During The Tournament

Everything I mention below should be considered in addition to all of the smart health related stuff Midgar Senpai recently covered in his article on tournament preparation, which you probably don’t always do enough of because you’re stressing out about things like deck choices, tech slots, travel, whether you got enough practice or not, the heat death of the universe or that dumb thing you said to your crush a decade ago which still haunts you.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to do whatever it takes for you to relax and make sure you get enough sleep. This is going to be different for everyone, and I’m starting to figure out what that is for me around these high pressure tournaments. Of all the healthy things we need to do before putting our brain thing through a gauntlet of card games and nerves, making sure your thinky muscle gets the rest it deserves is the most important.

I would also recommend not rushing off to your place after day 1 of the event to practice, not only is this really mentally fatiguing, you’re better off spending the time in good company with the awesome people you don’t get to see often enough, or sometimes never outside of these events. Because only one person in the room gets to win, if you’re not making the most of the opportunity to have a good time, you’re missing out. These massive weekends make up some of the best times I’ve ever had, with some of the greatest people I know and I wouldn’t trade it for a trophy.

Playing to Your Strengths

As much as I’d like to be, I’m not an innovative deck builder, and that’s ok. I can play fairly consistently well, I can feel out a meta, identify and adjust existing decks to it, or improve on loose concepts. That’s what I’m good at and like to do, so that’s what I tend to do, and it works out well for me. Ain’t no shame in it.

FFTCG is also a game with a lot of nuance and player preference even at high levels. As an example, it’s taken a long time, but I’ve just come to accept that Earth/Wind isn’t an archetype for me, or one that I’m particularly good at, no matter the iteration or format. I barely touched Dadaluma and I like to take my time to think in competition, but on lists like these that’s a dangerous game with the clock.

One of the things I struggle with the most in these big tournament settings is being able to take 5 to gather my thoughts and catch my breath. If I’ve ever come across as rude between rounds during a tournament, trying to find a moment between games, I don’t mean anything by it. Truthfully I’m just an introverted person, and if I could, I’d spend most of the day with headphones in blasting music if it wasn’t against the rules. A little selfish? Probably. But no one’s perfect. It just isn’t personal, and I’m sorry if it comes across that way.

Rikku Ban and Opus 9.5

I’m really grateful for this along with Dadaluma at the start of the set, even if it does give way to a new age of degeneracy we at least haven’t arrived there just yet. Both cards created a situation where “your deck must be this tall to compete” and possibilities were much more limited. Rikku proved to be oppressive enough that I just didn’t want to play or brew much of anything in Opus 9 at all.

Something I don’t normally do is approach players outside of TFE about the meta and deck lists. I’m not really sure why I haven’t before, but being my last shot for the year after coming close in the previous I wanted to be sure we weren’t falling into an insular bubble and taking something totally off base. If there’s two players I know that can give me the broad strokes on their respective metas, and tell me if I’m doing something wildly wrong, it’s Alex Hancox and Matthew Okimoto. I had the chance to pick their brains at Worlds last year and they were both very open, genuine, and helpful, especially when talking about different aspects of FFTCG.

Food For Thought

Those last 5 slots in your deck don’t matter as much as you think they do, so stop torturing yourself, as long as they’re decent cards you’ll be fine.

I would really like to record and analyse my own games, as it seems like the best way for me to improve moving forward. After rewatching my streamed games in the Majors this year (and I mean no disrespect to my opponents), there’s a lot I could have done better and that wouldn’t be obvious without having the footage to watch in review. I’m not sure in what capacity that is yet but it’s something to think about. Being fair to myself, a game on stream, in potentially the last game before qualifying for Worlds in the last event for the year, is a wholly unique game of cards and there’s a lot going on around you aside from just the mental pressure.

I get the impression Mithril feels similarly about our games too, he gave me a massive run for my money and definitely got in my head in these games by completely throwing out the script and playing Ice/Fire much differently than I was expecting; he attempted to outlast my deck, and he damn near did it too, playing to his outs. He held off a field of 7 forwards with a single 3k Terra on my second-to-last turn. As for the mirror, I was on the play and luckier that day. Mithril is a fantastic player and I have the utmost respect for how well he played, given how stacked the odds were in my favor in these games. Despite taking the finals in a 2-0, there’s no doubt in my mind that Mithril would have taken the 3rd game with his Wind/Water hatebears list, and that wasn’t lost on me at the time either.