Post game analysis of CAFS 2016: Bravo840 ([Necro]/Blood/Ninjitsu) vs. FrozenStorm ([Past]/Peace/Anarchy)

I’m happy to expand upon my thoughts and give tips of what I would have done differently in your positions, I appreciated the game and love seeing new names in the forums!

P1T1

I think it’s always important to consider the matchup, and look a few steps ahead when starting as player 1.

Right now, you’ve got Black starter (great at owning the board early as player 1), Garth (great at generating econ advantage without sacrificing board position), and two heroes who are full of surprises to blow out the board. I’m still not sure what Ninjutsu is meant to do for this deck (the FDS + Bugblatter combo is nice but FDS needs a lot of meat to hide behind with my having Zane, and easy to get rid of with Origin Story as you identified), but Graveyard + Crashbarrow is a terrifying combo.

Anyways, the point of my rambling here is I think Garth + Skeleton + Haunt would have been a superior opening - you get the same attack power with the same cards + gold, and your goal with this deck is just to get to tech 2 with Graveyard. That’s your primary win condition, and against Purple starter (which mostly has poor early pressure with its bigger bodies) skeletons give a great wall to get you there.

I probably would have workered Rogue here, though I would have considered Jandra (my personal experience with Jandra is she is only very useful in demon-focused decks where Vandy can buff her or she can get Unstoppable from Shrine, or in Legendary-focused decks using Mythmaking, like Demon / Strength / Growth or something). It’s nice to hold on to Archery as well, in case you shift gears into skeleton offense (though it would have been fine to worker as well).

P2T1

Pretty self-explanatory, patrolled FArgo to recover from a StW and avoid a Deteriorate + Jandra kill with no benefit to me.

P1T2

Another spot to showcase where having Garth would help here: you could have played played no cards and just made a skeleton, built tech 1, and pinged my base, leaving yourself vulnerable to little (it’s too early for me to make Zane plays that make sense), gotten patrol bonuses from the skeletons, and been in better shape to pull off your combo. You’re floating a gold into a great situation. Otherwise, deteriorate to kill the Fargo with Garth + Haunt isn’t a bad move either, keeping 2 skeletons in front to stop me from going Nullcraft + Zane for an easy Garth kill.

I think Bone Collector is a great tech as P1 in almost any matchup, and against my deck is no exception. Speed of the Fox on the other hand I’m not a big fan of, I think Lich’s Bargain, Bloodlust or Kidnapping are things you’d much prefer. Crash Bomber wouldn’t be a bad choice either.

Definitely don’t worker Sacrifice the Weak, it is such a great means of dealing with troublesome units (shoot, it can kill a Pirate Gunship!) Probably would have workered Summon Skeletons here; most decks would probably worker Graveyard with this hand but Necro Blood obviously needs it. Imp isn’t a bad choice either, given that my deck is either playing not that many cards anyway (strong hero game) or has card draw to not care about hand size too much. I think you did overvalue the card bleed in this particular matchup, though you are right that usually it is very crippling to do to other decks.

P2T2

Not much else for me to say, I do think you overvalued the Imp in this matchup and should not skip tech 1 even with the strong spells you have access to.

P1T3

If you’d gone tech 1 last turn, you’d have the BC out here, and there’s no way I have space to build a surplus. Things snowball from the Imp / Jandra choices being so expensive, where Garth gives you such cheap ways to stay safe :wink: You did fine given the position you were already in, though perhaps bringing Garth out would have helped. This is also where Bloodlust > SotF would have helped, could have killed Oni

Your insights here that maxing out Sets only works if you’re sure you can keep me off Origin Story long enough to generate dominating advantage with it. I think you chose wisely to avoid that line.

Tech choices were good, worker choice was good, no other comments from me.

P2T3

It was arrogant of me to go surplus here, I did not properly respect bloodlust’s ability to ruin my day next turn. You could have killed the surplus with a bloodlusted Bone Collector, how awful would that have been!

P1T4

Definitely the “tipping point” from my perspective: if you get Drakk to survive here, you’re still very much in control. I don’t even agree with your alternate turn: I think the correct play was Bomber + Drakk, bloodlust both, take oni and fargo, level Drakk to mid to heal, lay BC in squad lead. That’s 8 gold, +1 for worker is the 9 you had, and now you have a 3/3 blocking and ready to attack frenzied next turn, a Crash Bomber to come from Grave, and a Midband Drakk who can heal off the 1 damage he takes from bloodlust when he maxbands and allows something to come in hasted and blow me out HARD. I easily could have lost with my greedy Surplus move had that happened.

Would have workered Rogue over Jav, tech choice of FDS is way too optimistic and realistically, you’re never going to play it. Crashbarrow, War Drums, Doom Grasp, or Glider all would have been superior choices for various plans (frenzied glider being a free surplus kill if I don’t patrol Nullcraft is scary)

P2T4

Nothing else to say, I had room to tech rush you pretty safely at this point.

P1T5

I would have played Bone Collector here instead of Imp, and ran Crash Bomber into Brave Knight, dealt one damage to a building of mine, and resummoned it from the Grave, putting it in SQL.

Definitely would have teched Barrow + Glider, you need to bring the pain soon to have a chance of stopping my teching.

P2T5

I got a bit lucky drawing the Marauder, but yea it was pretty over at this point.

P1T6

The Hidden Ninja choice would have been great if you had Barrows coming up to break stuff. I would have maxed Garth for a barrow here and teched Death Rites with the other card though, as that was probably your only way back in the game.

Okay, finished! Let me know if I can expand upon anything further, I hope my words are helpful and not taken personally. I think turn 4 was your only true “misplay”, everyone misplays (I usually do it more than once a game, it’s hard to see how the future will play out when so much focus is taken just maximizing the turn and board state of RIGHT NOW) and every one of your other turns was pretty reasonable overall :slight_smile:

I recommend you watch the other two [Necro] / Blood / X decks in this tournament that BarrelFish and Marto (game hasn’t started yet so no link) are playing to get some tips as well, they are both experienced play by forum players and @Barrelfish is like me in posting his insights on every turn!

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