DM Home

Message Board

DM News Reports

Trading Card Game
Price Guide
Card of the Day
Duel Yammers - Fan Tips
Top 10 Lists
Tourney Reports

Featured Writers
JMatthew on DM
cecillbill's C-Notes
Hydromorph

Deck Garages
Dry’s Arsenal
Drizer's Dungeon
cecillbill's Dojo
Knives101's Lab
NFG's Garage
aka GDOG'S-VERSION

Spoilers
Base Set DM-01
Evo-Crushinators of
Doom DM-02
Rampage of the
Super Warriors DM-03
Starter Deck
Shobu's Fire Deck
Kokujo's Darkness Deck
Shadowclash Collector's Tin
Shadowclash of
Blinding Night Spoiler
Survivors of the
Megapocalypse
Disruptive Forces Decklist
Block Rockers Decklist
Duel Masters Starter Set (2)
Twin Swarm Deck
Hard Silence Deck
Promo Card List
Stomp-a-trons
Thundercharge
Epic Dragons
Fatal Brood
Shockwaves
Blastplosion
Thrash Hybrid

Video Games
Sempai Legends

Other
Staff

Duel Masters Tourney Reports

Fatal Brood of Infinite Ruin Release Event
Fantasy Games, South Bend, IN
January 14, 2006
Matt Dowd

Greetings to all Pojo readers. I’ve been lurking on the boards and reading the articles for a long time now (my screen name is mattdiss), and it’s high time I contributed something, so here is my first tournament report.

Before I get started, let me tell you a little bit about who I am. My name is Matt, and I am thirty-six years old and have twin eight-year-old sons (technically they are seven, but only for another month), Ben and Mike. The three of us play at home, and they’ve played at our local store, Fantasy Games, in only a couple of tournaments. So we haven’t had a lot of opportunities to play against other opponents. We’ve all got plenty to learn to improve our games.

On January 14, 2006, we gathered at Fantasy Games in South Bend, IN, for the Fatal Brood of Infinite Ruin release event. I had helped Mark, the store owner, with some of the organizational efforts (and, perhaps more importantly, bugged him over the last couple of months to run it), so I showed up early to see if I could help him with set-up. But they run lots of Magic tournaments, so everything was well in hand.

I was worried that we wouldn’t have enough to run the tournament because our last tournament only had eleven players, and I knew two of my kids’ friends weren’t returning. Fortunately, even though we were a half-hour early, six players had already signed up. My two made eight and we knew the tournament was a go. When it was time to get started, Mark told me we had an uneven number of players (eleven) so asked me if I would play. I hadn’t planned on it, having already paid two entry fees and figuring my kids would want some help creating their decks. But the chance to play was too much for me to resist, so only a little arm-twisting was necessary to get me to jump in. As we were all finishing up our decks, two more players showed up from Chicago; they were late because South Bend doesn’t observe daylight savings time, and they didn’t know they would loose an hour when they drove over. So we ended up with fourteen in the tournament.

Now my memory isn’t what it used to be, and I can’t recreate each duel the way so many other reports do. So I’ll give some overall impressions of creating my deck and my subsequent duels. I’ll try and point out what worked well and what mistakes I made so that others might learn from them.

I ended up running all five civilizations, which might have been a mistake. However, my pulls didn’t lead me to be happy with any four, and certainly not with three. For example, I just didn’t get enough nature cards, and my fire cards were skewed towards high mana cards (including two Balesk Baj, the Timeburner, the useless-in-release-event Armored Wyvern evo). So I went with a deck that tried to do a little of everything; as you’ll see later, this didn’t pay off as I hoped it might.

So here is what I put together:

Creatures
Darkness:
Acid Reflux, the Fleshboiler (x 2) (not only a useful card, but as as you get older, you’ll appreciate this card’s name)
Trixo Wicked Doll (x 1)
Fire:
Aerodactyl Kooza (x 1)
Gigio’s Hammer (x 1)
Snaptongue Lizard (x1)
Light:
Betrale, the Explorer (x 3)
Jil Warka, Time Guardian (x 2)
Kalute, Vizier of Eternity (x 2)
Nature:
Cavern Raider (x 2)
Silvermoon Trailblazer (x 1)
Whip Scorpion (x 1)
Whispering Totem (x 1) (a bad choice, as I didn’t read the card carefully and thought I could draw another creature, not just another Whispering Totem)
Water:
Kelp Candle (x 2)
Scout Cluster (x 1)

Spells
Darkness:
Grinning Hunger (x 1)
Zombie Carnival (x 2)
Fire:
Blizzard of Spears (x 1)
Relentless Blitz (x 2)
Light:
Cosmic Wing (x 2)
Water:
Impossible Tunnel (x 2)

Total: 31 cards

And now, on to the duels.

First Round
I was matched up with Logan. We found the duel very slow going at first, as we had to think through our moves with unfamiliar cards, and because I had to constantly stop and look at what he played because many of them were cards I had not drawn. We ended up having two duels that were pretty close, but I ended up winning both. Trixo served me really well in both duels, and Cosmic Wing and Impossible Tunnel were also very useful. I managed to use Silvermoon’s tap effect to good effect a couple of times, but he never came up for me the rest of the day. I also got a benefit from Logan’s play of Mihail in one duel, as he kept my blockers alive for me. Record: 1-0, 2-0.

Second Round
I was next matched up against Patrick. He beat me in two duels, one of which was reasonably close, the other of which was not. In neither one was I able to effectively attack; I had one or two attacks by way of Cosmic Wing, but otherwise couldn’t do much. In one of the duels, I don’t recall which, I cast Blizzard of Spears because I had no other way to stop his attackers. I had a Cosmic Wing in my hand when I cast it, and then proceeded to draw another Cosmic Wing and an Impossible Tunnel. They would have been great before I cast Blizzard, but left me in a lurch when I drew them afterwards as I couldn’t use them. Patrick made good use of Stallob, the Lifequasher. Record: 1-1, 2-2.

Third Round
I met up with Tony, who made good use of the interesting effects of many of the Light creatures in this set. He claimed to be worried about playing me, an adult, but he must have gotten over that pretty quickly when he saw the mistakes I made! I got lazy, especially in our second duel, and stopped paying close enough attention to his plays and the card effects; for example, one time I didn’t bother to block an attack by Micute and left myself open for a second attack. This isn’t to say Tony didn’t play well; he made the right moves when he needed to and handled me pretty easily in both matches. But I made things easier for him than I might have; I suspect I got a little frustrated as our first duel went poorly for me, following on the heels of two losses to Patrick. I’ll chalk these losses up to a learning experience: keep your head in the game and don’t worry about what can’t be changed. Record: 1-2, 2-4.

Fourth Round
Now I was matched up with Jordan. We had been in touch before the tournament through some web postings, so it was good to meet him. Knowing I had no chance to advance at this point, I played a little looser than I had with Tony; and Jordan was a pleasant opponent, which also helped. In our first duel we both initially drew all 4 and 5 mana cards in our hands, so we started slowly. I was able to start launching attacks a bit earlier, hold him off with some blockers, and made good use of Trixo again. In our second duel, neither of us could do much at first. I ended up with a huge field of blockers and was able to adopt a strategy of attrition, eventually wearing through his defenses (and nearly going through my whole deck). I won both duels, but felt like my draws went the way I needed them to. Record: 2-2, 4-4.

I ended up in seventh place out of fourteen. Not horrendous, but certainly not a great showing. My two losses, however, were to players who made it into the top four, so that made me feel a bit better. Patrick beat Tony, and Austin, a player who has been at Fantasy Games before but who I didn’t play this time around, won the other match against a player I didn’t know. Both tandems (Austin/Patrick and Tony/other) ended up splitting their boosters rather than playing out the final matches. I didn’t see either of their duels, as I was busy making some trades.

So a little bit of analysis of my play and deck. I could identify some obvious mistakes I made in the duel with Tony, and that simply was a matter of lack of concentration. Knowing this, combined with, hopefully, more tournament experience in the future, should help me overcome that problem. I think I did have some unlucky draws in my duels with Tony and Patrick, but they clearly outplayed me; I’ll need to practice more before the next tournament so that I don’t make dumb moves. I regret going five civs, but I am convinced that I didn’t have the right cards to do otherwise. The two civs I might have trimmed (based on my available cards) was water and darkness, but both were helpful in some of my duels. Impossible Tunnel could have been more useful had I been able to put together the races better, but luck never let me have the right cards at the right time; nonetheless, it did prove useful in a couple of duels. On the other hand, I didn’t get good use out of the water blockers, partly because it seemed I didn’t draw them at the right time, and partly because I used them as mana to set up Impossible Tunnel. Darkness was also of mixed benefit. Acid Reflux was a good blocker, and Trixo was probably my most effective card (especially when combined with Cosmic Wing, which I seemed to pull off frequently in the rounds I won); Zombie Carnival was nearly useless as I never had multiples of a race in my graveyard when I could use it. On a different point, I may have played too many blockers, as there were times I couldn’t mount an effective attack; on the other hand, they helped me hold off some attacks, so this might be a case of six of one, half dozen of the other (just like my record!).

I had a good time in the tournament, and I’m glad the store owner invited me to play. My boys both went 1-3 in rounds (as we recall, 3-7 and 3-8, but we aren’t sure), and Ben was a little bummed that he didn’t do better (they came in 11th and 13th out of 14; a couple of months back, when they used preconstructed decks, they placed 4th and 6th out of 11). Hopefully we’ve gotten a little better and can continue to improve.

I like to say thanks to Cecilbill for her helpful postings before the tournament in response to my requests. I’d also like to say a special thanks to JMatthew. He may not recall, but many months ago he encouraged me to press the store owner to run tournaments and gave me some strategy to help promote activity in the store. Those efforts paid off, and I hope we can start having regular tournaments at Fantasy Games. I enjoyed the company of most of the players in attendance, and new players will find a welcoming atmosphere. Those of you in the area who want more tournaments, be sure to let the guys at the store know.

Those who want to contact me about this report can send an e-mail to Matt Dowd, mdowd1@nd.edu .