Esoteric Capability Part I - Sheffield EC

I have reviewed my base deck on a previous page so will be putting up brief(ish) live competition reports to see how the deck runs. First up we have the Sheffield Elemental Championship at Patriot Games on the 2nd March 2019.

It is quite a drive up and an early start does not really help you to get prepared for games but I managed to arrive on time. The competition start was delayed slightly and had a nice thirty six entrants - which is a reasonable number.

The initial deck decisions were listed here.  It's current form is on bushi builder here and it is called  'Esoteric Capability', for some reason my Lion splash has always been this. A creature of habit I expect.

Round One versus James Ritchie (Crane, Keeper of air)

Very similar decks and against an opponent who (a year ago at least) was regularly top Crane at large Patriot tournaments. He apparently had followed less winning ways recently so was not on his usual form. I was not particularly sanguine about my own chances but as a general rule your play improves more (won or lose) against decent opposition. In true Crane mirror style the match hinged on the fact that I managed to get an honoured peep first and then proceeded to cancel everything my opponent initially did allowing me to get a quick two province lead. Being a very good player he started to work his way back in but never could quite out-honor my honoured peep count. It took too long and at time I had popped one more province and has the honour lead.  That in itself was a tactical move. I fired a 'Defend your honour' duel on one of my attacks and deliberately lost. He had to bid high to protect the province (so was looking to avoid extra points) and I was looking at his slightly higher honor. This meant I had the honor lead when tie breakers were looked at. He had a good look at his chances of countering but decided they weren't clear cut and as an honourable player conceded. 1-0

Round Two versus Paul Evans (Lion Keeper of Earth)

A very fast game. My opponent was not that familiar with the card pool (even the pre-children cards) which does not help as it opens you up to unexpected shenanigans. He also was unusually reticent to fate up his people which might be deliberate but did mean I slowly gained board advantage. A key turn when he attacked with Lion Pride Brawler and tried to bow an honoured Challenger (and failed, her force was higher than he thought) screwed up his chances big time and allowed me to charge out a Hotaru, win the conflict, honor her then unbow her with Magistrate Station. He held off the first attack (mainly because I forgot to cancel a Banzai, too many cards in hand and already getting tired) but a 23 strength political at the start of the next turn was unstoppable. 2-0

Round Three versus John Swiers (Scorpion - Seeker of Air)

A nasty Scorpion deck not helped by me not getting many of my honouring cards out. I really need early 'Soul Beyond Reproach' against Scorpion and did not luck out. He also has a great dynasty draw getting an early Shoju (who I managed to kill) then another one arrived. Ack ick ick,., He was carrying out a very effective attack where he would use Shoju to drop one of my defenders political and then dishonoured which killed the defender without me getting to stop it. A lack of cancels and Scorpions natural ability to prevent/delay honouring did not help. 2-1

Round Four versus Steve Yates (Crane - Keeper of Air)

I had been on the 'big boys' top table now since round two and now had a nice mirror. This Crane deck was more duel focused than mine and was packing both the new duelling holdings (Kakita Dojo and Proving Ground). I soon started falling behind as I only had weenies in Dynasty and his duel early Cautious Scouts stopped my province line up being effective backed up by him drawing all his 'Disdainful Remarks' that were doing a good job at neutralising my force pumps. With eighteen minutes to go I had popped one province and he had popped three of mine. Then things changed. His 'Disdainfuls' were gone and his Scouts were dead, my charges started arriving and a slow increase in fated peeps meant my board was increasing. A quick double province blow up brought us level before I pushed for the stronghold with a single challenger. He defended with one character who I bowed then danced through the resultant bow attempts (ready for battle, cancels and re-double honouring ) for the win with two minutes remaining. 3-1

Round Five versus Rob Smith (Phoenix - Seeker of Air)

Nothing went well in this game. My opponent has already won two Elemental Championships (and this would be his third) and to give you an idea of the card gods lack of favor in my first nine cards I managed three hand-to-hand and three legion of one. Plus a few other irrelevant. It took me twenty four cards drawn before I managed a single one of my honour up cards but by then he was well ahead and easily took my province down 3-2.

Now  after a quick coffee, in a desperate attempt to keep my flagging will to play alive, I had to wait to see if I would manage to sneak into the top eight. My one advantage was that my strength of schedule was the highest in the entire competition at 7.84 (the next closest was 6.76) with three of my opponents making the cut (and ending up first 7-1,  third 6-1, seventh 4-2). My other two ended up twelth (3-2) and fourteenth (3-2). I'll take the iron warrior match approach to a competition....

As it stood seven players had won four or more so the eight slot went to one of the nine players with three wins. Which was obviously me with my super SOS.

Quarter Finals vs John Swiers (Scorpion - Seeker of Air)

My nemesis from earlier. This game though was much more balanced until I utterly cocked up at the end for which I totally blame tiredness (it's worth pointing out that even he expected to fail this attack and was, like a great player, planning for the next two rounds. I think the odds would have been 60/40 to him if this mistake did not occur). He was down two provinces and I was down three and he had launched an attack against my stronghold. I had a better board and his was almost clearing this turn. All I had to do was defend the province and unfortunately for my sanity I had a brain fart and decided his attack was military and therefore I could defend with one person and then legion of one it before charging someone else in. Guess what! it was political. A fact I only realised when my legion of one was met with 'political'. What made it worse was that I had the cards to defend political and would have just put an extra defender in (Fumiko in hand, SBR and CG in hand and him with a dishonoured attacker and a dishonoured (initially bowed) Shoju). Meh and double meh. I am not as young as I was so long tournaments obviously weaken my decision making quite badly.

So all in all the deck was broadly successful. I need to tighten my play of it and can think of some useful changes. For example I may drop the goblin sneak and replace with something. Goblin Sneak would synchronise beautifully with Vassel Fields to strip fate. I am running Upholding authority so unless I switch province line up it does not help. Steward of Law is a cheap replacement but Steward practically demands 'For Shame' and the deck does not have a safe Courtier count. Since this deck also relies on Noble Sacrifice and thus has Shameful and Art of Peace in the province line up Steward is also sometimes problematic in getting those cards to function at their best as well.

I think I will try replacing the two sneaks with two Disdainful Remarks. One of Crane's key early tasks is to defend Magistrate Station and with bid 5 still being strong a sudden plus eight or more province strength is actually quite hard to beat (and even if it is 'beat' often would require several cards to be spent in order to do so ). Even at lower levels - say an unopposed 1 cost who has a Katana dropped on it. A sudden plus four or five could mean a banzai and another card has to be used to pump (then the Assassinate gets more useful). There are lots of possibilities. It does drop my conflict characters down to five but the charge assists slightly with that.

The other issue is that Hotaru does not fit the current concept. I am not a big fan of five costers and as this is a charge deck it needs the charge targets to be either large or militarily useful and Hotaru needs Favourable Ground or Formal Invitation (in the deck, this allows her to charge out then get pulled in bowed to a political to hopefully fire her ring ability on victory) to be effective.

In the comp I did have one game where I managed to charge her, defend successfully, honor her, unbow with Magistrate Station and then attack but that is unlikely to be common and also requires several cards.

The decks other weakness is it is generally expensive. So as Disdainful will be carried I need to increase courtier totals so will add three Ichigenkin Soloists instead. Whisperer has better stats but on some odd occasions the Soloist ability could be useful. This does have the disadvantage of increasing the chances of getting holdings and one costs only appearing but those risks exist in every fate point spread so we will see how it goes. As a plus my DCPC drops to 2.1 the DCPCH to 2.54 and the FCPC to a nicer 0.5.

Thanks for reading! thanks to Patriot Games for a nicely run tournament and finally thanks to all my opponents who were all a pleasure to play against win or lose...