We’ve all been waiting for it and this week it finally happened — FREE PVP TOURNAMENTS (until April 27th)! As much as I love arena tickets, the main reason I actually find in-game tournaments enjoyable is because I get to do them with friends. My friends and I joke about how laughably bad we are at PvP, so we don’t take winning or losing very seriously. We’re all in it for the fun!

Last night I teamed up with my good friend and fellow merc, Alex Deathtamer, to wreak some havoc and hopefully crack some smiles in the 2v2 PvP tournament. We came up with some pretty unique strategies that we hoped would catch our opponents off guard. And they did … in a way. Here’s what happened:

Disclaimer: Do not try these strategies if you actually want to win a PvP tournament. We were doing this for fun. :)

Battle 1: We Can Say We Tried

Knowing what we had planned for later, Alex and I decided to play this first battle normally and actually try to win. That way, we could at least say we tried. As far as our strategy, it was pretty standard for a 2v2 tournament I think. Since we went first, we played conviction first round and started to blade up after that. Alex was playing on his storm wizard, so the other team targeted him and took him out very quickly. Just as I was about to hit with Mystic Colossus, the other team casted a perfectly timed myth dispel which forced me to play a mythblade the next round to clear it. Once I cleared the dispel, the other team followed up with an enfeeble which removed all my blades and all our hope. I was knocked out soon after. Very smart playing by those opponents, nice job if any of you are reading this!

With our real efforts out of the way, now the fun was really going to begin!

Team Vanessa and Alex: 0-1

Battle 2: Only Shields and Shadow Attacks

Our first “epic” strategy that we attempted was only attacking with pure shadow spells. That’s right, no shadow enhanced spells allowed! The problem was, every pure shadow attack spell required not one, but two shadow pips. Since we figured this might be a challenge, we added shields to our deck. Every round that we couldn’t cast a shadow attack spell, we were to shield or pass. Genius, right?! Well, we never did end up getting two shadow pips. In fact, we went maybe 4-6 rounds without any shadow pips at all. So for those 4-6 rounds, all we did was pass and shield. Our opponents were sitting there thinking that this was merely a distraction and we had something bigger planned. But nope … this really was our plan! I’d also like to point out that our opponents got so many shadow pips! They played shadow enhanced spells 4 or 5 times, lol. Meanwhile we couldn’t even get 2 each!

Team Vanessa and Alex: 0-2

Battle 3: Polymorphs … Kind Of

Our next brilliant plan was to ONLY use polymorphs. Neither of us had any moon spells trained, so we traveled to the bazaar to pick some up. What we didn’t realize until the battle started and we couldn’t draw our polymorphs, was that TC polymorphs are no PvP. Doh! We were so bummed. Luckily, since we were assuming that we would only be using our TCs, we still had our regular decks from the previous fight. We repeated our shield and shadow spell attacks only plan with zero success. Our opponents were just as confused as we were.

Team Vanessa and Alex: 0-3

Fail Scale: 5

Battle 4: Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better!

For the grande finale, we wanted to go out with a bang! To do this, we agreed that we would “switch” schools. I was only allowed to attack with storm spells, and Alex was only allowed to attack with myth spells. To add to the confusion, we also packed each other’s buffs. Despite me attacking with only storm spells, I packed mythblades so I could buff Alex. Even though he was only going to hit with myth spells, he packed stormblades so he could buff me.

Keep in mind that we didn’t switch gear, so our stats for each other’s schools were absolutely terrible. I was fully expecting to fizzle each and every storm spell. Amazingly, I ended up successfully casting 3/4 storm spells I attempted. Sadly, my menacing thundersnake, lightning bats, and stormzilla just weren’t enough to get the job done. I did last longer than Alex though. I don’t recall him even getting the chance to cast a single myth spell. Our opponents: Extremely puzzled.

Team Vanessa and Alex: 0-4

Overall Place: 16th

We didn’t come on top in terms of placement, but I think we sure broke any fun or giggle meters. The reason we play games in the first place is to have fun! Don’t be afraid to loosen up a bit and try things just for the laughs! Win or lose – in our eyes, yesterday was a success.