At this point its still pretty early to pick a definite nats deck. I really like Havalar with Myriam as it seems good against rush and solo. Control might give it fits but that remains to be tested. It should draw enough cards to fight off discard decks.

The new ring Lightwarden's Band is retarded in this deck. I might put Glous in the deck as well but then i need to change up my quest line up. for the most part the way i have it set up she doens't fit. however she and the ring together does allow a mortal strike to be gained form a completely exhausted board. Things to be tested.

I know many people will probably tell me its a waste of my time but its fun. I have been changing it and working with it. I think i am going to download magic work station soon to see if i can get osme play testing done.

The second deck i am interested in working on is a rogue running Steelsmith and Myriam It will run these over some other basic rogue cards that will be on the side instead. I may play green fortress bracers for a kill card if Steelsmith gets an attack in. I think the deck has potential and deserves some play testing. With a rogue in play6 it will be tough for them to run allies into Myriam so she should get to shoot. And the deck will play Lightwarden's Band as well. The hero is undecided but will be combat alliance

If anyone has any constructive critisism feel free to post it.

The deck that took 1st in Waco yesterday was a rogue deck with Miriam. Seemed to work just fine.

(The player was a 14 year old kid from Waco, btw. His older brother was the one who took went undefeated at the last prerelease here in Austin.)

EDIT: Also, Magic Workstation is a great way to get a feel for how different decks work. I play there all the time now. It's easy to set up and learn, too.

I was looking for magic workstation online but they charge for it. is there a free version that works with everything? and how do i find you on there if i get on? I am interested in getting this going. Call me at that number i gave you before if you have time to walk me through it.

Ed says you don't have to register it, but it looked to me like you did, so I did.

They have a few options on the site to register for MWS for free, mostly by signing up for subscriptions to other services. I signed up for "freecreditreport.com", and then cancelled it, and got a free key for MWS. (If you don't cancel within 7 days on that one, you pay like $15 a month until you do cancel.) Most of the stuff on there is like those crappy record club deals that end up costing like $200 or something.

There's a thread in General on the wowtcg forums that says what patches to download. You only need like 3 things.

Here's the thread:
http://entertainment.upperdeck.com/WOW/COM...ad/1262329.aspx

You need the 3.1 patch, 3.0 patch, and the WoW theme.

Big thing with Halavar and warrior in general, you need an answer to the Ripped decks.

They are almost as fast as you are, and will be getting far nastier with more sure fire win conditions in the new set. New mage builds will also give issues with their board clearing low cost AE.

Also note that Myriam is going to be much less effective with all the protector sweeping AE effects everyone got, and horde got Brok to really rain on her parade.

I am looking at a couple of mage builds right now, traitor mage probably horde. Fizzle, Nether Fracture, Bringer of Death, and Tomb of Ice really lock down a lot of decks. With some mid range aggro for a win condition, I see it being tough to beat.

I will see if I can get a couple of decklists together this week for testing purposes.

what are ripped decks?

why do the pictures not appear on MWS for wow cards? and they do not have text?

Ripped is "Ripped through the Portal"

They try to disrupt the game state early on, then do something like like bring out Lock'holar on turn 5 or Azeoth on turn 6/7 and either flip or Cull the Weak to outright win.

Easily countered by Blood Elves, Rogues, and Mages. Everyone else watch out.

If the Ripped combo decks take off, like I think they might. Then Priest with Mindflip is going to be interesting. In fact it is very interesting already.

Priest now has enough tempo, removal in turns two and three to be insanely disruptive. Then drop some mid-range bombs to control the board. Weapons are of course their weak point, but Divine Spirit could allow a turn six Bringer Sweep which just might be fast enough.

The decks everyone is talking about right now are Frost Mage control, something like what Chad and Ed are running only with Frost Elemental to make life misery on everyone.

Along with that are Horde Suicide Fire Mage. Burn, rush, burn, turn seven sack all resources with a Morlug in play and burn you out. This deck gets access to Blast Wave and Dragon's Breath, it's nasty bad. Good news is it will lose to other mage builds even if it makes Druids sad pandas.

If I were looking at a warrior deck I'd look at Alliance Traitor which gets you Sudden Death, but lacks the strike out ability of Halavar. Problem is this deck is well known and everyone is going to attempt to be ready for it, on the flip side it's a very hard deck to play against since it has so many answers to everything. The bad matches are Rogue rush/midrange and discard Priest.

warrior does run puncture. seems good vs that card. and if needed siding shield bash and waiting for them to do it is an option. besides that deck seem like it would be terribly inconsistant as needing 3-4 cards by turn 5 to make it work. I am not concerned about that deck being too popular. Priest would be good against it due to low cost removal. But many deck would be good against it. Traitor warrior should eat the deck alive. Again I don;t see how it will be a big deck. call me crazy but i think mage will be popular and maybe priest discarddue to some new hype. Paladin will keep some players as well. overall i think the field will be so diverse at nats that having an overall deck will be good.

Its going to be interesting to see what people play. I wanna focus on something of my own if i can unless i see something in a tournament report that looks good.

I am still having soooo much trouble with MWS i downloaded everything allowing it to install on its own to where it wants to but its fucked up.

I wouldn't underestimate the Ripped deck, it's done very very well so far when played by good players.

We can playtest the old version of it sometime, or I can proxy the alliance version so we can test.

Or on MWS ask around to find someone playing the newer ones. I think you need instant speed removal or some way to getting around Eye of Kilrogg to really give it much trouble.

If it didn't have so much trouble with Mage, and if I didn't think Mage would be uber popular for Nats, I'd say we give it a shot.

I am probably not going to nationals, but I do not want anyone to run into this thing and not know how to play against it, then take a loss against a bad player.

MWS: Did you add the Warcraft.mws file as a default library, or something like that? Then cards should show up.

I got it to work. its handy. I will be on some times as Loki5150 look for me ;)