Silver Age Tournament Report

Last weekend I got to play in a sealed precon tournament at Fantasy Tower, one of my FLGSes. It was a ton of fun, and it made me appreciate the Silver Age format a lot more. I was enjoying it before, but the release of PEN (and Chane rotating out for a season) has made the format a lot more interesting. Runeblades are still good, but they don’t feel as dominant as they did before. Of course, you can’t draw that conclusion from the sealed precon tournament since there’s only 10 heroes eligible, and the decks–while competenent–are probably not the best versions for each hero. Still! I appreciate the faster gameplay. Keeps things moving along, but still allows for comebacks and lots of play.

Going in I was hoping for the Bravo deck. There were 10 players signed up, so a 10% chance I’d get him. I was a bit dissapointed to see the player who picked 3rd win the deck but figured I’d just have to try my best with whoever I ended up getting. Imagine my surprise when an 11th player was registered which meant, since I was the last to roll, I would get a shot at any of the 10 heroes. Luckily enough I got Bravo! If nothing else, this meant I wouldn’t need to buy the deck after the tournament.

LSS released a sideboard guide for the decks, which came in handy since most players (myself including) were playing with heroes for the first time.

Round 1 vs Miguel

Miguel and I came to the tournament together. While normally I wouldn’t like to be matched up against a friend, since this was a casual tournament I didn’t mind. I’m pretty nervous in public, so getting to play what felt like a casual match helped me relax. It also meant that we both could comfortably learn our new heroes without worrying about annoying our opponent’s. Miguel got Enigma, and it took him a while to get the jist of her. It didn’t help that Enigma was one of the more complex heroes to play. I’ve faced her on Talishar a few times, so I knew that I needed to watch out for her shield tokens. If she got too many, she’d be able to attack me a bunch of times each turn, something that I knew guardians had trouble dealing with from playing Oldhim.

I focused on pushing enough damage to break her shields (they are required to pop if they can prevent any damage). Once Miguel got the hang of it, he started to claw back tempo. I was holding on to a Pummel to finish the game, but couldn’t find a time to use it. I had gotten him down to around 6 when time was called. Miguel decided to concede to me because I was winning when time was called. I suggested we play out a turn or two more, but we didn’t want to hold up the tournament and usually a loss is better than a tie. I think if I had 2-3 more turns I would have won, but it’s hard to know for sure.

Record: 1 - 0

Round 2 vs Chuy

Chuy was on Kayo, one of the stronger heroes in the meta and, by extension, the sealed decks. Kayo hits hard and fast. He was swinging in for 6+ damage at least twice per turn, sometimes with a jab for 3 at the end. Guardians generally struggle defending against multiple attacks, so I was leaking damage almost every turn. My response was to play more aggresively than usual, swinging back with 8+ damage as often as I could. Eventually, we got to a point where he had a card in arsenal and I attacked with a Blue Disable. It only cost 4 because of a Seismic Surge Token I had made defending on his turn. He blocked all but 1 damage, but I had the Pummel ready to go. That mean that he took 5 damage, lots his arsenal, and lost a card in hand. With only 1 card left on his turn, he passed allowing me to swing back on mine with a full 4 card hand for game.

Record: 2 - 0

Round 3 vs Josh

Josh got Dorinthea and he wasn’t very happy about it. He said that he didn’t really like playing warriors because the game play style did not make sense to him. Unlike other heroes, warriors almost always attack with their weapon and have few attack action cards in the deck. What they do have a lot of, thought, are reaction cards which let them pump their weapon attacks after blocks are declared. There’s not many defense reactions in Silver Age, so this puts a lot of pressure on the defending player to either overblock and risk wasting cards, or under block and get blown out.

I felt like I was on the backfoot most of the game. I really don’t know how to play against reactions well, so I took a ton of damage early on that I did not need to take. Dori lets you attack with your weapon twice in a row if it hits, so I prioritized blocking early to keep him at only 1 attack per turn. On my turns, I often would just swing with my hammer for 4 and pass back. Eventually, he set up a huge turn where I blocked semi-efficiently, but he pumped his sword up to 9 damage. Luckily for me, I had sideboarded in Staunch Response per the guide and was able to pay the full 6 to block the entire swing. After that, I would always use 3 cards to block, even if the attack he presented did less damage. Most of the attack reactions pump in increments of +3, so that meant that he’d need 2 pumps to get damage over. The entire game he wasn’t able to put a single counter on his sword, and a Crush card + Bravo’s hero power sealed the deal, attacking for 9 after his equipmeent was spent and with only 8 block in hand.

Record: 3 - 0

Round 4 vs Chaparro

Chaparro was on Viserai, which is by far my worst match up. I’ve played against a lot of runeblades online and almost always lose. Still, I figured a 3-1 record would be pretty good so I just held on to my cards and planned to block a lot. You only need AB1 vs runeblades, so I sided in the new helmet. Why they just reprinted Null Rune Hood but with a class restriction, I’ll never know.

This went like most runeblade fights go. He’d have “on turns” with a bunch of runechant tokens making his attacks free and pinging me for arcane damage. I’d pitch to block arcane the try to block out the attack. I’m not sure if it’s Viserai or just the way the precon is built, but I didn’t have to deal with as much go again as Chane. Very grateful for that because it meant I could block efficiently. We traded hits, him building up rune chants requiring me to block out with my hand, then me getting a turn to sneak in some damage.

At one point I drew pummel, but had no way to play it because I had to block. I decided to take some damage, going down to 6, in order to aresenal my pummel. Then, I spent the next 3 turns blocking out, getting down to 3. Eventually, he ran out of runechants so he had to spend an entire turn generating them. That gave me one turn with a full hand so I went in, knowing that pummel was ready to go. He decided to not play around the pummel (which he suspected I had), because it meant giving up all 4 of his cards. Since I still had the pummel, I’d be able to do the same thing again next turn. That allowed me to push 6 damage through to win.

Record: 4 - 0

Conclusion

Well look at that! I did not expect to win! I got $600 MXN in store credit for my trouble, offsetting the $550 MXN entry fee (but not the additional $1700 MXN I spent on sleeves and a Jarl deck :D). Overall, had a ton of fun! The final standatings had me in first at 4-0, then Chaparro, Josh, and Miguel (in that order due to tie breakers) all at 3-1. I really liked this Bravo, and can see why he’s better than the original. That extra 2 damage adds up! It’s what let me pop Miguel’s tokens somewhat regularly, and close out the game vs Josh. I’m sure there are some cases where being able to dominate something from hand or something that doesn’t have crush is better, but the way the deck is built everything has crush and you’ll almost never get to attack from hand. Usually you’ll block 3 and either swing for 4 with the hammer if you kept a blue, or arsenal a red for the next time you get to attack. Being able to make full use of 6 resources shouldn’t be underestimated either.

I don’t know when I’ll go play again (last time was during Christmas!), but I think I’ll bring Bravo again. Gonna whip something up on Talishare to practice. I think the Bravo deck is pretty comptent, so I really only want to change the equipment. I rarely played auras, usually blocking with them instead, so the chest piece just blocked for 2. The boots were also hard to use because I couldn’t reliably make seismic tokens. Gonna swapm them for the civic gear and see how that works for me.

Also, I want to get back to playing Ira! I think I want to play both, though I’m swapping Oldhim out for Bravo for now.

Anyways, checkout F&B and play some Silver Age if you can! It’s a ton of fun and pretty cheap to get into! I think since the new set release, most decks are under $50 USD again, with a lot of them in the $20 USD range. Happy gaming!