Road to National London Report

I managed to play both Road to National events in London. So, thought I'd write a quick report on it, as well as updating my own road to Nationals.

I know its been more than a week since the event. But, what can I say, your boy has been busy grinding.

A big shout to Jason Hamer, who rallied folks to email LSS about getting London some RTN events. We nearly did not have one.

Bad Moon Cafe Road to National - Draft

Bad Moon Cafe's event was a double Uprising draft!

I've really enjoyed drafting Uprising. I did about as well as I expected in this event. I wasn't expecting to top 4, but I still managed to get in a few licks.

My first pod drafted fairly well. There were two Iyslander, I was one. Two Dromai and four Fai. Fai is definitely a popular choice for drafting as its easier to draft a good Fai deck. I was also tempted into Fai at the beginning, but after still seeing 4-5 good cards by pack 4 for Wizard, I pivoted.

I went 2-1 in that first pod. Losing to my bud Gavin White on Dromai which he played really well.

My second pod had an absolutely cracked box. Someone pulled a Crown of Providence, and someone else pulled the Blood of the Dracai. Crazy!

Despite there being 2 other Iyslander drafters, I still managed to get a decent Iyslander deck in my second pod, albeit not as powerful as my first. I went 1-2 in this pod, but had an amazing game against Arian Sultani, who also drafted Iyslander. Mirror Iyslander match are so much fun as there's just a lot of windows for interaction.

I went home with a 3-3 record, which means 18xp so I'm rather happy about that. You can find the stream for the whole day's event on Armoury Knight's Channel!

Rule Zero Road to Nationals - Classic Constructed

If you follow the blog, you probably know that I haven't really grown my roots into Classic Constructed. I've played Briar, Oldhim and also dived into Lexi after Skirmish season. Although my heart told me I should probably bring an Oldhim list to Rule Zero's Road to National's event, which is CC, I thought that Lexi stood a better chance in the current meta.

I won't detail out every game as there were 6 rounds and there is a lot I could talk about. If you would like, you can watch the stream of table 1 from Armoury Knight's Channel.

However, I would say that we're definitely starting to see the shape of a new meta.

Fai is definitely leading this meta with the ability to output a ridiculous amount of damage. We saw Fai did really well at the European Championship at The Calling Utrecht, so that's another telltale sign. However, this gives room to Ice heroes such as Oldhim, Iyslander and Lexi to start building their strategy.

The new Illusionist hero, Dromai, is also seeing quite a lot of play. Although Prism is still around, it seems many Prism players have switched over to Dromai, or away from Illusionst due to there being heroes who could handle the matchup. There were only 2 Prism at R0, if I recall correctly. This might be why we also saw the resurgence of some OG heroes that weekend.

Katsu benefitted from some new ninja cards and became a decent pick even against heroes we thought might be anti-meta, such as Lexi. Katsu also isn't too bad into Illusionist heroes so that's a plus.

We also saw a couple OG Bravo that weekend. With Illusionist not being as difficult to handle, and therefore less players playing them. Solid picks such as OG Bravo was bound to make a re-appearance.

Some heroes who were nerfed are still relavant! Viserai also did well that weekend, despite the Skelata ban. We continue to see Viserai at really high level plays as well. One of the top 8 at Utrecht European Championship was Viserai. Hamish from Push the Point also won an RTN with Viserai a couple weeks ago.

All in all, its a very open meta, where it could really be anyone's game, and I love it.

I didn't do too well myself. I was on Lexi, went home with a 2-4 record. I found the Fai matchups difficult because Rangers don't block. Dromai matchups are also difficult because I cannot pop phantasm. Perhaps I should have listened to my heart and played Oldhim. A lesson for Nationals perhaps.

Still, that's a good 12xp and I'm very happy about that.

My road to Nationals Update

With all the xp from RTN events and going to Armouries consistently, I'm now sitting comfortably at 28th place on the 90-day xp leaderboard. I feel much more secure now than I did previously. It would seem that this year's cutoff for the UK is very close compared to last year. With many RTN winners not being the top 100 on 90-day xp leaderboard, the cutoff reduced slowly from 90th place estimate (what it was last year) to now roughly around the 60th place.

I was aware this might be the case, so I've been grinding Armouries consistently. I haven't been updating the blog for this reason. I did create a twitter to try and give shorter updates, but I haven't managed to either 😂. But, the good news is, it seems I might actually make it!

The cut-off is actually tomorrow morning UK time. It does seems like I'm locked in. But, there's always some anxiety for things like this. I'll let you know in the morning how it turns out. See you then!