Final Fantasy TCG Locals - September 22nd, 2025

 We had four people show up for tonight's FFTCG Locals, which meant we had a full, proper "event" tonight.

Myself and one other player arrived early, and played a Best of 3 set against one another as we waited for our other players.

Refia/Warriors of Light vs Cadets

So, not strictly-speaking my deck, but:

I bought a copy of the 2024 World Champion Decks, a product that Square themselves put out in commemoration of, well, the 2024 world champion. For around $50 or $60, it gave me several hundreds of dollars worth of cards in the form of the two decks used by Hara Y. when they won.

And, unlike some other card games I could name, these World Championship decks are completely legal for play.

I've wanted a Refia deck for absolute ages, and the Fire/Water Monster list gives me access to a bunch of other cards, albeit not necessarily ones I strictly intended to use unedited.

So before we got started in earnest with our event for the night, I decided to pull out the Refia/WoL deck.

And of the three games, I won one of them.

The first game that we played, the Cadets had little choice but to hit me to 4, which activated my many effects, in addition to giving me a fistful of resources through EX Bursts. This gave me the ability to handily run away with the game.

In the second, both of us had games that, to me at least, felt pretty odd, in the only way I can think of to describe it. The Cadets did figure their way around my board position, and took the win.

The third game also went to the Cadets, though not for lack of effort on my part. My first turn, I decided to dump my hand to give myself three Backups, playing a Clarus into a King Tycoon, who in turn gave me a copy of Lenna. From there, I tried to play a little more conservatively to rebuild my resources, but it wasn't sufficient. The mass of removal that the Cadets have access to kept me under control.

It was during Game 3 that our other two players arrived, so the four of us began our night in earnest.

Scions vs Cadets - Loss... Sort of

Despite my efforts to play an aggressive game, the Cadets out-aggro'd me and found enough resources to keep my board under control via tremendous amounts of removal. An early Ifrit (XVI) was a big boon to their game plan, helping to eliminate what was a dangerously full board state I had produced.

As we finished our game much faster than our other two players, the two of us wound up playing out a Best of 3 set while we waited.

In the second and third games, I was able to run my deck aggressively, and my opponent didn't find their removal. A timely Odin EX Burst popping a Clive was also key to my victory in one game, as it meant that they were unable to prime into Ifrit and demolish my board as they had in game 1.

So while I lost the game that mattered for the sake of our event tonight, I took the overall win if it had been a Best of 3.

Vs Pirates/Vikings - Loss

This one was a difficult game for me, one that I lost when my opponent dropped Azdaja from Gunslinger in the Abyss. Turns out that the combination of Vikings swarming the field and Azdaja turning their attacks into removal was wildly potent.

Turns out Bikke also effectively turns off my Y'shtola's Pulse of Creation against the majority of a Vikings board state, not that I ever managed to have the resources in-hand to be able to use Pulse of Creation.

Vs Fire/Water Monsters - Win

The other World Champion deck, this one piloted by another of the shop's Pokémon Professors. They didn't actually drop any of the deck's monsters, but between an early Clive/Ifrit (XVI) and the F/W Firion hitting the table in the late game, they were able to put some massive hurdles in front of me that made this game incredibly hard to work around.

I did eventually take the game, having removed the Ifrit and then used Yotsuyu to to circumvent the Firion's ability to bulk itself up by preventing it from blocking.

Day Off - September 19th, 2025

Normally tonight would be Commander Night at the card shop for me.

However, this weekend, I'm busy with the fact that there is a Pokémon Regional Championship I am attending. Consequently, I'll be skipping out on both Commander tonight, and the Gundam TCG on Sunday. 

Which is a doozy of a thing to do just before my big "month off" for October, especially for Gundam as I've only just started playing that game. 

I digress.

I'll be back on Monday with Final Fantasy TCG.

Final Fantasy TCG Locals - September 8th, 2025

 Only one other person showed up for tonight's locals. Not shocked, a little disappointed, but it's feeling pretty common.

Regardless, we got a good four games in against one another. For all four of those games I played my Scions, both because I'm still trying to get more practice in with them and because I made a tweak to them after my last Locals night, swapping Warp Estinien out and putting the Opus 23 Estinien back in.

My opponent, for their part, played Sky Pirates for all four games, as they're trying to test some changes to it in preparation for the upcoming Last Chance Qualifier that will be happening in a couple of weeks, the day before the United States Championship.

Game 1 - Loss

This game went pretty quickly in their favor.

They hit three EX Bursts off my first three damage, giving them a fistful of resources in a deck that thrives on that sort of resource glut thanks to their pile of free-play effects and reduced costs. Not much I could do against that sort of overwhelming resource advantage.

Game 2 - Win

This time, they didn't have the Burst Luck that let them overwhelm me in the first game. Meanwhile, I opened aggressively, swinging early with Estinien and pulling so many cards back to my hand over the course of the game that I was the one with the overwhelming advantage in resources.

Game 3 - Loss

This one was just kind of a solid game where neither of us had any particularly crazy luck, good or bad.

They drew their value pieces sooner than I saw mine, and that gave them the edge over the course of the game.

Were this a normal Bo3 set, they would have taken the set here.

Game 4 - Win

The last game we were able to get in at the end of the night, and probably the best of the games that we got in.

They went first and had an explosive turn 1, dropping in Fran, Balthier, Penelo, and a backup Larsa all for effectively 2cp. On my turn, I followed up with Alisaie into G'raha Tia, searching Y'shtola to remove Fran, and I ended the turn with a Reeve and a second Y'shtola in hand, meaning I could effectively Pulse of Creation close to at-will.

Ultimately, the Pulse came out several turns of buildup later, when I had a slightly larger board that included a Ra-la, and they dropped in Asura, Manusya of War in an attempt to wipe my board. My Pulse meant the board wipe became a mutual total-clear.

I was able to rebuild a little faster, getting an Estinien to start getting in damage and getting my resources back from the Break Zone. Dropping an Amaterasu to stop their Fran's on-entry free play wound up being the play that won me the game in the long run, as it denied them the resources from getting to play Balthier off of Fran, which would have seen them build their board back extensively.

Putting a stop to that explosive rebuild meant that I was able to establish a board that they were unable to overcome, and I took the win after a handful more turns.

Conclusion

Two weeks ago, I wasn't able to take a single game against the Sky Pirates, and tonight I was able to keep it 50/50 against them, I feel like swapping Estiniens around was 100% the correct answer for the deck. I also feel like there's probably something that the deck needs still, but just the one change made it feel much better to me. More removal, I think, wouldn't be remiss. I'll test it a little more over more local events before I decide what I need to add to it, ideally if some other players show up and I can talk to them for suggestions.

I'm also finding that while I built it with the intention of running the list as a fast-paced aggro list, it's feeling better to play it as more of a tempo deck still. The addition of the Fire Element feels like it's doing some not-insignificant work for me compared to when I was running it as Mono-Lightning, at least.

Gundam TCG Locals - September 7th, 2025

 Today was the first day I was finally able to play the Gundam TCG after having bought in decently heavy at the launch of the game - at least, as heavy as I could from my favorite local shop.

And considering the fortunate luck that I could play Gundam, and then walk to the other side of the room to start my Pokémon Professor duties for League...

Well, it was convenient.

I played a Red/Green Zeon list - a picture of it will be at the bottom of this post. I know there are sites out there I could share the list otherwise, but the Bandai TCG app has a decent deck builder on its own, and I can drop the images here.

I digress. It was three rounds of play.

All three of which I lost.

In order, I played against Blue-Red Ping, Academy, and Blue-Green Wing.

I don't think I strictly made any overt errors in play during my games today. I got beaten due to inexperience and my opponents having the outs at the right time.

The only real mistake I made was in the final turn of my last game against Blue-Green Wing. I saw an obvious line of victory - swing to pop my opponent's last Shield, then swing in with a hasted Char's Zaku II for the win. Unfortunately, I played the Char's Zaku II before my attack, and "burst luck" followed me from FFTCG, seeing them flip a Nahel Argama Base from the Shield.

Nahel Argama, on deployment, rested my Char's Zaku, meaning I couldn't swing in to finish the game out. This left my opponent with a Wing and a Wing Zero to finish the game out on their turn.

I could have put an M'Quve on the Char's Zaku II Token I had initially swung with and taken out the Wing, doing Breach damage to the shield, and only after taking out the shield then I could have played my other Char's Zaku II from hand. Unfortunately with the Nahel Argama, I wouldn't have been able to win that turn, but it would have left my opponent in a somewhat trickier position as well.

Friday Night Magic Commander Night - September 5th, 2025

 Another night of Commander, tonight seeing three solid games. I played two new decks and one that I've had for a bit, but with a new Commander at the helm of it. The first game was with only three players total, and the other two had a pod of four.

Game 1: The Wandering Minstrel vs Y'shtola, Night's Blessed and Pantlaza, Sun-Favored

Ah, the five-color experience. With five colors in my list, I found myself unable to procure the Blue mana I needed to cast my Commander until around turn 6, and then only because I was able to drop Gladiolus to search out a land that could produce Blue for me.

I did finally play the Minstrel, however, though it was somewhat on the "too little, too late" side. I did lose the Inspiring Commander background enchantment that made my tokens even the slightest bit threatening in part because the Y'shtola player was a little annoyed that they "didn't understand" it due to their misreading of it.

Nonetheless, Pantlaza ran away with the game, crushing us both with Dinosaurs.

This was a solid "first run" for my Minstrel deck, despite the mana woes, and I look forward to playing it more in the future. There are countless ways I can think of to make it better, though many of those would be well outside of my current budget.

Game 2: Lathliss, Dragon Queen vs. Ziatora the Incinerator, Meren of Clan Nel Toth, and Brinelin the Moon Kraken & The Ghost of Ramirez de Pietro

This wound up a very slow, grindy game. I was mostly able to play due to Ruby Medallion and The Fire Crystal. I was able to drop numerous Dragons into play thanks to the reduced cost, however I ran out of cards-in-hand, so when my Dragons got hated out of the skies - repeatedly - and Bane of Progress wiped my Artifacts, Ziatora was able to turn things around and grind out the victory.

After having taken apart my Krenko to build this after getting hated out once too many with the Goblin Mob Boss...

Getting my Dragons hated down some more wasn't quite what I'd hoped to have happen. I suppose I can't completely fault my opponents for this one, but it would've been nice if it hadn't. Ah well. I'll give this deck a couple more tries before I decide if I want to keep it or not. I have a plan for what would replace it as my mono-red deck of choice if I do take it apart, but that's a preemptive concern.

Game 3: Kamahl, Heart of Krosa & Gilanra, Wirewood Caller vs. Gyruda, Doom of Depths, Lathril, Blade of the Elves, and Brinelin & Ghost of Ramirez

For this game, we added some Planechase planes into the mix, to spice the game up a little bit.

It absolutely did, in fact, spice the game up a little bit. In fact, things got quite hectic.

Gyruda opened with Leyline of the Void and proceeded to mill us all out a lot thanks in part to The Mindskinner. Between Kamahl and my Thunderfoot Baloth, though, I was able to make my board absolutely massive to take Gyruda out and stop the mill.

Unfortunately, Lathril immediately wiped me out on their next turn, before they ran over the Brinelin/Ghost of Ramirez player the turn after that.

In spite of the extra unpredictability from Planechase, this was a great run for my monogreen deck, which is the only list I played today that wasn't "new", though it was previously helmed by Surrak. The additional card draw from Gilanra was a nice benefit, and the overwhelming force provided by Kamahl made a good way to provide the deck a solid win-con in the Command Zone.