Big bold disclaimer: This event is not tied to WGP/EGP. This is an independent nationals.

TL;DR – I played Monogatari, got Top 8.

After the last few months which has been basically Vanguard only, I felt it only right to return to my main game. The last time the UK had a tournament worth travelling to was Chimera’s Spring Championships in March. That’s exactly half a year ago. That’s quite a long time to not play card games. Unfortunately, Vanguard and Weiss require two very different skillsets, meaning that even though TwoToPass were tearing up the UK tournament scene, I was still getting rusty. Combined with the fact that the meta was shifting drastically (something I’ll talk about later) meant that I had a lot of work to do polish my play. However, the main purpose for this tournament wasn’t to prove that I was the best out of a weakened field of UK players (half of the people who I consider “good” in the UK weren’t even there), but it was more to evaluate deck choices and prepare for the upcoming EGP qualifier in November. Doubly so on the “deck choices” part given that Monogatari (which is my secondary deck of choice behind Nisekoi) was hit with the restriction about a week or two before this event. The rest of this article will detail the decklist + choices, then a tournament report, then some random musings.

De-optimising a good deck

I will be the first to say that I am 100% aware that what I am playing is suboptimal. I have acknowledged that, and will continue to work with what I have. Now that we have established this, here’s the deck:

https://wsdecks.com/deck/12062/

Just open this in a new tab and scroll back and forth I suppose. Usually I’d go through the effort of doing a manual type-up with links to translations, but I don’t feel it’s necessary for this, given that the list is still undergoing a few small tweaks.

The first thing that will jump out at you when you open that link is probably the fact that there are no Middle Schooler Shinobu in the Level 0 lineup. This means that I am playing Smiles to the End, Mayoi. The main reason that swayed me in the end was that you have lots of good options for Level 0, that while not as good as Shinobu, get the job done. Whereas there are far less good Level 3 options that can even hope to fill the void left by Mayoi. At first, I tried Shinobu because Monogatari is a deck that has a good late-game, so Shinobu was useful for bridging the gap and getting you to said late-game, but Mayoi makes it so that when you reach late-game, you are highly unlikely to lose. However, I don’t think there is a correct option. Shinobu definitely has merits, and if I had known the field I was playing against today was the way it was, I would’ve played Shinobu. To put as kindly as I can, Mayoi gets better the better your opponents are.

The next major thing that you might notice is that I’m playing the 3/3 Tsukihi from Nisemonogatari, and the respective 2/2 changer. This is the most suboptimal choice there. However, Tsukihi is far and away my favourite character in Monogatari (and a Top 5 overall contender), plus I have the SP (Iguchi Yuka is a Top 3 seiyuu), which I treasure dearly. And I feel that the 3/3 is absolutely not worth playing on it’s own (believe me, I’ve done so since Nise). The 2/2 might change from hand, but it’s a 10k beater, which can be useful. Plus, sticking a 3-soul beater in Level 2 can really help push through damage. And the fact that it can (almost) never die, means that you save cards in hand and end up having more resources than you have any right to. I’m not suggesting it’s a good card. But the 2/2 makes the 3/3 borderline playable, and I am sticking with it.

The rest of the deck is extremely straightforward, and follows the popular “Gatorade” style builds. I won’t dwell too long on which cards to do what and why they’re good. Instead, I’d rather discuss some points that are worth bringing up for people looking to play this deck/looking to beat this deck and potential changes worth making.

The one thing I really wanted throughout the day was a third copy of Kaiki. Not for the consistent anti-counter, for the -500. Throughout the day I was plagued by a combination of 1k annoyances as well as the fact that a Kaiki was in clock/in stock. I don’t think he’s that critical to the deck’s gameplan, but I really felt like I wanted it in so many games, to the point where I ended up using Mayoi to search for it.

I am a very big fan of the 0/0 green Araragi. The fact that he goes into stock isn’t the best thing, it’s the reliable mill-3 effect. Sure, he doesn’t filter like Hitagi does, but he’s very useful for fixing things like decompression, as well as providing colour in the later stages of the game. Between Araragi, Ononoki, and Hitagi, you can go through your deck extremely fast and fix any climax issues you may have encountered early game. The fact that he can dodge TLR and opposing Monogatari Level 1 climax combos is just an added plus.

I have been trying Shinobu&Araragi, and I have to say, I’m consistently underwhelmed. It’s the sort of card you’d want to drop early, because having that bonus +500 to all Shinobukazes in play is actually ultra-relevant, but at the same time, you don’t want to waste the fact that it’s potentially a costless searcher later on (which is incredible for grabbing your 1-of Kanbaru post-refresh). And unlike the salvage Mayoi, you probably aren’t attacking with it, meaning there’s little chance of recycling it into the deck to be reused later. I’m not sure whether I want to cut this for a third Araragi mill, or if I want to be adventurous and try some other options like the Hanekawa support.

I ended up not having space for the 2/1 anti-change Mayoi-san, which is kind of sad, but I didn’t feel I was losing too much value by not having it. I didn’t miss it very much throughout the day, but it is the 51st card in the deck; if you can find space for it, I’d recommend it. In fact, I’d be tempted to try and slot it back in in my current build somehow, alongside a third Kaiki (cutting the Phoenix engine would do just that, amusingly enough).

I also cut Gag Glasses for two primary reasons; 3 stock is a LOT late-game for a card with narrow applications, and the fact that you are basically hoping to only draw into it late-game (unless you sandbag it from the start, which means you’ve basically played the entire game with -1 card in hand). The consistency and flexibility you give up playing it wasn’t worth the few occasions where it would save your life. And I think Monogatari is the sort of deck that prides itself on the former.

I am very much a fan of trying to unfairly force damage through in this deck, because of all the bullshit you can pull off lategame. I wouldn’t necessarily say I rush people early, but I think playing aggressive is good, because unless it’s Kantai or Girlfriend Beta, even if they commit their Level 1 engine first, you can probably refill with Shinobukaze just as easily. It’s not like Puyo where you’re just looking to kill them before anything, but you basically want to deny them time to set up, because of how straight forward your setup is; your early play has a change that you can search for easily (rather than a condition that you need to manipulate, regardless of how easy that condition may be), and between Shinobukaze and Gaharazusa, you have natural compression and stock generation already, meaning the only resource you truly need to manage is what you have in hand. This is another reason I’m a fan of the 3/3 Tsukihi; she really helps you catch up in the damage race at the later stages. Mayoi interacts amazingly with Tsukihi, because you now have a 4 soul beatstick with Shot. Which means you can either side for 1 (with Shot) against Level 3s, or fearlessly ram into them given that you have free encore (perhaps not advised against Pumpkin, but most Level 3s don’t have on-reverses that proc during your opponent’s turn). Alternatively, turns where you play Hitagi’s climax combo, putting the Shot trigger on Hitagi, means that you have Tsukihi already hitting for 4 (because climax), again, meaning you can side for 1, plus Hitagi herself can side for 1 (from climax combo), which procs the shot, and the attack itself is for 1. This is a narrow case, but is good to have regardless.

The only real regret I have at the moment is that none of your Level 0s are great for playing on the first turn. At the moment, experience salvage Mayoi and mill Araragi have been the most effective choices, but often due to openers, I just throw a Hitagi brainstorm at them to generate the stock I need for Mayoi the turn after. After that, you can even Mayoi for an Ononoki, which gives you some flexibility and fixing.

Overall, I’d say the deck earns it’s “High-A Tier” rating. Obviously playing a build without Phoenixes will help, but because I’ve been piloting Monogatari since we were still playing 3/2 Assists and 2/1 vanillas, I have a good enough grasp that I can make it to Continentals in a month’s time.

Some kind of tournament

Like I said earlier, this was a standalone, independently organized event. Run a good friend of mine up in Newcastle, I can’t describe it as perfect, but for a first major event, I have no real complaints. Despite being out of pocket due to the low player turnout (about 20-28 I believe), he was able to provide decent prize support and even brought down the single competent judge in the UK. So here’s the obligatory shout out, “job well done”. As is tradition, here’s the rundown of the London group:

Myself, YRG Monogatari (Top 8)

Chung, Clannad (Top 8)

Cheeho, Accel World

Baltazar, Angel Beats Music (Top 8)

Unlike tradition, there’s not much to be said about the journey or the rest of the weekend. I’d come up from Gloucester where I was on a business trip, and the other three made their own way up. I was staying with Alex the night before, but there isn’t much to write about that isn’t pure tournament report. So about that.

Round 1 – Ian (Accel World Pure R/Y)

I personally don’t consider Accel World that great. People might stop reading and never visit this blog again afterwards after I said that, but allow me to explain; despite the huge amount of new free plusses and fixing and all these great utility options, Accel World is still a deck that is trading resources inefficiently. You might save a bit more stock or a few more cards in hand than Puyo or Kantai, but you’re taking a bit more damage as a result. And your late-game isn’t even a heal loop. It’s a mega-burn style effect. I’m personally unimpressed. That isn’t to say it’s bad, but I don’t think it’s high-tier.

There wasn’t a lot to say about this game. My opponent was decent and was able to capitalize on the early weaknesses of the deck, but no early play, nothing to build the lead in compression, and no way to consistently refuel meant that he was struggling going into the late-game. His deck looked fine, but I got the feeling that he didn’t really understand deck manipulation very well, and ended up not paying out a climax or two, or just didn’t cancel enough. I wouldn’t have considered this a “free win”, but I don’t think there was any reasonable chance of me losing here, either.

1-0

Round 2 – Euan (Log Horizon)

Having only 2 Hanekawa clock-kicks screwed me here a bit, as it left me without reliable damage in the late-game. However, he ended up with a lot of climaxes early, which allowed me to get a decent rush on him. Combined with the fact that he has no plussing Level 1 climax combo, and with Kaiki to shut off his event backup, I was able to extend a massive advantage lead, which involved changing into the 3/3 Phoenix. This was actually very relevant, as I was able to field it in the middle against his Naotsugu and still front for 1 without triggers or a climax (due to 3 soul base) consistently because it never died. Though I heard playing three Ononoki in one turn and then Kaiki does kill Naotsugu. Despite everything, he was unable to break through and reclaim the lost ground, which meant that I was able to compress to a point where I could just keep throwing soul at his face.

2-0

Round 3 – Jason (Monoblue Titans)

Part of me was unsurprised that Blue Titans was undefeated; it’s a bit of an unfair deck for anyone not prepared for it. But part of me was also surprised that the field went as far as to include this deck at all (I later found out from Alex that most of the Newcastle locals played English, primarily). Of course, it’s one of those decks that you learn passively, whether it’s through the memes or just from seeing it randomly at your local store. Either way, you know that it’s a relatively easy deck to deconstruct. All I had to do was not panic and stick to the plan.

Of course, this was amplified by the fact that it was very obvious my opponent didn’t know the metagame well enough to know that Monogatari has an anti-change backup. While you could argue that it isn’t common knowledge, it was also kind of evident that he didn’t have much metagame knowledge at all, and was just kind of marching to the beat of his own deck rather than playing an interactive game. There was little attempt to force me to change how I was playing, and most of his effort seemed to be spent on keeping up with his own decision trees. Eventually, he walked his combo straight into the anti-change, lost all three attacks, 4 stock, and couldn’t recover at all.

3-0

Round 4 – Kris (Log Horizon)

According to Alex, Kris was a local player who had only been playing this deck recently. However, he wasn’t making many obvious mistakes. Rather, this weakness seemed to be the same as my previous opponent; he just didn’t know what my deck did or how to play around it. Unlike when I was playing Euan (who I know personally to be a good player), he wasn’t focused very much on my cards or my gameplan, and was just trying to get by rather than push some sort of advantage. His luck was better than Euan’s, but he wasn’t able to capitalize on it as much. Unfortunately for him, I was able to detect this, and ended up playing around a far simpler line (in that I predicted he would make basic decisions and adjusted accordingly). Eventually it reached a point where everything he did, I was out-doing. At one point my hand consisted of both Hanekawa -1 soul backups and 2 Mayoi, and I had Scrynobu in play. Maybe if he was able to pull off the Akatsuki climax combo he could’ve closed the gap, but it never happened.

4-0

Round 5 – Angus (Puyo)

Without wanting to sound rude (or more rude than I already have been) to my previous opponents, a lot of today hadn’t been very difficult or complicated. It was nowhere near as difficult as last year’s EGP qualifier, for example. While none of my rounds were “free wins”, the fact that none of my opponents had meta decks or were able to play around my gameplan meant that I didn’t have to think or work too hard for the win (perhaps with the exception of Euan, but even then, I don’t think there’s a regular Monogatari player in Scotland. Feel free to correct me on this, Chris/Euan/Glenn).

Meanwhile banter in between rounds told me early on that Angus knows what he’s doing and what he’s talking about. So I already respect him decently as a player. I think he’s with Lee’s group, so he definitely should have decent practice. He knows both of our decks and the matchups, and so do I, meaning this game would take a lot more concentration to win.

Or rather, it would have, if I’d been able to see a single Shinobukaze all game instead of the four Level 3s I had on Turn 2. Fortunately for me I have ways of building advantage elsewhere, namely cancelling through Gaharazusa compression. However, he sets up his pieces relatively quickly, and I can’t compress enough, so I end up losing the damage race quite quickly. I drop Scrynobu and force him to go through with his Amitie, but I was constantly triggering climaxes during the first attack, meaning that my refreshes were usually uncompressed. In the end, I couldn’t scry through Arle.

4-1 at end of swiss

Quarterfinals – Euan (Log Horizon)

Signs should actually point to Log Horizon being a bad matchup in the late-game; I will usually struggle to make it past Naotsugu without minusing from hand quite heavily, plus Shiroe turns off both of my primary kill-cons (Mayoi and Hitagi). His Brainstorms are more successful this time, meaning he’s actually able to keep up when it comes to card advantage. I’m unable to pull off either of my change effects, so I settle for just throwing climaxes at his face until I can drop Scrynobu. He ends up cancelling quite a few of my swings, which helps him catch up in damage. Eventually, it’s reaching a point where I’m just throwing stuff under the Naotsugu bus, hoping to stick damage and win through superior compression.

And boy was I compressed. Consistently 20 card deck during his turn, with at least 4 climaxes. What a shame that all four of those were at the bottom. I took a heap of damage, and despite topdecking a Kanbaru to kill Naotsugu, I still couldn’t stick enough damage. Ended up refreshing one last time with 6 in, and again, they were all so far from the top that it didn’t make a difference if I had 6 or 8.

For all my whining and bitching, I’m actually quite pleased with this result. I felt in control for a large portion of the game, and ended up losing because of how I shuffled, quite simply. I was well compressed, but didn’t cancel. I had card advantage, but very little damage was sticking. In the end, I lost to variance rather than my own misplay, and while that can be frustrating, I’d rather take that than know I made a mistake any day.

Lost in quarterfinals.

While it’s a shame that I’m walking home empty-handed, for what I feel has been a month’s worth of hard work and practice, but I am very happy with the deck’s performance, which was my main goal all along. The deck choices did well, and I was very pleased with how the deck was able to fix bad compression while maintaining advantage. While I’m still unsure if I can consistently toe-to-toe with TLR and Puyo, I think I’m in a better position going into EGP than I was last year. As a testing grounds for how well the deck does, I’m very pleased with this event and the deck itself.

Words words words

I am not a great player. I am a good player. I have consistently Top 8’d nearly every single JP WS event in the UK in the last four years. I play regularly, but not a very competitive level, because the playerbase is too small to justify even monthly local tournaments. There are a group of people that play in Milton Keynes, but that’s a bit too far and too much investment for what I feel is not enough return; I’m told people there are “competitive”, but I haven’t really seen/heard any success stories from there to make me think it would be worth my time over regular practice/testing with our small London group (who I know are competent and have decent decks). I carry over various card game skills from years of competitive Magic, which is where most of my ability comes from. The following are just ramblings that I would like to make. Feel free to agree or disagree.

I don’t like how BSR are basing banlists off the JP usage meta. It means that obviously powerful decks like Puyo and TLR will remain the only two S-Tier decks in the game for the foreseeable future. I was very close to playing Puyo at this event, and Puyo will likely remain on the table for EGP as well (though I’m about 80% sure I’ll still play Monogatari). Even TLR is on the table for EGP. I feel like anyone who wants to win more than anything (i.e. me) can’t discount these decks as options. Likewise, you also cannot discount these decks as threats. Monogatari is in a good place right now, it’s earned it’s “High A-Tier” ranking. Note that when I talk about TLR in this aspect, I refer primarily to Yamikan, but Animals is also an extremely good deck in its own right.

“High A” versus “Low A” basically means whether or not I’d be surprised to see the deck topping an event over Puyo or TLR. Other contenders for “High A” include Kantai, 765 iM@S, Animals TLR, and Milky Holmes, whereas “Low A” is where I’d classify Accel World, Nisekoi (Marika is still retarded), and Little Busters. Cinderella Girls is somewhere in between, though I hate CG as a series so whatever. These lists are not complete and are not definite. I don’t have the energy nor the motivation to sit down and think carefully about a tier-list. There are people better than me who have done so already. I am talking about from a general standpoint. Don’t respond to this with comments about my classifications of series/decks. I will stab you through the internet.

Despite the two S-Tier boogeymen, the game’s in a healthy state right now I’d think. People are starting to see archetypes for cards and understand how things interact. It’s not the linear world of “level 0 utility level 1 plussing combo, level 3 finisher” anymore. While there are still elements of that, there’s now manipulation in between and various other small decisions to make that affect the result later on. There’s enough skill involved when both players are good to make games interesting. I think it now mostly about who can control their deck better.

This is the bit where a bunch of people who think they’re better than me tell me I’m wrong and retarded. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Words. I’m not in a great frame of mind right now. Youtube. Discord. Peace.

~Z