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Aldershot regional tournament report by Jamie Faulkner

Hey guys, this is my write up for the Aldershot regional I won on Sunday the 15thof April. I originally didn’t even intend to go because I only just got back from a holiday and I was still a little messed up from it in terms of my body clock but, I woke up really early Sunday so it gave me enough time to throw a bunch of jank cards together and attend.

I was on holiday with Josh Ge and Tobi Henriet which was amazing and fun. We didn’t get a huge amount of time to test because we were too busy enjoying Istanbul but we did manage to build a few decks. Mono earth was one of the first decks we built (because we just heard that mono earth came 1st and 2nd at some tournament in Japan) and I think we played like 3 games with the deck before playing more fun stuff. In fact, we only really built the deck to test the power of Kam’lanaut in the mirror. Tobi’s version was more aggressive with loads of 2 drop brave dudes and no board wipes whereas my version had Kam, Zodiark, Shantotto, and Cecil. Naturally, the bigger version of a deck usually wins in a mirror but we did find out that the Psycom wardens in my deck were actually really solid and we also found out that Kam’lanaut simply crushes games. Every time I played that card in the games we tested he just took over the game and I won fairly shortly after. After that discovery our holiday basically became a have fun, enjoy Istanbul, Play 1v1s in LoL and find broken decks abusing Kam. Very fun!

So, I go to bed on Saturday with the intention of just laying in and playing League of Legends all day, didn’t feel like I would have the energy to go to Aldershot so I didn’t bother preparing anything. I did send a message to my friend, Likey asking him if he was going and wanted a lift but he wasn’t so in my mind it was settled that I wouldn’t go. However, I wake up at like 5am for some reason and see a message from another friend, Pedro, asking me for a deck idea. I ask him if he’s going and he needed a lift so I decided since I woke up early I’ll have some fun and throw a deck together. All my cards were still in my suitcase that I hadn’t bothered to unpack yet so I kind of just picked a deckbox at random and it had the half built mono earth deck I had play tested about a week earlier. It seemed like a good idea. Super easy to play, didn’t really matter what cards I put in it as long as Kam was there and the deck was already half built. Here is the link to the deck that I ended up playing:https://ffdecks.com/deck/5788262270500864

There were only a few cards in there I knew I needed. The rest were pretty much just what I found before I Left.

Kam: Best card in the deck? Not sure, Maybe. He takes over games on his own with his amazing body and ability and gives you the option of searching a backup (which is always nice) or searching a massive tempo card. Super cool. People don’t know how to deal with him yet. Abuse him while you can.

Wol: Also a really really good card. Gets advantage straight away. All his effects are useful and I’m happy to say I used all of them consistently today. He’s better played as the second body on the field rather than the first thing you play because then you get instant value.

Psicom Warden: Flan 2.0. I liked flan. I like Psicom Warden. Earth typically has a lot of trouble drawing cards or thinning the deck which is a really cool bonus of playing these 1 drop 11k’s. They also just completely take over a game on their own. In the finals I curved to 4, top decked one and did 7 points of damage with these cards alone. It’s literally the best top deck in the game in the mid game. The only time it’s a bad top deck is if you see multiples early but, in that scenario, it’s not super sad to discard them. And mid game you either top deck them and win cause it’s incredible to top deck or you don’t top deck them because you’ve already taken them out of your deck. No one expected to get killed by my little 3 drop dudes but everyone did.

Prishe: Star sibyl target and dedicated koboldroid yin blocker. In the quarter finals I managed to use the ability 3 times because I kept hitting ex bursts that killed my prishe. Odin, Famfrit, Famfrit. Still won that game, somehow :S

Ingus: Now I’m definitely sure that Ingus is the best of the new Warrior of Light cards. Not only does his effect kind of synergise with earth better than the other cards synergise with their elements. But, He also gets to use the effect WAY more because earth has so many ways to give brave so there are always forwards available to tap down to use the effect after attacking. When this dude is on board your board feels a lot stronger. Also, he synergises really nicely with Raubahn to make him live if you have him and Ennna Kros on field.

Zodiark: It’s really amusing when my opponent goes for turn 3 Setzer Locke from two backups and I just play Kam Zodiark and they lose on the spot.

Momodi: This card is really great to have on the field and realistically it could probably be put up to two but it’s also kind of a dead draw late game and isn’t a turn one backup so I’m honestly not sure. It’s 100% a 1 of in any mono earth deck and possibly a two of If you can find the space.

EDIT: Thought I’d mention Cecil briefly. He’s fine but was never fantastic. Sometimes killed a forward and that was cool and there is definitely synergy with Zodiark and Cecil. It did feel that either my opponents over extended into a board wipe and I just cleaned up or I was the aggressor (most of the time) so there were very few times I needed to play him. I would be happy to cut him to 1 so he is still there and searchable with miner and mog but I don’t draw him too early. Not a super important card to the strategy I think but nice when you can do it.

I will now go over the rounds that I can remember

Round 1: Alex Wu – mono fire

Alex is a good friend and a player I respect. Not great to go against a good player in round 1 of a tournament I’m hardly awake for to be honest.

I curve to 3 while he plays a turn 2 Xande. I answer it with a Kam and then Zodiark the next turn for 7 so his Xande doesn’t kill the Kam. He plays another Xande the turn after that which gets answered by a Raubahn. Finally, he plays a Sabin which got answered by a Cecil and the game was over. We played a few more games so I could get some more reps in with my deck because I didn’t really know what was in it or how to play it yet and the games went pretty much the same. I played a forward and it stuck, he played a forward and I killed it. Funnily enough we swapped decks after a few games and I crushed him with a series of like 4 ex bursts in a row and incredibly lucky draws. Was very funny.  

Round 2: Rob Philips – jank

Rob is one of the best players in the country (and all of Europe) and a teammate who I test versus regularly. Both of us are already qualified for Nationals at this point anyway and neither of us were massively invested in the tournament. I was there to get a bye at nationals and he was there to test his Jank. Weirdly though, in the last 3-5 tournaments we’ve played against each other (since Cardiff) we have played against each other pretty early on in swiss and it’s starting to become a bit of a meme. He knew my deck better than I did because he took a look through it before the tournament (and Rob is actually very good at understanding a deck just by looking at it) but, I knew what his deck did and how to beat it as well because he sent me his list while I was away in turkey so I could test it and see if I could improve it ( I couldn’t). His deck was sort of like an 0tk style combo deck that needed to get a lot of cards in hand to combo off. I knew how fast I needed to play in order to delay that as long as possible and I did. He didn’t draw very well but I also think I played quite well. It got to the point where he was decking out and I was threatening lethal every turn and it was just really obvious he couldn’t win anymore so he scooped.

Round 3:  Cant remember

I do not remember this round at all. All I know is I won in less than 5 minutes and then left to go troll my friend Ryan Stolarski.

Round 4: Callum Hackett – mono water monsters

Callum is another Dark sphere local and a good player. He’s playing a list that makes me want to quit fftcg and move to a farm with no internet. Was my only loss of the tournament. I threw away a hand that had no backups to draw a hand with 4 dark cards. Not great. It would have been fine if I had ever seen a third backup but unfortunately, I was stuck on 2 until about turn 10 so I could never play Kam or Zodiark efficiently. I still almost win though because I took him to 5 or 6 by playing Dadaluma, Wol and the Warden Squad. Eventually, however I just draw nothing but backups for like 3 turns in a row (which is what happens when you don’t see any for the top 25 cards) and I swiftly lost.

Round 5 Dan Meech – Mono lightning

Dan is another friend from Dark sphere (do you see a trend here?). He was x-2 and out of contention for top 8 so I kind of expected him to go easy on me. He didn’t. At all. I misplay really badly turn 2 by playing a Psicom Warden alone when he had two backups and he plays Al-cid + hildibrand + nashu which sucked. Then he plays illua and I’m really feeling the pain. I play Kam searching Zodiark on 5 backups because I knew the only way I would win was if I drew my 1 of Gabranth to scum out the game. He flooded the board and I draw it on 6 damage. Game was over from that point because he had no hand and I had a decent board. Killed 5 things with Zodiark, very flashy!

Quarter Finals: Mitch lander – Water lightning fusoya

Mitch qualified last regional so we both kind of knew it was a chill game for fun.

Game 1:

Hardest game of the tournament for me. I open fairly poorly and he opens well with fusoya and al-cid patrol. I also hit Odin, Famfrit, Cucu (put on top of deck from ephereal summoner) and then another famfrit into damage zone (only the cucu was done from fusoya). Which put me so far behind I felt like I couldn’t even see the cards anymore. I feel like I played exceptionally well from that point forward though because I managed to keep making Mitch use resources while just about clinging to life and still pressuring his life total. Eventually, I had a board of cecil, Kam and Wol vs his board of weak forwards with us both on 6 damage. Easy game from there.

Game 2:

Pretty standard game of fusoya.dek here. Similar things happen to game 1 where fusoya puts in work except this time al-cid also puts in work. It was too much when he played like 4 forwards turn 3-4 and I had no board wipe.

Game 3:

I think Mitch decided he didn’t want to win anymore because I played a Kam searching Zodiark from 3 backups with 3 in hand and he decided to discard his whole hand to dump 3 forwards on the board to try to kill Kam. He only had 1 backup and 0 in hand so it was the swiftest Zodiark of my life. Game was set and done from that point forward, no way to come back for him.

Semi Finals Sam wigmore – mono earth

Sam is a really nice guy and he’s turning into a bit of my kryptonite because every time I go to calamity games he beats me horribly and it’s never fun. He beat me two weeks earlier with mono earth and it was degenerate and seemed like it required no skill which was one of the reasons I wanted to test it :D

The TL;DR of this match should have been I have Kam and Sam doesn’t so I win. However, I didn’t play Kam once so it was kind of irrelevant.

Game 1

He plays Warrior of light turn 1 telegraphing he has a bad hand. I play a backup and pass. He plays Ingus turn 2. I Shantotto. Game over. Situations like this can easily be replicated if you play a normal game of fftcg except one player draws 4 a turn and the other draws normally. That’s what it feels like.

Game 2: We both curve out to 4 backups and play some forwards, But I play Psicom Wardens and position myself to be more aggressive. I think I played around his summons better than He plays around mine and it put us in a position where he was just defensive the whole game. Not even attacking with brave guys. I keep playing 1 forward a turn and hold Kam in hand for when he Shantotto’s me. He plays miner getting back his Shantotto so he can board wipe next turn but I had enough to lethal him from there. This game is a good example of experience I think. Realistically we both had decent draws and the same sort of power level of forwards but I just played more aggressively which put Sam into a defensive mindset which allowed me to just have my way with him. Don’t let players bully you into submission, always be thinking about how to attack back rather than simply not lose!

Finals: Pete Sherratt – mono Ice

Pete is another lovely guy and he seemed really ecstatic that he was in the finals. I could tell he wouldn’t play his best before we even sat down because he asked who was in the finals against him and when told it was me he seemed really unconfident about it. It also seemed like he didn’t really care too much about winning since he was already happy with the nationals place, which is fine. One thing I will say about it is never go into a game thinking you will lose because you are against someone who you perceive as better than you. Similarly, Never go into a game thinking you can just smash it without thinking because you think you are better than your opponent. Give everyone respect and try hard like you are playing in a final of a tournament (especially if you are!) I promise you will surprise yourself occasionally: D

I knew my deck wasn’t tuned for mono ice as much as Sam’s was and I would have to not just play defensively and win of Guy and Yang. I wasn’t entirely sure what the best way to get around Mateus was but I figured if I Hecatoncheir in response to Mateus then it’ll be a good trade of resources. What happened in the games was very different though.

Game 1:

We both curve to 4 and he plays Setzer Locke. I play Psicom wardens and it turns out they are way bigger than Setzer Locke. A quick Kam into Zodiark left me in a position where I just attacked him and he died. Didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it really other than delay it with freeze effects.

From there I decided to just aggro him out because I don’t think he was in the mindset to be able to deal with that. Most people would look at Ice vs Earth and say Ice needs to be the aggressor so I figured that if I took him out of his comfort zone he wouldn’t know what to do.

Game 2: Much of the same happened here. I played Psicom Wardens and Kam. He had no answer at all for them. I switched kam’s element a LOT this game though. Made it dark to zodiark one turn, then switched it to earth just so I could attack into an Orphan. Then back to ice, then earth. I killed his vayne and he just didn’t really have a way to get aggressive. As long as I was in the driver’s seat there was no way Pete would ever be able to win. I solve a really cool lethal puzzle though which involved me using Pellinore and sacrificing my Ingus then using My Monk to buff my Warden to be big enough to kill Orphan and swing in for the last point of damage.

Normally I would give shout outs for help with the deck e.t.c but realistically this deck was just a bunch of cards thrown together that happened to do well. Shout out to all the dark sphere guys (and Ryan and Alex) who were there yesterday and made the day fun and a massive shoutout to Josh Ge (and his beautiful girlfriend Sybil) for hosting me in turkey last week and for generally being a bit of a pimpishmotherf. I’d like to think that the trip made me a better player, but realistically the trip probably just made me a better wine drinker and fancy food sharer, lol.