Final Fantasy TCG Locals - January 27th, 2025 - CANCELLED

 Short post, but in the interests of keeping up with my schedule:

The quick version is that locals for tonight were cancelled.

The longer version is that in the Discord server for the local area's player base, local events are listed as weekly, reoccurring events that can be RSVP'd for, with a minimum of 4 players being necessary to make an event actually fire off. We only had 3 confirm for tonight, one commit as a "Maybe", and a number of players declined. The Maybe seemingly never decided one way or another, and as such we did not have enough people committed to make tonight's Locals happen.

The perils of having a small pool of local players.

Pokémon League Locals - January 26th, 2025

Played a few casual games of GLC on the side of our weekly Standard League play, getting more practice in with my Fairy Control deck.

Game 1 vs. Grass - Loss

I managed to get an early lock set up using Fairy Lock Klefki, but it only took a few turns for my opponent to find a Switch and break from that lock. That sort of set the tone for how this game went down for me. I stalled them, got a few locks in place, but invariably it would only be a turn or two before they managed to draw some out or another to break what I had in place while I was whittling away and trying to find my Miss Fortune Sisters or my Team Rocket's Handiwork to mill some cards. All in all, it was honestly a little frustrating to see the luck of the draw break so much in their favor that way.

Ultimately, a mistake on my final turn is what did me in, rather than their incredible luck at drawing their outs: I wasn't paying enough attention to how many prizes that they had taken. I thought they still had two left, when they were on their final prize. Had I been more cognizant of them being that close, I would've used my Supporter for the turn to play a Team Flare Grunt and discard an energy from their active Pokémon in an attempt to prevent them from attacking for the game. Instead, I used Team Rocket's Handiwork, trying to get some more mill done. Of course, given my luck that game, they probably had another energy in-hand and would've been fine to just attach and finish the job regardless, but I obviously can't say that with certainty.

Game 2 vs. Colorless - Draw

Again, I established an early Fairy Lock, but they got through it thanks to Colorless having a plenty of "double" energy in addition to other Supporter-based energy ramps, meaning that they got an attacker set up to knock my Klefki out. This left me a bit on the defensive, but I managed to stall them out regardless, and my Crushing Hammer luck did see me discard all of the energy that they had in play.

They eventually conceded as it was late into the day, we had paused so that the League's leader could work through an end-of-month raffle that our League does with support from the shop which was a lot of excitement and noise, and they did need to leave, so I technically won.

That said, I consider it a draw for a reason: I was running low on cards-in-deck myself, though I had a number of recursion effects in my hand that would let me keep myself from decking out. And while I had managed to slow them down by discarding all of the energy that they had managed to get into play with Team Flare Grunt, Crushing Hammer, and Enhanced Hammer, I can't actually say for certain that I would've managed to keep the stall going long enough to get the victory had they not conceded.

Pokémon League Learn to Play Day - January 25th, 2025

The card shop I go to on Saturdays was having a big learn to play day for new players to learn how to play the myriad games that they sell. This included Pokémon.

I showed a new player that their deck had a number of cards that aren't Standard legal, then ran two Learn to Play games for another new player, using older decks like the ones that used to be used at Play Labs and other side events at Regionals and other similarly-scaled events. After those two Learn to Play games the first newbie came back, having bought a new precon and wanting to try the game out in full. I pulled out my Festival Lead Dipplin deck.

Casual Standard Game: Festival Lead Dipplin vs. Miraidon ex Deluxe Battle Deck

Starting with a Cleffa in the active, my deck took a few turns to find and set up a Dipplin. The newbie attached some energy around, and didn't accomplish much. 

Once my deck finally found a Dipplin, the game was pretty swiftly over. 200 damage a turn overwhelmed all of their non-ex Basics, and while they did get a "baby" Miraidon set up to finally take a revenge KO, by that point I had set up additional Dipplins on my bench. A Lana's Aid to bring back the KO'd Applin meant that my bench was brought right back to full, and a Vitality Band was a little overkill, but meant that I could "one"-shot their Iron Valiant ex.

For a learning game with an unfamiliar deck, they did reasonably well enough. Unfortunately, my deck just decided to set up fairly rapidly and it was too much for them to do anything about.

Some time after this game, after a little bit of just hanging around, chatting with the other professors, and telling them a bit about changes I'd made to my Fairy Control GLC deck, I played against one of them in a Gym Leader Challenge game.

Casual Gym Leader Challenge Game: Fairy Control vs. Psychic Control - Win

This was my first game playing my Fairy deck after making some significant modifications to it.
I set up an early lock with Fairy Lock Klefki, but a Guzma and a lucky coin flip later, their Clefairy took out my Xerneas with a Mini-Metronome borrowing its own Bright Horns attack. I quickly grabbed it back with Rescue Stretcher, then returned to Fairy Lock-ing with Klefki after Bossing the Clefairy away. They eventually hit an Enhanced Hammer to remove my Double Turbo Energy, putting a stop to my Fairy Lock.

Some back and forth with Supporters eventually saw us get into dueling locks. They took my Xerneas out again with Clefable using a regular, no coin flips necessary Metronome, and we both made efforts to stall. Their Garbotoxin Garbodor turned off the abilities that many of my Fairies rely on, but ultimately I managed to get the win via mill by recurring Miss Fortune Sisters and Team Rocket's Handiwork.

It was a slower opponent that I was able to set up decently against, but the changes I made to the deck worked out incredibly well. I loved the way that the way the deck played with the new locks and the mill supporters.

We did start a second game, with them using a Dark deck utilizing Red Banquet Guzzlord, but they were called away to join the shop's weekly Standard play, so we had to call that game short after about three turns.

Friday Night Magic Commander Night - January 24, 2025

Heading to the card shop on my own once again, I sat in with a group of two, and a fourth joined us after our first game concluded.

Game 1:
Commodore Guff vs Brenard, Ginger Sculptor and Kaheera, the Orphanguard - Loss

By my own hand, I had a rather slow start to the game. I kept a two-land hand, one of which was a Temple of Epiphany, expecting that I would draw into more lands sooner rather than later. That was, quite frankly, my mistake.

Brenard's player, on the other hand, had a rather speedy start. With Brenard himself hitting the field quickly, followed by a variety of Splicer creatures to generate Golem tokens, and various effects to double up on those Golems, or on the Splicers when they died thanks to Brenard's effect making token copies of them, his player had a rather frightening board state. Kaheera's player eventually dropped a Farewell, slowing Brenard down and giving the two of us a little bit of breathing room that we were able to start building boards of our own.

I did eventually get a couple of Planeswalkers in play, Guff himself included, and started trying to build a small wall of tokens to block with. Meanwhile, Kaheera and Brenard took shots back and forth at one another, giving me ample room to work with despite my health total having been cut quite drastically in the turns prior to Kaheera's Farewell.

Unfortunately, after a few turns, Brenard's player turned his golem army in my direction and took me out of the game. Kaheera was unable to find an answer to Brenard's board, and followed the turn after.

Game 2
Commodore Guff vs The Cyber-Controller, Kaheera, and Me, the Immortal - Win

We had a fourth player join us at this point, who like me had come by on his own. Brenard had changed to Me, The Immortal, and Kaheera kept the Cat Beast out. Though I know that I personally kept a drastically better hand for this game, all four players started off slowly, almost like a casual "battle cruiser" style of game.

The Cyber-Controller was building up artifact-based mana ramp, I was keeping The Cyber-Controller in check as best I could, Me was a little mana screwed but still building up a collection of enablers for their Voltron strategy though having no Blue Mana to actually cast their Commander meant there was no pay-off, and Kaheera had built up a few powerhouse creatures through anthems and other buffs.

Kaheera took a few potshots around the board, chunking some damage out of the Me player as well as out of me, personally. When it came to The Cyber-Controller's "turn" to be attacked, Kaheera played Akroma's Will, turning their moderately scary board from 19 damage to a suddenly lethal 38 point swing with Lifelink, establishing Kaheera as the table's archenemy.

For one turn, at any rate, as I followed that terrifying display up with a Fumigate to wipe the board of creatures and gain a little bit of life back. My Planeswalkers were untouched by the board wipe, meaning I was left the strongest board at the table afterwards. I used Teyo, Geometric Tactician to give Me and myself some card draw because Kaheera was sitting at 80 life, and I knew I could use the help to whittle that life total down. Me eventually got their blue mana, played their Commander, and chunked 11 Commander Damage out of Kaheera, who couldn't do anything about it.

Using Teyo's -2, I then "forced" Me to finish Kaheera off by dictating that Me could only attack towards the Kaheera player. After, since Me had had no life gain to speak of, I was able to finish burning them down with the help of two Emblems from a Chandra, Torch of Defiance as well as Commodore Guff's own -3 ability.

Game 3:
Narci, Fable Singer vs. Arna Kennerüd, Skycaptain, Flubs, the Fool, and Olivia, Opulent Outlaw - Win

Another game with four, Cyber-Controller switched over to Arna, Me to Flubs, and Kaheera to an Assassin-focused Olivia. I decided that after two game with entirely too many Planeswalker effects, I had learned absolutely no lessons whatsoever and pulled out my Narci deck, which is no slouch in terms of triggers and game actions.

The game started with some early aggression, Olivia taking shots around the board, with myself and Arna hitting right back. Meanwhile, I built up a few enchantments, Flubs established a large, but mostly-defensive board with their landfall triggers, and Olivia had a somewhat rough time with establishing much else on the table aside from their Commander. Still, combat was happening, creatures were turning sideways, and life totals were dropping.

My Sagas and other Enchantress shenanigans set me up as the table's archenemy this game, but I was kept safe thanks to a Sphere of Safety. Mirari's Wake and a moderate mana flood made sure I was producing a patently absurd amount of mana every turn, allowing me to build that powerhouse position. Thanks to a Thraben Charm and a Cruelty of Gix, I was able to kill and steal an Avenger of Zendikar from Flubs.

Having used Open the Vault to get some Sagas back, I also managed to steal an Omnath, Locus of Rage in a fairly similar vein, though Omnath was exiled before I could do anything with it. The plant tokens I generated off of the Avenger gave me a small army that I was able to swing through to take Arna out of the game, while also doing significant damage to Flubs and Olivia with the other bodies I had managed to get into play, including an Avacyn token from Battle at the Helvault.

Though I proceeded to wipe the board afterwards using Single Combat, because while I was in a strong position, Flubs had several fairly large tokens leftover and could've theoretically overrun me if they could get around or destroy my Sphere. I left behind my Commander, but removing my own Avacyn token was fine as Battle at the Helvault was one of the Sagas I had returned with the aforementioned Open the Vault. With continued life loss triggers off of Narci alongside my Avacyn token, the writing was on the wall, and I eventually took the victory.

Game 4:
Ellivere of the Wild Court vs. Otharri, Sun's Glory and Maarika, Brutal Gladiator - Loss

Our fourth player had to leave after the third game, putting the fourth and final game as a pod of 3 once again. I decided to try out a preconstructed deck that I've had for some time, but have never actually played before - Virtue and Valor, from Wilds of Eldraine. Flubs changed to Otharri, and Olivia changed to Maarika. By their admission, the Maarika deck had a mana base best described as lackluster.

In my mind, this made Otharri, the only deck that was neither a precon nor a deck with a "bad" mana base, the immediate threat. Having played against other Otharri decks in the past, I also knew what the Commander was capable of doing.

I kept a four-land hand, which was a little excessive on my end, but I knew it would guarantee I could get my Commander out on curve at the absolute worst. With a couple of creatures that could benefit from Ellivere's role token auras, it could've been a far worse opener.

Though it also could've been far better, as I was stuck on those four lands for some time. And only one was a Forest, meaning I was hurting for green mana. Meanwhile, Otharri hit the field a turn or two early and started swinging, building an army of Rebels alongside it to put the dinosaur in the lead, further cementing it in my mind as "the threat".

So the few creatures I got into play, I buffed up with Ellivere's tokens and swung right back into Otharri, with the two of us trading back and forth quite a bit. Maarika meanwhile kind of durdled a little while failing to get a ton of mana or board presence. Once Maarika did hit the field, Otharri's player wasted no time in removing her.

After a few turns of the back and forth, Maarika's player finally played a Blasphemous Act, wiping the board, along with another spell that I missed to make sure that their only other creature would inflict a matching 13 damage to both Otharri and myself. Because I had actually been winning the damage race against Otharri, this took Otharri out of the game, while leaving me at 11 life and very much on the back foot. As the Otharri player went down, they decided to take a parting shot, initially looking at a Garruk's Uprising on Maarika's board, but deciding it was "funnier" to blow up a Fertile Ground that had given me only my second source of green mana, which only further contributed to my being on the defensive after Maarika's board wipe.

I flailed about for a few turns thereafter, barely eking out a little bit of survival and being knocked to my last life point. But I was unable to find any sort of proper answer, and thus I eventually had to fold.

Pokémon League TCG Challenge - January 23rd, 2025

Tonight, the shop I go to on Thursdays was running a League Challenge for the Pokémon TCG.

I did not play tonight, because I was acting in my capacity as a Professor to help run the event.

I did however offer a newer, or technically returning player some advice for their Charizard deck during a bye round, as well as letting them take a look at my Festival Lead Dipplin list.

Then after the event, I spoke with another player about the Gym Leader Challenge format, given their interest in the format, and let them see my Fairy Control list to help sell them a little on the format.

Final Fantasy TCG Locals - January 13th, 2025

Of the three TCGs that I actively play, Final Fantasy is the one with which I have the least familiarity, due to the fact that it is the one I picked up most recently and have had the fewest opportunities to play aside from that, as the local scene for the FFTCG isn't always able to meet on the one day a week I have readily available to play.

But it has been pretty consistently able to meet for the past month or so, meaning that with luck I'll be able to get much more play under my belt.

Tonight we had a total of 4 players, including myself. I was playing a Mono-Lightning Scions list.

Game 1: Vs Mono-Wind "Storm"

I know Storm is a Magic: the Gathering archetype and mechanic, but quite frankly, "storm" is the best descriptor I can think of to describe what my opponent's deck wanted to do, and both they and at least one of the other players agreed with referring to the deck as a Storm Deck, so it sticks. Anyways.

A fairly early Estinien put me into a fast, aggressive start for the game. Unlike Magic's Storm decks which can take a few turns of early damage and then combo off as if nothing had happened, in Final Fantasy TCG, my aggressive start meant that my opponent was on the back foot immediately. I was able to keep the pressure on, using my various removal effects to pop their engine pieces, freeing me up to throw steady damage at them.

They did manage a couple of strong turns in the later stages of the game where the deck got to "do its thing" and set me back quite drastically, though I managed to get stabilized and take the victory.

I also wound up taking 0 damage throughout the game, which was a testament to how much my aggression set them back.

Game 2: Vs Water-Lightning Crystals

Unlike my previous game, this one saw me playing a much slower, more methodical-feeling game. At least, to me. The powerful tools that can be fueled by the Crystal mechanic in the FFTCG did an excellent job at keeping my board fairly trimmed down, and a few large bodies meant I couldn't sneak damage through nearly as easily as I could against the Wind deck.

All I could do was play empty my hand to drop my characters with removal effects, destroying their board presence right back and keeping their Crystal engines offline until I finally won the war of attrition, whittling their resources down enough that I could get the last few points in.

This one, despite feeling much more difficult in my head, still saw me take the win 7-0.

Game 3: Vs 7-Color Crystals

Another round against a Crystal deck, this one with a wildly different take on Crystals than the previous. The only element that this deck doesn't run is Light - otherwise, there are at least 3 cards, per the player, in each of the other 7 elements in the FFTCG. This is also a list that the player in question is trying to tweak and fine-tune for an upcoming Winter Cup competitive tournament, so my Scions were likely very good practice for what the deck needs in order to deal with an aggro deck.

And that said, they kind of drew pretty poorly. Part of their tweaking and fine-tuning is trying to establish their line-up of Backups, so they knew going in that their deck likely didn't have enough to function the way that they wanted. And they were kind of right.

I did get a relatively early Estinien to get some early damage in and fueling my resources through Estinien's attack trigger. They built up a few characters on the board to try to build their Crystal engines, and when I played a Thancred in an attempt to blow up their Cyan - a massive payoff card for Crystal decks - they responded by blowing up my Estinien and both mostly shutting off my pressure as well as cutting down my resources significantly.

Using one of my Y'Shtolas, however, I was able to blow their board up twice, and pushed the final few points of damage in, after a shockingly even damage race prior to it. I won 7-4, a marked difference from the previous two games where I went untouched damage-wise.

After the "official" games were finished, myself and the 7-Color Crystal player had one more game, a friendly, casual match because they wanted more matches with their deck to get a better idea of what the deck needs.

Friendly Casual: Mono-Water Golbez vs 7-Color Crystals

I love my Scions deck, but I know it fairly well at this stage, and I know that it's rather good. I wanted to play a different deck of mine, one that's more or less a pet project of mine. Focused around a 5-drop Golbez who can cheat low-cost Forwards into play at the start of combat on my turn, with a bevy of support for "Standard Units" since most of the Forwards that I play are the Viking series of Forwards from Final Fantasy III.

I had a fairly mediocre start, but that was my own doing since I thought my opening hand was a little better than it proved to be. A little back-and-forth while we each tried to build our resources, including my use of a Meliadoul to disable their Waltrill and turn off their primary Crystal generation, I did get eventually get a Golbez in play, but my luck with his reveals was lacking. I revealed a Backup, and then a Light Element Noctis. The Noctis allowed me to pop one of their forwards, but it was met by a practical board wipe on their very next turn.

Eventually, I finally came up short, and they took the win over my deck.

The Golbez deck has legs in theory, but in practice it's not a style of deck that works well with the kind of game that the Final Fantasy TCG actually is. And that does make me a little bit upset, in the way that any deck not working would make its builder a little upset. But c'est la vie. I have ideas for what to do with the deck, but it will be at least a couple of weeks before I can play FFTCG again and find out if that will work out the way I want it to.

Pokémon League Locals - January 12th, 2025

Today was a Pokémon VGC Challenge at the shop I attended, so there were a number of video game players partaking in the current video game regulation - Regulation G, as the format recently shifted back to that, after several months of Regulation H.

I showed up a few minutes late, and there had already been enough players present for the event to fire, so I mostly just watched a little bit, did a small bit of shopping for some tokens for Magic, and also watched a little bit of two players playing Gym Leader Challenge against each other.

I did eventually have a game against a player who showed up even later than I did for the VGC Challenge, who missed Round 1 due to being so late, and then got a Bye in Round 3. So they could get another game in, I played them with my Regulation G team. They were incredibly new to Pokémon VGC, so it did not go well for them, but I did offer a few tips for making their team better. They asked about what to keep in mind when building a team for Trick Room, so that was interesting as I had to consider for myself the constraints of building a Trick Room team, as opposed to a team more suited to Tailwind.

After both VGC and the local Standard play for the day finished up, I played three games of Gym Leader Challenge against one of the other Professors, with the both of us using our Fairy decks.

Gym Leader Challenge: Fairy Control vs. Fairy Aggro

The first game, quite frankly, isn't worth talking much about. I couldn't draw Pokémon to save my life, and the other professor's coin flips were on absolute fire, so their Tapu Fini was able to continuously use Dream Away to shuffle away my active Pokémon, all while they were digging for more energy to use their actual, damage-dealing attack. The game ended when I finally failed to draw a new Pokémon and they were able to attack with their Tapu Fini's Wonder Shine to KO my final Pokémon. I lost for not being able to replace it with a new active.

The second game went significantly better, with a more varied back and forth. My deck is designed not to attack at all, it is completely a control build reliant on my Fairies' abilities and my Supporters to establish locks. The other professor did manage to start breaking through said lock, and it was slowly, steadily heading towards my loss, though there was room for me to turn it around and reestablish a lock.

At least until I realized I had made a significant play error out of my excitement to have gotten access to a particular Pokémon in my Prizes. Whoops. That one was completely on me.

Our third and final game was finally a really solid affair that got to have a meaningful conclusion that we were both satisfied with. I started the game by stalling with Charmed Charm Tapu Lele, confusing their only attacker by attaching a Fairy Charm to my Tapu Lele. I got the Stadium card Shopping Center into play, allowing me to bounce and replay the Charm each time they managed to retreat and break the Confusion, though they got several prizes doing so.

Eventually, I built up a solid loop with a Robo Substitute and Wondrous Gift Florges, where the substitute would get knocked out, and Florges, provided I got heads on a coin flip, would get it back out of my discard pile and on to the top of my deck, and the next turn I would then draw the substitute to put it back into play. This went fairly well until they were able to bump my Shopping Center to fully break my Charm loop, followed by a few bad coin flips meaning I couldn't keep them unable to take prizes. That they bumped my Shopping Center with a Parallel City was further icing, as I was restricted to three bench spaces, limiting my options each turn.

The final nail in my coffin, as we discussed once we finished the game, was that I had a turn where I had the Robo Substitute in play, meaning I didn't need to Wondrous Gift for it, so I instead played a Pal Pad, then got that back with the Wondrous Gift. Instead, I could and should have gotten back my VS Seeker so I could pick my copy of Arven back out of my discard pile to be able to grab an item card from my deck, which would've given me the means to find something to help me deal with the Tapu Fini slowly breaking my board down. Instead I drew my Pal Pad again, shuffled cards back in, and because Wondrous Gift kept putting my Substitute and Lillie's Poké Doll back on top of my deck, I could never draw the cards that had gotten shuffled in. It was a slow, grindy loss, because they were able to draw new resources, even as they whittled their own deck down, and got a few prizes on the turns where I failed Wondrous Gift, until eventually they managed to get their VS Seeker to pull their Guzma back out and bring up an actual Pokémon, getting around my Substitute for their final prize.

I love my Fairy GLC Deck, but it definitely needs some changes made to it, I think. It relies on Wondrous Gift loops to establish a lock, but that's an incredibly slow win by mill on top of being luck-based since if I fail to hit my Wondrous Gift, that's a turn where I can't do anything to delay my opponents. I've ordered a few cards that the other professor and I think will help it operate more smoothly and help it to pick up more wins. Time will tell, but I'm excited to try it out.

Pokémon League Locals - January 11th, 2025

At the shop I went to today, the League was running a League Challenge and a League Cup back to back. I did not participate in those events, but I did play a casual game with another professor who had been playing in the Challenge, although they had dropped from the competition. 

Casual Game - Festival Lead Dipplin vs. Gholdengo ex

On its face, this is a bad match-up for me. Turns out that Gholdengo's resistance to Grass isn't relevant super often, but against a deck whose only attackers are Grass-type Dipplins, it's incredibly relevant. 
I won the coin flip and went first so I could evolve as early as possible. My opponent, who is actually the person that gave me the list that I built, had a moment of forgetfulness about what Festival Lead allowed me to do, so I got two early Knock Outs against Gimmighouls. They then got a Gholdengo ex set up and things became much more difficult for me, especially with my Maximum Belt in my prizes. I tried to knock out a Fezadipiti ex, but didn't realize that it was weak to Fighting, rather than Grass, which meant it survived the hit quite comfortably.

The game wound up actually being a draw a few turns after. Without getting into detail, my opponent was in a somewhat sour mood for a number of reasons, and just didn't have the mental wherewithal to finish the game out.

The game ending in a draw aside, it was an interesting struggle to work around a bulky Metal-type who could resist my attacks, especially without my Maximum Belt available to help me get around that resistance.

Friday Night Magic Commander Night - January 10th, 2025

I always go to Commander nights on my own, because I don't really have anybody else to take with me or otherwise play with, so I'm at the mercy of finding folks who have space for at least one person to join their pod. Tonight, I was able to find room with a pod of 3.

Game 1, Narci vs. Prismatic Bridge and The Archimandrite

The first game was with a pod of 3 while waiting on the fourth to show up at the shop. I played my recently-built Narci, Fable Singer deck. This game went fairly quickly, with the Prismatic Bridge player dropping the Bridge kind of early. Because I was curious what the deck would do, and because the fourth player showed up partway into the game, while I had the opportunity to destroy it, I let it ride.

When they dropped their only creature in the deck, Ink-Treader Nephilim, they proceeded to use Ink-Treader's effect, which combined with myself and Archimandrite's boards meant that they were able to draw literally two dozen cards, and generate a dozen and a half tokens, which were then pumped into absurdly large creatures. The game was done after that.

Game 2, Xanathar/Gyruda vs Xanathar, The Archimandrite, and Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls

With our fourth player joining us, I was about to play my Abdel Adrian & Far Traveler deck, but then I saw that the fourth player was using his Secret Lair Drop art of Xanathar, Guild Kingpin as his Commander, so I pulled out my own Xanathar deck, which has a "second" Commander using Gyruda, Doom of Depths as a Companion.

Everybody started off a little bit slowly, but thanks to Valgavoth giving everybody some extra card draw through Stormfist Crusader we all got to "do our thing", at least a little bit. With myself and the other Xanathar player stealing cards from each of the other two players' decks - we bizarrely never targeted each other - the game got pretty out-of-hand pretty quickly with patently absurd numbers of triggers and card theft.

Eventually, between Valgavoth's group slug antics, and The Archimandrite's outrageous life gain, the game's winner became pretty clear, though we played it out. Ultimately, The Archimandrite wound up taking the win, outracing the Chandra, Awakened Inferno Emblems and Spiteful Visions from Valgavoth in a way that myself and the other Xanathar couldn't.

Game 3 Abdel, Far Traveler vs The Ancient One, Ulalek, Fused Monstrosity, and Lord of the Nazgul

So with our third game of the night, I pulled out the Abdel Adrian deck that I had initially intended to play in Game 2: Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward with the Far Traveler Background.

The game started off frighteningly, with the Eldrazi deck quickly dropping dozens of mana worth of mana rocks. If the Ancient One player hadn't played a board wipe, the game would've been finished within just a few minutes thanks to the board state that the Eldrazi player was able to power out. I was able to take out a couple of the Eldrazi's mana rocks afterwards, which slowed the deck down to a manageable level.

Unfortunately, while we were focused on the Eldrazi, the Nazgul player set up a few quiet pieces that enabled an outrageous presence. With a massively boosted Lord of the Nazgul and his Ring-Bearer emblem at its fourth and final stage, the Nazgul ultimately took the win.

Game 4 Abdel, Far Traveler vs Uril, Mist Stalker, Rafiq of the Many, and Go-Shintai of Life's Origin

Unhappy with Abdel's performance in game 3, I played the deck a second time for the fourth game. I had a pretty steady, decent opening and was on-pace to start really "going off" on curve.

Then Uril got adequately Voltron'd up and took me down the turn after I played Abdel, because I was the only person without any flying blockers. Whoops.

I didn't pay much attention to the game after that because I was putting Abdel away at that stage, but Uril got an aura to give Trample and it didn't last very long anyways.

Game 5 Narci vs Prismatic Bridge, Meren of Clan Nel Toth, and Rafiq of the Many

To finish the night out, I pulled Narci back out to give her a second go. With a turn 1 Sol Ring and turn 2 Narci, I had a decent, if not necessarily outrageous opening. Turn 4 I was able to drop a Sandwurm Convergence to protect me from flying creatures and start powering out a steady army of 5/5 Wurms. Remembering what the Prismatic Bridge during the first game of the night, I focused that player down pretty hard.

Meanwhile, Rafiq was swinging at me with an unblockable Yuan-ti Rogue that powered its way through Dungeons, getting a variety of different effects that saw that Yuan-ti hitting 4 rooms per turn, for 3 room activations each. Meren built a little slowly, but started getting some incredibly strong Grey Merchant of Asphodel loops by sacrificing it with different effects, such as Birthing Pod, then reanimating it with Meren.

The Dungeon value proved to be too strong in the end, and Rafiq took the win. I was a little upset, less because of the loss and more because my deck didn't really do many "Enchantress" things the way it's built to do. C'est la vie, sometimes that's how the deck shuffles.

In all, it was an incredibly fun night of Commander. Didn't get a single win, but I got to play all three of my newest decks, and the two absolute newest I got to play multiple times. Well, technically multiple times, considering how quickly Abdel was knocked out of the second game I played it for.

Pokémon League Locals - January 9th, 2025

Locals tonight were a "normal" League night, playing 30 Minute, Best-of-1 Rounds. I was playing a Festival Lead Dipplin deck built around, well, the Festival Lead Dipplin from the Twilight Masquerade set, along with a suite of various other single prize Pokémon for support. The only "rule box" in my deck is my Ace Spec, Maximum Belt.

With 16 players to start out the night - one player dropped after round 2 - we played 4 rounds, and I went 1-3. Technically. My one win was getting a Bye round in round 3 after the drop.

Round 1 vs. Lugia VSTAR - Loss

This game went poorly for me right out of the gate. The Lugia player managed to have a practically ideal opening setup, and they had an Iron Hands ex set up on their second turn, at which point things were pretty swiftly over for me. They got two knock outs with Amp You Very Much by the time I was able to get a Dipplin set up to take down the Hands, and the turn after I did that, they had set up a Minccino, and then Lugia VSTAR itself.

I don't think I necessarily did anything wrong this game, I just had the misfortune of my opponent getting a near-perfect start.

Round 2 vs. Festival Lead Dipplin - Loss

Not quite a mirror match, as the other player had a very different take on the Festival Lead Dipplin list. Among other things, running Teal Mask Ogerpon ex and Hydrapple ex meant a completely different suite of "support" options on the bench compared to my purely single prize selection.

I lost in large part because I got stuck with a Thwackey in the active spot. My mistake was in evolving the Grookey that I was forced to start in my active spot, because while I was able to attach a Rescue Board to it, Thwackey had too expensive a retreat cost. Thwackey's Boom Boom Groove is an incredibly strong ability, but it can't do anything when it is in the active spot. I evolved it because I was worried about not getting a replacement when I played an Iono to get a new hand. Much like my Round 1 game against Lugia, two turns of my opponent managing to hit 2 prizes a turn before I could set up a counter-offensive was too much, and I couldn't catch up.

Round 3 Bye - "Win"

Bye round. No game to speak of. I spent the round chatting with one of the other professors about VGC and the fact that we've officially returned to Regulation G as of a few days ago.

Neither of us is excited.

Round 4 vs. Gardevoir ex - Loss

The only game that I didn't see myself get stuck behind an impenetrable lead, this game was an incredibly fun back and forth. We hit time in the round and went to turns, and we were on pace to wind up in a draw at the end of turns.

Then I searched my deck and realized that after playing a Super Rod or a Pal Pad, some sort of recovery card, I somehow got my deck and my discard pile swapped with one another. Annoyed at myself for making such a ridiculous mistake, but c'est la vie. The damage is done, and it was a casual League night, nothing was on the line.

This deck was a bit of an odd one, even compared to my own Festival Lead Dipplin or the Dipplin I played against in Round 2. Mostly because while it was a Gardevoir ex deck, it was an unusual Gardevoir that was running a variety of Pokémon that aren't normally found in Gardevoir, such as Espathra ex and Xatu.

Ironically, if it had been a more typical Gardevoir list, I probably would've done better against it, but the presence of the Espathra meant I had to work a lot around its ability in particular. My deck only runs 4 energy, since Dipplin's attack only costs a single energy typically, and with Thwackey and Bug-Catching Sets, I don't usually have any difficulty getting what I need.

Alas.

Still, in all, despite losing every actual game that I played, I still think that the Festival Lead Dipplin deck is a lot of fun. It's a cute little budget list, and while I had some unfortunate luck, the deck has some teeth to it. Enough to take to, say, a Regional? Maybe not. Your local League night, maybe even a Cup or Challenge, though? Probably.

I'm almost certainly going to keep playing it for a while at my locals, at least.

An Introduction

 Hello, there!

My name is Edwin "Kalonimos" Dantes. Well, that's my penname and online handle, at any rate. I digress.

Without getting too deep into the weeds of things, because I'm trying to swing this out in the last fifteen minutes before I go to work for the night, I just wanted to get out a quick description of what my plan with this whole shebang is.

The relatively short version is that my current work schedule is 7-on-7-off. I work 7 days in a row, then I'm off for 7. And in those days off, I play a lot of TCGs. Or rather, I play 3 TCGs on 5 separate nights. I also happen to really enjoy writing! But with my job having the long hours it does, and then general adult life during my weeks off, I don't always have the time or energy to dedicate to trying to write the fantasy fiction I normally do.

So I want to combine these two hobbies of mine in some way. Thus, this blog. The plan is to write-up "after-action reports" from my locals of the three TCGs that I play - Pokémon, Magic: the Gathering (specifically Commander, since that's what the shop I go to does for Friday Night Magic), and the Final Fantasy TCG. The idea is going to be to talk about the decks that I played, the decks I played against, and the ways that I had to approach the different games that I played throughout each night.

The three games being rather different from one another mechanically, and the different ways that I play each of the three, will also be a fun thing to examine. But that's all in due time.

The intended schedule for this is going to be, well, trying to write each post up immediately following each of my usual game nights.

Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, I play or judge Pokémon TCG.

Fridays I play Commander.

And on Mondays I play the Final Fantasy TCG.

Like I said, I work 7-on-7-off, so roughly speaking I'll be writing posts every other week on those nights.