I’d like to start off by giving Blair a huge word of gratitude. Another very well run event, and all the more-so given that he did it almost single-handedly (get well soon, Denise!). The judges did a fine job, and everything went off without a hitch. Even if I wanted to, there wasn’t much I could criticize about the weekend, so instead here’s more of a rundown rather than an analysis.

Saturday we had the main event, which was the Weiss Schwarz tournament. I’ll talk about that first. Sunday was a waifu tournament (every card must have your character on the card with an exception of up to 4), followed by other Bushiroad games; ChaOS and Luck & Logic. I played L&L, will talk a tiny bit about that. The Saturday part will follow a structure similar to my last tournament report; what I played, why, and who I played. The Sunday will be a bit more exploratory and talks more about games as a whole.

Anyway.

Preamble

Once again, a handful of London players. Myself, Jason, Mervin, Cheeho, Chung, Kevin, Philip and Graeme. Philip and Graeme were not with us for EGP, but every other name was there. I don’t recall the exact standings because I didn’t take a picture, but here are our deck choices.

Me – Blue/Red Girlfriend Beta

Mervin – Red/Yellow Monogatari Series

Jason – Kaleidoscope Illya

Cheeho – Yellow/Green To Love-ru

Chung – Green/Blue/Yellow Little Busters!

Kevin – Alchemy Symphogear

Philip – Red/Yellow Nanoha

Graeme – Soundless Voice Project Diva

Cheeho, Philip, and Mervin made Top cut, Mervin won the whole thing, just like this time last year (which I now realize I never wrote about. Sorry!). My final record was 4-2, and a few others had a good record (Graeme was also in contention for Top 8, he and I missed out on tiebreakers).

The Tournament

The atmosphere wasn’t like it was at EGP. As Blair had explicitly mentioned at the beginning, the whole point of the event was to have fun. At first I was thinking about playing Green Puyo for the event, but I didn’t have my translation sheet and didn’t want to make it hard for Blair. Plus, given the fact that GFB is no longer allowed at international BSR events, I thought it would be a good way to send off GFB at it’s last tournament.

Round 1 – vs Mono Yellow GFB

My opponent (whose name escapes me) hadn’t played for a while, and was playing a slightly different build than I was used to for Yellow. He was playing the Ayane 3/2 whirlwind combo as well as a few other random bits and pieces. He wasn’t exactly bad, but it felt like I was in control for a lot of the game. He takes my Level 1 bait and I get off to an early lead. I see him discard and clock his Anti-change backups (either because he wasn’t aware I had early play Saya or just forgot), so I threw it out there and sat on it until Level 3.

Which was unfortunately very early. I didn’t cancel a lot, which meant I wasn’t able to build very much stock to compress later. I was able to heal a bit, but I couldn’t stop myself from dying. Throwing the pumpkin at him put him up to 3.4, but he had enough soul damage and I couldn’t cancel.

0-1

Round 2 – vs RY Terraformars

This time, my opponent was someone who had clearly played his deck a lot and was aware of the nuances of the game itself. I think he was a little unfamiliar with GFB which meant I was able to take advantage of a few of his misplays, but I wouldn’t dismiss him at all. It felt like his early draws were very iffy, and he was relying on the Haruue clone that TF has to smooth out his plays, so I punished him early, which ended up being bad for me, because he was playing a sturdy Level 1 game (TF’s version of apples) as well as the early-play untargettable Joseph, which made it very difficult for me to extend my lead. That, combined with the fact that he was cancelling very well at Level 2 absolutely screwed me on resources. A small stroke of luck caused him to eat a lot of damage from Fumio and Pumpkin, but he healed off 2 damage to get back into a safe range, and used Akari’s climax combo to burn me out.

0-2

Round 3 – vs Love Live! TD

I think it was a TD. It could maybe have had some modifications, but I couldn’t exactly verify. My opponent again hadn’t played for a while, so I did have to remind him about some things (such as standing his characters). He was able to ride the 1/0 Wonderful Rush Umi throughout the game, and had some well-timed climaxes to keep up on the damage race, but my constant stream of card advantage put me just a bit too far ahead. He rarely had any stock and very low hand (due to constant hand encore for Umi), meaning that he was so uncompressed I didn’t even Fumio.

1-2

Round 4 – vs Green/Red Project Diva

At this point I’m acutely aware that I need to go undefeated to even have a chance at making Top 8. I don’t really mind because as said, this was a tournament for fun rather than something with stakes on the line. But that was pointedly wrong. My pride was on the line. The deck this time wasn’t on the level of a TD, but it also clearly wasn’t exactly an optimal build. He didn’t have Soundless Voice, and it didn’t look like he had that many cards from the second booster either (I only saw two of the early play, for example). Unfortunately, the match wasn’t really anything special, so I don’t recall that many details other than the fact that he had at least 4 different Level 1s in the deck.

2-2

Round 5 – vs Green/Red Milky Holmes

Hey, I’m up against Dario. While we agree that Aldershot means I have to exclude Dario from the term “London gang”, we consider him a member of Team Dark Sphere anyway. Dario has odd choices in decks, but he does know what he’s doing, so I’m at least not worried about an interesting game.

The early game doesn’t look much different, the Level 1 Elly backrow, Level 1 Sheryl tank, standard stuff. While Dario knows about what my deck is capable of, I don’t think he’s really aware of how to play around it, so was I able to consistently bait his weaker cards and trade 2-for-1 on a lot of battles, so despite him having 7500 power walls with backups, I was able to search for my main engine pieces.

I got a few timely cancels, and ended up deciding against using Fumio (as he was relatively uncompressed anyway). Even so, Fumio’s refresh effect had been disappointing throughout today, and I’m even thinking of cutting it for more consistency. The deck just didn’t feel as explosive as it did at the EGP. Credit to Dario for narrowly getting there, but unfortunately, he forgot that Pumpkin also procs on my turn, and ended up taking the five in his own turn.

3-2

Round 6 – vs Blue/Green Sword Art Online

Looking at the standings and the pairings, I’m a little nervous at my previous opponent’s performances. The two players I lost to are not very high up, and neither is anybody else I beat, meaning my tiebreakers are extremely weak. But, the dream is still there, 4-2 can still make it, so I go ahead and play anyway. I can’t honestly say I was having a lot of fun at this point, since it started to feel like playing was a bit of a drag (and the deck was starting to falter), but I didn’t want to get anybody else down, so I kept my spirits up and sat down.

I win the RPS and go first, throw out a beater, normal turn 1 play. My opponent draws a card, clocks, and passes. Not good. I throw out another beater and a support, hit him to 0.5, and pass. He draws a card, clocks, draws 2, and then passes, discarding two 1/0s for hand size. Very not good. I’m only at 0.3, so at this point I set up for Level 2, seeing as I already have 2x Confirmed Capture in hand and the appropriate climax.

He draws a card, clocks something else, draws 2 more cards. I would at this point like to commend him massively for being a good sport and being able to laugh at himself about it, rather than getting salty and angry. He shows me three copies of the Level 0 runner Sinon that he drew. I really can’t say much other than “sorry that happened”, and try my best to not make him feel any worse about it. He eventually recovers a little, and plays some Level 1 game, while I drop my Confirmed Capture and farm stock for a massive end-turn. I recall at one point my hand was 2x of the 1/0 Ayame support, 2x Mirror Girl, 1x Fumio, 1x Nao Backup, and a climax. He manages to throw out the early play Kirito to wall up, as well as the 3/2 Sinon. Unfortunately, I cancel literally everything. I started my previous turn at 2.5, I start my next turn at 2.5. He throws everything at me again, this time triggering a Book and a gold bar, and I cancel everything again. I clock myself to Level 3 and the rest is the unfortunate victim of bad luck.

4-2

As suspected, I didn’t make Top 8 based on poor tiebreakers. In fact I finished bottom of the 4-2s, in 17th place. That’ll teach me to lose my first two rounds against people who didn’t end up winning everything else (sarcasm, if you didn’t realize). I mean, this was a better result than last year, where I played Kantai and ended up faltering at 2-4. So I’m not disappointed, just a bit tired. While waiting for the guys in Top 8, I teach a few people Luck & Logic, and play a few games of Wixoss.

We go out for Chinese buffet later that night, where almost all of us barring Graeme over-eat and regret it for the entire journey back to the hotel. Once we arrive at the hotel, Mervin and I head over the Euan’s room and put ourselves into a L&L mindframe for tomorrow. We reconfirm a few rules that Mervin incorrectly taught us (what a scumbag), and I finish my deck with Kevin’s help. Mervin and I then argue about how to build Puyo for the first time, I am actually right and he is wrong about WS for once. Just a shame I couldn’t play this deck. 20 clean stock never gets old.

Sunday – Waifu and L&L

I honestly don’t remember much of the Waifu event other than going 3-2 and playing against the Karakuri Pierrot Level 0s from PDF. I played Kotori (Love Live) if anyone is interested. The deck is trash because it consumes so much stock to generate card advantage and relies entirely on the Level 3 game which involves dealing lots of damage via AUTO effects.

Luck & Logic was a bit weirder. There were 10 players. 6 of them had sleeved Trial decks. One of them had a Trial Deck featuring 3 booster cards. 3 of us (Dario, Kevin, and myself) had full booster-modded decks. Dario and Kevin ended up playing in R2, so myself and Dario finished the event 3-0. This was less of a tournament and more of a hands-on learning experience. While I had demoed the game to a few people on Saturday afternoon/evening, a lot of people were still learning the game. In fact I remember on Saturday night Keith (friend of me, Cheeho and Philip) told me that he signed up for L&L but didn’t know how to play, so I replied that I can teach him how to play if we get paired Round 1. We got paired Round 1. Keith picked it up surprisingly fast. Unfortunately, booster cards are better than TDs.

Round 3 I’m up against Kyle (who I taught yesterday and who I sold 3 cards to so he could mod his TD), and the game is pretty even. He knows a lot about interactions and synergy now he’s got a day of practice. Unfortunately, again, booster cards are very good, but we come down to WHO HAS GATE NUMBER 4. I clear his last column with Yoshichika, but hit the 5 Gate on his second-to-last gate, which keeps him alive for one more turn. He manages to luck drive into a needed Level 1, and pulls off a narrow win over my Tranceunion, but unfortunately, my fifth gate was the Number 4.

I really like L&L as a game. It feels like a wilder version of Wixoss (which I still think is superior). Mervin, Kevin, and I discussed a few things on the way to get food, and we still think there’s an inherent issue with the Turn 1 player’s disadvantage. That, and the fact that between four of us plus 1 judge, we still weren’t 100% clear on some rulings (HotC translations suck, by the way, use the Wikia instead) meant that the game still has a few teething issues, but I think it could definitely do better than Vanguard. The speed at which the English release is following is hopeful, so we’ll see. I would like for it to take off. The game is much more mechanically intricate than Weiss, and there’s still a lucksack factor at the end of the day (“when does your 4 proc”), but I think that the game flows a lot better than WS. Weiss will still probably remain higher up my list of games, but I don’t see L&L pulling a Buddyfight and dying.

Deck Choice – Girlfriend Closed Beta

Alternate title: Girlfriend Meta. I played against a really nice variety of decks on the day. There were only two TLR players, and including myself, only three Girlfriend Beta players (both of these numbers are to the best of my knowledge). While Yami is still strong and Confirmed Capture is still consistent, we also saw a handful of Yellow/Blue/Red Puyo builds floating around (and I was ready to play Green Puyo). Didn’t see Cinderella Girls, and only saw one build of Nisekoi. While it should be immediately obvious that this is not representative of the meta, I would like to address something that I found interesting.

Now, while Girlfriend Beta in and of itself is a good deck – it has a decent Level 0 lineup, it’s Level 1 engine is one of the best in the game, the early play Level 2 allows it to effortlessly sustain through Level 3, and its finisher heals as well as being an extremely easy to proc finisher – it’s not the best. I still believe that title belongs to TLR (though not firmly. Puyo is strong as well, and these three will be duking it out for a while). However, part of GFB’s immense strength isn’t its consistency – it’s about as average as TLR most of the time. It’s the fact that it’s extremely linear, or as some would say, braindead. You play a beater. You play Windy Fumio to find Confirmed Capture. You play Confirmed Capture to search for early play Saya and Mirror Girl. You play Mirror Girl and Saya. You bond Pumpkin. You play Pumpkin. You burn 5. You win.

To be fair, TLR is just as (if not more) braindead. You play Mikan. You play Mikan. You play Mikan. You search for 3 Yami. You play 3 Yami. You win. Both of these styles of play rely on, or should I say, abuse the fact that people’s skill levels are unequal. GFB and TLR prey on weaker decks that can’t keep up. Kantai was the first to introduce this ability, then Nisekoi followed suit. At this point now it’s almost expected of sets to have some 1/0 with a climax combo that gives you cards. Most of them require a reverse, and that’s causing a rather dangerous arms race, I feel. Let’s take TLR as an example. Mikan is effectively a base 1/0 5500 power (because all your characters will be the required trait unless you left a Sitting Yui in play somehow). Combine that with the 1/1 Yami and she’s a 6000 power hand encore. On the attack, the Yami’s climax combo can turn her into 9000 power (9500 if she’s in the middle). On the defense, the Mea counter turns her into 8000 power (8500 in the middle). GFB is quite similar. If your backrow is Mirror Girl Nao and the 1/0 Ayame, one of your Confirmed Captures will be 7500 power on attack (potential 8000 if you have a different support). But usually just 6500 because your two backrows are Ayame and Fishing Saya. On your opponent’s turn though, that turns into 8500 before backups (both of which are 1500 power at Level 1. The red one scales, the blue one is vanilla, but at Level 2 you’ll be using the Nao backup that pays for itself anyway). While these numbers are fine on their own, the story they project can be slightly worrying. How long before you get a 1/0 4000 power that gets +2000 power if you have 3 or more other characters (with a climax combo of course)? How long before a set like TLR gets a 1/1 2500 power backup? It’s even more interesting when you try and look at these sets WITHOUT their climax combo. TLR suddenly falters a lot because it only has the 1/1 event to search for Yami now, and needs to rely on Puchi Yami and the other 1/0 Mikan. Blue GFB literally melts because it has no way of actually plussing consistently unless it plays the red 1/0 Apples clone. Yellow GFB starts splashing red for the 1/1. Nisekoi has gates but probably just plays the 1/0 encore effects and tries not to kill itself while searching for 3/2 Kosaki. I noticed this to a slightly smaller extent on the day when I failed to get my Confirmed Capture off in two games. I lost those rounds, largely because I was always down on cards, but partially because of my own misplay. While I’ve played the deck enough (and would like to think that I’m good enough of a player) that I was able to pull myself out of these situations, it would have been a lot easier if I didn’t have to worry about what I was going to play in this turn or in the next two turns. The fact that I didn’t cancel very much likely plays a bigger part in my losses, but I hope my point is clear.

For a less dramatic example, let’s look at a newer set. Cinderella Girls uses Minami at Level 1 to not only build card advantage, but also compresses at the same time. It then uses this stock generation and compression to be able to consistently go into it’s Level 3 game (which becomes exponentially better the more compressed you are). Ask your local Cinderella Girls player how hard he thinks the game would be without Minami. He might just tell you about the Rika/Mika bond.

Now unfortunately, I don’t have a suggestion or a “solution”. I’m not even really sure if this is a problem at all. I just think that when games boil down to “who can bait the Level 1 out of their opponent first” and “who has the better finisher”, it doesn’t feel as fun anymore. I built my Monogatari deck to have tons of 1-ofs and to be full toolbox. Sure, I’m still playing the Mayoi Riki clone, and the Shinobu climax combo searcher, but the deck is nowhere near as braindead as TLR or GFB. I need to worry about getting Hanekawa into level so I have Experience 2 and green for the 1/1 support, as well as clocking Yellow to even pull off my Level 1 game, while at the same time drawing into enough stock to be able to play my event backup. Then I need to think about whether the single copy of my 3/3 Tsukihi is in the graveyard before I search for the 2/2 changer, or if I should just sit on the 1/0 hand encore Araragi until I hit Level 3. Then it’s about whether or not I have the Level 3 Hitagi’s gate in hand, or if I should go down the triple heal route instead.

Here’s how I explained the choice between Nisekoi, GFB, and TLR to a friend the day after. I like playing Nisekoi because no matter how often it gets into a bad situation, it can mostly pull itself out of that hole and eventually throw Marika at the opponent. In the opposite vein, TLR struggles if I can’t find its Yami and the Whirlwind at Level 3, but you rarely have this problem because of how much search and filtering the set has. GFB is somewhere in the middle; runs into issues less often than Nisekoi but more often than TLR, but in exchange is able to fix better than TLR but not as well as Nisekoi. I play GFB because I enjoy the playstyle the most, but in terms of skill required, I think I’ll stick with Nisekoi as my main. I just really hope Kantai 3 introduces something interesting so I get another deck that isn’t braindead to play with.

All of that was just a thinly veiled excuse at a rant, I suppose. Thanks for reading if you managed to stick this far. I probably won’t be writing anything for a while until either GP Manchester or the August tournament they’re holding up in Nottingham. Once again, thanks a ton to Blair for running the event, and hopefully we will see you and Denise up in the shop again soon. For everyone else, feel free to hit me up on either Facebook or Discord to talk about whatever games I play. On the off-chance people want to see me write about something specific, let me know. Otherwise, until next time.

~ Zystral