It had been quite a few weeks since my first draft event, which I enjoyed immensely, so I was very much looking to my second draft. I was particularly excited as this was my first such event at Geek Retreat in Leeds. As mentioned in previous posts, I started playing at Geek Retreat as a way to broaden my experience playing different opponents. Being able to play at both EH Gaming in York and Geek Retreat in Leeds in the same week (EH Gaming is typically on a Saturday and Geek Retreat on a Tuesday) has also provided beneficial to my ranking on the official Flesh and Blood Leadership Boards – but that’s for another post.
While most of the players at the Geek Retreat event I already knew from earlier Blitz sessions, there were a couple of new faces – at least new to me. Perhaps the most notable of these was John Ho, currently ranked sixth in the UK. I hoped not to be drawn against John, but that was not to be the case.
In the run-up to the event, I had familiarised myself with the other Monarch heroes (Levi, Chane, and Boltyn) as I fully intended not to play Prism. As with the draft event at EH Gaming, it became evident that very few other players were choosing Prism as even after 4 or 5 passes, high scoring heralds were still available. As I had been selecting generic attacks up until that point, it was a fairly easy decision to choose Prism and start collecting suitable cards as they came around. In addition to common Heralds, I was also lucky enough to grab a Dream Weavers (in case of a Levia match up), a foil Celestial Cataclysm and a Soul Shield. The latter two would prove extremely useful.
My first draw (Loss) was against John Ho, who was playing Boltyn. Although I did not win this game, it was still a fairly close-run thing. It was interesting to see the cards John had selected, which included a few Belittles and Minnowisms. My strategy had been to focus on hero-specific cards, but it seemed that John’s strategy was to go wider, selecting cards that he knew would work well together. This is something I will keep an eye open for at future draft events.
My second game (Win) was against a relatively new player to Flesh and Blood but was very familiar with other TCGs. I had hoped this would mean I had a fairly easy round, but it was quite a close-run thing in the end. He had selected Chane, and, while he was able to put together some fairly big attacks, his blood debt was ultimately just too high.
The final game (Win) was against another Boltyn player. This was actually someone I have played against quite a few times at both Geek Retreat and EH Gaming. Our win/loss rate is about 50/50, so this game was always likely to be quite close. Indeed, it came down in the end to a few points, but I got the win on this occasion. Interestingly, Boltyn was one of the heroes I had particularly focussed on in the run-up to the event and this proved useful as I had a fairly good handle on the mechanics and what he was trying to do. This is one reason why it is helpful to have some knowledge/experience of playing other heroes so that you have some feel for what their strategy/tactics are going to be.
Overall, I placed five out of ten, which felt a bit low for two out of three wins, but I’m guessing there were quite a few other players with two wins. My prize was a booster pack of Monarch first edition (I didn’t pull anything worth noting), and there was the usual promo card for participating.
Cracked Bauble 