DMF Houston: Bring in the Judge...

So DMF Houston is over and in my opinion, it was a good success. 85ish people showed up for the DMF TCG and 10 showed up for the Minis. I must note, only 1 person from Louisiana came, and they normally have 5 to 6 on their own. Had our friends been sobered up from the Saints winning the superbowl, perhaps the turnout would have been better.

Our good friends from across the pond, the Marshall's came from England to play, and Steven top 8'd with a very surprising, yet effective team, piloting a Storm Rager, an Enraged Fire Spirit, and a Razaani Nexus Stalker to take home a Tiger! EFS on the VP, resulted in a few folks taking some damage, when they re-spawned on the VP, and being forced to move, so it was nice to see new concepts bring success.

Another new concept was the Anti-Mort team, designed by Chad Lathrop, Matt Wehner, and Nick DeWitt. It saw Double Nathressa Darkstrider on each arm of Prophet Velen. Now while at first this seems like an odd combination, if your plan was to beat Mortimer's, then bringing Expose Armor with Drakefist Hammers almost does the trick!


I say almost, as after reading the match reports for both top 4 matches, and being their in person, you can see that Mortimer is plain evil, and somehow pulls things out of demonic portals to overcome even the fastest set up of attacks. On a side note, I saw several matches where all three Mortimer's were on tick 6... that's ominous, and creepy at the same time. However, I digress.

At the start of the tournament, someone suggested that players Roshambo for the top spot since there were only 10, however after Matt Whait realized what this meant, he decided he should play minis for first place instead...


After a night of drinking, Matt sat down with Triple Zomm and a Trash Can. Literally. Marshall fielded his monsters, Isgur, Huffman and John Johnson fielded their Demonic Warlocks, and the Austin boys fielded their Prophet-Darkstrider teams and it was on.

Here are some great pics of the event from the Judge's viewpoint: https://s515.photobucket.com/albums/t351/Steelwing73/DMF%20Houston%202010/


Finally, in the end, it was Isgur's Mortimer's and Corle's Mortimer's that were in the finals, and although Ben won, as it is clearly documented below, Corle got the last laugh...


It was a great time to be had, and I agree with several of the posts on the main UDE boards... I think Blizzard is still trying to figure out Minis and it's future, but the TCG is locked in. I personally think that all Blizzard has to do to "Check itself" is to say, once they get the license officially back, is that they'll be sending out Battleground kits, with a Death Knight and 2 DK cards asap. If the take rate is there, they'll see it is worth moving forward. If it's not, then they'll also know which direction to go.

Almost a year to when Spoils came out and people are still playing and WANTING to play should tell them something.

Congrats to everyone, I hope you all had aas much fun playing and attending as I did Judging again. It was surely a pleasure.

PS - Big thanks to Simon Key (TCG HJ), William Zobac (Minis HJ), Miranda, Mary Beth, Alex, and everyone of the judges for making this a successful and fun event for EVERYONE!

And yes... if you were wondering... it didn't end well for Matt:

Would just like to note that I'm undefeated against the Nath's with Morts. Take that, MRW!

Photo reports are pretty awesome. Thanks for the writeup.

Ben,

Yes, the team was designed to beat Morts and did in the majority of our playtesting. That being said, it is incredibly tough for the match when Morts rolls are on fire (or defensive fire, as I hear was the case in your game against Nick).

Also, Chad had never playtested the team before running it against you, so I'm sure that match was a bit unfamiliar to him.

We ran Prophet Velen in order to do even more damage to Morts over the course of the game. However, the decision to run him was made AFTER we moved on to the Drakefist Hammer combo. The original team was, of course, Tyrande + Nats, which lost to Morts without the hammers.

In hindsight, it should have been Tryande and not Velen. Both for her 4 range melee, the Night Elf ability, and Mass Dispell.

Morts auto-lose if they call Jhuroons against the Hammers, and I'm pretty sure Tyrande would be screamin for some pets to come after her 1 armor.

Velen was certainly the weak point of the team, but after we had tested Tyrande and she didn't work, we dropped her. We just forgot to retry her AFTER we switched to the hammers (the original team was expose + mindnumbing poison, to help slow down morts + mage's with ice block).

All in all, I would have loved to play a match up with you. Corle and I's game was very, very close and was (imo) decided by dice rolls in the end. But, that is the nature of the beast

It was very nice meeting you and I'm glad that all of us there top 8'd.

I think you know I was joking, .

Yeah--it was an interesting team, and it's nice to see new developments in a stale game, even if just due to the map. Fun times were had by all.

-Ben