In a phenomenal change of pace, Locals tonight saw a turnout of 13 people in total!
I presume that the shop running a Win-a-Box event as part of some celebrations for their anniversary likely had some hand in that turnout. But hey, we take what we can get, regardless of why we get it.
As there was a full Box of Gunslinger on the line, I put away my Scions for the night, and instead pulled out my Dragoons instead. For better or for worse, the 'goons are still my best overall deck.
Well, aside from technically my World Champ precons, but I'm drastically more well-practiced with the Dragoons than either of those. I digress.
Before we got underway for the night, several players showed up early and we decided to grind a few games out. I played my fellow Pokémon Professor, who wanted to get actual practice in with a new deck that they had built, and I wanted to shake off the rust as I haven't played Dragoons in some time.
Friendly Games vs Mono-Fire - Win
So this wasn't strictly a Best of 3 Set, but we did play two games against one another, both of which I managed to win.
In both games, I was able to come out of the gates swinging, and the mono-fire list wasn't able to meet the aggression with sufficient removal. The Freya from Gunslinger came in clutch, clearing away no small number of threatening bodies, and LB Kain made sure I had a Freya on-hand at almost all times.
Considering that this was the first time that they had actually played the list against another person, however, and that the Dragoons seem to be a rough matchup for the deck, they did remarkably well for themselves.
After this, we began our Win-a-Box event in earnest.
Round 1 vs Dragoons - Win
Starting the night off with a Dragoon Mirror Match, and I was hyped as hell about it. Their list was markedly different from the lists I've been accustomed to seeing for Dragoons, still running the mono-water Freya and the King of Burmecia, alongside a few other oddities such as Vrtra.
In fact, a big thing that set the pace of the game in my favor was that, although I went second, I was able to get Alus online on turn 1 and hit a Dragoon off of it immediately. My opponent didn't get their Alus in play until their second turn (so admittedly not that much worse off), but their first reveal was a copy of Vrtra. This meant that I was able to get ahead on resources and ultimately won the back-and-forth volley of removal that our Freyas leveled at each other.
Round 2 vs Sky Pirates - Loss
My opponent went first and had a nearly ideal setup turn, playing Fran into a free-played Larsa backup, who in turn grabbed Basch, which hit the table and gave them another card in-hand with Basch's start-of-combat trigger.
I went second, and spent nearly every resource I had to barely end the turn with an Alus in hand. I also did spend a few to drop LB Cloud and pop Fran, because I knew how the rabbit could otherwise let the Sky Pirates get out of hand far too easily. On turn 2, they dropped a few other Forwards, including 2-drop Yuna, and on my turn 2, that Yuna made sure I didn't get to replace a card-in-hand when I spent my resources to play the Alus.
From there, after setting the tone of the game so brazenly, my opponent proceeded to absolutely pick me apart over the rest of the game.
Round 3 vs The Twelve - Win
Going first this time, I had turn 1 Alus and Ricard leaving me with 2 backups and a Cherry Blossom Freya in-hand. My opponent also had a solid Turn 1 Setup, managing to land their Llymlaen that would ultimately allow The Twelve to "play the game" as the Navigator's color-fixing for The Twelve is vital to the deck running at all.
From there, the game played out fairly similar to my Round 1 mirror match, with Alus setting me up with ample resources that ultimately saw me the winner of the back-and-forth on removal, giving me the game in the end. It was a tense game for me nonetheless, given the power that The Twelve have once the deck manages to get itself set up.
It really made The Twelve look like a super tempting deck for me to try building. Unfortunately, I know I'm still missing too many pieces that would make the deck properly tick.
Round 4 vs Warriors - Loss
That's right, we had four rounds of play tonight! That's the power of a Win-a-Box bringing people out in decent numbers!
Anyways.
I went first, and took a few turns to find an Alus, which slowed me down a fair bit. The game was incredibly back-and-forth, being one of the best games I think I've ever played with the Warriors player (they normally run Mono-Earth or Refia/WoLs, so Warriors is a little outside their normal wheelhouse), but ultimately I wasn't able to cinch it.
Part of that was that on two separate turns, I dropped the Gunslinger Freya, and was ready to swing her in as removal for some troublesome Forwards, only for "end of Main 1, Cuchulainn the Freya" to strip away her Haste and her attack trigger. Unable to remove problem Forwards not once, but twice meant that the Warriors player was able to, well, keep those problem Forwards in order to make them my problems, also allowing them to remove my Freyas on the following turns.
Conclusion
Gods I have missed the Dragoons. I was super glad tonight was a little more of a competitive night so that I had the excuse to pull them back out.
I may have went 2-2 in the event proper, breaking dead even instead of having a winning record, but that's fine. I had a blast playing the deck again, and was super glad that we had the turnout that we did.
Still have to do some work with my Scions list to work out the kinks in it, I think, but I'm looking forward to doing that as well. Given some of the spoilers we've seen for the next set - Journey of Discovery - I'm honestly incredibly tempted to shift back to a Mono-Lightning list for them, which I have a few ideas on how to build them a little better than they had been the last time I had them as Mono-Lightning.
But I don't think I'm quite ready to go that route yet.
Yet.