Ah yes, Friday Night. As usual, I made my way out to the local card shop to play...
Final Fantasy TCG?
Hell yeah I did. It's the night before the Winter Cup this weekend, and a handful of folks made their way out to get a few last-minute games in - some to practice, some to play a little bit of jank to unwind after the competitive testing they've been grinding out. I wasn't originally planning to go out myself, but I made the not-quite-last-minute decision to go, and I'm glad that I did.
I'm not going to get too deep into the finer details of the games I played tonight. One of the other Local players brought out a modified version of their Crystals list and wanted to get a few games in to test it out, see how it felt in its current incarnation. I obliged.
The first deck I pulled out against them, before I knew what they were up to, was my Manikins deck. I had only brought that deck along on, more or less, a lark. I figured that if people wanted to unwind and play some jank, I would do well to have an actual janky list with me as well.
The long and short of this game was that I wound up losing pretty badly. I got some fairly decent, early damage in, but once they were able to get set up, they quickly took the game over from me. Hilariously, Manikins feel like they might be able to accomplish something, but they lack staying power. With the list in its current state, if I hit top-deck mode, then it just folds.
But, I digress.
To help my opponent put the Crystals deck through its paces, and to get a little bit of last-minute practice in with the two decks that I plan to play this weekend, I pulled out first my Scions, and then my Dragoons.
Both of these decks won Best of 3 sets pretty easily, and then the Scions won a final, standalone game before I decided that I needed to head out to get home - both because I knew that it was trying to snow and I wanted home before the roads could get too terrible, and because I plan to head to bed fairly early so I can get up to get ready for the Winter Cup in the morning.
The Scions opened aggressively with Estinien, meaning I had ample extra resources from his ability to return Scions I discarded to cover play costs, and the deck's overall amount of recursion and removal kept the game in my favor even over the long-term.
The Dragoons operated on a moderately similar scale, except that the deck needed a little bit of time to get set up and going, which gave the Crystals time to set up as well. Still, Freya and LB Kain remained the deck's champions, and Game 1 seeing Turn 1 Alus certainly helped the resources out.
That said, Game 2, I made a call I don't make nearly often enough: I discarded my first and only copy of Alus that game to play a cost, instead of trying to keep it in hand to play it out. This wound up ultimately being the right call due to the fact that it left me with a different, less-expensive backup and I was able to use the short-term resource savings to good effect.
That my opponent followed that up by hitting me with 3-drop Crystal Cyan the next turn, wiping my board to where the extra resources from Alus would've been nice in the long-term is certainly a good example of why sometimes the mid-game Alus is the right call, however. Regardless, I was still able to take that game thanks to what I drew naturally, even if I also burned all three copies of LB Kain this game - only for them to all get taken down, either by Vinera Fennes shrinking them and then LB Zack finishing the job, or from LB Vincent just one-shotting them. The winning turn was off the back of 3-drop Freya, as I had three Backups, the Freya in hand, and I just needed any one other copy of Freya so I could Cherry Blossom.
Thanks to 2-drop Theatrhythm Aranea, I saw the Freya, and was able to take the game.
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