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.
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