by Mike Rosenberg

"This could be a fast feature match. Either you could combo me out...or are you playing a solo deck?" Patrick Samiento asked his opponent, wowtcg.com writer and Demon lover Jaron Tomsky, who sleeved up a Rawrbrgle deck for today. "Who knows?" he said, sheepishly. (Hint for the folks at home – it's not a solo deck!)

"What does this hero mean?" Patrick asked. Jaron looked at the hero, Sumi'jin, Guardian of Cenarius. One could assume tokens, right?

Both players, from Northern California, were, in truth, just goofing off. Patrick was well aware of what Jaron was playing, as he had built Jaron's deck for him! Patrick won the die roll, giving him an edge against Jaron's rush.

Patrick took a mulligan, while Jaron kept. Patrick led off with a turn one Ring of the Great Whale, setting up for some massive healing action with his hero's flip. Jaron had turn one Slippyfist off of a face-down resource, while Patrick used Seeds of their Demise to Delve. He added What's Haunting Witch Hill? to his field and passed with two open. Jaron played Swarmtooth, flipping a Murloc Coastrunner, prompting Patrick to draw a card with his quest. A Stashed Sava'gin the Reckless took out Jaron's Slippyfist, and Staff of Ammunae gave him some token generation action. Jaron Stashed a Raging Shout which put first damage on Patrick's hero, while Swarmtooth took out the token Patrick's Staff created.

And then Jaron played three Murlocs – three Coastrunners and a Slippyfist – netting three more Murlocs off the top of his deck via Swarmtooth. Patrick added another Ring of the Great Whale, while Jaron played Unleash the Swarm! Jaron's ability only netted him two more Murloc Coastrunners (and two more via Swarmtooth), but it enabled his flip. Meanwhile, Patrick flipped his hero.

Patrick played a Corrupted Egg Shell and passed his turn back, making an Egg token. Jaron played four more Murloc Coastrunners, keeping his hand full via Swarmtooth, and RwlRwlRwl!Rwl! gave them all Ferocity. The problem? Each attack would trigger Staff of Ammunae, giving Patrick a token. That would then trigger Patrick's flip power and two Rings of the Great Whale, healing Patrick for more than whatever Jaron's Murlocs could dish out.

Aware of how futile his attacks are, Jaron cleared away the Egg and passed the turn back, with an army of Murlocs and nothing to do with them. On turn 6, Gnash came down and wiped away Jaron's Murloc army, as Patrick got another Egg at the end of his turn. Jaron rebuilt with Snurky, Murloc Coastrunner, Swarmtooth, and Slippyfist. Gnash went at Jaron's hero, and a second Corrupted Egg Shell brought Patrick's Egg count to three at the end of his turn.

Jaron loaded up with four more Murloc Coastrunners and a Raging Shout, and then sent his older Murlocs in to crack Patrick's Eggs. While Jaron could not push through Patrick's defenses, he also made sure that Patrick could not end the game. Nature's Focus on Swarmtooth from Patrick prevented Jaron from digging through his deck faster for one of the two Poison Tipped floating around in there (two of them were already in the bottom seven cards of his deck thanks to Unleash the Swarm!)

Jaron went Egg-cracking with his fish army, and two more Murloc Coastrunners took out Gnash. He passed back, as Patrick played and dug into his deck with What's Haunting Witch Hill? He then played Alana the Woebringer, which was a fancy way of saying that Patrick took out two of Jaron's Coastrunners. Unleash the Swarm! off the top from Jaron put yet another Poison Tipped onto the bottom, as he netted five more Coastrunners. Those new Murlocs, plus the rest of Jaron's army, went to the graveyard as Patrick played a Gnash. On the next turn, Patrick popped a Corrupted Egg Shell to hatch two of his eggs into massive Dragons.

On the next turn, Jaron drew and played...Rwl!Rwl!Rwl!Rwl! Not quite enough to deal with Patrick's board, and Jaron offered the handshake.

Patrick Sarmiento wins the match!