CAWS 2016 - robinz ([Blood]/Feral/Present) vs shax (Mono Red)

@shax - I just read through your thoughts, concise and full of insight, thanks :slight_smile:

I don’t think I agree with you that my T1 play was “greedy” though. Don’t get me wrong, my T1 was an absolute disaster that it took me till T4 to recover from (with the help of lucky draws: getting both my big Tech 1s on T4 instead of T3 when I wasn’t able to play them) - but I thought my only mistake was the stupid stupid STUPID play of Dog in SQL, simply because I somehow forgot Zane existed. Had I reversed the positions of my 2 patrollers I think I should have been OK. And I’m curious what else you think I should have done with my first hand. Play Careless Musketeer?? (Calamandra was probably a better choice than Drakk though - I love Drakk’s abilities but suck at managing to use them. Cal is all-around solid with good abilities and 2 terrifying cheap spells.)

I was also very surprised to find you only teched 1 gunship on T4 - as soon as you built Tech 3 I assumed you’d teched double gunship that turn. That makes me feel a bit more unlucky that you had it on T7 - because I assumed you’d still have built it then even if you’d already whiffed on your gunship draw by getting them too early (because you’d need to build it eventually anyway, and by doing it early you both stop me delaying you by breaking Tech 2 AND scare me into going after Tech 3 instead of doing anything else).

Thanks again for the game - I knew before the game that you’re very strong with Red, and this game has been in many ways an education, for example you got great value out of both Pillage and Scorch - 2 cards which, even though I can see their use, I always end up workering because I never find a good time to play them.

I called it greedy because Draak can setup for some incredibly scary and seemingly endless pressure, but you just can’t get the ball rolling without a lot of cash. If I can keep your board down then Draak can’t do much and investing in him will likely leave the board open for a hero kill. As a result, it’s just not as scary as a more vanilla combat hero like Calamandra in the first few turns.

Early Draak can work. You are right that if you had patrolled Draak in SQL instead then things would have worked out a lot better. It’s still possible that balls-to-the-wall aggression from me could mess everything up because #justredthings, but it would have been a much murkier trade.

At that point I was drawing 4 cards from a 7 card deck with a potential technician draw. I got kinda lucky in not drawing it earlier, but my odds were good. I really screwed myself over by going for Maximum Anarchy then being unable to keep Zane alive.

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Maximum Anarchy is a strange one, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone tech it before.

It strikes me that you’d only want to use it if you were way behind on the board - but in that case your chances of keeping a maxed Zane alive to use it seem pretty slim.