Plays at KGI

My apologies, this post is coming out a bit later than I would have liked. The moment KGI started, it became a jam-packed weekend. I played the whole of Saturday and also did a Farewell to WTR event at Rule Zero on the Sunday as well. I just did not have the brain cells over the weekend to write a post that would do the amazing event that was KGI justice.

So, without further adieu, let's have a look at what the event was like, and how I played!

The Attendance

There were so many faces at KGI this weekend! The London folks were there; Finbarr, Tripp, Dan VandenBurg. But, I also met some new people as well! Obviously, I have already met Aaron from Go Again Gaming on the Friday night before. I also met Brandon from Teklo Card, an extremely good Flesh and Blood singles card store ran by a really nice guy! It was really nice to meet all these new people and I look forward to play against them.

First 3 Rounds - The Draft

At 11AM, the day kicked off with a Draft. Adam from Kingdom Gaming gave everyone a deck box and a pack of sleeves to use for the draft, woop woop!

We had 6 pods of Draft, each pod being allocated a random draft-able Flesh and Blood booster box! My pod was allocated a box of Monarch Unlimited. I believe other pods had a variety of 1st Edition Tales of Aria, Monarch and Welcome To Rathe Unlimited.

We started the pack opening soon after. You would not believe what was my pack one pick one.

I was so taken aback, it was the first time I pulled a Fable! Even if I lost all my games today, I still basically won. It was a really insane moment.

If you think that was crazy, wait till you hear what was my pack two pick one

That certainly earned me a couple "Excuse me, what?". I usually don't get this lucky, trust me 😂. There were a couple lucky boxes that day, I know someone in the pod behind us pulled a Heart of Fyendal as well!

I didn't even end up drafting into Chane or Prism. I was getting signals that Light and Light Warriors were taken, so I steered clear. Although I could have potentially drafted into Prism, I ultimately decided not to as I'm not familiar with Prism gameplay. I also noticed Shadow Runeblade being drafted heavily, so I was only left with one choice: Shadow Brute, Levia.

This wasn't a bad thing, I actually felt most comfortable playing Levia anyway. It also helped that I read the signals correctly. We had 3 Chane, 2 Boltyn, 1 Prism, and 1 other Levia player.

My first match was against James Ashall, who drafted Chane. I felt like I played adequately for most of the match. However, my lack of experience playing Levia showed, as I didn't block with attacks that had 6 power. I kept thinking that keeping those high power attacks to smash was better. At one point in the game, I was not able to turn off Levia's Blood Debt, which James used to his advantage. In the final turn, James made sure that I had to block with everything from hand, therefore not able banish a card with 6 power on my turn, killing me off with Blood Debt. It was very well calculated, and even though the match ended in my loss, I learnt a ton about how Levia worked.

My second match was against Dmitrij Cisar, who drafted Boltyn. I immediately improved my gameplay for this match, making sure I had enough 6 power cards in my graveyard to turn off the Blood Debt. I think what won me this game was when I managed to draw and pull off Soul Harvest.

Since I've been stacking up cards in my graveyard, many also having Blood Debt, I was able to pull this off whilst my opponent also had quite a few cards in Boltyn's soul. It wasn't fatal, but got Boltyn's health low enough for me to chip away.

My third match was against Finbarr, who drafted Chane. Finbarr played really well as he managed to keep his banish zone relatively free of Blood Debt. I also felt like I played decent enough. However, the one turn I miscalculated pretty much spelt my doom. I was able to pull off a big turn which came in for 11 with Underworld Bellow into Hungering Slaughterbeast, and was going to activate Hooves of the Shadowbeast to come in for another 6 or 9 with Endless Maw. However, I forgot to count my graveyard, which only had 5 cards at the start of my turn, when I needed to banish 6 cards for the turn to work. So, I activated Hooves for nothing and didn't really manage to keep any real pressure on. With Finbarr's constantly solid play, it wasn't long after I lost the game. But, lessons were learnt.

5 rounds of Classic Constructed

After the drafts, we had a quick break before moving onto Classic Constructed.

For these matches, I played my newly built Earth Briar deck. I haven't had many chances to test this deck out, only playing it once at a Rule Zero Armoury. Hopefully, I can improve it further after the event.

My first match was against Dan VanderBurg. It was an Earth Briar mirror! Of course, Dan played really well. Our decks were quite similar, except for pieces like CnC. But, Dan definitely was the better player here and rightfully won the match.

My second match was against Brandon from Teklo Cards! This was probably my most educational match of the weekend as I played against a hero I've never played against before, Prism. I initially thought I did well. I set up my turns properly, pulling off combos like Bramble Spark into another Bramble Spark into Explosive Growth, finishing off with a buffed Rosetta Thorn.

I played my Earth Briar quite aggressively. So, I let a lot of damage through in order to dish out a lot of damage.

However, the card that won Prism the game was Merciful Retribution.

Because I was going tall with my turns, I felt it wasteful to aim it at Auras. So, I never really dealt with this card throughout the entire game, just hoping I could come in for lethal at the hero. However, when it came to late game, just defending with Prism's shield was enough to defeat Briar. Lesson learnt, go for these Auras when I can.

My third match was against Niamh Austin, who was playing a post-ban lightning Briar. I was really thrown off by the build because I didn't expect lightning Briar to work as well as it did. However, Niamh built and played really well, replacing banned cards such as Plunder Run with cards like Captain's Call. The deck was able to go really wide. And, even though I got in some big hits, it wasn't enough to win the game. I felt like it was a close game, I definitely need to get in more practise to be able to handle go-wide strategies.

I got a bye for my fourth match and played my last match against Dane A Manson and his Lexi deck. This match was really fun. I managed to pull off a double Channel Mount Heroic on turn 2.

My damage output was really crazy. At one point, the life difference was 40 - 5 to me. However, Dane had an ace up his sleeves in the form of Winter's Bite.

I was waiting for my turn in order to come in for lethal, but a well placed Winter's Bite broke my hand and I wasn't able to finish Lexi off. After that, I took quite a bit of damage to try and set up good turns like Bramble Spark into Stir the Wildwood. But, Dane played really well, defending as much as possible whilst chipping away at Briar. Ultimately, I did win the match with some well placed Rosetta Thorn arcane damage. It was a good match and Dane was a really good sport.

My final standing

I didn't do great, placing 38th/43. But, to be honest, I was expecting to come much closer to last. So, I'm actually still rather pleased with the result. Plus, with the Library pull, I have something to console me.

The top 8 standings after the swiss on Saturday was

Goodies

Besides the free deck box, sleeves and booster packs, Adam also let everyone grab some free Flesh and Blood posters!

I grabbed quite a few so that I can share them with the London crew who couldn't make it to the event.

I also got a foil Polar Blast Promo from Adam as well. He just asked who my main hero was, and I said 'Oldhim'.

Conclusion

It was such an amazing event. I got to play more Flesh and Blood than I had all month, probably. Its also really cool to see such a wide variety of heroes being represented! I'm really glad to have met so many nice people, really looking forward to playing them again. I'm also very grateful to Adam from Kingdom Gaming for organising the event, which on top of being really fun was free to attend and had loads of goodies. You should check out Kingdom Gaming's online store and visit them if you ever get a chance, to support the store.

I definitely went home on Saturday with a smile on my face, and a hunger for more Flesh and Blood (not literally).