Hey guys, I’m happy to let you guys know that I ended up 3rd place at the Sacramento regional that happened this past weekend. I had a fantastic run at the tournament and was glad I was able to make it out there to compete for the chance to go to the national English Weiss Schwarz tournament. I would like to thank my sponsor Triple Crown Games for making it possible for me to get to Sacramento and compete!

I ended up using Love Live! for my deck choice as it’s one of the stronger sets out right now that can deal with most things in the English meta and it has one of my favorite cards of all time, Level 3 Nico clock shooter. Lets get into this tournament report now.

Tournament format was double elimination swiss, 6 rounds, into top cut for top 8.

Top 8 was best of 1 bracket.

Round 1:

I had a no show/Bye round so I ended up sitting around till round 2 pairings were up.

Win 1-0

Round 2: Love Live! vs Love Live!

My opponent seemed to have a mono character Love Live! build and just had the main focus of dropping 3 characters and slamming soul plus 2 every turn. I ended up eating the first soul plus 2 he played on his first turn and went from 0/1 to 2/0 right at the start. At this point I was pretty annoyed and half expected the tournament to be like this due to the lack of an English meta right now. So I continued the game without clocking and dropping my 1/0 Eri level 1 wall with umi brainstorm. My opponent couldn’t deal with the power of the characters since he wasted all his hand using soul + 2 and dropping 3 characters. I ended up at level 3 first, but I run 4 level 3 Nicos in my deck so I dropped a couple Nicos to mitigate damage with the soul -1 and shoot things to clock. My opponent ended up not having any hand size for most of the game and couldnt keep up attacks every turn.

A side note here. My opponent presented me the deck without shuffling it in front of me asking if I wanted to cut before round start. I ended up taking the deck and shuffling it like crazy. That was a very fishy thing he did so I wanted to make sure his deck was actually shuffled.

Win 2-0

Round 3: Love Live! vs Madoka Magica

The build I ended up facing was a mono-madoka deck that focused on having huge characters out. This game was pretty standard and nothing fancy happened here. I was able to get a change off to my level 3 healer and used the climax combo to clear field. My opponent had no real amount of healers in his deck, but used soul +2 to try to push for game a lot which ended up failing him. Finished him off with level 3 Nicos. This deck ended up getting to top 8.

Win 3-0

Round 4: Love Live! vs Love Live!

Ended up facing a friend in round 4. We had similar builds, but he focused on blue as his 3rd color and I went the green route. Game was pretty standard where we both just brainstormed and played 1/0 Eris till level 3. He ended up being in a bad spot at the end and I ended up taking it, while he died to refresh point.

Win 4-0

Round 5: Love Live! vs Madoka Magica

This round is a little fuzzy for me since I don’t really remember if this is when I played this Madoka player. Either way the deck he was playing was a standard Madoka G/B/R Build, but I believe he ran some amount of soul + 2 in the deck maybe like a 2 of. I got hit by soul plus 2, but was able to stay a head on board and damage. At level 2 I got a change off and used the CX combo with the healer again to over power the board. My opponent ends up at level 3 and plays Kyoko and uses her ability to over power my healer. I ended up using a counter so that my level 3 and his Kyoko would tie and I would force an empty spot on his field next turn so I’m able to play around Sayaka’s Wish Counter. This ended up paying off as he had 1 empty slot and 2 level 3 Sayakas in the front row. My opponent was at 3/4 or 3/5 can’t really remember, but I counted out my deck and of the 5 cards in my deck 3 of them were wind triggers. So I went a head and attacked the open slot first and hit a wind trigger to bounce 1 of his sayakas to his hand to create another empty slot in the front row so I can get another chance at avoiding the counter if he cancels. He ends up taking the 3 damage for game before that could happen though.

Win 5-0

Round 6: Love Live! vs Bakemonogatari (2nd place deck)

At this point there were only 3 undefeated myself and 2 others. I asked if there was a way for us to draw this game without getting a game loss, but there wasn’t even though we both were making top 8 no matter the outcome. I really wanted to avoid showing anything about my deck to this guy since we would most likely play eachother again in top 8, but there was no way to avoid us playing. So we just played the game out, but I did some yolo moves and kind of kept some things back in hopes that this would pay off in top 8 if we met eachother. His build was the standard 2 lovers build for level 1 into level 3 healers and supports. He played alright, but I ended up losing this game to a lot of yolo moves with Nico.

Loss 5-1

Top 8 Cut:

Game 1: Love Live! vs Madoka Magica!

I ended up playing the same guy I played in round 3. Game went the same, but this time I saw some new cards like the 2/2 Madoka, which was kind of annoying. I ended the game in the same way with Nico though by clock shooting a Madoka for game.

Win Advance to top 4

Game 2: Love Live! vs Madoka Magica! (1st place deck)

This was the worst game of the day. I ended up drawing 6 of my climaxes early and was forced to brainstorm 3 times in 1 turn to get through my deck to avoid taking so much damage early. After refresh I took a climax as refresh point damage and then triggered 2 more on attack. The only reason I was in the game was because my opponent left a 1/0 zombie sayaka on field so I was able to get 3 extra damage form that, but my opponent was still canceling a lot. I ended up getting him to 3/6 and had 1 more attack left, but he canceled it on the first card and ended up killing me the following turn. I miss played a lot at the end of the game on how I set up my field and it shouldn’t happen again after this. Considering this was like the 12 time I played this deck it went better than expected.

On a side note for this match, I felt like something was fishy about the way he was shuffling and shuffling my deck due to how at the start of the game I drew/triggered an odd number of climaxes and after refresh too. I ended up asking him to shuffle in a way where he couldn’t see my bottom cards or fan my deck out while looking at it while he shuffled. At that point he stopped shuffling my deck completely and just cut it once. I had no real proof that he was stacking or cheating, but I found it extremely odd and fishy the way he shuffled. I doubt he was cheating, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. I will be requesting Judge Shuffles for all of top cuts I play in English tournaments now due to this.

Loss Play it out for 3rd place

Game 3: Love Live! vs Sword Art Online!

This game was for 3rd place and to be the back up if first or 2nd couldn’t make it to the national tournament. My opponent had a modified SAO TD so the game was basically over before it started. He piloted the deck well and made a crazy move at level 1 that actually swung the game into his favor at 1 point when he accelerated 3 times with 3 1/0 Asunas in the same turn to clear my field. My opponent had no real way to heal or keep up at level 3 and I ended up clock shooting him for game.

Ended the tournament at 3rd place.

After Thoughts



I was glad for my run in this tournament since this was my first major English tournament. I made a lot of calls on my deck build based on what I thought was being played and how players were playing in English. I got a lot of funny looks on a few card choices, but those card choices ended up working better than expected! I talked to the 2nd place player at the end of the tournament and asked if he planned to go to the national tournament. He told me it was highly unlikely he will be able to go. He wished me good luck if I ended up going to Nationals, since he is most likely going to forfeit the invitation to me so I’ll be able to make it out to Chicago for the National tournament.

If I do end up going to Chicago I’ll most likely be going with a modified deck (If I stick with Love Love) since the version I played was more suited for a wide variety of players from good to bad.

MVP Card of the Tournament



This card did so much work for me in this tournament and many opponents misplayed into it. I’m glad I included this as a 4 of in my deck build.