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Well, I made it past top 4 today. Not only that, but I did it with my favorite deck Combative Humans (modified slightly). In the end Hampus Eriksson claimed the last Origins qualifier after 2 great games.

Even though I didn’t qualify at Origins, it was still an excellent time. There were a lot of great people and a lot of great games of Epic. I learned a lot from the 4 qualifiers, and I have a bunch of new Epic articles I plan on writing (in addition to the ones I planned before Origins). In addition, I finally bought my Gen Con badge and signed up for the Thursday Limited Qualifier.

Overall, the Epic Qualifiers were an excellent experience with an excellent game and excellent players.

Ben Wienburg pictured below.

Hampus Eriksson pictured below.

Congratulations Hampus Eriksson on qualifying for Worlds. It was a pleasure playing against you in the finals. Especially since I can now say I’ve dropped double Markus, Watch Captain with loyalty to a Psionic Assault (and still lost).

 

Today is the last day of Origins. I’m competing in the final Origins Constructed Qualifier today, and I am looking forward to see how/if the meta shifts after the first tournament. I am also looking forward to playing this deck. Good luck to everyone participating today.

Knocked out in the top 4, again, but the games were great. I also think I played and drafted well, so I’m not too frustrated with the loss. This also means that I get to play in the constructed tournament tomorrow, and I am looking forward to that. I need as much practice in the format as possible.

Below is the decklist I mulliganed into. I’ll post my chosen cards after Origins and explain why I picked what. I do not have the decklist I started with unfortunately. This list was excellent for me though. I went 3-0-2 (3 wins, 2 draws, no IDs) so I didn’t lose a match with it. If I wouldn’t have rushed I might have won my first draw, but I learned a valuable lesson about playing your final turn carefully since the time limit no longer matters.

Auggie pictured below. A lot of passing priority while holding gold in this game, but it was fascinating. Dark Knight was surprisingly strong in this scenario, sort of like a 0-cost Juggernaut. Juggernaut is incredible.

John Tatian strikes a well-earned victory pose after qualifying for Worlds, pictured below.

While I am looking forward to another day of Epic, it unfortunately means I won’t have much chance to cover the rest of Origins. Good luck to everyone who is competing tomorrow.

Today is the last Origins Epic Limited format qualifier (more will be at Gen Con and elsewhere). This is my better format, and I only dropped matches to the eventual winner, who is no longer eligible to play in qualifier events. So, we’ll see what happens today (I did have multiple close 2-1 matches yesterday though). Good luck to everyone competing today.

(As a heads up, I did go to Marquette, but I was not in ROTC.)

Another excellent day at Origins. I only placed 10th in the constructed Epic tournament (3-2-0), but seeing what everyone brought was fascinating. I brought an untargetable Sage Tempo deck designed to counter/outpace blitzing, airborne Wild fliers + burn; I’ll be posting, analyzing, and updating it after Origins.

Other decks that were played were discard/burn, life gain/burn, at least one Human Token Swarm type deck, Dinosaurs, and control decks. Derek Arnold’s 4-color control deck was outstanding, and it further evolved my understanding of the game. I am going to analyze it in much greater detail after Origins, but it appears to be a difficult deck to play well, the games go long, and it ended with multiple draws in the swiss rounds. All of the top 8 decklists can be found at the Facebook page or on WWG’s Deck Foundry.

My note keeping failed me again, last name Randolph pictured below. I will hopefully update tomorrow.

Hayden Brass pictured below.

Ryan Aker pictured below.

Jared Wood pictured below.

Brad Minnigh pictured below

Kyle Coons pictured below.

Top 8 from left to right Gabe Costa-Gioni, Cory Henderson, Nathaniel Mansfield, Chris Weidinger, Hayden Brass, Auggie, Kyle Coons, and Derek Arnold. *Names Updated*

Derek Arnold winner of the Epic constructed tournament and Worlds Qualifier pictured below. He brought an excellent deck and played it excellently.

Tomorrow is the final Origins limited Epic tournament. Good luck to everyone participating.

Special shout-out to Cory Henderson for taking multiple pictures for me today and yesterday.

Heading out to compete in the constructed Epic format. I have less competitive constructed experience so just hoping to make it to top 8.

First day of Origins was pretty great. Met multiple people who read this blog, introduced some new people to it, and played a lot of Epic. A lot of great people at the event, and I took pictures with a few.

For the tournament, I made it to top 8 with the below list of cards. I am not posting what I chose yet because I want to let people see what they would have picked in the same situation. (Mulligan to 56 is an acceptable answer too.) My record was 3-1-1 (the draw was an ID, Intentional Draw to assure top 8 and give us some time to get some food).

John Tatian (Pictured Below)

Tim Stanoch (Pictured Below)

Max Jacob (Pictured below) The rivalry begins.

Corey Henderson (Pictured Below)

Rich Shay (Pictured Below)

The 2 finalists for the 6/16/16 tournament. Will update tomorrow with the winner. (I was knocked out in the top 4.)

Tomorrow is the first constructed qualifier. It will be very interesting to see what decks are run. I didn’t get a hold of the other limited pools and decks (and I forgot to record the dark draft decks), but I’ll see what I can do about getting the constructed decks on here. At the very least, I can give a run down of the decks I come up against.

For everyone at the Epic event today, thanks for the games. I look forward to playing against at least some of you in the next few days.

Planning on heading out around 3am tomorrow, so I won’t have time to post this in the morning. Planning on wearing my Lindsey Stirling shirt and will look pretty much like this tomorrow.

I would be happy to meet any readers or potential readers so feel free to come on up. I might not be able to talk much if we are nearing the end of an Epic round I’m still finishing, but aside from that, happy to talk at length about Epic, other board game topics, or largely whatever.

There is a good chance that you will more likely see me from behind at a table, so I included that photo too.

Vicarious Origins

I would be thrilled if I could get pictures of a bunch of people (with their permission) and put them up on the blog after each day. Feel free to give me a line or two to associate with each picture.

With regard to the tournaments, I will post my decklist and try to get a picture and decklist from each opponent as well (after the match, with their permission).

For everyone that is going to compete in the tournaments, good luck, and I look forward to potentially playing against you. (Also I forgot Avenging Angel Control, so I have 5 decks I might play in constructed.)