Made my way out to the card shop tonight for FFTCG, honestly only expecting one other person to show - maybe two, as over the weekend, one of the other Pokémon Professors from the shop was suggesting an interest in possibly coming by.
To my surprise, we had a total of four players tonight, with the other Professor only hanging out and watching due to a limited familiarity with the modern FFTCG metagame, thus not feeling comfortable to try to play in the event, such as it was.
I was able to get in quite a number of games tonight, including a friendly game before we started in earnest, and a few friendlies after the fact.
Friendly Game: Mono-Lightning Scions vs Scions - Loss
While I was disappointed that I still haven't gotten quite all of the cards I've ordered for my Scions list to modify it to Fire/Lightning, I still wanted to play a little with my Scions, as I have still missed playing them with all of the Dragoons I've been playing otherwise.
That said, this game ended poorly for me. I started off with a decently aggressive start, but I got blown out - badly - when they had an LB Edge turn that wiped out my relatively meager board, from which I couldn't recover due to a lack of resources.
After this, our fourth showed up, we all made sure we were paid in, and we began the night. I played my Dragoons as the release of Gunslinger in the Abyss gave me a couple of new pieces to upgrade the deck with.
Game vs Sky Pirates - Loss
I got demolished by the Sky Rats this game. I never saw Alus, which hindered my resources significantly, and the Sky Pirates absolutely swarmed the field. With the new Vaan and new Ashe from Gunslinger, the Sky Pirates were given some extra consistency and a nice boost in attack power making their board even harder to deal with on the attack, as Basch and Ashe combined give a total of +4000 and Brave, with the Brave leaving Sky Pirates open for Balthier's ability to further buff them for even better combat math, or to give Haste where necessary.
Game vs Fire/Ice Priming - Win
I'm calling this a Fire/Ice Priming list, but there was still a strong element of Warriors throughout the list as well, including Taivas, Mizuki, and Akstar, mainstays in the Warriors deck even with the new Jill and Joshua added alongside the old Clive for additional Priming effects.
That said, I did take the win. I saw Alus, and the new Freya was able to put in a little bit of work for me throughout the game, keeping their Forwards decently in check while I plugged away at them for damage.
Game vs Mono-Earth Avalanche Operatives - Win
The new Tifa and Zangan make a pretty frightening duo to stare down, and the synergies among Avalanche Operatives meant that I was staring down a rather rapidly full suite of Backups to fuel the Mono-Earth deck's game plan.
That said, if new Freya put in work for me last game against Fire/Ice, she was an absolute godsend in this one. Between LB Kain and the new Freya, I was able to bounce back from three separate board wipes at the tentacles of JENOVA Synthesis, and wiped the board right back in retaliation. This despite new Freya's Special ability not being the mass-removal of the old Cherry Blossom Freya. Being able to pop a Forward with Dragon's Crest, and then another with her attack trigger was a sight to behold, and this game in particular makes me feel like new Freya was an absolutely massive boost to Dragoons.
Enough that, even though I was hoping to practice Fire/Lightning Scions (assuming my last package arrives before Wednesday), I might stick with Dragoons for the next Local Qualifier in a couple of weeks. We'll see how things go, and how I feel after Wednesday on that one.
But I digress. After this, we were finished, we all got our two packs for playing, and the Fire/Ice and Earth players bounced, while the Sky Pirates player wanted to get in a few friendlies to test out changes to their Crystals deck.
Friendly Game: Golbez vs Crystals - Loss
My first game with my Golbez list since the restriction of the 2-drop Light Yuna - a change made this past Friday with the release of Gunslinger - where I replaced two of the Yunas with a 3-drop Tidus I have an inordinate fondness for.
And, to put this succinctly, losing the consistency of the Yunas did nothing to help this deck. It was a fast, painful game in the Crystal deck's favor, with Vinera Fennes being able to blow my board out with her attack trigger - and my copy of Kalmia got knocked into Damage, keeping me away from my only protection from that sort of effect.
There's potentially room for the list to do something, I suppose, since the main shell of the deck, the Golbez and the Vikings are still there, with enough draw power that I should be able to hit either Materia to search for Yuna, or else hit Yuna directly, with at least semi-reliable frequency. I just need to figure out what to do with it, the Legend Tidus from set 16 is not the proper replacement for the restricted Yunas.
Friendly Best-of-3 Set: Scions vs Crystals - Loss
With both the Crystals player and I wanting another game, I put the Golbez away and pulled my Scions back out. Not something I mentioned above in the friendly Scion v Scion game, but the list is a little outdated technically, since I've been waiting to get my cards to shift over to the Fire/Lightning build before I commit to any changes, so it's added nothing from Gunslinger.
Regardless, if I weren't changing it to Fire/Lightning, Gunslinger wouldn't really offer many changes to the deck anyways.
The first two games were relatively quick. Game 1 I was able to rush right out of the gate with aggression and keep the pressure up, taking the Crystals down pretty quickly. Game 2, I didn't have quite the same amount of gas, and the Crystals were able to turn it around pretty quickly on me.
Game 3 was probably the closest of the three, but it was also kind of weird given the kinds of odd draws we were both dealing with. Ultimately, though, it went to the Crystals deck.
Playing Scions again tonight across the four games I did really has me champing at the bit to get the last of my ordered cards so I can swap it to the hyper-aggro list I want to turn it into, but I'm unfortunately forced to wait, with nothing I can do to speed up the postal service in getting them to me. At this point, I'm just hoping that they arrive before Wednesday night - I'm currently planning to hit the other card shop for more FFTCG, since I won't have any other chances to get practice in before the next Local Qualifier due to work getting in the way.
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