So day one is in the books for us here at Durotar Realms. First and foremost, eveyone on our team is qualified save for one person, so it was a very successful day. Basically, 6 of 7 in our team are in the finals tomorrow, including myself, my main playtest partner, and my daughter.
Everyone here has been great so far. Simon Key is our main judge and he and the entire crew did a great job today keeping things in line. There were some times when things got a bit squirrely, like starting late, and adjusting times of tournaments, but overall, almost everyone we spoke to enjoyed today thoroughly.
Now, the meat of things... this chick, does NOT suck:
A very large majority of people were running Vashj, Bloodscalre Wavecaller, and X today. Sometimes X was Blindlight Murloc, sometimes it was Ironfur Bear, and sometimes it was with Frostmane Troll. Thing is, with her attacks, plus the Boots of Crimson Hawk and Soulseeker, it's extremely hard to not die to Vashj.
Hands down, the most common error made by players today was forgetting to turn over their equipment until after the game has started, I know of two people who lost games due to that error.
Yours personally played Tinker/Tinker/Savin in the first qualifier and went 1-2 and dropped. Game 3 I played against a Vashj team who one shooted Savin (with the help of horrendous defense rolls) and then proceeded to wipe my side of the board on tick 2. Yes, that was not fun. It was amazing to see, but it was painful to experience.
My playtest partner qualified with 3-1 with the same team, having the advantage of playing against two teams with 1 resist on two minis... matchups are favorable sometimes.
My daughter went 1-2 and dropped as well, with the same Tinker team as well.
The second qualifier I played a surprise team my playtest partner and I have been working on for a few weeks. It was this set up:
Prince Kael'Thalas Sunstrider
Enraged Fire Spirit
Razaani Nexus Stalker
Basically, 3 flamestrtikes worked amazing, and took me to 3-1 and qualified. In the third round of this qual, I got a chance to play what I think may be the best game of Minis I've ever played. I played a gent named Aaron who had double Haruka and Thangal. Basically, he killed one, I killed one, and back and forth, taking us both to within 1 kill of the win, and in the end, my bad rolls came back to haunt me. Niether of us were blowing up or failing terribly, but on Kael's last stand, to take down a Thangal at 6, his bomb went off, and only hit for 50%, while Thangal was in Cat Form, and resulted in 1 damage, taking him to 5. Then he ticked by 3 to make his 7 dice attack, and whiffed for 2 whopping damage. Hands were shaken, and I went into the final round congratulating my new friend on a great job overall and a fun time.
Final round I pulled in against Thangal, Haruka, and Omedus, and in the end, blew up for a 26 vs 14 win after killing omedus 3 times and keeping him off the board a ton.
Finally, my daughter qualified in the sealed tournament so she is thrilled. She pulled vindicator Kaustron and Conqueror Eluna in her two boxes, and rolled the hunter love through the tournament for 2-1 and a qual. They only had 3 rounds in the final qual too.
So all in all, it appears to be 20-24 qualified people for tomorrow. We'll keep everyone updated after the events of of the outcome.
If you have any info on your Realms, please feel free to post a comment and let us know if Vashj is dominating the field there, or how things went for you.
Good luck to all those in the field tomorrow!
