The Year was 2016 – The Location: Lakeville, Minnesota – The stakes: Bragging rights for a year as the best player in MN!!!

Welcome to the Minnesota State tournament!

Minnesota state was hosted on July 8th and 9th at Cross of Christ Community Church in Lakeville, MN – Facilities were graciously arranged by Britta and Tim Maly and official hosting duties were performed by Bill Voight – All three are awesome people and put on a great tournament. We kicked things off Friday night with T2MP and Sealed deck. 8 players elected to try their luck with I/J starters and 4 brave souls dared the crushing agony that is T2MP.

I decided to play sealed – I have a goal of winning national titles in every category of play, one of my focus areas this year is Sealed. We played three rounds and elected to allow players to take two box packs (Treasures, Disciples, Early and Persecuted Church) of their choice – I elected to take two Cloud of Witness boxes, because why not play with the new cards!

Round 1 – Tim Maly

As with all sealed events we opened our packs and began deck building while navigating the tricky trade waters. As I opened my first CoW pack I saw a gleam of gold, it was a Second Coming! How good is that card in sealed! One of the commons in the pack was Throne of Grace another really powerful card. I had the Philistine defense and was thrilled when my second pack gave me a King Achish and an Apostles Herod the Great I’ve always been a fan of playing sealed at 50 cards so I had to find some stuff to take out. I also ended up adding in King Jehoshapat and King Saul. I tried to trade for Tim’s copy of Caleb’s Sword as it’s an amazing card in sealed, pairs great with Jehoshapat, and can be discarded to Throne of Grace. He wouldn’t budge though, my best card for him was Jawbone and he already had plenty of battle winners.

The game was very interesting, despite wanting to play a faster style with Second Coming I opened with a fistful of defense. I was able to hold Tim off for quite a while slowly poking away with big rescuers – He made some soul saving decisions with Vain Philosophy and Sorrow of Mary putting away battle winners and leaving me with Son of God, stopping me from having the right cards to stop his evil characters. However King Achish was doing work: he drew 6 cards on three blocks which sped me all the way through my deck – The extra dominant rescue was clutch and I won 5-3

Round 2 – Noah W.

I was feeling pretty confident coming into this game, TSC is awesome, King Achish was a boss the previous game, and I felt like every card I added was fantastic. I opened this game with an Andrew/Peter band only to get stuffed by Quirinius and Four Squads of Four. Ouch! On his turn he used Gideon’s Call and put 4 evil characters beneath my deck!!! Needless to say I didn’t block all game and it was over in 4 turns, 5-1 in his favor.

Round 3 – Britta Maly

Since we only played three rounds I was out of winning, but still had a shot at placing if I could beat Britta with decent soul differential. My opening hand had Son of God, TSC, and Angel in it but no heroes to rescue with! I let Britta go first and hoped to draw a hero – my first three cards had Peter and Throne of Grace – Big dudes in sealed + Throne of Grace proved to be as good as I thought it would be in the game I managed to put them together. I won three souls because I could use any single brigade good enhancement as a negate. I never did play Second Coming in this game, Britta under decked it and Angel in one block with Emperor Tiberius and Sorrow of Mary. I was still able to pull out a 5-2 win which gave me just enough differential to squeak into third place. Turns out when you use boxes lots of people get crazy pulls.

After the Friday events all the Alstads and Gabe came back to my place to prepare for the main events on Saturday – Tune in next time to see how I fared in Teams and T12P using a BoM deck.

To buy singles, sealed product, and other gaming supplies, please visit Three Lions Gaming!

By JohnE

John Earley has had an unbridled love for Redemption since he started playing in 1997. From his days as a RLK (random little kid) to the present, John has always enjoyed finding cool card combinations, exploiting obscure rules, and building the most devastating decks possible. He has been a member of the playtest team since 2009, and a Redemption Elder since 2010, he still plays at a competitive level, and is looking forward to the next National tournament.