Final Fantasy TCG Locals - December 29th, 2025

 Likely my last post for the year of 2025 unless I decide that I really want to head out to the other card shop on Wednesday - which is unlikely, given how rarely that day fires for FFTCG - and it was for a night with an incredibly solid 7-player turnout.

As I know I can only make my way out to play every other week, every FFTCG night between now and the Winter Cup in early February will likely see me playing my Dragoons just to make sure I have as much practice in with them as I possibly can get.

Round 1 vs Water/Lightning Monsters - Win

I went first, ended my first turn with Alus in hand, and was able to drop him on turn 2. Hitting a 2-drop Aranea on my second damage gave me an extra card in hand, and the extra resources from Alus enabled me to play aggressively and work my way around the Monsters, Relm, and Witch of the Fens.

I also got superbly lucky with the cards I sent to their damage, sending two of their Water/Lightning Lightnings, at least one Relm, and a Witch of the Fens to damage, where they couldn't be accessed. This gave me plenty of room to work with - and even then, the game ended at 5 to 7.

Round 2 vs Warp/Zodiark - Win

A turn 1 Alus on my end combined with some unfortunate, awkward backups on theirs gave me a resource advantage that they weren't able to overcome. When they dropped a Zodiark into play, LB Kain targeting a copy of the 5-drop "removal" Dragoon forced their hand so that they had to dull Zodiark to remove my break zone. This gave me the room I needed to play the 4-drop Freya and use her attack trigger to remove the godly Primal.

They weren't able to come back from that, and I swept through the last of their damage pretty handily.

Round 3 vs Cat VIII - Loss

They went first and dropped a Raijin backup. On my first turn, I played 2-drop Aranea, got an Alus to play, and then in turn played Ricard, ending with a 4-drop Freya in my hand.

Their second turn, they overpaid to play the new 5-drop Seymour from Journey of Discovery, used Raijin to pay the 1 on Seymour's entry trigger, and dull-froze my backups while forcing me to discard my last card in hand. Seymour's attack trigger, being identical to the entry trigger, proceeded to keep me locked out of playing by denying me resources for the entire game. I did sneak in a couple of points of damage, but it wasn't enough that I could even pretend like I was mounting any sort of comeback from it. Seymour and a handful of actual Cat VIII characters proceeded to utterly pick me apart.

Gundam TCG Locals - December 28th, 2025

After getting snowed out two weeks ago, I made it back out to the shop for the Gundam TCG today. After the disappointing results I'd experienced trying Blue-Green "One Year War" aggro, or at least my Green-heavy variant of it, I decided to switch my list back to Red-Green Zeon Rush.

My results today were... about the same as they had been, but I really enjoyed playing Zeon Aggro again, far more than I had been with One Year War despite losing more of my games today than not. With 15 players for today, we had four rounds of play.

Round 1 vs White-Blue Blockers - Loss

This was ultimately a pretty close game, where I played incredibly aggressively - fitting since I was playing a Zeon Aggro deck, after all - quickly knocking out 5 of their shields. However, unfortunately, the issue that I constantly run into once more reared its head: They hit a few sturdy blockers, cleared out my board, and re-stabilized all while I was nearly out of resources.

Round 2 vs Green-White "8 Char" - Win

This game, I more or less took over pretty quickly. We were both running aggro decks, but mine was able to go much harder, thanks in part to drawing incredibly well and hitting Char to give his bevy of Links the necessary High Maneuver to get around the few blockers that they dropped in my way. A Sinanju with Full Frontal hitting in the late game gave me even more firepower, letting me take out shields and deal damage to their field at the same time. A Char's Gelgoog on the last two turns were the last of the firepower I needed to finish the job, drawing into a Zaku II that I discarded to get back my Char from my discard pile to swing past their blockers for the last damage.

Round 3 vs White-Purple - Loss

Another game like Round 1 - and most of my games in the Gundam TCG. Aggressive until my opponent was able to stabilize, in this case with Gusion Rebake. This gave them the room to build up their field with a Barbatos handy to swing back at me while drawing themselves more cards to keep their counter-attack fueled.

Round 4 vs Blue-Purple Ping - Loss

Once again, I had a fairly aggressive start, but my opponent's suite of removal and pingers quickly cleared away my field and let them establish dominance over the board in the mid-game.

Conclusion

Honestly, I had been fully prepared to drop the Gundam TCG after today. I was resolved to do so when I was getting ready in the morning and realizing how much I really didn't want to head out to the shop so early, along with some other elements that made me question how much I really liked playing the game.

And... then I had a lot of fun playing today. More, with the Zeon deck instead of the OYW deck, than I had been having. And with several of the other players readily offering to give me several things to help me if I wanted to shift gears and build the Green-White 8 Char deck over Red-Green Zeon. Plus I was able to pick up things I could use to try building a Red-Green Clans deck (which I recognize apparently isn't a particularly good deck, but I want to give it a go).

So I guess I won't be dropping the Gundam TCG quite yet, after all.

Friday Night Magic Commander Night - December 26th, 2025

 After some concern earlier today about potential winter storms dropping freezing rain on my area, the weather turned out to be incredibly mild and I was able to easily head out to the card shop for Commander night.

I wound up getting a solid six games in tonight, five of which were with a pod of 3, and the last was with a pod of 4.

Y'shtola, Night's Blessed vs Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer and Gisa, the Hellraiser

I had a fairly slow start, and was mostly saved from Gisa's incredible amounts of undead violence thanks to the protection of an early Propaganda.

Consequently, Gisa rather swiftly removed Brudiclad from the game, and I had time to mount some defense and turn the game around. Thanks to the control elements in the deck, and Y'shtola's life drain effect to keep me reasonably healthy, I was able to take the win over the Gisa player.

Cloud, Planet's Champion vs Grist, Voracious Larva and Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker

I kept an incredibly greedy hand. One land, but I had Sol Ring and Inspiring Statuary. Surely I would draw another land fairly soon, and be able to play the game, right?

Anyways I was behind for much of the game with an outrageous resource deficit. By the time I started catching up properly, Shirei - who also had a Turn 1 Sol Ring, and but didn't keep nearly as bad a hand otherwise - was so thoroughly established with their engine that awaiting their victory was absolutely just a formality.

Cloud vs Grist and Daxos the Returned

Unhappy with how Cloud played in the previous game (which was, admittedly, almost entirely my fault for keeping such a bad starting hand), I shuffled him up again.

This time, I kept a 5-land hand and had a turn 1 Esper Sentinel. The Sentinel didn't give me a lot of card draw, but it provided just enough resources to give me the win. Cloud with a Conqueror's Flail was able to two-shot each of my opponents, and Grist wasn't able to take me out despite an incredibly frightening Valgavoth, Terror Eater getting reanimated.

Clever Concealment allowing me to save my Flail was easily the winning play.

Baral, Chief of Compliance vs Urabrask and Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER

I very quickly lost this game. I had a difficult time getting spells that could let me draw deeper into my deck, and Cloud heavily focused me down with their attacks.

Baral vs Belbe, Corrupted Observer and Grist

Much like with Cloud, I was unhappy with Baral's performance in the previous game and so I shuffled the deck back up for a second game.

This time, Grist scooped a few turns after I played Harbinger of the Seas, as they had nothing but non-basic lands so they were hard-locked from playing the game. This left the game a one-on-one between myself and the Belbe player, and my collection of counter magic meant there wasn't much of anything that they could do to stop me from just swiftly taking the game.

I dropped Enter the Infinite, drew my deck, left one card behind, and Belbe scooped after seeing their last card draw and concluding they couldn't do anything.

After this, both of my opponents for the past five games had to leave, but I was able to join another pod that had room.

Lathliss, Dragon Queen vs The Ur-Dragon, Nyla, Shirshu Sleuth, and Gogo, Master of Mimicry

This game played incredibly long, slow, and grindy. Gogo had control over almost the entire game, in part because of their having a bevy of powerful abilities they could copy - including the activated abilities from their Fetchlands allowing them to ramp their mana to an absurd degree.

Eventually, to reset the board and keep Gogo in check, I dropped a Blasphemous Act, clearing away the board. I tried to follow up by replaying Lathliss, but Gogo burned a ton of resources to keep me from getting my Dragon Queen back onto the table. This left Ur-Dragon and Nyla free to build up on their turns instead, a self-admitted miscalculation on Gogo's part.

Fortunately, Gogo was still the target for the rest of the table, which gave me breathing room to reestablish a board position of my own. Getting several card draws off of my copy of Dragon's Hoard definitely helped me on that front.

Dragon's Tempest, finally being able to replay Lathliss again, a handful of other Dragons, and an overloaded Vandalblast to wipe Nyla's board was what ultimately gave me the position I needed to take the game over the rest of the way, taking out Nyla first. After soaking a hit from Ur-Dragon's Intent the Dreamer, I won the next turn thanks to Wrathful Red Dragon's triggered ability meaning that the air force I swung in with was definitely dealing the Ur-Dragon enough damage to finish the game out.

Final Fantasy TCG Locals - December 15th, 2025

 6 people made it out to Locals tonight, so we had a "proper" event fire off.

In honor of the upcoming Winter Cup, which I plan to participate in as it is happening at this very store, I decided to start getting some more practice in with my Dragoons, so that was the deck I played for all three rounds today.

Round 1 vs Ice/Lightning Cat VIII - Loss

To start with, I didn't see an Alus until entirely too late into the game for it to be helpful. When I did see it, I made the same mistake I've made several times in the past, laser-focusing on dropping the Prince into play, running myself out of resources to do so.

Meanwhile, the Cat VIII player was basically exploding all over the field, and I was plainly unable to keep up, especially after the resource burn to play the Alus.

The true nail in my coffin was a Quistis that dull and froze my board not once, but because I broke her enabling recursion with a Seifer, but twice. This neutered me, given the resource denial from keeping my backups out of reach.

Round 2 vs Mono-Ice - Win

I never saw an Alus at all this game.

But I also didn't need him. I played two backups on turn 1, and tried to maintain reasonable resources in hand so I didn't end up in "top-deck" mode. Unfortunately for me, Mono-Ice Discard Shenanigans ended up stripping my hand. I played the rest of the game fairly slowly and conservatively, almost trying to play like a control deck, and I was eventually able to fight around their collection of dulls, freezes, and overall board state to take the victory.

Round 3 vs Dark/Lightning - Loss

This game wound up quite unfortunate for me. At almost every turn, they had access to some dull effect or another to keep my blockers - and multiple times, my attackers - out of commission at crucial moments.

I did see Alus on turn 2 or 3, early enough that it was worth running my hand out of resources to drop the Prince into play, given the long-term "repayment" of the extra card draw off of him each turn from his trigger.

Unfortunately, them keeping my blocks and attacks out of commission through dulling and outright removing them meant that I wasn't able to accomplish as much as I would like, and they were able to maintain control over the game, taking the win over me.

Friendly Match vs Dark/Lightning

After we finished Round 3, myself and the Dark/Lightning player decided to "play out" as if it were a Best of 3 game.

And somewhat annoyingly, I wound up taking both games of this friendly match. I was better able to deal with their removal and dulling effects, thanks in part to being able to use a lot of the 4-cost Freya's Dragon's Crest specials to remove the Class Zero Cadets that were used for dulling my field down in the game that was important for tonight's Locals.

Conclusion

Boy howdy, this was the worst I think I've done with my Dragoons in absolute ages.

Fortunately there's still quite some time 'til the Winter Cup, so I have time to get more practice back in with the Dragoons to get back to where I feel like I know what I'm doing in a variety of different situations.

And as a small note, I plan to play Dragoons primarily because of Winter Cup being a team event, and the Dragoons have nearly no overlap with any other deck in the format. While I would still rather focus on Scions for competitive play, Dragoons work out well in a team environment as a strong deck in their own right, as well as being one where I need to make nearly no changes to the main deck itself - only a few LB cards run the risk of competing with my teammates.

Snow Day - December 14th, 2025

 I had planned to make my way out to the card shop for Gundam TCG and Pokémon League.

Then a snowstorm hit my area last night, leaving behind several inches of snow. And I don't fully expect the roads and highways between me and the card shop to have been plowed and salted adequately yet.

So neither Gundam nor Pokémon were happening today.

Hopefully tomorrow things are cleared up enough that I can safely head out for Final Fantasy TCG. I found out that my local shop is going to be hosting the upcoming FFTCG Winter Cup in February, and I want to get as much practice as I can before then.

Day Off - December 12th, 2025

 The haunted house where I spent the majority of my October is holding a two-night "Cryptmas" show this weekend - that is, tonight and tomorrow.

I'm missing out on Commander tonight in favor of being at said haunt to help out with said show. So no Commander games for me this week.

I'll be back on Sunday, to discuss Gundam TCG. I've changed my deck from the Blue/Green OYW that hasn't been doing terribly well for me results-wise back to a Red/Green Zeon Aggro, so I'm hoping that does better.

I've also mashed together a White/Blue list that makes use of, well, my Blue cards. In particular, it runs - not that they were part of my OYW list - Unicorn Gundam in both Unicorn and Destroy Modes, along with the matching Banagher Pilot. Do I know if the list is any good? No clue, no. But I really like the Unicorn as a mech design, and I also really enjoyed the Unicorn OVA, so I wanted to build something that ran the Unicorn in it.

Will I ever actually play the deck? No clue! I'm likely going to focus on the Red/Green Zeon list as my "main" deck for that game, but I'm open to giving the White/Blue list a shot eventually.

But, I digress.

Final Fantasy TCG Locals - December 1st, 2025

 Final Fantasy TCG tonight, and we had a total of five players.

I did not get the bye in any of our three rounds of play tonight.

I was playing my experiment with trying the new Koana package in a Scions list.

Spoiler Alert: It did not work well. At all.

Round 1 vs Dark/Lightning Vegnagun - Loss

Without remembering too much detail, the game went quickly, and it did not go well for me.

Round 2 vs Earth/Water/Lightning Scions - Win

This game ended up being incredibly long, drawn-out, and grindy.

But in the end, somehow I managed to take the win over the other Scion list.

Round 3 vs Mono-Water Monsters - Loss

Another long, drawn-out grindy game. This time, I wasn't able to take the win, losing on the final turn to a Leviathan, Lord of the Whorl and a Witch of the Fens removing my blockers.

Conclusion

You may notice that there is little to no detail to speak of in any of these games. I didn't take many notes, and all of my recollections of the games are effectively supplanted by my frustration with the way the deck proved very unreliable.

The Koana package is neat, and it can potentially do some interesting things. However, I found myself almost constantly with Urianger and/or Thancred in hand, but almost never the Koana that I needed to actually make the two function fully - let alone to get the full value of a Koana searching for and playing the Urianger to draw an extra card.

So while I really wanted to make the Koana package work, I don't think it will, at least not in a list like Scions. There's likely a list out there for it, but I'm nowhere near figuring out what list that might be.