In my last article I gave you a glimpse at the #6-#10 players in the world: Nicolas Pilartz, Carl Reddish, Ben Stoll, Trey Gibson, and Patrick Hanberry. In Part Two you’re going to meet the Top 5 players in the world, as ranked by the DCI.
I’ve had a blast traveling around the country talking with, playing against, and chronicling the adventures of all of these players, and it’s been my pleasure to bring them to you through my tournament coverage and other articles. Several of them you know through their own articles on this site, but others remain just names on the scorecard to many players, which is a shame. One of the most common sentiments expressed to me by these players is what a pleasure it’s been to share a tournament circuit with such a classy, fun bunch of gamers.
With that said, let’s meet the Top 5!
#5 Matthew Hoffman
How do you guarantee yourself a spot in the Top 10 at Dreamblade? Winning seven 1K’s is a good start! Pile on seven more Top 4 appearances out of his 11 other tries and that just about does it. Throw in some Edge events, a pair of 10K’s, and the 20K release championship at last year’s Gen Con and it would be hard not to be at the top of the game. But don’t be fooled by that quantity, there are a passel of quality finishes in there against top notch competition (Matt plays in the New England region, and so has the Redcap Council as well as friend and teammate Michael Ayars to contend with on a regular basis).
Matthew is probably the least well known of the Top 10, since his participation and results at 10K events hasn’t been the strong part of his game. But, frankly, he’s ok with that. You see, like Ben Stoll, Dreamblade is a family game for Matthew, only this time it’s his wife that plays. The two of them share a love of games and traveling to tournaments, and so can almost always be seen playing together. Meaghan Hoffman is a very successful player in her own right, earning a spot in the Top 50. The two of them capped off their tournament season by placing 1st and 2nd in the Sunday 1K that followed the 10K in Hartford, CT.
Strengths: Relatively unknown playstyle could spell upsets.
Weaknesses: Lack of practice drafting and against quality opponents could hurt him in the long format.
In His Own Words
On his Dreamblade success: Being able to build armies and test them with my wife, Meaghan, was the single biggest thing that helped me get to the top and stay there. During Gen Con and in the following weeks leading up to the first few 1K’s we were able to play dozens of games, gained valuable experience, and create some new teams that did well in 1K’s. Later on, we formed a good team with Michael Ayers, Rob Ansel, and more recently, Mike Seamans, also from the Rochester area. As most players will tell you, having a team is vital to success at any level with collectable games, since one person can never test enough stuff on their own.
On the battle for New York: Ian beat me for tops in NY, so I guess he would be my nemesis. I need to beat him by 1000 points in the 50K to overtake him before the end of the season, so I guess besides winning that is my main goal.
#4 Ian Stickland
Ian Stickland weighs in as our #4 Dreamblade player this season. The man with the devilish goatee and trademark black vest has been one of the most consistent players in the Top 10 all year long. With the exception of what he calls a “disastrous performance” at the Orlando 10K, Ian has placed in the Top 12 at every 10K he’s attended (hint: that’s most of them). He’s also got a lot of 1K victories under his belt, even though he lives in a region with a hefty number of top players. He has a very strong mental game that’s not prone to making mistakes, even in the most tense matches. It’s this steady hand during the late rounds of tournaments that has brought him so much success.
Ian is one of the most social players in the game, with a huge network of friends that spans across teams, regions, and other boundaries. He’s one of five members of the Redcap Council to be showcased as a Grandmaster, including three of the Top 5, and he’s one of the primary reasons that although the Dreaming Dragons came first, the Redcap Council is arguably the best team in Dreamblade. He’s been an active recruiter to the game, and has aided the travel of foreign players such as Nicolas Pilartz so that they can participate in as many tournaments as possible during their time on our soil. Ian is well-known for his unique brand of fast-talking slang, some of which I’ve heard slip into the speech of others players while I’m playing against them. Ian brings a great deal of character and color to any tournament he attends, and one will likely find him at the 50K surrounded by friends, including those he’s only just made.
Strengths: Intimidation factor; knows what to do with a Ragedrake.
Weaknesses: Has matchup problems versus some top players, must sweep early rounds to make Top 8.
In His Own Words
On why he plays the game:
I really, really, really love this game. I'm really sad that the big tournaments are going away because they provided an awesome social aspect for the game that’s helped me meet a whole bunch of really cool people, many of whom I hope to stay in touch with. As far as fighting to stay at the top, I get made fun of a lot by my teammates for that, caring how far up I am in a points system that doesn't measure percentages, just totals; truth is, I just like the name recognition. I like the extra edge it gives me in tournaments once people realize why they've seen my name before.
The best example of this was at a 1k after Seattle when I pulled out the Kitsune band and this guy rolls his eyes and goes "netdecker". I just stared at him for probably a full 10 seconds then pointed to my name on the match reporting slip. He just goes "oh." and then proceeded to lose 6-0. I've definitely won more than a few matches off the back of my opponents' nervous misplays.
The money was also a big factor, as long as I kept winning I kept traveling, using the winnings from one event to pay to attend the next.
On looking forward to the 50K: “I am absolutely thrilled for the 50k. I've been testing draft and constructed like crazy. I'm sure there will be some wacky warband designs and I guarantee you'll see a few things you never thought of. As far as players to avoid go, I'd prefer not to run into any of my teammates early because frankly I'd like to be sharing the Top 8 table with them! For people I do want to run into: Nicolas Pilartz. He's totally my nemesis (and very good friend). I need to get him back for doubling up on that roll in Kansas that knocked me out of the top 4! As far as chances of winning the event go, well, I'd say I'm in the top 5-6 contenders given my skill, present level of practice, and top-secret warband choice.”
#3 Justin Cohen
Coming in at #3 is the bad boy of Dreamblade, Justin Cohen. While outside of the tournament room Justin is laid back and talkative, when he shows up to play he’s an ice cold customer. He sports dark sunglasses, a gray hoodie, and a stone-faced expression that says, “don’t talk to me, just sit there and take the pounding I’m about to give you.” And Justin’s been known to give out some poundings in his time. In fact, of all the players in the Top 10, Justin is the most feared among his peers. When I asked them who they’d like to avoid if possible, the majority cited Justin as that person. Ian Stickland says of his teammate:
As far as players to avoid go, I have to pick Justin Cohen, he's the only top tier player who I've never won a sanctioned match against. Plenty of test games, but never a sanctioned match. Both Justin and I get a lot better once we sit down at a tournament table as compared to testing and his A game just keeps edging mine out.
Justin is a two-time 10K finalist, and the only such person to have never won a major tournament. He’s got 1K’s under his belt just like all the rest of the Grandmasters, and a ton of Top 8 success…he just can’t seem to get there when it’s all on the line. Both of his finals appearances were made while piloting the best warbands available: Chessmaster in Atlanta (though with the key addition of Eater of Hope, which propelled he and Sam over the vanilla variant) and Kitsune in Seattle. Since that time, his relative isolation from the rest of the Dreamblade scene has hurt him a bit, with questionable warband choices going into the New York and Hartford 10K’s. (Hartford is the only constructed 10K in which Justin has failed to crack the Top 8, a major achievement in its own right.)
At one point during the tournament season, Justin declared himself the world’s only professional Dreamblade player…and he may have been right. He is one of the five members of the Redcap Council in the Top 10, and is roommates with one of the others: Sam Black. Surrounded by so many great players and with access to just about every 1K in the Midwest and all but one of the 10K’s meant that Justin made quite a bit of cash over the course of the season. Living with Sam also means the availability of a world-class testing partner almost at will. Don’t be surprised to see Justin hold his seed and cap off the season with what to him will just be the expected result…another Top 8.
Strengths: Dominating playstyle; intimidating stare; clever in-game patter can throw opponent off his game.
Weaknesses: “Apartment meta” means that it’s possible he may bring an inferior warband to the tournament, hurting him in the later rounds and Top 8.
In His Own Words
On his topsy-turvy tournament experience: “I actually started out doing reliably well at 10K's (Top 2, Top 8, Top 2 at the first three I attended) and terribly at 1K's, while Sam would smash the 1K’s and sometimes perform at the 10K's. I broke the habit when I missed my first 10K elimination with an absolutely awful Chrysotic Plague sealed pool in Orlando, only to win the 1K the next day, and be in the finals of the next 3-4 1K's I attended after that.”
On the Dream Series Championship: “The 50K is pretty exciting. It's a great chance to have a lot of fun with friends from all over the country, not just Dreamblade players but Magic also. I expect the tournament to be won by someone who's been putting in a lot of work; just check VASSAL to see who's on all the time and you'll have some pretty good guesses. As always, I hope to play as few people I know as possible, especially people on my team. I would say my chances of winning the event are about as good as anyone's, which is to say fine but not great, considering the likely turnout.”
#2 Robert Hatch
Robert Hatch, our #2 ranked player, is a familiar name to anyone who follows the game at any level. Robert smiling and holding up a trophy has become an iconic image for 10K coverage, since it seems to happen every other tournament! In fact, Robert has won more 10K’s than any other player (3, two constructed and one sealed), and even more impressively has gone undefeated in two of those first-place showings. He got 2nd place at the inaugural 20K event, and went an amazing 31-3 over the course of his first five tournaments (losing to his brother, Peter, in a 1K finals after going 22-0 in match play before that point). All of this is to say: Robert is the scariest opponent you’ll ever face across the dreamscape. He missed out on the #1 slot by just 299 points, but attended five less sanctioned tournaments (40 or so matches) than the player who edged him.
Robert’s success is due in equal parts to his dedication to the game’s play as well as its theory. On the theory side, Robert has spent a lot of time formulating and posting his thoughts about the game on the message boards, and has used his love of statistics and probability to create the definitive chart showing damage and blade probabilities. Not just a numbers man, he also scrutinizes each new set to find the combination of pieces that works best together. He has credited his two constructed 10K victories to fielding a superior warband than his opponents at least as much as his thoughtful, near-flawless play. In both cases he sparked a major revolution in warband theory, first in Chicago with his Passion of the Reapers, and then in Hartford with the Barag Barrage.
Don’t think that it’s all theory and no practice, however. There isn’t likely to be more than a handful of players who play the game more than Robert does. He can be found playing online at virtually any hour of the day. I’ve been up drafting with him as late as 4am and seen him playing with European players as early as 8am. He seems to personify his message board signature, “Sleep is overrated.”
Whether it’s draft, sealed, constructed, open rooms taking all comers, or locked in secret testing with his team or other top players, Robert plays this game in every way it was meant to be played. Not only that, but he has selflessly put countless hours into tracking booster slot distribution and coding in updates to the online game engine so that everyone can benefit from practicing online. You might think that one of the game’s top players might want to keep it all to himself, but Robert has always shared his work with the community.
He’s always been a community builder in Dreamblade, though, being a founding member of the first Dreamblade team, Dreaming Dragons. His teammates have helped him reach the #2 spot by giving valuable feedback on warband designs, helping to test, and providing encouragement and support of many kinds along the way. Robert’s mind for the game and willingness to help others—as well as his tournament success—have made him the MVP of an incredibly talented team of trailblazing players.
Strengths: Thought more, played more, and won more than any other Dreamblade player.
Weaknesses: Ninjas, because if he has any I certainly haven’t seen them.
In His Own Words
On his passion for the game: “I guess I'd say that my motivation for putting long hours of practice into this game comes from three things: love of the game, the prize money reward, and inertia. The first two are somewhat self-explanatory, so let me explain that last one. No, it's not that I'm a creature of habit, so once I start playing Dreamblade a lot, I just don't bother to stop doing so. Rather, I prefer to explore a type of mental puzzle or challenge that I'm already deeply familiar with more than I enjoy exploring a type of mental challenge that I'm unfamiliar with or that I've never tried before.
“I think it's really hard to say how much any one factor of those three (fun, money, inertia) had to do with the tons of hours I've put into this game. There have definitely been times, though, when I would've taken a short break from the game, were it not that there's the lure of winning money. Often that leads right back into the inertia aspect, and of course I love the game, so it's never a hardship to play this game, it's only a choice of WHICH awesome hobby of mine I want to spend my free time on.”
On the tournament season: “This year was a blast, I really want to thank WotC, particularly the R&D guys and the OP guys, especially Reid, for all their hard work. Likewise, the non-WotC guys: the judges for their help and dedication, and lastly the coverage guys for great coverage at every event. I think the biggest surprise this whole year, for me, coming from my D&D Minis background, was how awesome it was to have tournament coverage at all the big events. Big thank you!
I love this game, and I can promise I'll be buying and playing Night Fusion after GenCon!”
#1 Sam Black
We’re finally here, at the #1 Dreamblade player in the world as ranked by the DCI: Sam Black. The phrase “been there from the beginning” describes Sam perfectly, since he was the first ever Dreamblade tournament champion. Sam started the season in first place and ended the season in first place, something that’s difficult to do in any organized competitive environment, but especially one in which several thousand people are gunning for you all over the world! Sam’s back and forth point war with Robert Hatch has kept spectators engaged over the course of the season, but Sam’s been the front-runner most of the way. He certainly has been in first at most of the 10K’s, as he’s collected quite a closet full of top DCI reward cases.
Sam has torn up the 1K scene in the Midwest, his dominance possibly being one reason why Justin wasn’t able to close the gap between he and the Top 2. Sam has also remarked that he’s played more than his fair share of Sunday 1K’s after his 10K washouts. In fact, it’s amazing that Sam was able to hold onto the #1 spot after subpar performances at just about every 10K after the first one in Atlanta. Sam, however, made lemonade from lemons by winning three of the four Sunday events he played in. Undaunted and always adapting, he elevated his game in these tournaments and in some cases spent all night revising his warband, or practicing with something new altogether to defeat the metagame in real time!
As I mentioned before, Sam is both the roommate of Justin Cohen and teammates with four other members of the Top 10. Unlike the Dreaming Dragons, the Redcap Council is a group of individuals, or more aptly a confederation rather than a cohesive whole. Whereas the former generally come to a tournament all piloting what they believe to be the best warband, the Redcap Council are more diverse. Sam is not only regionally isolated, but his grasp of the game is so well developed that he generally pilots warbands that are different from the rest of his team (except Justin). Perhaps the most salient example of this was the Counter/Burn warband he brought to New York, which was meant to beat up on the most powerful warbands in the game. Sam is always ready to learn and adapt to what he sees. It’s this interesting, sideways take on the game that makes Sam such an unpredictable, and winning, opponent.
Maybe Sam put it best after his win at the 20K, “I feel like I’m playing a different game than everyone else.” One thing’s for sure, Sam’s playing at the game’s highest level, and the rest of the Dreamblade world is still trying to catch up.
Strengths: He’s been #1 since the beginning; fears no player and no situation.
Weaknesses: Apartment meta; will probably have been up for 72 straight hours winning other game tournaments before the 50K even starts.
In His Own Words
On being a hardcore gamer: “I've gotten used to playing a tournament every weekend, and the week feels kind of empty if I don't, this is why I drove over seven hours to Kentucky to play Magic this weekend, and why I'm going to Nationals next weekend even though I'm not qualified. In fact, I'm thinking about not even trying to grind in because I have to be in Madison Thursday morning, so I'd be driving to Baltimore just for a PTQ and to hang out. Aside from that, the potential for money was a huge incentive, particularly early, more because it helped justify the time I put into it than because I needed the money. After that it was important for me to stay on top as a matter of pride and to lend legitimacy to my articles. I really didn't want to seem like a random guy who got lucky at the beginning, I wanted to prove that I really was good. I'm extremely disappointed that I haven't been able to win a 10k recently and really feel like I have to win the 50k to prove myself. Also, I didn't want to let other people get the Red Boxes, and I needed more because they're what I use to store the pieces Justin, Dave and I use. Writing for Wizards also meant that I had to stay informed at all points, so I couldn't really take a break. I attended every 10k and almost definitely more 1ks than any other player.”
On the Dream Series Championship: “Yes, I'm excited about the 50k. The hangouts are going to be insane. Seeing all the Dreamblade players for one last time is going to be awesome. I intend to win many dollars, and I really care a lot about it because it's my last chance to go out on top. I care a lot about this being "my game," and I feel like it will really be that if and only if I win the 50k.
“I think Dreamblade is an extremely skill intensive game. As a result, I like my chances, as well as the chances of the other top players. I'm sure the top 8 will include some players I don't know. I think we'll see a lot of the bands we've seen before, but almost always with slight variations. No one wants to play in a big tournament like this with a list they haven't changed from before at all. I think there are some abilities and pieces that have been undervalued recently, but I don't know that they'll do well because I don't know that anyone will try to use them, as there are a lot of similarly good strategies that people do know.”
On to the Dream Series Championship!
There you have it folks, this season’s Top 10 Dreamblade players. If you see one of them around at Gencon or your local game, be sure to stop and say hi, because to a man these guys are friendly and enjoy talking about the game. They deserve the accolades they’ve received as well, for devoting so much time and bringing so much talent and skill to the game of Dreamblade. This year would not have been nearly as cool without each one of them. See you all at Gen Con!
