Tournament Report: Hallow’s End at Grasshopper’s Comics

This past Saturday was the Hallow’s End Holiday event at Grasshopper’s Comics. This was the first event held at the store since the release of Throne of Tides, which also marks it as the first event under the new Core format. We had nine players turn out for the event and everyone had an absolute blast testing out their new Core builds while simultaneously competing for the Hallow’s End exclusive playmat prize.

When I first saw the spoiler for Throne of Tides I quickly decided that I wanted to revisit the Druid. A Horde Druid was the first deck I built in the Worldbreaker block format and I stuck with it for quite a while despite its lackluster performance. My new Druid build, however, saw me switch to the Alliance with a drastic new approach to the class.

The Deck
The urge to build a new Druid deck came after reading the card Wild Mushroom. I knew immediately that it was a gimmick card with the potential to be great, so I decided to build a theme deck around it. The theme, which I affectionately call “Trust the Fungus,” is a build focusing on the two mushroom abilities (Wild Mushroom and Fungal Growth) and a Treant rush.

After a very small playtesting session the day before the tournament I ended up cutting Wild Mushroom in favor of a more defensive (and quick acting) card. I had a feeling this was going to happen as I want the deck to be competitive and Wild Mushroom is simply too gimmicky to survive in that environment. Plus, the deck’s strongest point, the Treant rush, works so fast that it is possible the Wild Mushroom would never fire.

The Tournament
Round 1 vs. Ricky Hahn (Alliance Holy Paladin)
Ricky hadn’t been playing World of Warcraft at all when this tournament was announced so he had to scramble to make his deck legal for the new Core format. Even with his deck in the very early stages of what will hopefully become a powerful Earth Elemental deck, I knew this could be a rough game as Holy Wrath is a very effective turn six reset button against my deck. I knew that I had to rush him as hard as possible before turn six to make sure that the Holy Wrath didn’t end my game.

I had a strong start with a stashed Magni on turn one and a Verdant Boon on turn two. I dropped Surge of Power on turn three and I didn’t look back after that. Turn three saw me break through for eight damage to his hero, and on turn four I dropped a Stevrona Forgemender coupled with a Bottled Life, meaning I had a total of six 3/3 treant tokens in play, four of which attacked that turn.

Unfortunately for Ricky, his opening hand was absolutely terrible, which allowed my rush to break through so hard. He had no turn one or two play, and his turn three play was to flip a quest. He revealed to me later that, after his mulligan, his hand was two quests and five cards that cost five or more, two of which were Holy Wrath. There really was nothing he could do to prevent the rush and I won the game soundly on turn five.
1-0

Round 2 vs. Adam Teitelbaum (Horde Protection Paladin)
After all the talks leading up to the release of Throne of Tides, I knew in advance that Adam was running a deck built around Grand Crusader. The card is extremely strong in this format and I knew it would put all of his allies just a step ahead of my weeny Treants. My plan for this game was to rush early to build damage, then sit back and hope to swarm him with a late game Boundless Wild that would leave me with distinct board advantage.

Unfortunately for me this did not work out. I knew Adam would be running low cost characters that would be fueled by Grand Crusader, but I did not expect all of them to be protectors. The first four allies he played were all protectors with decent life, meaning my early game consisted of trading Treants for his characters so that he never established board presence. My turns one through three saw me drop Bottled Life, Verdant Boon, and Stevrona Forgemender, which allowed me to clear his board. This came at the cost of my own, however, as he used one of his decent allies to attack into Forgemender, leaving both of us with no characters on the table.

I took this lull in the game as an opportunity to build resource advantage via Starburst and Davius, Hearld of Nature. When he got to six resources, however, I made sure to always leave three open during his turn as I was constantly expecting a Mazu’kon to hit the table and left an Entangling Growth in my hand. I later found out his deck didn’t run Mazu’kon, but the Growth came in handy anyway. He dropped a Corrupted Egg Shell on his turn six, and blew it up on turn seven to get his 8/8 Twilight Dragonkin. It became a 10/10 with the Grand Crusader in play, and became even larger when he played another card that I cannot recall. After all this, however, he was left with no hand and no ready resources, and was very sad when I played the Entangling Growth on his giant Dragon.

On my next turn I played my Boundless Wild for nine 1/1 Treants, giving me twelve on the board in total. He then spent his next turn drawing lots of cards via Elched Dragonblade Girdle (destroying the 10/10) and his quests. I broke through for quite a bit of damage on my next turn thanks to having twelve Treants, but was brought to a halt on Adam’s next turn when he dropped two protectors and a 6/1 ferocity ally that hit me for full, bringing within fatal should Adam get another turn. I happened to draw a Surge of Power on my turn, though, and broke through with ten of the Treants to secure the win.
2-0

Round 3 vs. Joe Demestrio (Horde Hunter)
I knew this was going to be a difficult match going in as the Hunter is an extremely strong deck and Boomer very easily shuts down my early game rush just by being on the table. My plan for this game was to attempt to ease the pain of Boomer in the early game while trying to build my Treant army for a late game push, possibly leading into Deathwing.

This did not work out, however, as my hand post-mulligan saw no plays for turns one, two, or three. I ended up drawing into a Magni and a Verdant Boon, but these were useless as Boomer hit the table as soon as he could. I ended up shifting gears and going for resource acceleration, hoping that it would help me in the later game as long as I could keep his board clear. I did make a play mistake, however, and forgot to use my flip to kill Boomer earlier than I did, which would have allowed me to keep two Treants alive that surely would have helped.

I ended up stabilizing quite a bit and took control of the board. By turn eight I had seven Treants on table while he only had two ranged weapons. I had quite a bit of damage on me, though, so when he dropped Mazu’kon and shot at me with his weapons, it was game over for my Fungus.
2-1

Round 4 vs. Peter Sanzone (Monster Mage)
Between rounds of the tournament Pete explained to me that he had no idea if his deck was going to work and that he hadn’t playtested it at all. I was just happy to see a Mage across the table as it meant I only had to do 25 damage for the win rather than the 28 and 29 damage I had to do in my previous three games.

The downside to this match, though, was that I was completely unprepared for a Monster or a Mage deck. Monsters are still new to the competitive scene and I haven’t really seen what they could do yet, nor do I know their cards all that well. As for Mage decks, I simply have not seen one in quite some time and am not terribly familiar with their cards.

None of this mattered, however, as I completely steamrolled Peter. I drew the strongest start I could with a turn one stashed Magni plus Bottled Life, leaving me with three 1/1 tokens on the end of my first turn. Turn two saw me play Verdant Boon (now six 1/1s) and hitting for 3. Turn three was the clincher with a Surge of Power and a tidal wave swing for 12 damage, putting him at 15 taken on turn 3. He tried to stabilize and drop some allies, but none of it mattered as I put out another Surge of Power on turn four and broke through for the win.

To put it simply, this game was the one in which my deck worked as best as it possibly could.
3-1

Round 5 vs. Bill Powers (Horde Paladin)
Another Paladin! This was getting frustrating. It isn’t so much that the Paladin is a strong build, it is just that Holy Wrath is an easy and immediate answer to my rush that also serve as a reset button.

This game was also plagued with bad drawing on my part. My post-mulligan hand saw me wind up with four copies of Starburt and three quests. To make matters worse, each turn after the first I drew each card a turn after it is optimal to play it. I drew Bottled Life on turn two, Verdant Boon on turn three, and Surge of Power on turn four. Even with this ugly start, however, I was able to break through for quite a bit of damage as Bill spent his early game putting out a weapon and drawing cards.

Everything went to hell on his turn six, though, when he played the Holy Wrath that I had managed to dodge throughout the tournament. He killed seven of my allies, which put seven tokens on his Grim Campfire that he dropped on turn four. Without any equipment destruction in my deck I knew this was the end for me, but I obviously had to go down fighting.

Thankfully, Bill didn’t do too much damage to me over the next two turns and I was able to put out a few Treants here and there and build resources via my excessive number of Starburts. Later on, however, I was put to a decision when I had no allies on the table and the only card in my hand was Deathwing. Having no face up resources and no board presence, I took the gamble and destroyed my entire board to put Deathwing on the table.

This didn’t prove to be enough, though, as Bill simply put out filler cards and token allies to effectively ignore Deathwing’s start of turn trigger. He also played an Egg Shell that he saved to get two 8/8 Dragonkin, which were enough to beat me to death before I had any chance to recover.
3-2

Conclusion
My 3-2 record had me finish in 3rd place, which I am extremely happy with considering it was my first tournament with the Trust the Fungus deck. I obviously wish I had come in first to win that awesome playmat as I didn’t win the door prize either (it went to Ricky). The results of this tournament are as follows:
1st – Joe Demestrio
2nd – Bill Powers
3rd – Terence Dorman (myself)
4th – Adam Teitlbaum
5th – Joseph Yackel
6th – Michael Lloyd
7th – Peter Sanzone
8th – Ricky Hahn
9th – Michael Prunella (Dropped)

I’d also like to give a special shout out to Joe Yackel who lent me the cards I needed to finish out the deck. It was also his idea to put Deathwing in the deck, which was something I hadn’t considered, and I like the idea. I don’t know how long he is going to last in the deck, though, as the deck definitely needs some improvement and Deathwing is currently on my short list of cards that can be cut in favor of more defensive minded cards.

Happy Halloween!