I had started to lose faith. The first few weekends of Trials involved getting obliterated repeatedly. It was still great fun. Then I tasted hope with Zero and Red Robber. On Black Shield we (mostly Zero) went a solid 7-0 before I got weasled and instantly destroyed my card. We finished it out and Red made it to the Lighthouse

A couple weekends later I tasted it again. Beorn, DreadPirateWes and I logged a solid 8-0 on Widows Court before being tragically cut down. Third time's the charm though, this weekend was going to be it.

The Cauldron was brutal. I had so many one and two win cards. On Sunday I started a card with a co-worker, and some random kid from an LFG site. He was good team player with an Alpha Lupi. Rocking all Dead Orbit swag, we launched off to a quick 4-0. While working on our 5th, he mysteriously vanished leaving us to a slow, painful 3v2 loss on an otherwise easy win (they had a level 25 Hunter).

There goes the Mercy. Just my luck. I called it a night.

Today after work, I got a message from Squid saying they were looking for a third in Trials. I had less than an hour to play, so I just grabbed the card from the night before and joined him and Schedonnardus. We steamrolled though 2 quick games before I had to leave.

That left the card at a tantalizing 6-0 with no Mercy. I figured I should probably finish it off before the reset. I met Beorn at a pub for our weekly trivia night (be jealous), and we decided to take a shot at it once we were home. Beorn found KoRnyMunKy on the other side of the VoG and we commenced.

Three fairly uneventful games later I was ogling that emblem I've always wanted and a shiny new Adept Scholar with Void elemental. Not a bad haul for a first visit to the Lighthouse.

So for the many of you who contributed to that very unconventional Trails card... THANK YOU. Co-worker, Korny, Squid, Schedonnardus, Beorn, and random LFG kid who abandoned me to die: thank you all.

A big blemish on the whole thing was another tragedy for Beorn. We had a good thing going after I hit the lighthouse, so I re-joined to see if we could get Beorn's 6-0 card across the line. We got him to 7-0, then we blew the mercy on a tough team of Titans that flanked well. Right after that, we lost another game where none of us got more than 2 kills across 5 rounds. They had immortal Warlock that could shrug off Thorn rounds like a light rain go on lag-switch induced 15-kill streak.

Who can really say if nefarious means were really in play, but there was some serious networking anomalies in that game. Beorn got me across that finish line but we couldn't pull him across it ourselves.

Sorry Beorn, it'll happen one weekend soon.