Andrew’s Tournament Experience
I remember waking up the day of the tournament and realizing that I actually didn't have a deck yet. I decided to modify the Star-Stitched (Reanimation-Astrology) deck because I thought it'd be under-represented as the most complex deck. I made the following changes:
Original → Modified
1x Mount Meat → 1x Perdition's Altar
1x Atiq's Portal → 1x Snare the Stars
1x Dissection Model → 1x Lightning Shackles
2x Frenzy of Limbs → 1x Aether Hawk, 1x Tenacious Scrap
I had a pretty good idea of what to change, having playtested these decks a lot. I was reversing some of the nerfs we implemented to balance the deck with Meltdown, the Combustion-Metallurgy deck. Aether Hawk and Tenacious Scrap are both amazing sacrifice fodder. Aether Hawk lets you put pressure on opponents, while Tenacious Scrap serves as a solid road bump for opponent servants. Lightning Shackles is excellent removal, and Snare the Stars is one of the stronger traps, giving you two cosmids to work with. The one difference was Perdition's Altar, which is simply a very fun and very powerful card.
My first two matches were both against modified Toxicology decks. With the unmodified starter decks, this was a horribly painful matchup for the Tox players. Turns out it was still horrible even after changes, since the core of the decks was intact. Whatever they Wilting Malignancy'd or Necrotic Burst'd, I would sacrifice to Manflinger or Insatiable Horror. The RA deck also typically made a swarm of cosmids that the Tox deck could never control. Tristan, my first opponent, made a clever play to get around my sacrificing capabilities by playing Wilting Malignancy on his own Nethermaw Imago, then using Plague Swallow to reallocate the -1 counters. Unfortunately, it was a little too slow to deal with the cosmids, and the Imago would always be a little weaker on defense. Fortunate pairings gave me the 2-0 record that brought me to the finals against my good friend Jamie, running a modified CM deck.
This game was incredibly intense. It went to time because of the difficult plays we both had to make. I don't remember the details of the early game, but we had a very intricate endgame. I know I had one Astral Surgeon out for most of the game, and that Jamie had made a move to knock out my lab, leaving me with just one card in hand.
My last card, however, was Perdition's Altar. I used most of my remaining vaporize reagents to both play and activate the Altar, sacrificing an Aether Hawk. I got three cosmids, which deterred attacks (Jamie's board had a Tempest Djinni and an Apprentice's Spark, servants with no combat). The cosmids also threatened to let me dominate the game, by sacrificing one to get Insatiable Horror back, which I could then sacrifice to the Altar (most likely getting three more cosmids). Jamie made another smart attack to take out my Altar. Still, the one or two Altar activations brought me back in the game. I sacrificed another cosmid to the Insatiable Horror, and started vandalizing Jamie's lab. Having a Manflinger really sped up the clock. Then, each turn, I would sacrifice the Horror in play to the other Insatiable Horror in my scrap heap, netting me a cosmid from the Astral Surgeon. Over the course of a few turns, I had ground out Jamie's lab, and his remaining servants still weren't great at fighting. They would also eventually fall to my cosmids. Time ran out though, and after the three overtime turns, the game was not over, so it was a draw. A thrilling finish to the day!