Deck Overview (See deck here)
I have been tinkering with a Green-Daniel deck for the past couple months which started out as a straight Daniel deck. Over time I changed individual white Daniel cards for simply better versions of the card in green. This evolved until the deck was essentially Green-Silver with Meshach. The goal is to produce large bands with multiple exchange characters, and multiple territory class consistency pieces. Deborah gives great flexible reserve access, and is usually used to take a hero from reserve. Elijah is usually the character that ends most bands as he is very strong combined with being in a band with Daniel.
The defense is a Black and Orange goodstuff combining Prince of the Air with the best Black-Orange evil characters. There are also some Canaanites included to give Elijah a choose the blocker target.
Counter cards included are Hate the Light, Confusion of Mind, and Jonah in an attempt to slow opponents down. Emperor Claudius is splashed in with Denarius as an added speed boost, and he can use two of the evil enhancements.
Note: As I am writing this a few weeks after the tournament I don't remember a ton about the games that were not live streamed, so sorry about how vague the details on those games are.
Round 1: Joe Andrigetti (See video here)
In the first round Joe and I got paired up, he was playing a Gospel Goodstuff and Gray deck with Pot of Manna. I went first and attacked with Michael and Meshach to draw two. Joe didn’t block so I rescued a soul, played Jonah and passed the turn.
On his turn Joe played Falling away on my Meshach, activated the Cross and played a Possessing Spirit. He attacked with Simon the Zealous and chose Possessing Spirit to block. I believe he made a misplay here and meant to choose Meshach but I was not sure. He then played an AoC to discard Meshach and Possessing Spirit CBN. (This shouldn’t have been able to happen as the Cross was tossing it, but we both missed that.) Post attack Joe played Golgotha to get the Brood of Vipers from deck. I then used Jonah to shuffle his Cross and he passed the turn.
On my turn I get a stricken star, and then play a Crowd’s Choice to grab the Victorious Beings. I then attack with the Victorious Beings and exchange to the Watchman, who goes to Ezekiel who topdecks Joe’s Brood of Vipers from his hand. Other than that Joe really didn’t have much defense so I got the rescue. I then played a Gates of Hell, a Hate the Light and then passed the turn.
Joe drew into an Emmaus Road star ability to look at my hand and saw that I had only two evil characters, the Goat with Horn and the Judean Mediums. In his prep phase he played Harvest Time and got out Complacent, Crowds, and Distressed turning my Jonah off. He then used Spirit as a Dove to get Zaccheaus. He attacked with Zaccheaus and reserved my Goat with Horn and got the rescue.
I know that on this turn with the game tied 2-2 that I need to rescue to win the game, I already have the Second Coming so I just need to get to Son of God. I attack with Deborah and draw two cards and draw into Son of God! I chose her because I had no other way to get around his Saul of Tarsus playing Unsuccessful. He blocks with Saul and draws two also. I then play Foreseen by Samuel to shuffle his Saul, he has no negates so I play Son of God and the Second Coming to win the game 5-3.
Round 2: Jayden Alstad (See video here)
Going in I knew that if I was to do well at the tournament that I would have to face Jayden at some point during the day. You can never quite tell what he's going to play, as he could play a crazy jank deck and still do very well.
Turns out he was playing a White Honeypot deck, which didn’t bode well for me as my deck is very weak to Pot of Manna and Holie of Holies. Jayden got to go first, and I got a very defensive hand, so I wasn’t too worried about blocking him. I was hoping that a scattered sheep star ability would help to slow him down, but it didn't do much. I underdecked a David, Heart after God leaving two other heroes in his hand. I also had to underdeck my Daniel which was my only hero in my hand.
Jayden got a crazy turn one activating Denarius, playing False Peace, and playing Glory of the Lord to play the Tabernacle. He then attacked with Elimilech to draw two and grab David back again, grabbing Faith Unbowed. Luckily Jayden had two good brigades in play so I blocked with my Prince of the Air, played Gates, and underdecked Prince of the air and my only lost soul.
On my turn I had the Cherubim (Blake) that drew one, and an Angel of the Lord. That wouldn't do great against his Nero so I passed the turn right back.
On his next turn Jayden proceeded to activate Holy of Holies and Bound to the Law. He then attacked with Moses the Servant and took Temple Dedication from deck. I asked for action priority to grab Prince from the bottom of my deck with Gates, but he played his Woes on Gates. I then had the choice to block with either Deceiver to Judean Mediums to band to the Prince of Greece in my hand, or I could block with Adoni-Bezek to grab the Women of Thebez. Here is where I blundered, completely forgetting about his Holy of Holies and thinking " Hey, lets get an offensive CTB set up". That didn't work and I was stuck with a Women of Thebez in battle. The reason that I chose this block over Judean Mediums to Prince of Greece was because I was worried about a probable Pot of Manna combined with Daniel, the Treasured to CTB and I would be stuck in a future block. The correct play here would probably have been to go to King of Tyrus instead of the Women of Thebez to be protected from Moses but that didn't happen. I played my Falling Away on his hero and squeaked out the block.
On my turn I was still in hero drought which didn't help my situation where I blundered a block away in a game that was not already going great. So I passed the turn again. Jayden proceeded to rip through his deck, playing Temple Dedication to grab Pot of Manna, and activating that in place of Bound to the Law. He then attacked with Moses who was protected. I was not able to get a block and Jayden rescued a soul.
On my turn I finally had enough offense to make a decent attack, so I played my Three Woes in my upkeep to negate his Pot of Manna and Holy of Holies. I was able to attack with Ezekiel and a couple Cherubims making it much harder for him to block. He blocked with my Adoni-Bezek and went to his Foreign Wives in reserve to try to get a Subdued block. Luckily I was able to Son of God it. Now I had a decision to make, I could either play my Angel of the Lord and discard his Foreign Wives, or let him play Philosophy to discard my Angel of the Lord. Here is where I made another blunder choosing to play Angel of the Lord, when I could have rescued the soul anyway, even if he discarded my Angel of the Lord. Now I was up 3-1 after playing both Son of God and Second Coming.
On Jayden's turn he was able to make another successful rescue putting us at 3-2. When I drew for turn I drew a Delivered, and was able to use the star ability. To my surprise I discarded Jayden’s Second Coming! I had to choose a Three Woes Target this turn and I chose to negate his Bound to the Law, as it was hunting my offence the most, and I had access to Humble to get around Jayden’s Holy of Holies. I got my hand size down and was about to attack with a huge band, when Jayden played his Son of God on my Humble. I then had to attack with a sad Ezekiel banded to a negated Cherubim. Jayden easily got the block with Nicodemus playing Tenants kill the Son, to band to the Lying Prophet to discard Ezekiel, and Tenants discarding Cherubim CBN.
Jayden drew for turn and attacked with a Daniel choosing my Goliath that I had played down last turn for Humble, withdrawing Daniel and presenting David, who played a battle winner on Goliath. I had no negates in hand so Jayden got the soul. One thing we played wrong is that Daniel would have been protected from Goliath’s withdraw, but I didn’t have anything to play on Goliath, so it didn’t make a difference in the long run.
From here on out Jayden was in the driver’s seat having his complete lock out, I wasn’t able to make a great attack, and Jayden did the same attack next turn to win the game 5-3.
Round 3: Bill Voigt
In the third round I got paired up with Bill Voigt, he is one of the people that I have the most fun playing with. I opened with a dream hand getting a huge band out turn one and drawing a ton of cards. (As I was doing that I was thinking "now why couldn't I have gotten that hand against Jayden?") Either way I got the first soul very easily.
On his turn I believe he attacked Aaron, the Peacemaker, to grab a Book of the Covenant. I had an easy block with Judean Mediums to Prince of Greece.
On my turn I just kept pushing with my band, now adding Zechariah to be protected. I again got an easy soul after seeing his hand with the Cherubim and Ezekiel. The game continued in a similar fashion for a 5-0 win. This was a perfect example of the Green-Daniel deck being in complete control for the whole game, with little the opponent can do about it especially because of the Cherubim and Ezekiel slowing them down.
Round 4: Nehemiah Graf
In the last Round my brother and I were both 2-1 with both of us losing to Jayden. Essentially whoever won that game would get guaranteed top three, and the loser might be able to make it depending on how the other games went. Nehemiah was playing a Gospel Goodstuff and Demon-Thieves deck that he had been turning for the last month.
Both Nehemiah and I made a successful rescue on our first turn and blocked each other on our second rescue. We both made successful third rescues putting us both at 2-2. He had gone first so I knew that if I could get a block I had a good chance of winning because he had fairly little defense left. He made this rescue attempt successfully with some sort of Simon rescue so I was waiting for him to play Son of God and the Second Coming before I gave him a soul. He didn't so I realized I still had a chance to win. Post block I immediately played Glory of the Lord because he hadn't played his Spirit as a Dove yet, which would be able to grab one of the big two so he could win. He passed the turn and I was able to make a successful rescue attempt and play Son of God and The Second Coming to win a 5-4 nailbiter.
Turns out that he did have Spirit as a Dove in his hand with the Second Coming on his last turn so he would have won. But we realized as he was showing me that the Son of God he was using was the Daniel K deck version! So even if he had been able to play Spirit as a Dove he wouldn't have won. The annoying part is we even talked about changing it to the L deck Son of God a few days before and had forgotten about it. Either way Nehemiah is a very great player that should definitely be watched out for whenever you play him.
Ending Thoughts
In the end the top three was Jayden in first, Maxwell (me) in second, and Martin Miller in third. I believe that to do better at regionals and Nationals I will need to be able to have my defense do better in the clay matchup, and be able to fare better in the Honeypot matchup. Thanks so much for reading and keep an eye out for my North Central Regionals tournament report coming out sometime in the next couple weeks!
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