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.
No comments:
Post a Comment