After last weeks discovery that in an aggressive meta I can't just sit back and indiscriminately blast everything put in front of me like some kind of magical Judge Judy, I picked up the cards needed to build the more midrangey Golem based deck, also known as "Dirt Rune".
A couple of weeks ago there was a Grand Prix in Fukuoka (how's the timing zzz..) and a Dirt Rune deck made it into the top 8, so I based the deck on that.
The deck is a combination of cards that create dirt tokens, and cards that require these tokens to be sacrificed as a cost to create Golems or do other cool stuff. Thematically I think we're supposed to imagine that some of these Followers can make Golems out of dirt or something, even though they're clearly from Warhammer 40k's Eye of Terror.
Strikeform Golem
[Rush]
Guardform Golem
[Ward]
An example of things that MAKE materials:
Evolve (1): Evolve this follower.
Last Words: Summon a Magic Sediment. [Magic Sediments are 1pp Rune <Earth Sigil> Amulets with [Stack].]
Last Words is an "on death" trigger.
Magic Sediment (Token)
Examples of a way to SPEND earth material:
Fanfare: [Earth Rite] Put 2 Guardform Golems into your EX Area. [Guardform Golem are 2pp 2/3 Rune <Golem> followers with [Ward].]
Earth Rite is the key term for "spend a material as a cost", and your EX Area can be thought of as a second hand that sits in front of you and has a max capacity of 5. This ability basically allows you to add two Golems to your second hand, and then play them later like normal cards.
Ancient Alchemist (Evolved)
While this follower is in play, subtract 1 from the cost of playing your <Golem> followers. Whenever an allied <Golem> follower comes into play, choose an enemy leader (read: player) or enemy follower. Deal 3 damage to it.BURN BABY BURN
14th Sep - Locals - オレタン天神 20人 ~ Dirt Rune
Round 1: Aggro Nightmare
I mulliganed a very borderline hand knowing I had much better average hands against Nightmare (you get one free mulligan), but the hand that followed was MUCH worse. This deck has a lot of top end that if you can get to you can stabilise pretty well, but getting there against Nightmare Aggro can be difficult. Despite my slow start I managed to stabilise by deploying enough Guardform Golems, and was threatening lethal, but got blown out by Nightmare's signature card Cerberus, which can put out an absolute firetrucking amount of damage at little to no cost with her 0 cost generated spells.
Cerberus
Evolve (2): Evolve this follower.
Fanfare: Put a Mimi or a Coco into your EX Area. [Necrocharge_10] Put 1 of each instead.
Necrocharge_X means, if you have X cards or more in your grave, escalate the effect.
Choose a friendly Follower. Give it +2 Power (permanently)
By playing these in back to back turns, and evolving one, you get 3 Cocos and 2 Mimis, which on top of the Follower attacking is +6 damage, with the Mimis clearing my Ward Followers.
Stupid sexy vampires.
0-1
Round 2: Royal Aggro
This was my first exposure to Royal Aggro and without knowing the timings and key cards of the deck, it was always going to be quite difficult. After the death of the Queen this week, it seemed like every Follower was out for blood, either coming down with haste, attacking twice, or creating additional bodies upon arrival.
I learned a lot about the importance of tempo in this game, and I think I can almost draw some ties to chess. The entire pattern of the game was something like this:
1. Royal player develops a board, dealing 1-3 damage to me in the process with hasty Followers.
2. I manage to clear the board with removal and my Evolved Followers.
3. Return to 1.
The problem with this play pattern is that while I felt like I was finding good and efficient ways to answer his threats, by the time we got to the mid-game and I'd stabilised the board a bit, I was at 5 to his untouched 20 due to the tempo of the game. I was never able to be the aggressor, always responding to his threats rather than developing my own.
This is a viable play pattern with a control deck in MTG, because the use of the Land resource system means that MTG aggro decks have a low land count and a low "power curve" to match it. In this game you get the Max PP every turn regardless of whether you're playing aggro or control, so even the aggro decks play a top end. In this case, that top end was a guy called Albert (lol?) who came down and finished the job.
Albert, Levin Saber (Evolved)
[Storm] Strike: Stand this follower. This ability can only be used once per turn.
Evolve: This turn, this follower takes no battle damage
Storm means it can attack players on the same turn its played. Strike is an on attack trigger. So this Follower can come down, and attack face for 6 immediately.
0-2
Round 3: Dragon Amulet Control
Dragons again, but this time I'm a little more confident because I feel like the Dirt deck has a lot more ways to deal with the bigger bodies, and Followers with [Ward] at least give some tissue-paper thin protection against the Dragoonbag.
The game played out almost exactly as I hoped it would, chipping away at the dragon player's life total while sitting behind Guardform golems, and then using Gandalf Erasmus in the end game with Ancient Alchemist (scroll up) to burn away the big scary dragons and also my opponent.
Fanfare: [Earth Rite] Choose an enemy follower. Deal 6 damage to it. Deal 2 damage to that enemy's leader.
Activate: [Act this follower & Earth Rite]: Choose an enemy follower. Deal 6 damage to it. Deal 2 damage to that enemy's leader.
1-2
Round 4: Dragon Amulet Control
If there was ever a meta that should be able to be designed against, surely it's this one. Despite there being 6 factions each with 2-3 different playable decks with them, 80% of my matchups across 10 tournament games at this point have been against either Nightmare Aggro, or Dragon Midrange/Control.
This game played out fairly similarly to Round 3, except I didn't have as many [Ward] Followers at my disposal. I got to the point where I was threatening overwhelming lethal, sitting at what I thought was a comfortable 10 life, and my opponent drew to only 2 cards in hand. He lit up a bit, and I jokingly asked him if it was "exactly what he needed?" ちょうどいいの？
Except the joke was on me, because it turns out it WAS exactly what he needed. A card I'd never seen before in all my Dragon games, this thing:
[Storm]
He played it, and unfortunately without any [Ward] Followers, hit me for exactly 10. Honestly when you're at 1-2 in a tournament I'd probably rather learn about something like this than scrap a win into 2-2, as the difference between 1-3 and 2-2 is exactly nothing other than some ego points.
1-3
Post Event Thoughts
First time playing this new deck so I wasn't expecting too much. I think the deck has reasonable matchups across the board, but seems quite susceptible to bad runs of draws with almost no card-draw or selection, and a real glut at the 3-5 cost range. It felt like a lot of turns from 3 onwards I was still just playing one card per turn, which lead to some loss of tempo especially against the more aggressive decks. That being said, despite the results I think Golemancy is the better way to play Rune this format and I'll keep exploring the deck.
Nico (the Nightmare player, friend and testing partner) picked up Bishop for some variety after playing hyper aggro for a couple of weeks, so I'm thinking of starting a second faction as well. I don't want to double up with him, so that leaves Elf, Royal and Dragon. I think I'll read some cards now that I have a little experience and go from there.
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