First off, I would like to apologize for the 180 days or more since I last sat down long enough to blog, but a lot has been going on in that time... An ancient family member passed away, leaving myself and my wife to deal with Estate issues which are just settling, my job got obnoxiously busy and we started to buy a new house. Fortunately the estate is settling this week, the house finalizes next week and my job is slowing down to a normal pace as well. That all said, I want to move forward and look back at this last weekends DMF Seattle which I managed to make 2 of 3 days, and had a hell of a good time in doing so.

Getting ready for the DMF, I had 3 different decks I had serious tweaked and looked at for a couple weeks, playtesting at night for about 1 hour a night before I HAD to crawl into bed to sleep. Not a lot of practice, but better than none. And in doing said practice, I went ahead and ordered any of the cards I needed for the 3 decks, just to make sure I had what I needed before the event. My son, on the otherhand, waited till the Friday night of the DMF before deciding that he definately wanted to go on Saturday to get a Leeroy Jenkins playmat, so we had to kludge something together fast. So.... I relearned a valuable lesson this weekend that I had learned all to well some 25 years ago.

Around the time I was the same age as my son, a mere 15yrs old or so, I wanted nothing more than to have a kick-ass, tricked out BMX bike. something like one of old skool Redline or Mongoose bikes. And you know the old saying of 'Champagne taste on a beer budget'? We didn't have a beer budget. We had no budget. So, I set out to earn enough money to buy me a tricked out bike, doing lawn work cheap. Only problem is I hate lawn work, so it sucked trying to make money. Finally I had about $60 saved up, after having to give my Dad about $80 to replace the lawnmower I basically burned to death. And knowing $60 isn't going to get me anything decent, I was rather dejected. My parents decided to contribute a bit, and between the three of us, we found ourselves at just over $90 to spend on a bike.

Now, keep in mind, I wanted a cool BMX bike to replace my old skool 'touring bike', you know the sort, with the tassles in the handgrips, the mile long banana seat, and all the metallic flake paint they could fit onto a bike. Yeah, I wanted to get rid of my metallic flake purple bike for something a bit tougher. At the time we lived in a section of Spokane, Washington that was being developed into a bunch of neighborhoods, and our street had a slight hill at one end, a bunch of dirt lots in the middle and a few driveway cutouts made for forthcoming homes. So, we kids of the area had borrowed spare lumber from the construction sites, built a ramp that connected to the entrance to a driveway and had been having 'jumping contests' for weeks. And my old, ancient touring bike, with tassles, just wasn't cutting it.

My dad worked at a grocery store, and knew the Produce manager pretty well. Said produce manager, a Russian, knew a bunch of other people, including a guy who made 'top of the line custom bikes for cheaps!'. In otherwords, recycled stolen bike parts. At the time I didn't know that 'cheap' meant recycled, but to be honest, I wouldn't have cared. I just wanted a bike. So my dad decided to surprise me with a rebuilt bike that was AWESOME. At least it seemed AWESOME at first when we went to pick it up. While I had hopes of chrome, I had to settle for spray paint silver. And while I did like the contrasting black, flat black spraypaint isn't the best paint job either. I did get the requested 'motorcycle' style handgrips though, and instead of the cool plastic wheel, my rims were heavy duty with extra thick spokes.

So, I settled... and figured it was close enough. The frame was a Mongoose frame, and due to the questionable origin, was spray painted black which hid the nice chrome beneath, and that was ok with me at the time. The most important thing was that I would finally be able to challenge the previous jump record with my new recycled bike. And as soon as I got home with it, that is exactly what I headed up the street to do. Everyone sort of complimented my new bike, because it was an improvement over my old bike, but still, they were a bit unsure what to make of the Frankenbike. I didn't let that daunt my spirits at all as I headed up the hill, turned around and peddled like a madman escaping an asylum. I hit the driveway entrance at a speed I only dreamt of previously. I hit the ramp with the air whistling in my ears and then I pulled up on the handlebars to get my nose up a bit and .. found myself leaning too far forward as the handlebars folded neatly down, not being secured correctly. The nose of my bike never got the lift it needed and I was sailing through the air, in what I was sure was going to be an epic crash. And for once, I was right. My front tire hit the marker spike we used to show the longest jump.. hit it squarely and bounced, driving the spike into the ground and the bike into the air. I was mid-360 flip when I fell off, hitting the ground in a awe-inspiring cloud of dust as the bike sailed another 10' and finally stopped. I tied the record, bent my handlebars in the process and managed to avoid stitches, but still require a quick run to the emergency room all within the first 10 minutes of having my bike at home.

In short, while it looked like a BMX bike, and had the parts of one, because it was put together from a mix of stuff, it just didn't do the job. And that, my friends, is my long into into my sons Pally deck that went 2-5 for the weekend. It had some great cards, but it was short some key cards and that is what I want to cover. 

First off, we found that we only had a single Blessing of Wisdom, and realizing we need the card draw ability of that card, we went looking for an alternative. Overall, Paladin has some great card draw ability, which makes it one of the strongest classes for card advantage, and in this case, we settled for some fast healing combined with card draw to make up the difference. The downside to this approach is the use of resources to spawn the card draw, which often left less than ideal resources for other essential plays.  Even sacrificing a single resource to draw a card can mean lagging behind your opponent in allies early game, as you have to decide between dropping a fast heal + card or another protector to buy you more time to set up.

Lacking any Lay on Hands also meant that games going to time had no 'emergency' reset for a potential win, which cost Keegan at least 1, if not 2 games outright. A Flash of Light just doesn't do the job ;)

I will post the actual deck he ran as soon as I get a chance, and break it down a bit more, but clearly we found that running sub-par cards lead to sub-par performance. Simply put, you can't undervalue your deck and hope to play on the same level as someone taking the time to get the cards they need to build the deck right.

So, does that make WoW TCG a money game? Well, the answer is as varied as the decks you find in competative events. Of course it is a money game, at the high end, as you want to build the best deck possible if you are going to compete at a high level. But one doesn't need to invest hundreds of dollars into the game to compete or have fun. There are various decks that have a low overhead cost but allow some signifcantly viable competition. The downside to most of those decks is that they tend to be more complex than the straightforward heavy hitting of some of the more expensive decks.  

One can also compete in local battlegrounds with a less than optimal deck if they are looking for a challenge, or a bit of lower keyed fun.  It really depends on the level of competitiion you hope to achieve or seek.