Ms. Leonhart, Or: How I Learned to Stop Whining and Embrace the Meta (Part 11)
by Dani Diaz
The Finale
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Pairings for round one of Louisville had just been posted and around 180 heads snapped down to check their phones. My pairing was… Austin. My teammate. On one of my worse matchups. He looked up from his phone at me and we shared a moment of commiseration. So this is how it’s gonna be, huh, we said to each other with our expressions. We headed to the table and set up, knowing that whatever happened there would be chaos.
But!
Before we get there, I want to talk about the lead-up to the event.
The week before the regional, I got very, very sick. I went to the doctor and found out that I had a “severe ear and throat infection”, which knocked me out for most of the week. During this time, I didn’t have much to do but sit in bed and stress about what I was going to play at the event. Over the last few testing nights, I had gone winless with the Annie deck. It felt like everyone had my number and knew exactly how to counter my strategies. I started to feel a little hopeless.
I had reached out to my friend Jose to take a look at the deck and see what he might change. He responded with a question: “Are you okay switching to Death?”
Switching symbol was something I had considered but once I had found my strategy of constantly cheating momentum, it seemed more advantageous to stay on Chaos. The option did stick out to me, and Jose had built a very strong Death deck for Pieck that won the StarkDark event, so I agreed.
He got back to me later with an awesome looking deck with lots of interesting sauce. I excitedly tried it out with the team and made a little more headway than previously, but it was much slower that I’d anticipated. Whereas I was used to flipping on turn 2 or 3, this deck liked to flip on 4 or 5, playing honest 7-hand size defense instead of relying on Annie’s damage reduction ability.
The other thing I tried was playing Pieck.
I had a blast figuring out how to pilot her and that introduced the bugaboo that I was currently experiencing. Jose told me I’d probably need more time to figure out Pieck before playing her at a regional level, and he was right. Nevertheless, I had Richard put the Pieck deck together to bring to the event.
Jose and I butted heads over the week leading up to the Regional because we had a core disagreement about how the character should be played: he liked a more defensive approach and I liked to take a more aggro approach and whittle them down before they could completely set up. I wanted to try his strategy but settled on adding some defensive cards to my mainboard and stopped looking at the list for a couple days.
I make it sound like it was my idea but Richard is the one who said I had to take 48 hours off UVS Ultra and do something else. I watched all three Back to the Future movies and eventually got through my infection. I didn’t play seriously the rest of the week leading up to Louisville, and the time away from the game helped tremendously.
We left for Louisville at 4:30 AM and it took about 14 hours to get there. Along the way we quizzed each other on card effects, joked relentlessly about pivoting, and ABSOLUTELY DID NOT STOP FOR THEME PARKS! There was a flash flood right at the time we arrived, so we ended up driving through standing water in some very sketchy freeway traffic. After that, we settled in at our Thursday digs at the Red Roof Inn and got some Mexican food from a local spot.
The next day we toured Louisville a bit, checking out the Louisville Slugger museum and factory tour, which was a lot of fun. While some of us played in a Street Fighter sealed event, the others got some practice games in at the side tables. We hung out for a bit before heading out Friday night for a minor league baseball game with the Louisville Bats – or, as they were known that night, the Malmo Oat Milkers. I think the time spent NOT playing UVS was my favorite part of this event, and helped my mindset considerably going into Swiss rounds on Saturday.
Speaking of Swiss, let’s get back to the story…
Round 1: Austin on Chaos Godzilla
This was an absolute slugfest.
Both of us were playing Chaos big stompy characters, so much so that we started referring to each other’s characters as Big Zilla and Baby Zilla or Godzookie (if you get that reference, I’m sorry that your back hurts).
This game was especially fun for me because something clicked with me almost as soon as the game started. I felt in control of the pace of the game, even on defense. Austin even commented on my defensive turns, surprised that he wasn’t just steamrolling me. These games came down to the wire, and we ended the set two games to one in Austin’s favor. We excitedly fist bumped afterward; it was a great set.
After this, there was some unexpected technical trouble behind the scenes and they sent us out to lunch for over an hour. This was a bit of whiplash after planning for no lunch break at all, but it wasn’t unwelcome.
Round 2: Bryan on Death Pieck
We settled back into the event for round two and I was seated across from Bryan from Response on Play on what many of us assumed would be the meta leader, Pieck.
One of the games was a long one, a midrange battle that saw me stall multiple times on offense and barely survive on defense. I drew into the gas in another game and was able to aggro him down before he was able to set up appropriately. The third and final game was a stalemate and as we went into overtime, I turtled and started playing for my life. I managed to survive and we tied the round.
Round 3: Ashley on All Suzuki
I heard that round three pairings had been posted over the PA and checked my phone. I saw Ashley F paired up against me and practically ran to my table to find the incomparable Ashley Fullerton seated across from my spot. I had last seen her at HLC 2023 and she remembered me from our games in the team competition at that event.
Ashley is always an absolute joy to play, and we spent as much time chatting as we did performing game actions. She was on an All Suzuki build that took me by surprise with a really neat interaction around Earthbreaker. She also played incredible defense, which is especially hard against my Annie deck when it gets going. I finished the set 2-0 and we chatted for almost the rest of the round time, catching up and discussing the direction of the game. Ashley is one of my favorite people in this game, and I can’t wait for her to get her champ card (hopefully soon).
Round 4: Cameron on Water Jamie
This was a scary matchup for me because Jamie had officially released… the day before the event. I knew what he could do, but no idea how people were going to build him. This match ended up as a 2-0 in my favor, but I fear that it was closer than the results seem. He actually scooped as soon as it looked like a Harness Undeath was going to deal any damage to him, without counting the number of backups in my discard pile. I do think at least one of them wasn’t lethal, but I’ll take the wins I suppose.
Round 5: Ryan on Void Rodan
Rodan is one of my worst matchups – I can put beaucoup damage on attacks but any sort of speed reduction gets hard to overcome. This was an 0-2 effort on my part because of great play on Ryan’s side of the table and some extremely well-timed Breakers to slow me down. It inspired me to finally give the funny bird a shot the next day and I ended up having some fun on the Air symbol. So, thanks for a great game, Ryan!
Round 6: Marcus on Chaos Zeke Yeager, Warchief
When we went into the event, none of us had any idea how common the backup decks would be. But by this point, I was surprised that I saw my first backup opponent this late in Swiss. This was a set that was punctuated by some terrible luck during build turns for my opponent that he couldn’t recover from, and some aggressive counter-backup play from me. As much as I hate when people punch my backups, it had to be so much worse to have me destroy them and gain additional momentum at the same time. This was fairly one-sided, but Marcus was a gracious opponent, and the games stayed fun.
Round 7: Shah on Chaos Devil Jin (also Shah and Dani versus the Fire Alarm)
I was shocked to see a Devil Jin, but in retrospect I should have seen it coming. He plays a tough string game with lots of advantageous cards printed on the Chaos symbol. I got absolutely manhandled in this set. It was Shah’s turn when the fire alarm went off. I was down on health and he had a hand full of attacks, so he asked if I wanted to concede. I did willingly so we could try to grab our cards and avoid leaving them inside. This unfortunately didn’t work out and we spent a good amount of time outside while the fire alarm situation was resolved. Thankfully it didn’t trigger any sprinklers or anything so our cards and belongings were safe and sound. Shah and I promptly packed up our stuff and headed out after the announcement that the final round would be played Sunday morning.
Round 8: Brodey on Chaos Reiner Braun, Warrior
Bright and early Sunday morning I found myself paired against the inimitable Brodenkainen, who was playing a very fun Reiner brew. We joked some about needing coffee and wanting to scoop, but when it came down to it both of us wanted to go positive on the event. I managed to overpower him before he was able to get fully set up, even through a double Filled with Doubt and a turn where he double Fortitude of the Armored Titan’d me. The check manipulation was just too strong. I won the set 2-0 and encouraged him to go take a nap rather than coffee. Paul promptly yelled “Brodey, you suck” across the hall at him. You had to be there.
And with that, the tournament ended. We spent the rest of the day brewing up fun decks, getting more product, and playing anything but our competitive decks.
The Louisville Major Regional has come and gone, and Coping with Cardboard showed out in a big way. We had 8 players compete with an average of almost 3 wins per player, which is very cool to see. I took my Annie deck to a record of 4-3-1 on the day, making Louisville my best tournament result ever. I owe a lot of that success to my teammates, the UVS community and to these articles for helping me really analyze what I was doing and how I was feeling about it.
This series is now over, but I’m already working on what comes next. I am currently brewing an exciting new deck that is just so fun to pilot. I’ll tell you more about it when the time comes.
I started this series to keep me honest, to share my experiences, and to encourage those who might be going through the same things. I did it. I met my goal of going positive at a major! And since then, I’ve been experiencing this sort of calm when I think about the game and playing it.
I was so stressed out even leading up to the event itself, about if the deck was good enough, if I was good enough, if all of this even mattered as much as I built it up in my head. But when I look back on the last few months, I don’t think about the cards and the play. I think about my friends. I think about Richard and I staying up late brewing ideas. I think about Paul, Anna and I jamming games in their living room to try things out. I think about visiting our dear friend Thomas as he worked on getting back to the game. I think about all the time spent with new friends at the event, like Tim and many others. It comes down to the people.
So, I leave this series having not only accomplished my goal in game, but taking away something so much more important: memories of time spent laughing and smiling with friends and loved ones as we shared a common experience. And that is the greatest prize I could ever imagine.
Thank you for coming on this journey with me, and as always, keep coping.