Despite what you may have heard, I am not an abnormally strong player. I forget what cards do (often), I make the occasional play mistake, and I often pick the absolutely wrong deck for constructed events. With that said, I have managed to string off back to back Darkmoon Faire Top 8s, both in limited. The first, DMF Las Vegas, was simply Worldbreaker and War of the Elements sealed, while Gen Con added Twilight of the Dragons to the mix.

In April I started a new job that has effectively vacuumed up my WOW TCG play testing time, making it rather difficult to test on a regular basis. Leading up to Nationals I did not pick up a deck until a few days before the event, and scrubbed out with my Arturius Hathrow balance home brew. Luckily there was a mediocre Dragonkin beatdown deck waiting for me in the side event DMF which I was able to pilot to a x-1 record during sealed play. While the majority of the best players were still battling in the Continental Championship, local Las Vegan grinders Niles Rowland and Brian Gates joined me in the Top 8.

During the draft I opened a [Charmed Ancient Bone Bow], but could not follow it up with a single Hunter card worth mentioning through packs one and two. I ended up going into Shaman when I hit [Blazing Elemental Totem] to pair with a couple removal spells I picked up along the way. I was solidly in Horde and tried to build my deck around the [Tazrik Crankrust] hero flip with some random elementals filling my deck. Sadly I faced fellow Las Vegan Brian in the quarter finals and he wasted no time in dispatching my janky Shaman brew. Even with two other Las Vegans drawing live to the title, neither could come up with the trophy.

Fast forward to early July and I had no intention of going to Gen Con. My aforementioned job makes it difficult to just pick up and go whenever I please, and I did not think taking five days off from work was worth it to simply play in a Darkmoon Faire. Tim'Riv reminded me that there was going to be a rather juicy team sealed event and it turned out two Las Vegans were interested in teaming up. Brian Gates and Jeff Driscoll wanted to throw down, and with the allure of the team sealed, I snap bought a ticket and then talked my job into letting me have the time off. Team Man Date would be wrecking fools in Indy.

I fully expected to Top 8 the team event. Jeff and Brian are better than most in my opinion, and we tested the team sealed more than enough to know exactly what we were doing.

Our actual pool was so-so. We did open a few powerful cards like [Twilight's Hammer] and [Warchief Garrosh Hellscream], but overall our actual decks were marginal. Brian went into battle with a Death Knight Dragonkin deck, Jeff a Horde Mage with double [Draconic Flames] and I ran with the Assault 2 Alliance Druid.

Round one we had the good fortune of playing against Team Better than Ben Isgur, led by Matt Markoff. Coincidently we were all playing essentially the same decks, except Team Man Date had significantly better builds.

1-0

Round two we paired against the eventual undefeated group, Team Tea Pot. Brian and Jeff split their matches and it came down to me versus Robert Philippi. We went to game three, but an opposing [Soridormi] later and we were already down a match.

1-1

While I like Dan Clark and the rest of the RIW guys, they are not the group I wanted to be facing in the losers bracket. Oh wait, they weren't losers, we got paired up against them while they were 2-0. A quick thrashing later and Team Man Date was dropped from the tournament. For what it is worth, both the teams we lost to Top 8ed the event, so I feel like we ran somewhat bad. That being said, our decks were still fairly average, so I was not really shocked that we missed.

1-2 drop

Unfortunately for me, however, I did not anticipate not Top 8ing the Team Sealed. To fill the void I walked around the vendor hall and saw some pretty sweet costumes. While I saw several Captain Americas, I like this one the best:

A little later on in the day I managed to pick up a head cold. There's nothing like getting sick on your vacation. I am sure going into the filthiest bathrooms you have ever seen your life combined with being surrounded by 40,000 people did not help matters. On the plus side that evening's ESPN had a hilarious highlight real from that day's WNBA action. The news anchor narrating the action had some great one liners:

Coming up, futility you will have to see to believe!

Nothing but oxygen!

And that was a great pass...if she was eight feet tall!

During deck building for sealed play I usually try to build my deck around any bombs or clear synergies that are opened. For DMF Indy 2011 I found nether. I ended up running a super janky [Victor Baltus] Warlock. How janky was it? I included [Abyssal Maw] with only one way to activate it: [Zooti Fizzlefury].

Hero: [Victor Baltus]

Allies: 22

1 [Alador Stonebrew]

1 [Alister Cooperating]

1 [Aresha Thorncaller]

2 [Loriam Argos]

1 [Marius Jator]

1 [Emerald Acidspewer]

1 [Ruby Enforcer]

1 [Maazhum]

2 [Dominic Kandor]

1 [Gully Rustinax]

1 [Nessera Gildenrose]

1 [Zooti Fizzlefury]

1 [Azure Skyrazor]

1 [Bronze Drake]

1 [Amani Dragonhawk]

1 [Obsidian Enforcer]

1 [Haratha Hammerflame]

1 [Kalan Howland]

1 [Roger Ulric]

1 [Sardok]

Abilities: 3

1 [Seed of Corruption]

1 [Favor of the Nether]

1 [Void Rip]

Locations: 1

1 [Abyssal Maw]

Quests: 4

1 [Corrosion Prevention]

1 [Dragon, Unchained]

1 [The Crucible of Carnage: The Twilight Terror]

1 [Devoured]

Pro tip: In the event you open absolute garbage, I recommend you try to make the fastest deck possible. This will allow you to have a significant edge if you win the die roll, and it will give you the chance to beat your opponents before their late game bombs can take over the game.

Beyond [Abyssal Maw], I did open one other playable rare in [Amani Dragonhawk], but I only played it in one game that I can remember. My deck's curve went from one through five and then a random seven drop that is only okay. The majority of the time he ended up facedown.

I really should not have Top 8ed this DMF. And I do not say that because my deck is trash, but because I had to have multiple opponents make game changing mistakes round after round. I don't want to throw anyone under a bus, but lets just say that on more than one occasion I was able to steal wins that I had no right taking.

My two losses came at the hand of [Al'akir the Windlord] piloted by Michael Dalton and Daniel Hanson. Luckily for me, however, I had nearly everyone on my tie breaker still in the event and still winning. I squeaked into the Top 8 in eighth place, one of only two x-2s to make it in.

During the Top 8 draft I was immediately given a tough decision in pack one pick one. [A Matter of Time] or [Blast Trap]. Usually [Blast Trap] is paired with [Tesla] which makes the decision to pass on both of them pretty easy. However, having the stray removal spell is a rather appealing pick up. On the other hand, I hate, hate, hate taking an ability card with the first pick. [A Matter of Time] is easily among the best quest in a format with filled with stinkers and it will obviously make my deck 100% of the time. With that line of thought, I took the quest and promptly passed up another trap and [Tesla] picks two and three. All three made it to the eventual winner, making me think that if I had just taken the [Blast Trap] pick one, I would likely have added another DMF championship to my collection.

At any rate, I end up drafting an abysmal [Aric Stonejack] Death Knight. I was on the wrong end of a 6-2 faction split, and found myself as the second Death Knight at the table. During pack two I scooped up a pair of [Crown of Chelonian Freedom], and so I tried to stock up on neutral guys in order to take advantage.

Hero: [Aric Stonejack]

Allies: 15

1 [Koeus]

1 [Laenthor Shademoon]

1 [Zuur]

1 [Ruby Flameblade]

1 [Dagin Bootzap]

1 [Gully Rustinax]

1 [Nessera Gildenrose]

1 [Patricia Potter]

1 [Azure Magus]

1 [Obsidian Drudge]

2 [Obsidian Skyterror]

1 [Bound Rumbler]

1 [Bound Vortex]

1 [Gardos Gravefang]

Abilities: 6

1 [Black Blood]

1 [Frenzy]

1 [Withering Decay]

1 [The Tidehunter's Gift]

1 [Frozen Core]

1 [Necrotic Strike]

Equipment: 3

1 [Etched Dragonbone Girdle]

2 [Crown of Chelonian Freedom]

Quests: 6

1 [Enter the Dragon Queen]

1 [A Matter of Time]

1 [Mystery Goo]

1 [The Torch of Retribution]

1 [Elemental Energy]

1 [Forged of Shadow and Flame]

You might be wondering why I main decked so many crappy cards. The answer? I only drafted 31 playables. Being on the 6-2 faction split and the second Death Knight pretty much assured I would be getting slim pickings. Even with that, I managed to hobble together a somewhat synergistic list. There isn't anything here that would guarantee me a win, but I had drafted some cards that play well together, and felt like my build would give me some wiggle room to do some cool things in combat. If nothing else, I could trade the board over and over again and then lean on my ridiculous hero flip.

The first round of the Top 8 I had to battle longtime buddy Matt Spread Them Berries. I managed to make a pretty horrific play during the second game, forgetting that [Azure Drake] gained Protector with [Ruby Protector] in play. That aside, I was able to sweep the leg two out of three games. You can see the play by play here.

In the semis I got bashed by [Lightningflash] piloted by eventual winner Ben Bellis. My deck does indeed run an answer to equipment in the singleton [Obsidian Drudge], but I whiffed on it in all three games.

The rest of my Gen Con weekend was decent. I demoed the Resident Evil deck building game with Matt Spreadbury and Jeff Driscoll. The game basically equates to you building a deck full of guns, ammo and special abilities. When your character is pimped out enough you kick open the door to the mansion and start blasting zombies until you murder the end boss. If you like deck building games it is not too shabby.

Later on we capped the Gen Con experience by eating over at the Ram, which has a specialty menu for Con week.

I would like to end this by saying that we all got home quickly and safely but that actually did not happen. We had a connecting flight in Chicago and rain delayed our flight from Indianapolis by two hours. The worst part was that we were stuck on the tarmac for the entire time. Eventually we got to Chicago, but just in time to learn that all nine of us missed our flight and would have to stay overnight, unless the last flight to Las Vegas had any openings. It turned out that one person did not show up for the flight, so we gave that to Rob Swarowski since he was going to get boned the hardest by missing work. Then, a few minutes later, we were thrown another bone after some lady went crazy in the plane and got kicked off. Her vacancy opened up two new spots and we gave those to Tim'Riv and his wife.

No more bones were thrown after that and the remaining six of us stayed overnight in the Chicago airport. Some of the highlights included:

• Six year old kid screaming and rolling around the ground without a parent in sight for a solid ten minutes.

• The impromptu sleeping area set up by the airport security that looked an awful lot like a hospice.

• Kirk slamming a handful of muscle relaxers to sleep in said pseudo hospice.

• Niles getting seven years bad luck after he was found wheeling around in a wheel chair by an actual cripple.
  
  

Props: Brian and Jeff for having me on their team sealed.

Slops: Getting home 16 hours later than originally planned.

-Phillip Martin