BCS 2019: ROME Weiss Schwarz Tournament Report

Last weekend, the boys and I drove 9 hours to Rome for BCS 2019, so I thought I’d do another post like this. Due to scheduling this time around, we had to skip Vanguard day and only went to play Weiss, but it was still a lot of fun!

There were 49 players total, and considering that the new set dropped on Friday, it’s no surprise that a lot of us played Bang Dream! I saw a lot of Pasupare with the new Maya combo and some Christmas+Moca builds, but I didn’t run into anyone playing my version of Christmas+Yukina.Game 1, I played against Disgaea (StockSoul/2Soul) and it was one of the weirdest matches I’ve had in a long while. Usually, I get compressed enough with Bandori so that big swings aren’t really a problem, but he managed to sneak a couple 4s and 5s in regardless, and I assume I would have been a little more on edge if it weren’t for the fact that he didn’t cancel anything until level 2. Due to the weird pace of the early game, both of us had a rather weird late game too: I’m still not entirely sure what his overall game plan was, but I believe he was trying to use Flonne and Etna to guarantee hitting higher damage numbers at the end? Either way, I got a reverse with Yukina and that was game, but not before I also managed to get myself a warning for forgetting to resolve a refresh penalty. Yikes 😬.Game 2, I went against Re:Zero (Book/Gate). The game started out well, but I was stuck at level 0 for a while and my brainstormers were nowhere to be seen in the first few turns. When it came to using the Kokoro drop search, I prioritized getting the 3rd copy of Kasumi for the combo, and in hindsight, that was a rather significant misplay on my part, especially knowing how much I usually rely on brainstorming after the 1st refresh. At the time, I assumed I’d be able to grab one off of the event next turn, but two got stuck in clock and the other two must have been somewhere at the very bottom of the deck. My handsize in the last few turns was pretty shit, but my cancels held up until the bitter end – in fact, what killed me was Ram‘s ping for 1. Perfect lethal be damned.

Game 3, I faced Love Live Sunshine (2Soul/Gate) and … I’m not even sure if I wanna talk about that fiasco 😂. See, I was 3 or 4 climaxes out by the end of my first turn: that wouldn’t necessary be the end of the world since I can obviously mill fast, but not as fast as my opponent was slamming down 2Soul climaxes. I think I was level 3 by his 3rd or 4th turn? I kept playing Yukinas just to heal and I kinda hung in there, even got him to level 3 with a few vanilla swings for 4, but I still went down like a sack of potatoes in the end. It was one of those games where the deck just bricks and you’re left salvaging the situation as best as you can – I think I did all I could in that regard. Wouldn’t say I had any misplays in this game, my deck just got stuck in a vulnerable position and my opponent happened to have the best tools for taking advantage of that exact vulnerability.Game 4 was my one and only match against Konosuba (Gate/StockSoul). I must have left all my bad luck in the previous match because this time around, my deck was back to not spewing out half my climaxes on turn one 😀 Between the Hagumi and the new Rinko coinflip, I actually have decent ways of denying reverses, but it’s not something I usually commit to 100% – in this game, it just kinda happened. On his first level 1 turn, I had Rinko and two Hagumis on board: Rinko bounced and that’s the story of how I got two free stock while he got jack shit to reverse. It was such a perfect setup that I almost felt bad for my opponent at that point. What followed were a few turns of me spamming Kasumi and him cancelling quite a lot, to the point where it took me two consecutive turns of Yukina to finally win.Game 5, I played against Bang Dream (Christmas+Moca). For the most part of the early game, it was more or less a mirror match. I got the Kasumi combo 3 turns in a row, my opponent only had it once at level 2. At that point, he began cussing at his draws in Italian every single turn – part of me was amused, part of my was low-key freaked out because holy shit, Italians are scary when they’re mad. I survived his final turn of triple Moca and killed him with two Yukinas and the Kokoro Musashi.Game 6 was again vs. Bang Dream, but a different build this time (8Gate Pasupare). Gotta say, I think this new build is super cool, especially because the only similar combos are in Summer Pockets and the latest JP Sunshine set as far as I recall – so this is essentially the first of its kind in English! Anyway, this was a rather interesting game because my deck isn’t really equipped to deal with level 2 walls all that well, and I kept getting CXs stuck in stock on top of losing board every turn too. But during what I was pretty sure was my final turn, by some bloody miracle, my opponent took 9 straight damage and died!

After the Swiss rounds, because of my 2 early losses, I didn’t make it into the top cut, but I had a great time despite that – especially in the last few games! This was my second time playing in Rome – I loved coming back there because the staff at the shop are absolutely incredible!

Since the new WSEL season doesn’t start until next year, I’ll be taking a break from playing competitively for a while now – time to test new wacky decks and write more articles, I suppose 🙂 First thing on my list are new Bandori fever builds, especially since I bought some boxes before the event and had nice pulls!