Bonds of Memory: A Blog of AGE Weekend By Ka Chan

       After having attended Calling Montreal only a few weeks prior, I told myself I was going to give myself a bit of a break - attend a local PQ or two, take some time to do some chores around the house, relax a little after a good finish and all that. But after the idea of getting a hotel room for the night and attending the double-header of a Grave-Troll PQ into the AGE the day after was floated to me, I found myself unable to say no.

Day 1: The Pro- Quest   

          The PQ was very unexciting for me compared to some of my recent results - only 2-4 across 6 rounds, having found myself in some unfamiliar matchups and being underprepared for the slow shifts we’ve been seeing in the Classic Constructed meta.

          I brought Arakni, Marionette, a hero that I’ve been almost exclusively playing for the past few months, expecting the same old. Instead I find a Prism, Rhinar, even a Teklovossen, all more than prepared to deal with me. It gave me a lot to reconsider before potentially attending another PQ next weekend. Perhaps it’s time to put on a different mask yet again.

          My own mediocre placing aside, it was great seeing my friend and frequent carpool-comrade, Dan, get second place at the event. We’ve begun to recognize a trend; whoever drives will usually bomb out, and the other will make it into the top 8 and leave the other waiting. I’ll have to find a way to bait him into driving next time so we can properly put this theory to the test.

          Regardless of the outcome of that particular tournament, I had fun grinding out games with everyone, as always! Usually after these sorts of events we end up having to drive back home to Connecticut almost immediately - the 2+ hour drive is a daunting task after 6+ hours of some sweaty card gaming - but since we had a room in Nashua prepped for the night, we were able to get dinner with the gang. It was a rare treat, sitting across the table with food in between all of us competitors rather than two playmats and piles of cards! We ended up going to Local Street Eats and I gotta say, their BBQ smash burger was an absolute delight.  

          After a very tall burger, it was a matter of settling into the hotel room and slowly nodding off while listening to the Calling day two stream and some oddly-synchronous snoring.
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Day 2: AGE Silver Age Open

          To preface this next bit, I came in not particularly excited about the current Silver Age format, especially after the recent banlist. My preferred (and I suppose only) class, Assassin, feels more than a little lackluster without a lot of the powerful Majestics where a large portion of the class's power budget tends to be consolidated. Up until the day before, I was debating bringing Fai or Kano for the AGE SAge event and just letting the day play out however it would. But where there’s an expected king of the mountain, there’s an avenue for a contract killer. 

          With all the recent buzz around Kayo and the banlist, teammate and fellow dagger-pusher Elyse and I quite literally vibe-checked each other into bringing a Nuu list that we thought could attack the deck while still having good enough coverage into other expected heroes. 

 

 

          Knowing the general composition of Kayo’s maindeck to be entirely attack action cards (and some brave Pummels, apparently??), we wanted to include more targeted cards like Desires of Flesh. This allows us to try and threaten cards off the top of their deck, leading to a quicker endstate where they’re exhausted of threats and giving us a small heal whether they block it or not.

     We also decided to beef up on more copies of defensive maindeck options like On the Horizon, Unmovable, and Inertia Trap, just to try and shore up our block-heavy role in the matchup. These cards also pull double-duty in other matchups, providing ways to defend against evasive Dominate threats in the case of Unmovable, or blocking the ever-annoying 4-damage breakpoint that was likely to come out of aggressive decks running about.

 

          To match the more defensive stance of our maindeck, we also shifted the equipment suite a little bit, moving away from the standard Blade Beckoner’s in favor of the Assassin-exclusive Graven Vestament and Prey Spotters.

Vestament gives us a very strong defensive outlet for our Silver made off of Contract attacks such as Excessive Bloodloss and Annihilate the Armed. Prey Spotters also enables the class’s best in-slot option for disruption, Mark of the Black Widow. This weaves together both the mill-focused style of Assassins of old as well as that of the more mark-reliant Assassins that were introduced in The Hunted. 

Rounding out the list with some Nuu classics such as Intimate Inducement provides us the opportunity to snipe power cards from the opponent’s deck before they have the chance to resolve them, while tools like Venomous Bite and Hiss allow us to push over everything but the staunchest of responses.

          After a hearty breakfast and much-needed coffee from Jajabelle's, my hotel-room’s-worth of companions and I stumbled half-awake back to Grave-Troll ready for another day of competition.

          For my first round I sat across from teammate (and eventual winner of the tournament) Julian on Kano. The game was already off to an awkward start when I quickly realized an oversight in our deckbuilding; with all the attention we put into preparing for the combat-focused powerhouses of the format, we neglected to consider our plans for the arcane-focused Wizards. One card short of what felt like a relevant 40, I was forced to include an Inertia Trap. He chipped me down early with some well-timed Voltic Bolts and I was eventually sent straight to the Shadow Realm™ by double Snapback while staring at an unfortunate handful of reds (Inertia Trap does not, in fact, prevent 3 arcane like it does 3 physical). An unfavored matchup and an unlucky draw isn’t the best way to start the day, but the rest of the round finished fast enough to keep me from wallowing.

 

          Round two went much better, giving me a Pass Over in my opening hand against an unwitting Fai’s Phoenix Flame. In response to him attempting to activate Fai’s hero ability to add the Flame back to his hand, I was able to extinguish the Flame before it could be lit. Removing that recursive option from his graveyard early gave me a lot more breathing room in the game and saved me what was likely a critical five to eight life over the course of the game. With that extra bit of space, I am barely able to block out Robbie’s fiery assault and dagger him down.

 

          The third round pit me against Dash, an aggressive hero that relies on banishing her own cards from the deck to present a barrage of strong Go Again attacks. It’s a generally bad matchup for the Mechanologist, given that she plays right into Nuu’s fatigue gameplan. There are plenty of draw sequences in which Dash can overrun Nuu’s defenses, but fortunately for me that was not the case in our game. By the combined efforts of his aggressive Boosts and my consistent banishes, I am able to whittle down Tyler’s deck before his efficient Hyper Driver resources and aggressive Talishar swings could prove lethal, putting me at 2-1.

 

          In my fourth round, I sat down across from Manoj on Oldhim, feeling pretty confident after our quick talk last night over burgers. Guardian has historically been a favored matchup for Nuu due to her hero ability allowing her to play blues from the opponent’s banish for free and Guardian tending to run a lot of costly, but very powerful, blue attacks. Unfortunately for me, Manoj had prepared for this possibility, and presented a 40-card Oldhim maindeck in a way where almost none of those powerful blue attacks were present for me to leverage; as a result, I found myself in an incredibly uphill battle against Sledge of Anvilheim, with access to only one blue Glacial Footsteps throughout the game to make use of. I presented it a total of three times across the game, but compared to an ever-present 6-power bonk, it did not prove enough.

 

          In the last round of the event, I got paired against Chan Clan Fam™ friend Chel on Valda, another Guardian. I was feeling more than a little dejected after the thorough sledging I’d experienced only twenty minutes prior, but I may have been dooming a little too much. This matchup went more to plan, with me lining up a turn of multiple big blue attacks from her banish to force her to block with her remaining cards. Sorry I had to do it to you, Chel! 😭

          With an overall record of 3-2, losing in round one and four, I found myself placing at 11th in the event. No top 8 for me this time, but the games were much more intense and fun than I’d originally expected them to be, so I certainly can’t complain! The room was a lot more diverse than I’d sort of hoped, I think a lot of people came into this event with the same idea - “Kayo will be the best deck, so I will bring something that beats Kayo” - and a lot of us neglected to bring the actual one-armed Brute into battle ourselves. That, and we’re a bunch of odd-ball specialists who would rather bring our favorite than the supposed best-in-format.
 

          I was at least able to tune in to the livestream on the drive home, and had the voices of Colin Eriksen and Patrick R to bring me the top 8 matches. Listening with bated breath as that Pummel came out of seemingly nowhere from Noah to secure victory against Elyse in the quarter-finals, agonizing in solidarity as they mention the double Speed Demon clunker that Connor drew up in the semis, mentally cheering as Julian presented that Scalding Rain for lethal in the finals… It all made for some excellent entertainment to ease the long two hour drive home, topping off a great weekend.

          In hindsight, perhaps there’s some room for Assassin in the format after all. Who knows. We’ll see how things shake out following the Pro Tour in Yokohama next month. Even as I write this I am debating changes - perhaps swapping some of our block-focused cards for perhaps a fourth source of Arcane Barrier (probably Nullrune Hood), or an Oasis Respite or two in an effort to prevent myself from getting gotted by those reprehensible Wizards (❤️affectionate❤️).

          For now, I will be satisfied with my 12 AGE points and another great day of card gaming with some of the best that New England has to offer - and getting home from an event before 6PM. SAge rounds fly by so quickly! Looking forward to next month’s AGE event, when I get to drive only ONE whole hour to The Battle Standard for some Classic Constructed.