by Red Riot Games CA

By Nathan Chin

Last weekend we wrapped up the first big Grand Archive tournament in the GTA and what an event it was. As someone who has loved the game since its early Kickstarter days, it's great to see so many people jumping in the game. Today I’m going to walk you through my preparation, experience of the event, and the local scene.

Tournament Structure and Snapshot of the GTA Scene

While the game has been in various levels of availability for testing online, most players jumped into the game a little over a month ago at the launch of Dawn of Ashes Alter Edition. As expected this meant most players were less experienced, playing odd lists and/or playing at a slower pace. All this aside for many players GA isn’t their first foray into competitive TCGs and at the top tables there was definitely a lot of impressive play to be seen. The tournament was structured as a 5 round 50 minutes per round pure swiss tournament with very top heavy prizing. A bit of an interesting choice I’ll revisit later.

Meta and Preparation

Having played the game quite a bit I am well aware of what the online meta has evolved into. To be fair I’ve probably also had a small hand in shaping it. The deck that sets the tempo for the whole format has always been Fire Arcane Rai. If you give him space to breathe he can put out an essentially infinite amount of damage while also drawing infinite cards.He’s basically impossible to stop once he gets going and it can be done reliably and very quickly depending on the build and the pilot. For this reason I tend to look for decks that can apply pressure early and force cards out of Rai to interrupt what can otherwise seem like a game of solitaire from the Rai side. Many styles of Lorraine from both wind and fire can do this while still maintaining a good matchup against less popular decks in the format. The weapon flexibility, extra health pool and abusable lvl 2 are all big reasons to want to play Lorraine.

I also won’t be the first to tell you I’m a slower player. There’s a lot of decisions to make in GA even when it comes to what you risk putting into reserve. Many games have been won or lost simply by reserving the wrong cards in memory and being forced into an unorthodox line of play. As a result, for important tournaments like I tend to take a proactive deck to offset my personal slower pace. After all a drawn match can in many ways be essentially a loss and more controlling decks can find the physical clock as intimidating as the opponent. 

That being said, my main concern with taking Fire Ascension Lorraine was that most valiants of  Wind Lorraine have good matchups into the deck. And while I also expected most people to be on Wind Lorraine thanks to the starter deck I think I correctly assumed most people would either be fairly inexperienced and/or have an unrefined deck lists negating that edge. 

 

Matches

Round 1

My round 1 opponent was a Wind Lorraine player that was self admittedly fairly new to the game. A classic early mistake in the Lorraine matchups is to overplay your board and not hold out protection against sweeps. Having drawn 3 cards off of doing exactly this in game one it enabled me to go my lvl 3 follow up turns with a large hand making the combos decidedly stronger.  In the follow up game my opponent played a similarly low pressure opener allowing me to play fairly greedy and set up my optimal transition into the late game with a devastating blow.

Round 2

The second round was decidedly harder. He was on another Fire Lorraine of a similar build that I’ve played against in the past. While perhaps having less experience on the deck he played very well if not also a bit slow like myself. The mirror is extremely scary because of the burst potential of the deck. Oftentimes you cannot afford to fully set up before being forced into lvl 2 for health. Going first can be really big as being ahead on materialization can give you that extra bit of set up to snowball the match with a drawn blade. Of course I was going second in the first game and was immediately on the back foot as my opponent was able to creative shock and cremate allies into an early rending flame. I had the potential to come back and win the match but unfortunately I was forced into reserving key cards for my lvl 2 and dungeon guide turns and losing them put me too short on damage to close the game out. Game 2 I chose to start and the cycling was a bit better allowing me to set up while not risking too much against sweeps. I was able to get into lvl 3 without losing critical cards or having to put my defensive cards into reserve. Ultimately my opponent stumbled a bit more than me and I was able to deflect a big rending before safely landing my own big fire attack from the safety of lvl 3. Unfortunately because we’re both kinda slow the timer decided we would not have a game 3 and we would have to settle for a draw

Round3

The third round was against a Wind Ascension Lorraine list but with a more experienced pilot. He ended up playing the human tribal package early, pressuring me but simultaneously not respecting the sweep which gave me a lot of tempo in the following turns. Since the majority of units were not floating memory the loss of cards in hand made his follow up a bit too clunky. Game 2 he went first and played a very conservative board while holding tricks which I believe is the best way to play the match. Failing to find dungeon guides or rending flame I got too greedy trying to set up and eventually forced into a lackluster lvl 2 just for some damage. The extra turns allowed him the cards to follow up my lvl 2 turn with his own full combo into lvl 3 with beseech landing a ton of damage in the process that was ultimately unrecoverable from. Game 3 I was on the play again giving me a bit of extra room to cycle and get a fairly standard set up off. On the other side my opponent was not able to turbo into level 3 either leaving him on lvl 2 for an extra turn. I was then able to close the game with a big devastating blow.

Round 4
Round four was an interesting one against another Wind Lorraine but this time running the Crux Knight. This opponent went for an extremely aggressive opener with the allies, even playing a dungeon guide with no effect just to get the human count high enough to land the captain on turn 2 with cards to spare for an inspiring call taking an early 9 damage or so. Admittedly the play was all in on me not having a sweep or dungeon guide of my own and it sorta paid off. I had to go to lvl 2 without the sweep just to get health and clear a Captain. Thankfully I eventually found a sweep to clear the board but unfortunately for him there wasn’t much left in hand to follow up for the last bit of damage. I was then eventually able to convert the card advantage into a game win. Perhaps emboldened by the close game one, my opponent tried the same in game two but this time I was able to sweep on the lvl 2 turn essentially ending the game on sheer card advantage.

Round 5

My final match of the day was against a Fire Rai with a pilot that knew what he was doing. Definitely the scariest match up of the day. Fire match ups always end up being essentially a race with limited defensive options for both sides thanks to there just being none for lorraine outside safeguard amulet and spark alight being able to nullify Rai’s best defensive card. I lost the dice roll for the third time that day  which put me on the draw and forced me into a very aggressive line of play. It was so aggressive in fact that I didn't even get a sword back when I went to level 3 for the pure tempo. However, thanks to this I was able to use the existing sword to put out a huge rending flame while holding up a spark alight for the arcane barrier that would have ended the game for me should it have resolved on the rending flame damage.

Game 2 felt a bit better as I was able to side out some of my dead cards in the matchup for some more aggressive cards. I had a potential lethal on an earlier turn but with my opponent being able to draw into 3 cards I couldn’t safely land the dmg through a shield so decided for a “safer” turn of trying to bait my opponent into using enlighten counters to keep their barrier servant up. Fortunately I believe they were just short of killing me that turn and so opted to play a single fireball to set up the next turn and hold up the rest for defensive play. Thankfully I was able to spark alight the barrier attempting to defend my swing preventing them from having enough to cast what could have been a second barrier and then squeaked past the finish line with a blazing throw using my remaining weapon. Overall a very close match that could have gone either way.

My final score that day was 4 wins and a draw which fortunately for me was enough to put me in the top spot having defeated the player with the highest score in the last round. There was a lot of great play on display and honestly it could have easily gone to any of the top players had things played out a tiny bit differently. I was especially impressed to see fire zander make the top tables despite being an often overlooked deck. 

Closing Thoughts

While it was definitely a blast to play I think there were things that could have gone better. For one the rounds felt a bit short at 50 minutes. With newer players, sideboarding and slower decks the recommended 60 minute rounds could definitely help resolve some of the draws we had. Secondly with an extremely top heavy prize pool it would probably feel better to have a top cut. With pure swiss the results of any one match plus tiebreakers can wildly move you around in the final standings. With a top cut at least players that survive the swiss cut can have a better understanding of where they are likely going to end up at the end of each match at the cost of more rounds. That isn't to say 1st seed won’t lose to 8th seed but atleast expectations can be tempered. Lastly, some sort of online deck submission would have definitely helped the event kick off in a more timely manner.

All in all I had a great time playing and talking about the game with everyone. With regionals right around the corner I hope some of the rough edges get smoothed and I see everyone out there again with more reps under their belt as we move into the first season of sanctioned organized play!