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.
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