Tall Dorinthea Skirmish Report VI: Lucky Gaming TCG

So I played in another Skirmish event yesterday, this time the Lucky Gaming TCG event. Big shoutouts to Jose and the rest of the Lucky Gaming team for putting on a great event with lots of bonus prizes for the community. I think this was my favorite Skirmish experience yet! I streamed my gameplay in the event, as well as the bonus prize raffles that occurred in between Swiss and the cut, but for those who don’t want to watch over six hours of streaming here’s a written report as well!

The Deck

Today I decided to run a version of my tall Dorinthea deck that was optimized primarily to face other Dorinthea and Ira decks, as I consider these the most prevalent decks in the US/EU online meta. In order to counter these, I decided to incorporate Springboard Somersault, which is one of my favorite defense reactions — not only is it very handy as a defense reaction, but it also pitches for two so it can better fuel aggressive turns and isn’t as dead a card against Kano as a card like Sink Below (red). I also included Dauntless (red), a counterpick card for the Ira matchup in particular — in my experience, Dauntless can be a great way to impede an Ira opponent’s defense reactions.

Here was the exact build:

Cool formatting courtesy of FABDB — here’s a link to the build on that platform!
Flesh and Blood and the Dorinthea card art is © Legend Story Studios.

The Games

Round One: Katsu

My first round was against an aggressive Katsu deck. Defending against powerful combos put me on the back foot at first, but once I was able to “turn the corner” and become the attacker my opponent’s plethora of two-block cards made defending awkward and I was able to push through and get the win — in the end I swung for three damage with my opponent at three life. He defended conservatively with three cards from hand, but since two of them were two blocks he was only blocking for seven. I played a Glint the Quicksilver from Arsenal, which drew into the blue card I needed in order to play Singing Steelblade into red Overpower for plus seven damage, putting me at ten — exactly the damage I needed for lethal!

Victory! (1-0)

Round Two: Ira

This time I wound up against Grendel, a friend from the L5R and Conquest communities and the player who taught me how to play this game! He was running Ira rather than his usual Rhinar this time, with a more aggressive build similar to those used by some New Zealand players. I think my matchup against more aggressive Ira decks is often better as their defenses are weaker relative to some of the builds that play more defense reactions and three-block cards, and Dorinthea tends to win “races” where neither deck is defending much thanks to her Dawnblade counters. Things ended up pretty tight on time, but I was able to prevail with a heavily buffed Dawnblade.

Victory! (2-0)

Round Three: Dorinthea

For round three I was against Jake Burns, the #1 player in the US for total LSS XP — though as he mentioned much of his experience was with Bravo in Classic Constructed, quite a different situation to what we were encountering! Jake was also playing a Dorinthea deck and this led to an intense mirror. As is often the case with these mirrors, it had an interesting mix of aggression and defense, sometimes overblocking heavily and sometimes letting a big attack hit to maintain aggression. Ultimately I managed to get it after an attack where my opponent didn’t block, I played an attack reaction to threaten lethal, he countered with a blue Steelblade Shunt from hand, and I let that resolve and then played a red Ironsong Response (with Reprise now active) in order to get the win!

Victory! (3-0)

Round Four: Kano

Kano may be one of the worst matchups I have for this deck, so I wasn’t that excited to see this on the other side of the (virtual) table! In this game I had a very strange opening hand with both of my copies of Ironsong Determination! While I considered trying to push through on the first turn, I ultimately decided to use turns two and three as the Ironsong turns if possible.

On my turn two I used Ironsong and scored two hits, getting a +1 counter and putting my opponent down to four life, but he zapped me with various stuff bringing down to ten. On turn three I figured it was do or die and came in with the second Ironsong Determination for 5 with Dominate. He blocked with a card and Tunic. Unfortunately, I had drawn an all red hand, but I was able to use Stroke of Foresight to give the attack +3, replace one of my reds with a blue, and then defend against his Sonic Boom. He had himself drawn an awkward hand and wasn’t able to do much more, so the Stroke gave me lethal and that was the game!

Victory! (4-0)

Round Five: Kano

This round was against Colin, an experienced player and actually one of the judges/organizers for the event! He was also running Kano, which I wasn’t so happy to see again. This game was slower than my last Kano game but still quite aggressive. We both scored minor damage on each other at first (with him healing some of it with a Tome of Fyendal), but then I was able to threaten much more with a Supremacy + Determination on Dawnblade, ultimately scoring two solid hits, getting my +1 counter and putting Colin to two life! On his own turn, Colin zapped me for five with a buffed Voltic Bolt and then played an Energy Potion!

Seeing lethal, I didn’t block the Voltic, meaning we were now at my fourteen to his two life. One way or another, one of us was probably going to die on this next turn! I buffed up my Dawnblade with a Dauntless and Sharpen Steel and swung for ten damage with two cards in hand and one energy floating. He fired off Kano and played a buffed Aether Flare, using his Potion. I pitched the red Dauntless I still had in hand and used my floating energy to block two, going down to twelve. My opponent looked at his cards in hand, asked to see how many Ironsong Responses were in graveyard (I had played one red and IIRC pitched both blues) and decided to go for a big block with his cards and Tunic, only for me to play my last card, the second red Ironsong Response, for the win!

Victory! (5-0)

Round Six: Ira

For the last round of Swiss I was against Rob from the Tolarian Dropouts team, the current #1 US player by LSS’s 90-day XP and someone who has also won a few Skirmishes with tall Dorinthea — in fact, I’d originally been inspired to make this build after playing against him! However, Rob had swapped off his usual Dorinthea in order to play Ira for this tournament. Like Grendel, he was playing a more aggressive Ira build — unlike Grendel, he revealed the infamous Zephyr Needle! This card is potentially very dangerous for Warriors who cannot break it, making it much harder to stop that second swing relative to a Harmonized Kodachi. I was happy to be running Springboard Somersault!

Given Needle I was happy to be running the Somersaults and was able to get one into arsenal quickly, but only by playing an awkward Singing Steelblade with no Reprise, potentially signaling what I had. Rob avoided swinging with Needle for a bit but eventually did and I broke it with the Somersault. While he went on to hit me with some other attacks, I felt I was now in a pretty good position with no Needle on the other side and a +1 counter on the Dawnblade. He overblocked me heavily on a Valor + Supremacy turn, stopping me but losing momentum, and on the next turn I managed to land a Singing Steelblade into red Overpower to close out the game!

Victory! (6-0, #1 seed going into cut)

With that, I was undefeated for Swiss and would be moving onto the cut as a player rather than a commentator! (I was providing official streaming coverage for this event, with the understanding being that I would stream my own games until knocked out and then commentate.) In between the Swiss and the cut, we ran a raffle on stream with substantial bonus prizes in the form of rare cards (both standard and promo) being given out by Lucky Gaming to participants in the event, followed by me raffling off a few WTR/UNL packs for the stream viewers. The overall meta for this event was looking interesting:

Meta breakdown courtesy of Colin!

As you can see we had a pretty diverse field, with the “usual suspects” of Ira and Dorinthea being the most popular but a lot of other heroes represented as well! In fact, I believe we had every available hero represented except for Shiyana and Kayo — there was even a Data Doll and a Kavdaen player!

Since I was the top seed, I would get to pick first or second in my remaining games — not always a decisive advantage, but still a good one to have.

Top Eight: Kassai

For this game I wound up against a Kassai player that I had encountered at a previous event a week or two ago. I feel that in a quick game, Dorinthea has the edge over Kassai, while in a long game Kassai will begin to have the advantage over Dorinthea; the Dawnblade has much more threat under “normal conditions”, while Kassai’s Cintari Sabers are often “ignorable” at first but become very difficult to deal with as life totals decrease. Further, my deck does not run attack actions which means the Sabers are not going to get their +1 damage triggers.

In this game, I was able to land some big hits, putting my opponent into the “danger zone” relatively quickly. He shifted into a defensive approach and was able to block me for a bit, but I pulled off a big play with Spoils of War into Singing Steelblade into Twinning Blade, allowing me to outmaneuver his overblock and get him with the second attack.

Victory! (7-0, made semis)

Top Four: Bravo

This was perhaps my most intense game of the event! My opponent had incredibly strong initial draws with Bravo, countering my first turn Ironsong Determination -> Warrior’s Valor with a buffed Staunch Response and then playing a Sigil, redrawing, and hitting me with a Pummeled Command and Conquer! I decided to lose a Steelblade Supremacy from hand and just arsenal my last card, a Springboard Somersault — this proved quite prudent because on the next turn my opponent came in with a Crippling Crush buffed with Dominate, and my Somersault let me stave off the Crush effect with only one card from hand and a piece of equipment.

On the next turn, my opponent let my Dawnblade hit the first time for five, then blocked using only armor and played a Pursuit of Knowledge! I knew that there was a good chance he was going to Pummel this but decided that if he had it I’d make him play it here rather than on something more dangerous — he indeed had the Pummel, hitting me again and putting me down to one card in hand after a double block and one discard. That last card was an Energy Potion, which I played and passed.

Next, my opponent used his new five-card hand (thanks to Pursuit of Knowledge hitting) to throw out another dominated Crippling Crush! Luckily I’d saved my armor and was able to block eight damage,. stopping the Crush effect. At this point the life totals were nine to eighteen, but my opponent had used both his red Pummels, both his copies of Crippling Crush, and a Command and Conquer, so the biggest threats were out of his deck! He then let me get a Dawnblade counter and kept the pressure on with a Bravo-buffed Righteous Cleansing, which I managed to stop from Crushing me via my second Springboard Somersault.

However, the tide was beginning to turn — my opponent let me get a second Dawnblade token and threw out another Righteous Cleansing, this time without Dominate. I blocked for seven, took three, and swung back with a strength five sword, but my opponent dumped his hand to reset my counters. On my next turn I came in with a Dawnblade swing buffed by Steelblade Supremacy, and while he played a copy of Staunch Response with the boost I came in with a red Overpower to break through his defenses for the win!

This was a wild game. It’s definitely not always the case that Bravo is the aggressor against Dorinthea, but for much of the game that was the case! In fact, my opponent did not make a single hammer swing all game, instead throwing out big attack card after big attack card! I was happy to be able to come back and win this after the crazy start.

Victory! (8-0, made finals)

Finals: Kano

For the finals, I was against Colin and his Kano once more! While I’d defeated him in the Swiss, I wasn’t happy to see Kano in the end as it is IMO the most difficult deck for me to face if played well. This ended up being a very close game, with both players taking some damage early. On the critical turn I was coming in with a strength five Dawnblade with Dominate (one +1 counter and Ironsong Determination). My opponent popped his Lens and then hit me with a combination of effects that took me into Blazing Aether range. However, he let my attack land and I broke Bolters for another swing, this time threatening lethal.

My opponent had an interesting decision to make. I had one card in hand. He had Blazing Aether on the top of the deck and could Kano it to threaten lethal, but if I had a blue or yellow I could block enough of it to live and then my attack would kill him. He could also block with his card and potentially Tunic to stay alive and try to get me on my next turn, but if the card I had left was red Ironsong Response I would push through his block and kill him (as had happened in our previous game!). He considered his options and ultimately decided to go for Blazing Aether — if my last card was a yellow or blue I could block enough to survive and my incoming attack would kill him, but if not he would kill me before getting hit. My last card proved to be a red, so he took the game and first place in the event!

Defeat! (8-1, second place)

Conclusions

I felt that my changes to the deck went well at this tournament. Springboard Somersaults in particular seemed like a big hit — not only were they key to surviving that onslaught from Guardian in my semifinals game, but they broke a Needle against Ira and were pitchable for more energy than a red Sink would have been in some of my games against Kano. I definitely want to keep those in the build for future events!

While I did end up losing the final round, it was a very close game against what I consider my worst matchup, and I was pleased to have gone 2-1 against Kano overall for the day.

Overall I had a lot of fun at this event. In fact, it was my favorite of the Skirmish events yet even though I did not win in the end. I really enjoyed streaming the games and getting to do some prize raffles for the viewers. Big shoutout to Lucky Gaming TCG for doing this event and for having me as the official broadcaster (disclaimer: they sent me some swag for this) — I really enjoyed it. At first I had thought I would just be commentating, but they decided it would be more hype to have me play while streaming my own games and then switch to commentary once I was knocked out — and luckily for me I ended up making it all the way to the finals, so most of the commentary was in between rounds! Lucky Gaming TCG also contributed lots of bonus prizes to the event on top of the normal LSS prize support, which really went “above and beyond” in my opinion. I’m excited to see what they have in store for future tournaments!