Lily: Combat Evolved

On a pleasant pre-typhoon Friday afternoon, Nico and I found ourselves in Hakata both waiting for our girlfriends to travel down to Fukuoka for the long weekend from their respective cities (huge flex, must be nice). His partner was scheduled to arrive much later, so he was going to kill time at Dragoon Hakata by playing in their weekly Friday afternoon event. By the way, Nico has started an Instagram page to share some of these experiences in full colour and HD, so give him a follow here: 

https://www.instagram.com/gaijin_cardcaster/

I went along with my deck to help him warm up and with the intention of watching a round or two before skipping out. A few minutes before registration closed, I get this message: 

Well well well...

Don't worry unnamed-person-for-privacy-reasons, I'll find a way to kill another few hours... CUE THE ANIME OPENING THEME MUSIC!!

Nico's Bishop Tinkerings

16th Sep - Locals - Dragon Hakata 6人 ~ Elf Control

Not a large turnout, but some familiar faces of strong players (including the guy who served me bat soup on Wednesday). I later found out that the place to be on a Friday afternoon for Shadowverse is in Ohashi, where they regularly draw a more healthy number of players.

Round 1: Dragon Pre-con lol (Koen)

Technically I'm awarded the bye, but avid f5'er of the blog Koen Van Something was also with us riding the hype wave and had bought the Dragon pre-con to start battling (where's my sponsorship money, Cygames?). We had a couple of games to make it feel like a legit tournament, and also because I knew he would love to make an appearance in his favourite literature.

"Show me your favourite cards for the blog"

The dragon pre-con honestly contains a fairly solid spine for the aggressive version of the deck, including the most important card for the entire faction in Dragon Oracle. I remember thinking to myself at one point in the game that if in this spot he had the usual 10/10 [Storm] Genesis Dragon, I would have lost this game, but nevertheless that was still a 50円 purchase away. 

Dragon Oracle

Choose one of the following: [1] Gain an empty play point orb. [2] Draw a card.

POV you're losing to a nerd sweating against a pre-con

1-0

Round 2: Bishop Control (Nico)

I'm still on a crazy streak of playing non-aggro decks, so this is a good test for the changes I'd made following the last event where I was found to be massively lacking in those matchups. Bishop control is a very strict control deck packed with removal and board clearing spells, looking to close the game typically with Heavenly Aegis or Kaguya which are Followers that put out holy amounts of damage while being difficult to remove.

Heavenly Aegis (Evolved)

[Aura] 

This card cannot be destroyed by card abilities. 

Evolve: During this turn and your opponent's next turn, this follower does not take damage.

Kaguya (Evolved)

Whenever an allied amulet comes into play, choose an enemy follower. Deal X damage to it. X is equal to the cost of that amulet. 

Evolve: Summon an Ephemeral Moon. Add 3 to your leader's defense.

Ephemeral Moon

During your turn, as long as this amulet is in play, all of your allied Kaguya will not take any damage. At the start of your main phase, banish this amulet.

The game was incredibly long and tense, as all control mirrors are. I landed a Rose Queen later in the game but couldn't find a window to throw all my Thorn Bursts at his face without losing the game on the following turn, and I had to keep removing his Kaguyas with what is now my new favourite card in the deck in Crystalia Lily:

Crystalia Lily

Evolve: Choose an enemy follower. Put it on the bottom of that player's deck. (Tokens put on the bottom of the deck are removed from the game)

THE BOTTOM OF THE DECK???

Being able to get around Kaguya's anti-damage theme and spin her back to the bottom of the deck was the difference that kept me in this game, as I managed to find two Lilys and held them for the moment Kaguya arrived. In the end, I finally managed to overcome the scary boards he was building and sheer amount of life-gain and had just enough Thorn Bursts to win. Notably, Rose Deer's Thorn Burst (you remember that beautiful bastard don't you?) came in clutch for the last few points of damage. Feels good to get a win over control, and for the cards I brought in to have done the job.

Action Shot!

This blog is now a Lily Fanclub

2-0

Round 3: Nightmare Control

I'm in the finals for all the marbles as we used to say in 1975, and I'm against Bat Soup. Except it's not the guy from Wednesday, but another guy who has just beaten him in the Bat Soup mirror. Tasty. I lose the die roll and he makes me go first, and I open a hand that looks incredible against control with the following two cards:

Harvest Festival

When this amulet leaves play, draw a card. 

Activate: [Pay 1pp & Act this card & Put it into your graveyard]: Add 1 to your leader's defense.

Ancient Elf

Evolve (1): Evolve this follower. 

[Ward] 

Fanfare: [Return an allied card in play to the hand]: Get +1/+1.

It looks fairly innocuous, but playing a 3/3 on turn two that draws you a card and threatens to become a 5/5 the next turn while netting another draw is a real headache for control decks. At best they're going -1 on card advantage to remove it, and at worst they're taking way too much damage in the early exchanges AND are down 2 cards. 

My opponent did get his best case scenario and immediately removed it, but I'd drawn into another and we played out the same pattern, with him removing the next one. He was lucky to have not taken any damage in this exchange, but I was up 2 cards in a grindy game so as the honorary Mayor of Value Town I can't complain about that.

Knowing Nightmare don't play any board clear effects (I'm learnding!) I used my next turn to build out a fairly decent board of around 6 Attack across a few bodies, and his response was this:

Underworld Watchman Khawy

[Ward] 

Last Words: Choose an enemy follower. Destroy it. Add X defense to your leader. X is equal to the chosen follower's attack.

What an unbelievably annoying card to deal with when you're trying to build some aggression, right? It's a 5/5 with [Ward], so it must be attacked, and when it dies it blows away my biggest thing AND gains my opponent life. What kind of overbearing psychopathic control freak designed this?

Always had it 

So we sent that demonic BTS-boy to the bottom of the deck where he belongs, which doesn't trigger [Last Words] as he didn't technically die, and smash in for a huge chunk of damage.

I wrote a bit in an earlier article about the important of tempo in this game, and here I was in full control of it. My opponent did his best to play catch-up, but my subsequent combination of Robin Hoods, Archers and Arias meant that I was ripping apart his boards while developing my own and getting decent damage in along the way. Feels good to have made some good metagame calls for once.

Robin Hood

Fanfare: Choose an enemy follower. Deal 4 damage to it. 

Activate: [Pay 1pp & Act this card]: Choose an enemy follower. Deal 4 damage to it.

I actually would have been able to seal the game much earlier on two occasions with a Rose Queen, but like some kind of Criss Angel stunt he landed Crazed Executioners in the perfect moments to strip them from my hand.

Crazed Executioner (Evolved)

Evolve: Deal 2 damage to your leader. Reveal an enemy's hand. Choose a card from among them. Your opponent discards it.

In the end it didn't matter though, because I was winning the tempo war and won the game through a combination of beats by Robin Hood and other forest creatures that had turned up to get down.

3-0

Post Event Thoughts

Hell yeah.

The organiser asks me for a photo of my decklist to post on Twitter and I immediately feel like a fraud because I have no idea what I'm doing, but also who doesn't want to have their own creation on Japanese Twitter?

We did it reddit

It's very rewarding to win with this deck, and more so to bounce back and reorient after Wednesday's schooling. I don't think I'll make any changes for the time being. Not because I think it can't be improved, but I'll need to play against the aggro half of the meta and the dragon decks before I really know what's lacking. 

The prize of 5 boosters remain sealed for now, it's not much but I think we'll record the opening for Nico's gram (@gaijin_cardcaster).

Peace out nerds.

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