Relic Games

Today I joined the tournament for February. I actually wasn't planning on it at first. When Snuff asked if I could play a tournament game with them, I went ahead and signed up. It was just a matter of picking a deck to play. All my decks are 40 card decks, so I just needed to pick one and modify the magi pile to just two magi to qualify... unless I was mistaken about the special rules for this month. While I was originally thinking I might go with my Elder's Legacy Naroom deck from a tournament a while back or possibly with a Weave deck using Kesia, I ended up choosing to go with my Orlon's Ring deck.

I went first in our first game. Aula, Mindseeker started off with her power as usual. Too bad I didn't have the Deep Barl and Sea Barl in hand before using her power. I would've loved to started off with all that card draw on the first turn. I chose not put in them in play so I could hold on to them for card draw instead of risking losing them. When Snuff flipped and tossed down a Wudge, that would hurt. Aula would hold on as long as possible, but I had to take a few turns of stealing Core's relics with Hubdra's Cube. Of course, the first shot of thefts took Secrets of the Book and didn't net me any cards. While the Wudge would rule things as I played creatures, this would also be telling later in the game. Morag defeated Aula and Quilla flipped over. Quilla would barely survive at first, but she would use the Orlon's Ring with Hubdra's Cube trick to steal Morag's relics. Morag responded by stealing Hubdra's Cube and using it to steal another of my relics. This was a little frustrating. I forgot that Karak Necklace refers to creatures because this is not often an issue. Either way, what killed Morag was lack of creatures. He had lots of energy, but Quilla had taken out all his creatures at last and was making free hits on Morag. Then, she would put into play a few more creatures. Now, the game crashed on us a few times. It was nice that the game has an auto-save. The only problem was that the first time we restored the game we could not see our active magi at all (they weren't in the stack either), or the relics we had in play. Fortunately, we knew what was there and played this part by memory. This made the theft of the cube interesting. Snuff declared that they were going to use the power of Rayje's Belt afterwards, a relic of theirs I had “stolen” earlier from memory with my cube. My answer was that they couldn't use its power because it had been discarded from play as a part of purity. It just wasn't in the discard pile because neither of us could see it to put it there. Since they had named Rebuke off my Reef Hyren, it revealed that they had finally netted a creature again. This is also why they stole another of my relics. Snuff knew that although the cube would go back to my hand when Morag was defeated, the relic on it would not. Anyways, it was just as Morag was being defeated that the game crashed again. This time, when we restored the game, Snuff was missing four cards from their hand, three of them being creatures they desperately needed to ward off Quilla's growing swarm. You could read in the side log from Snuff's last turn still, and it showed them drawing two to bring the total up to nine while clicking on info for Snuff confirmed a hand of only five cards. There was nothing wrong with my hand, although the missing relics from before were still missing.

Snuff and I played another game a bit later. This time, Snuff went first. I was very glad that Morag did not net another Wudge. That creature is real good. Shadow Cloak did reappear, and would prove just as annoying this time around. I placed two Sarazen Guard into play and used Submerge on one of them. Snuff had a Rous in play along with a Gragling. The Rous hit the smaller of the two and Turn messed up my plans. If I had kept both, I could've really messed up Snuff's hand by using their effects. Snuff didn't have cards to spare, and I was hoping to take advantage of that by driving their hand of three down to something smaller. However, with only one left in play, there was no way for me to redirect the attacks such that it triggered the effect. The stolen Sarazen slammed home into my other Guard and Morag took Aula out with just the one turn. It hurt. Fortunately, this also left Morag without much energy to throw down more creatures. Quilla searched for a Karak Necklace and Orlon's Ring from the deck. I already had a copy of the cube in hand, so I promptly denied Snuff any benefit from Warrada's Ring by stealing it and drawing two cards. By the time Quilla defeated Morag, Morag had stolen three of her relics and drawn cards for it by stealing her Karak Necklace as one of them. Still, Quilla was doing quite alright. She had two Reef Hyren in play, two Wellisks, one Phrup, a Coral Hyren, and a Sarazen Keeper. This time I got to see the power trick Snuff had in store for me. Togoth was revealed and the Naroom Shadow Geyser was played. I opted to let it slide with my Phrup. When they played a Wudge, I had forgotten that the Naroom Shadow Geyser added only one energy. However, depending on how things were figured between Rebuke and the geyser it might have been possible for the Wudge to survive, so it was probably just fine that I wellisked the critter and ended all debate without even thinking about it. Then Togoth played out a Trask which I only rebuked. This was probably a mistake. Trask would trigger each time they played a creature because the shadow geyser qualified as a spell adding energy to their creatures. I had energy to rebuke twice more, and I wellisked a Rous to avoid Hit. It wasn't the Trask I was worried about at this point. I just don't like the power “Hit” right now. When they played an Orok as their last creature, I phrup'ed it. With the energy back on their magi, they Entombed “crushing.” I knew they were after Undertow most likely, and was quite willing to honor it as such should it be an issue. Why? Because I had Tidalwave in hand and Quilla energized for enough that either one was playable. When I played Undertow on my next turn, Snuff declared their defeat and, “gg.” It was a good game. It was enjoyable to see such a twist on Core. While I am sure that someone found it shortly after Togoth was released, this is the first time I can remember seeing it.

I have no idea if Snuff used the same deck in their next game. All I know as I am writing this that they reported a game on the forums with godofchaos were they used The Dark Twins instead, counting as both their two allowed magi. Godofchaos won that one with Motash it seems.