Neirea's Dreamhack Chodown

July 01 2015


Dreamhack Summer was a couple weeks ago but there is one game worth revisiting. Neirea's match against Dog had one of the most memorable games of the tournament given the surprise appearance of one Lorewalker Cho. The matchup was Dog on Patron Warrior and Neirea on Oil Rogue and when Cho jumped out of a Piloted Shredder things got weird.

Here's what Neirea had to say about the game and how he transformed this bizarre scenario into a win.




The first few turns of this game played out uneventfully. Neither Patron or Rogue are known for having turn one plays. On my second turn I equiped my Dagger but didn't attack. Attacking is usually correct in games where you don't have a turn three play but I chose not to so as to not enable Battle Rage. Turn three was also just a killing of the Loot Hoarder and Hero Power-Deadly Poison. I had a good curve into the Drake so I wanted to be mana efficient.


Turn four was also rather uneventful. My play here was to simply Shredder and attack face to play around Harrison Jones. Turn five was Dog's first significant play in Sludge Belcher. My goal was to clear the Belcher so I played Drake in an attempt to draw into Backstab. Since that didn't work out I passed the turn.


By turn six Belcher was still around so I cleared that and Shredder-Hero Powered. There was an option to cycle Thalnos but the Dagger was more valuable given my two Oils.



This is where it got weird.

My read at this point was that Dog didn't have a Weapon. He likely would have played it last turn if he did. I also reasoned that Cho would be better for him than for me so I resolved to trade it off. Going Farseer-Oil was my best chance at this as it have a 50% roll to enable a Cho attack. As it turns out, I didn't get the roll.


Dog ended his turn here with a 3/3 Taunt and a 2/4 Gnomish Inventor. I decided to go with an Azure Drake for my first play this turn to see what I drew. I could have gone with the Violet Teacher here but there was no real follow up available.

The trade I made this turn, however, was incorrect. While I saved a point of damage I had to give up my 6/3. I made this call at the time because I was very worried about a Frothing combo. I was worried about the combo since Dog's hesitation to play cards seemed to imply he was holding combo pieces.

I ended this turn with a fresh Dagger, a 4/4 Azure Drake, and the good old Lorewalker.


After Dog used his turn and Grom to clear the Azure Drake, this was the turn I went full Cho. I didn't have good way to clear the 10/5 Grom so the plan was to fill Dog's hand and burn it. Turns out I miscounted my spells and ended up ruining the play since I Sapped Grom with nine cards in hand. I ended up giving him a Preparation, Sprint, and the Sap. While giving up cards sucks these spells aren't all that useful in this Cho game since our hands will both always be full.

This was the turn I ended in the most trouble. My board was soft with only Chow and a 3/3 and I now knew that my opponent had a full hand and a Grom. My Sprint next turn will need to find something good.


On his turn Dog simply replayed the Grom and passed with it at 10/6. It was time to Sprint. The Prep-Sprint paid off huge by drawing a second Blade Flurry, a SI:7 Agent, and an Eviscerate.
This is the turn where I won the game. Knowing that most of the cards in his hand were dead my objective was to deny his draw for the turn and lock the game out. The secondary goal while doing so was to create a big Van Cleef. I had already seen an Execute and he'd had opportunities to play the other so I knew the plan was safe.

I passed the turn back with a big board against a clear one and a locked out draw.


With nothing to draw Dog was unable to mount a suitable defense or assemble lethal. On my turn there was a simple double-Flurry combo to close out the game.




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Writer: Liquid`Neirea
Graphics & Format: shiroiusagi
Art Credit: Blizzard
Editors: Hayl_Storm, monk