I will give a short report of my book and how well it did against the other match ups. I ran a stray wood beast master with a lot of the academy cards including bear cubs, asps, wytchwood hounds ect. I Added a few other lvl 1 creatures such as Falcons, feral bobcats, and having some more heavy creatures timber wolves, emerald tegu and steel claw matriarch, along with of course slavorg and some more utility based creatures based on who I am playing against.
My book is a swarm book with a kicker it turns into a "hyper enchant/buffs" mid to late game. The goal is simple mass a swarm with a variety of low lvl 1 creatures using a lair and stray wood's ability to quick cast a lvl creature. With my initial set up the first two rounds I able to summon 3 lvl ones for a few turns to build up the swarm. Going to attack and/or counter a rush form opposing Mage is tricky with this book. I may run bigger creatures or ones that could at least guard appropriately to counter a rush. It's a little slow but usually having 9+ creatures around turn 4-5 can give the opponent hesitation to jump in at me. Secondly as an act of defense or security before my beast master gets involved I will throw down animal kinships to get the buffs I need.
along with having all those creatures with more on the way to insure swarm dominance and longevity with varying animal types i can get one solid strike at the opponent with board control. I will usually target things that will block or impede me from going after he Mage.
It is a tricky book and starts relatively the same but I try to summon appropriately with the type of Mage I'm playing against.
So the tournament went really well for this book. I went 3 and 1 winning the grand prize the PvS set.
All my opponents played well and provided different problems for me throughout the tournament. Two matches I like to spot light that put me through the most pressure. The first was a wizard who ran three gargoyles and the gate of Voltari. It was really difficult to get a around his guards with intercept. I was able to suprise him with a teleport/ tanglevine combo and set up a swarm attack that did some serious damage. He was able to reposition and blasted my swarm with an electryfy and chain lightening and my forces were pretty devasted. That match went to time and I was able to squeak out a win by most health. The one loss was to a swarm build using the pentagram and many academy demons. It was a really cool book and used the demon familiar that could cast curse spells. It posed a challenge because his book was indeed faster and he was able to pile the damage on with demons attack adding burn tokens and curses to my beast master. I was able to kill a few demons to allow me a little more time. Mid to late game I was able to position my swarm and get some really good damage. Last turn I pulled out a force hammer to deal enough to bring his warlock down to only 1-2 life. He pulled out a fireball to do a crazy amount of damage enough to kill my beast master in the quick cast round ending the game. It was an exciting match that challenged my book to the limits.
Again fun time I am super pumped to play PvS and looking forward to game with these guys again!