Ms. Leonhart, Or: How I Learned to Stop Whining and Embrace the Meta (Part 9)
by Dani Diaz
Part 9: The Drawing Board
It’s been a long week since StarkDark.
I spent much of it recapping the event for this very article series, and that afforded me a lot of time for introspection. They say that if you can teach a subject, you truly know the material. Explaining the card, explains the card and all that. I think the same is true for examining your thought processes and putting them in a readable format for the internet to read. In the process, you gain a better understanding of why you felt the way you did, and how to cope (pun not intended) with the consequences.
The day after the event, I decided to look at my notes about what worked and what didn’t. Something the deck greatly struggled with was any character who reduced speed on face, characters like Pieck Finger and Jean Kirstein. With enough speed and damage reduction, even my longer attack strings could be handled with ease by the defender. Playing too many attacks trying to get one through would deplete my resources and leave me defenseless for a backswing. A lot of these insights are UniVersus 101, but it was the first time my status quo of “aggro until they’re down” was sufficiently challenged.
We went out to get food with most of the top 8 after the tournament on Saturday and I was seated opposite Tim Keefe. We talked a bit about Annie and he mentioned that she could be deceptively hard to play because of the resource management aspect of her gameplan. You must ensure you spend your momentum appropriately to set up both defensive and offensive turns, which is a deeper puzzle than it appears on the surface.
After thinking on it overnight, I decided to modify the deck to solve the dual problems of attacks being blocked and running out of cards in my hand. I figured that if I overloaded one zone, it would eventually be impossible for the opponent to hold the right block zone. On the attack side, I added Duplicitous Recollection and Female Titan’s Roundhouse Kick to add some utility and add to the mono-low game plan. Roundhouse Kick even has EX:3, which would help me break through some defenses to score some damage. In my mind, the shifted side of that card would even help a little bit if I had to destroy further foundations by adding a card back into my momentum.
So, I came up with another decklist with a very heavily revised gameplan: stay on front side longer, get some pokes through and stock up momentum, then flip for the win turn. I decided to test this out with teammate and fellow creator Thomas (check out his videos on our YouTube!) in a few different matchups. We played 5 games, which let me get a feel for the deck.
It was absolutely awful.
I thought I’d look forward to playing my high difficulty cards because they had massive upside. Duplicitous Recollection lets me cheat in Nine Titans, for crying out loud! The concept seemed so clear in my head. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case once the virtual cards started hitting the table.
Playing the 7 and 6 diff attacks meant I was typically down on tempo in the beginning of the game, which was already an extremely limited commodity. There were too many answers to their big effects, such as Filled with Doubt and attack removal abilities. My rhythm was so thrown off by their presence in the deck, and I didn’t see them enough to even gauge their effectiveness. Simply put, the vibes were off.
I needed a solution to my moves getting blocked constantly, and one possible answer came to me via Richard – Nejire Wave.
It was something I’d never considered, but Nejire Wave has two great things going for it: it punishes the rival for blocking by adding 2 damage for each attack that was previously blocked, and it has an on-play response to spend a momentum to force the rival to commit three of their foundations. It’s a perfect fit for a momentum-hoarding deck like Annie and for a player that is struggling to get attacks through.
While we were assessing what to cut for it, we also noticed a third advantage: it being a mid zone attack might force the rival to shed low blocks to try to stop it, opening the possibility of an echoed Harness Undeath win. One of the big offenders for getting blocked in the deck was The Jaw Titan’s Bite, which is a three speed high attack. Multiple copies help its case, but Nejire Wave just felt like it had more utility. I cut the four Jaw Titan’s Bites and slotted in four Nejire Waves.
Without The Jaw Titan’s Bite, I needed to look at ways to filter my hand or just draw more cards. I added four Fearsome Transformations to assist with that. The filter aspect would almost be nonexistent because I always had a way to cheat a momentum, but it’s always nice to have the option. I also added a League Interview as a one of when I had the higher difficulty attacks in the deck, and decided to leave it there to either guarantee early string checks or help with blocking.
Filled With Doubt felt very good to play on my rival’s key attack cards, but I felt the burn of adding another card to my cardpool and having to deal with the increased progressive difficulty, even with my check manipulations. So I decided to swap the action slot with Surprising Strength, a three difficulty action that gives an attack EX or Powerful: 2, while also putting itself into my momentum. It was a key card in my Sasha deck and it felt great in initial testing. This would open the door to a win condition of either a buffed Nejire Wave or an extremely fast Harness Undeath, and both of those options were just fine with me. It would be worth testing and seeing how it felt over the next couple of weeks before I needed to lock in my deck for Louisville.
We’re awaiting the final ban and errata list before the Louisville Regional as I type this, and if there are no major changes, I’ll need to really think about how to slay my own meta demons in the leadup to the tournament. It’ll take some time, dedication, and precise play, but after searching through cards – and my own feelings – I believe I’m up to the challenge. Thanks for joining on the journey, and until next time, keep coping my friends.