Final Fantasy TCG Locals - April 21st, 2025

Tonight was the most people I think I have seen show up to FFTCG at once - this likely due to the fact that there's a Local Championship Qualifier happening this Saturday, so in conjunction with the Sunday FFTCG shop being closed for Easter, people came out looking to get practice for said qualifier.

Every game I played tonight, I played with my Scions deck, which has only barely been modified since the release of Tears of the Planet.

I, and several other players all showed up early, so myself and one of the others decided to play some casual games against one another, effectively playing a Best of Three.

Casual games vs Mono-Water

A best of three that I lost 1-2.

The games were very back and forth, with lots of removal lobbed by each of us. I took game 1, they got games 2 and 3. Turns out Mono-Water has a lot of incredible card draw and strong removal options. 

Leviathan, Lord of the Whorl was a key factor, with Game 1 going to me in part because I removed an early Leviathan from the break zone using Irvine, giving me time to get damage through before a later Lenna revived a second. The new LB Sephiroth did no small amount of work for me, and a combination of that and an Odin to remove a Monster that could dodge Sephiroth's dull effect let me push the final damage in. Game 2 and 3, my removal wasn't quite as up to snuff, which wasn't the sole cause for my loss, but it didn't help.

After these, the last few players arrived, so we began our play in earnest.

Game 1 vs Ice-Lightning - Loss

So the shortest way to explain what happened here is as follows: The new Light Yuna and Legend Reno from Tears of the Planet are really good together.

When combined with how quickly I burned my own resources, the Yuna/Reno combo was able to keep my board locked down incredibly thoroughly, and with Reno's ability, also served as removal for many of my Forwards. I did figure out a way to partially get around it, with my Y'shtola's ability to dull my Scion forwards in response, meaning that my opponent was unable to dull my active Forwards, meaning Reno couldn't ping, which worked until my opponent decided to use Yuna's ability to dull my non-Scion Forwards instead.

The match did end up being incredibly close, however, with the final damage score being 7-6.

Game 2 vs Mono-Ice - Loss

Based on how this game went, I feel like Mono-Ice control is a bad match-up for my Scions in particular. Discarding my hand, dulling and freezing my board, keeping me stripped of resources, and while the new LB Sephiroth helped deal with a fairly early Ifrit (XVI), it also proved to be a double-edged sword, because Sephiroth's ability actually broke several of my own Forwards.

Ultimately, a Shiva (XVI) and a Clive priming into Ifrit (XVI) proved to be too much for me to get around, because I was unable to deal with two Forwards with that much power behind them, especially with one of them being Ifrit.

Game 3 vs Mono-Earth w/ AVALANCHE - Loss

A Mono-Earth list using AVALANCHE Operatives as a powerful card advantage engine, which wound up being a lot. My first turn saw me drop two Backups, then their first turn saw them drop the new Legend Barret from Tears of the Planet to fetch a Marlene. I dropped LB Sephiroth almost immediately after to remove the Barret, and spent a couple of turns unable to really follow that up with any other Forwards - after what I had dealt with in my previous game against Mono-Ice, I wasn't about to let Sephiroth destroy my own Forwards if I could help it - so with each of us doing some mild draw-go, I just poked a little damage through with Sephiroth.

Eventually, my opponent managed to break Sephiroth, and while I had a fistful of cards to swing back from that, ultimately the AVALANCHE Operatives were able to generate enough presence to keep the victory far from my reach. Getting hit six times and going from 1 damage to 7, hitting exactly none of my Odin EX Bursts on the final turn also hurt in a big way.

Holiday Off - April 20th, 2025

 It's Easter! And in observance of the holiday, both the card shop where I would typically play Pokémon and the shop that does Final Fantasy TCG on Sundays are both closed today.

Plus I have plans with my family.

Have a good Easter, yourselves. I'll see you tomorrow night for some Final Fantasy TCG at my typical card shop. Probably.

Rest Day - April 18th, 2025

Tonight, I should have been playing Commander at my usual card shop. However, I had to get some work done on my car. 

While I had scheduled the appointment for that work early enough in the day that it should have been finished with ample time for me to make it out to the store, there were delays with that work that kept me later than anticipated and I didn't have the time to make it out to the shop. Plus, if I'm being frank, I slept like garbage and, frankly, was probably too tired to drive the minimum half-hour on the highway to make my way to the card shop. Regardless.

Not an auspicious start to my week for TCGs, especially given that I know that the shop will also be closed on Sunday for Easter which will prevent Pokémon League.

Final Fantasy TCG Locals - April 7th, 2025

 After several weeks, I finally got to play my (relatively) newly built Crystals deck. And boy, oh boy, did it get put through the paces by the selection of lists I played against tonight.

The first opponent I played was, funnily enough, the person whose own Crystals deck heavily informed the list that I put together. Ironically, though, not using their own Crystal deck. We had shown up about an hour and a half before our "event" for the night was meant to happen, so we played a best of three to get in some practice games.

Every game I played tonight was with the above-linked Crystals deck.

Casual Games vs. Three-Color Cadets

In a twist of fate, these games were played with me as a Crystals deck, and my opponent as a mostly-aggressive deck built around a specific Job class. Normally, I would be playing my Scions against their Crystals.

As I said, we played a best of three, and I wound up losing it 1-2.

The first game was a lot of learning pains for me. I made a number of misplays, forgot a number of my effects, and generally was just playing poorly. Meanwhile, my opponent evidently has been an avid Cadets player for quite some time, but got a selection of brand new tools with Tears of the Planet. In short, this meant that where I wasn't entirely sure how to play my deck properly, they were well aware of what they were doing.

The second game, I wound up winning. I had a better opening hand, actually remembered to use more of my effects, and was able to figure out how to work my way around the shenanigans from the Cadets. The third game went similarly to the second, but unfortunately the Cadets were able to keep me in check with enough removal that I couldn't get the seventh and final point of damage through, eventually losing it.

After this point, the rest of our players for the night had arrived, we all bought in, and began playing in earnest.

Game 1 vs. Mono-Earth - Loss

There's no sugar-coating this: I got destroyed. I had an atrocious opening, even after a mulligan. Turn 1 Warrior of Light into turn 2 over-paying for Spiritus was horrific. My opponent was able to play incredibly conservative and maintain a fistful of resources while I floundered to even set up any sort of board presence.

I was forced to try to play aggressively, dropping Ramza into play and spending my then-two Crystals to turn him into an admittedly-monstrous 9k with a whole bevy of abilities. While I had an Amaterasu in hand, I didn't have the resources open to actually use it to save anything, which resulted in my getting hit with a Shantotto to wipe away what little I had set up. The rest of the game went no better for me from that point on.

Game 2 vs. Fire/Ice SOLDIERs - Win

In a complete reversal of the Mono-Earth game, I opened with a fantastic hand, got better payoffs for my resources, and generally just played a much better game. Not for a lack of trying on my opponent's part, however, their SOLDIERs, bolstered by some of the new tools from Tears of the Planet, were quite scary in several ways. In fact, I will say that I think the biggest thing that saved the game for me was that I dropped my one-of copy of Cecil, and my opponent had to spend every resource they had available at the time in order to pop Cecil with an Ifrit (XVI).

However, in the other direction, they did make a grievous misplay on the final turn of the game. I had a Crystal in stock, an active Spiritus, and a fully-powered Ramza also active, ready to block anything that was thrown at me, with Spiritus available to make certain that Ramza would be the largest character on the board. They played a SOLDIER, I forget which one, triggering their Genesis to dull and freeze two of my characters.

They did not choose Ramza. This meant that after the buff from Spiritus, I had a 14k blocker with First Strike, more than enough to handily destroy anything my opponent had, including the Ifrit. They scooped promptly thereafter.

Game 3 vs. Tri-Color Cadets - Win

Once again playing against the person whose Crystals were a heavy inspiration to mine. I opened up with a bit of a misplay, having opened with two 3-drop Samurai backups in my hand, and made the mistake of pitching one to play the other. This meant my intended turn 2 play of dropping the other Samurai couldn't come to pass. This screwed up my math for making further plays, and I was somewhat forced to operate more aggressively than I had planned to.

Thanks in part to my opponent not fully clicking that I had the new LB Emperor in play to generate a ton of extra value from a lot of the Cadets shenanigans, I did manage to take the win.

After the end of the event, my final opponent and I played one more game, me because I still wanted more practice with my Crystals, and them because they wanted to test some changes they had made to their own.

Casual Game vs. Crystals - Loss

Not quite a mirror match, but our two decks do have a number of similarities to one another. Our draws this game were also of roughly similar caliber to one another's. We had a very back-and-forth game, but ultimately, I think we both agree that the clincher was my opponent's greater familiarity with how the deck runs, meaning that they had better overall decision-making in terms of how to best handle what twists and turns we each faced.

Conclusion

The Crystals deck is a lot of fun to play. It's a vastly different beast than my Scions list, and I think I still prefer Scions overall, but as an alternative, something else to break up the monotony of just running the same deck over and over again, it's an amazing amount of fun. I have a few tweaks to it that I plan to make, suggestions from the person I played in most of tonight's games, but that'll require ordering those cards.

Pokémon League Locals GLC League & Content Update - April 6th, 2025

 So I know I said a while back that I wouldn't be doing as much writing on Pokémon League play any more due to my waning interest in Standard, but I may have been made a slight liar by a recent decision made by my League and the other professors to introduce a quasi-formal GLC League to our normal Sunday rotation.

Assuming that the GLC League works out for this "first season" - which will last from today, at the beginning of April, until the tail end of June - we will regularly have Gym Leader Challenge play occurring alongside our normal Standard play.

As GLC is a format I am much more interested in, this works out to mean I will in fact have a steady flow of Pokémon games to write about. This slightly throws off a plan I had where I would try to go out on some of my Sundays to a different card shop in the area to play FFTCG, but I may still try to make that happen. Though this month will prove to be a little odd due to the Easter holiday on my next off-week, as my family want to get together and do something that day.

But I digress. I have Gym Leader Challenge to write about.

And while this would be the point where I would break into my typical headings to talk about each of my games individually, this week I'm not doing that for one main reason:

All three games played out more or less the same way. I used my Fairy deck - one of these days, I'll find a site I can use to upload my Pokémon deck lists the way I have Moxfield and Materia Hunter for MtG and FFTCG - and each game was ground to a practical standstill.

My first two rounds were against Colorless decks, and my third was against a Fire deck. In all three games, I played a highly effective stall strategy, using Robo-Substitute and Lillie's Poké Doll to keep my opponents from taking many prizes, getting obscenely lucky off of my Florges's Wondrous Gift flips to get the dolls back when they got KO'd and drawing them through Slurpuff's Tasting so that I wasn't stuck in a loop where I couldn't find any new cards.

Unfortunately, I had difficulties landing my various mill effects through my two main Supporters, Team Rocket's Handiwork and Miss Fortune Sisters. In my first game, I used Rocket's Handiwork numerous times but only ever hit a single heads with each use. In my second, I used Miss Fortune Sisters to great effect, but again only got one or two cards with each use. And in the third, I simply did not find my mill Supporters. I made use of Rocket's Handiwork maybe twice, but most of my resources were focused on getting around the fact that my opponent got set up in such a way that they had consistent attackers set up, so I needed to work around getting rid of their offense.

What this ultimately boils down to is that in my first two games, I came rather close to milling my opponent out. In my second, specifically, my opponent was down to three cards as we went into the last turn of the game, thanks to my whiffing my only use of Team Rocket's Handiwork and getting the double-tails.

My final record for today was going 0-0-3, which while nice that I was technically undefeated, I was somewhat disappointed that I had gotten so close to winning in two of my three games but just couldn't finish the job. This disappointment has prompted me to go and pull out a copy of Bellelba & Brycen-Man, a win-con from my deck's original incarnation, to give myself a third "win condition" card, one that has a guaranteed flat rate of mill. Once I figure out what comes out of the deck to make room, that will hopefully prove to be a change that gives my deck the last bit of juice it needs to take reasonably consistent wins.

Friday Night Magic Commander Night - April 4th, 2025

 After what felt like a lot longer than the two weeks it's actually been since I've had any card gaming of actual substance to talk about, I made it out to my usual card shop for a Commander night.

I got in four games of Commander tonight, two were played with my Narci deck, finally scratching that two-week old itch to pull her back out, and the other two were played with my Saheeli deck, which remains an absolute blast to play. Three of these games were with pods of 3, and only the last was a full pod of 4.

Game 1: Saheeli vs. Rafiq of the Many and Atraxa, Praetor's Voice - Loss

The Rafiq deck is one that I've played against before, and much like that game nearly three months ago, the game went incredibly quickly in Rafiq's favor. A turn 1 Noble Hierarch led into a turn 2 Yuan-Ti Malison, this in turn being followed up by a turn 3 Rafiq hitting the table for an immediate 8 damage swing that triggered two instances of venturing into dungeons.

Rafiq kept that pressure up, building his board with more and more effects to make the snake hit harder and harder as it swung in on its own, and managed to find answers to every attempt to put a stop to the oppressive value from the unblockable rogue and the dungeon effects. The game was over in swift course as a result.

Game 2: Narci vs. The Archimandrite and Ghyrson Starn, Kelermorph - Loss

The Archimandrite was played by the same pilot as Rafiq, and was likewise a deck I played against nearly three months ago as outlined in the above-linked post.

This game, like the previous game, went by rather quickly. It had a somewhat slower start due to the different decks in play, but a Shiny Impetus on my Satyr Enchanter meant that I was doing a lot of Archimandrite's work for him. I also wasn't able to do many Enchantress-y things due to getting severely mana flooded, and the few things I did accomplish primarily kept Ghyrson Starn held back from accomplishing much of anything during his turns.

The game winning turn came when Archimandrite, still at 37 life due to Ghyrson and I not being able to punch much damage through, swung one creature at each of us, then played Beacon of Immortality to double his life total, meaning that both Archimandrite and his other creature each got +37 power. As Ghyrson and I had done some damage to each other, and I had been plugging away at myself to some degree with my own lands, this resulted in a sudden and practical OHKO.

After this game, two other players arrived, friends of the two with whom I had been playing and that they had been waiting on, as the two were waiting to get product from the Tarkir: Dragonstorm prerelease going on at the time before jumping into playing.

Two other nearby players, however, were looking for somebody to play against, so I shuffled Narci up once more to play.

Game 3: Narci vs. Hazel of the Rootbloom and Brinelin, the Moon Kraken/Ghost of Ramirez DePietro - Win

This game was long, slow, and incredibly durdly. I once again got heavily mana flooded, and spent a good dozen turns playing lands and mana rocks with only a few enchantments here or there making their way to the table. Hazel could have very easily been putting out threatening damage despite a somewhat mediocre board, but was electing to just sit and build up the squirrel army a little. Meanwhile, Brinelin played a serious game of draw-go, including using Jace Beleren to do nothing but let all three players draw constantly. The extra draw power from Jace is, quite frankly, the main reason I was finally able to draw through my mana and start generating a proper presence on the table.

And once I did establish that presence, I quickly became not quite the archenemy, as Hazel continued to not do much of consequence, but definitely the main target for Brinelin. I eventually hit a few Sagas, including most prominently the Battle at the Helvault, and once the Avacyn token hit the table, that turned the game over to me in incredibly short order. The life drain from Narci as my Sagas ran their course certainly helped as well.

The two I joined for this game left the shop after, having plans later in the weekend that they needed to prepare for. I returned to watching the first pod I had joined with, and eventually one of them needed to leave for personal reasons, opening a space up for one final game of the night in my only pod of 4.

Game 4: Saheeli vs. Breena, the Demagogue, Baylen, the Haymaker, and Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER - Win

To start with, the Cloud was a proxied copy of the face commander for the upcoming Final Fantasy MtG set's Commander decks. All of us were completely on board with it being used.

The game itself began with Baylen hitting the ground running, with a turn 1 Sol Ring leading into artifacts to reduce spell costs, as well as an Impact Tremors to throw damage around with their rabbit tokens entering the field. The rest of us began to build up much more slowly, and all three of us quickly punched Baylen down quite low in life. Once Baylen's life was fairly low, Cloud took note of Breena's board and comparatively hefty life total - the owl was still sitting at around 30 life when the rest of us were in the low 20s or even the teens. This prompted the equipment deck to turn around and focus fire towards Breena for several turns, while I continued to plug away at building a board presence. An attempted Blasphemous Act to deal with the increasingly large sluggers was met with Cloud's board and the Breena alone being made indestructible, meaning that the players most hurt by the mass removal were myself and Baylen, the two players who were overall in the worst positions at the time as it was.

Once Cloud eliminated Breena, it became a somewhat frantic effort on my part to build up some defense against the massive mercenary. Fortunately, Cloud turned towards Baylen to remove the rabbit from the game, buying me one final turn. Even more fortunately, that turn was all that I needed. With some significant luck - and no small amount of calculating out energy generation and energy costs, which my brain is still somewhat fried by - I was able to get my Commander in play, then use a Gonti's Aether Heart to take a second turn. During the second turn, using Saheeli's "start of combat" effect in conjunction with a Lightning Runner and Aetherwind Basker, I was able to swing through Cloud's relatively meager blockers and take the win.