CAPS 2017: Jadiel ([Feral]/Future/Truth) vs. FrozenStorm ([Demon]/Necro/Finesse)

@FrozenStorm FYI your tech 3 is not showing in your posts.

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Man this game is on a knife’s edge! Thanks for the notice @payprplayn, I’ll fix that

Player 2, Turn 8

P1 [Demon]/Necro/Finesse vs P2 [Feral]/Necro/Anarchy

[details=Starting Hand]
Hooded Executioner
Lich’s Bargain
Pestering Haunt
[/details]

##Events of Turn:

###Upkeep:

  • Get Gold (10)
  • No techs right now

[details=All Teched Cards]
Zarramonde, the Obliterator, Lich’s Bargain
Death Rites, Voidblocker
Nether Drain, Hooded Executioner
Two Step, Nimble Fencer
Discord, Twilight Baron
[/details]


###Main:

  • Hooded Exec + Boost, I choose real omega as the weakest, which pops mirror as well (6)
  • Garth (4)
  • Lich’s Bargain, my base to 16 my workers to 9, out come some chunky blockers (2)
  • Worker (1)

[details=Workers]
Pestering Haunt, Jandra, the Negator, Graveyard, Summon Skeletons, Poisonblade Rogue, Skeletal Archery
[/details]

  • :pspurpleshield: Patrol as below
  • Discard 0 Draw 2
  • Tech 2 cards before my next turn

###Board Info:
####Buildings:

  • :heart: Base HP: 16
  • Tech1 HP: 5
  • Tech2 HP: 5 SPEC DEMONOLOGY
  • Tech3 HP: 5
  • Tower HP: 4

####In Patrol:

  • :psblueshield: Squad Leader: Horror (3/3+1armor)
  • :psfist: Elite: Thieving Imp (2+1/2)
  • :pspig: Scavenger: Zombie (2/2)
  • :exhaust: Technician: Hooded Executioner (3/3)
  • :target: Lookout:

####In Play:

  • Garth (1/3 lvl 1)
  • River (2/3 lvl 1)
  • Skeleton (1/1)

###Economy Info:

####Cards:

  • Hand: 2
  • Deck: 5
  • Disc: 5

####Gold:

  • Gold: 1
  • Workers: 10

[details=End of Turn Hand]
Zarramonde, the Obliterator
Nether Drain
[/details]

[details=End of Turn Discard][spoiler]

[/spoiler][/details]

[details=My Thoughts][spoiler]
He fears the Vandy XD perfect, this sets up well. I buried another omega, he’s light on sacrifices, I’m patrolled strong, come get some :wink:

Zarra you’re just in time! I have a feeling you’re going to come in to kill Quince and win this game for me on the following turn XD Here’s hoping there isn’t a double void star feral strike in play for him on that draw! that’s the only thing that could potentially shut down my Zarra, but then I guess I just target one of them instead of quince? We’ll see I suppose

[/spoiler][/details]

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I screwed up editing my turn 7 into my turn 8, I’m going to try and sort it out. Most recent post is my turn 8 though, just with some of the secrets goofed up b/c of the botched edit

EDIT: OK everything is fixed (other than my turn 7 thoughts being much briefer now)

Hooded Executioner should be a 3/3.

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I’m glad you’re enjoying it. I suspect it’s a mirror of our last tournament game which feels close to you, but I feel hopelessly behind…

P1T9


Tech StartingHand Workers

TECH
Promise of Payment
Promise of Payment


STARTING HAND
Young Treant
Free Speech
Feral Strike
Xenostalker
Murkwood Allies


WORKERS
Rich Earth
Ironbark Treant
Predator Tiger


NextHand

Huntress
Spore Shambler
Xenostalker
Omegacron
Playful Panda


Discard

Omegacron
Feral Strike
Free Speech
Young Treant
Xenostalker
Murkwood Allies
Promise of Payment
Promise of Payment


Tech 2 card(s)
Get Paid + float - ($8)
Cal casts Feral Strike with Boost, summoning 2 Void Rays - ($0)
Cal trades with Horror, River midbands

Float ($0)
Discard 4, draw 5


Board Info:
In Patrol:

  • :psblueshield: Squad Leader:
  • :psfist: Elite:
  • :ps_: Scavenger: L5 Quince (1/5)
  • :pschip: Technician: Void Ray (5/4)
  • :target: Lookout: Void Ray (5/4)
    In Play:

Buildings:

  • :heart: Base HP: 16
  • :heart: Tech I HP: 5
  • :heart: Tech II HP: 5 (Future)

Economy Info:
Cards:

  • Hand: 5
  • Deck: 10
  • Disc: 8
    Gold:
  • Gold: 0
  • Workers: 7
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Just realised I forgot to say who gets the levels when Cal dies. Editted

I’m mobile but my next turn is zarra, kill technician, nether drain, River Max quince to 3, hoodie and Garth kill quince, River and zombie kill tech 2, imp and skeleton hit base to 11, zarra sql

I think that should be “checkmate”? Even with 8 gold and 6 cards, without tech 2 quince or Cala I don’t think you can have a card in deck to kill Zarra and stop him obliterate killing your base next turn, especially with a half dozen little dudes of backup to clear other stuff?

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Yeah, if you have Zarra it’s GG @EricF

It was an interesting game. You definitely deserved to win. I made a lot of big mistakes. I think in the first 7 turns, I misplayed 4 of them. (For those spectating, I’ll spoiler which ones - see if you agree!)

Misplays I spotted

T1 was fine

T2:

I played too aggressively. His next turn was pretty predictable, given the black starter, and my aggression against Garth was unwarranted. I can get the stealth kill just as easily on T3, and if I defend for a turn, I can get Tech I up. My techs were both bad, as I knew I’d draw them both next turn, and I didn’t have enough money to build Tech I.
MA is a terrible choice against Finesse, especially when you telegraph it by not building Tech I

T3:

I was lucky you imped my MA, as otherwise Discord T3 would have ended the game much earlier. This turn ended up being fine, but only because you luckily removed a terrible play which I would have otherwise made

T4:

I never cast Free Speech this game, so maybe I should have teched something more useful - not sure what though

T5:

[spoiler]I felt too safe here, as I didn’t anticipate a possible 6 hasty damage (Fencer + Two Step). The other line I considered was:
Stalking Tiger kills Imp, using up tower
Stalking Tiger kills Vandy
Cal trades with Baron
Panda trades with Lookout
Tech II
Vir, swap Omegacron with top card, patrol in SQL
Float 1

This leaves him unable to break Tech II, and means I can drop double Omega next turn. I also have two 4/1 tigers which he probably wants to trade for. That clears my board, but once I have double Omegacron, I have a huge amount of threat from just floating gold, and I don’t need my tech buildings any more. In hindsight, this is clearly a better line, but like I said, I thought my Tech II was safe with the line I took.

Patrolling the Wisp in TECH was also a major error, as it locks out one Omegacron for my next cycle. I guess I wasn’t expecting Tech II to go down though, so this is excusable.[/spoiler]

T6

Not sure what I was thinking here… Why would I not patrol all the Frogs? I guess I thought that protecting Cal wasn’t that important, although Feral Strike seems pretty big here. I guess Nether Drain means I can’t play it anyway, but Nether Drain if he can’t kill Cal is a risky play, as it means that I get a free heal…

T7

Playing Omegacron is clearly correct here, but given my board position I don’t know if makes sense to actually bring it in to play this turn. I really need to get into a position where I can destroy Tech III, but Feral Strike is about my only out at this point, so preparing for that would probably make more sense… A forecast Omegacron represents 27 damage with 10 workers, so I think that would be more effective than dropping the hammer early

T8:

Turns out that discard was pretty significant! I wasn’t expecting Executioners - another oversight, clearly! I’m not sure there was anything particularly wrong with my play from here on out, but I was pretty sure the game was lost!

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GG WP! You nearly had the game; if I whiff that zarra draw I think I just lose!

You can see my thoughts on each turn I thought the Cala stealth kill and immediate Omega activate were a little over aggro, if not for those you certainly had me beat. It took some good luck for me to make it there!

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Great game! 2 quick questions if I may?

  1. How come the Omnicrons didnt take tower damage each time?
  2. Earlier in the game, why did the rampant growthed Cala take 2 damage instead of 1 from a 3/3 patroller (2/3 in elite spot)

Cheers.

Hey there, thanks for reading our game!

  1. It looks like they didn’t on account of human error! They should have been at 4 and 3 health respectively with the tower damage (2 from Voidblocker, 3 from Garth, +1 on each for the tower), nice catch!

  2. You actually answered your own question here with the first question! River, a 3/3 as the Elite, has a tower behind her, and thus a 6/5+2armor Calamandra attacking her will take 3 damage from River, and 1 from the tower, leaving her at 4/3 after Rampant Growth wears off!

It was a riveting match. I like your hero choices as they incorporate a tempo / control element to them. Fascinating!

Your restraint in teching every turn also made your deck much leaner than your opponents.

Regarding my earlier points, the omnichrons should have taken two lots of tower damage, with the second attack killing one of them, although it was inconsequential due to your response.

Do you have any experience of a pure control spec combination in Codex? I’d love to play something like that.

Control deck means different things to different people as I’ve experienced, can you elaborate on what you’re asking about?

Fair enough. I mean a spec combination that can manage opponents early / mid game aggression by dealing efficiently with their plays and controlling the board, in order to play late game powerful strategies that are hard to deal with.

Your codex and tech choices in this game reminded me somewhat of this style of play.

Huh, see I don’t think of it that way exactly. In this particular game, I was playing as P2, and thus kind of have to “manage my opponent’s early/mid game”, but this deck is very built around rushdown. An early hero’s hall + heavy tech 1 pressure is the primary gameplan I’ve been going for with this deck.

Blue and Purple are very much “stay safe early, beat down late” decks that look to mitigate pressure with pretty specific counters. Law is IMO the most “control”-oriented spec, that very much plays to win late, and perhaps Disease and Future similarly so?

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Curious you should mention Future - to me, Future is more about hitting hard in the midgame (that is Tech 2 level - with Omegacron and the potential aerial armada). I would say that Past is the obvious “control” spec from Purple - having plenty of ways with spells/Prynn/Tech 1 to deal with opposing units, and of course Origin Story for heroes.

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I think that’s fair. I was more thinking that future is weak early and has only very specific answers to things, but you’re right that to win it usually sells out for omegacron. I was thinking of Void Star and Hive as “powerful late game” b/c I associate future more with them (Protoss!), even though in practice most future decks are playing for Omegacron lol

Like I said, “control” means different things to different people. What deck am I not trying to influence (/“control”) my opponent to play sub-optimally and leverage that advantage? :wink:

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I’m not sure it’s helpful to think about a control spec. Codex is very different from MtG in that you rarely want to pick your spec to do one thing. It is interesting to think about what control elements exist within a given spec, and when you want to try and leverage those. So e.g. @FrozenStorm’s deck uses a black starter, which has (relatively) strong control in Sac the Weak and Deteriorate. Black has access to a lot of Board Control (Shadow Blade, Doom Grasp, Death Rites, Hooded Exectutioner) and Finesse brings Discord to the Table also. I wouldn’t say he actually teched all that much control this game, but what he did tech was undoubtedly effective! :slight_smile:

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You said exactly what I was trying to say; thinking about a “control deck” in MtG terms doesn’t really seem helpful to me in a Codex context. Each deck always has multiple things it can do, and it’s much more about making effective trades and gaining advantages while trying to read what your opponent is doing.

"Control"ing your opponent is part of that equation, in so much as you want to lock off your opponent’s best options (be that by means of direct "control"y type things like Reputable Newsman or Injunction or Slow-time Generator, or Hero “control” achieved by killing heroes at opportune moments, or tech “control” by blowing up a building right on cycle).

That said, I think people coming from MtG usually think about “Control” as using means other than attcking/blocking to directly limit the opponent’s ability to play what they want or use the cards they’ve played.

I think it might be worthwhile to have a list of ways each spec does this, so I’m going to do that in another thread and link here. (:

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