My roommate Paul2520 and I have reestablished a weekly Epic time, Monday evenings. We’ll be focusing on testing the aggro/aggro-combo constructed decks I’ve been experimenting with recently. Afterwards, around 9pm CDT or so (updates through twitter), I plan on regularly doing a stream discussing the results of those sessions as well as potentially playing the app a bit (if there are challenges or an interesting Arena [like Dark Draft this week]).
Finally, I have been working on some more blog content, but I’ve decided to rework my 3 article series from [depicting my failure-filled progression to my “Escorting the Insurgency” human tokens aggro-combo deck] to [3 individual deck techs discussing the 3 pillars of Epic constructed as it stands today focusing on Sam Black’s Midrange Wild deck, The Flocks/The Lad’s Scara’s Gift deck, and my Escorting the Insurgency deck]. Below is the start of the previous progression that I have decided to scrap if curious. (I couldn’t figure out how to/remember enough to effectively make that format work.)
After over a year and a half of no physical Epic tournaments I could compete in, no new cards, departure of two of the most visible employees in the community (Ian Taylor and Andrea Davis), minimal Epic playing in general, and even less official communication from WWG, my enthusiasm for the game was almost completely depleted. So much so that the eventual announcement of the upcoming Kickstarter with a lot of new content and the $10,000 tournaments (to replace the 50K digital tournament which was broken off of the $100k tournament) had little effect on me, which showed in my lack of blog content. I was considering dropping Epic, depending on how Origins went.
All of that helps to inform my prep for Origins, which I began one month out. However, as I prepped, I gradually rediscovered my love of the game, and Origins was absolutely amazing. Playing in person is infinitely better than playing in an alpha app with long queue times to find a game. I’ve even begun streaming again (with plans to edit highlights and put them on Youtube), I’m blogging currently, and I ordered have received my second full constructed set.
“Screw it, I’m playing Priest of Gold Dragon”
While, in the moment, I was (and still am) incredibly proud of myself for making top 8 at Worlds 2017 with Pluck U’s Wild Combat Tricks deck, especially since it created one of my favorite Epic moments which I want to write about at some point, the fact that I played a deck that I didn’t create and ultimately lost anyway, slowly ate at me. I had/have this vision of myself as a clever, innovative jank player that I wanted/want to honor, but at the same time I thought of myself as a weaker constructed player, largely “because I held myself back with that mindset.” So, when my desire to win surpassed my desire to be seen as the clever jank player, and my team (led by Tom Dixon) helped move me past my mental hurdle of not playing the “best deck” and I lost anyway, I couldn’t hide behind that excuse any more.
For Origins, I initially regressed behind that hurdle because my motivation to put the work in, was not there, and I semi-consciously wanted an excuse to explain potential poor performance away. I stubbornly decided just to play the deck that I was going to play at Worlds, my Priest of Gold Dragon [PoGD] deck (despite the fact that I thought it would be even more disadvantaged in a Best of 1 format). To be fair, the matchup against Evil in our testing for Worlds 2017 did seem slightly favored for me. But, the Wild matchup was not. I figured I would test against Sam Black/Mike Sigrist’s list, and if it was anywhere near close, I’d call it good enough.
It was not close.
That’s about as far as I was able to get.
Next article will be explaining how/why Sam Black’s Midrange deck pushes out all other midrange decks (that I’ve tested so far). For a taste of what that will look like, you can check out my deck tech for my 2016 Worlds Pyrosaur Deck.
Glad to see more content!!