Back long ago, when the land was still young and fertile, and I had 17 seasons behind me.. (ok.. some 22 years ago..) a good friend of mine called up, seeking a favor. My buddy, Ron, had newish girlfriend, and wanted to hook up with her, but she had promised a friend that she would hang with them. Yeah, I got the Wingman call. And being a buddy, I answered. So off to 'blind date' night I go.

Now, to be fair, at least I didn't get set up with some hideous fat cow that would stare blankly at me as I tried to crack a joke.. no, that would come a few weeks later and strain my friendship, but thats a story for later. This time I got a gnome.

Seriously. She was about 4'6" tall, had chubby gnome arms and legs, and her name was Mirna. Now, keep in mind that in high school I barely hit the towering-over-Ted-Evans height of 5'2" so I wasn't really that much taller than her, but it was enough.

The date was for a church dance, which I figured meant my chances of getting some scratch out of it, even before seeing Mirna, was pretty much slim to none. Then seeing her, I was still betting on the none part.

I was terribly wrong, and I think she may still have 'beauty bark' from the flower bed we got busy in tucked in her ass crack to this day. Still, the night was one of the more strange and filled to the brim with 'omg, I made a bad decision' moments. Which is a really wordy way for me to segue into this entry in my scrub blog...

Recently I made it to a constructed event at the local gaming store, dragging a completely untested mage deck with me. And when I say untested I mean 'I built this 10 minutes before I left the house, and didn't bother to sleeve it..' untested. It had a craptacular mix of burn, allies and such. Horde mage.. no, not that one.. not even that other one. The weak ass arcane one.

The entire deck was one long list of bad choices... a sub-par hero, an unfavorable mix of allies that didnt have synergy, a resource curve that was horrid and then factor in the fact I have never tried playing 'control' mage.. much less rush mage. Ever.

I got my ass handed to me 7 ways from Sunday, although I couldn't find fault with those handing my ass to me... it was entirely my fault for going untested, and more importantly, not at least netdecking enough to see what the normal mix of stuff was.

So why, given that I read more posts on building and decklists than most folks can stomach in a day, and given that I have built successful hunter decks that rely on rush, did I build such a crappy mage deck?

One of the first bad decisions was to deviate from my normal mode of play, without testing it at all. I switched from my favored Alliance to Horde without really reading the ally cards or looking for synergy.

I also switched play style from 'throw everything at them, including the Fury in the kitchen sink' to 'wait for a good time to counter or zap something' without understanding what a good time to do so was.

For example, in one of my first matches, my opponent tossed down a Zephyr at a 2/1 ally, and I opted to fizzle it, allowing them to exhaust a few more cards to drop something that ended up hurting me a lot more. I could have lived without the ally.. it was disposable, but I poorly opted to defend it. After the match, I had a chance to discuss my allies with the other player and he helped me build a list of good 1-3 drop horde that would work for 'steady beats' that are floodlike, but not quite a rush. Using his formula, I have tweaked the list to become outright rush and tried it with some decent success on MWS. My current rush list is:

4x Kagra of the Crossroads

4x Jazmin Bloodlove

4x Hootie

4x Broan Charges-the-Fight

3x Fury

2x Shadala

2x Sileas Dawnwalker

4x Seamus Sommerset

As you can see, its a hunter rush, with a heavy focus on Ferocity to get damage rolling on turn 1 and keep it rolling, turn after turn, till 5-6 when I drop Fury for some big beats. And in coming up with this mix, I looked at why I was using the selected cards, such as having a pair of Shadala as 'emergency' ability removal, and Sileas to do a late early, or early midgame hardware removal. I also wanted to have Jazmin as a soak for other allies, using her uninspiring 1/1 status as weak damage or as a means to handle a rampant ally from the opponent.

While the hunter deck it is attached to isn't a T1 deck, it has been doing very well in MWS, and I feel that this last weekend/early week has moved me a few steps ahead because of the time I have put into finding synergy with the allies I have chosen. All I need to do now is get the rest of the cards I need for the deck and try it live this weekend, which means I will have 20-30 games on MWS played using it by then. And that, I am hoping, will prevent me from making another bad choice in deckbuilding...

Tags: WoW Warcraft Gnomes Midgets