How to prepare for a tournament

[Dragoon]

HOW TO PREPARE FOR A TOURNAMENT

Well, since I missed yesterday's tourney by half an hour and I had already put a bit of time into preparing for it, I've decided to not waste all that work but instead to turn it into a guide for newbies. The first tip is this, make sure you know when the tournament starts. I mean, make really, really sure.  : P


INTRO

There are some of you out there who would love to play in a tournament but you’re scared to try it because you have no idea what you’re doing. There are others of you who tried it once but got clobbered and so gave it up. Well today, I’m going to walk you through how to prepare for a tournament. Hopefully by the end, you'll have gained a few pointers in preparing for a tourney and will have enough confidence in your newfound skills to give it a crack next time.

We’ll use the Warp Speed tournament rules as the example to work through in preparing for tourneys.


STEP 1: SIZING UP THE CHALLENGE

Every tourney has some kind of limitation on deck-building. You need to read the rules and think about how these rules affect making decks. So these were the rules for the most recent tourney:

• Upgraded cards are not allowed
• Shards are not allowed.
• Decks must be trios, containing three and only three elements, and having at least 25% of each type.
• Mark cards count as a card of their element.
• All cards that heal the user (or cards that give the opportunity for said healing to take place) are banned.
• Immolation, Discord, Nova, Nymph's Tears, Fate Egg, and all 'Other' cards are banned.

And these were the banned cards:

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Make sure you pay careful attention to the rules and banned card list. The last thing you want to do is spend hours crafting your decks, only to find out you made an illegal deck and disqualified yourself. It happens sometimes. It always sucks. So pay attention to the rules.

Now how do these limitations affect deck-building? Try to think about it and answer it for yourself. Here are some questions you can ask yourself:

• How do the restrictions affect quanta production? How would quanta denial affect this restriction?
• How do the restrictions affect common combos and synergies? How does it affect the counters to these combos and synergies?
• What about output? Do the restrictions make it more difficult to put out a lot of damage or control?
• How does the deck building restrictions affect a deck's complexity and consistency?
• Are the restrictions forcing a very slow or fast tempo for decks?
• What specific card bans will have a major affect in how people build decks?

After you think about it for yourself, you can read my assessment in the spoiler and see if you missed something.

Spoiler for Drag's assessment:

So what are some big picture take-aways from these rules? Let's take a look at it as it affects 4 major deck-building concepts. As far as complexity goes, everyone will have more complex decks. It just goes with trio territory. Expect decks to have more versatility since they'll have to make use of 3 elements fairly evenly and PC and CC cards are the cheapest and easiest to fit in to get up to the 25% minimum. But hand-in-hand with complexity goes consistency. Since trios tend to be complex with lots of cards, the decks also tend to be less consistent. Maybe there's some way we can take advantage of this? What about output? Well with the 25% minimum limit per element, output will probably be less as far as damage goes (because creatures tend to be expensive), but higher as far as control goes (because CC and PC tend to be cheaper and therefore easier to add to three-element decks). And finally, we have tempo to consider. With trios being more complex, less consistent, and lower in damage output, you can expect the tempo to generally be slower. These are generalizations and would be true for an average trio deck. But in tourneys, we're not trying to make average decks; we're trying to make exceptional decks. As we'll see, there are decks that buck some of these generalizations.

Now, what about specifics? Well, without Discords and BHs, we don't have to worry about quanta control as much, though Devourers and EQs still can be troublesome since decks will probably have lower pillar/pendulum counts. With RTs and Eternity banned, we don't have to worry as much about strategies built on combos being hard countered. Without heals, a lot of stall decks are weakened. With no Immolations and Novas, some of the speedier decks, like Immolation rush and Speedbow, are out. Devtal is weaker without Minor Vampire. Catatitans is stronger because of the RT & Eternity ban. Without Purify, the hard counter to any kind of poison is gone.

So how'd you do? Maybe you found some things that I missed. Kudos if you did. I'm definitely not claiming to be the top PvP player in the game so I'm sure there are things I missed.


STEP 2: THE NEED FOR SPEED

Whenever I’m building decks for a tourney, I always start by trying to find the fastest rush deck possible. It's a good place to start because rushes are usually the easiest to make, and you’ll at least need to make a couple rushes for yourself to test your other decks against. You need to test against rushes because someone will build one and use it against you . . . probably a lot of someones since they are easier to make and are often preferred because they're usually the most consistent. And chances are, you'll want to have at least one good rush deck to use too. 

Fortunately, we can rule out a lot of rush decks because trios make them too slow. The best place to start would be rush decks that are already duos. From there, it may be possible to mod them with a third element without slowing them down too much. So what kind of rush decks use 2 elements? Try to build some first, then compare with what I built. When building rushes, try to build a few different kinds of rushes—decks that use different ways of winning that are still fast. The more diverse you are now, the more you'll be prepared to face different kinds of decks in the tourney, because hopefully, you'll have found the counters to all these different decks in Step 3.

Spoiler for Aggro decks:

Rustler Rush
The first deck I thought of was Rustler+Light Pillars+Emerald Dragon+Mitosis. These Rustler decks are very fast, and we can easily use 8 Light pillars to fulfill the requirements for one of the elements. Throw in a bunch of Rustler, Dragons, and a couple of Mitosis and you have the skeleton build for a fast deck.

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For the third element, we can add RPs for more speed/CC, Deflags for PC, or Momentum for Dim Shield+EA stalls. In the end, the deck could be something like below:

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Advantages: Quanta acceleration (Rustler), Card advantage (Mitosis), Resilient creature (Emerald Dragon, 6HP)

Catatitans
Another rush duo is Catatitans. Titans, Catapults, Flying Weapons, and Air Pendulums easily make our duo.

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We’ll need to add more Pendulums to make sure we get enough Gravity quanta, but we can still add a few cards like Freeze, BB, or EA to increase speed or resilience. And with RTs and Eternity out, the worst kind of CC against this deck is gone. Since Freezes speed up the deck, let's see what it would look like with those.

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Advantages: Alternative damage (Catapult+Flying Titan), Resilient creature (Flying Titan and RT ban), Versatility (Freeze as CC or Catapult bonus)

Graboids+Golems
Graboids need two elements and Golems need two elements. Fortunately, they both share a needed element. So what happens then when you create a Graboid+Golem deck? You get the fastest deck I could conceive of.

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There are still 4 cards we need to add. We could add Deflags or Rage Potions for versatility and we can add Precogs to go through our deck a little faster. Completely filled out, a Grabby-Golem rush might look like:

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Advantages: Creature spam (Golem, Graboid, GotP), some versatility (Deflag), fast!

So right there are 3 rush decks: creature spam, quanta accelerated rush, and alternative damage. There are more (Graboids+GotP, AdrenaFlies+Blessed Peggies, etc.), but I'd guess they'd all be around the range of 6-8 ttw. The Graboid+Golem deck wins consistently in 7 turns and wins in 6 sometimes. The Rustler deck wins in 7-8 turns. The Catatitans deck is the slowest of the three winning in 8-9 turns. How do I know that? I play tested them . . . a lot. If you want to enter a tourney and do well, you got to be willing to put the time in to test decks.

STEP 3: THE COUNTER

So now that we've found some fast rushes, we've got to figure out how to beat them. If possible, we want to find something that can beat all 3. So let's take a look at our rushes and see if there's any weakness that we can exploit. If there aren't any, we need to see what measures we can take to stall or minimize their damage. Try to come up with some decks that can bring these decks to a grinding halt, then see what I came up with. If possible, try to come up with different ways to stop the same deck. Exploring possibilities can help us find a deck that can handle all 3.

Spoiler for Counter decks:

Rustler Rush
Since Rustler is the lynchpin of this deck, if we can deal with them, we can deal with the deck. The simplest counter to this deck would be basically any kind of CC, i.e. Bolts, Lightning, Shockwave. Also Dim Shield can stop this deck hard. You might need to add EAs to counter Deflags and Lobos to counter Momentum. A second turn Devourer could stop this deck too if your Devourer is nice and keeps eating his Life quanta, but that's leaving things up to chance.

Possible counters

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Plenty of CC to knock out those pesky Rustlers before they can convert any light quanta. From there, Poison and Bolts take care of the rest.

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EA'd Dim Shields stall while Lobo takes care of the possibility of Momentum. The Poison isn't much without Arsenic, but it'll get the job done while you hide behind your shields. You could replace the Poisons with something else like CC or even more stalling with Sundials, but I prefer to have a second way of winning just in case decking out doesn't work out.

Graboid+Golem
This is a fast, consistent deck with lots of creatures. So what stops Golems and Graboids? Dim Shield or Wings of course. We'll have to pack some EAs to counter his Deflags but it would be game over for the Grabby-Golem rush if we can keep the chain going. Another possibility would be to pack lots of CC. 13-14 CC cards could bring this deck to a halt. Or better, some Maxwells or EEs could kill this deck. You'll be low on health and depending on how he plays his Graboids, you may not be able to deck him out. So you'd have to combine lots of CC with enough of your own firepower to keep him from winning with burrowed Graboids. EQs could slow the deck down too, but again, you'll need to bring a solid set of your own attackers to outpace him.

Possible counters

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We can reuse this deck against the Grabby-Golem rush but with Arsenics instead of Lobos. You could also use Wings instead of Dim Shields. Either way, the Grabby-Golem rush is sunk against these EA'd shields. Again, you can add CC, creatures, or Poison for the 3rd element though I think Poison is preferred.

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4vd 4vd 4vd 4vd 4vd 4vd 4vh 4vh 4vh 4vh 52r 52r 52r 52r 542 542 542 542 542 542 542 542 5up 5up 606 606 606 606 606 606 8pj

Maxwells easily take out all the Golems and Graboids. Once the Bone Wall is up with a Maxwell or two on the field, the game is over. Steals could be replaced with Gargoyles if you need speed more than versatility.

Catatitans
This deck is gonna be tougher to crack. Although it's not as fast as the others, it uses a mix of creature/weapon damage and alternative damage. CC is useless. Dim Shields are circumvented. Even if we lobo'd a Flying Titan, the deck can get around the shield with a Catapult. So what does that leave? Well, the catapult is really what gives this deck the speed it does have. If we can get rid of the Catapults we can slow the deck down. So maybe some Deflags or Steals + enough creatures to outpace 2-3 Titans. Also, since the deck will probably be barely juggling 3 kinds of quanta, EQs can wreck havoc on the deck.

Possible counters

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EQs to slow the deck down, Deflags to take out Catapults, and creatures to outrace his Titans.

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Interestingly, probably one of the better counters to the Catatitans deck is the Grabby-Golem rush. With some slight modification to get up to 4 Deflags, the deck handles the Catapults while still maintaining it's extreme speed.

So we got some counters, but we can't use all of them. We need to find something that has a good chance to win against most if not all of the decks including the other counter decks. So let's do some head-to-head battles to see how the decks do against each other. If we were to put the results from these match-ups in a table to see how the counter decks did against both the rushes and the other counter decks, we'd get a table like this:



Where did I get this information? Some of it is obvious which deck would win in a matchup. But for the others, I play tested them myself. You can do this too. The best way would be if you had a second account or a friend to play against. But if you don't, the trainer still can give you a rough picture. Of course the AI on the trainer doesn't play decks the best, so you'll have to take that into consideration, but it can give you a rough idea of how the decks compare with each other.

So when we compare decks, we can see that the Rustler deck, well . . . it sucks. So let's get rid of that deck. Now let's redo the table.



The new most sucky deck is the Grabby-Golem rush. Although it is one of 2 decks that can be the Catatitans deck, it fails against every kind of stall deck. Even though it's fast, it's not actually very resilient to counter strategies. So let's remove it also.



Now, the top 3 decks in our pool of possibilities are Catatitans, CC Stall, and the EQ-Grabby deck. Of the 3 stall decks, the CC stall wins against all the other stalls. It even wins out against the EQ-Grabby deck. However, it loses against Catatitans. Catatitans wins against everything except the EQ-Grabby deck. And although the EQ-Grabby deck loses to two different decks, it's the only deck left that can take on Catatitans. Simply put, the power structure of the viable decks is as follows:

Catatitans > CC Stall > EQ-Grabby > Catatitans . . .

So there we go, those are probably the top 3 decks we have to work with—at least the rough, general ideas. But we're not done yet. Now that we've finished Step 3, we need to refine our decks more, so on to . . .

STEP 4: ADJUST & ITERATE

So we have 3 decks, but let's see if we can adjust them so that they can withstand their counter decks better. How would you improve the Catatitans, CC Stall, and EQ-Grabby decks so that they can do better against their respective counters?

Spoiler for Enhanced Decks:

Catatitans
To help strengthen our Catatitans deck against EQ, we can diversify and/or over-pillar our deck. If we do over-pillar our deck, we'll have to take out some of our combo cards, which will decrease the consistency of our deck. But it's a risk we'll have to take as it's the lesser of two evils. Our next choice is to choose between Freeze (+16 damage with Catapult; 3 turn delay as CC), BB (+8 damage with Catapult; 6 turn delay as CC), and EA (anti-Deflag). Not having Freeze or BB will slow down our deck by a turn, but losing a Catapult right at the end can slow us down 2-3 turns. Since losing our Catapult would slow the deck down the worst, I went with EAs. So our modified deck looks something like below:

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This deck still loses to the EQ deck often, but the odds are much improved. We just need 15 Gravity quanta to win. Half of that will come from our mark. We also only need 1 FW and Catapult to win in 9 turns. 1 EA should keep our Catapult safe and a second EA or FW will keep our 2nd Titan safe from Deflags. In mirror matches, it'll be close. The extra Gravity will help launch your deck faster, but if they play with Freeze/BB, they'll get to the end faster. It'll be a coin flip I think.

CC Stall
To help strengthen our CC Stall against Catatitans, we'll have to do some major surgery. Flying Titans are hard to deal with, but there is a way. With Ice Bolts and Shockwave it's possible to take out Titans both on the field and in the weapon slot. Add some Deflags for Catapult and we have a CC deck that can handle creature spam and at the same time has a fighting chance against Catatitans. The main thing is to get up to 10 Water quanta ASAP so that you have a 50% chance of freezing the Titan. Every 10 quanta gives you another +10% chance of freezing, so hold off if you can afford to. You'll also want to get to that 10 quanta mark ASAP because against those rushy creatures like Graboid and GotP, you'll need 10 quanta to be able to do the 4 damage to kill them.

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This deck will have some trouble against the EA version of Catatitans since an EA'd Titan can't be frozen and shockwaved. But even this version of Catatitans will be slowed down by the threats of Deflag and Ice Bolt+Shockwave. With a little luck, you might be able to hold out until your Steamie takes them out. 1 Steam Machine fed every turn can win in 7 turns. But no matter how things play out, the main things is that with this version of the CC Stall, a Catatitans matchup is not an auto-lose. In mirror matches, this deck will lose against the Fire Bolt version. Fire Bolt + Poison > Ice Bolt + Steam Machine. It's just a trade off you have to make in order to do better against Catatitans. The tier 2 Dim Shield Stall may be more difficult to beat as well. But hopefully nobody will bother with that deck with the threat of Catatitans.

EQ-Grabby
This deck is a bit harder to improve since there aren't a lot of creatures that 1) pack a lot of punch, 2) is fairly cheap, and 3) has better resilience against CC. If we increase resilience by adding Immortals, Phoenixes, Steam Machines, etc., we lose speed and therefore will lose against Catatitans. But what if we took a different tact? Instead of increasing resilience, why don't we double-down on the quanta control? If we can lock the other deck down, we don't have to worry about CC or fast damage. With a quanta lock in place, we can safely release our weaker critters and we don't have to worry as much about beating Catatitans in the damage race.

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590 590 590 590 593 593 593 593 593 5ru 5ru 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5ul 5um 5um 5um 5um 5um 5um 606 606 606 606 606 606 8pm

The deck does better against the CC Stall. With a good draw, it can lock the CC Stall deck down letting your creatures attack with impunity. Against the Catatitans deck, the Devourers help if they run EAs and over-pillar their deck. Still, it'll be close since this deck isn't as fast as the earlier version. Again, you have to decide which trade-offs are worth it. Is it better to have a stronger deck against Catatitans, or to have the possibility of winning against a CC Stall? In the end, I'd like to have a chance to win against either deck rather than a better chance of beating only Catatitans.


The new power structure looks more like this now:

Catatitans ≥ CC Stall ≥ EQ-Grabby ≥ Catatitans . . .

Each deck has a stronger and weaker matchup, but no matchup will be an auto-lose.

FINAL THOUGHTS
Even after you do all this, there's no guarantee you will do well. Things like deck choice, play mistakes, and randomness will have a big impact on whether you do well or not. A lot of times, it comes down to 3 decks. Each deck does well against 1 but fails against the other, e.g. rock, paper, scissors. So unless you have precognitive abilities, it's a crapshoot to know which deck to play. And of course, even if you do pick the right deck sometimes you just have hair-ripping, tear-inducing draws. It happens. Sacrifice more to the RNG gods. You displease them.  : P

So don't feel bad if you get eliminated early on. It happens to everybody. Just try again next time. Be creative, learn from other people, and most importantly, have fun! Yeah, this is a competition, but those TOs are volunteering their time for you. So don't throw a tantrum and make life miserable for everyone if something happens that you don't like. You're not 3 anymore so act like a big kid. Be gracious, don't cheat, and make sure to take screenshots if you think there may be some kind of debate about something. Like I said before, have fun, because that's what this is all about.

Again, I wouldn't consider myself the best PvPer out there, but hopefully you picked up a few tips about preparing for a tourney. I wouldn't be surprised if I missed a key deck. It's very possible that somebody may have come up with something that can beat all 3 of my decks. But that's what makes tourneys fun. It's a chance to sharpen your deck building skills against other people. I know I've picked up a lot about deck building from playing against others. Now it's your turn to go out there and get slaughtered learn something new!

REVIEW: AKA TL;DR

• Think about how the limitations affect deck building.
• Make some fast decks. Use different kinds of fast decks (creature spam, combos, alternative damage).
• Make counter decks. Make different kinds of counter decks. Narrow the field to the top few decks.
• Go back and adjust your tier 1 decks taking their respective counter decks into account. Make sure the new decks can still win against previous decks.

[Acsabi44]

The first thing I do when assessing the meta is finding a weak spot and attacking it.

For this tourney, trios->inconsistent quanta->EQ.
If you EQ the key pendulums, the opponent will have a very hard time to play his cards.

Okay, no. The first thing is usually to make a few decks (starting with rushes, as Dragoon suggested), play with them a bit and then attack them.
trio decks->shaky quanta->EQ

[Absol]

Reserved for comment. I will comment after I see the entire guide.

[TribalTrouble]

BREAK TIME'S OVER!!! GET BACK TO WORK YOU LAZY DRAGOON!!! I WANT THAT COUNTER AND I WANT IT NOW!!!

Spoiler for Hidden:

Please? :3

[Acsabi44]

BREAK TIME'S OVER!!! GET BACK TO WORK YOU LAZY DRAGOON!!! I WANT THAT COUNTER AND I WANT IT NOW!!!

Spoiler for Hidden:

Please? :3

Counter: Anticipate what everyone else's playing (except Jenkar. Jenkar never plays the same as everyone else.) and destroy it.
Protip: If dimshield is available, eveyone will play dimshield (except Jenkar.). Counter with pulverizer or poison.

[Dragoon]

BREAK TIME'S OVER!!! GET BACK TO WORK YOU LAZY DRAGOON!!! I WANT THAT COUNTER AND I WANT IT NOW!!!

Spoiler for Hidden:

Please? :3

Sorry, Acsabi44 is keeping me busy with his Adventurer PvP event. 

I am almost finished with Step 3. I was slowed down because I accidentally posted over my deck codes that I had prepared.   So I'm having to try to remember what they were and remake them.

Maybe later today I'll post step 3.

[redeyesly]

Anticipate what everyone else's playing.

I'm really struggling with that part for Armedilgo War. I've got some ideas, but no clue if everyone else will have the same ones, better ones, or if the trend will be vanilla type decks.

[Acsabi44]

Anticipate what everyone else's playing.

I'm really struggling with that part for Armedilgo War. I've got some ideas, but no clue if everyone else will have the same ones, better ones, or if the trend will be vanilla type decks.

Well, it is not too hard for this tournament. I bet you a million electrum I know what will everyone else be plying. I also know how to counter.
No I will not tell ya 
Even if I told ya, that would be not much help since I think everybody else will know

[redeyesly]

I'll take that bet. If everyone plays the same thing, and everyone knows it, then half the people would play the counter instead. So what you're saying is that creativity is out the window on this one (or all tourneys) and anyone who does do something different will get steamrolled?

[Acsabi44]

I'll take that bet. If everyone plays the same thing, and everyone knows it, then half the people would play the counter instead. So what you're saying is that creativity is out the window on this one (or all tourneys) and anyone who does do something different will get steamrolled?

Creativity is not at the least bit out of the window.
With the current rules, there is not much to play. I think nearly eveybody will come up with at least one of the 2-3 viable tier1 strategies.
Creativity comes in when you try to build a deck that contains one of those tier1 strategies while effectively counters other strategies.
If you are very creative, you can come up with a deck that shuts down all tier1 strategies, and futhermore is able to play one (or more) of said strategies consistently.

During other tournaments, where the rules are more flexible, creativity is even more of an issue (finding the best strategies requires quite a lot of creativity, as is finding the effective yet consistent counter, whthin as few cards as possibe, to avoid hindering your deck's own gameplay), but that doesn't change the fact that the most effective decks will always be able to consistently execute one of the tier1 strategies of the tournament, while effectively shutting down the opponent's tier1 decks.

[kev]

Looking forward to seeing how this ends up.  I see it as a tutorial in the noob section that'd really be additive.  When the mentor program was up and running one of the noob tasks was to enter a tournament.  A post like this could really help bridge the knowledge gap.

[dragonsdemesne]

A series like this for some unofficial tournaments could be  beneficial, too.  A veteran could set up an unofficial tournament with whatever card kust, then think about how they'd play in that tournament, and then let the new players try it out and see what they come up with, have them post their decks and how they did, and everyone could throw in feedback and criticism and stuff.