The Final Countdown

The Final Countdown - Or, avoiding a last minute crisis of faith at 2 AM while intoxicated.

Let me tell you a little story. In March of 2008, I went to the South Coast Championship in Orlando for some fun and card floppery. Also, of course, to do the best I could and finally WIN a damn tournament instead of constantly losing to James Hata in final rounds (it happened at the 2007 East Coast Championship and again in the 2008 New York City Team AoP in January, d'oh). Granted, if you're going to lose to someone, you can't really complain if he's the best individual player ever in the game (and also the current lead developer, of course). That was the plan, anyway.

Now for some reason, this event featured Teams first, then Singles on Sunday. So Saturday our team was set; I was playing Void Ibuki (yes, VOID Ibuki!), my local teammate Chris Kovaz was playing Water loop *James Hata*, and Omar Chavez had come down from New York and was running Andrew Olexa's character card off Evil. It was a strange team composition, three essential hybrid decks, as mine was the closest to being control. All day we did great, getting good matchups in terms of decks, and we all were on our game. Team Southtown, from the Tampa area, was the only team to defeat us in Swiss, so we were 5-1 and ranked 2nd going into top rounds. We met them again in the final, however, and ended up losing a close match. It was a tough loss, especially for me as it was my 3rd consecutive runner-up finish! Yikes. Would I always be doomed to lose when I was so close? It weighed on me for sure. you have to consider, in card tournaments, that the better you do, the longer your day will be - so finishing 2nd is not only emotionally draining but physically as well.

Now this Void Ibuki deck was built for fun, mostly, but featured a lot of great cards for defense like Tough Outer Shell - exploitable with the Life response, which Ibuki had access to - and Seichu Nidan Tsuki for the kill - still my favorite attack ever printed, by the way. It didn't hurt that she was busted as hell, if you recall this Ibuki was later banned for doing horrible things with Higher Calibur and The Red Lotus Of The Sun. However I had known that it wasn't good enough to play in Singles and win, and that result further confirmed that I needed a new deck. Well, all of us were hungry and so we all went to Friday's to eat. Everyone was talking about their day, and having a good time, and I kept plying myself with Bloody Marys while discussing ideas for tomorrow. After about the 4th Bloody Mary, I had a decent buzz going, and thankfully the hotel was literally next door. We walked back, and I pulled out my cardboard and starting looking through everything for ideas. Meanwhile, I continued to drink alcohol, because we had 3 beers in the fridge.

So now, I'm basically drunk, and my stack of characters is fast becoming a tower. Then it hits me - Cody. With an Evil/Fire split. I basically cobble together a deck out of spare parts and hand it to Omar, which he plays against my Ibuki. Omar first turn - Chain Throw + TRIPLE Absurd Strength! And I fail my block! GG. Yeah...so I'm thinking, though that should hardly ever happen normally, that's still quite nice. Nicer than anything my Ibuki can do on the first turn. Another attractive thing about Cody's character was the vitality - 24, for a 7HS! Again, being degenerate with both his abilities didn't hurt either. Now it's 2 AM, I need to finish this deck and get to sleep, and I can't find any Addes Syndicates. Which I know I need because of the stupid Void/Order Yun-Seong mill deck that Steve Kline had just won the Gulf Coast Championships. So I was in a depressing, inebriated stupor here, trying to get this deck done while my brain was creaming things like FOOD and SLEEP back at me. Also, I needed sideboard tech, and in this state of malaise I suddenly hit upon a perfect solution - The Illuminati. Though I was using Higher Calibur, I didn't rely on it to win and could be selective, while The Illuminati seriously crippled all forms of Yun-Seong, as well as many loop decks using Shinobi Tradition.

Next morning, my head is killing me, but I'm happy with the deck. Despite being TOTAL jank, with not even playsets of key cards like Addes and Unrequited Love, and being built under the influence, I did great all day and amazingly, played against Steve in the finals and won. It was a great feeling. So great that the 3 hour drive back to Fort Myers breezed by, despite me being the one doing the driving (and being really, really exhausted).

Now the point of this story is, DON'T do that! Like, ever. I got really lucky, had done a LOT of homework on the metagame and knew Cody fairly well, as I played him for months before that before I switched to Ibuki. That, and thankfully sobering up JUST in time for start of the tourney were my only saving graces. I did play very well during the tournament and I had a brutal final match against a wall of control to deal with, so the focus was there. Still...outcomes don't justify the means, as Machiavelli believed. I've won or competed at events at a high level since then, and my preparation has always been far more careful. I DO have a tendency to finalize decks at the last second, I can't help it. I'm a tinkerer; a card here or there CAN make a difference. Other than that, though, the steps that I take to prepare for a semi-major or major tournament are markedly different.

So, after all that, the question remains, what SHOULD you do? Different people have different processes, so I can only say what works for me. At least, I HOPE it STILL works for me, that would be more accurate! Because of the way I've kinda thrown myself back in headfirst, and with little time to prepare due to school/work and other obligations, my preparation for the SAS has been sporadic at best. Still, I think I've managed to get the best use of the time I have had, so that's what matters. Typically, I try to do the following before a tourney:

1. Find a deck that you are comfortable with, NOT just the "best deck" in the format. Whether you develop your own idea, or netdeck and modify someone else's idea, YOU should be familiar with the deck and ready to play it against anything. That is the most important, otherwise you will simply be ill at ease and more prone to making play errors. You gotta roll with what suits you. If you have and like a deck that's winning locally, but that hasn't made any impact anywhere else - hey, go for it! It could be YOU making that impact. As you play more and more games with a deck, certain additions and subtractions become apparent. Modify, and do it again. You will also notice patterns, combinations and strategies better - as opposed to simply copying something off the forums that seems to have won stuff and hoping for the best.

2. Play a LOT of games, and keep the metagame in mind at least a little. I mean, a lot of games. This is where metagame planning starts to factor in, an important part of any competitive CCG environment. Some top players, such as Omar, swear that they don't care about the meta, and it doesn't impact their decks. Some, like Team UFS House (Matt Kohls, Paul Bitner and Jon Herr - all on cardboard) play everything they can in every shape and style and DEFINE the meta themselves. I tend to skirt along the middle of this path - I do the best I can with my own ideas, then take the most consistent decks in the format and repeatedly play against them. I am not a fan of netdecking for playing purposes because I like to create on my own, but I have no problem with it as a useful tool for testing. For example, Astrid and Rashotep are extremely powerful decks right now that you need to be careful for, by general consensus and my own specific observation. So, getting a good list of those decks is important to gauge readiness and find chinks in the armor. On the same note, I leave the sideboard for last. I try and get the maindeck makeup of the deck sorted out, and if it's working on Game 1 wins at least 70% of the time that's good enough for me. Only then do I work on sideboard options.

3. Make good use of your sideboard slots. Those extra 8 cards are very important, and they should be chosen with care. What is hurting my deck? Is it specific to one character or card, or more general? Unless literally there is only one deck that you need help dealing with, your sideboard should contain cards that are good counters to your two or three big concerns BUT also not be too limiting; those cards should have more than one use. The recently reprinted Martial Arts Champion has long been a sideboard and even maindeck staple for precisely this reason; it's flexible, and flexibility means value in CCGs. It provides counters to a wide range of annoying problems - card draw, recursion, silly loops - at low cost, balanced by its numbers and no block. Perfect. The new Soul Wave is another example, as it is anti-discard along with asset hate - screw that Path Of The Master! If you have 3 copies of a card in the main, ocassionally the 4th copy is needed in certain matchups to ensure you draw it at critical times. Taken together, you can whittle down to 8 cards and set it up nicely for a toolbox of solutions.

That's all I have to say for now, but that was a lot! With two days to go before the big show, I've finished these steps at least and now am simply playing more games to get practice in. It feels good when you can lock your deck AND have time to just spin it as much as possible. As I illustrated concretely, though, that doesn't always happen! Check back tomorrow for one more update before the tourney Saturday, and till then, peace.