GenCon 2019
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GenCon 2019 was an absolute blast and we at WoW TCG Reborn just want to say THANK YOU to everyone that showed up for one of our WoW TCG events! We realize that GenCon is the gamer Mecca and that most attendees don’t have a moment to spare, so thanks for choosing to spend a few with us!
El Clásico
Our Classic event was only the second Reborn Circuit event to take place after the banlist announcement we made earlier this year. The first was Reborn Lubbock where the top players looked to powerful Alliance allies to carry them in light of Hesriana leaving the format. But GenCon turned out to be different… quite different. Here’s the winning deck:
1st Place - Pat Eshgy
Hero: Elumeria Wildershot
//Equipment (18):
4 Quickstrider Moccasins
4 Tarnished Raging Berserker's Helm
4 Silent Fang
3 Leggings of the Tireless Sentry
3 Super Simian Sphere
//Abilities (12):
4 Intimidation
4 Snipe
2 Planned Assault
2 Slashdance
//Allies (15):
4 Boomer
3 Deuce
3 Jerrak Krandle
2 Yertle
2 Terina Calin
1 Mekkatorque, King of the Gnomes
//Resources (15):
4 Temple of the Jade Serpent
4 Crown of the Earth
4 Towers and Bunkers
3 Sunken Treasure
//Side Deck (10):
3 Track Demons
3 Bombard
1 Yertle
1 Slashdance
1 Bestial Revival
1 Terina Calin
Okay, so maybe it was a deck with Alliance allies, but Pat’s winning list wasn’t teaming with the midrangey value allies or aggressive beaters you’d expect from an Alliance hunter. Pat saw an opportunity with the newly arrived Temple of the Jade Serpent to stack up Heirloom counters on Tarnished Raging Berserker’s Helm without over-committing to heirloom cards. This allowed him to combo off with Quickstrider Moccasins to infinitely ready an ally and deal infinite damage. In the meantime he slowed his opponents down with armor, interrupts, removal, Intimidation, and tons of healing from Elumeria’s flip and Super Simian Sphere with Slashdace / Planned Assault to flip again and again. Congrats to Pat on taking down Jeff Blyden in the finals with this interesting deck and becoming the Reborn GenCon 2019 Classic Champion!
congratulations to pat eshgy! the question is: will he ever break away from combo’ing off to actually play the EA edwin he won!?
Cube Draft
Saturday morning saw a perfect eight-man pod show up to draft the Reborn Cube. We joked that participants were starting the day off right with a Top 8 finish already under their belt. But due to overlapping event commitments for some and drafting a poor deck for others, we had a few early drops.
In the final round only four remained: Mike Barnes, Craig Cainkar, Alex Miller, and Nathan Cole. Mike lost in three games with his Horde Warlock control deck featuring Invoke the Nether looking to reach 10 resources for Thrall the Earth-Warder against Alex’s barrage of Horde allies with Ferocity. Meanwhile Nathan squeaked out a win over Craig with Legacy of the Horde and Mikael the Blunt shutting down Craig’s early allies and army of Treant tokens.
The finals were a rematch of the final round of Swiss with Nathan and Craig squaring off in the Alliance mirror. In the end Nathan was able to snag the W off of Mikael the Blunt and Wavestorm Totem triggers and secure the title of Reborn GenCon 2019 Cube Champion! Congrats again Nathan and well played Craig!
the drafting pod feat. norvic reading every card!
Congratulations to nathan cole!
The Core Event
Shortly after the Cube Draft our WoW TCG players gathered in the Lucas Oil Stadium again to play some Block 7 / Block 8 Core. Of all the formats that feel shaken up, Core is definitely the most in-flux. We saw a few attendees show up with no decks looking for loaners (which we happily supplied), one attendee with an all Block 7 deck, and a couple others with Block 6 / 7 decks. Exactly as we expected! But we managed to get a legal deck into everyone’s hands and get the event underway in no time.
The field was pretty diverse and after five rounds of Swiss we had the following Top 4 cut:
Nathan Cole - Li Ting Farsky Tauren Tribal
Jeremy Honda - Malfurion Stormrage Euphoria Doomhammer
Joe Kleptz - Malfurion Stormrage Night Elf Tribal
Stefan Giovanni - Arthas Menethil Death Knight Mill
In the semi finals Joe and Nathan battled it out in a war of the tribes which saw #teamlongears get the victory over #teambrowncow. And in the other semis match it was Jeremy with a pile of four-drops facing down the villain of the event Stefan and his pile of healing, draw, and mill. Stefan came out on top and was looking strong going into the finals.
In the final match of the day and deciding match of the Core Event, Joe fought hard to break through the sustain of The Last Relic of Argus and Will From Beyond and the control of Despair of Winter and Mind Trauma. These were close games and though Stefan had been running the tables previously, Joe managed to put out enough damage to slay the Raid Boss and take down the event! Congratulations Joe Kleptz on becoming the Reborn 2019 Core Champion!
congrats joe on winning the trophy and vancleef family!
2019 core event participants!
Contemporary and Wrap-Up
By the time Saturday rolled around GenCon had another record-breaking single day attendance. Between the busy goings-on of the convention / our overlap with other events, the arguably less-popular format, and our ambitious Saturday scheduling, we only pulled in four for Contemporary. But those four brave souls sleeved up the dirtiest strategies they could think of and settled in for a Round-Robin event. And when I say dirty, I do mean dirty:
1st Place - Joe Kleptz
Hero: Lady Vashj
//Allies (9):
4 Shadowy Apparition
3 Agent Connelly
2 Commander Ulthok
//Abilities (21):
4 Shadow Word: Despair
4 Spook
2 Redeeming Dispel
2 Dark Deliverance
4 Mind Trauma
1 Legacy of the Horde
4 Splintered Thought
//Equipment (19):
4 Band of Secret Names
4 Miniature Voodoo Mask
4 The Last Relic of Argus
3 Bottled Spite
4 Darkmoon Card: Volcano
//Quests (11):
4 Path of the Damned
4 The Scourge of Lordaeron
3 The Ichor of Undeath
When Agent Connelly was first spoiled, there was a lot of buzz about how strong he was. Nobody revealed much in their comments, but it was assumed that he would pair nicely with Block 7 ally Kahul the Sunseer in Core. Of course in Classic there would likely be some interesting interactions as well. But nobody thought much about Connelly in Contemporary. That is except for Joe Kleptz, apparently!
Joe showed up for Reborn Indy back in January of this year with a pile of Contemporary-legal cards at a Classic event looking to mill people out. Fast forward eight months and not much has changed for Joe except a Dwarven master of disguise and a traumatic tap down effect. And apparently that was all his Contemporary Priest deck needed! After the completion of Round Robin followed by a Top 2 cut, Joe took down Nathan’s Mogdar Control deck in the finals and boasted a second GenCon victory, second EA Edwin Vancleef, and the Golden Sylvanas trophy! Congrats again to Joe Kleptz on his victory and solid weekend performance across multiple events!
Obviously, four is a smaller number than eight and this means we have a few extra Contemporary playmats lying around! Stay tuned for how you can compete to win these over Tabletop Simulator. For those interested, go ahead and start working on Contemporary decks (Blocks 5-8) on Tabletop Simulator and keep an eye out on our socials for scheduling info. For those that participated the last time we did this, this contest will function the same way.
Overall we feel that our first GenCon weekend was a huge success. We learned a lot and had a blast along the way. Moving forward we will likely trim an event or two to try and cut back on the number of hours our TO’s are working and consolidate the number of events players have to choose from (resulting in higher attendance for each event). Decklists will be posted in the next few days (again - sorry for the delay, this is our first technical issue with decklists and we’re just as unhappy as you are). Thanks again and stay tuned for some juicy updates in the coming weeks!