Dark Sphere Regional Report – WOL Tempo

Posted on behalf of Jamie Faulkner

First up, the list:



Hello, my name is Jamie Faulkner and I recently won the London (Dark Sphere) regional with my take on the Water/Wind Warrior of Light Deck that has been doing well and making waves (get it?) all around the world. I’ve not written a write up from a tournament before so forgive me if I forget to mention something that you would have liked to know!

To start with I will tell you a little about my background. I come from Magic: the Gathering, having played in my first event just under a year ago (Pre release: Eldritch moon hype!) since then I have attempted to grind PPTQs (something similar to nationals qualifiers that happen seasonally). After a few months, I managed to day 2’d my first Grand Prix and finally won a PPTQ at Dark sphere about 2 months ago. At this point I was a little burnt out with MTG, the format was stale and wasn’t changing at all and there was this new game that was attracting large crowds at dark sphere that peaked my interest, FFTCG. I write about this because I truly believe my skill at playing MTG (which is only about average for a grinder) gave me a massive leg up on a lot of the other FFTCG players who were mostly ex Yu-GI-OH players. The stack in Magic and FFTCG is very similar and if anyone wants to level up their game in FFTCG I recommend going to Friday night magic. You’d be surprised at what skills you learn that transfer to FFTCG.

Now to talk about my deck; I’ve already done a video speaking about my choices of specific cards (click here) So I won’t go into too much detail about but I would like to talk about the reason why I choose the deck. I was well aware that the dark sphere national would be the biggest in the UK, this meant that it would be at least 80 players with 7 rounds most likely. I decided that the best course of action to win a tournament with so many players (in a bo1 format, no less) was to play a deck that sacrificed some power for a lot of consistency. There are two reasons, the first is that in a Bo1 format, it is irrelevant how powerful your deck is if you don’t get the perfect combo you need that wins you the game for free if you play it. You want to play a deck that you can be quite confident will do the same thing every game, and then use that to outplay your opponent. By having a consistent deck, you also get rid of luck as an element to the game. Good luck is always nice to have but I’d happily trade all my good luck so that I don’t have any bad luck. I also played the deck because it didn’t really interact very much with my opponent, I set up backups and then flood the board with forwards, every game. I put pressure on my opponent in resources, damage and even their deck. The pressure is always on them.

The second reason I wanted a consistent deck was mainly because of my sanity. The national was a really long and tiring day and I imagine it would have been a lot harder if I had to think about certain things that my deck didn’t make me think about. I used the same 5 backups every game and that just took a huge strain of off my mentality, because I knew how to use them, when and which to tap first and that took a lot of stress of me. Travis Woo makes a lot of good videos about how important mentality is when it comes to a long tournament. It makes way more of a difference then you would normally think. If there is one thing I feel safe in saying about the tournament it’s that I don’t feel like I was the best player the room. In fact, the only leg up I feel that I had over the other finalists was that I was not nervous, I was having fun! Take it one game at a time, one play at a time, one victory at a time and you will find yourself getting closer and closer to top tables in tournaments.

I won’t talk about all the rounds because honestly a lot of them were not even games. I didn’t take a point of damage until something like round 4. So, I will only talk about the games that were close and interesting.

Round 5 vs Mono earth

This game was interesting mainly because it was the first time (of many) I played against earth in the tournament, a matchup I knew would be difficult. I had made a conscious decision to be very disciplined with myself when playing vs earth. Don’t overextend into Shantotto and don’t deal the 6th point of damage until you can win the game. Stupid me broke both those rules. I got swept by Shantotto into a 1CP Gabranth which almost made me lose the game. Frankly, I felt rather lucky that I top decked a forward and eventually managed to stabilize, forcing him to Shantotto a board that was fairly even in terms of power. Once his final Shantotto was gone I just flooded and board and swung for the win. Don’t take Gabranth lightly though, it’s a real card!

Round 6 vs Rob (3rd place) on Water/Lightning.

My only loss of the tournament (including bo3 in top8). I’ll be honest, I don’t remember much about what happened leading up to an important play but we had a board state where I had a Balthier and Warrior of Light vs his board of about 3 things and a legendary Cecil. I had a Cuthulian in hand and knew that I would lose if I didn’t at least try to kill his Cecil with Warrior of light. He was also tapped out so I reasoned that if he had a combat trick he would have to at least lose card advantage. The combat goes like this: I attack, he taps one and cyclops, I respond with a cuthlian (tapped 3 for it, which was my first mistake) he responds to that with a cuthulian of his own. I tap my backups so that my last thing left open was a Rikku, instead of my Yuna this was my fatal mistake because I topdeck another Cuthulian from the draw I got from my first Cuthulian. He wins the combat and I swiftly loose the game to double Odin into Kain. There was no reason to leave open Rikku, I just played bad there!

Round 7 vs Earth/Water

This was the win and in so it was pretty intense although, realistically I was in the driver’s seat the whole game. This time I decided to start milling very early and basically just play very slowly. Eventually a shantotto was forced on a board that didn’t hurt me much, I play more forwards, making sure I am able to mill more and eventually the pressure becomes too much to deal with.

Top 8 quarterfinals vs Earth/Water

I felt pretty confident because I had just played a good match vs Earth Water, I knew my strategy to beat it and I could see that my opponent was feeling the nerves more than I was (although to give him credit he seemed the least nervous out of my top 8 opponents). Game one I get blind-sided by a opus2 Emperor which shut off my entire board. It was scary but he was already behind in the mill race so I knew all I had to do was wait for his deck to thin for him to start panicking and making mistakes. Eventually he shantotto’s a board that realistically was in his favour (and finally gets rid of his emperor) and then plays a forward. At this point I double cuthulian to kill his 10k and draw 2, it felt pretty good. I build up and sit back on my Rikku plan again. Eventually he looks at his break zone and concedes because he has no more threats.

Game two went roughly the same way. My opponent let me know he ran 3 shantotto’s (thanks for telling me) when I only thought he had 2 so I made sure to play around all 3. Eventually it wasn’t his shantotto’s that ran out, but his Delita’s. Once I realized this was the case I just went to pound town. My opponent tried to concede because he couldn’t see a winnable situation from the board state however, I told him he should play till he loses because miracles do happen. I instantly regret this because he topdecks Gabranth and emperor and almost turns the game around. It ends with his board being bigger than mine but him needing two turns to kill me when he only had one draw step left. Something that happened a few times throughout the day. A lesson to learn from this is never to concede though!

Top 4 Semi-finals vs Pre in the mirror

I had played against Pre in the mirror a few days prior to this tournament, for that tournament he was my only loss of the day So I felt like he would be an appropriate end boss to beat to get my qualification. I was aware that my forward package was far superior to his (however, I didn’t know I ran a full 5 forwards more than him until after the tournament) so, I decided that I would play the same every game. I would go second to set up backups easier and then get on the board first to be aggressive. Once I had put him in a defensive mind set, I would relax and let the strength of my late game win the game. This is almost exactly how it happened both games. Game one I take him to 4-5 points rather early but quickly loose board advantage. At that point I am comfortable sitting back on the mill plan since I had only taken 1 point of damage, no matter what happened he had 4 cards less in his deck than me so I would win the mill race. The issue that Pre had, was he was trying to trade forwards too much against me. He was running Ashe instead of Tidus and no Balthier so realistically I could just keep playing high class forwards that would eventually over run him. It got to the point where it was obvious I was winning the mill race so he had to get aggressive, this allowed me to set up a turn where I had leviathan and Aerith in hand vs a tapped-out board.

Game 2 he went second but the plan still applied, build backups, get on board first and force him to be defensive. I think I started with a turn 1 Paine to fetch Yuna this game so I really did get on board early. Eventually a similar situation happened where Pre had to attack me to start to win and I ended the game with a double leviathan on the back swing. Some could argue that having double leviathan in hand at such a late point in the game was lucky but, I’d argue that all that means is I managed to put myself in a winning position having only seen 1 leviathan vs the 3 that were used against me by that point.

Finals vs Fire/Water + Odin

I knew my deck was massively favored against Tush’s deck for two reasons. First of all, I had a higher density of card quality then he did. His plan was to force his opponent to trade damage knowing that he had a massive ex burst count so that he would be getting advantage while taking damage. I decided not to play the game he wanted. If I just didn’t attack him much then he wouldn’t be getting a huge part of his deck as value. The second reason was he had no way to clear my board, Bahamut was the best option but I have so many counters to it that realistically he had to win fast or he wasn’t going to win. There were some issues regarding the stack for me in these games because I had planned to wait for him to geomancer and then if he kept the top card I would mill it with Rikku. However, what I found happening a lot was that he would look at the top card then if it was an ex burst he would immediately slam it down. I totally understand why and it happened in such a way I didn’t even really think about it but it just gives me more reason to believe my deck is favored against his because of this interaction.

Game 1 he has a fast start with Lann which, realistically I don’t have many ways to deal with. However there was a big turning point when I play Tidus leaving open aerith. He double red mages me which I decide not to aerith in case he has a Bahamut in hand. Takes me to 5 damage from that attack. After the attack I Kill his Lann with Cuthulian and top deck leviathan and Tidus. He was totally tapped out so I simply Aerith planet protector and blitz ace for a free win. Having said that I had other forwards in hand and the leviathan draw in my mind solidified my lead in the game. I don’t think he was coming back from my un-tapping that turn.

Game 2 was slightly scary because I didn’t see any Minwu’s. However, I did find a Cecil and shortly after a leviathan, allowing me to play the Cecil without fear of it dying. Tush was rather unlucky here having seen most of his odin’s early, so I knew I could slowly chip him down and run him out of resources of the back of the Cecil. He concedes quite early (on his turn, no less) but I have to agree I couldn’t see a way for him to win after my Cecil starting turning sideways.

That’s my write up, thanks a lot for reading (especially if you managed to get all the way through!) I just wanted to end on saying thanks for dark sphere for hosting a great tournament, thanks to my best mate Leo for looking after me at the tournament and a massive thanks to Matt and Mognet for being an indispensable tool to the community. Without the care and effort that he (and others in the community) put in, I don’t think I would have been at that tournament last week. It truly is people like Matt who makes a small community like ours feel like a worldwide phenomenon and without his hard work we wouldn’t be growing as quickly as we are. Someone seriously needs to start this guy a gofundme!