Jeremy Jenson, Dave Hunting, and I went to Vegas over the weekend along with his long suffering wonderful Girlfriend Amy.The main idea was to get closer to Qualifying for Worlds on Rating. I had no idea what to run and really did not want to spend the weekend sleep deprived playing cards and turning back around. I decided that if nothing else it would be one last chance to play test before DMF Philly (and possibly help Dave out if we got matched up. )

The more I play Pallidin the more frustrated I get with Namasius the Implacable. Rescue the Survivors is not reason enough to play the Dranei, and since you are always exhausting to Blessing of Wisdom it seemed pointless after turn five. When I finally tried the deck it was not quite as bad as I thought, but I still never used my 'Rescues' except to enable Defias Brotherhood. By then I had about ten cards in hand anyway. So I decided to try Gracius as my hero. I wanted to try the protection hero to try out Avengers, and Holy Shield but some of my Red Pally stuff had not come yet. I cut ten allies from my Namsius deck, and threw in some of the Protection cards and called it good. It was much more allie lite than I liked, but it felt good. Normally I won’t play a deck unless I have tested it for a few weeks to a month, but I had done a similar thing with switching from Dizzy to the Human Warlock in Idaho regional and went undefeated until the top 8.

Jeremy needed a deck so I gave him the Hamburger Hunter Deck, Dave had been helping me tune. (Red hunter with aimed shot)

Unfortunately I forgot to borrow Blaster Shot Launchers from a friend, as I had thought he was going to come with us. Jeremy ended up playing with only two of the best card in the deck.

We got in about 2 am. When we were all in bed, we heard a knock on the next door and then a periodic, rhythmic pounding on our wall, followed by a twenty second pause every five minutes. This went on for exactly an hour before the TV immediately came on and the door opened once again and shut. Sounds like some one knew how to get their moneys worth.

The first round we were all matched up against pretty good players. All of which had made day two at Nationals. Dave won but Jeremy lost. I won a fairly hard fought match against Hoot and Shoot. The deck was pretty slow and I probably should not have even wasted cards dealing with Hootie, Korthas, and CO, early. He did not concede as he should have even when I had four protectors on the field and was drawing three cards per-turn to his one in hand. Finally he figured out that he was wasting his time(literally) and scooped. With only ten minutes left in game two all I had to do was draw a couple of protectors. He got off to an amazing start, but time ended on turn 6. My opponent was clearly going to win that game as he said, however I was just playing to stay alive not to win so who knows what would have happened. This was pretty upsetting to my opponent. I guess he had never played against Pallidin. If you lose on time because you refuse to concede game one you deserve to lose. I know I have had my share of loses because of being too stubborn.


I was matched up against a pretty good Telerander Deck for my next match. Jeremy played a Senzir Deck and Dave played the Gore belly deck that would eventually go undefeated.

I kind of felt bad because they both lost hard fought games while my opponent never got to untap his hero once thanks to Hammer of Justice and Avengers Shield. I also called the judge over because he was playing with out sleeves and some of his cards were really worn. But mainly he had four Leeroy Jenkins in his deck and I just wanted him to put some sleeved on them! The judge said since they were all so screwed up they were not really marked. I offered to buy my opponent some sleeves later but he declined.

After the game, my opponent told me he had never gotten crushed so badly in his life. He had been playing Telerander since Heroes fist came out and was considering giving it up after playing me. I felt horrible and I tried to explain that this was probably his worst match up. He didn’t really seem to understand that.

Jeremy started getting the hang of the deck and made some great plays that I had never seen from him in past events. I think it was a combination of having a deck that suited his style and the Nationals experience starting to sink in. I see that happen all the time where a month or so after going to a big event a player starts to raise his play to another level.

While we watched Jeremy play a group a small herd of Gothopotomi* had gathered around us. The Gothopotomi continually asked us questions filled with not so vague innuendo, and wished aloud that we lived in Vegas. As flattering as it was our male competion was some what lacking. One particularly well endowed Gothopotumus was prone to having her resource row completely covered with her enormous breasts, plopped down on the table.

*( Goth-o-potumus: A rotund female who likes to dress in dark clothing, and wear gothic make up and accessories. Often can be found at gaming and comic conventions listening to depech-mode on their Ipodes and displaying copious amounts of cleavage.

Goth-o-poto-mi: Plural. The Gothopotomi frolicked with each other at the back of the club.)



One particularly funny game was when Jeremy spent most of his time Re-curring confessor Mildred to keep his Hero from being covered with DOTS. His hero looked like a diseased cow. One of the dots was doing two per turn but would deal 4 if he destroyed it. He made the smart play and killed it anyway as in the long run it would do 6-10 damage in a few turns. Jeremy had been reluctant to put Two confessor Mildred main and two side but I am sure he will never play with less than four after that game.

Dave did not really have any trouble the rest of the day as he bent the Gnome Warlock to his will. Most people have no idea what to do against the deck even if they have a better deck. Dizzy could be the worst deck in the format (an may well be) but Dave will always get many wins in spite of the fact just because he can play it blindfolded.

I had a couple of close games against Shamman, but as Dave said before even if he got a god hand I should still win just because I know how to play Shamman so well. He was right. The first game my opponent had a god draw. He went 1-2-3, 4, turn five moria for my Hellreaver, turn 6 Kali. I just took it and went to four health left. Played consecration after the attack and my opponent kind of laughed as nothing died. On my turn I play Halberton of Smiting targeting and killing Kali and about 6 guys. For good measure I attacked into Moria since he was tapped out and killed her as well. That was pretty cool.

We all made top 8 with me as the only undefeated. I was matched up against my first opponent a very bitter Hunter player. I usually hate to bitch about opponents, but this guy was clearly looking for pay back. He seemed to be playing ridiculously slow and I finally conceded the first game. Even though I had zero damage on, I did not have an answer for his Magni in my hand and knew that it would take another 4-5 turns to draw into it. I could last that long, but could not risk taking the time for that with how long he was taking. I figured we would be ok as we had 40 minutes to go. I took out my Lay on Hands as I needed to win quickly.

My opponent was taking even more time game two. I called the judge to watch for slow play. Even though my opponent took about 5 mins per turn the judge never told him to speed up. I lost on time having a Halliburton of Smiting a Panda and 5 small guys in play to his face up Perfect Stout. He was able to Stout my Panda and stay 6 away from lethal damage. I was pretty pissed, but Dave had won his match and got to play the Hunter Deck.

Pallidin is a bad match up for Hunter, but Warlock is just a Gnomish Gang Rape. Dave even let him have an active Modoc just for fun. It was pretty pointless and a rather anti-climatic finish. The only time it was close was when Dave made a mistake on turn 6. Fury was in play along with Moria Dark heart with one damage on her from Dave’s now dead Sarmoth. Dave had a Shred Soul and a Shadow bolt. He Shadow bolted Fury and Shredded Moria. If addmited he was pretty bored or he might have realized that Moria is not usually a threat to Warlock, but a Fury can be.

Next turn he dropped a master of the Hunt and a Teep, to making things a bit exciting, then chased for Fury and swung for 8 on next turn. I thought that could cost Dave the game but he brushed it off, dropped a Parvink and drew another Shred Soul. There was no Finals play off as apparently you are not supposed to play the top two against each other. We had been doing a finals locally.

Jeremy lost to the Gorebelly deck that ended up splitting 1-2 honors with Dave in a close 3 game match. Gorebelly is Hamburger Hunters worst match up but Jeremy had him to 1 left in both loses.

In the end ‘mission accomplished’. Jeremy got his honor points and another top 8 berth. I got the record I was hoping for to boost my rating. (all be it the one loss I wanted happened in the top 8) and Dave should have his rating invite or close to it. We went to Excalibur’s buffet to stuff our self after our long day. Dave and Jeremy pilled various forms of carcass on their plates while I tried about twenty different things until I found something good. I was pretty happy when I found the Veggie Egg rolls. I probably ate about twenty of them and three different pieces of cheese cake. We all topped it off with some soft serve ice cream. I have decided people always end up at the soft serve machine at a buffet because you have just eaten all these different things that look really amazing but are fairly disappointing once you actually taste them. The soft serve ice cream is the one thing that consistently never disappoints. It tastes exactly like you expect it to.

We were pretty late after the buffet and Dave did not want to stop to see Strippers. (the only reason I really came to Vegas) How disappointing to go to Vegas and not see strippers!