Ms. Leonhart, Or: How I Learned to Stop Whining and Embrace the Meta (Part 5)
by Dani Diaz
Part 5 - Finally Free 3-0
This was not what I expected.
Over the last few weeks, I've been working on this Annie list and playing games as much as my free time would allow for. I missed our weekly locals last week because I was busy answering hot questions and eating even hotter wings at my Hot Ones-themed birthday party (it was a blast, by the way). I went into this weekly tournament with no expectations of how I would do, because testing was a little mixed so far.
During the past week, I went 1-2 into Richard's Hange Zoe list, with games going to turn 3 every time. I managed to eke out a 2-1 set against my nemesis Rodan with turn 5 wins. We ran one game into Eren Yeager, Usurper, which I won on turn 4 before I had to attend some work meetings. I also had some matches against Armin Arlert, Power of the Colossus, Mollymauk, and Falco Grice, which ended up with a positive record for me. Overall in games, I was at nine wins and four losses, with a turn four average win turn. In the games I won, I felt in control; in the ones I lost, I felt powerless.
I've been taking my notes, writing down my comments, concerns, worries and wonders. With each game I've been feeling a bit more confident and feeling the urge to change the decklist less and less. There was one final change I felt I needed to the attack line-up, one that I initially resisted because it felt too obvious: I needed Vast Hybrid Chimera Kraken.
Kraken's been in basically all my decks since I bought the cards. It offers a high level of value with the commit and freeze enhance, the commit an asset enhance, great base stats and a playable enhance while in momentum. It's just a GREAT card and is especially valuable in a meta where assets have a ton of power and it's crucial to control tempo. I slotted three in to go with my three Seafood Sluggers and went to locals.
The Coping with Cardboard locals has a wide variance of decks, from people bringing "haha funny" stuff to competitive, regional-hopeful lists. We have a big event coming up in June, the StarkDark Open Series, so people are starting to bring more competitive decks to try and get their testing in. My three opponents for locals this week were a mix of the two categories, which led to some very fun games. Let's get into the report.
Round One: Paul B on Erwin Smith, 13th Commander of the Survey Corps (Attuned Death/Order)
Paul is working on a video for our channel where he makes a deck out of a single box of Attack on Titan: Battle For Humanity and upgrades it with sealed product as he goes. This made for a very fun matchup where I didn’t know most of the cards in the deck.
In game 1, I was set up for a turn 2 flip with a Finally Free and Theo on board with a grip of momentum-gaining attacks. I could flip and go for the win, so I saw red and slammed down Support from the Female Titan. First enhance, I flipped Finally Free to cheat a momentum. Paul looked down at his board and flipped over Plea for Reason. “Okay, I flip this and you spend a momentum,” he said calmly. My vision blurred. What was this card? Common draft chaff from the first AoT set? I asked to read it. Sure enough, a one difficulty common that said “Flip: Your rival spends 1 momentum.” My gameplan had been disrupted so easily.
I reeled for a second, then decided to play safe for the rest of the match. I did manage to flip turn three and overpower him in game one with a string of Support into Harness Undeath with enough backups in my discard to burn him to zero health.
The second match went about the same, but my attack turn after flipping was Support into Seafood Slugger, into two The Jaw Titan’s Bites. We managed to finish out both games on turn 3, but they were definitely two of the more stressful games I’ve had with Annie. Paul’s skill as a pilot outweighs the jankiness of his sealed deck, and he had solid answers for what I was trying to do. It was a wake-up call for me.
Paul later admitted that I was the matchup he was loathing the most, and of course we got paired round one. It feels good to be the villain.
Round Two: Kylie B on Katsuki Bakugo .IV (Air)
Kylie was one of the very first people I ever played at locals, along with her husband Richard and their friend Colton. We have a lot in common and always have a good laugh whenever we play. She’s a sweetheart and I love her to death! With that in mind, I was terrified when I saw who she was playing.
Bakugo IV is one of my pet decks, as mentioned in Part 1. I loved playing him and getting better at the game. He is particularly bad for my character because of his persistent response on face: “After your Fury attack receives a damage penalty, it gets +3 damage.” With Bakugo’s kit alone, his attacks can get to huge damage numbers, and he only got more tools in more recent sets.
This matchup is terrible for my gameplan because I want to flip to Annie’s Female Titan, Finale side as fast as possible, and use damage reduction to survive whatever attacks the rival throws at me. With Bakugo’s response, that advantage is completely negated. My normal combo of damage reduction from Annie’s enhance and Theo’s response would actually cause him to go POSITIVE on damage.
I grimaced a bit when I got confirmation on that from our locals judges. “Okay,” I thought, “I just gotta kill fast.” Bakugo has 30 health, which at the time of his release was a pretty tanky six-hander. Killing fast might be a little harder than I thought.
I managed to win these games because of unfortunate checks on Kylie’s side. She repeatedly checked Explosive Rebuke, a two check, in critical moments which stalled both her build turns and her attack turns. Along with judicious application of Filled with Doubt to seal crucial opening attacks, her offense was never able to get started. I won the first game with an extended string of two Vast Hybrid Chimera Krakens, Seafood Slugger, Rapid Speed Slash, and Harness Undeath after some truly impressive chain blocking on Kylie’s end. In the second game she had such a minimal stage due to two checks that I closed it out with a Rapid Speed Slash and two The Jaw Titan’s Bites.
While I did win, Kylie didn’t misplay at all. She did her absolute best, with the right plays, and the cards just weren’t on her side. I’m looking forward to our next matchup and I hope it goes way more smoothly for her.
Round Three: Derek S on Zeke Yeager, Warchief (Life)
Going into this matchup 2-0, I felt pretty good overall. I knew I couldn’t rest if I wanted to succeed against Derek though, as he’s a talented pilot who has a lot of experience on Beast Titan and his variants (Is it set 1 Zeke even though it’s just Beast Titan? Shoutout Kevin Broberg).
Against another backup deck like Zeke, the goal is always to get a Harness Undeath through and let the burn do the work. Derek expected this, of course, and did his absolute best to hold the low blocks or damage reduce my attacks so the on-damage trigger could never occur.
These games lasted the longest of any I’d played in the tournament thus far, both lasting until my turn 4. Derek played impeccable defense, sealing my key pieces with Filled with Doubt and stalling my offense as much as he could. On one play of The Jaw Titan’s Bite, he instantly slapped Filled with Doubt down and said “No, Dani, you don’t get to make your entire hand Jaw Titan’s Bites,” which got a laugh out of me.
Thankfully I managed to get a Seafood Slugger into my momentum face up, which allowed me to seal one of his key defensive pieces, Keiko’s Aid, on my first form each attack turn. Without the threat of an additional two difficulty to offset my character’s check bonus, I could roughly run my offense the way I wanted. Both games ended with a Harness Undeath burning for lethal.
Concerning Harness Undeath
This prompted a discussion about the power level of the card itself. Harness Undeath has probably been my favorite card since Critical Role’s release. I love that it makes playing backups worth it by ramping your offense for each backup that has ended up in your discard pile. It’s very flavorful to the subject character in Critical Role and just happens to be on a few of my favorite symbols. I mean, it won me four of my six games at this tournament. It pains me to not run four in Annie, honestly.
But when paired against another backup deck, the card quickly goes from potent offensive piece with major upside to game-ending threat almost any time after the second or third turn. This is a major piece of the card’s flavor (“I’ll use your fallen party members against you!”) but it can get out of hand with a ton of pink cards in play. I don’t know what the right answer is to balance it, or if it even needs it, but it’s something I’ll enjoy while I have it in its current state.
Looking Forward
So, I ended up 3-0, not dropping a single game throughout my tournament run. This is the first time that’s ever happened, and it feels great to know that my deck is well-tuned and my skills as a pilot are progressing. I’m looking forward to more locals tournaments as we get closer to Louisville so I can experience some different matchups and fine-tune the deck as needed.
Near the end of June, our local game store CounterSpell Games is hosting the StarkDark Open Series, a 2.5K tournament with some major names in UniVersus attending. This will be an amazing opportunity to test my skills against some of the best in the game before the Louisville Regional so I can make some last second tweaks.
How have YOUR tournament experiences been going? Let’s start a conversation in the comments below!
Thanks for reading and supporting the articles, and as always – keep coping!