Gundam TCG Locals - November 30th, 2025

Another week, another Gundam TCG Local event. A picture of the deck list I ran will be present at the bottom of this post. Today's event wound up being 4 rounds thanks to the turnout - which honestly I was a little surprised by, given the fact that it's the Sunday after Thanksgiving. I suppose I was expecting more people to still be traveling.

Round 1 vs Blue-Purple Aggro - Loss

I came out swinging against my opponent and took a lot of early damage, but it was nowhere near sufficient. They stabilized in part because of two Gusion Rebakes dropping big blockers I couldn't fully get around, whereupon they were able to take the game over.

Their ability to ping away some of my units certainly did me no favors.

One thing I did that my opponent considered an early mistake was swinging into their EX Base on a turn I couldn't fully pop it, as it gave them the ability to freely trade into my 2/2 Zaku and play a Corsica Base to replace the EX Base and leave themselves with board presence.

Which, in conjunction with what happened in my next game, is leaving me the realization that I'm still not at a point where I fully recognize when I should hold back, when I should focus on taking out opposing units, and when I should be trying to race for Shields. But I digress.

Round 2 Bye - "Win"

Bye round, nothing to really say here.

Round 3 vs Blue-Green Aggro - Loss

More or less a mirror match, although our lists were somewhat different takes - my opponent had more Blue, which gave them more options for pinging away my units to finish them off.

This game was one where I tried to focus on taking out my opponent's units, which I wasn't able to do as effectively as they did against me, letting them overrun me pretty handily, which goes back to what I mentioned during Round 1 - I'm not certain when the correct time to focus Units vs Shields is.

Round 4 vs Blue-Purple Aggro - Loss

I was really frustrated with this game. Not because of anything my opponent did, but because my hand was completely gummed up with Pilots while my opponent practically swarmed the field. There was nothing I could do - I really couldn't play the game at all. This left the game to finish up in an outrageously swift fashion, in my opponent's favor.

Conclusion

I... don't know how to feel about this deck right now. On one hand, it's fun. I like the benefits that Amuro, RX-78-2 and the card draw that A Show of Resolve provide for me.

But it's been giving me absolutely no results. I think I won one game with it at locals two weeks ago, and it's honestly putting me off hard from the notion of sticking to the list. I think I want to try to rebuild a Red/Green Zeon list, and see if I can put together a second, different deck using the Blue cards, though I would need to figure out my second color for that if I did.

I'll figure this out and be prepared for the next time I can make it to Locals in two weeks.

Presented below is the list I used for today.

Friday Night Magic Commander Night - November 28th, 2025

 I hope you all had a peaceful, enjoyable Thanksgiving - I certainly did, as the Thanksgiving Holiday meant that the card shop was closed for the day yesterday, so I got to take a night off even from my Professor duties.

But tonight was no longer Thanksgiving: It was Friday, and that meant Commander Night at the card shop. I got in four games tonight, three of which were with only three players in the pod.

The Wandering Minstrel vs Mr. Foxglove and Ghost of Ramirez de Pietro/Brinelin the Moon Kraken

The first game of the night, using my Minstrel deck that has been modified a little bit to be even more Token-oriented in spite of my original plans for the deck.

On my end, I managed to get the Minstrel in play, and on the turn I hit my fifth Town, I had both Divine Visitation and Roar of Resistance in play, meaning that instead of generating a 2/2 Elemental, Minstrel was instead cranking out 4/4 Angels with Flying and Vigilance each combat, Angels that then had Haste due to the Roar of Resistance.

A few turns of generating Angels and swinging a little bit of damage around were halted by Foxglove destroying my Visitation, and Ghost Kraken swinging at me with a massive Ojer Kaslem that they had previously stolen from Foxglove, which ate most of my Angels when I blocked to avoid the potential damage since they had been all but announcing plans to drop a Cyclonic Rift during their first Main Phase, until they had realized that they wanted to swing the Ojer Kaslem.

However, with my Tokens still growing stronger, I thought I had a turn that I could finish both of them off. Foxglove had no fliers, and Ghost Kraken had too few blockers to stop my damage from coming through thanks to Summon: Fat Chocobo's Kerplunk ability giving Trample to my field. Using Minstrel's last ability to buff my board, I swung out with what should have been a lethal turn... had Moon Kraken not proceeded to jump through hoops to ultimately hit me with an Aetherize, removing my board presence and ultimately handing Foxglove the win.

Baral, Chief of Compliance vs Jetmir, Nexus of Revels and Ghost/Kraken

Ghost Kraken and I had to work pretty hard together to keep Jetmir under control so that we weren't run over by a hoard of tokens that were buffed to the high heavens by Jetmir. Several cards hit the field on Jetmir's end that mass-produced Tokens and kept Jetmir active almost the entire time that the Cat Demon Crime Lord was in play.

I was able to survive one or two attacks from Jetmir thanks to Propaganda keeping them from being able to swing out at me in force. This gave me enough breathing room that I was able to win with a High Tide turn, first dropping Enter the Infinite to draw my deck, and then barely having the mana leftover to drop Thassa's Oracle and win the game off of the Merfolk's entry trigger.

Kamahl, Heart of Krosa/Gilanra, Caller of Wildwood vs Dr. Eggman and Ghost/Kraken

Shifting gears from my "nearly-no creatures" Baral deck, I pulled out my mono-green "windmill slam big creatures into play" list...

Which really didn't windmill slam very many big creatures into play, this game. I actually won mostly off the back of my Mana Dorks, pumped by Kamahl's combat trigger. Birds of Paradise, a few one-mana Elves, and Elvish Archdruid were the bulk of my forces, alongside both of my Commanders, and the one non-Kamahl "big creature" I dropped: Jumbo Cactuar.

With Heroic Intervention keeping my Cactuar in play when Ghost Kraken tried to remove it, I was able to win by throwing the Cactuar at Eggman, and everything else at Ghost Kraken, hitting Eggman with a Trampler packing 10,003 power, and around 36 damage worth of Elves, Bird, and Kamahl, each player having taken a bit of damage previously already.

Saheeli, Radiant Creator vs Karona, False God, Tatsunari, Toad Rider, and Ghost/Kraken

The fourth and final game of the night for me, and the only one with four players as one of the shop's employees was able to sneak in to join us for a round. I haven't used my Saheeli for a while, so I decided to shuffle her up and throw her against the field.

A fairly slow game for the lot of us, and I'm pretty sure the only game I've ever seen the Ghost Kraken player not have a turn 1 Wizard Class which was part of what made it slow on their end.

Because Ghost Kraken didn't have a maximum hand size, the copy of Mystic Redaction that they had in play ended up milling us all quite dramatically - between Rhystic Study and several heavy draw spells, they were discarding between five and seven cards for a few turns, hitting us all for double-digits worth of mill.

On my end, I barely survived a round with Karona in play through a little bit of light politics. My use of Aether Revolt and a few Energy generators wound up being key to my winning the game - in particular, Aetheric Amplifier, as the effect doubling my number of Energy Counters meant exponentially-increasing damage from the enchantment. In fact, my final turn, after Karona and Ghost Kraken had been taken out of the game, saw me hit a combination that I hadn't considered the full ramifications of:

Using Saheeli's combat trigger, I made a copy of Aether Revolt, then immediately left combat. Now with two copies of Revolt, I activated the Amplifier to double my then-19 Energy Counters - which thanks to Izzet Generatorium, gave me 20 Counters in total. Each Aether Revolt triggering for 20 damage meant popping Tatsunari for a total of 40 damage, finishing them off and taking the win in the end.

Final Fantasy TCG Locals - November 17th, 2025

 One of the smaller FFTCG turnouts we've had in a while, we only had five players in total show for tonight.

In light of the fact that a new set dropped this past Friday - Journey of Discovery - and there are changes I want to make to my Scions list that I haven't fully figured out yet, I decided to spend tonight playing my Dragoons. While those also got changed with the new set, it was an incredibly minor change that I had already figured out during the preview period for the set.

Four of our five showed up early, and so we decided to get in some friendly games before the night started in earnest.

Friendly game vs Mono-Water Monsters

Ah, monsters. My beloathed.

This was altogether a close game, with a lot of back and forth, but because of the monsters' selection of removal they were able to keep me from getting more than one or two damage in at a time, when I even could swing in.

On my last turn of the game, I had set up a Hail Mary strike using Barbara, Aranea, and LB Kain to try to get the last three points of damage that I needed through. Unfortunately, on damage 6, they hit a Leviathan 6 to bounce away the Barbara, keeping me from finishing them off - and leaving me without any ability to stop them from swinging in with a Tros they had in play, which would hit me for the final point of damage that they had needed.

Around this point, we realized it was right around time to start, and our fifth had arrived. The store gave us our pairings - the fifth got the bye for the first round, funny enough - and we began the night in earnest.

Round 1 vs Earth/Wind Cat VII

I took the game over pretty quickly. Alus and a handful of Dragoon backups hit the field, and 4-drop Freya ran rampant over my opponent, demolishing every Yuffie and the Barret that they dropped into play, letting me swing in pretty unimpeded and take the win.

Round 2 vs Mono-Water Monsters

The "runback" of the friendly match, this time without my opponent being as lucky in their removal game. I was able to run pretty roughshod over my opponent, though it was still pretty tense for me as I knew what the deck could have done, and knew that it could easily Burst its way back from behind.

Cherry Blossom Freya did some not insignificant work clearing away a large board state and picking away at my opponent for damage.

Round 3 vs Wind/Lightning Cat VII

A second, much different Cat VII deck, which was an unusual amount of Cat VII for one night.

The only game of the night where I never saw an Alus... sort of. My opponent played a 2-drop Zidane that could steal a card from the top of my deck, and it turned out that the card they hit was the first Alus I would have drawn.

Despite not getting my primary "value piece", I was still able to build up decent amounts of resources. The first two or three turns of the game, I was able to just play backups, so that when I did finally start playing Forwards I had ample resources without needing to necessarily dump my hand out.

Between Freyas and Kain, I was able to take and keep control over the game, and the 5-drop Haste Dragoon gave me the extra offensive momentum to make certain I didn't run out of gas before I could finish the game out.

Gundam TCG Locals - November 16th, 2025

Another Sunday, and my third swing at the Gundam TCG. Today went markedly worse for me than my last foray out to the shop for Gundam - which is, admittedly, a little discouraging. But I liked how my deck felt, a lot.

Which is a touch annoying, since I was honestly hoping to stick with Red/Green Zeon aggro, but after getting my card order (or I guess my replacement card order, as the one I'd been waiting on previously still has never shown, so I made a new one for the cards I'd needed/wanted the most), I shifted into the following Blue/Green "One Year War" aggro list:

With an attendance of over 16 people at first (I was on the waitlist on the Bandai TCG App and everything) - at least initially, as I believe we lost some to the shop's third day of Avatar MtG Prerelease - we had four rounds of play today.

Round 1 vs Green/White Wing - Win

As we set up, I won the dice roll to choose turn order and opted to go second. Thanks to the EX Resource, I was able to start my game with a steady stream of offense, playing the 2/2 Zaku II on turn one and the GM on turn 2. Turn 3, I was able to drop the Gundam and Link it up with Amuro, taking out my opponent's Bird Mode Wing Gundam with the OG while my Zaku and GM took out the EX Base and a shield.

Turn 4 saw a second Gundam and Amuro with took down a Gundam Lfrith while I knocked away even more Shields, and turn 5 I finished the game out by dropping Char's Gelgoog and Linking it up with Char.

Round 2 vs Blue/Green One Year War - Loss

Not quite a mirror match as our decks were different in a few key ways, but... basically a mirror match.

They seemingly ran a little heavier on Blue, opting to use Guntank and Anksha to sneak some ping damage against my units, making combat trades work out a little better in their favor, though I gave every bit as good as I got. By the end of the game, I'd cleared away 5 of their shields, but wasn't quite able to finish the job after they'd flooded their board with units.

And said flood proceeded to run rampant over my shields, destroying my Corsica Base and every one of my shields, with "burst luck" against me as I only hit one other copy of Corsica as they ran over my defenses.

After the game, they did point out that if they had been just slightly less lucky - didn't have an Amuro in hand to punch through my Burst Corscia, for example - it would have all but definitely been my game to win on the next turn.

Round 3 vs Blue/Green One Year War - Loss

Another not-quite-mirror match, and the game wound up running pretty similar to Round 2.

I didn't get quite as much damage in before my opponent was able to take over the game and run me over, but it was still a pretty solid game altogether. Does make me think I might want to consider trying to work in a little more Blue to my list - Guntank or some other ping damage - but I'm not wholly convinced quite yet.

Round 4 vs Blue/Purple Ping - Loss

I'm not completely sure that calling the list Blue/Purple Ping is accurate, but with the amount of on-entry ping effects that they ran - including self-damage to trigger some of Purple's effects that want its own units damaged - it's probably a little more accurate than calling it an aggro list.

That said, this was my first time truly playing against a Purple deck, and once again it was a close game.

At least, until it wasn't.

They dropped several Gusion Rebakes into play, giving them an absolutely massive 3/5 blocker that I wasn't able to get around as I couldn't find any of my few particularly large attackers until entirely too late to make any difference in the game. It was pretty swiftly over after that, as I really couldn't do anything to close the game out from that point on.

Conclusion

Like I said at the top, I'm a little annoyed at how good this Blue/Green list felt to pilot, because I really did kind of want to stick with Red/Green Zeon.

But I can hardly complain - though I do have room to grow in terms of playing the deck well, given how three of my four games ended with my opponents turning favorable-to-me board positions around and taking the victory.

Friday Night Magic Commander Night - November 14th, 2025

 After over a month since the last time I played Magic due to my being busy with a haunted house, I made my way back out to the shop to play some Commander.

Three of the games tonight were with five players, which was... a lot. Do not necessarily recommend, at least not with the tables laid out the way that the card shop lays them out.

The Wandering Minstrel vs Warrior of Light (Jodah, the Unifier), Indoraptor, the Perfect Hybrid, Y'shtola, Night's Blesssed and Massacre Girl, Known Killer

My Minstrel deck worked remarkably well this game, and that made me... equal parts glad, and a little frustrated. Because the way that this game went, now I feel like I really do want to build the deck towards a focus on Minstrel's combat trigger.

That said, while it did work out well enough, it did run into some much more frightening threats. Indoraptor was able to drop into play as a 24/22, though Y'shtola was able to put an end to it when it tried to look towards them with the dinosaur's random targeting.

After removing the Indoraptor, thanks to an Irenicus's Vile Duplication that allowed them to clone their Commander, and the life drain effects went overboard, letting Y'shtola take the win pretty handily.

Cloud, Planet's Champion vs Warrior of Light (Jodah), Indoraptor, Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER, and Hidetsugu and Kairi

This game was fairly quick, because the Hidetsugu and Kairi player was able to combo off fast and took a fast win.

I honestly do not remember anything else about this game. Having the fifth player so far out of sight and mind made it a lot harder for me to pay as much attention as I'd have liked.

Lathliss, Dragon Queen vs The Ur-Dragon, The Wise Mothman, Sauron, the Dark Lord, and Vivi Ornitier

This game ran a little long. Thanks to Ur-Dragon's copy of Urza's Incubator, I was able to play a nice pile of dragons which gave me shocking command over the board for several turns. This included popping the Vivi player with a copy of Steel Hellkite, and using the artifact dragon's second activated ability to wipe out half of the little wizard's board.

A few turns later, I did finish off the Vivi player, and really should've taken Sauron out at the same time as I easily could have. Unfortunately, because I didn't, Sauron's 17-power Orc Army was able to swing in at me unblocked a few turns later, after a board wipe, and I was taken out by a non-combat damage trigger not long after. Fortunately, the Ur-Dragon "avenged" me and took the win.

Cloud, Planet's Champion vs Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER and Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER

The last game of the night, as two of our players needed to bounce. It was also getting late, so we tried to play a fast game.

Tried.

Turn 2, I played Drannith Magistrate, which held things down a little bit. A few turns later, I played Sword of the Animist and used that to help me ramp my mana a little bit.

I did drop Cloud into play, but thanks to some Shenanigans™, Sephiroth's player was able to wipe the board.

I promptly replayed Cloud... forgetting that Sephiroth's ability is an on-entry ability, and not just an attack trigger, meaning I lost Cloud to a Grave Pact trigger immediately after. This slowed me down dramatically, as I didn't have a "plan B" available, which gave the other Cloud player room to take control of the game.

My last turn, I did play Firion, Wild Rose Swordsman and Gilgamesh, Master-at-Arms, giving me a potent attacker that I used to finish off Sephiroth, although I was subsequently crushed by the other Cloud immediately after.

Final Fantasy TCG Locals - November 5th, 2025

 A bit of an impromptu decision to head out to the second card shop for the first time in rather literal months, having not made my way out there since the LQ back in August, but the chance to play a few more games with my Scions list - including against a player I don't often get to play against - was enticing.

So head out I did. I got there well in advance of anybody else (I had wanted to see what sort of Gundam TCG Singles they had; the answer was "Not many") and ended up chatting with that shop's Pokémon Professors for a little while as it had been, as I noted above, some number of months since last I made it out.

Once other players started arriving, we broke up into pairs for some friendly best-of-3 sets. I will say that I didn't keep any notes from these games.

In every match tonight, I played my W/L Scions list.

Friendly vs Warriors

My first opponent for the night was playing Warriors, and these were three fantastic games, in my opinion.

They opened game 1 by dropping their hand to play Taivas and get a free-play off of him, which admittedly set me on the back foot for much of the game. I got a couple of points of damage in, but they got me to 6 fairly quickly. I found some answers to their threats and managed to stabilize, then came back in the end to take the first game.

Our second wasn't quite as kind to me. I wish I could remember where things went wrong - did I draw poorly, did I make misplays, what happened here? - but ultimately I lost game 2, and while I got a little damage in, I don't recall it exactly being close.

Game 3 was another close affair like the first had been, but without me feeling quite as much like I was fighting for my life as I didn't get hit to 6 as early on as I had in Game 1. A board wipe from Y'shtola in response to an Akstar ended up sealing the deal, as I had enough Scions on the board that even with the Dull-Freeze, I was able to swing in for lethal on my turn.

After, as our Bo3 took longer than the other pair's, we swapped partners.

Friendly vs Ice/Fire Priming

The other player who I don't often get to play against, the one I've noted in the past as being around as experienced with the game as I am, as we started near the same time as one another.

They were playing a predominantly-Ice deck that also featured Clive, Ifrit, Joshua, and possibly the Phoenix? I didn't see any of the firebird, but I presume at least one copy was floating around the deck somewhere. Regardless.

I took a fairly early lead thanks to my ability to explode onto the board a little, with Alisaie grabbing G'raha, who could in turn go nab an Estinien, Thancred, or Y'shtola. This explosion of Forwards also brought with it removal via either of the latter two.

However, despite that, the Eikons were able to bring along a suite of powerful removal themselves, and did successfully keep me in check for quite some number of turns, "stalling me out" after I had dealt 4 damage. Eventually, I did work around the bevy of Dulls, Freezes, and Ifrit triggers to swing the last three points in, at which point we shuffled up for Game 2...

Which played out in similar fashion. We did note near the end of one game that my opponent had been neglecting to make use of her Anabella backup to get extra dull-freezes with their primes, which could have very legitimately changed the course of the games. For my part, I didn't know what Anabella even did beyond vaguely remembering it was an effect after priming, so I couldn't really remind my opponent to use her effect.

Friendly vs Ice/Dark Vegnagun

A genuinely super cool (hah) control deck, which I couldn't be quite be frustrated at despite it doing an incredible job at keeping my board and hand both locked down.

Despite overextending painfully into a Vegnagun in game 1 - a Vegnagun that I knew my opponent had both in-hand and "online" for its mass removal ability - I was able to find enough tools to still take the win in the first game.

Game 2, my opponent had one Vegnagun in hand, and they were hoping against hope to hit a second before they would be willing to play that first one for a variety of strategic reasons that frankly made a lot of sense. That said, what they did have instead were Red Mages, Snow, and Zenos who all kept my board locked down stupendously, with Zenos even doing some work to strip away cards from my hand - which was important, as I had whittled my own hand down dramatically to fill my board, leaving me with a small hand to begin with.

Once again, I did eventually find enough answers that I was able to pull the momentum of the game back in my favor, and I took Game 2 as well.

Conclusion

I think I feel slightly bad about playing Scions tonight. I know that I shouldn't, we were all playing fairly competitive lists to get in reps with them, and Scions is my current "baby" in that regard.

But with me technically going "undefeated" in all three of my friendlies tonight, and two of them going 2-0, it is a little hard not to feel at least a little bad about bringing the deck into what was technically a set of friendly matches. Still, we all had a good time as far as I could tell, so maybe my brain could go ahead and shut up about it being "mean" to have played the deck I did.

I do think I'm getting a better hang on the W/L version of the list, though. Which is good, given my thoughts on trying to take it into the next competitive season.

Though I will need to see what changes get made to the list based on the next handful of sets. Category XIV gets quite a few potential new toys with Journey of Discovery, the set that comes out in just over a week.

I am a touch annoyed that I will be likely missing the entire prerelease window as I did with Gunslinger, but unfortunately, my job does need to take precedence over my hobbies.

Final Fantasy TCG Locals - November 3rd, 2025

 A total of eight players showed up for tonight's Locals, which is frankly a lot more than I was initially expecting given that it was just a "normal" local event, during the "off-season" competitively, and the shop wasn't running a Win-A-Box as they were the last time I was able to make it out.

This is not a complaint, for the record. I was thrilled. It was still only three rounds, but I made significant changes to my Scions list since last time I played them - including investing the heavy price tag for W/L Lightnings to play the "proper" Scions deck - and wanted as much practice as I could get. Every game I played today was with that deck.

Which is why I was glad to play a friendly match with another player who had shown early.

Friendly Match vs Mono-Fire - Win

This was an extraordinarily tense game for me, because Mono-Fire's suite of removal can keep me away from the mass of Scions I otherwise want to have available. Fortunately, my Alisaies and Estiniens gave me enough recursion to outlast the removal.

Not long after we finished this game, our Round 1 pairings were given out, and the event was begun in earnest.

Round 1 vs Mono-Lightning - Win

Much like the Mono-Fire game just prior to this, this was a decidedly tense game thanks to a ton of removal - including Break Zone removal - from my opponent. In the end, the score was 7 to 6 in my favor.

The turn that ultimately gave me the game was one in which I popped my Alphinaud to revive Alisaie, which gave me a necessary revival on a G'raha, who then brought in either Y'shtola or Thancred to remove my opponent's Forwards - I forget exactly which, since I wound up ending my turn with both in play. G'raha being buffed by an Astrologian gave me an insurmountable wall that made sure my opponent couldn't get around my board for their last point of damage.

Round 2 vs Mono-Earth - Loss

Lots of mono-element decks that I ran into today. Kind of made me want a mono-element list that's not also Job-focused (such as my Dragoons, or even my myriad attempts at mono-lightning Scions), but that's just a personal "Man, that grass looks so green" thought.

Regardless.

Turn 1, my opponent played Epitav to search for Leo. On turn 2, they went from 1 Backup straight to 5, playing a Miner, who nabbed Minfilia, and when Minfilia hit the board, they used her ability to get back the Leo and the WoL4 that they had discarded to help pay for her. Minfilia was followed up by two Leatherworkers for free. This left them ending turn 2 with 5 backups and a hand consisting of Leo and WoL4.

This was, frankly speaking, more than enough. Turn 3 saw them drop Leo and WoL4, activating their backups again so that they could go even further with the other cards that they had drawn. I was able to remove the WoL4 and got a point of damage in, but a second promptly hit the field, followed by Earth/Water Sophie, who added some extra, passive damage to the mix.

I did manage to land about 4 points on them, if I remember correctly, but the outrageous amount of early resources that they had gave them the early lead and I really couldn't catch up despite my best efforts.

Round 3 vs Mono-Fire - Win

The same opponent as the friendly game from before we got started in earnest, and another mono-element deck, technically.

Much like the friendly, this game was tight and tense for me. They were mildly frustrated at the fact that a relatively early Krile made their removal math so much harder, and my recursion (combined with their inability to find the Cloud in their list that would have potentially removed Forwards from my Break Zone and prevented my recursion), and I wish at the time I could've better explained that the Krile was the only reason that their removal didn't run roughshod over me.

I digress.

They had a Clive that Primed and kept control over the game for a few turns in the middle of the game, but I was finally able to remove it solely because I had 5 full backups, and was able to drop the W/L Lightning, an LB Leo, and then my LB Tidus who I could then pay the extra cost from, removing the Ifrit and one of their Backups, as well as giving me more cards in hand. This removal gave me the ability to claw control of the game back, even after they removed nearly all of my Forwards again.

Conclusion

I kind of hate the fact that spending the money on the Lightnings was the right choice. W/L Scions is a lot of fun and incredibly strong.

Although I didn't do so well against Mono-Earth, I don't know how much of that was the deck, how much was me not knowing the W/L version of Scions quite as well as I'd like, and how much of that was just the insane turn 2 giving them such a massive pile of resources to play the game with.

I will almost definitely try to make this my competitive deck of choice for the next season once LQs and such start back up (give or take my work schedule getting in the way of my attending LQs), and I look forward to seeing how far I'm able to go with it.

Gundam TCG Locals - November 2nd, 2025

For the first time in about two months, and my second time ever, I was able to get out to the card shop to play the Gundam TCG.

Unfortunately, a number of cards I had ordered had yet to arrive in the mail. This left me playing my deck in an un-updated state - in the time since I last made it to play Gundam, the game's fifth starter deck and second booster set were released. This meant that instead of the Blue/Green "One Year War" list I'm planning to build once my orders finally arrive, I was running a Red/Green Zeon list that completely lacked anything from the second set. An image of the list will be at the bottom of this post.

Also, formatting on today's post is going to be a little wonky because I have plans for later tonight, after both Gundam and the Pokémon Prerelease I'll be helping with, that will see me out quite late, so I'm writing this post up on my phone, through the mobile app.

Round 1 vs Green/White Wing - Loss

My aggro list ran face-first into a whole host of strong Blockers. Close Combat did some amount of work, but with each of the blockers being too big to be completely removed by the command, it wasn't quite enough. 

I did get to have The Dream, playing Sinanju, pairing Full Frontal onto it, using Full Frontal's ability to play Char's Gelgoog from my hand, and discarding a Zaku II to get Char back from my discard pile and pairing it to the Gelgoog. Unfortunately, my two powerhouse Link Units were forced to trade into two Aile Strike Gundams, leaving me with just a Zee Zulu on board. 

My next turn, I filled my board pretty extensively, but it wasn't enough. With no blockers, my opponent was able to run roughshod over my remaining shields.

Round 2 vs Green/White Big Zam Turbo - Win

A very different Zeon list that tried to play a little more defensively and ramp into Big Zam.

Simply put, I outraced them massively. 

Round 3 vs Purple/White Iron-Blooded Orphans Starter - Win

 Today was my opponent's first time playing Gundam TCG, and they were playing an unmodified precon.

I was able to quickly run them over with my small horde of Zakus. Getting lucky and nabbing Sinanju off of a destroyed Starter Char's Zaku, then getting the Full Frontal off of a destroyed shield, meant that I had the offensive firepower needed to finish the game out on turn 6.

Conclusion

The changes I made to the deck after my last time playing Gundam felt really good. It's a bit of a shame that I made those changes and never had a chance to play before the second set came out, because I plan to change my list somewhat significantly once my ordered cards from GD02 come in. 

Ah well. One good local event with them is better than none. And going 2-1 felt pretty nice, as well.

As said at the top of the post, I'm posting a picture of the list I played today: