TCGplayer Staff
8/14/2006

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This is the "coverage" area where those souls fortunate to be part of the press (me!) or those who waited hours in line would sit down to do a public demo of the WoW TCG. As you can see, both Brian Kibler (standing) and Danny Mandell (sitting) were on site to give Demo's to the public.

Lucky me, I was allowed to go into a side room and do a 1 on 1 demo with Brian Kibler. He started off by explaining the game to me; some of it I knew from UDE's coverage and some of it was new. He went through the various cards within each demo deck and how they would work once brought into play and the different areas of the playing field. We then pretty much got right into it and shuffled up for battle. The game starts off with each player drawing 7 cards and having one hero in play.


I chose the Horde side and had Ta'Zo as my hero and Brian used Warrax. (Silly Alliance!)


To start my first turn, I played a quest card into my resource row and with nothing to cast in my hand for 1 resource point passed the turn. Brian went right for the throat by playing a resource and the ally card Apprentice Teep with 2 ATK and 1 Health.


On my next turn I drew my 1 card and then laid the quest Your Fortune Awaits You into my resource row. I used one of my resources to play the Instant Ability: Fire Blast targeting Apprentice Teep to kill her. Thinking that I had made a good play I passed the turn.

Brian drew his card and played the quest card Are we there, Yeti? into his resource row. He then played another Apprentice Teep and an additional ally card, Kryton Barleybeard before passing the turn.


I once again drew my starting card and play yet another quest into my resource row, Counterattack!. (I never got to complete this quest which makes me chuckle a bit in retrospect as I remember the frustration involved with trying to solo this quest for the online game and also never completing it without help.) I then cast my first ally card, Vesh'Ral. I used his Ferocity ability to immediettly attack with him and went after Kryton Barleybeard. After combat resolved, both creatures went to the graveyard so I passed the turn.

Brian then laid a resource face down and used all of his resources to bring in another ally to his party, Kor Cindervein. With my side depleted of Allies he attacked Ta'Zo directly with his Apprentice Teep. She does two damage, so I placed a die with the number 2 showing to keep track of my hero's damage, as you can see from the image.


Upon starting my turn I drew my obligated card and summoned my own hero to "party" with, Kulan Earthguard. That used up all of my resources so I passed the turn.

Brian laid a resource and then attacked Apprentice Teep into my Kulan Earthguard. Let me tell you, I thought he had lost his mind, as this was obviously not a good move if he wanted to gain an advantage. Well... I soon found out how sneaky Brian can be. After damage was dealt and his ally went to the graveyard, he played the Instant Ability: Execute on my damaged ally. If you were too enthralled to click on the link, Execute destroys target ally with damage on it. This was extremely bad news for me as Brian was able to use his weakest ally to remove what I thought was an absolute powerhouse. He then attacked Ta'Zo directly again using Kor Sinderskin as I had no more allies in play to worry about.


From this point on things started to become a blur as Brian had me on the ropes and I sensed he was just batting me around like a 1/1 bunny gets played with by a Druid in bear form. I wanted to cast another ally but it seems as though my side of the board stayed pretty clear aside from my helpless cloth hero.

Brian, on the other hand, brought into play Tracker Gallan and then the ongoing ability, Battle Shout. I have to say, the card is perfectly in flavor with the Warrior ability, but I wish I didn't find this out by having it come into play against me. He then attacked Kor Cindervein into my cloth covered mage for 4 damage (3 for natural ATK + 1 ATK from Battle Shout ).


On my turn I couldn't muster up allies again so I decided to try and slow Brian down. While I wish I could have used my Fireball ability on Warrax directly, I had to stop the attacking allies, so I went after his Kor Cindervein to get it out of the game using a Fireball. (This was not an Instant Ability, so I needed to use it on my turn.)


As you can see from the above image, this is where I started to see a bit of the control power of the Fire Mage deck. Brian's deck seemed to spew out creatures, as became even more evident when he turned in the Quest, Are We There, Yeti? and was rewarded with 3 Mechanical Yeti tokens.

Normally this would have me very scared because my hero was already getting low on life. But I had secretly been holding the card Flamestrike in my hand and was thrilled to see Brian put more small creatures into play. This allowed me to kill every ally that Brian had in play as well as serve up my first damage to that filthy Alliance hero scum, Warrax.


My turn came once again and I knew Brian had another, Are We There, Yeti? in play to be activated which I was hoping he would use, seeing as how I just drew the Instant Ability: Frost Nova. With 7 or more resources my thoughts were that I would Frost Nova on Brian's turn so on my turn I turned in the Quest, Your Fortune Awaits You to draw an extra card, leaving open 4 resources.


Brian did in fact turn in the Yeti quest and I gleefully cast Frost Nova upon his attack and killed the pesky 2/1 tokens as well (thanks to that darn Battle Shout). Unfortunately, Brian had another ally to bring to his party after I cleared his side, Tracker Gallan. I am not sure of the exact scenarios, but things were getting desperate now as Ta'Zo had now taken 17 damage and thus only had 8 health remaining.


This image shows the sequence of events that had me once again reacting to Brian's Ally rush. It doesn't appear I did much on my turn other then playing a Mana Agate and passing. Brian proceeded to bring into play Latro Abjectus. With Ta'zo not being able to handle the damage that would soon be coming and no allies in site for me I decided to Frostbolt Latro into the Abyss. The card text for both Frostbolt and Frost Nova couldn't be more perfect as I think many of you who have experienced WoW pvp can verify.


The exact happenings during the game for this turn are even sketchier for me to remember, as this paragraph is being written up a full day after the demo. But the basic happenings are that Brian brought into play Anika Berlyn and I brought in Zygore Bladebreaker. I believe that I thought I would later be able to attack my mighy Orc into his Anika and then use Ta'Zos special ability to finish her off. But Brian stopped me at the pass by using Warrax's special ability to Protect Anika from Zygore and ruin my hopes and dreams. He then went after helpless Ta'Zo with Anika.


This was the last turn of the game and you are safe in assuming I didn't do 20+ damage to Warrax to win. I drew my card, looked at it and saw Vaerik Proudhoof. Vaerik isn't horrible, but in this case it was about the worse thing I could draw as he does not have the Protector ability. I played him anyways and passed the turn. Brian then simply swung Anika into Ta'Zo again, delivering the killing blow to my Hero and thus claiming victory for the Alliance.

How embarrasing for this proud Horde afficianado.

In closing, I had an absolute blast with the demo and think this is an extremely promising game. Brian was great to sit down with in person and really went through everything I need to know in a very easy to understand method. Unfortunatly, while recording his tutorial, the background noise of GenCon was simply too much for me to clean out to be a useable upload. I will be back later in the week with some interview questions that I got to run by some of the various members of UDE =)

And from here, I simply look forward to further previews and the opportunity to demo the Onyxia Raid deck in advance... *HINT!*

-Chedy