Grand Showdown Tournament Report

So initially, I had no intention of attending this event, as the flight cost is extremely high, and the format is very unforgiving (have to have very good breakers for 5-2 or place X-1 or higher) into single elimination top 32, which is awful.

However, a week ahead of the event, the local Chinese whale decided he wanted to sponsor my trip for an 80% cut of prizing, which I agreed to. Naturally, I let him know that I didn't think it was worth it for him, but I think he wanted to gamble (lol) and also because it's naturally easier to purchase the prize cards in person than to deal with it online later.

The bad news? I finished 5-2 with bad breakers (but wait until you hear the story of round 6!)

The good news? Well, we did, in fact, manage to pick up a playset of every prize card and a playmat for my friend, the Chinese whale, so at least we still met our base obligations!

Deck Choice

I still stand by Kuon as the best deck in the format.

I made only a single change to the decklist presented in the guide, which was Angelic Snipe > Wind Blast. The reason for this change is that I expected Egg Haven to be somewhat popular, and Angelic Snipe is very important for that matchup, especially when going first. It's a pretty small change overall though.

Tournament

Roughly 250 players with 7 rounds, meaning 16 5-2s make top 32 and the other 30 5-2s don't make it.

Round 1 - Bye card

Round 2  

Kuon Mirror. I lose the dice roll, opponent chooses to go second. He misses the Penguin Wizard opener on turn 2 (as do I, for that matter), but he draws into it for turn 3 and it's just downhill from there. Although I clear it, he is able to repeatedly flood the board with Curse Crafter and Demon Caller, and reaches Kuon threshold significantly earlier. I drew 0 Curse Crafter compared to his 3 + penguin wizard + double trail of light. On turn 8, I leave enough pp open for Rimewind, but I lose regardless as he has double Kuon Dshift Merlin.

The very sad thing is that I had to play Penguin Wizard on turn 8 to cycle + get to Kuon threshold. I did not have the Trad Sorc in hand to start the turn, and after drawing into it, I was semi-board locked due to having a 2/2 on-field + penguin that could not trade into anything, which meant that I could not play Trad Sorc + Kuon to get the ward on Celestial.

Very unfortunate game, but it is what it is.

Round 3  

Yokai Abyss. I win the dice roll, go second. I play as if it's Silence, but after a while, it becomes clear the man is cooking with Yokai/Demonlord Eachtar package. From turn 6 onwards, he starts chaining Eachtars on me and pushing ridiculous boards on me, but due to me leaving my Curse Crafter standing and refusing to swing his face with my followers, I am able to leverage them to clear his board. Importantly, on one turn, I was able to use my standing Curse Crafter's effect for 4 damage, by playing Shikigami Summons play a second Curse Crafter, evo it for 4 damage, use its effect for another 4 damage etc.

I also drew multiple Merlins, which combined with the standing Curse Crafter allowed me to out his board repeatedly, until I eventually had the combo for game.

Round 4 - Egg Haven

I choose to go first, he opens with the standard aggro curve which I clear. I play Demoncaller on turn 3 to make the Alice play more awkward (surefire bullet in hand for huge tempo swing), but he plays Tin Soldier instead, which I cannot easily clear. On my turn I evo demon caller and push face, which is where it gets interesting.

Of course, I'm aware the entire time that Surefire Bullet is invalidated by Andromeda. He plays Alice on turn 4 and I ask him "trading into my Demoncaller"? He says yes.

He does his search and he goes into his movement to swing and when he sees I have a response he's like oh actually I want to play Andromeda first. I think by the rules he's not really able to take it back, but since I had Rimewind, I just let it go.

Rimewind on Tin Soldier there is actually super effective, and then I clear the rest of his board pretty easily. He never draws/play Humpty, so there's practically no real burn threat the entire game despite him putting up a few challenging board states. I eventually find time to chain heal with concentrations/merlin and it becomes impossible for him to close the game out before Dshift Kuon combo.

Round 5 - Aggro Rune

I made the mistaken assumption he was on Kuon, but it becomes super obvious when he starts playing 1-drops and Charming Gentlemouse that he's on something else.

I have Penguin Wizard but it's actually a very awkward game state where Gentlemouse's evo effect lets it do 5 damage together with the swing. So I trade the Penguin into his 2/2 so make it 2/3, thus making the Gentlemouse trade very awkward (as it will ping it to 1 hp, but he's going to be reluctant to trade from there).

I take quite a bit of damage but ultimately stabilise. In the penultimate turn, he plays Truth's Adjudication and he's like "ping your follower" and I'm like cool, then he's like "and also ping your leader". And I have to pause for a second and check his field and he actually has two mages.

He drops me to 6, and I have the option to Curse Crafter to full clear him, or I can go Trad Sorc + Kuon, heal to 8 and presume he can't clear the board easily.

I opt for the latter, and he plays Zodiac Demon, discards Kuon and burns me for 7, putting me down to 1hp. He doesn't have the final damage from there and I win the following turn.

Round 6- Kuon Mirror

This entire match was super cringe from the very beginning.

We start with shuffling our decks, and then passing to opponent to shuffle. I take his deck and I shuffle his deck as I do for many of my other opponents, slanted diagonally so I cannot see the cards, while performing a few cuts and a few mid air riffles. While this is happening, my opponent drops one of my cards onto the floor. I'm in the middle of shuffling his deck, so I'm simultaneously switching my focus between watching him pick up my card, and shuffling his deck (which I obviously need to look at because I'm shuffling the cards at a 45 degree diagonal angle.

He calls a judge after he picks up my card from the floor, and what he says next is shocking. He goes "I think my opponent is stacking my deck, can you please shuffle my deck for me"

And I'm just sitting there thinking "what the fuck" lol. This guy drops my card onto the floor so he potentially gets info on my deck (I can't see if the card dropped is face up or face down) and this guy is calling a judge to accuse ME of cheating!? Supposedly his justification was that my eyes were shifting between his deck and him while I was shuffling, but that was obviously because this motherfucker dropped my card on the floor. Not that.... having shifty eyes is indicative of stacking in the first place???

Judge finishes shuffling the deck and passes back to me to cut. I do the same shuffle I did before in front of both of them (lmao).

In any case, he passes my deck back to me, and then I notice immediately that my outer sleeves are fractured. Like some of them had not only peeled off, but had been outright damaged to the point where a quarter of the sleeve had peeled inwards, rendering it completely unusable. I then noticed that a few other sleeves were the same and had obviously been handled with zero care by him while shuffling my deck. This also takes time for me to literally unsleeve my Evolve Deck cards to replace the outer guard sleeves. So yeah, the game starts probably 5 mins in, and I was too shocked by the whole chain of events to ask for a time extension from this bullshit. I play a lot of card games, and even in sweatier games like One Piece, I've never had an opponent like this guy. Also the first time I've ever been accused of stacking ha ha ha.

In any case, game plays out like a fairly standard Kuon Mirror. I drop a big board on him (can't remember if this was a Kuon on just a random wide board), he gets forced to Merlin + Crimson Meteor Storm to clear. I drop Trad Sorc Kuon, he goes for his Kuon + Shift turn. It gets to the point where he has 1 Kuon left in deck and Dshift in hand and a wide board which I answer using Merlin Witch Bolt etc. I have second Kuon + Trad Sorc to swing face and the hp total is around 14-6 HP, with me being vastly in the lead (probably like 90-10 odds to win, esp cause i have Merlin + Adjudication still in deck), even with him topping 3rd Kuon with Shift, there's no chance he has enough resources to close out the game.

Time gets called, we're probably around 5 mins away from finishing the match (which is very sad if you consider the bullshit he pulled at the start of the round). As is normal behaviour, both players show hand, it's very obvious I'm ahead and I would win the game if it progressed. I ask him if he can just give me the win, he goes "no, I'm going to give you the double game loss".

For context, double game loss is almost always wrong. It's better for one of the players to win because if you are going to lose anyway, then it's better if your opponent has higher tiebreakers. This is why most people are fairly reasonable about this and will give the opponent the win if it's clear that they would have won the game if it continued on.

In any case, I ask him directly "What have I done to you to deserve this?" and he goes "it's nothing personal, I just think that I'll have a higher chance to make top 32 if you are out of the running for it, than the extra 2% tiebreaker from you having the win." I try to explain to him that it's almost always (if not outright always) better to have the 2% TB in this scenario, but he's pretty steadfast and reports it as a double loss.

When he said it wasn't personal, at first, I was like, okay, I guess it's OK if he genuinely believes this. But then I was like, he's literally killing my run cause my TBs are not very good, and he's almost definitely wrong in his reasoning from an objective viewpoint. So at this point, I assume the bridge is burned already and I just give him the final ultimatum, which is that if he reports it as a double game loss, I'll just scoop round 7/drop cause I cant make it anyway, which would therefore make it a 4% penalty to his TBs (basically run-ending in most scenarios).

It's unsuccessful in changing his mind so it's like cool, my tournament run is over in the most stupid way possible.

He queues into Bella in round 7 and loses to her, so it doesn't even matter. Also, according to Bella, he tried to shark her in round 7 as well, so obviously, he's just an all-around cunt and it probably wasn't actually personal lol.

Round 7 Control Haven

I can't top at this point anyway, but regardless, we play it out. He has Marwynn Evo turn 4, leaves it standing, and has Boost Kicker on his next turn (thankfully not Jeanne). This let me clear out his board and relieve the pressure. Although he drops me fairly low, I am able to clear his board on every turn afterward. I am eventually able to set up two d-shifts over separate turns, and this is enough to close the game with only 1-2 cards left in deck.

Thankfully, Bella literally rolls my r6 opponent in record speed, so there's no need to consider conceding round 7 and I get to just finish 5-2. I also did confirm it with my opponent, but he also wouldn't have made it with his TBs, so it was ultimately a meaningless match, as expected.

Final thoughts

I can't really regret my choice of deck for the tournament because, realistically, I should have finished the Swiss round 6-1 or potentially squeezed in with a 5-2 record (as TB is inherently better, as I would be losing to a 6-1 player in R7).

While Kuon had a target on its back, I didn't expect the field to be dominantly Kuon. The deck is somewhat expensive to build and requires a decent amount of pilot skill. In addition, a lot of people were scared of the Amataz matchup, so with all things considered, it makes the choice of Kuon quite acceptable, as it's much harder to target if it's not a super popular deck.

It was definitely pretty annoying to match into a guy like that in Round 6 though, I'm not going to lie. Definitely soured what was otherwise a pretty enjoyable event, meeting a lot of people (including some of the Patrons on here) and checking out LA for the first time again in nearly a decade.

Thankfully, my sponsor wasn't too disappointed about the outcome. He knew the format didn't really make it too likely for a single individual to place well, and the round 6 story is genuinely just unfortunate. I still managed to pick up the prize cards for him at a pretty good price point, so I guess he still got what he wanted, even if it wasn't me who won it for him ~_~!