[Aether] pikachufan2164 3-0 Dragoon1140

[pikachufan2164]

Apparently, Lady Luck was not on Dragoon1140's side tonight

Complete decklists to come after Trials are over -- we don't want to ruin the surprise, now, do we?

Dragoon had a fail draw, while I headed off to a slow and steady start. Lightning handily took care of his first Charger, while I piled on the pressure with flying Titans. I got Silenced a whole lot, though.

1-0Dragoon got a first turn Crimson Dragon, and subsequent Twins, despite my best efforts to scramble with Discord. Thankfully, the RNG really favoured Pandamonium this time while my creature army got to work on his HP.

2-0Lightning handily wiped out his small creatures, and Dragoon's vampiric healing was stopped cold by Phase Shields while the damage piled up on him.

3-0Great games, great opponent. Best of luck to everyone in the Trial of Aether

[Dragoon1140]

Excuse the late response everyone.  After losing to a complete newbie in the tournament in the first round, losing to icb 3-1, and then losing to pikachufan 3-0, I figured I could use a little break from Elements.   Thus, please excuse any mistakes since I'm recalling all of the duels that took place about twelve hours ago. 

Pikachufan sums up the battles pretty well.  I can only blame so much bad luck on the RNG Gods though, he just had the better decks.

Game 1 - (Lost)
Tried out my TU/Charger deck, only I drew five Chargers in my opening hand and only 1 Pendulum.  Ouch.  I think he Lightning'd and threw various other control cards at my Chargers, so I never dealt enough damage.

Game 2 - (Lost)
Went with TU/Crimson Dragon/Cremation deck.  I drew 4 Cremations in the opening hand, a single Dragon, and only 1 Pendulum, along with a few TU's thrown in.  At this point, Pikachufan just played his cards and punched my face in.

Game 3 - (Lost)
I tried to use my Fractal/Pest/Vampire deck, which, again, works great under most conditions.  However, I didn't draw a Pest (which, apparently, Pests don't like me to draw them), and I was forced to Fractal the Vampires instead.  Even though I had counters to Dimensional Shield in the deck, I didn't draw them, and lost accordingly.

GG pikachufan, you are underestimated no more. 

[pikachufan2164]

More thoughts:

Round 1: Flying Twin Titans vs. Twin Chargers

When I saw Dragoon's first Charger hit the field, I was expecting Fractal Chargers, so I hit it with Lightning before he would have a chance to Fractal. Turns out that Dragoon was playing a TU version, which would have been a big problem for me if he had a better draw (more Pends and TUs, fewer Chargers).

Round 2: Entropic Fission (my own little deck creation) vs. Immolation-based DragonPowa

I was pretty much fearing for my life when Dragoon got his Dragons out, due to the ever-present threat of Explosions taking out my Phase Shields. Luckily, kevkev calculated that Pandemonium does around 3.2 damage (if it does damage-based CC) to creatures -- and a variety of useful non-damage CC effects -- which was just enough to take out those Crimson Dragons.

Round 3: Flying Twin Titans vs. Pest/Vamptal

Again, Steals would have given Dragoon an offensive advantage by taking away my defences and letting his vampiric healing go through. That could have stalled the game long enough for him to make a comeback, since I didn't have way too much damage on the table.

Dragoon is definitely a strong opponent, but the RNG just wasn't being very nice to him yesterday night.