Yesterday, sunday the 8th of march, saw the first of 3 Golden Ticket qualifier tournaments organised here within the Flemish Underworlds community. Mines of Alost, hosted at Hermelijn in Aalst.
Now this is a venue that suits me it seems, as I won the three events ran there last year, and now we had 12 participants.
But not after some morning chaos, as our "bus driver" Peter came down with illness at 5 in the morning, and suddenly everything had to be changed for transportation. Aaah, nothing but some fun chaos in the early hours.
I went there with my Shadeborn warband and a deck of Blazing Assault and Raging Slayers (or as I had dubbed it, my BA/RS-elona deck), and which had performed rather well the previous test games (whom due to timey-wimey stuff will actually be posted later on my YouTube then this tournament, but that is how things work okay lol).
And so after the initial round of hello's and what are you playing chats, we where ready to get going for this 5 round tournament Best-of-One.
My first round put me against Wouter, whom just had spend an hour in my passenger seat, running Xandire's Truthseekers and the Emberstone Sentinels with Countdown to Cataclysm deck. It went way to smoothly though, as a quick opening score for taking Taros down, followed by a gang rush on Dhoraz, quickly sealed the deal. The golden boys (there where no less then 4 warbands of Stormcast today) where cut down 26 to 6.
In the second round, I faced Arnaud, who runs the excellent Touche Critique website, and Thorns of the Briar Queen. The ghosts used the new Nexus of Power deck coupled with Deadly Synergies, but his 2 wound figures where no match for the pure violence, and especially my leader with her Ensnare had a day in the park, resulting in another solid win of 26-4.
It was time for the lunchbreak then, and after some McDonalds and the display and voting for the best painted warbands, we got back to the tables. I'll insert a little clip with the warbands at the very end of this.
It was now time to play my number one Fan, Johan (the bloke that gave me the Hrothgorn t-shirt and who provided all the additional pictures for today). He had brought Blackpowder's Buccaneers with Deadly Synergies and Reckless Fury. I quickly took down his minions though, leaving the big pirate suffering cut after cut until he fell, and grabbed a 25-5 victory.
For the fourth round, it was Simon, who was also in the lead at that moment, with The Headsmen's Curse and Blazing Assault with Deadly Synergies. I knew I had a single chance, and that was to immediatly "bum rush" his leader before that bloke started one shotting my fragile aelves. The plan worked however, and from then on it was a clean up job, resulting in a 20-11 win.
At this point, I was the only one left at 4-0, but I had a huge glory differential of around +70 at that moment, my next opponent at about +25 at that time, so it seemed safe if not to freaky things happened.
And that final opponent was Valentin, who had brought Kamandora's Blades with Blazing Assault and Deadly Synergies. And this was that typical one game everything stalled. After an opening hand of 5 upgrades, I mulliganed into 4 upgrades and a single ploy... and then the bloody dog refused to die for 4 attacks straight over the game, letting cards like Strong Start sit dead in my hand while my aelves started to fall to the renewed bleeding effect. Luckily, I had to lose something like 26 to 0 or so or I would have been in serious trouble, and the aelves scored something left and right (including that five times cursed dog) to only suffer a 12 to 20 defeat.
As a result, we ended with 4 people at 4-1 (and my little apprentice I learned the game a few months ago grabbing third spot in the end) with the glory differential being the decider. As a result, I grabbed the Golden Ticket, with a differential of still +63 (I had scored 109 glory over the day in total, and like in Halle the only one to break the 100 scored Glory barrier), while Valentin in second had +42.
As such, the full results of Mines of Alost came in like this:
1. Tomsche - The Shadeborn - 4/1 + 63
2. Valentin - Kamandora's Blades - 4/1 + 42
3. Tom - Emberwatch - 4/1 + 26
4. Simon - The Headsmen's Curse - 4/1 + 20
5. Wouter - Xandire's Truthseekers - 3/2 -13
7. Niels - Hexbane's Hunters - 2/3 - 6
8. Thibaud - Mollog's Mob - 2/3 - 6
9. Johan - Blackpowder's Buccaneers - 2/3 - 36
10. Arnaud - Thorns of the Briar Queen - 2/3 - 44
11. Wim - Ironsoul's Condemnors - 1/4 + 5
12. Philip - Xandire's Truthseekers - 0/5 - 50
This gave me some fantastic loot with another Embergard glass trophy, the certificate as well as the new Liege Kavalos on War Chariot for Age of Sigma. No aelves, but that box goes straight in my price support pile for next year's Spearhead tournament!
And Thibaud took home the Best Painted with his Mollog's Mob, that's his second time best painted now in a row!
So, the conclusion on decks for today was that Deadly Synergies is the new go to deck, as I had told my friends back before the Halle tournament already. It is a solid deck, and has taken the place as the go-to building block after the age of Countdown to Cataclysm and then Pillage and Plunder (which was only featured in a single deck today).
On a personal level, of course I'm happy I will get to experience the Worlds for once, and a Belgian will make it there at last. But for the coming months, with the pressure totally of the boiler now, and building competitive decks and warbands is not needed (we get 2 FAQ's and a new boxed set before Worlds anyways, so everything will change big again by then), I'm going to lay back and play some other warbands I painted up for my aelves collection, and do some weird deck combo's of decks I usually don't play. Yeah, perhaps even you, Realmstone Raiders!
This will also get me to play some other people I usually don't run into at tournaments, which is a hearty change of pace, as well as some other game systems at the club now that I don't need to play training friday's or go on a "euro tour" to try and qualify!
But in true "turbo aggro" that I so love to play... I probably got a speeding ticket on the way home...
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