[11th Trial of Earth] Blacksmith In 5 - 2 Dawn_to_dusk

[Blacksmith]

Trial final battles are always fun to play.

18 upgrades for me    15 for him
                                                       Bans for ME                Bans for Him

So I really don't want to comment make to many comments about the bans. Simply since it will come right back at me next year if I do. But I very much like to hear Dawn's reasoning behind his choices.
What I can say is that I believe that these bans favored me.


Game 1

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4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vl 4vl 4vl 58o 5aa 5og 6u1 6u1 74f 778 778 77a 77a 77g 77g 77g 77g 77g 77g 78q 78q 78q 7ae 7dm 8pj

Disco bow vs Mono earth denial. Won coin toss and got early disco. He got a ton of quanta, 3 wardens and a golem turn 3-4? which is more or less ideal for him. With help of Disco and a boid I manage to reduce his health turn by turn. BH did it's job and gave me another few turns to live. In the end I lost with him at 1 hp.
I also realized spending upps on boids was not nearly as good as spending them on discos. Disco do 2 extra damage every turn while boids only when uppgraded. More preparation might have made this a win.

Spoiler for Pics:

Game 2

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4sp 596 596 596 596 596 596 5ib 5ib 5ib 5ib 5ib 77e 77e 77e 77e 77e 77e 78q 78q 78q 78q 7gk 7gk 7hi 7hi 7hi 7hi 7i6 7i6 8pp

Terratids. A super start + coin toss win ( see spoiler ) I thought for sure that I had this game. Then suddenly mid game he bursts out a lot of stuff and put me at low health. I use wardens to hold of. The next turn I was certain I had him in 2 attacks so I spended 1 warden to stall one golem, that cost me the match. Once again I lost with him on 1 hp. I was mad I didn't count damage which would have made me win.

Spoiler for Pics:

Game 3

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4sm 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 590 590 590 5aa 5og 6u1 6u1 6u5 6u5 6u5 74f 778 778 77a 77a 77g 77g 77g 78q 78q 78q 7ae 7dm 8pj

Time for reversweep after 2 losses just like I did last trials. I play the improved Discobow and won coin toss I believe. Disco is a killer vs duos and did wonders. I won comfortably.

Spoiler for Pics:

Game 4

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4sm 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 590 590 590 5aa 5og 6u1 6u1 6u5 6u5 6u5 74f 778 778 77a 77a 77g 77g 77g 78q 78q 78q 7ae 7dm 8pj

Won coin toss again, what?  I faced gravity earth. Got tons of quanta early game. Fortunately I got some good top decks and early disco. There was not much he could do. Win

Spoiler for Pics:

Game 5

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4sm 594 594 594 594 594 594 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5m6 5m6 5m6 5m6 5m6 5m6 77c 77c 77c 78q 78q 78q 7k1 7k2 7k2 7k2 7k2 7k2 7q9 7q9 7q9 7q9 7q9 7q9 8pq

Even if I felt really confident with the discobow I wanted to diversify a bit. Won coin toss. At first when I saw gravity mark I thought I would lose vs pulvy. Fortunately for me he played Catatitans. Vs sancstall it would be a even game, but vs Sod stall he really needs a rush start to have a chance. Fortunately for me he didn't.

Spoiler for Pics:

Game 6

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4sm 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 590 590 590 5aa 5og 6u1 6u1 6u5 6u5 6u5 74f 778 778 77a 77a 77g 77g 77g 78q 78q 78q 7ae 7dm 8pj

It's time to rush again, after all rushing is what I do best. Once again coin toss win. In order to counter disco Dawn used Immos. However early disco still slowed him down a lot and I managed to win with a good margin. I don't think he had a good draw though.

Spoiler for Pics:

Game 7

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4vh 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5og 71a 778 778 778 779 779 77g 77g 77g 77g 77g 77g 7ae 7ae 7ae 7ae 7ae 7dm 8pn

Why change a winning strategy, won coin toss again. So even if I love discobow I wanted to give the a lot faster frog bow a chance. It has 5 more creatures than disco bow and can therefor handle his wardens quite well, and you can't really play an earth finals without using ants at least once. Instead of running into wardens I ran into a 48 card life stall and a earth nymph. Life stalls are a bit slower than light-earth stalls, partly because the lack of dials. Mid game he had a good lockdown with the earth nymph. If he had started to draw his Sogs I might have lost. Fortunately he didn't and when he played mito on the nymph I decided to upgrade my boids and won in 2 turns.

Spoiler for Pics:

GG's Dawn well played. It was fun playing you and I'm happy you have discovered the power of . I'm also happy to finally get my third master title. Not to many people have that

[dawn to dusk]

Spoiler for Bans:

Overlooked Nova as a card to ban, would have chosen that over Devourer had I remembered. The cards banned against me didn't feel restrictive, as SoPa was expected, and the rest could be built around. Besides that, my ban plan has always been to ban specific decks in specific games. He was unable to play stalls in even games, which meant they could only be played on odd games. From there, I banned Rush cards for Odd games to restrict that. This greatly helps in making predictions to what he would play. I would have used Fractal Golems in more odd games, if DiscordBow wasn't played as much as it was.

Definitely should have banned Nova.

Mono Dom 1 - 0

Spoiler for Hidden:

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58o 58o 58o 58o 596 596 596 596 59c 59c 59c 59c 5aa 5aa 5aa 778 778 778 778 778 77a 77a 77a 77a 77a 77a 78q 78q 78q 78q 8pm

1hp win :DD

Time Rush 2 - 0

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58o 590 590 590 590 590 590 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5ru 5ru 5ru 5ru 6rk 778 77a 77a 77a 77a 77a 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 8ps

1hp win :DD

Fractal Golems 2 - 1

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58o 58o 58o 593 593 593 5aa 5aa 61q 61q 622 622 622 622 622 778 77a 77a 77a 77a 77a 77a 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 8pu

Hardcountered

Versus All 2 - 2

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55p 55p 55p 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58v 58v 596 596 596 596 596 5aa 5aa 745 745 745 77a 77a 77a 77a 77a 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 8pl

Discord produced quanta struggles, and Pulvy was Deflagged instantly

Catatitans 2 - 3

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55s 55s 55s 55s 55s 561 561 561 595 595 595 595 595 595 5aa 5aa 77i 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 7n2 7n2 7n2 7n2 7n2 8pl

Was hoping to get some early chip damage with a Titan, but didn't draw one for the first few turns. After which, Earth Stalls are able to spiral out of control.

Immorush 2 - 4

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590 596 596 596 596 596 596 5f9 5f9 5f9 5f9 5f9 5fa 5fa 5fa 5fa 5fa 778 778 778 778 778 77a 77a 77a 77a 77g 77g 78q 7dm 8pm

A potential counter, but again a slow start of not drawing Immolation

Life Stall 2 - 5

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58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 593 593 593 593 59c 59c 59c 59c 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c3 5c3 5c5 5c5 5c5 5c9 5cq 5cq 5cq 5cq 5cq 778 778 778 778 778 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 7ak 7ak 8pn

MASSIVE misplay by me. Mito was there for the single niche case where it would be useful. Unfortunately, didn't draw some cards which would have been nice, and couldn't heal enough damage. I made some last minute changes to the deck, so it would be larger than Black's stall, however in retrospect, I put far too little pendulums into the deck which was really tough to get through.

[Zawadx]

TrO Approved. Gratz Blacks, and good try dawn!

[CactusKing]

This must have been intense, sad I didn't see it.