Shadowfist Deck: Brawl in the Tombs by Braz King
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2006 dueling championship winner)
[posted 13 Sep 2006]
Published with permission. Thanks Braz!
Braz King won the GenCon 2006 Who's the Big Man Now?! (dueling) championship with this deck.
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I am not a duelling enthusiast but have gradually warmed up to the format. My main criticism is that duelling is a crucible in which only the best cards survive. It requires the use of card with the best power to cost ratios and doesn't allow for elaborate, baroque, slowly-unfolding, James Joyce-like decks. So decks become predictable and games become predictable and at that point you might as well play chess. However, I love Shadowfist and want to embrace it all, so I started duelling more last year.
This deck has been in the works for just over a year. It combines the broken combo of Big Bruiser and Is That All You Got? with the old skool Yakuza Enforcer + Final Brawl combo. Being able to Brawl over the two main characters of the deck without them taking damage is very effective. The site structure consists almost entirely of fighting sites so that anytime I lose a site, my opponent takes some loss as well. And any site of mine that they seize can be attacked by my Yakuza Enforcers without taking damage. I added Thunder on Thunder because of Cavebear's Purist duelling deck in Toronto and it came in very handy stopping Brian Smith-Sweeney's purists in the GenCon duels.
Jane Q. Public is great in duelling because opponents don't have the luxury of allowing damage to get through. She almost always gets the two power while causing damage or drawing denial.
Serena Ku isn't really jank, but she is not seen much these days. Several deck types, like monkeys, pledged, etc, get messed up when Serena appears.
Satellite Intelligence. I don't consider this jank either, but I almost never see anyone else play it. It is great to move my own fighting sites around to get the matchup I want, and it is equally great as a surprise game winner, letting me hit the site I want.
The deck went undefeated during the qualifying rounds, though it timed out one game vs. John Merrill's Ascended deck and in that game John appeared to have me on the ropes. Brian Smith-Sweeney's discard deck was a challenge, but the character recycling and just the over consistency of the deck helped me win. In the finals I played Ben Barnett's Hand deck and then faced John Merrill in the championship match. My games against John were amazing, varied, intense because of the strength of his Ascended deck, with Moonlight Raid, Killdeer, Mentor, Oliver Chen, Fox Pass, and especially Desolate Ridge, which wreaked havoc with my deck. John won the first game, I won the second, and in the third it looked like he had the upper hand but I managed to turn it around. There were a lot of memorable moments, like him dropping Adrienne Hart and attacking my unprotected, unrevealed FSS. I dropped two Brawls, then revealed a back row Boobies-Trapped Tomb, bringing Adrienne to 1 fight, then revealed the front row Hartwell Iron Works and Adrienne feel to her knees and died on the steps of the forge. My deck is pretty Mentor-resistant as well, because the two main characters are Big Bruiser and Yakuza Enforcer. My own Bruisers can beat the mentored Bruisers and my own Yakuza Enforcers can beat the mentored Enforcers. In one game I had one Yak in play and John Mentored him and attacked me for a killing blow and I played ITAYG to get back another Yak and kill the mentored one. Overall, those three matches with John were my most enjoyable Shadowfist duels ever. And I felt bad snatching the duelling world title from my Michigan brother.
Brawl in the
Tombs
by Braz King (60 cards)
Foundations 2 Friends of the Dragon 3 Hacker 2 Redeemed Gunman 4 Student of the Dragon Fragile Utility Characters 1 Chinese Doctor 1 Jane Q. Public Welterweights 1 Serena Ku 4 Yakuza Enforcer Monsters 3 Big Bruiser The Juice 3 Dirk Wisely's Gambit 1 Kiii-YAAAH! 1 "Now You've Made Us Mad!" Freebies 1 Ashes of the Fallen 2 Brick House 5 Final Brawl 1 Satellite Surveillance Upgrades 5 "Is That All You Got?" 1 Satellite Intelligence 2 Thunder on Thunder FSSs 2 The Blue Moon Club 4 Booby-Trapped Tomb 1 City Park 2 Hartwell Iron Works 2 Temple of the Angry Spirits
[writeup by Braz King]
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