My Reborn Louisville Rundown

Hey all, Patrick Broadway here with a tournament report from the recent Reborn Louisville event. I regret not being able to do a write up for Indy, which I also won, as I waited too long and just didn’t have a clear memory on each round to provide a proper write-up. So, I am writing this as the event wraps up on the same laptop we’re streaming from before I forget everything!

First, let’s go over the deck. My choice in deck was a last minute decision. Initially I was going to go with a strikeout rogue because it was the only deck in the format I had experience with, but Scott Landis’s shaman from SCG Baltimore caught my eye, and so I swapped out with little preparation or playtesting. The deck was left unmodified from Scott’s original list, but there are some changes I think I would like to try after some more experience with the deck.

1st - Patrick Broadway

Hero: Barador Wildhammer Timewalker

Allies (26):
4 Thrall the World-Shaman
4 Lord Kur’talos Ravencrest
4 Naisha
4 Edwin VanCleef
3 Aggra
4 Vanessa VanCleef
3 Archimonde, Hand of Sargeras

Ability-Allies (8):
4 Tidal Totem
4 Magnetic Totem

Abilities (15):
3 Legacy of the Horde
4 Frost Arc
4 Earthquake
4 Call of Lightning

Equipment (7):
3 Kaz’rogal’s Hardened Heart
4 Doomhammer

Resources (4):
4 Seeds of Their Demise

The deck has a very powerful curve, however due to the nature of the unique allies building wide boards isn’t doing to happen. I usually only had an ally or two out at a time. The best bet is to trade blow for blow with the opposing hero until you can build an advantage through Doomhammer and Legacy of the Horde. Now on to the matches!

Round 1: FIGHT!

Round one I was paired against the other deck in the meta I really liked the look of, Deathbringer Kor’ush running the Call of Yogg-Saron combo. Piloted by my good friend Chris Waits, this deck tries to use versatile removal coupled with strong healing from The Last Relic of Argus and Blood Parasite until they can assemble an instant win with Call and Neltharion, discarding their opponent’s deck and preventing them from getting the normal five turns Call would offer. I don’t have any way to stop either, but I can overpower the healing with massive late game damage. I won the roll and started off with a strong hand. Thrall into Doomhammer, and Aggra let me start to layer on damage. He had a Last Relic, and had managed to take away my Legacy of the Horde with his Commander Ulthok, but I responded with a Naisha on Despair of Winter. Up until this point I was trying to just keep one large threat pressuring away, but with Naisha I was able to start spreading onto the board. I used Archimonde to keep him from building enough power to kill Naisha, which meant he couldn’t wipe my units. At one point he traded several tokens into my Archimonde to put 5 damage on it, and dropped Pygmy Pyramid to setup the kill, but I threw down a Tidal Totem to reset the damage and I was able to put on just enough damage that when he protected with pygmy I was able to play a second Archimonde to smash through and kill his hero before he got the healing from blood worms.

Round 2: FIGHT!

Round two saw me facing Gul’dan, piloted by Woodrow Hood. This was problematic for me for two reasons. First, as far as I was aware this was an entirely homebrew deck I had zero experience against. Second, Horde warlock isn’t exactly a well-known deck so outside of the Horde allies and Boundless Hellfire I was completely in the dark. Another winning the die roll I curved out Naisha into Thrall and Doomhammer, but this time I followed it up with an Edwin. With Naisha I chose to lock out Daedak over other cards because with Doomhammer I could survive a Boundless Hellfire, and I wasn’t sure of what else my opponent might be playing. Woodrow started out with a surprise Last Relic on 2, into a Soul Trap on my Thrall. Using Relic to heal out the health cost was a neat trick, but unfortunately with Doomhammer protecting my Edwin from Boundless he needed an answer fast. He used Life Tap and quests to draw into a huge hand, but unfortunately nothing could contest the Edwin plugging away for 8 damage with a Legacy of the Horde the following turn to power it up to 16. Once Horde was down there was no hope left, a Boundless wouldn’t even scratch my allies and Stealth Untargetable locked out the other options. Unable to clear the tokens with Nightfall now, Woodrow attempted to stabilize with a second Relic and quest completions, but his final gambit of Banish Soul and Daedak couldn’t compete with the Edwin and burn over the top with hero flip and Call of Lightning.

Round 3: Eye of the Tiger

Round three left me against the only other undefeated, Phil Stacy my friend and playtest partner. Again, I was playing without solid knowledge of the opposing deck as I had not playtested this matchup. Instead I had to lean on what I knew as a previous rogue player. I lost the roll, so I was playing from behind, but this gave me an advantage against the hand disruption I was expecting to see. My Naisha came down on Helplessness through the uniquely identify rule (I couldn’t remember the card name but knew what it did) and was promptly poisoned so that he could use Helplessness on me. He chose to kill my curve by removing the Thrall, stunting my turn 3. Without much to do, and just seeing a helplessness I didn’t want him to get another advantage so I foolishly played a second Naisha on Daedak. In hindsight, it should have been on Edwin. A second Helplessness hit my Doomhammer, tearing into my next turn play a second time. With a passed turn 4 my opponent’s Edwin came down and I responded with an Elusive / Untargetable Aggra. This was where the game turned for me. Having resourced one of my two Legacy of the Horde’s I was set up to play one next turn, and my opponent decided to remove my Naisha to play Daedak which left my Legacy untouched. This let me get out the Legacy and start the stall game. I could start chipping away at his board while taking little to no damage myself. A third helplessness took away my Archimonde and left me top decking. Legacy and Tidal Totem kept me healthy while I ate some dead turns. Some back and forth saw me with a Kur’talos and Doomhammer, and my opponent miscounted the health and ended up trading his Edwin to kill it with a Poison Bomb. This is when we learned that we were playing Legacy wrong, and not applying enough damage reduction. Essentially Legacy rounds the damage reduction itself up, while we were rounding up the damage. This meant that I should have been taking no damage from packets of one, and taking only one damage from packets of three. Despite the rules error, I had managed to stall out at 4 life. And with Doomhammer and Legacy out, my Vanessa was hitting for 14 and was enough over two turns to secure victory.

Round 4: The Last Stretch

For the final match of swiss I was paired against a strikeout Edwin rogue, the deck I had played previously at the very end of the game’s official life. My opponent, Frank Adams, led out with a Meteor Shard and Throne of the Tides to try and assemble his combos, but my curve of Kur’talos, Edwin, and Doomhammer was putting too much pressure on him. Frank managed to finally hit his Maimgor’s on turn 5 but I swiftly untapped and dropped a Legacy of the Horde and came down hard for a sudden kill even I wasn’t expecting. With the last match out of the way I was undefeated in swiss and looking at the top cut to see who my final opponent would be.

Final Match: Finish Him!

The finals left me facing Josh Wilson and his Mogdar monstrosity. I won the die roll and proceeded to start game one with a Seeds of Their Demise followed up with Naisha on Muln. Seeing a Keeper Sharus on the other side of the table, I decided to use my turn three to play Earthquake, killing the Keeper to deny a turn 3 play. But to my surprise a wild Monstrous Totem appeared that I could not immediately remove. My Edwin came down to the tune of Pygmy Pyramid tears as my opponent got his trigger, but no amount of protector could save the totem from Stealth. Another Monstrous Totem and a Keeper came out, but with Legacy of the Horde I was able to make a huge board swing while losing nothing in return. My opponent finally managed to get his Harmonize online with Muln but it was too late. Stealth Edwin, Barador’s Bolt, and Call of Lightning finished him off for a huge twenty-four damage swing.

Game 2 saw Josh going first this time, so I was going to be behind trying to deal with his board. He led off with a turn 1 Keeper Sharus again, but this time I had a cleaner answer with Frost Arc. He has a Keeper Bolas to get him on the board though so I followed up with a Naisha on Monstrous Totem. I eventually lost the Naisha to board pressure which allowed my opponent to get to two Harmonize, Muln, putting Remulous into his hand. I had curved out Kur’talos into Edwin, so I was able to remove the Muln from the board and sit with a protected Edwin but a Monstrous Totem into dual Stonebranch removed the Edwin. Fortunately I had a Vanessa to throw out to keep up board pressure and followed it up with an Elusive / Mend 4 Aggra, hoping to stabilize from here. That was when Game 2 turned dire for me, being unable to remove the totem, my opponent dropped Doom Commander Zaakuul, doubling up on them and preparing to make a MASSIVE board swing by turning his Stonebranch into multiple token copies and getting a lot of swings in. Fortunately Aggra had Elusive, but the new pressure was intense. The living Stonebranch killed off Vanessa and turned into two Stonebranch and four Treants loading up damage on me. I was confident I wasn’t going to die, and with a Legacy of the Horde in hand (and the rules correctly understood) I was ready to stonewall the 1/1 token army. I used Aggra to kill the Monstrous Totem, and my opponent forgot to make a token copy of it (I also didn’t think about it). With Aggra healing me, and Legacy stopping all but four damage, I was able to stall and simply not play cards so that more tokens could not be generated. I just worked to pile on the damage and end the game before he could find an answer. I had the victory set up, however out of left field my opponent played Despair of Winter, sacrificing his current board to remove my Aggra and generate a new token army, though without a Stonebranch. Now the gameplan was changed, and I worked to clear away the token Doomcommanders, spending my entire turn to deal eight to my opponent and remove the first one, significantly lowering the risk. I played Edwin, looking to get a lethal setup through any protectors. I made a mistake in letting Edwin take more damage than he should again (math is hard) and my opponent played Shade of Aran to copy his token Doom Commander, generating two Firebreathers and two Pyramids, growing his board and making my victory delay. I plopped down a Vanessa, hoping to get it to stick and sneak in a lethal setup and instead found an Earthquake off the top. Seeing a line to sweep the board, I played Thrall and left up the three resources for the trap. Just before losing my board I threw out an Earthquake to wipe everything but Shade out, resetting things in my favor, only to get hit with Despair as well. I picked up a second Legacy of the Horde, representing a ton of damage and almost no chance to kill me, even with a Doomhammer and Shade getting Stealth I was able to keep Edwin alive and swing for 20 and game.

Final Thoughts

This tournament, although smaller than Indy, was a ton of fun. It was nice to play in a different format and see so many different decks. The lack of quests made for a significantly reduced experience, but the rest of the mechanics were in full effect. It was nice to see such a mix of allies, abilities, and equipment. Given the field, I would definitely play this deck again, and I think that my choice in deck had a significant impact on my games. I think that ways to deal with Legacy of the Horde and other abilities will be a primary strategy for a lot of decks looking to play in the Core format. Things like Monstrous Totem and Grand Crusader are powerful but get turned off by Miniature Voodoo Mask, while Legacy and Doomhammer do not, giving a lot more power to the deck. All my games were a blast and I greatly look forward to participating in the next Reborn event soon!