Final Fantasy TCG Locals - August 24th, 2026

Another Monday, another night of FFTCG. With only four people showing up, tonight's FFTCG only barely fired, but it fired nonetheless.

Still wanting more practice with the deck, I shuffled up my Ice/Wind Crystals tonight. Four players meant we ran a quick, casual round-robin style event.

Round 1 vs Three-Color Warriors - Win

The newest player of the playgroup still, they made a bit of a misplay on Turn 1. They had misread Larsa and assumed they could only grab a Forward of Cost 4 with it, meaning they went to grab a Clive instead of the somewhat more useful option of grabbing a Taivas, who could've set them up more effectively. Unfortunately for them, I played a Yazoo to dull-freeze Clive.

While they were able to prime Clive into an Ifrit the next turn and remove Yazoo, I was able to play a Kadaj to bounce the Eikon and, with two Remnants in my Break Zone, force them to discard. They were soon enough left relying on their top-decks thanks to Kadaj's ability, and I was able to take control over the game.

Round 2 vs Mages - Win

This deck was so cool. Without going heavily into detail (I'm aware I don't have a huge following, but just in case, I don't want to give out too many of the deck's tricks; well, too many of the ones I could even remember, at least) it made rather effective use of the new Mages from Blissful Eternity at the heart of a control shell.

And boy oh boy did the deck hold up well. Going through the list of things I used against my opponent this game, they pointed out the way that they fought against a Marche, the Remnants, two Yuffies, and a few other of the typical powerhouse cards in the Ice/Wind Crystal suite.

I still took the win in the end, but they made me work for it.

Round 3 vs Sky-Pirates - Win, then Lose

So in the first game we played, my opponent played two Backups and had two cards left in hand at the end of the turn. On my turn, I overpaid to play a Yazoo - removing a Loz from my Break Zone that I had used to pay for it - and then overpaid to play a Kadaj - again, removing a Loz that I had used to pay. This gave me a total of 4 Crystals. I dull-froze their Filo Backup, Kadaj made them discard the last two cards in their hand, and then they scooped.

So we shuffled up for a second game and things went drastically differently, among other things that I didn't have any Remnants available to make use of their abilities. They also had a much more conservative turn 1, playing only one backup, which on turn 2 was followed up by a 7-drop Vaan that got them a Fran, Balthier, and Penelo, immediately dropping a full board of Forwards onto the table. They took the win only a couple of turns later, as there wasn't enough I could do to stop them.

Conclusion

This deck is so weird, almost inconsistent, but fun all the same.

My second game with the Sky Pirates player was a good example of what happens to me when I don't actually get any of my Crystal payoffs, as between the lack of payoffs and my opponent's Penelo being more than able to cancel my auto-abilities which made me hesitant to play the Seymour I had in my hand for much and more of the game, I didn't really feel like I got to actually play much that game.

Though I guess with how our first game had went, I suppose that's a bit of fair turnabout. Which is a little impressive, given how poor I thought my opening hand was after I had taken the mulligan.

I digress. I do think I'm getting more accustomed to how the deck plays, though I've still got a ways to go before I can really consider myself good with it.

Friday Night Magic - August 21st, 2026

 In a bizarre twist of fate, I went out to the card shop originally planning for Commander Night - it was The Hobbit Commander Party, even, and the rules for that looked like quite a bit of fun - but I ultimately didn't actually play Commander.

I got to play Pauper, instead. On the card shop's Discord server, somebody had mentioned that they would be bringing some Pauper decks along to play if people were interested. Given that I always bring my two Pauper decks along, I was of course incredibly interested.

So after finding the person in question, the two of us shuffled up to play... a lot of games tonight. They had three different decks with them, and I had my two. Hilariously, though, as I was looking up my Moxfield account, I don't even have one of the two "built" on the site. I even went to dig up my old TappedOut account that I never use anymore, and while I do have the deck list put up there, it was an out of date version of the list. So that's fun! I also just updated said list so I can link it in a moment.

I digress. The list I do have up on my Moxfield is my Monoblue Terror-Delver. The other deck I have is a Monogreen Stompy list (man, linking to TappedOut feels a bit weird).

The decks my opponent had were Tron, a Delver of their own, and "Gruul Ponza" which was largely the same concept as my Stompy, but in Red/Green, running Land Destruction, and with some different Creature choices. I digress.

I didn't even remotely keep any notes on the games we played, as each one went by rather quickly. They were all best-of-3 sets, we Sideboarded in and out between games, and generally had a good 4-ish hours or so playing some good old 60 Card Magic with each other.

I did figure out a few glaring weaknesses in my two Pauper Lists, as an aside. While the Stompy deck's weaknesses aren't as big of a deal to me - until playing today and finding out that "No this is actually a real Pauper Archetype", I thought it was just some goofy monogreen jank, but no, the list I'm running is genuinely incredibly solid as Pauper lists go, it's just that there are a few cards that would serve it rather well - the weaknesses in my Terror-Delver list I do want to iron out.

As an aside, if you're reading this later down the line, the deck list will likely already be modified to reflect the changes I'm planning to make.

Ever since I put the deck together, I knew running a playset of Force Spikes was probably a bad decision. I had the full four-pack in the list because I had actually had it put together for years as a fun little deckbuilding challenge to myself, building a paper Pauper deck long before it was made an actual, official paper format. Then when they did make it one, they banned Daze - understandable, but my deck had been running a playset. So I needed something to take Daze's place, so Force Spike was a quick answer.

Tonight being the first time that I got to properly put the deck through its paces, I finally got to see firsthand exactly how bad a decision that really was. It's great if you can have it in the first couple turns of the game, but against both Tron and Ponza, it was pretty evident how quickly it became a waste of cardboard in my hand. I also ran into entirely too many situations where I was almost out of cards in hand because I have startlingly little card draw, I've now realized. Far less than I thought I had. I need to swap some of my counter magic out to make room for a few pieces, because having answers in the deck doesn't mean anything when I can't find those answers in time to play them.

I could also use some answers for dealing with non-creature threats. We were looking at some Pauper lists after we were done but before we left, and some of the lists were running Boomerang as an option.

So in addition to draw power, I'll be working on my removal suite a little bit, rather than trying to rely on counters.

After nothing but Commander for Magic for so long, it was nice to play something else, and I have a few ideas for how to make my preferred deck a little better to boot. I honestly look forward to the next time I get to shuffle up for Pauper, though I may be playing Commander again the next time I can make it out. Time will tell, of course.

Final Fantasy TCG Locals - August 10th, 2026

 After yesterday's Local Championship Qualifier, I was looking forward to tonight's Locals for two main reasons.

Reason one, the newest set, Blissful Eternity, dropped this past Friday, and I was looking forward to grabbing a booster box. Reason two, ostensibly a little more chill night, being less competitive than the LQ.

I showed up to the shop about an hour and a half early for tonight's locals, got my box and a few other things I was looking to pick up, and cracked the box while I was waiting. I got everything from the box that I needed for modifying my decks - particularly my Dragoons and my Crystals - and made those changes before anybody else had shown up.

My pulls otherwise felt a little lackluster. I got a decent number of Legends, and a Full Art Reprint of Gilgamesh (FFBE), but nothing that felt particularly impressive.

But I digress. When the rest of tonight's players showed up - we only had four in total tonight, fewer than I had been expecting - we shuffled up and got ready to go. We ran it as a round robin since there were only the four of us, so it was a fairly quick night.

Wanting more practice playing the deck, and wanting to test my changes, I played Ice-Wind Crystals tonight.

Round 1 vs Sky Pirates - Lose

Their opening turn saw them dumping all of their resources from hand to get a board full of Forwards. Unfortunately for me, I wasn't able to capitalize on how few resources they had afterwards, and they had time to regroup and make what they did have work well enough for them to hold me at bay while they established a better line of resources, after which they just sort of took the game over too quickly for me to setup against and properly "fight back".

Funnily, the two of us had played a couple of friendly games ahead of the event starting proper, and while they absolutely dominated those two games, with one having had a similar start to the "real" game for locals, this one I was able to hold my own much better.

Round 2 vs Warriors - Win

The first couple turns of the game, I did Crystals Things™ against them. Then they handed out to drop an Ifrit (XVI) and took out my Yazoo.

I proceeded to play a Seymour and just bully them real bad with it for the rest of the game. I broke their Ifrit, kept their Seymour dulled and frozen, and their Lenna Backup was kept much the same. They were forced to discard a lot of cards, and when I dropped a Xezat - the new one from Blissful Eternity - they weren't even able to do anything about Seymour since they had to target the Dawn Warrior with their Kuja. They'd even tried to use a Serjes from the LB to freeze Seymour until I reminded them about Xezat forcing them to target him - I let them walk back that Serjes, I'm not a complete monster, and tonight was just a friendly locals, so I didn't want to punish them too badly given how hard Seymour was already locking them out hard enough.

Round 3 vs "Army of Kain" - Lose

Of the three "real" games I played tonight, this was the one that felt the closest. During our opening turns, I played a few Backups, a Vaan, and a Yuffie, while they got the SOPFFO "Crystal" The Emperor and Warped out the Kain from Dreamlike Oceans. When Kain entered, I used Vaan with his Life of Crime Special to try to wipe the board. They responded by trying to Jump with Kain. I responded to that by popping Kain with Yuffie, who in turn got popped by The Emperor since I was out of Crystals to protect her with.

At that point, we were both just sort of playing "draw-go" for a couple of turns, and they were able to start playing again a little bit sooner than I was. Part of that saw them hit me with a Dark-element Kadaj from Opus XI who has a bevy of strong on-entry auto-abilities and a self-flicker ability to make constant use of those abilities. Kadaj was devastatingly effective, and helped them take a few good points of damage before I was able to get back in their way with Forwards.

After a few more points of damage from my end, they were able to get another Kain, finally, and Warped him out. Between Kadaj and Kain, they had enough bodies and enough removal to successfully get around what blockers I had, and they finished the game out.

Conclusion

Compared to when I played this deck two weeks ago, tonight felt much more rough for me. I didn't have much difficulty generating Crystals, but it felt like I had a difficult time finding ways to spend them effectively.

The Sky Pirates playing more aggressively and not giving me time to get set up very well didn't help matters much, I don't think.

I'm still excited to play the deck more, I do think it's a lot of fun and I want to get better at playing it, but tonight was wild for me with how poorly it felt like it went compared to the last (and so far only other) time I shuffled it up two weeks ago - my game against Warriors aside, that is.

Final Fantasy TCG Local Qualifier - August 9th, 2026

 Final Fantasy TCG Local Qualifier! A shop about an hour and a half to two hours away from me, a shop I used to frequent for a few different games years and years ago. Last year (give or take a couple of months due to differences in the LQ schedule) I played my 47 Forwards Golbez deck for the very first time, and got bodied, going 1-4 in that event.

Today, I made a bold decision and played a good deck that I actually have some amount of practice with, Fire-Water Warriors.

Unfortunately, I didn't do much better this year than I did last year. I'm not completely certain how many players we had in total, but I know it was a five-round event for the Swiss portion before it cut to the Top 8, which I was nowhere near attaining - I believe I came in 17th place in the end.

Round 1 vs Ice-Wind Crystals - Lose 2-7

I had a fairly aggressive start, while my opponent had no Forwards for several turns. Unfortunately, the fact that they didn't have any Forwards meant that I was making a lot of awkward plays to try to avoid "wasting" my on-entry damage effects such as Ward or Akstar.

And a lot of those awkward plays were likely incredibly incorrect plays to make, as well.

Once my opponent did get a few Forwards in play, their Remnants and Yuffie were able to establish a lock against me and kept the game firmly under control from there, taking me to 7 over the course of a few turns.

Round 2 vs Sky Pirates - Lose 4-7

I made way too many misplays into a deck that's not a great matchup for me to begin with. My opponent getting a Gabranth EX Burst on the first point of damage I dealt them, allowing them to go grab Ashe, one of the most powerful cards in the deck in terms of utterly wrecking my chances against them given the way that the Princess effectively blanks much and more of my removal.

At the end of the game, I made a drastic misplay when I could have maybe turned things around, but ultimately I didn't fully see the line and was taken out.

Round 3 vs Three-Color Warriors - Win 7-0

About here is when in the day I started really waking up enough to get properly back into the swing of playing Warriors.

Unfortunately, this came about just in time for the both of us to play an incredibly weird game, with us both dumping a ton of resources into basically slow-building into a mutual stalemate as we both had Yuzuki in play to prevent much and more of the other's removal effects.

Eventually, I broke the stalemate. I had a much larger board to begin with, and I played a Cuchulainn into their Yuzuki to blank her damage-prevention. When their Zeromus "ward" auto-ability triggered, I played an Amaterasu to counter the ability and break the Zeromus. Swinging in left my opponent in a position where there wasn't much they could do on their turn, especially when they misplayed by dropping a Clive and priming into Ifrit (XVI) instead of using Seymour as they were originally planning to do. My own Yuzuki being still in play meant that there was nothing they could do to take my field out at all, at least not with the mighty Eikon.

Round 4 vs Griever - Lose 0-7

So I've never played against Griever, so this was a new and novel experience for me.

One I would not recommend. Griever being online early, with me having no answer to the malevolent Guardian Force, meant that my hand was ripped apart and left me with almost no resources, since I only had two Backups for much of the game.

Unfortunately, I didn't hit enough EX Bursts to save myself on the last turn of the game.

Round 5 vs Mono-Fire Warriors - Win 7-0

A self-admitted newer player who had honestly drawn a bit poorly.

Frankly speaking, I ran pretty roughshod over them.

Conclusion - Final Record 2-3

My only wins today were in the pseudo-mirrors, playing against other Warrior decks. My first couple of rounds I was playing poorly into not-great matches, and as I noted above, by round 3 I was awake enough to start playing my deck more or less properly - though I was probably still making misplays in places. Unfortunately, that was just in time for me to have the incredibly bizarre round 3 game that I had, followed by Griever in round 4.

All in all, a losing record means I'm not thrilled with my performance, but I'm also not entirely unhappy with how I did.

Friday Night Magic Commander Night - August 7th, 2026

 Another night of Commander at the card shop. I got in with a group of folks that I've played with before, though most nights they already have a "full" pod, so it's been some time since I've gotten the opportunity to play alongside them.

The shop was packed for The Hobbit prerelease, so there were comparatively few Commander players out. With the group of folks I played with, we got through three games, one with a group of four, and then we had a fifth hop in for the other two. Given the layout of the table we were playing at, it was actually shockingly easy to keep track of everything despite having the fifth person.

I admit that detail for these is going to be lacking. It was storming fiercely when I left the shop, so a lot of my focus was on getting safely home, and I hadn't taken down a lot of notes about each game and how my decks were operating.

Game 1 - Saheeli, Radiant Creator

For the first game of the night, and our only four-person game, I pulled out my Saheeli deck. I haven't played it in a while, and I just sort of wanted to.

The game was one where we all kind of got to "do our thing" a little bit, though I didn't really feel like I got to do as much of "my thing" as I would've liked due to somewhat limited resources. Not so limited I couldn't do anything, but limited enough to keep me from making a significant impact on the game.

Meanwhile, the Edgar Markov beside me didn't have quite the same issue, and the vampire deck ran over the rest of us.

Game 2 - Yuna, Grand Summoner

The game where I played the least amount of Magic. I had Yuna, a couple of other mana dorks, a few solid Summons to swing into the field, and O'aka as a draw engine...

And then a board wipe hit the field, and I wasn't able to draw into enough replacements to really get back into the game.

Game 3 - Bartz Klauser (Winota, Joiner of Forces)

And for our third and final game of the night, I pulled out my Winota deck, which just got a couple of small upgrades added to it recently from some singles I received.

I had a resoundingly powerful first few turns, dropping in a handful of Goblins, including General Kreat, and throwing around a couple of points of damage before I played Winota on turn 4. With General Kreat, the Fanatical Firebrand, and the Token that General Kreat had made on turn 3, I had three Winota Triggers immediately, which saw me drop in Alexios, Minwu/Mangara, and Greymond.

Alexios got through one of my opponent's turn before he ate a Deadly Rollick. And then a Toxic Deluge hit the field and wiped out the board, setting almost everyone back significantly - except the Y'shtola player, who had saved their board with a Teferi's Protection.

Over the next several turns, the rest of us worked together to try to take the Y'shtola player down, as they built up a dangerous lead thanks to their board being the only one to survive the Deluge. An Ethersworn Canonist tried to keep things in check, though Delney, Streetwise Lookout kept the Y'shtola player running well, especially with a Curiosity on the catgirl that provided a ton of card draw on top of her own ability. With my Bartz/Winota getting counterspelled when I made my only other possible opportunity to play her, I was stuck playing without my Commander and the ability that actually makes the deck operate the way it's supposed to.

Eventually we took out the Y'shtola, but the three of us who survived the matter were all down to around 3 life points each. I made the decision to play "kingmaker" and take one of the other players before getting overrun by the last remaining opponent.

Pokémon League - August 6th, 2026

 How long has it been since I've shuffled up to play the Pokémon TCG? Flipping back through my archives, the last time I wrote up a blog post about playing the TCG was late last June, after not one but two GLC Events in a row had left me feeling tilted and realizing that I wasn't having as much fun with the TCG as I would have liked.

Tonight, after well over a year since the last time I really dedicated a night to playing the Pokémon TCG, I decided to give it another go, on the condition that we would've otherwise had an odd number of players, as that meant I could eliminate a bye round for our players.

Given that I'm writing this post up, I'm sure you can figure out whether or not we had an odd number of players other than me.

As I haven't gotten around to gathering all of the pieces I would need to build the new "Hide 'n' Sneak" deck that Pitch Black put to print, I pulled out my faithful Festival Lead, a deck I've been playing (give or take my more-than-a-year off) since it first came out during Twilight Masquerade. Despite my hiatus, I've been making sure to keep it upgraded in a few places as new sets and new tools have come out, such as running Lillie's Determinations and a suite of "protective" support pieces like Psyduck and Patrat to keep my board safer from being sniped.

We had a total of 16 players tonight, myself included, so we had a 4-round event of standard Pokémon TCG play.

Round 1 vs Toucannon - Loss

Did you know that Cornerstone Ogerpon ex is immune to damage from any Pokémon with an Ability, needlessly making it impervious to many of the already fairly weak single prize attackers in the format?

Because I plain forgot that until my opponent dropped one in front of me, and with only one Boss's Orders available I couldn't get around it. I tried to get a Grookey set up so I could maybe poke it with enough damage to one-shot it through Weakness, but I couldn't find any of my precious few energies and wasn't able to get the monkey set up in time.

Round 2 vs Mega Abomasnow ex - Win

I forgot how ridiculous Mega Pokémon ex can be in terms of HP counts. Under optimal conditions, my Dipplins are able to strike for a lot of damage per attack - 100 for a full bench, an extra 20 from Lilligant's Sunny Day Ability, another 50 from Maximum Belt, and if I can empty my hand enough to play Gladion's Final Battle a whopping 80 additional damage brings me to a total of 250 per attack - but optimal conditions don't come by very often. Instead I was smacking the trees for around 120 or 130 per Do the Wave, meaning that they were successfully surviving to crack back even after the double-attacks granted by the Festival Lead ability.

Despite that, the absurd amount of damage that Abomasnow can output, and that the single prize Kyogre that serves as its backup can likewise dish out, is wasted on a deck where the most HP any of my Pokémon are printed with is a paltry 110 on Lilligant and Seaking. Fortunately despite the absurd HP count, it only took one and a half rounds of attacks to take out each Abomasnow, and the Kyogres and Snovers fared significantly worse. I was able to get an early lead, and then each Mega Abomasnow being worth three prizes meant it didn't take long for me to clear out my Prizes.

Round 3 vs Mega Excadrill ex - Win

When my opponent revealed Genesect ex as their starting Pokémon and I saw the Grass Resistance, I audibly groaned. The one match where Resistance was going to matter, and it was going to matter a lot considering the nature of how Festival Lead works as a deck, relying on multiple attacks per turn for the damage, is countered pretty nicely by each of those attacks being weakened by opposing Resistance.

However, fortunately enough, my opponent bricked. I was able to get set up well and start putting out a lot of damage even through their Resistance thanks to a bevy of my buffs, and while they did get established eventually, they were at the point where they were relying on the Genesects themselves to be their primary offense. All in all, not a bad idea, considering the combination of Resistane and the Genesect's attack giving them even more damage prevention, but I was able to figure out a workaround, mostly by way of having two Boom-Boom Grooves available to find whatever buffs would work out best for me.

Round 4 vs Marnie's Grimmsnarl ex/Frosslass - Win

During the time in between us finishing our third-round games and the start of the fourth round, several of us, including the Marnie's player, were discussing Festival Lead and a few of its matchups. The Grimmsnarl matchup into Festival Lead is quite favorable despite Grimmsnarl's weakness to Grass, because the deck decides to instead play as a Frosslass/Munkidori deck to take out the bench full of low HP 'Mons that are rife with Abilities that Festival Lead employs.

Unfortunately for my opponent, and fortunately for me, they met the same fate as my Round 3 opponent: They bricked hard, and I swiftly took the game thanks to my getting set up before they could get me locked down at all. This even in spite of all three copies of Thwackey that I run being locked away in my Prize Cards, meaning I didn't have my free search effect each turn.

Conclusion

After over a year of not playing the Pokémon TCG I... genuinely forgot that it really can be a lot of fun.

I won't lie, I think a large part of that is that shifts in the meta mean that a lot of the control-oriented lock decks aren't big parts of the metagame right now, and while Dragapult remains the king of the format, there was a lot of variety in what was being played at League.

If I intend to keep playing even semi-regularly again, I will need to consider running some sort of an out for dealing with Cornerstone Ogerpon, just in case I run into the Toucannon deck again. Being unable to do anything due to the legendary ogre's damage prevention ability was the most deflated that I felt during the night. That or get around to collecting what I need to play Hide 'n' Sneak instead.

One or the other.

Final Fantasy TCG Locals - July 27th, 2026

 After a weekend at my local anime convention, I was excited to sling some cardboard tonight at Locals.

I brought along a new deck that I was itching to test out, Ice-Wind Crystals, and shuffled the ever-loving daylights out of it in preparation. We had 6 players show tonight, which gave us a three-round event.

A three-round event that frankly kind of fried my brain a little bit. Brand new control list after a draining (if fun!) weekend will do that, I suppose.

Round 1 vs Category MBM - Win

The first test of my new deck and...

Man, I almost feel bad for how this went. I wound up with all three Remnants in play, each having removed a different Remnant from my Break Zone, giving me a ton of Crystals just off of the three of them, plus having Kadaj's end-of-turn discard effect fully up and active. Between Kadaj, Yazoo's Dull-Freeze ability, and general ability to keep my opponent's Fowards under control, this was pretty decisively a game in my favor.

Round 2 vs Category VIII - Win

Two Ice Decks, clashing against one another.

This game was slow. And grindy. And exhausting. Neither of us really had room to make a lot of headway against the other, chipping away at one another for one or two damage over the course of multiple turns. I successfully cast the 8-cost Bartz for his alternative cost of three Crystals on turn two, and unfortunately I hit two of my three copies of the 4-cost Shantotto, neither of which I could play off of Bartz. Still, effectively drew two cards, so it could've been worse.

Like I said, neither of us could really make a ton of headway against one another, with my Dull-Freeze effects doing a ton of work - Yazoo being able to hit a Backup was clutch, as it kept my opponent's Cid Kramer locked down, keeping access to "every" element out of their reach, plus the resource denial that locking one of their three Backups down provided. Seymour eventually joined Yazoo in keeping things locked down. An "online" Kadaj stripping their hand away helped a lot as well, since it meant they were being forced to play from their top-decks.

This game, it felt like I had a hard time generating Crystals, but as my opponent pointed out to me, I really didn't. I was generating Crystals left, right, and center, but I was also immediately spending those Crystals on things like playing Bartz, or using my Remnants' abilities.

Ultimately, after a long, long game, I took the win by swinging big and "overextending" some damage into their board, then using Shantotto's from-hand ability to Dull their entire board before they could crack back and take me out on their own turn.

Round 3 vs Sky Pirates - Win

And right after frying my brain with the Cat VIII game, I got another round against an opponent with a difficult deck for me to work around.

Fortunately, my opponent played the game less aggressively than they really should have, giving me time to get some amount of setup, and while I again felt like I had a rough time building up Crystals, that honestly really wasn't the case - I was just spending them almost as soon as I was collecting them. My one copy of Spiritus hitting the field did a lot of work to help me with some of my Crystal management since I was able to get some slight refunds on a few of my effects, but unfortunately nowhere near enough of them.

They also, thankfully, never saw Ashe. They went through all three of their copies of Basch, but the only Ashe they saw was used to drop a Kites into play because they weren't expecting me to be able to use my Vaan's Life of Crime special to hit their board for a solid 8k damage. Damage that, thanks to them making a bit of a misplay, took out their 2-drop Yuna along with Balthier, which in turn resulted in Fran going down as well.

From there, I was able to claw my way back to a victory, with Seymour cinching it for me by dull-freezing two of their remaining Forwards and breaking the third. With the damage we'd each dealt to one another, that left me in position to win within a turn or two from there.

Conclusion

My brain hurts.

But man this deck was a lot of fun to play. I'm looking forward to getting some more practice in with it, even if I'm not sure that I'll be able to make it to any other competitive events this season. If nothing else, I'd like to get to the point that I don't need to think as hard about how to handle different situations I find myself in. Being brand new to this control-oriented version of a Crystals list, there were a number of points throughout the night, especially against Cat VIII and Sky Pirates, where I wasn't completely certain what the correct play was, and honestly probably overthought a little bit which contributed to how exhausting it was to play the deck.

But, again, practice. That's what it's for.