Final Fantasy TCG Locals - June 30th, 2025

 After some initial concern that we wouldn't have enough people decide to come along for FFTCG tonight, we did ultimately wind up with a total of 4 players, allowing a small round robin-style "tournament" for the night.

Wanting to finally give the deck a good go after some changes made to it a little while back, I pulled out my Crystals deck. Not just testing out the deck's changes, I was also looking to see if the deck perhaps has enough teeth from a competitive standpoint that I could potentially play it at the remaining Local Championship Qualifiers that I plan to attend this season.

Game 1 vs Warriors - Loss

This game was a fun back-and-forth affair that ended up feeling pretty close to me. In the end, the final damage score was 4-7 in my opponent's favor. The Warriors were able to stabilize enough to work around my removal, and I never saw quite potent enough mass removal to destabilize them.

Plus I keep forgetting Volker reduces the cost of a Warrior by 3. This meant that when I played Zidane to scout for an Amaterasu, where I had an opportunity to have removed Volker, I didn't take that chance. This is what gave my opponent the ability to stabilize as much as they did, since Volker grabbed Taivas, who could then be played for just 2, which in turn searched for Ward to remove the Salamander I had just used to remove their Ifrit (XVI).

Game 2 vs Sky Pirates - Loss

So this was the game where I figured out exactly why Sky Pirates is nicknamed "Sky Rats".

I had a decently strong start, but my opponent had an even better opening and practically exploded on to the board. I was able to drop Cyan and use his on-entry auto-ability to generate the Crystals I needed to wipe the Sky Pirates' board.

Balthier's effect saving Fran, and Kites's effect saving Balthier meant that during my opponent's turn, all I had done was slow down their ability to attack by a single turn, because they rebuilt all but immediately, leaving me with practically no resources left to fight back.

Despite that, however, the game still ended fairly close again, this one being 5-7 in my opponent's favor.

Game 3 vs Mono-Earth - Loss

This wound up as my worst showing of the night, with my only dealing a single point of damage to my opponent.

We both had pretty decent openings, spending a few turns building board states and backup lines. My opponent's backups were both a touch more numerous, and slightly better quality thanks to Clarus searching Epitav, who in turn could search for the 1-drop Earth Leo Forward that allows backups to produce any element. This meant my opponent, with about four backups, was able to go a little crazy, getting 4-Element Warrior of Light in play, followed by an Unei that I had to remove.

Of course, I didn't help myself by dropping my LB Emperor one turn later than I should have, as I put it into play the turn after my opponent had done all of their searches. Given the way the rest of the game went, I'm not sure it would have helped me much at all, as they were able to power out high-cost, high-value Forwards turn after turn.

My one shot to turn the game around had been on my very final turn, dropping Cyan and attempting to generate a full 5 Crystals with him. Unfortunately, after I dumped all of my resources into the play, my opponent used Amaterasu to stop the actual generation and remove Cyan from the game. Using the 4 Crystals that I'd already had, I popped Warrior of Light in retaliation, but the damage was done. With two copies of Spiritus in hand, I was out of gas, and my opponent finished the job without much issue, ending the game, as I noted above, at 1-7.

Conclusion

Honestly, even if I didn't take a single game, this was much needed for me. I think that tonight's the most my Crystal deck has ever "behaved" for me, as often my draws feel like my deck doesn't care much for me, and I had desperately missed playing it. Plus, as I said at the start, I'd made a couple of changes to it that I wanted to test out, so getting that opportunity was nice.

And while I've come to the conclusion that it has some teeth, competitively speaking, it's just not quite enough to serve as an option for the remaining LCQs of the season. In the two games where things came closest for me, I wasn't quite able to seal the deal. And while both Warriors and Sky Pirates are legitimately viable contenders in the current meta, neither is fully a "Tier 1" list, so being able to hang with them is a good sign, but not being able to take the win over either is a little stronger of a bad one.

Pokémon League Locals - GLC Event - June 29th, 2025

 Today was the "capstone" event for my League's inaugural attempt at a Gym Leader Challenge League. Several highly expensive full-art Trainer cards, as well as some expensive energies from the Heart Gold/Soul Silver era of the TCG, were up for grabs.

Knowing my Fairy Control deck has issues with actually closing out games, despite the myriad changes I've made to speed it up and provide it more consistency, I elected to play my Water GLC deck instead. This may have been a mistake, as I went 1-3, but there's honestly no way to know whether or not I would have fared any better - or any worse - if I had played my Fairies instead.

With 12 total players, we had 4 rounds of Swiss before cutting to a Top 4. As I said, I went 1-3, so I did not make the Top Cut.

Game 1 vs Water - Loss

A player who, by their own admission, spends around half their time thinking about Water decks, their list had a far more focused game plan. On top of this, they had a much easier time getting set up, doing so much more quickly than I did, leaving them in a far better position to make use of their resources. It was a relatively quick affair, with me getting beaten pretty handily.

Game 2 vs Grass - Win

My one win for the day, because it was basically the exact opposite for me. I got set up splendidly and took fairly quick control over the game. Veluza took early knockouts, passed its energy on to Shady Dealings Inteleon via Filet Memento once it was knocked out, with the spy lizard covering most of the rest of the game for me. A lucky triple heads from a Scale Hurricane Butterfree took down Inteleon, however, leaving Baxcalibur to finish out the game for me, taking out the Butterfree and a Beedrill in short order once it was promoted to the active spot.

Game 3 vs Fighting - Loss

A game that was frustrating to me for one major reason: Most of my energy was prized, as was one of my two energy search cards. My opponent ran roughshod over me with Buzzwole, and there was nothing I could really do to stop it. Even if I had, by the time I had gotten anything that could've potentially stood a chance, my opponent was down to one prize and had a Steelix on the bench prepared to finish the game out with its Earthquake.

Game 4 vs Grass - Loss

My final game for the GLC event, this game was mostly a close-feeling back and forth between us. Both Veluza and my Rapid Strike Wishiwashi came and went, putting in a ton of damage thanks to Baxcalibur enabling me to quickly power them up, but when my opponent managed to get a Zarude set up to one-shot my Wishiwashi, the game turned around quickly against me. I needed to get my energy back from the discard pile, and wound up trying to fish for cards that would let me fill my hand and hopefully get Superior Energy Retrieval.

I realized, after the game as I was talking with my opponent, I could have just used the Evolution Incense I had in hand to grab Shady Dealings Drizzile and go fetch my copy of Nessa, then used her to get my energy from my Discard, which I could've then used to power up Baxcalibur to take Zarude out. My opponent had nothing but "support" Pokémon left in play at that point, so there's a distinct possibility that I could've turned the game around from that point. But, to my great consternation, that was a line of play that didn't even attempt to occur to me while I was in the middle of the match.

Post-GLC/Conclusion

After taking some time to cool my head - my last two matches left me somewhat tilted - myself and one of the other Professors elected to pull out our Switches and play the best TCG Format: VGC.

Using "Regulation H" rules, which meant no Restricted Pokémon, we had a fun set of three games. I lost the first two, but won our third and final game. The VGC was much-needed after my GLC losses.

But I digress. I'm realizing more and more that I don't know how much fun I really have playing the Pokémon TCG, even as I continue to enjoy my Professor duties for the League. At least twice in the past month, both during GLC events, I have found myself getting needlessly frustrated and getting incredibly tilted. While Standard, which I play less frequently, has still been mostly enjoyable, I'm still finding myself at a point where I'm overall having way less fun with the TCG than the time I spend playing it is worth.

I will likely try to step away from playing the Pokémon TCG, at least for a while. I've been meaning to make that change for some time, but I keep finding myself roped into playing despite my intention. I'm going to continue my Professor duties for my local League, I enjoy the community too much to step away from that entirely. I even have more Professor "things" coming up in the near future - I plan to attend the Pokémon Professor Conference in about two weeks, and I submitted an application to hopefully work as staff for an upcoming Regional in my area (though I have no idea at this point whether or not I will be selected), so we'll see how things go for me from here.

Friday Night Magic Commander Night - June 27th, 2025

 Tonight was the "Commander Presents - Pride" special event, so for two of the three games that I got to play, everybody was making use of the additional "Every Legendary Creature gets Partner" special rule to run multiple Commanders in their decks.

That said, I will only be listing each deck's "normal" Commanders, not the additional Pride Partner Commanders, as I drop the headings for each of the games. I digress.

I joined in with a pod that had 3 going in, and the four of us managed to get three games in tonight.

Game 1: Gogo, Master of Mimicry vs. Sephiroth, Fabled Soldier, Sephiroth, Fabled Soldier, and Kefka, Court Mage

Right out the gate, not one, but two Sephiroth Aristocrat Builds. It was rough going, this game.

For my deck's "Pride Partner", I chose Arcanis the Omnipotent. Mechanically, Arcanis is one of the strongest options I can run alongside Gogo, getting potentially absurd card draw power out of copying Arcanis's innate tap effect. Aesthetically, the idea of these two utter enigmas being "Partners" made me chuckle. Gender? Never heard of her. Sexuality? No thanks. Just two Legendary Creature - Wizards, giving no indication of what can be found under their respective robes.

The long and short of this game is that one of the two Sephiroths found their copy of The Masamune super early and stapled it onto Sephiroth as soon as they possibly could. Even forgetting that Masamune was supposed to be doubling their triggers - which would've flipped Sephiroth super early and generated the Emblem - they still used that to take resounding and utter control over the board by swinging the legendary war hero into any creature that dared to hit the board.

On my end, I couldn't accomplish much because I never really saw any permanents to play, leaving me a depressing lack of abilities for Gogo to copy.

Game 2: Gogo vs. Sephiroth, Fabled Soldier, Dogmeat, Ever Loyal, and Arcades, the Strategist

Not happy with how Gogo ran in the first game, I was the only person to stick to the same deck going into game 2, including keeping Arcanis as my Partner. Dogmeat chose the Commander Precon's Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER for a Partner, Arcades took Tetsuko Umezawa, and Sephiroth opted not to take a Partner for their deck. "Sephiroth is asexual", they said. Which, honestly? Fair. Also, respect for ace rep in the Pride event. I digress.

Arcades having previously been the Sephiroth who ran away with the first game, once again took this game over pretty handily. Turns out that giving them Tetsuko Umezawa to make all of their creatures unblockable, and Arcades making them all powerhouses at budget rates, they just ran roughshod over the rest of us. Sephiroth, formerly Kefka, was able to keep things held at bay for some time thanks to their sacrifice effects, and I dropped an Inundate to slow everybody else down significantly - though Arcades did keep some amount of board state due to being part Blue.

Unlike last game, I did get to do some Gogo Shenanigans, including copying Arcanis's ability multiple times, copying it 3 times on my first use of it (for a total of 4 instances of "Draw 3") and then copying it twice on my second go (for a total 3 "Draw 3"s). Unfortunately, even drawing literally twelve cards in one wack wasn't able to draw me any answers, and I ultimately got run over by the unstoppable force of Arcades's walls.

Game 3: Saheeli, Radiant Creator vs. Xenagos, God of Revels, Ellivere of the Wild Court, and Ziatora, the Incinerator

The one game where none of us used the Pride Partner additional rule, finishing out the night with a relatively quick game.

In short, Ziatora outpowered the rest of us thanks to Gitrog, Ravenous Ride giving them a lot of powerhouse effects from sacrifices, drawing cards and ramping their mana to do a ton of strong plays. For my end, I had a fairly slow start and had pretty minimal Energy production until fairly late into the game, and even worse luck with actually getting Energy payoffs. My one attempt to ease up the damage Ziatora was doing was a Blasphemous Act, but Ziatora top-decked a Victimize and had a cheap creature in hand to play and sacrifice, getting back the worst of what I had removed.

The Demon Dragon mopped us up not drastically long after, thanks to constant recursion of Kokusho, the Evening Star keeping their life total high enough that none of us could quite overcome it and take them down for good.

Conclusion:

Honestly? Tonight was a good, fun night. And in particular, I got to play my Gogo deck twice and get a half-decent feel for it. I don't think I'm going to keep it put together, though, honestly. At least not in its current form. I think that, once I get a few cards that I've ordered, I'm going to heavily modify it and lean more into the spellslinging aspects of it, rather than trying to do funny trigger copying abilities. This will necessitate a change of Commander, either to Baral or to one of two other creatures that are part of the orders I've made.

And, because I'm nothing if not a monster resourceful, I'm likely going to also take apart my Commodore Guff list to get access to its many succulent juices powerful game-changers, going all-in with as powerful a mono-blue list as I can manage to build, which will also free up a number of cards from it for other decks I've been looking into building.

Final Fantasy TCG Locals - June 16th, 2025

Only two people showed up for tonight's Locals, so while we didn't have a formal "tournament" style event for the night, we did still play a few games against one another...

After digging through a box of bulk from a recent trade-in that the store's employee offered to us, as it included a lot of FFTCG Bulk, and the logic was to let us have the first crack at it, as we would be most likely to have uses for any of the cards within.

I digress. Not many games were played, only a grand total of four before we decided to leave.

Dragoons vs Warriors - Win

The first two games we played were my Dragoons list - now actually packing the 2-drop Theatrhythm Aranea that it ought to, thanks to finding a playset in the aforementioned bulk that the store let us dig through - against my opponent running a Warriors deck.

The two games were both incredibly close, with one coming down a damage score of 5 to 7, and the other finishing at 6 to 7. I ultimately managed to snag the victory in both games, thanks to Dragoons having a frankly stunning amount of removal available. In the first of our two games, it was Freya's Cherry Blossoms for 10k or more damage multiple times, and in the second I mostly leveraged the 6-drop Starter Aranea, as I didn't see a single "Cherry Blossom" Freya until the final turn of the game.

After my winning the "match", we each pulled out different decks.

Golbez vs Water/Lightning Monsters - "Tie"

When my opponent indicated they were pulling out their W/L Monsters, I decided the only correct choice was to pull out my 47-Forward Golbez, now with a brand new copy of Kalmia replacing copy of Merlwyb. Although only a one-of, Kalmia gives the deck some level of defense against the removal suite of Serah and Witch of the Fens that has proven so incredibly backbreaking in my previous games using this list.

Which did not matter one single iota, as I did not see the Kalmia until a rather late turn into our second game, when she was revealed by a Golbez flip, and got knocked away to Damage on my opponent's following turn.

Regardless.

I lost the first of the two games. I couldn't maintain any resources in the face of ample removal, including an early, grievous misplay when one Yuna was removed, and I played a second as soon as I drew it on the next turn, despite having no protection for her. In the slightest defense, my opponent had needed to feed all of their Monsters to Witch of the Fens in order to remove the first, thanks to my "lightning rods" Auron and Charlotte, so I was playing her onto a Monster-less board, but given the simple fact that my opponent was playing a Monster deck, I should have had the good sense to anticipate a follow-up, either a search effect or just straight top-decking a Monster. It was the latter, for the record, but the point remains - I didn't have the foresight to hold back a Yuna until I had protection, and I suffered for it.

I won the second game, because while all three of my Yunas were once again removed, I was able to stick a Golbez and keep him out to provide me value throughout the game. I was able to eventually push through the win, in part because I used Golbez to steal their LB Graff, and otherwise had enough resources available to keep them at bay until I could snatch the victory.

Despite us being tied at 1-1 at that point, there was no third game between us, as the other player was ready to pack up and head home. Not as many games as I would have liked to play out, but at least I was able to get a few in, and the bulk box gave me the opportunity to pick up a number of cards I had been looking at for a little while.

Pokémon League Locals - June 15th, 2025 - No playing, Only Professor Duties, and I loved it

 Today was a rather tiring, but fulfilling day at my local League.

In addition to our typical League shenanigans - for which we had a rather respectable turnout in spite of it being Father's Day - we also had a small party with our League. Today was also the Finals Day for Pokémon's North American International Championship, so the League's professors planned for a watch party today. The store generously provided us some pizza, we had baked goods, soda, and generally made merry while we had Standard play firing alongside our NAIC Watch-Along.

But also, we had six new players show for League today, with myself and one of the other professors at some point digging through a box of "League Bulk" - extra cards that have been donated to our League, either by the professors or by other players, to give out to players who need the extra cards for their decks - to help two of the players build not one but three total decks.

So in addition to running our Standard League Play, the three professors present today helped the new players with rules interactions when they came up, aided in building three separate decks, and coordinated with the store to throw a small party.

All of this without me shuffling up a single deck.

This is the sort of day I love to have at my local League. Give or take the party, which was nice, but not the main part of what made today feel so good.

So many people, including so many new players, all coming together, having fun, and my being able to help them in various ways, helping to foster that sense of community. That is why I became a Pokémon Professor, and that is by far and away my favorite part of the Pokémon TCG at this stage. If I never had to shuffle up a deck to play another game of Pokémon, but in exchange I got see more days like today happen regularly at the League? I'd be happy with that.

Friday Night Magic Commander Night - June 13th, 2025

 I went in to the card shop tonight with three decks, including my new Y'shtola deck - mostly the precon, but with the precon's copy of Summon: Good King Mog XII swapped out for a Black Mage's Rod - fully intending to play a game with each of them.

What wound up happening instead is that I saw there was a copy of the Limit Break precon, and I bought that. I did play one game with my Y'shtola deck, but then the pod I joined conveniently happened to switch decks such that we each were playing a different one of the four Final Fantasy x Magic: the Gathering precons.

Game 1: Y'shtola vs. Tidus and Y'shtola

The first game before our fourth arrived was between my very-slightly-modified Y'shtola deck, a second, fully unmodified Y'shtola deck, and one other playing the Tidus deck.

Two Y'shtola decks operating at the same time is a little ridiculous. The two of us were drawing frankly stupid numbers of cards. There were also, all said, four or five separate board wipes throughout the course of the game, which ultimately gave me the win, technically, as my opponent decided that they had no desire to start rebuilding their board from scratch again. Our fourth arrived just after, no less, so it was all the same.

Games 2 & 3: Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER vs. Tidus, Yuna's Guardian, Y'shtola, Night's Blessed, & Terra, Herald of Hope

These games were long, and the four precons feel pretty decently balanced against one another. I did not keep any sort of notes for these games, I just remember, for lack of better description, the vibes and a couple of significant plays.

The first of the two, I was playing with very little going on. I drew a little heavy on lands, and got maybe one piece of Equipment out during the entire game. Tidus and Y'shtola fared better than I did, and did get to engage in their deck's respective gameplans.

But Terra. Oh, baby, Terra. The Terra deck absolutely ran away with the game, going crazy with reanimation shenanigans, including a well-placed Rise of the Dark Realms right after a Crux of Fate wiped away most of their board. This gave Terra a practically guaranteed win if none of the three of us could find a board-wipe, which none of us did, whereupon we shuffled up for a second game with our precons.

The second four-precon game was a much more balanced affair. Everybody got to "do their thing", I had around four Equipments in play before dropping my first creature, but that first creature was Helitrooper who could equip all of that gear for free thanks to its ability for reduced equip costs. I got Sword of the Animist out and gave that to Helitrooper, fixing my mana woes as I was a little behind on lands and lacked access to all of my colors.

Tidus was able to generate massive creatures with their varied Counter-production shenanigans, Tidus's combat trigger for Proliferates, and this also gave them card draw. Terra unfortunately floundered for much of the game, having even worse mana troubles than I had, but when they did get some mana, they made up for it in spades with some wildly swingy turns.

The winner of the game, though, was Y'shtola, whose minor bits of passive healing and just-barely-threatening-enough-to-not-attack board state left them at above 30 life when the rest of us had been whittled away to single-digit totals. Hraesvelgr empowering an incredibly beefy Ardbert spelled a swift doom for the lot of us.

Conclusion

As much as I hate the "Fortnite-ification" of Magic as a product, I can't argue with how much fun the Final Fantasy Commander decks were to play against one another. And with the copy of the two-player Starter Kit that I picked up, I look forward to taking apart the Cloud deck, along with some of my other decks, to bash together with the Starter Kit Cloud for a (hopefully) fun R/W Equipment Voltron list.

Pokémon League Locals - June 12th, 2025

 I was not originally intending to play during tonight's League, but we wound up with an odd number of players, and I was the only Professor who brought a Standard deck along.

Ergo, I ended up shuffling up my Festival Lead Dipplin deck and playing in tonight's 3-round League locals.

Round 1 vs Yanmega ex - Win

Hilariously enough, I had just thrown this player a copy of Yanmega ex that they had needed for their deck tonight, so facing off against them in Round 1 must have been some bizarre providence of fate.

Or just coincidence thanks to Pokémon's Tournament Organization Manager software. Either way.

This was a relatively quick game, with a little back-and-forth between us. They got a handful of Yanmegas set up and prepared, but never more than one at a time. Meanwhile, with my selection of Dipplins and Tools, I was able to take out their bugs just as soon as they took out my apples. With me as a deck full of Single-Prize Pokémon, the math worked out in my favor and I won the prize race.

Round 2 vs Marnie's Grimmsnarl/Froslass - Loss

This game came down the absolute wire between the two of us. We finished with plenty of time left in the round, but it was a practical nail-biter that could have easily gone either way for the two of us. They made a few play errors, sequencing their turns poorly, but it didn't impact their game too drastically.

The final turn came down to some fortunate damage management on their end, where they were able to use TM Devolution to take out four of my Pokémon at once, taking a massive four-prize turn to win. Had they not managed to do that, I was primed and poised to take the win on my turn, but I couldn't even attempt to be mad because of just how much fun the game was and how close the result wound up being.

Round 3 vs Marnie's Grimmsnarl/Froslass - Win

Following up on the Grimmsnarl/Froslass game I had just played, I was paired against a second Grimmsnarl/Froslass for Round 3.

This player was less familiar with the list, it seemed, and admitted at some point that they were only borrowing their friend's deck and that they didn't have one of their own.

They were astonished at how much damage my Applins were able to push out, and how quickly I could set up the apples to do so. They didn't seem to ever find their Froslass to start forcing damage around on my field, which gave me a much easier time dealing with them than my opponent in the previous round, and once I grabbed a Vitality Band to further power up my Applin, I was able to easily take two prizes each turn, quickly securing the victory.

Final Fantasy TCG Locals - June 11th, 2025

 Another day outside of my norm thanks to my taking some time off work, this was actually my first time going out to the other card shop I used to frequent in quite some time. I wanted to get a few games in, ideally with a couple of my decks to see which one "felt" the best against somewhat more competitive lists.

Somewhat unfortunately, the only deck I got any games in with was my Golbez list. Not that that's a bad thing, of course, even if I wanted to use a little more variety than I did. Regardless. Only a total of three people showed up, myself included, so we didn't run a true "tournament" style locals, just took turns trading off Best of 3 games with one another.

Game vs Sky Pirates - Loss

Three very different matches against this Sky Pirates list, which ultimately I lost.

In game 1, I overextended by a lot, and they responded with a board wipe. My deck decided to play resilience however, and I was able to rebuild enough to keep them at bay and buy myself time to overwhelm them with Golbez and Yuna, taking the first game of the set.

In game 2, I was in a strong position and trying to build up to a board that could take them from 0 to 7 in a single turn, but they were able to land a Neo Exdeath to wipe my board - even through a number of Yuna Taxes. The Neo Exdeath swung the momentum of the game hard in their favor, and while I was able to slowly establish something resembling a defensive position, they simply outpaced me - especially with their own Yuna hitting the field at some point.

Game 3, I made an incredibly early misplay that let them Fenrir my Yuna. I couldn't find another, and this left them in a phenomenal position to run away with the game as I couldn't do much of anything to stop them from wiping me out.

I stepped aside to let our third take the seat for a round after my loss.

Observed Game - Refia/Warriors of Light vs Sky Pirates

I missed a few early turns of this game, but when I returned, the game had become two relatively close board states. The Warriors of Light dropped a Refia to do a little bit of removal and score some card draw, though the Sky Pirates managed to remove her in fairly swift order. To no avail, unfortunately, as the Warriors of Light top-decked a second to run away with the game.

The second game, the Sky Pirates wound up stuck with a few odd play lines due to bizarre draws, and this gave the Warriors of Light time to establish a pretty dominant position, even without a Refia. When the Warriors of Light did finally play a Refia, it ended the game in incredibly short order, not hurt at all by the Fire/Wind Zidane that stripped away the Sky Pirates' attempted answer.

The Sky Pirates stepped aside, and I sat back down to play against the Warriors of Light player, though with them using their Mono-Earth list instead.

Game vs Mono-Earth - Loss

Game 1 was pretty heavily in Mono-Earth's favor, because I wildly overextended trying to dig for a Yuna with my Viking triggers. When I failed to find one, my opponent was able to board wipe me without any difficulty, and my lack of resources after my greedy first turn meant that they had ample time to build up a position I couldn't compete against.

Game 2 I had a much better turn 1, getting a decently sized board in place, including a Yuna, something I wasn't able to get out in the previous game. My opponent's turn 1, however, was a hard answer to my deck in the form of Shinryu. Thanks to Shinryu's ability to give my entire board a massive -7000 power loss if I reveal a Forward during their turn - and my deck running 47 Forwards to get maximum value out of Golbez's triggers - meant that the dragon hard-countered my deck in a way that even the Lightning Serah being commonly run in W/L Monsters can only dream of. Even on turns where I could rebuilt some presence, my every attempt to tax the Shinryu's effects was met with failure, and my opponent beat me handily all but entirely with the dragon.

Final Fantasy TCG Locals - June 9th, 2025

A day outside of my normal schedule, since I should have been at work tonight. But it was my birthday, and I gave myself the gift of scheduling PTO to take a half-week off from work.

This opened me up to head out to the card shop, pick up my preordered Magic x Final Fantasy Commander deck (Scions and Spellcraft - I do love me some Final Fantasy XIV), and play a bunch of FFTCG.

I showed up ridiculously early, but that gave me time to rearrange a few things with my decks and sleeve up the aforementioned MtG precon.

When another player did finally arrive, we chatted for a little bit before sitting down to play almost a half-dozen games together. I will note that, due to our fourth player arriving spectacularly late, we did not play an especially organized tournament for the night, but instead had a bit of Round Robin-style casual games with each other.

Dragoons vs SOLDIERs - Win

For our first game, I wanted to try out my freshly (re-)built Dragoons list. Dragoons were my "first love" when I started ordering cards to build proper decks for the FFTCG, and a few weeks back at the Local Qualifier one of the local players brought a Dragoon deck and managed to make the Top 8, which inspired me to rebuild my Dragoons, having sidelined them a long time ago first for Kingsglaive and then for my Mono-Lightning Scions list.

And my goodness, what a correct call that was. The sheer amount of fun I had with these Dragoons cannot be understated. Now, the list I linked above is not technically accurate to my current list. I don't have the 2-drop Theatrhythm Aranea, instead having a significantly worse 4-drop Dragoon in her place, because I simply do not own any copies of that Aranea at the moment. But I digress.

I didn't keep particularly detailed notes about what happened in this game, but the SOLDIERs and I had a pretty fun back and forth with each other, but I eventually cleared the way, I believe using Freya's Cherry Blossom Special Ability, and swung for the victory.

After this game, the other player and I, still the only two present at the shop, each pulled out different decks.

Crystals vs Scions - Win

This turned into a Best of 3 between these two decks, two of which I took the win in.

In the first game, I got Salamander (III) in play when I had Spiritus and Firion both out, which enabled me to pay 2 Crystals, pop two of their Forwards and immediately net a Crystal back from Firion, and then at the end of my turn generate a second off of Spiritus. Those two Crystals then fueled Salamander's ability over the next several turns, as I paid the Crystals to pop Forwards each time my Salamander swung, netting me two Crystals back each time between the two generators. It was a pretty smooth victory from that point, as the Scions couldn't keep Forwards in play to power their own abilities.

In the second game, it went hard in the opposite direction. I didn't have consistent removal, and I burned a Cyan 5-Crystal Nuke entirely too early in the game which bit me hard later on when I couldn't keep their board state under control.

The third game, which I won again, saw me get turn 1 Warrior of Light into a Turn 2 Onion Knight searching for Fire/Lightning Y'shtola, giving me an incredible amount of momentum right out of the gate, especially as I was able to pop the Estinien that they had opened with thanks to Y'shtola's ability.

After this, we each changed decks yet again, as still nobody else had arrived.

Golbez/Yuna/Vikings vs Warriors - Win

The predominantly-Fire Warriors deck had numerous Board Wipes, but I was able to fight my way through them all to do Yuna/Viking things fueled by Golbez keeping my board well-stocked with Forwards. It was a pretty fun game to play, and some much needed practice if I'm going to potentially keep to using the Golbez deck throughout the next handful of major competitive events that are happening over the summer.

This was the point where our other players started arriving, one player significantly in advance of the other. When finally the fourth did arrive, I shuffled up to play against them.

Dragoons vs Sky Pirates - Loss

Doing effectively a best of 3, and I lost both of the games that we played together.

In our first game, I had some issue filling my board which left the Sky Pirates plenty of room to outrace me, plus I made a couple of misplays throughout the game that didn't help me at all.

The second was an incredibly tight affair, coming down to the fact that my opponent had a Qiqirn Backup active that they were able to use to Break what would have been my game-winning attacker after the attack was declared. During the turn that this barely scraped together for them, their Sky Pirates were able to rebuild a full board that gave enough of their Forwards Haste to take their last two shots at me and clinch the victory.

This was where I moved to my final opponent for the night.

Dragoons vs Cat IV Yuna - Win

Again, effectively a best of 3. I won our first two games, "winning" said Bo3, but we did play a third game afterwards just for the sake of getting more games in.

The first game gave us both slightly slow starts. We each just built up our Backup lines, but thanks to my getting Alus in play, I was able to generate a ton of extra value thanks to effectively drawing three cards a turn. This combined with getting Freya in play to throw around Cherry Blossoms numerous times, each to devastating, board-clearing effect meant that I took Game 1 cleanly and fairly quickly.

Our second game, I opened with all three copies of the Cherry Blossom Freya in my hand, which drastically slowed down my start. Once I finally got an Alus in play and built up my backups, I dropped Freya with enough other Dragoons in play to make swinging into me a somewhat risky proposition. My opponent did get Yuna in play, but the turns that Freya bought for me gave me time to establish a firmer position, and once again I unleashed utterly devastating Cherry Blossoms to wipe out my opponent's board.

This was the point where we played another, third game, and I got bodied hard. My opponent's turn 1 was the same 5-drop Cecil I run in my Crystals deck, whose auto-ability was used to drop the 4-Color Warrior of Light, which gave such an enormous amount of momentum that even though they spent a few turns drawing and passing to recoup their resources, I was unable to break through what they had and got handily beaten down. Especially so after they dropped a Frimelda that gave them even more value for having so many elements in play, using that to play Ice/Lightning Zeromus and bringing their total number of elements-in-play up to 6, meaning Frimelda could stick a -12k power loss onto any one of my Forwards at the start of combat.

All in all, the sheer amount of FFTCG I got to play tonight was fantastic and some much-needed fun. And the sheer enjoyment I got from playing Dragoons again after so long, it was so wildly worth rebuilding that deck.

Final Fantasy TCG Locals - June 2nd, 2025

 After Saturday's LQ and yesterday's Pokémon GLC proved to be two different flavors of frustrating for me, but both seeing me go on a heavy losing streak, I was hoping to head into today's locals with a little more of a clear mind and calmer emotions.

Myself and another player arrived early, and played a couple of casual games. In the interest of wanting to get more games in with my 47 Forward Golbez deck, that was the deck I played in every game today.

Casual Game vs. Water/Lightning Monsters - Loss

Much like my game against the same list at Saturday's LQ, this game did not go well for me. An early Ixion wiped my board, and Witch of the Fens kept me from building back after.

Casual Game vs. Warriors - Loss

A second game against the same opponent, this time with them running a very different deck. I think this is the first time I've played against Warriors, with any of my decks. But I digress.

I wound up losing all of my Yunas - the first was removed from the game by Wind/Fire Zidane, the second was sent into Damage, and the third I did successfully play, but it eventually got removed by a Brynhildr. However, I got a Golbez in play afterwards, and was able to use that to build my board state back up. Even though my field was mostly fairly weak Forwards, I was able to produce a sufficient board state that I could take the victory.

I'd actually realized, on my second-to-last turn, that if I had played things just slightly differently, I could have won a turn earlier than I had. I swung with my Golbez, when I could have stolen my opponent's larger blocker with Golbez and successfully gotten enough damage through with Leo and my Vikings. Unfortunately, I did the math wrong and didn't realize it, but fortunately my opponent wasn't able to capitalize and snatch the victory away from me.

After this game, the two of us both wanted to get up and stretch our legs a little, the rest of our players for the night had shown up, and so we bought in and began our locals in earnest. A total of five of us arrived, meaning we did have one player receive a bye in each round. I was not the recipient of any of these bye rounds, which was fortunate as I did want to get practice with my deck.

Game 1 vs. Archfiends - Win

I got a small board built over the first couple of turns, getting three or four Vikings, Yuna, and another incidental Forward in play, and that was sufficient to keep the Archfiends locked down and unable to play.

Decidedly not helping my opponent's case was that on their turn 1 or 2, they made an attempt to play a 5-cost Hecatoncheir in an attempt to wipe my board, but two Yuna Taxes on the Summon kept my field safe, and left them without any remaining resources, which played a significant role in my ability to keep them locked out.

Game 2 vs. Water/Lightning Monsters - Loss

Turns out this is still a bad matchup for me. I rebuilt after an Ixion wiped me out, but then a Lightning-element Serah hit the table and gave my board a blanket -2000 power debuff, wiping out most of my Forwards, and leaving even my Golbez vulnerable to getting taken out by a single activation of the Witch of the Fens. This meant that I was unable to rebuild again afterwards, and could do precious little to stop my opponent from taking the win.

Game 3 vs. Warriors of Light/Refia - Win

My first turn saw me drop Materia and Yuna alongside a Viking or two. I only snowballed from there, and managed to keep my opponent locked out of their Earth Backups, meaning that the only mass removal that they had ready access to - LB Shantotto - was out of reach for them. They never drew any of their other mass removal options, either, which meant there was nothing they could do to stop my momentum.

After the conclusion of the third round, myself and my final opponent played a few more games for fun and practice with each of our respective decks.

3 Casual Games vs. Warriors of Light - Won All 3

In the first game of the three, I opened with Golbez, Yuna, and three Vikings, which was the start of an incredibly rapid snowball. They did manage to get Refia in play and bottom-decked my Yuna, but I had a second in hand and was able to drop the LB Warrior of Light to protect the rest of my field from Refia's removal.

In the second, I opened with Merlywb, searched Golbez and dropped him in play. I flipped Materia from my Attack Phase trigger, and promptly discarded the Cagnazzo I had intended to keep so that I could search out Yuna. They were unable to find any removal to stop me, and momentum was heavily on my side from that point.

And then in the third and final game, they opened with Fire/Wind Zidane and removed a Golbez I had in my opening hand from the game, but with two Merlwybs in my opening hand, I swiftly searched out a second one and started powering out value with his effect. They did finally see their Opus 1 Backup Shantotto in this game and wiped out my board, but the very next turn I top-decked my third Golbez and they were unable to stop the value engine from running away with the game.

Conclusion

I do still want to play with this list more for experience, but I think I've got a solid handle on it at this point. I'm starting to think that I just hard-lose to Water/Lightning Monsters - any Lightning deck, to some extent, due to the fact that Ixion is an inexpensive way for them to decimate my board, but Monsters have been the only lists I've seen running the Serah that passively wipes out half of my deck's Forwards - but I otherwise seem to have fairly solid matchups, mostly.

Any deck that has a lot of mass removal, or the ability to at least keep Golbez and/or Yuna off of the field will have better odds at stopping me in my tracks, but as I found during my casual game with Warriors before tonight had started in earnest, I can work around not having Yuna, then in my game with Archfiends I saw I can function without Golbez, but I can't deal with losing both. Golbez is what generates my board presence and value, and Yuna is my primary payoff for all of that value.

Pokémon League Locals GLC League - June 1st, 2025

 Today, six people showed up for our local Gym Leader Challenge league, including most of the Professors for the card shop. I want to say it was mostly fun, though two of my games proved more than a little frustrating for me for entirely different reasons.

Three rounds, Best of 1, 40 minute games each. I played a Fairy Control deck.

Game 1 vs. Water - Draw

This was, by far, the best game of the three that I played today. It was an incredibly back and forth game, where I kept my opponent stalled down for several turns at a time, though they found ways to break my locks and start fighting through my defenses. We went all the way to Time and into the final turns of the game, where neither of us were quite able to grab the final victory. I had milled out all but four of the cards from their deck, and by the end of their final turn, they had taken 5 prizes. We both thought that the game was fun and incredibly tight.

Game 2 vs. Fire - Loss

My opponent this round was a literal child, one of the League's younger regular attendees, so keep in mind during all of what I'm about to say about this game, I am incredibly aware that my opponent was a child and that my frustration is not directed towards them in particular:

In terms of actually taking a win during an actual 40 minute round, my deck's biggest weakness is going against an opponent who takes a long, if still reasonable amount of time to play out a turn. They're unfamiliar with their own deck, they're unfamiliar with playing against control decks and how to handle the sort of stalling and walling that my deck intends to engage in, any of a number of reasons like that.

Being a child that is understandably easily distracted - say, by the League running its May end-of-month raffle in the middle of our round - is one such reason for my opponent to take somewhat longer turns.

So while I was trying to get my opponent to focus on our game without being a complete jerk - because, again, literal child - my own attention was not completely on the game itself because of needing to draw my opponent's focus back.

This meant that when they dropped a Skeledirge with an ability protecting them from the effects of my attacks, such as my Klefki trying to confuse it with Metal Sound, or stop it from retreating with Fairy Lock, it did not register to me at the time that the Skeledirge was immune as such.

And this was not caught for a few turns, at which point the game could not be reasonably rewound once an outside observer noticed.

Game 3 vs. Dark - Loss

And following up on my keeping myself from getting too frustrated at a child, I played against another of the shop's Professors and, quite plainly, could not play the game.

I ran out of cards-in-hand fairly early on, and my Cleffa's Excitable Draws accomplished nothing, I was absolutely incapable of landing a Heads on literally any attempt to refill my hand using the ability. This meant I was easily picked apart by my opponent's Nidoking slamming into my Fairies for 190 damage a turn. My bulkiest 'Mon, Xerneas, who even has a Resistance to Dark, only has 130 HP, so Nidoking could still one-shot it with ease, and it was over in incredibly short order.