I’ll pro-actively provide some further commentary, based on now perfect information of what was in your hand and what you teched each turn. I hope that doesn’t seem forward to you, it’s meant purely as a gesture of friendly advice and not to be harsh or overly critical of your decisions. No one can make perfect decisions, and it’s even harder when you’re relatively new to the forums I continue to make decisions that are really stupid in hindsight, despite all that I have learned over two years of playing.
Turn 1:
Your starting hand sucked. That’s a rough P2T1 draw just hands down. You want to see Merfolk, Tiger Cub, or Playful Panda, so you can (somewhat) safely drop a hero. Spore Shambler w/ no hero was probably your best move here, well done!
Turn 2:
This was the classic P2T2 error: bringing out a vulnerable hero with a vulnerable patrol zone. If you don’t feel confident you know what you’re opponent is teching, or you don’t respect a likely counterattack, you will feed free levels early in the game and quickly lose control. New players lose the game on this turn routinely for this reason, and it’s a tough reality of the game.
Given your hand and my board, I feel like Ironbark + Cala would have been a much stronger play, teching perhaps Ferocity or Behind the Ferns + Huntress or Centaur, or maybe going for Galina + Murkwood with a goal to tower up and/or use Cala topband to get a counter kill on Drakk.
Even just doing what you did but without the rune gift of Shambler (instead opting to keep full Shambler in SQL) means at worst it will trade -1 on gold and even on cards, making the counter-attack I put on much worse for me.
Tower would also be your friend at this point, as it really slows down my ability to keep my weenie army around for a War Drums.
Turn 3:
You’re already in a big hole at this point, but certainly just laying Centaur and teching up makes more sense in this situation. You aren’t going to stabilize the board with just Ironbark and Centaur, so might as well make the investment in a tech 2 and force me to continually respect the threat of something problematic, like Oversized Rhino or Potent Basilisk / Wandering Mimic. Teching Murkwood Allies or Moment’s Peace is definitely the correct call though, given that I will likely break the tech 2 in the short term.
Turn 4:
Probably better to SQL Midori here and build a tower instead of Panda, as it requires Zane Max from me to then counter, which I don’t necessarily want to do, and thus you get the possibility of playing your other Moment’s Peace. But there isn’t much you can do at this point.
Turn 5:
You’re arranging deck chairs on the Titanic by this turn, good choices given the situation (perhaps better to play a hero also to try and minimize what can get through patrol) but the game was effectively over already.