A Recap of Reborn Indy

The first ever event on the Reborn Circuit is in the books! Eleven players showed up to battle it out in WoW TCG’s Classic format at Game Preserve Indianapolis. Many thanks to everyone who participated for showing up, playing each round, and even sticking around afterward for side games. Saturday was a blast! The following is a brief recap of the event and shenanigans that took place.

The Swiss Rounds

We started promptly at 1:00PM with round one of the day. There were three Alliance Hunters in the room which threatened to give the three Horde Mages present at the event some trouble. There were also three decks looking to use their graveyards as a resource and then the rest of the field was a mixed bag.

These are the decks that were present according to final swiss standings:

Patrick Broadway - Alliance Warrior (Death Wish)
Woodrow Hood - Horde Mage (Graveyard Monsters)
Nathan Cole - Horde Shaman (Spider Solitaire)
Neil Denton - Monster Paladin (Grand Crusader Midrange)
Susan Turner - Alliance Hunter (Aberration Aggro)
Chris Waits - Monster Deathknight Shaman (Graveyard Combo)
Phil Stacy - Alliance Hunter (Aberration Aggro)
Josh Wilson - Horde Mage (Frost Midrange)
Audis Turner - Alliance Hunter (Aberration Aggro)
Bob Hannum - Horde Mage (Draw-Go Control)
Joe Kleptz - Monster Priest (Mill Combo)

We only had eleven attendees which was quite a bit lower than expected considering all the online chatter. A lot of people reached out and mentioned weather prohibiting travel while others were having personal issues. This ended up being a blessing in disguise though as we were able to end earlier and leave plenty of room for an evening full of side events!

The Top 4

After just four rounds of swiss, we cut to the top 4 which consisted of Patrick, Woodrow, Nathan, and Neil. You can find the their decklists here. As you can see it was a good day to be filling your graveyard for value. But it was an even better day to be hiding behind a wall of armor and mowing your opponent down with swords and axes! The biggest shocker was Neil’s deck which was full of block 6 and 7 allies backed up by Grand Crusader. With no side deck, equipment, and very little abilities and quests Neil was able to slam bigger dudes than most people could handle.

The semi-finals had Patrick (Deathwish) squaring off against Neil (Green Grand Crusader Midrange). Patrick was able to turtle behind some armor and pick off Neil’s pesky allies with weapons until Patrick could get to the late game and take over. Neil put up a good fight but the Dwarf Warrior and his arsenal of equipment proved too tough a match for the block 6 and 7 allies.

At the other table playing out their semi-final match Woodrow (Red Mage Graveyard Midrange) and Nathan (Spider Solitaire) jockeyed over who would resolve the most Anub’araks. With Undercity and the full four Anub’araks in Woodrow’s deck he was able to control Nathan’s graveyard and keep him out of the finals.

The finals was Patrick and Woodrow - a rematch from the swiss rounds. Game one saw Patrick curve out with armor against some pretty medium beats from Woodrow. The Warrior had some damage on him, but accumulated enough gear to put the game out of reach in the end. Game two Woodrow mulligan’ed into a hand with a pair of Brittilize and used those in conjunction with another Brittilize, a Nether Fracture, and The Taste of Arcana to keep the Dwarf Warrior off his protection while getting in the red zone with early allies. Game three saw Patrick back on the play again and welcomed his Horde Mage opponent to the game with Guardian’s Plate Bracers into Gravitational Pull with three +1 armor counters. Woodrow’s deck just seemed to do nothing as he flipped no hits and a lot of his interaction into the graveyard off of a Bottled Knowledge. Some damage showed up to accompany the defense Lord Benjamin had accumulated and the game was over not long after making Patrick Broadway the winner of the first ever Reborn Circuit event!

No Twitch Stream

Our plan to stream over Twitch was thwarted when we found out the internet at the venue was down. We tinkered with some hot spots but couldn’t get a consistent and high quality connection. At the end we just decided to do video capture of our feature match area and release it later on. There will be commentary, card references, and health totals in the final edit so keep an eye out for its release!

Reborn Circuit Points Breakdown

The Reborn Circuit features a point system used to create the leaderboard. We have borrowed the point breakdown values from other games’ tournament circuits and tweaked them according to our needs. This is the first time we’ve ever released this information publicly; below is the Reborn Circuit point system for live events:

Participation (Local) - 2pt
Participation (Convention) - 3pt
Playing Match - 1pt
Winning Match - 2pt
Bye - 2pt
Top After Swiss - 2pt
Winner (Local) - 5pt
Winner (Convention) - 10pt

So with this in mind, the participants at Reborn Indy scored the following:

Patrick Broadway - 27pt
Woodrow Hood - 16pt
Nathan Cole - 13pt
Neil Denton - 13pt
Susan Turner - 10pt
Chris Waits - 10pt
Phil Stacy - 10pt
Josh Wilson - 10pt
Audis Turner - 8pt
Bob Hannum - 8pt
Joe Kleptz - 8pt

Side Events

With the lower number of attendees we were allowed a lot of extra time which we certainly didn’t squander. For those who didn’t quite make the swiss cut, Chris Waits busted out some Chaos decks and they proceeded to play WoW TCG’s answer to the EDH format. If you’re unfamiliar, you can read a brief summary of the format here.

After the event was over and the winner was crowned, seven people stuck around to do a bizarre chaos draft using Dark Portal for pack 1, Worldbreaker for pack 2, and War of the Ancients for pack 3. The games weren’t organized in any way and some people even wrote on their cards or cut them in half when they died. A single round of playing those decks was about all anybody was up for anyway. At this point the venue, Game Preserve - Greenwood, was fifteen minutes from closing so five of the seven packed it up and headed to a hotel lobby to keep things going!

Once situated in the hotel, we were split down the middle on whether to do a Cube Draft or face off against a Raid. We decided to split the difference and do both! We assigned random roles to each of the five participants. Four party members and one raid boss. We then proceeded to draft the cube. The party members were looking to assemble a deck that could help take down Onyxia, but the raid boss was also drafting! His strategy? Cut every card he didn’t want to see during the raid.

After the draft we had a consisting of an Alliance Hunter, a Monster Warlock/Rogue, a Horde Priest, and a Horde Mage head into Onyxia’s Lair to see if they could battle through the welps and slay the dragon! The short answer is they could not. The longer version is that they came close and had a blast trying! Onyxia is just low enough in terms of power that it was manageable, but she had some really good draws in the last stage of the raid.

What’s Next?

Keep an eye out on our socials @wowtcgreborn for future event announcements and footage of Reborn Indy. Currently the next event on the Reborn Circuit is in Louisville, Kentucky in March! The date and venue are still TBD, but the format is Core. We’ll see you there!