I didn't originally plan to make my way out to the other card shop to play FFTCG tonight, but in light of the fact that we're not far off from a Local Qualifier, and that I need more practice with my Dragoons list, I decided to head out.
Myself and the individual who I played against on Monday both attended Locals tonight, and as this is the shop where we never get "formalized" events for our weekly locals, we both agreed that neither of us wanted to play the other after our dozen games just two days ago. Fortunately, there were two others who attended against whom we could play.
For every game I played tonight, in light of my desire to get more practice in, I played my Dragoons deck.
Games vs Refia/Warriors of Light
We got quite a number of games in against one another. I lost track exactly of how many, though it was at least three or four.
Our first game, I was able to see Alus pretty quickly to help me draw more cards and generate more resources that way. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to keep up with the Warriors of Light in board presence and was unable to capitalize on those extra cards I was drawing, in part because I really didn't get many other backups. I did get one Cherry Blossom off, which popped a Refia but was unfortunately unable to finish off their WoL4, and that bit of work was immediately negated when they quickly brought the Refia back. Refia's return was effectively my death knell.
In our second, I didn't see Alus at all until my very final turn of the game, so it was a struggle to build resources and keep up with the Warriors of Light at all. In retrospect, I might have been slightly better off if I hadn't played the Alus that turn, and focused on trying to play a Freya to destroy their board, but as I think about it I don't know whether or not I had the resources available to me to make the attempt.
I did manage to take one game against them, however, where I never saw any of my Freyas leaving me to play incredibly aggressively. After the game, my opponent did mention that the way that their final turn played out they never would have done in a tournament setting, but in the more casual setting of this local they wanted to see if they could manage to take me from 2 to 7. I had Alus to stop their final Forward from swinging, and then I was able to get a 6-drop Aranea to remove their only blocker and take the final point of damage.
Games vs Knights
Playing against the other person who made it to Locals tonight, I lost almost every game that we played. Almost every game, they managed to get an incredibly strong start, managing to get the Ramza-for-Curilla play on turn 1 or 2 in almost if not every game that we played.
The only game I won, they revealed after the game that they started with a Ramza and all three of their Curillas in hand, so there was no way that they could have tucked that hand away with a mulligan since there was no guarantee that they could have gotten any of those back if they had. This left them with minimal gas, so when I managed to punch a couple of holes into their position, they didn't have the gas to come back around, leaving me to be able to take the win.
Game vs Fire Luso
The same opponent as the one playing Knights, who wanted to play a different, more fun-to-them deck for a game or two, this Luso was one I'd never seen before. A funny "gamble" type deck, where the Luso drops a random Fire Forward into play after shuffling their deck and revealing the top card, I lost pretty handily to them, but we were having so much fun with the randomness of it, I didn't even want to be mad, and was incredibly glad that I couldn't be mad.
Conclusion
So I need more practice with my Dragoons list. After the half-dozen games I played against Crystals on Monday, I was overestimating myself a little and wasn't expecting how badly the Refia and Knights games would go for me. I need a lot more practice in those matchups, and possibly some of the other meta decks such as Cat IV Yuna, before I take the deck with me to the next LQ.
Still, if I can't get practice against those chunks of the current metagame, I could still use more practice in general to figure out exactly what my play lines are and how to handle not getting one resource (Freya, say) or the other (Alus, which is much more punishing).
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