DadBodCon, or DBC for short, is a tournament in Utrecht, and it is organized by David. It is in the "denksportcentrum" in Utrecht, where Chess, checkers, bridge tournaments are also held. A fitting place to hold an oldschool tournament. This was to be a Swaffel event, which means you play also fallen empires and the promo cards from '94 if you want to.
Since there was an invitation for spice players to send in a deck pic for most spicy deck, and since I had not played my deck with wombats for quite a long time now, I decided to go for it, since I had a standing promise I would take this deck to tournament and I had not done that since something in the range of 2012 or so. I was thinking about doing some changes, but in the end I kept the last iteration, with one animate dead in it.
I tried saving the day with an enchantress and trying to get a bigger wombat, but it was very hard.
The second game I was off to a pretty slow start, so I decided to speed things up by using time walk to get ahead. I just had to play the wombat because I did not have anything else, and waiting for another blood moon did not seem very enticing.
Even though one showed up, I could not make it big enough fast enough to make a lot of dents in my opponent. I was feeling a bit bad about not running control magics in the sideboard, I thought it was a bit unspicy to do so, but by this time I felt I really needed them to survive.
After I while I thought I was getting somewhere, when I had two wombats there was some potential. Unfortunately, they could hardly attack with the onslaught of creatures on the opposite side.
On round 4, I was paired against an Ernhamgeddon deck. I did not know that when I mulliganed to 5 since both previous hands mysteriously contained no mana.
The deck was doing what a deck like that does, it went off fast, swords to plowshared my enchantress, played Erhnam Djinn and armageddon. It was over quickly and without much surprising play.
After this, it was time for the last round. After I had mulliganed to 6, my opponent opened with a black vise. Fortunately, I was able to get from under that fast.
After meeting the familiar faces and shaking some hands, and then helping out with the tournament software to get a pairing right after a repairing, it was time for round 1. My opening hand looked promising.
Unfortunately, my opponent started with a land tax, then a black vise, then an Ivory tower and then a Sylvan Library. So I was either looking at a control deck like a the deck version with Ivory towers, or tax Edge. Both of whom my deck does not like due to them being heavily anti-creature.
What did not help, it that I did not draw into a wombat, even after drawing some extra cards with my Enchantress. It was basically hopeless against 2 ivory towers and no offense. So, no surprise there, I lost.
The second game, I did not have a lot of power but I decided to keep my hand since it did not seem that bad. But unfortunately, there was quick black vise again, on turn 1.
The fact that my opponent played an Abyss and I drew nothing to counter that (spectral cloak would have helped, as would have the disenchant I had boarded in).
But, since I was first destroyed by balance, then by wrath god, after which I was mind twisted, you can guess the outcome.
The second round, I was paired against a green/red deck. Lots of burn is also not very promising, but at least it is better than Abyss, wrath and stuff like that.
My enchantress did not stay on the board long, which was not surprising, so I had to wait for a while and first use power sink, then play the wombat out with spirit link and cloak all in one go.
Even though that looked pretty good, a bunch of Ernham Djinns eventually stopped it and blocked it to death when I made a miscalculation, after I which animated it, then played a bunch of enchantments on it and went for it that way. This way it flew, which made it more resilient against blocking djinns. What did not help is that my opponent had helpfully made all my lands into mountains due to blood moon, which made me happy I had chosen to play some basics because I knew the deck does not like blood moons. Somewhere during the game I remember my opponent playing a tranquility. I don't exactly know when, but I remember it vividly since not a lot of people play that card main deck. In the end, I did manage to get out more enchantments, and managed to get to this.
Eventually the wombat got really big, and I won my first game of the day. And it felt kind of awesome, I must admit.
The second game I was off to a pretty slow start, so I decided to speed things up by using time walk to get ahead. I just had to play the wombat because I did not have anything else, and waiting for another blood moon did not seem very enticing.
After some land destruction from my opponents side, I was still able to power sink an Erhnam Djinn, and I animated that with my animate dead. I played spirit link on my wombat to make it a bit bigger, even though a single bolt would take it out. I had to try this. One more enchantment and it would be big enough to make a real difference. This was however, not necessary. The djinn, together with a really small wombat, managed to save the day because I got ahead in damage too quickly. 2-0. Jippy, I would not be going home completely defeated, which is something you have to take into account when you play something like this.
My next opponent was playing a black weenie deck with land destruction. Not an ideal matchup, especially if it is also playing mind twist.
To make a short story even shorter, I was crushed before I could even do something. The second game I was greeted by a quick Sengir vampire.
Which I kept a bit at bay with spirit link, but unfortunately, no wombat showed up.
Even though one showed up, I could not make it big enough fast enough to make a lot of dents in my opponent. I was feeling a bit bad about not running control magics in the sideboard, I thought it was a bit unspicy to do so, but by this time I felt I really needed them to survive.
After I while I thought I was getting somewhere, when I had two wombats there was some potential. Unfortunately, they could hardly attack with the onslaught of creatures on the opposite side.
Eventually I was able to squeeze out a win in game 2.
On game 3, I found out my opponent was playing Nevinyrral's disk. Which is something I totally cannot handle with this deck. Unsurprisingly, I lost after the disk went off and I was mind twisted again. That last part was hardly necessary :) What was cool was that my opponent had put in warp artifact.
On round 4, I was paired against an Ernhamgeddon deck. I did not know that when I mulliganed to 5 since both previous hands mysteriously contained no mana.
The deck was doing what a deck like that does, it went off fast, swords to plowshared my enchantress, played Erhnam Djinn and armageddon. It was over quickly and without much surprising play.
The second game I tried to put on a fight, but was again hindered by my decision not to run control magics. There might have been a chance I had them. Perhaps I should run something like the enchantress deck I played on the Camel Trophy a while back, which somewhat unbelievably made it to the top 8 there.
Anyway, this board state looks promising, but after a swords, a balance, an Erhnam and armageddon, it was over. I wish I could make the story more interesting, but it really wasn't :) I was 1-4 at this time, and was hoping that at least David had enjoyed looking at my deck pic.
Next up, I was playing against Kobus, who tends to play cool and original decks. He was running a troll deck with a twist, he was playing the promo cards like Arena, which were legal in this tournament.
I quickly played a holy strength on my enchantress, to prevent her from being destroyed in the Arena.
In the end though, I managed to get things rolling and the fun thing about enchantress is that you can get these completely bonkers boardstates like this. The troll was a good way to keep Arena at bay in the start of the game, which gave me the chance to build op this enormous board. The fact that it took so long to build this before I actually won, should give you some idea of how bad this deck is :)
Fortunately, I managed to win with my invisible flying wombat. It would have been kind of embarrassing to lose with a board state like this (but I have managed to do so, though not in this tournament..). My next opening hand was not spectacular with the 2 cities, but it had plenty of power, so I kept it.
I also had the chance of seeing this on a table nearby, classic!
Kobus also used his Chaos orb for naked orb flips, and destroyed one of my cities early, when I did not draw into a lot of land.
With some help from the timetwister though, I was able to recover and started building a pretty nice boardstate again.
In case you're wondering why the Enchantress is tapped, she's been fighting a Rukh Egg in the Arena :)
Kobus tried some more aggressive tactics with the Arena later on, which caused my Wombat to become tapped, also a rare sight when there is a Spectral Cloack on it..
This gave me time to watch a unsleeved Thallid deck being played against Remko.
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| unsleeved thallids, what's not to like? |
After this, it was time for the last round. After I had mulliganed to 6, my opponent opened with a black vise. Fortunately, I was able to get from under that fast.
As it turned out, the deck was also playing red, which is definitely in the "not good, let's panic" section for my deck. I had to recycle my creatures by getting the out of the graveyard several times.
Since my creatures were being destroyed a lot, I used my powercards and recycledc time walk a couple of times to get to the point where I could play a lot of enchantments in one go, before my opponent had a chance to draw into swords or wrath of god or the likes again, which made my wombat untargetable, and gave me a lot of life.
After taking some comments about looping power which is apparently unsportsmanlike to some people, while bolting birds and enchantresses is not, it was time for game 2, in which I found out that playing vises and winter orbs is apparently very sportsmanlike :)
It is however, very slow. So after several of my creatures were again wiped of the board, I started attacking with a birds of paradise. Even though I am not sure it would have won me the game, it was doing pretty well, dealing 7 points of damage in that game before time ran out and I won this match1-0-1.
So, in the end I went 3-4 in a 7 round swiss. Not a great achievement, but winning more than one match with this deck against some pretty serious opponents (and granted, some not so serious but fun:)) was as good as a result as I could hope for. Oh, and I was able to catch the last couple of turns of this matchup here, Thrulls against Thallids! Very, very cool indeed!
I was not able to win the Spice price, but David did mention he enjoyed my deck picture, and during the day my wombats made several people laugh, so mission accomplished on that part. Thanks to David for organizing this great event, and thanks to all that showed up to play. I'm looking forward to seeing you all on the next tournament! See you then!
