BSF 2024: Germany Weiss Schwarz Tournament Report

Besides Belgium, this was the second Springfest I attended this season (and also my last one). I didn’t have time to write one of these after Belgium where I got 2nd place with Steve and Kevin, so I hope my Munich run to 1st place with Denis and Filip will be sufficiently illustrative of the I-No deck and its matchups in practice 🙂 And don’t worry, a detailed deck tech post is also coming later this week!

Event Stats

Teams: 34
Rounds: 6 swiss + top 8

Overall Set Representation

Top 8 Set Representation

The Team

I played I-No for the obvious reason of ‘I love the deck’ and the apparently less obvious reason of ‘deck kinda good into a lot of the meta rn.’ I’m pretty sure Denis went through every Hololive build on the planet and I guess Chloe/Marine was what he landed on in the end: it’s a nice deck and I think we both value the Marine consistency and stock efficiency over the Gura high rolls. And Filip was on Meliodas because he didn’t have Hendrickson pieces, and also because Meliodas at least theorethically does something vs Avatar (if they don’t kill you from level 2, but oh well).

Swiss Matchup Recaps

Round 1

This was a textbook case of Weiss, more or less: good plays carried a few lengths further by some good luck. I canceled many of the problematic early swings for 3 and 4, so I pulled ahead at the start. I got my first I-No out on board at level 1, and then I spent two more turns at level 1 from all the cancels – it got to the point when I couldn’t even loop the combo anymore because I wasn’t level 2 yet so I couldn’t play Happy Chaos to grab more I-No and the Door.

That whole debacle left me with a heaping pile of clean stock, so my opponent eventually stockswapped me when I had 11 stock and 12 cards in deck with (I think) 4 climaxes. That allowed them to close the damage gap a bit, but at the same time, it meant I had space to soak up some damage. The turn after, it was Arifureta’s 2nd turn at level 3, and I was left with 8-ish clean damage in deck so the Bridget free-fresh counter was absolutely instrumental there.

And they’d eventually get a 3rd level 3 turn too, because even with throwing all my burn 2s at them, they were just too stock compressed for me to get enough damage on them in one turn. Guilty Gear doesn’t have a stockwap, so they lived at mid level 3 while I was at 3-1, but they only had 1 stock and 1 card in hand after drawing. We were down to the last 40 seconds of the game at that point, and they chose to forfeit rather than letting it go to double loss because there was no way they could kill me, and I would have won next turn.

I appreciate that approach to the situation because I have the same mentality, but at the same time, it’s definitely not a call I’d want players to be making in a competitive environment, especially in team format. I know for myself that I want to play meaningful games that see their rightful end, and my opponent not winning only because of a timer would definitely leave a sour taste in my mouth. But it’s much easier to exercise personal ethics about timers and forfeiting games when the outcome of your own match doesn’t also influence the outcome of the round for your teammates, who might have different expectations in that situation.

That’s not to say I’m against the current 35 minute timer – I think it’s there for a reason, and in the whole 6 rounds we’ve only had one other game on our team that came close to a double loss, so it’s not like it’s a complete disaster or anything. This game was definitely an outlier because it was just canceling back and forth the whole time, so there wasn’t really anything we could have done to make it go by faster. If people ain’t dying they just ain’t dying! But yeah, I just wanted to acknowledge the awkward situations that time limits can put players in, and I hope everyone on the opposing team was content with how our game got resolved. We vaguely know each other, but not that well so I didn’t have the chance to ask how they did afterwards.

Round 2

There’s a song I found the week before this tournament, and part of the lyrics goes I’m not proud of that position, but it’s the hand that I’ve been dealt. But as far as I’m concerned, that hand can go to hell. Wanna know what this matchup was? It was exactly that. I go first and draw 2 Doors in my initial 5 cards. Drop both and get a Standby, which is good but overall not ideal because I evidently don’t wanna start games with 3 CX out of the deck. But I tell myself it’s fine, we’ve been here before, I can manage this as long as I don’t get rushed early. And then I look up and see my opponent is mulliganing Azure Lane cards 🙃

By some fucking miracle, I still canceled a turn one swing for 3 and a turn two swing for 4, which gave me just enough breathing room to be able to start aggressively pushing damage on my end too. I lucked out on my level 1 combo turn with a Standby trigger, so I brought out another Happy Chaos in backrow and had double I-No next turn while I was still level 1 (probably like 1-5 or 1-6). By then, I also spent all my surplus resources on milling my deck since the free-fresh counter was at the bottom of my stock (RIP), so I essentially played the rest of the game on 1 or 0 cards in hand the whole time. It probably looked bad, but it didn’t actually feel that uncomfortable to be honest. They couldn’t out the two I-No, so I just sat on them and kept doing jazz hands magic tricks to loop the Door while managing my compression.

Which, to be fair, is what the deck comes down to in times of crisis anyway. I’ll go more into it in the deck tech post, but the Millia handfilter being able to handfix you 2 cards for free while also being a ditch outlet in a deck that needs 2 pieces to loop combo from Waiting Room is just *chef’s kiss.* I didn’t feel bad on low hand because I was still in control of what I had in hand, and that’s all the deck really needs in a situation like this. You know how sometimes in a game of Weiss, your opponent lives when they really shouldn’t, but they’ve got 1 stock and 1 card in hand so you’re kinda like well what’s the worst they can do? Yeah, well – the people I’ve been playtesting the deck with have stopped saying that to me after being slammed with the ‘guy guy I-No climax burn 2’ special out of seemingly nothing one too many times. Point being, low hand is something I feel comfortable with even on my deathbed with this deck, so being in that situation much earlier in the game didn’t particularly rattle me either. Not in this matchup at least.

Anyway, back to the game: I bring out my double I-No at late level 1, and my opponent has 3 CX in waiting room with 4 cards in deck. It can be tricky to follow climaxes in Bar decks, because fuck if I know if the Bar they’re slamming now is what they triggered last turn or what they already had in hand on top of that, but I digress. I correctly assumed 2 CX were left in deck, so using the first I-No to shuffle back their waiting room was a no-brainer, and they ate 4 damage after that. Our damage was kinda equalized by that point, and I think I canceled two of their next attacks. On my 2nd double I-No turn, they skipped level 2 entirely from a burn 2 and another shuffleback. I was at 2-2 when they were 3-2, and then they misplayed the restander that needs full board by slamming Bar and bouncing two Taihou back to their hand. On the bright side, it at least didn’t actually matter because I had plenty of room to take 4 attacks, and I canceled twice anyway. Next turn I had triple I-No with 3x burn 2, so they were deader than dead.

Unfortunately, so was Filip who died from Hendrickson from mid level 2. You may say that’s expected with their decompression tools, but nah he wasn’t decompressed at all, he just managed to shuffle 4 climaxes to the bottom of his deck. He went back with 7 in 20-something, and 6 of those climaxes were in the bottom 11 cards of the deck – it was brilliantly painful to see. Denis also lost to Ramlethal, so this was our first loss of the tournament. Not the best for our tiebreakers, but still better than a round 1 loss I guess.

Round 3

The CSM player actually got a game loss after playing Easy Revenge with Kishibe on board, which wasn’t noticed until several actions later so the head judge ruled it as a game loss to them and a warning to Denis for not noticing the misplay earlier. I was kinda unnerved by it because I saw Kishibe on board at the start of the turn and had the instinct to comment on it, but obviously that’s not really something you’re supposed to do in the middle of your own game (against a team we didn’t know no less), so I figured surely the player would remember to overplay and/or Denis would notice. But neither of those things happened, and the outcome was what it was. However, the situation was made a bit more palatable to me (and hopefully also the other team) with the fact that Denis was still level 2, he had 2 CX on top of a 7 card deck and one CX second from the bottom, opponent only had 1 Aki with 3 events and didn’t even have the CX in hand (or so I heard). Point being, he would have almost certainly lived, and then if Marine wouldn’t be lethal from 3-3, idk what would be. But I think that makes the gameloss less painful than if it were to get in the way of a likely or guaranteed win instead, so I hope they didn’t beat themselves up about it too much afterwards.

My game, on the other hand, was absolute brutality – for my opponent, that is. The start was very standard and by the book: Riki into Jack-O, then top check rearrange 2 to know what I’m triggering before I shuffle deck with Jack-O again. I actually really love that play, because if I see a climax I don’t wanna trigger, I can just attack with Jack-O first or second to hopefully shuffle it somewhere else, and if I don’t see a climax, I know my triggers are clean. However on this occasion, I saw a Standby on top of the deck. So I check my waiting room and yup, two Happy Chaos ready to go. I put the Standby back second from the top, slam Standby, trigger the other Standby, search two Asuka backups on the third attack with Jack-O combo.

My opponent looked at my board and asked if I have to be level 2 to do the “change” thing.

I said no.

And then I wasn’t, because I was at 1-0 or 1-1 at the start of their turn, and I canceled one of their attacks.

So there I am, sitting on double I-No at level 1 for the second game in a row, and I’m feeling pretty good about myself. After setting up the board, I went over where all of my pieces were, and I noticed I had 4 clean left in deck before attacks. Great! I can slam CX and then still refresh with it, that’s good, right? Well, not necessarily. Refreshing with all my Doors in deck is actually a pretty daunting prospect with I-No, because the whole point of the deck is the ease and consistency with which you can loop the combo, and that gets exponentially diminished if you have to mill and brainstorm and perform black magic just to try to get a Door into waiting room.

Now remember, I was resolving 2 Happy Chaos, so at this point I was debating whether I take another door from 2nd effect and refresh 7, or refresh 8 and then gamble on milling the Door in time. The turn before, my opponent was salvaging more Calli off their double Calli combo, and I didn’t see the 2/1 Anya anywhere, so I made an educated guess that my board would live, thus I decided to salvage the extra door and keep it out of refresh. With that sorted, I then ask my opponent how many climaxes they have in waiting room.

They say 7.

I count 10 cards in their deck, and make yet another educated guess that since they were salvaging more Calli and there’s one Choice unaccounted for, it could very well be in their hand. I didn’t necessarily plan to pay 2 burn 2 on both I-No that turn, because it usually pays off to conserve some stock for late game, but obviously that all went out the window at the prospect of so much damage on the table.

So anyway, I started burning and they ate 10, only canceling the last attack after refresh.

I was right on the money with their hand situation, because they followed up with another turn of double Calli combo, crashing into the I-No board and nudging me to 2-2. They were mid level 2 at that point, and I assumed I was fine living triple Marine from that range with my current deck state, so I just slammed a random third attacker plus the Door I kept in hand, hoping I’d bring them to mid level 3 and then end things next turn. And then, if I remember correctly, what happened was this: I burn 2, they cancel then take the attack to bring them to 3-0. I attack with the random third card, they eat 3 again. The second I-No is facing an empty lane, so that’s 4 damage minimum. I was thinking that they’d most likely take the 2 and then cancel the 4 anyway if I burned. Again, I did not expect to kill that turn and I also didn’t expect to die to triple Marine on their turn, so the option of saving 2 stock for the kill turn felt more valuable to me in that position. Shuffleback wouldn’t extremely decompress them, but it would do something at least, so I figured I might as well choose to use it (since I could also just give I-No power and leave their waiting room untouched – the shuffle back is optional alongside the +1500 crossturn boost).

And then I attack for 4 and they die.

‘They eat the four eventually” is my motto for a reason, I guess.

Round 4

Funniest round of the tournament tbh – and I mean that as a compliment! Their third guy bailed on them just before the event, so Filip got an auto win on account of his opponent not existing. They had a cute cat plushie in a deck box as their replacement teammate though, that was super adorable. So we get the introductions and laughs out of the way, Filip stands up next to us and Denis and I take the rare opportunity to get comfy with space on those narrow benches with only two of us on the table.

I start my game and see a Yotsuba deck, which is theorethically supposed to be good news for me since it’s not a meta build. However, I’m currently 3-0 on a deck no one believes is real, and facing a team with the same record as us with one missing player, so thinking I’m about to have it easy on account of a random rogue deck was about damn last on the list of all the thoughts I’d have. In fact, I was actually slightly on edge because I don’t know Yotsuba cards, and I-No really benefits from knowing the field well because the lines of play are very different depending on whether they can deal with her before level 3 or not. I know not every early play deck needs or wants to ask that question, but I sure as hell do, and it’s unnerving when I can’t give myself the answer.

Aside from me needing to pick up lots of cards to read while making plays on the safe side though, it was a pretty normal game up until my opponent got to level 3 with double Yotsuba combo while I was at 2-5 or something like that. Then my deck said nah, we respect the burn 2 in this house, you’re eating and I took everything despite my overall good deckstate; Imma let you guess where all my climaxes were 🙂

Luckily, Denis won his game shortly after so we were still good. But honestly, if we lost and that team continued to do well, I’d pay to watch if they made it into top cut!

Round 5

Finally. Fucking finally! I spent months grinding the CSM matchup. Part of the reason why I chose to run the Axl suicider alongside Jack-O at level 1 was because of Kishibe in the first place. I even joked on Twitter multiple times that people should stop saying Kishibe is not good, because I want to play against all the Kishibes with this deck so people should keep the damn wall in their decks for me to demolish. And yet, I didn’t see a single CSM deck other than this one in both of my regionals somehow. So part of me was trying to not get carried away as soon as I saw Kishibe on the mulligan, and part of me was bouncing off the walls in excitement like a pinball because finally, I get to do my thing.

Arguably, I think my earlier opponents who had to face double I-No at level 1 probably felt worse than this CSM player did, because they can get by fine without Kishibe too, and they did the smart thing of not even trying to go for that board when they saw me grab a suicider on turn 1, but I honestly didn’t care and still don’t. I felt like one of those boxers sitting in the corner of the ring with Steve pouring cold water over my head and saying we trained for this: I had a plan, I executed the plan and it worked.

Plus at some point, they canceled 2 from the I-No burn and then ate a direct for 5, so yeah. I think that was my only attack for 5 in the whole day, and it stuck somehow? Nice.

I was the first to win, Filip died shortly after and then we got to watch the absolutely grueling Hendrickson turn against Denis. I was sure we were done for at that point! I was even preemptively kissing our top 8 chances goodbye, that’s how bad it was looking. If we wanted to get in with a 4-2 record after losing round 2, we probably needed the second loss to be in round 6, not round 5.

But let me tell you: I played the Yukina burn 4 combo for all of 2023 BCS season, and I haven’t seen a single man cancel so many 4s on the 4th card as Denis did in that game. Absolute insanity!

So we won this round despite all odds.

Round 6

I guess this was the round 6 loss that I was hoping for (if any). It also helped that our opponents were apparently the only 5-0 team, so we technically got up-paired and then wiped out, which padded our tiebreakers nicely at least. Given that we all lost, each game was kinda less impactful overall, but on an individual player level, I think this was my most important game of the whole day, so I still have lots to say about it.

Technically, Guilty Gear has the perfect Overlord counter with the 1/0 I-No which gets around hexproof by bouncing their whole front row back to hand, however I just did not want to prioritize space for her in this build on top of all the other things I was already trying to fit. Overlord has been seeing less play this season, so I focused on techning against CSM and Avatar instead. Plus, between the shuffleback taking goats out of their waiting room and the anti-change counter threat, it’s not like the Overlord matchup is outright horrible for my deck or anything, it’s just not optimal. And alot of the ‘not optimal’ also comes from the fact that I have very limited experience playing against current Overlord in the first place. But I did play basically all of the set 1 builds for fun back in the day, so the one thing I know very well is that they do in fact have a rest counter that they’re verry trigger happy with.

So I go into the game with the general idea of well, I should execute the standard plan as usual and prioritize searching out the hexproof, then after my level 1 Standby turn I’ll see where things are and reasses from there. And then Alex, who I was playing against, gets to level 1 first, plays triple combo with the door, and proceeds to trigger 3 more doors. I think he already had a Bar in the waiting room as well, so all of a sudden I’m looking at the Door in my hand and thinking that maybe I shouldn’t climax swap it for the Standby? It’s a risky move to willfully destabilize so early in this deck by forgoing the Standby play on purpose, and the only worthwhile experiences I’ve had with soul rush were games where I happened to pair an early surplus Door with a level 0 trifield utilizing the cleancut, and this very much wasn’t that. But Alex’s deck state was just too good to pass up, so I pivoted from my original game plan entirely and just went to smash face. Two turns in a row, I had the Door to push damage, so he got rushed a lot more than he probably expected, and I was able to get my I-No pieces out eventually as well by hard playing the Happy Chaos. I was still level 1 on his first Ainz turn, so anti-change plans were not an option anyway, but the other thing that got lost in this mess was the hexproof assist.

Which is honestly pretty tragic, because in most of my games before that, I just kinda drew into it and played it early even in matchups or deck states where it certainly wasn’t needed. But perhaps that was part of why I was thinking less about it, and of course the general disarray of the current game didn’t help either.

On the turn when I likely could have ended the game, I had two I-No facing Alex’s board of two Ainz on each side and a level 1 in the middle. And I remember thinking I could side that, but I honestly don’t know what happened with that thought afterwards. I was frazzled by the extremely unorthodox game we were having, excited to have lethal on board and just generally distracted by the prospect of doing well in a matchup I wasn’t very confident in. So I don’t know, I guess my brain just dropped the thought of siding entirely and I started with a front attack on one of the Ainz. Or, now that I think about it, another thing that could have happened is that I focused too much on saving the side attack for possible soul modulation on my last attack, and didn’t even see the anti-counter play in the first place – but I honestly don’t remember, so this is just a theory.

Anyway, I walked into rest counter, lost my kill reach and died next turn.

I wasn’t exactly disappointed per se: sure, it was a stupid fucking misplay that I’ve spent a long time learning not to make, but at the same time, it’s not like I had a perfectly standard game and then dropped the ball while standing still before the finish line. It took a lot for me to evaluate the opportunities opened up by Alex’s sudden decompression at level 1 in the context of my current hand and pre-established game plans, and I don’t personally see myself as someone who’s capable of reliably adapting stuff on the fly, so the fact that I was able to carry out a completely different early game than usual and it still paid off was already a pretty big deal to me, and I’m still proud of that. It kinda balanced out the disappointment I’d get from that misplay otherwise, because at least in this situation, I was able to tell myself look, this was a weird game and you made the best of it, that took a lot of braincells and you know more than anyone that you have your limits, so it’s fine – you didn’t fuck up, you just ran out of steam. A little exercise in being kind to myself, if you will.

Since we’re friendly with this team, after the round is over we just stay in our seats and chat a bit: our side of the table is worrying about our tiebreaks and their side is encoraging us to just start sorting our decks because surely we do make it in with our 4-2 record. And we did, we were 7th after swiss! So I’m taking my deck apart to put it in Decklog order, and Alex and I are talking about the game a bit. He said his personal record was 6-0 at that point, and that their team made a deal that every player gets to lose once – so in all of my whimsy, I shoot back with “Hey, so that loss you haven’t used yet? Save that for the finals, I’m coming back.”

It was supposed to be a joke, but I guess I’m better at clairvoyance than I am at comedy.

Top 8 Matchup Recaps

Before I delve into the main course, I wanna acknowledge that the rest of this post may come across as even more erratic and braggadocious than it possibly already has. I am aware as much as the next guy that for every good RNG and favorable matchup I’m celebrating, I could have just as easily been on the other side of that some other day – because that’s usually where I am in tournaments anyway, or used to be at least. Not allowing for opportunities to get impactfully fucked over by RNG and bad matchups is part of the Weiss skillset, and I am definitely still very much developing that skillset. But I do think I’ve gotten a lot better in the last year or so, especially with the support of all of my incredible friends and community members who have inspired and motivated and coached me to hell and back so that I could improve at turning cards sideways.

I have been playing Weiss for 9 years, and this was my first regional win of any kind. So while I hope that I will still be able to describe my best games in a reasonable and respectful manner, it’s not something I have any practical experience with, so if the rest of this comes off as just one lunatic rambling on her high horse … please know it’s in good faith, and maybe idk, let me have it just this once 🙂

Quarter Finals

This was another team we knew, so we have some chit chat while we’re shuffling our decks, and Denis asks my opponent if they are still playing the Saekano deck or something like that. So now I’m suddenly alert as fuck and having a repeat of the Round 4 Yotsuba moment, because I don’t know Saekano cards that well either, and I really did not wanna start our top 8 game with what I deem to be mine and the deck’s biggest disadvantage – that being lack of information about the opponent’s deck. The whole experience was made even worse by me seeing 8 Pants Spy Family in seat B, because I do know that deck! And I’m pretty good against that deck! I would have loved to play against that deck! But oh well. It would have been a very different format if we could pick our opponents, so I got my shit together and focused on my own matchup.

In general, if I don’t know what to expect in terms of I-No answers, I just play it as standard and as safe as possibile, and prioritize having at least one I-No on board several turns in a row over getting out multiple in one turn only to have them all answered immediatelly on the swing back. So I’m going over that plan in my head again: I’m assesing my own deck state and checking to see where my pieces are … and then I see a Standby on my opponent’s field.

I’m the kind of person who easily gets emotional over simple joys in life, and I genuinely felt like tearing up from happiness in that moment, because that was (presumably) my out: that was my way to get the confidence and control back on my side, and it was very much not something I had been counting on.

As mentioned before, I ran the Axl suicider largely because it is a suicider – and also because Guilty Gear has a limited pool of even remotly okay-ish cards at level 1 anyway, especially in just one color, but that’s beside the point. We are evidently not in a Standby meta right now, so while Axl’s secondary stun effect can be very powerful against those decks, I wasn’t expecting to capitalize off of it in the slightest. At best, maybe 8 Standby Hololive would have a bad time if I ran into them, but I didn’t. And sure, Avatar techically runs a Standby, but they don’t really play as a typical Standby deck, so even stunning the 2/2 or 3/2 Azula in the against them doesn’t feel particularly rewarding when it’s merely a minor hindrance for their billion attack gameplan most of the time.

So it’s not like I saw one Standby and immediatelly thought this was gg ez, but more that I saw a line of play which my deck was uniquely positioned to exploit, and my opponent would likely not be expecting me to do so.

I siwtched my mind over to the anti-standby game plan and made sure I had an Axl available to grab at all times. The first thing I stunned on my level 1 turn was just some 2/1 back row, and perhaps it would have been better to keep the stun hidden as a surprise until it could do something more impactful, but I wasn’t having the best hand and needed him as an attacker anyway. My opponent then does another turn of the on-reverse search combo with the Standby, and on the last attack I thought I missed what they took from the deck, so I asked what they searched for.

“Nothing.”

So there I am: looking at the 4 climaxes in their waiting room, one Standby on the field, one Choice in stock and 2 cards left in a deck they didn’t search anything from with their last combo. Clearly they’ve got two climaxes left in those two cards – meanwhile I’ve got Happy Chaos on board ready to go. I showed them all the pieces the turn before, but I don’t think they actually read the I-No, so no idea if they knew what was coming or not. But as far as I was concerned, Christmas came early this year. Every possible niche thing I was able to exploit, this matchup gave me to exploit.

I shuffled back their waiting room, and they ate 4 damage that turn. Then I stunned the Eriri combo in the back row when they were level 2, and that was pretty much game. I got so far ahead with the I-No burns on the follow up that even their finishing turn didn’t manage to kill me, and I closed the game pretty easily after that.

Semi Finals

Turns out Christmas came early and I got a unicorn for my present.

In complete disbelief over my sheer dumb luck, I even pondered for a moment after seeing Mushoku cards on the mulligan that maybe this is some non-standby spice, but no. There was one single Mushoku deck in this entire tournament, they were running the 8 Standby, and they got sat down against me in the quarter finals. Never before in my entire tournament career have I felt as on top of the world as I did in that moment. I was ecstatic, elated, absolutely overjoyed. And at the same time, tryng to calm the fuck down because a good matchup doesn’t guarantee a win and advantages don’t mean jack shit if I’m not able to capitalize on them. I do get really really excited over these kinda situations, but I do still see every game as an uphill climb that needs to be respected – some just come with better climbing equipment handed to me at the start.

And demolishing this deck wasn’t easy on my side by any means, I wasn’t having a comfortable early game at all – I just knew that was the price to make my opponent have an even worse game.

Turn 1, they Standby out 1/1 Eris in front row. Turn 2, they do the combo and Standby out another Eris in the back, and after two of their three attacks, I am at 0-5. They decide to pass turn and leave me there. Now I don’t know if that was greed or a calculated guess on their part, but I don’t think it was the latter because the Guilty Gear Riki is one of the best cards in the set, and most decks run 3 to 4 copies of it. Given that there were none in my clock and none in waiting room, I think if they knew the set, they would assume I’d be able to clock myself to level 1 anyway – and that was exactly what I did.

Ideally, I’d want Jack-O and an Axl to play, but I only had the Standby and a Riki in hand, and no other pieces, so I made my chocies and searched an Axl with the Riki, choosing to play the Standby empty and hopefully finding the Asuka backup next turn by some other means. I reversed their front row Eris with the Axl and stunned the back row one, and then just made looping him my top priority.

They bring out the 2/2 Ghislaine in the back, I stun that. Nex turn they Standby the 3/2 Ghislaine over it, and then trigger a Standby to bring a second 3/2 Ghislaine out in the front row. I stun the back row 3/2 and kill the front row one with an I-No that climed all the way up to 15.5k. And I even learned my lesson with the counters! At the start of that turn, I hit two on a brainstorm, and asked if the rest counter was in waiting room. They kinda smiled and said it wasn’t. And I don’t know if that was supposed to lead me to believe they had it in hand, but it honestly didn’t matter: I grabbed the hexproof assist from the waiting room and thus rest counter ceased to be a threat.

They were attacking for 1s and 2s most of the game, so needless to say I was ahead in damage and they didn’t even get a proper finishing turn. During their last attacks, Filip announced that he won his game and we need one more win, and I’ve never before said “working on it” with so much confidence. But I was working on it, and it once again worked out! I recounted the game to Kevin later, saying that my opponent had nothing, and he commented on the somewhat precarious position I put myself into by leaning fully towards anti-standby stuff at the cost of my actual combo, because that kinda means I also have nothing.

“Yeah. But I chose to have nothing – they didn’t.”

And honestly, I think I apologized to my opponent like three times after that game, because I know it probably felt really discouraging to play on their side. It’s really not a Standby meta, so I doubt anyone in the whole room was running three stunners in their deck like I was. It’s just not a good feeling to get so specifically outplayed when you’re not even the main threat people are supposed to be techning for. I’d have a clearer conscience if I did this back in the main Mushoku season when it at least made sense to expect those kinda answers.

Finals

I stood up after our semi final match to see that of the two Austrian teams playing for top 4, our Round 6 opponents won so we would actually be getting a rematch. Before the game, Alex proposed that we each take one winner’s promo regardless of the outcome, and just play to determine who gets the third one. I discussed with the team and we accepted the offer – personally, I didn’t really have the headspace to think much about it at the time, nor did I care, but in hindsight, I do appreciate it as a nice friendly gesture. Coming second (or anything other than first, I guess) kinda sucks with the minimal prize support this year, plus it’s not like we had a good matchup into any of their decks, so I think this was charitable on their part to say the least.

I don’t remember much of my early game other than it being fairly standard for both decks. My social battery was pretty drained by then, and my overall hype and excitement was winding down – in a melancholic but comfortable way, I think. I already lost to this deck and player once that day when I was in just about the best possible position, so I felt like my chances were slim to none, and I think I already accepted that I would probably lose,  and that would be alright. Regardless of the final outcome, we made it this far and two second places in one season would still be a phenomenal result for me. Denis already said he doesn’t care what happens as long as we make it to the finals, and Filip was just there for the good times anyway, he’s not even a Weiss main (yet).

So I didn’t give up, I just relaxed a bit. Forgot the whole tournament thing and just played the game in front of me as any old regular game of Weiss.

But here’s the thing though: I like playing regular old games of Weiss. Especially against strong decks I don’t often see, and strong opponents I can’t always play against on demand. So I still wanted to do my best and win, because it would be rewarding and fun. It just didn’t feel like there were any other stakes to it than that, because I mentally already accepted that we’d lose this round. So I just did my best for myself.

And all I really remember is the turn when I pushed him to late level 2, which he later healed down from anyway. I had the hexproof assist on board, the level 1 climax swapper, one I-No and one Happy Chaos which I couldn’t change into a second I-No because there weren’t any left in my waiting room. The usual line of play would be to just leave the 2/1 in the back for next turn, however I was looking at my deck and saw that I was 7 out with 15-ish cards left. And I had the freefresh counter in hand, so thinking out loud, I move the 2/1 to the front row and say “I’ll just put him here to make side attacks more awkward for you.”

“What side attacks?”

“If you choose to do them,” I shrug, knowing well enough he’ll catch up with the state of my deck in due time. I triggered the last climax on my second attack, and it was a Standby so I got another Happy Chaos out in the back row. After my attacks, I was at 2-6 with 4 cards in hand: Asuka backup, freefresh, anti-change and a 4th card I can’t remember (we’ll get back to that soon). I assume Alex knew I had the freefresh since he saw me salvage it the turn before, and that’s what I was alluding to with the side attack suggestion, but realistically, I was hoping to go for the anti-change play instead. Because he couldn’t kill me if he side attacked everything, and he also couldn’t kill me if I anti-changed one of his Ainz. And as a final bonus, I’ve been holding onto that counter the whole game, so I wasn’t even sure if he saw it as a potential threat since it never appeared anywhere among my cards before.

He played a random 1 soul attacker versus my level 1, and two Ainz facing my 2/1 and 3/2 respectively, then he slammed the Bar. Sided the level 1 for 1, bringing me to 3-0, then started heavily debating what to side or front and in what order. I had 5 stock and 2 Happy Chaos on board, so if he doesn’t kill either the front row 2/1 or the I-No, I was perfectly situated to do triple burn 2 next turn, which he didn’t feel comfortable sitting through, especially with the rest counter being null and void due to hexproof this time. He almost sided the 2/1 first, but then pivoted away to front the I-No instead for 3 damage. And here is where I potentialy made another misplay.

I can not for the life of me remember what the 4th card in my deck was. But I do remember thinking about which Ainz I want to remove (aka which of my characters I want to save) so that I can still do double burn 2 next turn. Obviously if they’ve got 2 early plays and you’re playing anti-change when they attack with the first one, the default correct play is to remove the second one so they don’t get one extra stock. But if I couldn’t 100% change both Happy Chaos into Ino, then the right play would have been to remove the Ainz that was currently attack the I-No that was already on board – but I didn’t choose to do that. So I think that means that the 4th card in my hand was the Millia handfilter, but I don’t know for sure, hence calling this a potential misplay.

However, it wasn’t punished either way, because after taking the 3 damage, I drew another Asuka backup from the top of my deck. Bam, wham, two I-No back on board in no time. Hexproof in the right place, climax slammed, attacks ordered as they should be, and fucking hell I won with perfect lethal.

Pretty sure I spooked some Vanguard players down the hall with the screech of victory I let out. I felt so proud of myself after this game, it’s absolutely insane. And I think I was the last one still playing, so it was the deciding game too, and I did it.

I fucking did it. I won. We won.

There were no 3-0 rounds for us that day. Everything we won, we won with a 2-1 score. Every win mattered, every single win mattered. And I am so happy I got to share something like that with my team!

Closing Thoughts

It didn’t hit me until the next day that I actually had a 3-0 record in top cut. And if I hadn’t misplayed in round 6, I would have come out of swiss with a 5-1 record too. I’m really proud of that, it’s the best I’ve ever done in a tournament before. The tables were narrow but the horizon was wide, and I got to ride off into the sunset with my friends and some shiny medals around our necks ♥

I wanna say thank you to all the judges and event organizers for taking care of the event.

And thank you to all of our opponents for being kind, funny and a joy to play against.

And last but far from least:

Denis, thank you for going through the quintillion Hololive cards to find the deck you felt most confident on, and giving me a humbling taste of having all my I-No reversed every time. Screw that 2/1 Anya, I hate that card.

Filip, thank you for indulging Weiss with us – we’ll continue to convert you from Vanguard, just you wait. Then again, there’s enough space in a single bicep of yours for at least three TCGs, so you can probably do well in both.

Steve, thank you for the relentless CSM and Avatar bootcamp. That one Sunday with 14 games until we equalized at 7-7 lives rent free in my heart forever, and I’ll always think of you when I walk into avoidable counters in the future.

Kevin, thank you for being the player I look up to the most. After all the success you’ve had with Slime over the years, there’s no other person in this community who has inspired and motivated me to do my best with the deck I love more than you have.