the 17th seed right because the 16th seed

1:03:36

dropped so he wasn't going to make the cut and then bill

1:03:39

said he couldn't make it so jonas made made the cut and got

1:03:42

paired into damien and beat damien right

1:03:45

so 17th knocking out first seed was a huge upset

1:03:48

they're both amazing players so looking at the bracket

1:03:51

it's an upset but any of these players can take

1:03:54

any game he was making jokes

1:03:57

about that he rolls a lot of crits and boy does he the second game was even

1:04:03

closer but it went to him ultimately if i remember correctly i think i was was

1:04:09

plus four on the first one and maybe minus two on the second one.

1:04:14

And so going into the third game, I'm like, again, I feel good that I at least won't drop.

1:04:20

A full set right no one's gonna take me out of this without

1:04:23

at least dropping a game to me okay go ahead and

1:04:26

brag about it whatever hey that's all

1:04:29

i got to take home with me so i got i

1:04:32

got but the third game

1:04:35

i super felt like i had a

1:04:38

chance at it and then round one i missed four

1:04:42

attacks in a row and round two i missed

1:04:45

four single focus ploys and

1:04:48

then a and then a spell attack on channels

1:04:51

so a total of five spells in a row that didn't or

1:04:54

one sorry one of the ploys did and then three single

1:04:58

focus ploys and one double channel spell attack i rolled exactly what i couldn't

1:05:04

use on all of them and so all of my cast a spell objectives didn't go off and

1:05:09

then he just just slowly picks my fighters apart while I can't land any damage back on him.

1:05:15

And that joke of he rolls a lot of crits, it kept going.

1:05:17

I don't think he rolled as many crits in the third game.

1:05:21

I just think that I rolled far fewer successful attacks, but I really appreciate

1:05:27

his demeanor was very sweet and, you know, very like jovial the whole time.

1:05:33

I didn't tilt on the third game, but I I definitely wanted to with my dice the

1:05:37

way they were, but he's just such a nice guy that I couldn't actually tilt while playing against him.

1:05:44

It was still a very enjoyable game, and I still very much love the set.

1:05:48

But of course, at this point, I'm a little disappointed that I got knocked out of the tournament.

1:05:53

I made top eight, but not top four. And kind of funny or coincidentally.

1:05:59

Aaron and Cabanis get knocked out in the same round.

1:06:01

So three of my locals, me included,

1:06:04

made top eight, but none of us made it through to top four

1:06:07

all right and then the actual main event

1:06:10

of lvo was the truly underground

1:06:14

underworld why don't you tell us

1:06:17

what we did after they well okay so it's the pink slip game and i'm sure most

1:06:23

people who are on social media have heard i had this idea to play a best of

1:06:30

three match versus someone from what the hex and the winner takes all.

1:06:35

And what I mean by takes all is the winner takes the other person's painted

1:06:39

warband and rivals deck. Now, I threw it out there and no one was taking me up on it.

1:06:47

Until brian from what the heck said i'll do

1:06:50

that with you so we played in brian's

1:06:53

room there is a video that is my understanding is

1:06:57

it's getting edited and it's getting posted i don't

1:07:00

know i mean guys i don't think i want to spoil it

1:07:02

how it ended up i will just say i don't

1:07:06

think it was incredibly close you would

1:07:09

have to watch the video yeah without giving anything

1:07:12

away it was one of the tighter games and tighter

1:07:15

matches that i've witnessed very suspenseful

1:07:18

very dramatic we had a whole crowd of people watching cheering gasping

1:07:22

speculating it's good entertainment it's a good game

1:07:25

and man i'm excited for the next one like it really was the atmosphere was just

1:07:28

so high saying like it was electric if this card is the one i think he has like

1:07:33

he's taken home the other guy's warband tonight but that was like it was crazy

1:07:37

and i basically can't imagine a way for for that match to have gone better than it did.

1:07:42

I'll tell you both right now, the thing I feared the most was a boring set of games.

1:07:48

That's what I feared the most. I didn't, even more than losing a war band,

1:07:52

I was worried that we'd get in there and either I would just wipe him out or

1:07:56

he would wipe me out and it would be completely anticlimactic, right?

1:08:00

And we'd both leave thinking, oh, that just stinks.

1:08:03

But the way it played out, the commentary you guys did, the chatter in the back.

1:08:10

Trash talking each other and stuff it was one

1:08:14

of the highlights of my whole i would say my gaming experience

1:08:18

not just lvo it was just an absolute

1:08:21

blast and while again without saying specifics i you know was a little bit surprised

1:08:27

at what you were willing to bet but boy did brian beth far no it's i was when

1:08:32

that video turns out you should watch it because my oh my is that something to see.

1:08:38

It will be on Alex, we mentioned, came with What the Hex. He has a YouTube channel

1:08:44

called Shade Glass Reflections, and it should be posted on there relatively soon.

1:08:50

Like we said, it's currently in the works, so we'll make sure to link it.

1:08:55

Everywhere once that's an option, but yeah.

1:08:58

And I wanted to just say thank you to you two, you, Mike and Thomas,

1:09:02

and then also to the, what the heck screw for sort of just making it happen.

1:09:06

Like, I mean, anyone can have a fun idea, right?

1:09:10

But then it's all about the execution and everyone's sort of pitched in to make

1:09:14

it as cool of an event as it could have been.

1:09:17

And so thanks everyone for just kind of pitching in and doing what y'all did

1:09:22

to make it awesome. To expand on that, the podcast hosts and the voices you're

1:09:26

used to hearing, we were all yapping the whole time, but we weren't the only ones there.

1:09:30

And there were several other people like Bobby and Alex and Jazz were helping

1:09:33

doing technical stuff in the background.

1:09:36

Like, oh, you know, your microphone cut out. Oh, the video feed isn't synced.

1:09:39

Like they're doing these live tech support things kind of around us while we're

1:09:44

commentating on this game and, you know, making sure, okay, that we were live

1:09:47

streaming it on Discord. Is that running through? Are we getting an echo? go like they weren't entertained

1:09:52

in the same way because they were not doing like real work you know

1:09:54

and so while i you might say oh yeah you know you're announcing this

1:09:57

game you're working too but like i was getting to have fun and just talk underworlds

1:10:01

like these guys are actually you guys technical stuff and it was a huge team

1:10:04

effort and for the first time with basically no prep to do this like that i

1:10:09

think it went pretty well and so i'm i'm really hoping that you know we can

1:10:12

do some more pinks matches in the months or years ahead and really kind of see where this goes.

1:10:18

Yeah admittedly i was a little bit apprehensive about

1:10:21

the idea when mike initially pitched it but now yeah i couldn't be more stoked

1:10:25

for the next anyway i think summarize it to say thank you everyone for making

1:10:30

that all happen and if you're interested at all you got to watch the video it

1:10:34

is a great set of games for sure all right so with the.

1:10:39

Most important event and also the grand

1:10:42

clash out of the way now we can talk about the casual tournament let's

1:10:45

mention too that derrick did win oh sure i

1:10:48

guess well you can

1:10:50

see i mean there's the grand clash who cares whatever the pinks match though

1:10:54

that's never happened before that's the moment yes derrick did win he beat us

1:10:58

all pretty bad and he second lvo in a row for he won the game against jazz which

1:11:04

we also filmed by the way i think alex is going to post that as well so there

1:11:08

There'll be a no commentary live stream final,

1:11:10

which was pretty tight, pretty close. It was close.

1:11:13

And she was playing Crimson Court with Force of Frost and she played it really well.

1:11:18

They did about as high level as you'd expect a Grand Clash final to be.

1:11:22

And that was a good set of games. So anyway, Alex should hopefully post those up too.

1:11:26

And we'll link to that where we can. So if you want to watch some top level

1:11:30

actual competitors, that's the place to go.

1:11:32

All right. So the third day of the tournament was a fairly casual Rivals tournament.

1:11:37

I think we ended up with like 30 people, right? We had a handful more in the

1:11:42

Rivals tournament than we did in the Grand Clash. There were 29 registered.

1:11:46

I think 21 showed up. So it was pretty good. Pretty healthy amount for the Sunday fun.

1:11:52

So it was more people registered, but actually like a couple less joined than the Grand Clash.

1:11:57

Because the Grand Clash ended up with like 25 registered and 24 played, I think.

1:12:02

Anyways something like that they're both pretty big they're both very

1:12:05

lively events for sure but the casual nature

1:12:08

of the rivals tournament made it a little more jovial i think a little more

1:12:12

laughing and cheering fish mode warwick brown enough said yeah i yeah i did

1:12:17

i started the day with the crown and then i lost it all right so tell us what

1:12:23

did you play that day and run us through your rounds other mike

1:12:27

Yeah. So I brought a Burger King crown. I picked it up on the way to the airport.

1:12:31

I went into the Burger King near my house and I said, give me one of those crowns

1:12:35

and I'll buy something if I have to. They said, you don't have to. So I just walked out with a crown.

1:12:40

This is the same thing I did at the Tacoma Open.

1:12:43

I brought Velmore and Sons of Velmore and he's the king baby.

1:12:46

When you're in Vegas and you're the king, don't you need a crown?

1:12:49

So I brought down this paper crown and I put it on and I played King Velmore

1:12:53

with their faction rivals deck. And And I did that in part because it's a warband that I know,

1:12:56

it's a warband that I love. And they also got an errata where their command counters now finally function as intended.

1:13:01

And so several of these spend a command counter cards don't feel so painful

1:13:06

to use the beneficial effect.

1:13:08

And so it flows a lot better now, that Rivals deck than it did when it originally

1:13:11

came out. And so I wanted to give it a spin.

1:13:14

And I'd taken Felmore into Grand Clashes before and played a lot of him and

1:13:19

thought, you know, this is Rivals. I'm not going to practice for this, you know, so I'm just going

1:13:23

to pick something that I i'm comfortable with and just have some fun and if i

1:13:26

go two and two then that's pretty cool so anyway i show

1:13:29

up and i match into brian from what

1:13:32

the hex once again he is

1:13:35

playing thrice fold discord once again but this time instead of using their

1:13:38

faction deck he is using the breakneck slaughter deck which i actually think

1:13:42

might be a better rivals pairing for them john buddy of mine from seattle he

1:13:47

came to this as well and he brought thrice fold with their faction deck and

1:13:50

And he did pretty well because he has a decent amount of experience with them.

1:13:53

We've played 12 games together, he and I, and he's done probably 12 more with other people.

1:13:57

So his rivals thrice fold skill is about as much as anybody's is,

1:14:01

but that deck just has some conflicting goals.

1:14:03

Whereas breakneck says, get over there and get it done.

1:14:06

Brian got over there and he got it done and in activation two he

1:14:10

does a yolo charge from downtown where vex

1:14:12

more has devastating charge so now he's doing one

1:14:15

dice four damage plus one

1:14:19

move and i think he gave him breakneck speed or something anyway he just like

1:14:22

hurdles this behemoth across the board spears king velmore and on one hammer

1:14:27

rolls one hammer so i have one shield i've got one shield and i roll a dodge

1:14:33

so what do you think like a double single support or something so So King Belmort

1:14:37

is dead, activation two. And so my King Kill Someone Surge is gone.

1:14:41

My leader is the last surviving leader is gone. All my King Restricted stuff is gone.

1:14:46

And I'm just like, this is brutal, right? I have no command counter.

1:14:49

So all my command counter related cards, which are not restricted to the King,

1:14:52

are also not very useful. And I have no support for the rest of the game.

1:14:56

So I'm like, this is okay. Well, good job, Brian. This will be fun.

1:14:59

And then he stays close to me and allows me to stagger him.

1:15:03

And then I start killing guys and it turned back around

1:15:06

on me he got really lucky with that it's like a 25 chance to go

1:15:09

the way it went and it went that way for him but in the

1:15:11

end i ended up winning the game 10 to 8 so it's

1:15:14

kind of a low scoring game and i got him so brian if you're listening apologize

1:15:18

but you have been thrice folded oh snap oh snap poor brian yeah i'm having a

1:15:24

dinner i think i i do i really instead i think he didn't get anything from me

1:15:29

but torture and and it just continues so uh well Well,

1:15:32

maybe he played Slaanesh. Maybe he enjoyed it.

1:15:35

Maybe he did. It could be fun to be embarrassed publicly by others.

1:15:39

And so that's some people are into it. I ended up winning that game.

1:15:42

So I'm 1-0. So I match into you, Thomas, and you had brought Headsman's Curse faction.

1:15:47

And here's what I'll say. My card draw required me to take some big risks and

1:15:51

they didn't pay off. Oh boy. And that's my summary of that game. So you can talk about it when we get to

1:15:56

it. Sure. but I lost 20 to six.

1:15:59

That was not great, but you know, it is what it is. So the King had his head

1:16:03

taken off and that's what happens. So now I'm one in one and I'm playing into Frank Sevilla, the other Frank,

1:16:09

there were two Franks, which is kind of fun. And so other Frank, he is playing Griselle's RNI.

1:16:14

He was one of the three people who brought them to the nemesis clash and he

1:16:17

brought them again to the rivals clash. And so that was cool to face off off against him but he did not

1:16:22

hit and i did and i got crits and i inspired and then i just steam rolled and

1:16:27

it was really unfortunate because much like my deck and his nemesis deck as

1:16:31

well it kind of requires like that early glory to get going he didn't get it

1:16:34

and i did and i think in rivals it's even more punishing because some of their

1:16:38

flourishes and stuff just don't really line up if you don't draw in order.

1:16:42

Some of their objectives brick really hard if

1:16:46

you don't get exactly the right card at the right yeah and that's

1:16:49

i think he had some of that some bad dice luck and i had

1:16:52

great of both for mine and so it ended up being 21 to

1:16:55

0 and there's just not oh boy there was just

1:16:57

nothing he could do so i'm being things velmore and

1:17:00

op g dub please nerf i won

1:17:03

21 to 0 in a rival's game which felt kind of bad but i mean

1:17:06

he was a good sport about it and it wasn't like anyone's fault like that's just

1:17:09

how the dice fell so anyways i'm two and one i'm heading into

1:17:12

my fourth game and we were slated to play five but we

1:17:15

ended the tournament ended up getting shortened to four games just because

1:17:17

some things ran long and people had flights to catch and stuff so

1:17:20

i'm playing jonas the guy who 17th seed makes his way to top four like a hero

1:17:25

and he is bringing void curse thralls magor's fiends gorgeously painted lost

1:17:30

the best painted vote by one and brian you you did win best painted so you did

1:17:34

get something don't worry i'm not i'm not just crushing you all day i got got

1:17:37

a single painting vote. Hey, I got zero.

1:17:40

If someone had taken their vote and voted for Jonas instead,

1:17:42

they would have tied him or something. But no, I guess I had to give Brian something.

1:17:45

But I played Jonas and he was a savvy opponent, a good spirited guy.

1:17:50

Magor's fiends are pretty nasty in close combat, which is where I needed to be.

1:17:55

And I took a couple of big risks and they paid off this time,

1:17:58

which kept it really close going into round two.

1:18:00

And we got to this point where I had played Rise Again.

1:18:03

So I bring back one of the sons, I forget which one, And starting Hex in my

1:18:06

territory and I swing on Riptooth and I get a crit hit and he got crit success on defense.

1:18:13

And so it was just like crippling, you know, that I'm, oh my God,

1:18:16

I can't, I can't kill this dog.

1:18:19

And I needed that for a kill surge and a precise damage and a bunch of other things.

1:18:23

And I was like, that probably just lost me the game. Cause now I have this vulnerable

1:18:25

son raised just for you to take down.

1:18:28

And then I was lamenting my bad luck to Bobby, the table next to me,

1:18:31

because he saw my face and he's like, hey, man, what happened?

1:18:34

So I told him I got this, like, I bet it all and I lost.

1:18:36

And then during the discussion of that, I realized that Riptooth was trapped

1:18:40

at that time. And so I actually killed him.

1:18:43

And so we, Jonas was a courteous opponent and let us roll it back,

1:18:46

like half an activation and a power step to make it so that I actually did score

1:18:50

all those things. It did get that kill. And that was the difference maker was his sportsmanship to let me say,

1:18:55

hey, I didn't realize, but I actually did succeed on that. attack.

1:18:58

I did get a critical hit. I did kill you with Grievous. I did yada yada.

1:19:01

And so I did end up winning that game 17 to 11.

1:19:05

But honestly, I should have lost because I didn't realize I had my opponent trapped.

1:19:09

But he's a great guy, flew out all the way from Europe and still was okay with

1:19:12

me basically turning the time back to take him out.

1:19:16

So at the end of that match, we had our placings.

1:19:19

And the way that they did the rankings was a little different.

1:19:23

I don't know exactly what what they did, but it was wins and total glory and

1:19:26

strength of schedule and some other things factored in. Whatever their algorithm

1:19:29

was, it put me at fifth place. And so I did not make the third, fourth place game or the first,

1:19:34

second place game because we didn't do a bracket for this.

1:19:37

It was just top four will play for first, second, and third.

1:19:40

And so I did not advance to the playoff-ish thing.

1:19:44

But like I said, I didn't come here to win. I came here to have some fun.

1:19:47

I got to play some Velmore and go three and one with a pretty good differential.

1:19:50

So So positive 25 glory across four games is pretty solid. So overall,

1:19:54

I think Velmorn's back and you should give him a try. And Rivals is fun. You know, it takes a lot of the pressure off because you're

1:20:00

like, well, I didn't do this. You know, this is just the card.

1:20:02

This is just the card I have. So, you know, what am I supposed to do?

1:20:05

That was my day on Rivals Sunday.

1:20:07

I'm telling myself that all of us that went 3-1 tied for third.

1:20:11

Okay, you can tell yourself that, but I'm... I'm gonna tell myself.

1:20:14

I'm saying I got fifth, so... Alright, so we'll go to my Sunday. My first round, I played Nick.

1:20:22

He definitely seemed like he had a very strong grasp on the game,

1:20:24

but he had mentioned that he hadn't really played very much since the Diochasm

1:20:28

Beastgrave era, but he absolutely knew what he was doing.

1:20:31

He was playing crushes which was kind

1:20:35

of interesting because i was playing husband's curse with the rival's deck he

1:20:38

was playing crushes with the rival's deck so first i think

1:20:41

i won roll off and i did like a almost

1:20:44

full offset not quite full offset but either way round one we both i think realized

1:20:50

that we were playing like very counter punchy bands and so we both deployed

1:20:54

kind of cagey and both were just kind of like playing chicken i drew a card

1:20:59

first activation I think he won that roll and made me go first,

1:21:03

so I drew a card. He moved a fighter onto an objective.

1:21:06

We both took some very, like, just wait-and-see turns.

1:21:11

But in those turns of mine, I spent two turns sharpening the wielder.

1:21:16

So the wielder is now sitting on a five-damage attack if he can land it.

1:21:21

We get to the end of round one, and we both have still done nothing.

1:21:24

We've both not moved into each other's territory or made any type of aggressive movements.

1:21:30

But I had hold them still in my opening hand. At the end of round one, I discard nothing.

1:21:35

I keep exactly the powers and objectives that I started the game with.

1:21:40

I'm a little greedy, but a little confident that I can make it work. I won...

1:21:44

Maybe I didn't win initiative. I actually think I didn't. He went first and

1:21:49

I think just moved a fighter forward to where they could theoretically move into attack range.

1:21:56

And also made it to where if I wanted to charge one of those two because they

1:22:00

were in the offset, I would very likely give the other supports or at least

1:22:05

a way to push into supports. Anyways, so I believe I played Unseemly

1:22:10

Haste is plus two move to friendly fighters in the next activation.

1:22:14

And then i charged the wielder

1:22:18

and then i played react to withhold them

1:22:20

still which is play it after one of my fighters moves choose

1:22:23

another friendly fighter they move it's still within the same activation because

1:22:26

it was a charge action so they both have the plus two move

1:22:29

so i'm able to blitz the wielder and the bear

1:22:32

like all the way halfway into his board so now

1:22:35

my wielder has supports and

1:22:39

cleave and five damage so i

1:22:41

am able to just one shot thug and remove him

1:22:44

him from the game and he had a condemned counter

1:22:47

from the previous round so i inspire

1:22:51

all of my fighters off that one kill as well and i

1:22:54

think he realized that that was kind of

1:22:57

a huge swing and it kind of was inspiring all my fighters and

1:23:00

getting i think two surges and a large fighter bounty off of one attack was

1:23:06

a huge setup for me and the rest of the game kind of went like that able to

1:23:11

just kind of push the bearer where I needed him to have the supports and cleave

1:23:16

to get the wielder essentially one-shotting people.

1:23:18

And he definitely got some really big hits back on me.

1:23:22

There was one like four damage attack that he missed that would have killed

1:23:27

the wielder in round three and definitely would have brought it closer.

1:23:31

But yeah, so that game ended in my favor. That was a very, very interesting

1:23:35

game with both of us playing super cagey to start and then getting real aggressive halfway through.

1:23:40

That was really fun i haven't played with or against crushes very

1:23:43

much so i wasn't super sure what to expect but so that made for a

1:23:46

very very interesting match after that as you said

1:23:49

i played you other mike your cards dictated

1:23:52

that you made a a pretty long bomb charge

1:23:55

with velmorne and you whiffed it which left velmorne

1:23:58

pretty vulnerable in my territory if i had

1:24:01

it would have been for glory in my direction oh yeah i

1:24:04

didn't so that's and it would have been the the bearer that

1:24:06

i think yeah it was the bearer so i felt like it was the right

1:24:09

move to make but it yeah that's the risky take and

1:24:12

the bear is the the real star of the show like i said i came to

1:24:15

vegas to gamble so so that yeah absolutely

1:24:18

would have been huge but didn't go off left it

1:24:21

to where i was able to push with just.

1:24:25

In case i think got me into headsman

1:24:28

fighting i don't remember i think Thane maybe

1:24:32

I had scapegoated who was also pretty

1:24:35

forward in my territory it was Thane oh that was

1:24:37

Thane I killed in round two so I think it was Helmar in round one anyways

1:24:41

it doesn't matter a skelly boy I had scapegoated and

1:24:44

was pretty deep in my territory and so when Velmorn ran

1:24:46

in I was able to use my push cards to get

1:24:49

myself like just kind of on top of your skelly

1:24:53

son and get him out which again inspired all

1:24:55

my fighters look how they massacred my boy and

1:24:59

then basically immediately after i was

1:25:02

able to take velmore out just kind of slowly worked through

1:25:05

the rest of the suns except jedrin was able

1:25:08

to survive my onslaught at one point i had like run the wielder away from jedrin.

1:25:13

To get the sword boy in the back and so i had like dual purpose charge dove.

1:25:19

The sword boy managed to get the kill on him but also got away from jedrin and

1:25:22

And then at the very end, I looked at my hand and I was like,

1:25:25

I can score everything in my hand in the third end phase, regardless of whether

1:25:30

or not the wielder lives. So I took a long charge from the wielder onto Judgerin.

1:25:35

And if I landed it, you know, it's just two more like bounty and I deny you

1:25:38

some points, but I did whiff it. And then Judgerin turns around, kills the wielder, you get the large fighter

1:25:43

bounty, you score out a little bit of your hand, but I still score like seven

1:25:48

points in that end phase. And like you said, it was a pretty big glory differential at the end

1:25:52

of that one pretty early on i like you said my cards told

1:25:55

me what to do and i did it and it didn't work and i was just

1:25:58

playing to not lose too bad by the end of it so yeah

1:26:01

you did me a super fun game yeah it was

1:26:05

funny because i was like i could just leave him where he is or i could try for

1:26:10

two more points and i didn't get the two points and gave you three or four but

1:26:14

yeah it was a very fun game very very interesting to see how it shook out especially

1:26:20

with that like aggressive opening. After that, I played Aaron from my local. He was playing Crimson Court with

1:26:27

Breakneck, if I remember correctly.

1:26:30

And maybe Force of Frost. Oh boy, I can't remember now.

1:26:34

Either way, it had to be Breakneck because there was impetus involved.

1:26:39

Anyways, the point is he got some pretty lucky early aggressive moves.

1:26:44

And I missed some really important early hits.

1:26:48

I had scapegoated Gorath, I believe, and whiffed it.

1:26:52

And then lost the wielder and the bear like back to

1:26:55

back and so the rest of the game i

1:26:58

basically was just drawing cards while he

1:27:01

failed to hit the sharpener and he did eventually table

1:27:04

me but i knew that if i drew enough i could get i killed one of his fighters

1:27:11

at one point and so i might have even killed devol relatively early if i remember

1:27:15

right but i drew into they have an objective that is is have one of my fighters

1:27:21

with a raise counter and have an enemy fighter dead.

1:27:23

And then there's an objective for all of my fighters have a move or a charge token.

1:27:27

And then so I drew for fishing for those. And then I drew fishing for you must

1:27:32

serve, which is bring a chain rest back. And so I knew that I could at least score those two objectives,

1:27:38

basically by just playing you must serve in his last power step before my turn,

1:27:44

bring the chain rest back, and then just move him.

1:27:46

And I scored those two ed phases just with that

1:27:49

and it wasn't nearly enough it was still pretty one-sided he

1:27:53

got a lot of points and I got not a lot of points so that one big miss from

1:27:58

the wielder early definitely the game could have turned pretty hard on that

1:28:02

so at that point I'm two and one and my final game is against Damien it was

1:28:07

very fun to meet Damien after having spoken Spoken to him on our podcast.

1:28:12

He's a very, very nice person. Super cool to just get the chance to chit chat

1:28:17

with him, let alone play him. He was playing Crimson Court with Breakneck Slaughter and the attacks that did

1:28:23

not go my way in my game against Aaron very much went my way in my game against Damien.

1:28:29

So I was able to scapegoat.

1:28:32

I believe Gorath again and just remove him, inspiring all my fighters.

1:28:37

He killed the bearer like three times in that game.

1:28:42

The bearer was the only one that died, but he died three times.

1:28:45

And it was very interesting. There was one point where I was able to bring him back in such a way to block

1:28:51

off a charge against the wielder who was half dead.

1:28:56

I got a lot of really lucky setups to where he

1:28:59

didn't have any optimal way to charge me without either like

1:29:02

running through lethal or giving me supports and then

1:29:05

i was able to bring the bear back next to

1:29:09

inspired velis who should be

1:29:12

on guard but you can't be on guard next to

1:29:15

the bear and then should be on blocks but the wielder has cleave

1:29:18

and so she was the last one i took out and it took a

1:29:21

lot of work and a lot of misses but i was eventually able to

1:29:24

do it that was a super fun fun game with a lot of like really interesting

1:29:27

minutiae a lot of nuance in both of

1:29:30

us trying to set up for the next

1:29:33

person's turn but that was very fun and so i ended

1:29:36

the day three one and i was the

1:29:39

only one that beat you other mike so i went home with

1:29:42

your crown yeah that's kind of a thing that i do i give things

1:29:45

to people who defeat me and so you got my crown and your

1:29:48

kid called you i want to say queen papa after that yeah made

1:29:52

it all worth it i walked in the door and immediately he said

1:29:55

look it's queen papa and he kept telling me

1:29:58

that anytime i took it off he was like papa where's your queen hat

1:30:01

you got to put on your queen hat it's very very funny all

1:30:04

right so that wraps up my games at the

1:30:07

rivals tournament i ended the day three and one so mike why don't you tell us

1:30:12

about your adventure your journey on the day of the rivals event so my first

1:30:19

round was a buy which I was super disappointed about because I wanted to play games before I...

1:30:25

Going to that, though, I selected Xandire's Truthseekers with their Rivals deck to play with.

1:30:31

I had toyed with, and I had sent this message to you guys, I had toyed with

1:30:34

doing Hexbane's Hunters because I had actually done a Rivals tournament with Hexbane and won.

1:30:39

And I thought, well, why don't I just do that again?

1:30:42

I mean, it worked well for me last time. But then I was contemplating the night

1:30:46

before and I was putting my Rivals deck together. I'm just like, you know what?

1:30:49

I'm just going to have fun with this thing. Let me take Zandair.

1:30:52

I always have fun playing Zandair and the Rivals deck has some really wonky

1:30:58

cards in it, but it has some good cards too.

1:31:01

So I thought this will just be fun. I'm going to go Zandair.

1:31:03

There. So I show up as Xander. Like I said, first round, I get a buy and I talked to Chris and he's like,

1:31:09

oh, well then let's just play a game. And so I sat down and I started playing with Chris. He played Gnarl Spirit Pack.

1:31:14

And before we started playing, I said, okay, how does this affect me?

1:31:17

Like if I lose to you, do I get a loss? If I win, do I get a win? How does this work? He's like, oh no,

1:31:22

no. It's just a tie no matter what. I said, okay, let's play a game.

1:31:26

And so I took ridiculous risks and did

1:31:30

crazy stuff and so did he and i only

1:31:32

scored like nine glory on that game and ended up

1:31:35

as a tie because we were just doing silly things so that's my

1:31:39

round one so my round two is really my first

1:31:41

game in the tournament because the first one

1:31:44

was a buy and round two i get paired up against john

1:31:48

and john is from other mike's

1:31:51

meta super nice guy super fun

1:31:53

to to play he was playing thrice full discord but the

1:31:56

thing about thrice fold is that's one of the matches that

1:31:59

i get concerned about when i play my stormcast for one reason and that's that

1:32:05

armor upgrade that they can throw on you and bring me down to move which basically

1:32:11

means i'm moving one right so i was very concerned about that john is an absolutely

1:32:16

awesome opponent super super fun to of play.

1:32:19

He came in pretty aggressive.

1:32:22

And in, I think, power step two, he throws the armor on Doraz.

1:32:26

And I'm like, well, shoot. He comes in with Vexmore really aggressive to hit Xandire and misses.

1:32:36

So now Vexmore is standing next to Xandire and one hex away from Doraz.

1:32:43

No, he doesn't miss. He knocks Xandire back.

1:32:45

So Vexmore is in the middle of the board. Xandire is a hex away.

1:32:49

Doraz is two hexes away. It comes to my power step and I play advance as one,

1:32:55

which if you don't know that card, it's a sidestep for every member of the war band.

1:33:00

I still think it's very underrated and people do not give it enough credit. So I play advance as one.

1:33:05

Xandar moves up next to Vexmore. Is that his name, Vexmore? Yeah.

1:33:10

Yeah, Vexmore. He's more Vexing than any other fighter, I realize.

1:33:13

Exactly. Hating him right now, and I just can't stand him.

1:33:18

Dores is now just one hex away, so I make a one hex charge.

1:33:22

Swing with Dores, land the attack, do three to Vexmore.

1:33:26

Next activation, Xandire goes, takes out Vexmore.

1:33:30

So I've taken out Vexmore. By the end of round two, I also managed to take out the wizard.

1:33:36

I forget, is that Vashtis? What's the wizard? Yes. yeah

1:33:39

so vastus is gone and then i believe vexmore is

1:33:42

also a wizard he's just not a very good one he's just not a

1:33:44

very good one he's just big and then at the beginning of

1:33:47

round three i win the roll off to see who goes first i give

1:33:50

him the first turn now i have zandar and doras sitting

1:33:53

in the middle of the board and he has lassovere lassovere

1:33:58

thank you i always forget lassovere standing about four hexes

1:34:01

away and he's like oh i did not want you to

1:34:04

give me the first turn and he sits there and he contemplates for

1:34:07

a while and he thinks and he thinks and he ends up charging

1:34:10

he charges zandire misses the attack doris charges in and cleans him up so i

1:34:16

ended up winning that game pretty handily but it was very close and i think

1:34:20

advances one really is the thing that turned the tide for me right my next game

1:34:24

i play bobby and bobby is from the what the hex X meta,

1:34:29

and he is an excellent player, and he's playing Dripers with Toxic Terrors.

1:34:34

Nice. He draws up his hand, and he has to mulligan. He's like,

1:34:37

I really don't want to mulligan, because I don't want you to see what I'm playing, but I have to.

1:34:41

And he throws it down, and I see the Toxic Terrors card. I'm like,

1:34:44

oh, I didn't expect that. I thought he was going to play their Rivals deck, which can do pretty well,

1:34:49

actually. Right, right. So this game starts with a bang.

1:34:53

I give him the first turn. He stays where he's at, and he draws a card.

1:34:58

And I'm like, oh man, I didn't expect that. And he's four hexes away from everyone.

1:35:03

So in my power step, again, I play advances one.

1:35:06

Everyone moves up. Now I'm in charge range with Doraz on the patrician. I charge the patrician.

1:35:13

Doraz rolls double crits. Oh, damn. Bobby picks up his dice,

1:35:17

rolls double crits. Oh, no. We scream.

1:35:21

I mean, we're like yelling at the top of our lungs and we're doing weird high

1:35:25

fives across the table because we can't quite connect. It was so awesome.

1:35:28

It was one of those super memorable moments. And he had deployed perfectly so that Hackfell, who's going to have Cleave,

1:35:35

is right behind the Patrician. So that now he's got a Cleave attack on Dorazcom.

1:35:40

He ends up missing that attack, which was super fortunate for me.

1:35:44

Zandar charges in does a little bit of damage storm

1:35:48

rider charges and shoots drepper for

1:35:51

one and knocks him back just out of charge

1:35:54

range even with the push so drepper's kind of

1:35:57

out of position he throws is it freezing venom is that the name of the card

1:36:01

yeah on that gives you in snare and yeah yeah super action yeah yeah so round

1:36:08

two he throws that on doras so now i can't charge with Doraz,

1:36:12

and Drepper's coming in. He ends up killing Stormrider, who shoots another shot at Drepper and hits.

1:36:20

Then I have Xandar charge Drepper and kill him. So that took out a lot of his potency.

1:36:28

And he kind of questioned himself on the deployment of Drepper.

1:36:31

He felt like he misdeployed him. And what I told him was, you couldn't have

1:36:34

predicted that I would land two two Stormrider attacks to push him back twice.

1:36:39

That was just hard to predict. So the game ends up going my way,

1:36:43

and I end up beating Bobby. We had a heck of a game. My third game, Chris announces, oh,

1:36:49

Mike, you're playing Derek. And I'm thinking to myself, well, this has been a good run.

1:36:54

But then Chris comes back and says, actually, that's a mistake.

1:36:58

I messed up the pairings. And here's the resolution.

1:37:01

And I end up playing Nick, who you played in round one, Thomas.

1:37:05

And he's playing Mordok's Crushes. Now, I think anyone who does well in a tournament will tell you that there has

1:37:11

to be some luck on their side. You can't just skill your way to a win in a dice game.

1:37:17

Well, the reverse happened in this game. The luck just wasn't on Nick's side. It was brutal.

1:37:23

I have never apologized to an opponent as much as I have apologized to him.

1:37:28

He came in with Morgok with so many attacks.

1:37:32

At one point in time, I had all four fighters in his territory and he charged

1:37:36

with a scything attack in the middle of all four of my fighters and he hit nothing.

1:37:41

I believe he only landed two attacks maxed the entire game. It was painful.

1:37:47

I felt so bad. At one point in time, he had hit Xandire for three.

1:37:53

So Xandire was vulnerable. And he came in for another attack, and of course, whiffed.

1:37:58

And I played walk it off, and Xandire for two.

1:38:02

And the game just went that way. I mean, he just could not hit an attack almost the entire game.

1:38:08

I ended up winning by a landslide.

1:38:11

It had some to do with my skill, but it had a heck of a lot to do with his dice rolling.

1:38:16

I mean, I don't think he rolled a single crit all game. He only landed two attacks.

1:38:20

He was rolling for swords. I've never seen so many supports and double supports in my life.

1:38:25

So, I mean, that's how the game went. And I felt bad. You don't want to win a game like that.

1:38:30

But he told me before the game started, he said, so I'm just here to give you

1:38:33

enough glory to get to the next round. That's what he said to me. Oh, no.

1:38:37

I said, Nick, how can that be? I mean, you're playing a great war band and it

1:38:40

all went downhill and he drew his best cards.

1:38:43

I mean, he had brutal reprisal. He, I mean, all those, the cards that you would

1:38:47

expect Morgok to draw, he had them, but it just, he couldn't land tech. So that was that game.

1:38:51

But that meant that because I had the buy-in round one, that was a tie and I

1:38:56

had one against John, Bobby, and Nick, I was undefeated.

1:39:00

So I was playing in the final round with Zandier and the rival's deck.

1:39:04

And I was playing Jesse, who was playing Crimson Court, and their rivals did.

1:39:10

This game was an absolute nail-biter. I will tell you that I had above-average luck.

1:39:16

There was a couple times I rolled a couple crits, and someone who was watching

1:39:21

said, hey, do we need to toilet test those dice?

1:39:24

That person was me. It was inordinate. He would do something and be like,

1:39:29

okay, this is about the best possible play Jesse could have made.

1:39:31

Were all like, oh, he's got it this time.

1:39:33

And then you would crit out of it. And the whole room exploded too. It was crazy.

1:39:39

The number of times that you cheated death or had just the right card or just

1:39:43

the right die. It was mental.

1:39:47

Fate on your side this time. It was. I had the right cards at the right time.

1:39:52

And I rolled pretty well. One of the things that happened again is he came in

1:39:56

with that spell that put a move token on Xandire.

1:39:59

And Xandire was, again, a hex away, but I had advances one, and he didn't expect it.

1:40:06

So advances one goes down, Dwaraz goes up, and Xandire moves up.

1:40:11

And now Xandire gets her attack on, what's the lady's name? Gosh,

1:40:15

I'm so bad with names. Veles. Thank you, on Veles. And so Xandire's swinging three hammers with cleave and

1:40:21

supports on Veles. us. Of course it lands, right? My bird did work.

1:40:25

He actually went after Stormrider pretty hard.

1:40:28

And so Stormrider gets a shot off. I activate Stormrider again,

1:40:33

do a charge, send the bird over so I have double supports, lands another shot.

1:40:38

But he just went after Stormrider hard, ended up killing her,

1:40:40

which inspired Doraz and Zandire and left the bird uninspired.

1:40:44

And so I was actually pretty surprised by that, but Doraz just did work.

1:40:49

I mean, he landed almost every attack that he took.

1:40:52

And at the end of the game, he's got Gorath in my zone in the corner.

1:40:57

And he plays the upgrade where I'm at minus one damage to a minimum of one.

1:41:03

And he's got four wounds. He's basically full.

1:41:06

So I ended up charging with Doraz and doing what would have been three,

1:41:11

but it's two. He swings back. I crit out. I charge with the bird. The The bird hits for one.

1:41:18

So now he's on life support. He tries to cast the spell to give himself another wound, and he fails.

1:41:25

Oh, no. But then what he does is he charges out of the corner two away from Duras.

1:41:29

Duras is already charged out. The bird is already charged out.

1:41:32

And he swings with his staff at Duras.

1:41:35

But again, Duras defends. And then to his surprise, I drop down a hail of darts

1:41:41

on Duras, which is a range three damage one three sword attack.

1:41:44

Attack yep and everyone in the room groans yeah

1:41:47

okay jesse's got this he managed

1:41:50

to charge out of danger doraz is charged out you don't have enough activations

1:41:54

left and then here comes flight of darts i was like well good luck man this

1:41:59

is my every every time you did something jesse had like just the right move

1:42:04

to get out of it and then you had just the right move to get him back in and it was like,

1:42:09

He just couldn't buy a win. I don't know. You had his number the whole time.

1:42:14

It was, this game was so much fun. And Jesse, by the way, what a fantastic opponent.

1:42:19

So anyway, I put flight of darts on Doraz.

1:42:22

Like I said, the whole room groans and I've rolled a three sword attack.

1:42:26

And sure enough, I land that last bit of damage on Gorath, which scores me six in the end phase.

1:42:31

And that was the game. So that means I ended up winning that tournament.

1:42:39

And which I'm stoked on, right? So there's all this prize support.

1:42:42

So I grabbed my first place prize for it, which I pick up Black Powder, the war band.

1:42:47

I'm super in love with them right now. But then to my surprise.

1:42:51

He announces that there's a sportsmanship award and that goes to me.

1:42:55

So then he hands me another war band, which I'm like, how did this happen?

1:42:59

I literally said, how did this happen? And he was just like, look, man, everyone knows you're in the room.

1:43:04

You had a good time with everyone. You enjoyed yourself.

1:43:06

People enjoyed playing you. You deserve it. I'm like, that

1:43:09

is the coolest thing in the world so that is my first shade

1:43:12

glass i've ever won i've never had another shade

1:43:15

glass trophy and even though i've played in a ton of tournaments it felt

1:43:18

awesome to rep zandair through that

1:43:21

tournament so one thing you didn't mention part of

1:43:24

the sportsmanship i mean other than just being like a fun guy

1:43:27

to hang out with and actively cheering on your opponents

1:43:29

and stuff but you uh brought a bunch of fools gold

1:43:32

like nothing it's a fool's gold and every

1:43:36

one of your opponents you were like here is some sigmarite unalloyed untempered

1:43:40

sigmarite i just want you to rub it a little bit just a

1:43:44

little bit just rub it for me and then

1:43:47

you would like give them this thing they could take home as a souvenir and

1:43:50

like multiple people have taken pictures like here i am at my weekly game night

1:43:54

with my sigmarite nugget like it's like you would just curse these people with

1:43:59

sigmarith blessing honestly like we didn't vote but i'm pretty sure you would

1:44:03

have gotten that huge majority of the sportsmanship votes i appreciate that it was easily for sure.

1:44:09

I appreciate that. That means a lot. But yeah, that tournament was so fun.

1:44:14

And like I said, I've done a ton of tournaments before. I've never won Shadeglass.

1:44:17

So it felt really good to win it at LVO, even though it was the Rivals tournament. It felt good.

1:44:22

All right. So that was our long, arduous journey through the Las Vegas Open

1:44:30

for us to take home that trophy for Underworlds Underground and for Mike.

1:44:34

The trophy that mattered, right? The Rivals event?

1:44:37

Yep. yeah yeah there's the argument to be made like

1:44:39

nemesis is who brought the best pairing who brought the

1:44:42

best deck whatever but like rivals it's all

1:44:45

pilot skill you know for someone to

1:44:48

pilot zandar's faction deck to an undefeated

1:44:51

win like that yeah actually during the end of

1:44:54

the game we were looking at the score and like the cards you had in your hand and davey

1:44:57

leans over to me and he was like undefeated he's just playing straight faction

1:45:00

zandar's is sleek like actually really

1:45:03

good at this game like he

1:45:06

was like surprised to see it he was like it was a joke but like

1:45:09

yeah i think honestly you know yeah we poo poo all rivals

1:45:12

is you know the easy version but you did really

1:45:15

well because you know how they play i appreciate that it

1:45:18

was fun all right with that recap out of

1:45:21

the way time for us to get to having a

1:45:24

good time other mike do you want to walk us into that segment for sure

1:45:26

so in having a good time we like to have a good time we

1:45:29

pick a silly question and we go have some fun so today

1:45:33

we're gonna talk about love stories and underworlds so at the LVO preview event

1:45:38

prior to any of the tournaments they said okay here's stuff that's gonna be

1:45:41

available for pre-order in the future by now you can see online the Zandara's

1:45:45

grave breakers a new death war band and they proudly said that love comes to

1:45:50

the underworlds this is the first. War band where there is a love story involved and we

1:45:55

were talking after the preview event thinking you know actually

1:45:58

i can't think of any love stories that we know about there

1:46:01

must be of course there's 50 some war bands and

1:46:03

so we thought this is the first love story where two people are openly in a

1:46:08

relationship the werewolf and the necromancer they love each other or at least

1:46:11

did in their mortal lives but there surely are other relationships that existed

1:46:15

and so we thought what romeo and juliet pairings are there so let's think about

1:46:20

in the city of shadespire, You live, you die, and you live again, and there's this endless cycle of fighting.

1:46:26

You see the same war bands over and over and over again. You think,

1:46:29

there he is again. That's the same guy who's killed me 10 times this week. I know who he is.

1:46:35

Maybe some of these relationships turned into bitter hatred,

1:46:38

but maybe some of them were some secret or perhaps unrequited love.

1:46:42

Let's go ahead and get into it, having a good time, and see.

1:46:45

It looks like we've each got two chosen pairings of secret relationships.

1:46:49

So we'll start with Mike. Who is your first of your two possible Romeo and Juliet scenarios?

1:46:55

Okay, just picture this. Two rival houses. One of these individuals is from heaven, or Azir.

1:47:01

The other is an absolute scoundrel. Are we picking up Romeo and Juliet vibes yet?

1:47:06

Of course, yeah. No, families would never allow them to get together.

1:47:08

Definitely two different families, right?

1:47:11

And who I'm talking about here are the original lovebirds,

1:47:15

taros and shriek scoundrel literally

1:47:20

heavenly you know that they love each other I mean they're the only available

1:47:24

birds we're not going to talk about far strata that's not an available the more

1:47:28

crow you don't you don't think anyone's got the hots from work no no more crow is terrible bird.

1:47:36

Taros and Shriek. The love is obvious.

1:47:40

Am I the only one that hears Iago's voice when I see Shriek's model?

1:47:43

Anybody else? I hear just screaming in my head because I have three Dodge in

1:47:47

cover, and that's how I feel about Shriek.

1:47:50

Fair. That makes sense. He is a dirty dog. You're right. Okay,

1:47:53

so we've got the original lovebirds. So for me, my first pairing, I think that the Romeo and Juliet, we have King Velmorn.

1:48:00

Let's take a look look at him as a guy. He is a somewhat loving father.

1:48:04

He carries around his three legitimate sons and his illegitimate son,

1:48:08

but he never brought his queen into the afterlife.

1:48:12

He still hangs out with his kids. He still wants to be a good dad.

1:48:15

He has the card, the father's pride. They're a family unit. And what is a king without a queen? And what queen could

1:48:21

he possibly take other than the briar queen?

1:48:23

So my assumption is she's from the same social class he is. His sons are just

1:48:27

not ready to take over and they need some nurturing hand.

1:48:30

And so he thinks the Briar Queen is probably going to be the right choice.

1:48:33

She, of course, is married to Nagash and has no interest in King Velmore,

1:48:38

or so she would tell everyone. But you know- It's a love triangle.

1:48:41

Who doesn't want a man who stands up for himself, doesn't have anything to do

1:48:46

with Nagash. He's got his own thing going on and she can dream.

1:48:49

I'm sure it gets kind of boring just hanging out with a bunch of chain rasps.

1:48:53

This guy's got his own intellect. He's got his own cape. Think about it.

1:48:57

I think the Briar Queen would never, unless somehow they were the last two standing

1:49:04

and no one had to know. This is so plausible. It's ridiculous.

1:49:08

Of course. All right, Tom, who is your first Romeo and Juliet pairing? All right.

1:49:13

I am picturing a blood-drenched battlefield, Maybe multiple warbands, right?

1:49:20

This is a four-player game with corpses just strewn all about,

1:49:23

and Thedra Skullscryer is reaching down to take a skull of one of her enemies to scry with,

1:49:31

and her hand grazes across that of Gorath the Enforcer, who is also reaching

1:49:37

to claim the prize of an enemy's skull, and their hands...

1:49:40

Just gently embrace and they look up and they they see each

1:49:44

other's just blood-stained maw and something sparks

1:49:47

in their eyes of course it does it's mostly murder but but there's a little

1:49:53

bit of extra the blood lust in there right you know exactly exactly it is hard

1:49:57

sometimes to separate love from blood lust it's hard exactly especially in this

1:50:03

game who among us hasn't had those conflicting emotions.

1:50:06

Oh no. Okay. So Gorath and Thedra are just well lubricated and the blood is off.

1:50:13

I can see it. Turn a phrase. I can see it.

1:50:17

Okay. So to recap our round one, we have Taros and Shriek, the original lovebirds.

1:50:22

We have the king and queen of undeath and we have Gorath and Thedra with blood all up on.

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Okay. Mike, let's go back to your second set. Who is our other Romeo and Juliet

1:50:30

candidate you brought to the table? Yeah. So you're going to have to to work with me on this.

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This one's a little bit out there, but Melisande from Storm of Celestis.

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I've always envisioned her as like, she takes the orders, she does what's right,

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but I think she has a little bit of a wild side.

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When she inspires, she's kneeing people and kicking around.

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You notice she's got kind of some crazy heels on. So there's a little bit of

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a wild side to Melisande. And the person that sort of attracted her and got her attention was Jagathra

1:50:58

from The God-Sworn Hunt. I mean, he's punk rock.

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He's got the mohawk. They both love Range 3.

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I mean, Jags is like the punk rock boyfriend that Sigmar never wanted Melisande to bring home.

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And plus, like I said, they both like launching things at Range 3.

1:51:16

I would imagine that they met axe throwing. I mean, these two, there's more there than meets the eye. And I think the two

1:51:22

of them come from two totally different backgrounds.

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But like I said, Melisande's a a little spicy you don't know it but she's a

1:51:29

little spicy and she likes jacks yeah i'm guessing that uh the rest of storm

1:51:33

celestis is really boring too so she's gotta gotta get her variety somewhere.

1:51:37

Yeah, Aphis is such a doofus. I mean, the guy just, he has no creativity whatsoever.

1:51:43

She needs a little bit more creativity. Fair. That actually chains into my next one pretty well.

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I, for my second entry, going to bring the Godsworn Hunt now in their third

1:51:52

secret romance in this game.

1:51:54

So the most romance novel that you can get is apparently the Godsworn Hunt.

1:51:59

I have Thedra Skullscryer taking a cheat day on Gorath and she's going actually

1:52:03

for Rastus the Charmed from the- Interesting.

1:52:06

Yeah. So hear me out. What do we know about the Godsworn Hunt?

1:52:09

They have sworn to their gods that they are going to hunt some Stormcast Eternals.

1:52:14

This is back in Nightvault. What Stormcast Eternals are running around in Nightvault? That's right,

1:52:19

Stormsire's Cursebreakers. What does Thedra do?

1:52:22

She scrys skulls, but she also casts spells with her wand. One of the things

1:52:25

you can do with a wand is charm somebody.

1:52:29

Erastus might be Prince Charming, but he's also the charmed.

1:52:33

He's been charmed by someone. That someone is Thedra, and she,

1:52:37

bet your bucket, it has more than one way to

1:52:40

increase her body count you you put

1:52:43

that together like legos with instructions what a walk to take so so fedra and

1:52:48

rastas i think there's perhaps a little bit of love potion compulsion going

1:52:52

on but i would say there's a spark she's on the hunt and when the cougar is

1:52:56

on the prowl you better look out that 100% lightning bolt but spark nonetheless all All right, Thomas,

1:53:03

close it out. Who is your last Romeo and Juliet pairing?

1:53:06

So my final pairing is Veles von Fein from the Crimson Court.

1:53:12

With island the mind's edge

1:53:15

from miari's purifiers they are both

1:53:18

master duelists master swordsmen i feel

1:53:22

like they are probably frequently both the last one

1:53:24

standing on the battlefield just fought to a draw

1:53:27

neither one can like best the other and

1:53:30

so they've spent a lot of time alone at the

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end of a battle together i can picture them blades locked

1:53:37

being like hey do you want want to just like take a break

1:53:39

you want to go for a coffee maybe we just

1:53:45

chat we see each other a lot each other's swords real quick just

1:53:48

kind of like yeah like we know each other but let's

1:53:51

get to know each other you know oh my god i think it

1:53:53

could happen there's something to be said there for sure and like at

1:53:56

a certain point after their i don't know third date they start trading sword

1:54:01

sword stance tips they teach each other like swordsman styles i think especially

1:54:07

their love for that craft can take them pretty far for sure okay so i guess

1:54:11

we can move from there into our honorable mentions does anyone else have any

1:54:14

extra stuff they want to throw out possible. Unrequited loves or romeo juliet just quick hits i got an okay so i've got a

1:54:20

couple extra i thought of i think the first one is rothkorn from rothkorn's

1:54:24

man trappers i think he's into fecula Because we already know that he likes big girls.

1:54:29

What a nasty pairing. He likes big girls, and she is looking like a snack,

1:54:34

maybe a whole dang meal. But unfortunately, she's into older guys.

1:54:37

Some people like to say daddy, but she's all about that granddaddy. Uh-oh. Oh, no.

1:54:42

I think another unrequited love is Grashrak the Despoiler is into Kagra.

1:54:47

He's impressed by her desecration and jealous that she can despoil,

1:54:50

and he cannot, despite being the Despoiler. but he unfortunately does not have a top knot.

1:54:56

And so she will not give him a date because he's not punk rock enough for her.

1:54:59

And then of course we mentioned in other circumstances, but I think that the

1:55:04

card improvised blow shows me that there is some definite romance novel material

1:55:10

going on for Steelheart and Iron Soul and whichever one of the ghosts it is.

1:55:15

I can never tell them apart. Perhaps she can't either. You just grab one close and you begin the dance. So

1:55:21

that's what I think might be happening i'm sure there's several other

1:55:24

combinations i don't want to know what the skaven are getting up to but if you

1:55:27

listen or have any idea of who exactly

1:55:30

might be romancing who behind the scenes please

1:55:33

let us know because we would love to hear your thoughts as

1:55:36

our first unveiled romances in the story but we

1:55:39

are sure there have been some before all right and of

1:55:42

course as always make sure that you check out the sleek's

1:55:45

bowl blog the spent glory web page go ahead

1:55:48

and check out the what the heck's podcast if you haven't and keep an eye out

1:55:52

for links coming from the shade glass reflections youtube channel email us at

1:55:58

underworldsunderground at gmail.com if you have any questions or ideas and this

1:56:03

was underworldsunderground coming to you from the rime.

1:56:07

Music.