1st Place: Jayden’s Silver / Thieves
2nd Place: Tyler’s White Silver / Demon Thieves
Tyler’s Youtube Video:
Tyler’s Write Up:
This year leading up to Nationals was the most amount of time and effort I have put into type 2. I spent countless hours building, goldfishing, theorizing, and talking to others (thank you Jay, Joe, and Jeremy) about type 2. I am not exaggerating when I say I would go to bed and think about each brigade, each theme and try to connect dots for decks for making something extremely strong.
I tested with Pot of Manna, Nazareth, Holy of Holies, HoneyPot, Gospel of Christ variants, Holy of Holies + Priests, Captive Priests with a Dutiful “onslaught”, Patriarchs with CBN play first, Ruth with side battles (shoutout to Shon for Lost Child Found shenanigans), Driven “loop”, and numerous other decks. I only tested dozens of decks because I was sure that Thieves with Possessing Spirit x4, Resurrection Revealer x4 with Chamber of Angels and a turn 1 or 2 Harvest Time with oppressive Lost Souls was the best deck. I wanted to make sure of that, and I also wanted to make sure that I did not miss anything else. I can honestly say I did the best I could in the deck building phase.
The basis of the deck is get to Resurrection Revealer turn 1 and play The Resurrection to get to Bethlehem Stable ad Chamber of Angels. Sometimes you do not have an ideal turn 1 rescue, but the turn 2 Reserve access plus aggressive board state makes up for that. The original offense did start off with more angels and Entertaining Angels. I assumed Jayden would be on angels and I also figured Jeremy might be as well. I also knew Eman would be on Daniel with N.T. angels, so Entertaining Angels would help with me going to a Legion of Angels, Resurrection Revealer, or exchange Heroes for John/Zaccheus for surprise attacks. It was a good deck, but I wasn’t sold on the offense. I played Jeremy and did very well, but I knew Nativity was more consistent, faster, and involved Mary, Holy Virgin. I played Jeremy and used that game as a way to have him think I was on my deck from last year, but with Entertaining Angels added.
I swapped over to Nativity maybe 4 or so weeks before Nationals and told no one. I goldfished in Lackey. I goldfished with the physical cards. I watched all of Baboony Tim’s Nativity videos (thank you Tim!). I put in hours upon hours into this build. Every card was calculated and had a purpose. I could play the deck flawlessly and knew every card. I felt the most confidence I ever had leading up to Nationals. When Brian and Hendrix asked who I thought would win Nationals, I confidently replied, “Me.” Which I think every player should feel that way if they are serious about Nationals. I wanted Justin, Jayden, Jeremy, and pretty much every player to play Type 2 this year. I really wanted to test myself and if I won, I wanted to feel like I beat the best of the best to get the title.
Jeremy has been my kryptonite as of late, and the last two years against him I misplayed, especially last year. When I beat him in a casual test game, I knew this could be my year. I wanted to play Jayden or Jeremy first round and I got my wish. I played Jeremy round 1. His deck whiffed a bit against me and if you don’t get a good hand against this deck, you can’t recover. I knew I would play Jayden round 2 and was ready.
Jayden and I had an amazing game. The player who played more this year and played a cleaner game won. This game will haunt my Redemption dreams for years to come (hopefully I am exaggerating). Turn 1 I had Simon Peter in hand and was able to Resurrection Revealer to The Resurrection and band in Simon Peter and search for Mary, the Restored. I had 2 cards in hand and had no good Enhancements. I had to think in a matter of seconds do I leave Mary as white or flip to meek to negate. I saw Jayden’s hand up front and knew he had Temple Thieves and if I remember correctly, I did not think he could block. I rescued and did not flip Mary (even though I had no Enhancements), because I thought there was a chance I could use her next round as a white Hero (since I do not play clay Enhancements). Jayden blocked and used Temple Thieves to negate Mary. I was not able to snag Angel of the Lord, and I actually lost the battle. I have to go back to the stream to see what happened. But I remembered thinking to myself that I overthought that play and should have converted to meek, especially since Temple Thieves literally had no target. Mary could have gone to AotL and I get 1 Lost Soul turn 1.
During my testing I knew I would go against the mirror match, whether it was Jeremy or Jayden, or both, I knew to use Lost Child Found to bounce my EC’s prior to rescue. One turn I thought about it, and quickly decided against playing LCF in territory to bounce my EC’s, as I tended to need GE’s against thieves. Jayden couldn’t band to my EC’s either, as he didn’t have the banding EC’s at the time if I remember correctly. However, he was able to use his Sheol to band in my EC and he blocked me. Great play on him, and honestly, it was a Nationals winning play.
My real misplay is what I will describe next in hopes that others reading will learn from it. I chose Thieves/Possessing Spirit because I knew Jayden was running Nazareth and there was no way that a Nazzy was going to stop me. It’s so easy to stop Nazzy in type 2, IMO, and I would rather stop Nazzy and search then opt to not search. Turn 1 Bethlehem Stable also helps. Throughout the game I was able to search my deck and Reserve due to Stable being out. Either Stable, or Possessing Spirit was in his territory, so Nazzy was never an issue. Towards the end of the game I was able to get SoG and TSC and in my muscle memory I played SoG and quicky (and foolishly) dropped TSC. Possessing Spirit was NOT in territory (which I knew) and Bethlehem Stable was out. Bethlehem Stable does not protect my discard pile, so Nazareth was protecting my discard pile from me. I played TSC with the intent to go to discard pile, and although it was not a legal target so I could have swapped, I just discarded TSC (and I am not sure if I had a target in deck at this point anyway, although I might have had Glory). Either way, I quickly dropped a TSC into a Nazareth and could not play my SoG.
Jayden and I went to time. Jayden won in time 4-3. At the end of the tournament Jayden and I tied in points and differential. Jayden had the tiebreaker. Had him and I timed tie, I would have a tie against him and had a differential of over his. It was brutal on my end. Jayden deserved to win, and I was proud of myself for how I handled the rest of my games and my attitude, but that one hurt.
Hopefully you enjoyed reading this and some insight on Nationals. This year’s Nationals was smooth, enjoyable and very memorable (for reasons other than this post). I loved meeting everyone.
Great job to Ron and Jay. John E did amazing as the emcee. Gabe, Joe, Marcus, Chris and Roy did amazing as judges and we had help from Josh and Marc with judging, calling rounds and checking decks, thank you! We got to hang out with Ron Saturday night, we got to find out Israel’s Inheritance has foils and got some awesome promos, tokens, mats and sleeves from this year. Truly an amazing team effort.
I hope everyone loves Israel’s Inheritance and has a great time making decks this coming year. Can’t wait to see you all next year, God willing.
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