Happy Friday everyone, just about to hit that wonderful weekend. Have a special treat for you today, an interview with Shereena Decano! After a fantastic run at the SoCal Crystal Cup tournament, we wanted to ask some questions from a player that had quite the following both off and on the Break Zone stream!



COI: Well Shereena, it is an absolute pleasure having you participate in an interview with Cards of Ivalice. As far back as I can remember, you have been active in the Final Fantasy TCG community. When did you start playing and how did you find out about the game?

SD: Thanks for having me! I used to be a big collector for Final Fantasy stuff, so I used to collect the old FFTCG Chapter cards. I found out through a press release that not only would the game finally be released in English, but in multiple languages around the world, I was stoked. I didn’t start playing until Opus III, but I was active on the online communities from the beginning. I played a few games throughout the beginning of last year and I was a huge noob, but I didn’t really start playing and practicing until the week before the first NA Nationals in 2017. The first local tournament I went to was at Card Game Coliseum in Orange, CA a little bit after Nationals and that was only because I met Arvin Bernardo through my Twitch stream. We found out that we lived near each other, so he was nice to introduce me to the local scene. Ever since then, I’ve been attending locals on a weekly basis. The community is great and I’ve met many lifelong friends.

COI: As you were playing in the Semi-Finals, a large portion of the stream was cheering you on, and a fair amount of the spectators knew who you were. My daughter and wife also took note that you were playing, and they were very happy to see a female not only playing, but dominating in a huge tournament. With a lot of members of the community supporting you and cheering you on (myself included), is there a lot of stress involved in that level of competition, and if so, how do you find the best way(s) to handle it?

SD: I am absolutely overjoyed with the amount of support I’ve received from the community, especially during this tournament. I’m glad that many are happy to see a female doing well in a big tournament. =) I did stress out a bit for a few matches when I started to feel a little bit of the pressure from everyone to win. But after those matches finished, I was happy to have gone that far in the tournament that I didn’t mind whether I lost from there on out. My goal for the tournament was to make Day 3 and after I did, I didn’t expect much after that.

That’s not to say that I didn’t stress out about my Day 3 matches, because they were extremely stressful for me, in terms of actually playing the matchups and not from the pressure of expectations. There was just so much Ice! I don’t like playing against ice. I got burnt out by the time I got to my last match. I’m thinking, “great, first Mono Lightning, then Mono Ice twice, and now Ice Lightning!? Give me a break!”

COI: During your final match, there was a moment when a play occurred, and the Judge had to intervene, on which seemed to be with multiple responses that went simultaneously. The stream went a bit crazy because we couldn’t hear what exactly was going on, but there seemed to be some conflicting information. What happened?

SD: So, uhh, I made a big misplay. Lol. I was anticipating an Al-Cid combo from the beginning of the match. It’s why I kept building the resources in my hand to be prepared to counter it. I saw his summon cancellation and expected the Titan being cancelled. First off, the Al-Cid and putting Onion Knight on the field immediately threw me off. I was like, wait, let me respond. I expected Onion Knight to go back in hand, but my opponent left it on the field. It just added another unnecessary thing to my train of thought. After Titan was cancelled, I’m thinking in my head that it’s good and all resolved, but I didn’t say it out loud. So when I played Asura, they thought I was adding to the stack. When RB asked to see what I was playing Asura to, I accidentally blurted out that I was responding to Al-Cid. My immediate thought when he asked me was that I misplayed because I forgot to say out loud that Titan, summon cancellation, and Al-Cid resolved. I got flustered and I just blurted out that I was responding to Al-Cid as I was thinking about that. I immediately realized my mistake and wanted to say that I was responding to Onion Knight, but knowing that Joshua had made the same mistake with declaring the Lightning attack in the first match that costed him the game, I just let it go. I felt pretty bad about it because I make that play all the time, using Asura to counter an Al-Cid combo, but I’m not losing sleep over it. Lol. I’m just surprised that that was my only big misplay for the day. I make misplays on a usual basis, I’m kind of glad that they only started showing up late in the tournament.

COI: A lot of Opus VI has been revealed, and with that a ton of exciting cards for all of the elements. Are there any particular Opus VI cards which you have your sights on? Are you building off of your tournament deck, or do you find it best to start from scratch?

SD: I’m pretty excited for King Leo and Minfilia. Ah, I’d love to try those out in my Earth Wind deck. That deck is not cheap to play, as in everything has high CP cost. King Leo is a good cheap Earth forward that I was looking for and Minfilia is a great card recycler, which is great for my deck that has a lot of “one of” cards.

I usually do both when a new set comes out, updating my current decks and making all new ones. With every set introduced, archetypes get bumped up on the support and make them much more playable. There’s always a new deck to try out.

COI: I really appreciate you taking time for this interview, and wish you the best in your pre-release pack-cracks! Do you have any advice you’d like to leave for players doing their first pre-release sealed play?

SD: Thank you again for having me! It’s definitely a big change for me. I’m used to reading my friend’s articles and interviews. =D

I’m uh… not so good with sealed drafts. Lol. Not sure how much I could say. Consistency helps. Try going for that. Lol. Backup enter effects are nice. Abilities that require a certain element cost is not when you’re running a rainbow deck. I usually go for non-element cost abilities, especially the abilities with dull only/put in break zone costs. And overall, have fun! I could probably be the poster player for “biggest improvement.” It’s fine to lose. I definitely know a lot about that. Lol. Learn from your mistakes and just have fun with it.

And with that, everyone have a great pre-release weekend! Thanks for reading!

(Did you know? Final Fantasy VII was originally going to be developed for the Super Nintendo, and take place in New York! Many ideas that started with this development were shifted to other Square games, such as Parasite Eve with the locale, and the Sorceress Edea being shifted to Final Fantasy VIII)