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.
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