After my poor showing at yesterday's LQ, I was looking forward to tonight's much more casually-minded Locals. I also, admittedly, wasn't completely certain that enough people would show up for us to have an actual event fire, but to my mild surprise, we had a total of 5 players show up, including myself. Almost everybody who did were all newcomers, with I honestly believe myself as the most veteran player of the group tonight.
One of the others showed up quite early, as did I, so we played a couple of extra-casual games with one another.
Casual Game: Crystals vs Crystals
My first game with my Crystals since some slight changes after I had played it last, and...
Well, it barely operated like a Crystal deck. I had few generators show, and even fewer payoff options. Near the end of the game, I did finally start to see some of my Crystals, and most pertinently I saw Cyan, who I was able to use to clear away my opponent's board for the victory. But in the interim, I was operating as a mediocre Fire/Wind "aggro" deck.
My opponent, for their part, put up a valiant effort against me. They were using the deck from the Dissidia Anniversary Box, and were stymied significantly by my turn 1 Cecil making my Forwards all that much more costly to remove, until they eventually did manage to remove Cecil himself. But the amount of resources that were burned over the course of the game could very feasibly have made a significant difference in how everything played out.
As I said, I took the win. As we still had some time, we began a second game.
Casual Game: Golbez/Yuna Vikings vs Crystals
A deck that I put together literally this afternoon before heading out to the shop, as I plan to shift gears for this format into a deck with a more streamlined version of this deck's game plan, this was my inaugural game. My opponent continued playing their Dissidia Starter deck.
To put things both quickly and bluntly, this did not go well for them. I forget the specifics of how this game went, just that I got both Golbez and Yuna out and active, I had a board full of Vikings at one point, and eventually I remembered to play my LB WoL to protect my field from removal effects.
This was around the time that we had all five players show, so we bought in, and after confirming that nobody else was likely to be arriving, the shop divvied us out into pairings for the night.
I continued to run the Golbez/Yuna Vikings list throughout the night, as I wanted the practice.
Game 1 vs Yuna/Knights - Loss
The same opponent who had been using the Dissidia Starter in the two casual games just above, this was when they pulled out a dangerous deck. I lost our die roll, and they went first.
And to put things both quickly and bluntly, this did not go well for me. Turn 1 was just a Larsa for Gawain and pass, my turn 1 wasn't super impressive either, and then turn 2 they played Gawain to search Ramza and Curilla, whom they proceeded to then play, filling their board. I was immediately behind, and largely failed in my efforts to play catch-up.
Game 2 vs Warriors of Light - Win
This game, unlike the above, went much more swimmingly for me. I was the one who put my opponent on the defensive with a quickly-filled board, and with Yuna kept them locked down for most of the game. One strong point that risked derailing my entire game was when I made the mistake of not playing my LB WoL, which enabled an EX Burst Brynhildr to break Yuna. I rectified the mistake, and eventually hit another Yuna off of Golbez, which cleared the way for me to pummel them with Vikings safely.
Game 3 vs Turks - Win
I felt a little bad about this one. My opponent was using a deck that was mostly the Shinra deck from the FF7 Two-Player Starter set. I was using a deck that's a strong contender in the current meta, albeit a deeply unoptimized version of it.
They had a field of strong Forwards, but once again getting Yuna, Golbez, and a board full of Vikings in play meant that I was able to keep those Forwards locked down while safely swinging damage in with Golbez. LB WoL hit the field early to make sure I didn't get caught unawares by any EX Burst removal again, and I generally kept the game under complete control. My opponent, for their part, was a great sport about it, and was mostly excited to see the Yuna/Vikings deck in action, as they had heard about it being strong, but were unaware of just how strong it could be.
After the game, I showed my final opponent my other two "real" decks - my Scions and my Crystals - and explained roughly how each of them works as I was. Eventually, they needed to leave, but I wanted to get one final game in, to try out a different deck that I built entirely to be a fun, casual "jank" list, so the only player tonight that I hadn't already played against agreed to play me.
Casual Game: Manikins vs Dark Golbez Archfiends
So just, going into this, I fully anticipated losing. The Manikins list was built on a lark because it was cute, the whole list ran me $6 total, and $4 of that was shipping costs, and it gives me a more casual list to play against new players - like my final opponent - who may not have anything "current" and ready to tussle with my other, stronger decks. My opponent used Archfiends, partially at my urging since I wanted to see it in action, and partially because their other deck would've needed to cannibalize a few pieces from the Archfiends list anyways, so just using that deck saved us both some time.
And I did, in fact, lose the game about as handily as I anticipated. But it was a fun game regardless! I was excited to see the Archfiends in action, and my opponent thought that the Manikins were a fun deck in their entire concept. We both enjoyed ourselves a ton, and at the end of the day, isn't that what playing card games is about?
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