The weekend was actually not at all draining, so I’m writing this up now while everything is still fresh in my mind.

Another week, another event. Bushiroad’s Spring Fest has actually been really good so far, here in the UK. For a first-time thing, it’s actually been very smooth. Obviously, having experienced Magic Pro Tours and Grands Prix means that it is below my personal average, but I can only see bright futures. I won’t rattle on too much, because there’s less to say here than there was for Glasgow, so let’s get underway.

The Deck

After some debates after Glasgow about play, over the last week, I was debating whether to stick to my guns and my comfort zone and play Nisemonogatari again, or switch to a more metagame safe deck in Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F. I printed out decklists for both, and a translation sheet for the former just in case.

The list was unchanged from Glasgow, so see the previous article for more in-depth information about that. Honestly, you could just copy and paste that entire section from that article in here. In hindsight, Nisemonogatari was indeed a bad choice to play; the event here had significantly more people, which lead to a lot more rounds, and thus I needed something a lot more consistent.

There were a few issues with the deck on the day, the most major of which I’ll talk about later, but I definitely felt that this weekend was a lot less smooth than Glasgow; I was often stranded at Level 1; not drawing Blessing of the Moon Shinobu or Vampire-like Human Araragi was crippling to my game, and it meant that I was constantly trailing on power.

The Event

Obviously I had planned for a lot more people at Birmingham than at Glasgow, being a more central location and whatnot.

My friends and I participated in the Vanguard tournament the Saturday before as a laugh, and we were thrown out almost immediately. It was amusing, but definitely not worth talking about. All you need to know is that I was playing a Link Joker Schwarzchild Dragon deck.

The hotel venue was reasonable. I say this because while we were able to accommodate both BuddyFight and WS in the same room, there were twice as many people as expected for the Vanguard event, and that day, the room was a sweltering mess of sweat and body odour. It was far from pleasant, but I’m glad to say that the numbers dwindled by Sunday, and it was much more bearable.

Due to the large numbers of people this time, a lot of the event was run on the PC; match slips were printed out, and tables were significantly more organized. I am told that pairings were still done by hand, however, which doesn’t sit well with me. In Round 4, there were three players on a 3-0 record, and despite two of them having not played before, they were all paired down, which is an oddity in and of itself. I feel that using software for the entire event would definitely have helped smooth the running of the event. In round 3, one player was accidentally not included in the event, despite still being in the running, which caused the entire round to be repaired. Humans make mistakes, and so we should look to eliminate those mistakes wherever possible. I am aware it is Bushiroad’s tournament policy, and so here I am saying that their policy sucks knobs. If this game is going to grow, this needs to be improved.

Edit; I am told that tournament software was used for the entire event, and thus the only element of human error in the event was due to people filling out match slips incorrectly. I apologize for any negative implications this initially had on the tournament organizers.

Space was a little bit tight, but I guess that was them taking precautions due to issues with Vanguard the day before. The TOs and Judges were all as accommodating as could be, given that I had already seen and experienced them once, all despite the chaos of the day before. I am significantly happier with this weekend than I am with Glasgow, that’s for sure, even though I didn’t as nearly as well as I did then.

The Metagame

I won’t list every deck at the event on the day, because not only are there far too many to list, but I didn’t even properly scope out everybody. Rather, here is a big list of what I know was played:

Nisemonogatari (Myself)

Love Live (WH, see previous article)

Log Horizon (Cheeho, see previous article)

Railgun (Laurent, see previous article)

Railgun (JP, mostly meta)

Bakemonogatari (EN, Lovers)

Bakemonogatari (EN, RG)

Madoka (Mono Green)

Madoka (R/B Howling)

Madoka (R/B Howling)

Madoka (R/B Howling)

Madoka (G/B Ulti-Heal)

Sword Art Online (EN, B/Y Meta)

Love Live (JP, RYB Meta)

Nanoha (RY Meta)

Project Diva F (R/Y Rin)

Project Diva F (G/R Meta)

Project Diva F (G/R Meta)

Suisei no Gargantia (BG, no Red)

Love Live (EN, Y/G)

Kill La Kill (R/B/Y)

Sword Art Online (Y/R)

Sword Art Online (Y/B meta)

Angel Beats (R/Y meta)

Kantai Collection (R/G/B Kongou / Kumano)

Kantai Collection (G/Y Full Anti-meta)

Kantai Collection (G/Y/B Anti-meta)

Crayon Shin-chan (Trial Deck)

Neon Genesis Evangelion (R/B)

Daybreak Illusion (R/Y Ginka build)

A lot of other unknowns

I’ll say this; the metagame was significantly more varied than I was expecting. The complete lack of dominance by SAO was very refreshing to see, and the fact that almost half the room were using Japanese decks was very encouraging to the growth of the scene here in the UK. The play level also seemed a lot higher, which was good. I know for sure that I was looking over a lot of other people playing and was pleasantly surprised. There’s not a lot to say here except we just need to wait and see until next year. Granted, the English skew was still there (Madoka and SAO’s dominance), but the presence of other, less known titles such as Evangelion and Gargantia are really good. If Bushiroad keep supporting the English game, we can only see more and more players look to pick up Japanese titles as time goes on.

Tournament Report

I’m not going to write a whole lot here, because it’s slightly disappointing, and I’ll get a little bit angry and myself if I write too much.

Round 1

I’m immediately paired against my testing friend Cheeho. He has already told me he can’t make it to Continentals anyway, so was just going to scoop to me, but we figured we would play a game for posterity. He ends up deciding on Log Horizon.

Now, some backstory; the Tuesday before the event, his 10 boxes of Log Horizon arrived in the post, so I went to his house to break them. The boxes were good; he pulled an SP Marie and an SP Shiroe. Well, I say he, I’m the one who opened the packs for both. He managed to build an almost complete deck from his boxes: he got 3 of the 3/2 Akatsuki, 4 foil Gates, and everything else. So of course I know what his deck does.

It’s a bit of a silly game, and I’m not sure if he was throwing to me on purpose, but I know that he triggered 3 Book climaxes extremely early on, so I just rushed him. He was also digging for the singleton RR Nyanta in his deck and missed, meaning my 1/1 Hanekawa was safe. This was good, given that I only had Green in clock once the entire game. The noteworthy play made was when he Brainstorms with 8 cards left in deck, one success, then searches for the 2/1 Akatsuki Refresh backup. He has two cards left in deck after he picks the Backup to hand, and then refreshes on attack. That moment basically sums up our game.

1-0

Round 2

Due to a tournament error, I was originally meant to play against R/G Project Diva. I know this because a few moments before the event I had lent this player some of the cards he needed that he was still missing. I also know that he does have some Time Machines in the deck, and so it’s not as much of a walk in the park as I’d like it to be, given how weak my backup distribution is. So, we get repaired just as we sit back down, and suddenly I’m playing against RGB Bakemonogatari, English.

I know I have an advantage here, because my Level 1 game is basically entirely costless, and if he hits me to Level 2, not only is my support stronger, but my Tsukihi basically counters his entire 2/1 Araragi/Hitagi combo. I found out later that he doesn’t even play that combo, so the point is moot. However, I know that he wants to keep his 1/1 Nadeko alive, and so if I can force him to burn cards, that’s better for me.

Now the irony of this match is extremely apparent. If you scroll down this blog a little bit, you’ll see that a few days before the event, I published a small strategy article on how to deal with climaxes in hand, and how to play them to get the maximum effect. I drew three in my opening hand, and mulliganed into one more. I clocked into a fifth, and triggered a sixth on the first attack. While I could deal with this, his Level 0 attack puts both of my Brainstorm Mayoi into clock, which is already an alarming factor, and then I’m not drawing my Level 1/2 game that I so desperately need. My hand at one point was three climaxes, one 3/2 Hitagi, and 3/2 Shinobu. Also worth mentioning that I did not draw the 0/0 Hitagi loner, which caused even more issues. While this was not the biggest of deals, the killing blow was the fact that my opponent was playing blue, and thus had the 1/0 Lovers climax combo. Which is a +2 soul climax. Which meant I just ate 12 damage, and died.

Luck happens, I’m not complaining, and this player did go on to finish third, so it’s not like I was guaranteed to beat him, even if I wasn’t climax screwed. I’m not out. Yet.

1-1

Round 3

As soon as I heard my opponent’s name called out, I knew I was out of the tournament. Just a few weeks ago I had sold him some 1/1 Yuubari from Kantai Collection, and I knew full well that he was playing it. He plays a turn 1 Hatsukaze, and the game is effectively over. I stall out a bit, luckily due to the fact that he’s aggressively playing Hibiki, but has no Verniy in waiting room. He does however, drop the trifecta of Hatsukaze, Yuubari, and Chiyoda./. Triggering three Gates did not help, neither did drawing 0 copies of Blessing of the Moon. I can pay my climaxes out by aggressively Brainstorming, but they all whiff, and so I have nothing in hand to be able to fight back with. Eventually, he manages to get Hibiki into Memory, and I’m forced to pay 4 stock to play Hitagi into a field of Level 1s, meaning her second ability doesn’t even proc. I refresh with 8 in, but I can’t keep up the pressure, and his greater hand sze means that he can just put out more damage.

1-2, out of tournament.

I’ll be honest, it was quite difficult, given that I was expecting to win an invite at Glasgow, and having to actually play with something on the line here put a lot more pressure on me. I’m disappointed, sure, but I could definitely be in a worse state. I’m actually pretty pleased with myself in that I didn’t immediately go on tilt, and that I didn’t get into a strop. I just lost because of bad luck and a bad matchup. I made a few tiny mistakes, but I probably would have lost those games even if I had played perfectly.

This time around, however, the tournament would not have been as much of a cakewalk as it would have been for me at Glasgow. A lot of the players there were from a local shop near Coventry, and they were good at the game, according to insider knowledge. The metagame was also skewed slightly against me, in that a lot of decks were playing more of a strong Level 1 than banking on a Level 2 into 3 transition. This of course wasn’t helped by the fact that I didn’t draw my Level 1s very regularly either. The Project Diva decks would definitely have given me a run for my money; Time Machine and Rin-Chan Now! both are very troublesome to play against, both because I find it extremely difficult to guard their huge power on the offense and because I will struggle to make them lose any advantage due to their almost costless Level 1 game.

Other decks such as R/B Madoka and Gargantia are indeed easier matchups, but even so, I definitely needed to be on point. And I admit, I was far from it that morning. I don’t wish to sound like a workman blaming his tools, and we have no idea on what could have been, but I do feel that Nisemonogatari was not only the wrong deck choice, but it also failed to perform. I had this concern at Glasgow over Nisemongatari’s consistency, and those fears lived up to themselves at the event.

I probably won’t retire the deck, because I like the show, and the deck was very good in teaching me how to play a defensive playstyle early, a vast change from my early days of playing Railgun and Project Diva. I feel as if on the whole though, the English metagame isn’t very right for Nise as a whole. There’s a lot of “play climaxes, kill them” mentality here, and so you need to fight aggression with aggression and try to win the game before the opponent can kill you. I’ll be investigating the other scenes over the summer and see what comes up. I probably won’t play Nise for a few days, perhaps even weeks, but I definitely know that I’m one of the better players in the UK, and even though I currently have no evidence to show for it, I’m sure that if the deck I choose to play doesn’t shit on me that I can definitely consistently win events when they come up.

The Experience

As mentioned, my friends and I trekked up there on the Saturday morning to play in the Vanguard event. Even coming in through the doors was a surreal experience in and of itself.

Long story short, it was a 2 hour wait, and they had to run four smaller pods of four DE rounds, take anybody who wasn’t eliminated from those pods, and put them into a new pod of double elimination, and then cut form that. My friends and I were out by Round 2, and there’s nothing you can do about that. One of us had come out of Vanguard retirement, one was an active player piloting a foreign deck, and I had only been playing for a handful of weeks. The fact that I won a game at all was very impressive.

I won’t bore everyone with the details, but we were thrown out in short because I took some risks and lost. Most notably, my opponent is at 4 damage with almost no cards in hand, I’m at 4 damage with a lot of cards in hand. He swings in with his final attack, I give it a two pass, and he hits two triggers, one of which is a crit, and we’re done for the day.

Vanguard aside, that afternoon we buy some Love Live EP boxes, and crack nothing impressive. Well, the rest of the group don’t. I open an SP Kotori, which is nice, if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m aiming to have my Love Live deck be completely non-foil (ignoring the stock foiling on Rs and RRs from SIF). The group of 8 of us sit and play for a bit in the afternoon around the venue for the day after. Myself, Weihua, Cheeho, Laurent, Chris, Matthew, Julian, and Kevin just sit, play some games, and ready ourselves for the day after.

It was good getting to see a lot of people I knew over the weekend, especially in a different environment. The Aldershot players: Dario, Jason, and Stuart were all great, even if they didn’t strike luck either; Chris and Denise, the TOs and owners of The Chimera (local card shop) were lovely as always, and I got a nice bit of business chatting with them; there was even one of my underclassmen from Imperial who I thought had gone home for the summer, but instead came along to play! I’m a bit sad that I didn’t get to meet and chat with any of the regulars from The Chimera; WH says they’re all pretty good players with high-level decks, so I guess that’s for something to do when I next go up to Brum. The atmosphere and environment of the tournament was absolutely tremendous, even if the event itself ended bitterly for me.

Taking my early leave from the tournament, I meet up with two of the guys who had recently learned to play, and they had come to Dark Sphere about a month ago once. Turns out, they had some free time in their schedule between MCM and EVO and decided to come along. It was good seeing them, and they say that they’ll be down more often, so chalk the community count up by two. They both wanted to expand into this game more from their slightly modified TDs of Madoka and Bakemonogatari, and so they splurged on boxes. Kevin picks up five Log Horizon boxes, whereas Edwin goes for three boxes of Crayon Shin-chan.

Kevin rips like god and opens 4 copies of 3/2 Akatsuki, one of which is signed. In fact, he basically opens the full 50 card deck that everyone else is playing: 0/0 Akatsuki suicider, 0/0 Akatsuki loner, Marie support, Shiroe Brainstorm, 1/1 Clock encore Akatsuki, 1/0 Clock encore Shiroe, 1/1 3.5k backup, 4 Gates, 2 Books, 2 Pants, 4 3/2 Akatsuki, 2 Bodyguards, 2 3/2 Shiroe, fillers. It was pretty impressive, and I look forward to seeing that deck hit tables soon.

Edwin on the other hand got a little less lucky. He didn’t get his needed Level 3 game; only 3 copies of the Kindergarten crew, and only 1 copy of the 3/2 Shinnosuke. He did get 4 gates though, one of them being a RRR. His Level 0 game is also slightly lacking due to not enough Suiciders, but he does have runners (Big Butt). His Level 1 game is good, and he could do with some more copies of Hiroshi as the SUN, but it’ll do. He knows what he needs, and most importantly, he’s buying that set for the right reasons; It’s hilarious and he likes the show. In the end, that’s what matters.

Conclusion

Yes, I’m disappointed and salty that I don’t have an invite to Continentals. Yes, I legitimately think that I’m skilled enough to have one. Yes, I firmly believe that my losses that day were largely beyond my control (sure, I could have won if played absolutely perfectly, but climax screw and bad matchups happen). No, I’m not quitting the game, and yes, I would absolutely 100% repeat that entire weekend all over again.

I enjoy this game almost as much as Magic, and to see such a thriving community grow so quick is great. It makes me almost less bothered by the fact that I have zero results to show for the talent that I believe I have, because I know that as I play more and more, I should win more and more, but to see more people having fun is just as great, because then I know that there are others out there who are like me, who believe that they are good and improving and who yearn for the chance to prove their abilities.

That’s it from me for now. I’ll probably be writing a bit less as I start my summer holidays and prepare for resits and try to find something to do and earn some money. I hope you all enjoyed reading this, and I hope you guys have liked the blog so far. Jonny is back from his field trip in exactly two weeks, so the content should begin to vary a bit more. As always, feedback and criticism is welcomed. Or, if you just want to say something, we’re always easily accessible and would love to talk. Especially if you’re in South England and can travel to London!

See you soon!

~ Zystral