Ms. Leonhart, Or: How I Learned to Stop Whining and Embrace the Meta (Part 3)
by Dani Diaz
Part 3: Let the (Test) Games Begin
“I think I’m just dead here, aren’t I?”
I looked over Richard’s board and glanced up at his hand. “I think so, yeah,” I said. “Spend the momentum for plus three damage, respond Theo for plus two more, and I get plus two to my next check.”
“Yeah, makes sense,” Richard said. He’d heard that familiar refrain several times already during our testing session. “I’ll try to block this one, let’s see how it goes.” He flipped over the top card of his deck revealing a 3. We both winced. “…Yeah… that fails,” he sighed, putting his prospective block into his discard pile. “I’ll take 11.”
From there, I slapped down Harness Undeath and the game was essentially won. It hit, and the burn from a discard pile full of backups did the rest of the work. I’d won the best of three against Richard’s Hange Zoe deck, but it certainly didn’t feel decisive.
“I think it’s in a really good spot,” Richard said, shuffling his cards. “It’s a good aggro deck.”
I was already separating the cards out on my playmat to adjust the ratios. I nodded. “Just gotta win the coinflip. Just kill ‘em, right?” Richard sagely nodded.
“Just kill ‘em.”
We were at another local game store with a high-top, four-seater table. Next to us, Richard’s wife Kylie and our teammate Derek were embroiled in a game between Jean Kirstein and the Beast Titan. We were all testing our deckbuilds for the Louisville regional, and the games were tough.
I had tested a bit already on Tabletop Simulator, or TTS as it’s commonly called. I played my Annie into Derek’s Zeke Yeager, Warchief deck and a Caleb Widogast, Fiery Transmuter deck and Richard using the first iteration of his Hange Zoe. The deck felt very good against the Zeke, balancing aggressive attacks with potent damage reduction. The Caleb games were much scarier, since Widogast’s Web of Fire allowed Derek to burn my backups into my discard pile. After an especially terrifying turn with an echoed Web of Fire from Duplicitious Attack (what a cool combo!), I was backup-less and at low health. I somehow managed to find the 29 damage and win that match in a single turn. From that moment, I knew this was my flavor of chaos.
From those early test games, I had made a few adjustments to the list and was mostly satisfied. I had cut one Sole Motivation in favor of a Moment of Normalcy; they had the same block modifier, but Moment could potentially be more powerful in a tense moment with its ability to reset an attack’s speed or damage. I also cut a Duplicitous Recollection and added two Support from the Female Titan that were graciously lent to me by Paul.
My build turns were good and if all went well (Richard didn’t find a turn two Titanpile, for instance) I was able to consistently flip and close out the game on turn three. Winning the coin flip wasn’t quite good enough in my mind, though. That might work against aggro decks, but what about midrange and control decks? I needed to see my pieces faster, more consistently.
The deck was at about sixty-eight cards but trimming it down to the minimum of sixty would enable me to see the things I wanted to more often. There were several cards that I had put in for additional speed hate, some defensive pieces that just weren’t relevant anymore if the plan was to see gas on turn two and three and “just kill ‘em.” With Richard’s guidance, I cut Fast Friendship, Yeagerist Follower, Protecting Yukina, Dark Ward and my one-of Surprising Strength to hit an even sixty.
I put it to the test against Derek’s Beast Titan. BT is a nasty midrange deck that can swing for huge numbers, particularly with the addition of Nine Titans. Beast Titan Attacks is my worst nightmare as a seven-hand-size, twenty-one health character: BT can sacrifice one of its numerous backups to give the attack throw, and then double the damage with Nine Titans, often making it lethal even if I block it. Then Beast Titan builds it down, picks up another giant attack out of the discard pile, and it’s usually curtains after that.
The first game I lost by a wide margin to a barrage of attacks including the strategy that I outlined above. The second game went more in my favor. Derek overextended and was left with an empty hand after one of his turns. I managed to run an extended attack string ending in Harness Undeath. As I counted the backups in my discard pile, Derek reminded me that the attack counts backups in all discard piles. That brought the eventual burn amount up to 19, which was enough to close the game out.
After that match, I had to head home to take care of errands for the family. But the games kept replaying in my mind. I needed better defense for unsuccessful attack turns, and I also needed answers when my turns were disrupted by effects like Breaker and Kaya’s Compassion.
The next day, I played some TTS games with the team and asked for some control matchups. I was met with void Rodan, Giant Monster of the Sky and void Izuku Midoriya, On the Move.
Both games were very unsuccessful (I rage quit out of one after being hit with Breaker: 5 on a win turn). I felt a familiar sense of dread set in. This was the same feeling I’d had when my previous decks started to run into bad matchups or other issues. It’s a deep frustration, and usually feels like an indictment of my deckbuilding or piloting abilities.
I was determined not to let that feeling win this time.
I posted the decklist up to the team’s chat and asked if anyone had any recommendations. My two rivals for testing both said it was in a great place, but perhaps my card choices were ill suited for the turn two or three win that I was looking for.
We decided to rebalance the deck, replacing Sole Motivation with Pass Through Walls and Dark Ward, which would negate Breaker effects and offer an answer to assets until I could find other asset hate pieces. We also dropped the number of two-difficulty backups down and added 6 Yeagerist Followers, since their scaling speed reduction offered a good replacement for Sole Motivation’s effect.
On the attack side, we dropped Surprising Transformation and replaced it with Seafood Slugger, Pact of Wrath, and Camouflage Counter. These utility pieces should offer some answers to other problem pieces on rival boards like Military Airship, Cape of No Return, and Genkai’s Guidance.
I’m excited to try this new build out and make more tweaks from there. I’ll see you all later this week with an update, and as always – keep coping!