WoW Card Game Question

[China Doll]

i will bring a deck or two and play some with yous guys.

[Sciler]

So, there is a contest going on for the spectral tiger card on March 1st, nation wide.

It says it is "swiss" style play...what is this?

[Ming]

The easy explanation is that the tournament will not be an elimination tournament

Each round of the tournament you will be paired up with an opponent based on your overall record for the day up until that point (how many wins-losses). During the course of that round, you will have to play a best out of three games match with that opponent. The winner gets a certain amount of points which go towards determining standings.

The number of rounds to be played for the tournament will be determined by the attendance (I'm not sure how it breaks down, but it could be anywhere from 3-6ish rounds), with each round being 50 minutes long.

Now, there are usually two parts of a tournament. The first is the "Swiss" portion that I described above. At the end of the Swiss portion, standings will be determined, and there is a cut to (usually) the top 8 players. At that point, the top 8 players will play 3 elimination rounds. The last player remaining at the end is the winner of the tournament. Also note that sometimes this second part doesn't happen, and the winner of the tournament is determined by final standings after the Swiss portion. I'm not sure if that's how the Spectral Safaris will work, but I wouldn't be surprised either way.

I know that that may have been confusing, so if you have any other questions, let me know and I'll try to clarify.

Are you definitely going to go tomorrow?

[Sciler]

I doubt it. I would love to, but I have zero experience besides what you guys showed me. Still a lot of questions but as far as making a deck, I cant make up my mind what class I want to do. I have quite a few rare cards for many classes >_<

plus as far as making a deck, I'm not sure of the best breakdown of cards...

like x amount of allies, x amount of quests, etc.

[Ming]

The beauty of this game is that Upper Deck did a really good job of balancing the classes. That is, no class is really better or worse than any other. Since the game's inception, every class has, at some point in time, been the most popular and/or "best" deck to play competitively. So in that respect, you really can just pick a class and stick with it.

On the other hand, you have the flexibility to try out other classes that you may not have thought about trying for the MMO. For example, I started off focusing on Warlock, because that was what my MMO character was. While I still love my Warlocks, I find myself gravitating towards Druid A LOT lately.

And back to the previous example, Druid started out being one of the weaker classes at the beginning of the life of the game, but with each new set release has risen to the point where it's probably one of the best because of it's versatility.

My best advice as far as deck building is concerned is to just start off with your favorite class, and stick with it for a while. If you want, let me know what class and faction you want to start off with, and I'll help you put something together.

[Sciler]

If you want I can give you a list of all the cards I have, but i have a LOT spanning 3-4 sets.

I know I have stuff from:
Heroes of Azeroth
Through the Dark Portal
March of the Legion

and a few from Burning Legion and even Winter Veil lol.

[Ming]

Don't worry about listing the cards that you have. It's fairly easy to put together a good deck that doesn't use a lot of (or any) rare and epic cards. If you have a lot of stuff, odds are we can come up with something that you'll already have most of the cards for.

Like I said before, when you first start off, it's best to stick to what you know or are familiar with. Each class is pretty evenly matched, and while there are certain nuances between playing Alliance vs. Horde, it doesn't really matter at the stage of playing that you're at. Right now, it's more of an aesthetical or preferential choice.

So let's start this way...which class would you like to play, and would you rather play Alliance or Horde?

[Sciler]

Alliance or Horde doesnt matter to me, I'm only alliance in game because I wanted to be an elf, and rolled a druid lol.

I've got experience in most classes, have the least knowledge on warriors and rogues overall. Only had a warrior up to 35 and a rogue up to 20.

I have a 70 Mage, Pally and Druid, and a 64 warlock, and 50 shammy. Everything else is below 40.

[Ming]

Ok, I just want to let you know that I haven't forgotten about putting together some easy decklists, I've just been busy at work and had a busy weekend.

Here's a deck that I play with every so often. I first read about it online in an article, then altered it slightly to be more to my liking. It's a really good deck to play around with at first because it's fairly simple, but also fairly powerful, particularly for a deck that contains no rare or epic cards. I'll list the set each card comes from, as well as the rarity. HOA = Heroes of Azeroth, TDP = Through the Dark Portal, FOO = Fires of Outland, MOL = March of the Legion, C = Common, U = Uncommon

Also, if you don't know what some of the cards are, this is a great database of every card printed and release so far: http://www.wowtcgdb.com/cards.aspx

Hero: Forang Deathrattle (MOL)

Allies (29)
3 Bhenn Checks-the-Sky (C - TDP)
4 Bloodsoul (C - MOL)
4 Broan Charges-the-Fight (U - FOO)
3 Doshura Risestrider (U - MOL)
4 Kagella Shadowmark (C - FOO)
4 Magister Ashi (C - MOL)
4 Thulthun (C - MOL)
3 Voss Treebender (C - HOA)

Abilities (17)
3 Soul Inversion (C - MOL)
3 Life Tap (U - HOA)
4 Shadow Bolt (U - HOA)
3 Steal Essence (U - HOA)
4 Warlock Training (U - MOL)

Quests (14)
4 Finkle Einhorn, At Your Service! (C - TDP)
3 One Draenei’s Junk . . . (C - FOO)
4 Torek’s Assault (C - HOA)
3 The Name of the Beast (C - MOL)

A few notes...

This is an example of an aggressive deck. The idea is to play your allies and attack with them until you win. You use your abilities (and even some of your allies), for the most part, to clear any blockers or problematic allies out of the way. That's pretty much the gist of what the deck is supposed to do. While you can build aggressive decks in a variety of classes, I like using Warlocks because they have a lot of abilities that cheaply kill opposing allies or deal damage directly. And while you can use any Horde Warlock that you want for this, I particularly like Forang Deathrattle (an Orc) because he has a really good flip power that mimics your card Steal Essence.

Another thing to note is the breakdown between allies, abilities, and quests. This gives you a good breakdown of what an aggressive deck should look like. There are, obviously, exceptions to this scheme, but for an aggressive deck you generally want to have a majority of low cost (no more than 3 resources) allies, supported by efficient (cheap) removal (abilities that kill things). And because your stuff doesn't cost a lot (resource wise), you will often run low on cards in your hand, so your quests are generally used to draw cards to keep your hand as full as possible, because the more cards you have in your hand, the more options you have in any given situation. Although this is more of an advanced concept, this is what is known as the theory of card advantage.

There's more to follow, but I hope that that gives you a good starting point. If you don't have some of those cards, don't panic! There are plenty of other alternatives that you can use. Just let me know what you may be lacking, and I can give you some alternatives. And let me know if you don't like the deck at all, and I can come up with something else (which I'll do anyway soon...).

[Sciler]

I'll read through this in a little bit, as I'm cleaning up hte apt atm, but its all good, I didnt think you had forgotten =D

That database will be WAY handy though, thanks for it!