Ms. Leonhart, Or: How I Learned to Stop Whining and Embrace the Meta (Part 1)
By Dani Diaz
I guess I’ve always kind of been a contrarian.
Throughout my time playing games, TCG or otherwise, I’ve always enjoyed finding success with characters that were considered… let’s say “suboptimal.” I love the challenge of learning the character’s idiosyncrasies, finding ways to combat the high-tier picks, and eking out wins when I can. I thought I had a pretty good handle on how to do that; then I found the UniVersus TCG.
I found UniVersus when I tried to play the Guilty Gear card game by Level99 with my friend Paul, who was drumming in the same band as me at the time. After some time struggling through the rules, he said “I think you would like the card game that I play. How do you feel about My Hero Academia?”
“Oh yeah, I used to watch that a lot. What’s the game like?”
And then I was swept to our LGS, CounterSpell Games in Jacksonville, FL. Paul pulled out a box of bulk and started sifting through it. “Who’s your favorite character?” he asked. “The fast guy. Iida, I think?”
“Bet,” Paul said with a smile.
In a few minutes we had a fully constructed Tenya Iida III deck on the Order symbol, and Paul was teaching me to play against his Denki deck. Then he graciously invited me to our locals. I met some fantastic people who are my friends and teammates to this day. How did I do?
I got stomped.
“It’ll take time,” everyone told me. “This is a tough game to learn. You’re not exactly on a strong meta deck either.”
“Well, what’s strong nowadays?” I asked.
“Mirio is pretty good” was the bulk of the feedback. So, I bought a Mirio Clash Deck and built him with the Good Punches package. As the weeks went by, I started getting more and more wins. This should have been my first indicator that I would get better results by just using strong decks and letting them carry me through the new player growing pains.
But, as noted before, I’m kind of a contrarian.
I deemed Mirio too strong for my tastes and wanted something that others wouldn’t play, something with more… zazz. I found Toru 2, which no one at our locals played. I loved her light control aspects, and the Air Charges package I built her around. I was having fun and getting better results slowly but surely.
Then I hit a wall again.
I couldn’t close out games. I kept losing to powerful cards and characters, and I started to become resentful of people who could have the best attacks and the best decks. This was during the “Repeated $100 Smash” era and I was becoming increasingly salty that I didn’t have the cards to compete. The “low-tier god” mindset began to set in.
I was a good enough player to beat $600 dollar decks with my pile of cheap cards, I reasoned. It’s a game of skill, not of power, I thought.
I was not good enough yet.
I started losing more and more as JetBurn released, then Yu Yu Hakusho: Dark Tournament. I attended HLC for the Last Chance Qualifier and pivoted from my powerful Bakugo 4 deck to Air Charges Toru at the last second, thinking I didn’t want to play the “easier” deck.
I washed out 1-3.
This sent me into a spiral of rotating between characters that I liked but were clearly not the best picks at the time. Younger Toguro? Nah, I’ll play Botan. Oh, people are getting results with Overhaul? Nah, I’ll build an all-throws Mandalay deck (it’s still low-key one of my favorites). As I desperately made more niche decks, I continued trash-talking the meta decks. “It’s so cheap,” I said. “You just play the good ones no one can get, and you just win games. This sucks.”
Fast-forward to Attack on Titan: Battle for Humanity. I was still only playing characters that I liked from the IP. I tried Sasha Blouse, and she was very fun but not strong enough at the time to keep up. Meanwhile, my locals were finding great success with Ymir. I played her once and won the match, having a ton of fun in the process. Since it felt too easy, I dismissed her as “not my style” went back to cooking Annie Leonhart. It never panned out, and by the time Attack on Titan: Origins of Power came out, I was looking ahead to playing Sasha Blouse, Food Fanatic.
I built a Life/Chaos deck around Swarmed by Titans and Falling Debris and had decent success in our Local Qualifer. I was convinced she was the right pick going into Nationals in Dallas.
I washed out 1-3.
Our breakfast the day of the washout.
Our local, Cayman, ended up at 19th overall on the back of Bertholdt Hoover, Living Weapon, the infamous Bert II that everyone complained about and eventually caught an errata. Cayman is a wonderful player and incredibly skilled. In my mind at the time, the main reason we were so far apart was because Bert II was “broken” and “cheap”. I was wrong. Cayman played out of his mind and did exactly what he needed to do to finish JUST outside of top cuts. I was, and still am, incredibly proud of my friend and teammate.
My teammates consoled me after the washout, and urged me to play more straightforward and powerful characters to get my groove back. I rebuked them with the same excuses I always did. “I must like the character. I can’t play it just because it’s good.”
Leading up through the release of Attack on Titan: Apocalypse, I built a Caduceus Clay, Insightful Caretaker deck that was a lot of fun, but didn’t have the juice to compete at the highest level. Seeing a theme here? I watched the AoT:A previews, hoping that a character would come along that checked all my boxes, and was powerful enough to hang with the top tiers. I finally listened to my teammates and vowed to embrace a “meta” character to play in the Apocalypse format leading up to the Louisville Major Regional.
Enter Annie Leonhart, Awakened.
Godzilla shaped with damage pump and check manipulation. Great damage reduction capability on face, even better in conjunction with her supporting tools. The ability to play an entire hand of attacks with a minimal stage. This character could get it done.
I played several test games with her on TTS and found I was winning more easily than usual. The Green Goblin mask on my wall tempted me, saying she was too good and to find something else. I put my build to the side again. Surely there was something more flavorful I could be playing, I thought.
Then I watched a recent video by NakeyJakey about his rise through CounterStrike 2 ranked play. His journey inspired me to embrace this powerful character and put my nose to the grindstone to improve my play. The character may be good, but I must also level up my game if I’m going to avoid another 1-3 washout.
So, welcome to my series lovingly entitled “Ms. Leonhart, Or: How I Learned to Stop Whining and Embrace the Meta.” I’ll be documenting my testing, edits to the deck, and how my gameplay progresses. At the end of this, I hope to attend the Louisville Major Regional and leave with my best competitive record yet. I hope you’ll join me on this journey!
Thanks for reading. Next time, we’ll go over my deckbuild for Annie Leonhart, Awakened. As always - keep coping!