Please note this was written over four years ago and never posted. (This means that some of my comments are out of date and that I'm probably missing links to some other useful articles) I've tinkered with it and edited it twice since then, its still not to the place I'd like and some of my thoughts have evolved since writting it. But the few people I've shown it too feels like there might be some value here, so for your information I present...From Tourney Chump to Champ in 9 Easy Steps
Whether you are a brand new player who just got their 10 posts 5 minutes ago and want to enter your first tournament, a tourney regular that can never seem to make the jump to finals, or a multiple tourney winner that just wants a little extra polish, I think there is something to be learned from this guide. I know that I was reminded of a few things and came to one "new-to-me" realization while preparing this guide. I hope reading this guide is as enlightening to you as writing it was for me.
Note: Any yellow text in this article are links to other articles that are of value to the topic at hand.The Cardinal Rule: RNG Rules the Day! 
Luck plays a significant role in any card game; what cards you draw, when you draw them, what deck is your opponent playing, how strong or weak is their draw. It is not uncommon to hear cries of “Damn you RNG!” following many PvP losses. If you are going to succeed in tournament play don’t be one of those players, it's too easy to become discouraged from poor luck with the result that either you begin to make play mistakes, or you give up on tournament play and write it off as a “Luck-Fest”. Understand that if you play enough tournaments you will occasionally be disastrously unlucky and have an early and pathetic exit, but that in another tournament the stars will align and even though your opponent picks a perfect counter deck they will draw no pillars for 10 turns and you will destroy them. Knowing that luck plays such a large role there are three things you need to do:
- Be a gracious loser - even when the RNG does destroy you, congratulate your opponent, thank them for the game, wish them good luck and leave the tourney room. If you really need to vent go to public chat and PM a friend about how unfair the RNG was to you. When you make your complaints public it belittles your opponent.
- Come back every week and play in lots of tournaments, eventually luck will turn your way and you’ll score a win and get that lovely shiny mark!
- Play to have fun - playing only to win marks is a recipe for frustration, if you show up at a tourney have some great games, learn something new and get to hang out with friends or meet a cool new person consider it a success.
On the Other Hand: Between Rastafla, majofa and vagman13 there are around 30 tournament trophies, while luck plays a huge role in tournaments it is not the only factor. Let me reveal a few of the things to do to prepare properly for the tournament and a guide to help you avoid mistakes, and give a few tips once the tournament has started.
A Guide to Tournament Preparation & Play 
You should certainly be familiar with the general tournament rules
here, as well as the specific rules for the weekly tournament found
here.
Preparation for a tournament begins long before the weekly tournament rules are posted. The first and simplest step is to acquire a significant unupped card base, being forced to play only one deck in a tournament is a sure way to lose. And having the card base to build decks frees you from having to grind week by week, instead you can spend that time testing and building your decks. Beyond merely having the cards at hand and a grasp of the rules however understanding the “metagame” is a significant part of what separates tournament hopefuls from the perennial contenders. Having a collection of key upped cards (see
this post for some ideas) will help every 4th tournament when upgrades are allowed.
Step #1 - Understand The MetagameThe Metagame of a CCG is the game within the game, its the ability by guess work, intuition and study to know what decks will be popular, how to counter those decks, how to counter the counters and so on. A general understanding of the meta game is useful for tournament play, because it allows you to see how the tournament specific rules change the possible deck choices. Hopefully allow you to better predict what decks you will see in the tourney. There are different models used to simplfy the metagame as a means of understanding it, I'll present two of them below.
Spoiler for Metagame Model #1: Rock Paper Scissors:
The Rock-Paper-Scissors EffectWe are going to divide all decks in elements into three deck types: Rush, Control, Stall. Where at its simplest: rush decks beat stall decks, stall decks beat control decks, and control decks beat rush decks. While this is not always true it is a useful place to begin.
Rush DecksThese are decks governed by speed, every card they play is placed with the intention of making the deck win faster.
A classic example of rush deck is a simple
Death Rush It's filled with damage sources, and while poison may not be the most efficient damage source its ability to bypass shields makes up for its slowness. It is built to win quickly. With a rush deck the opposing players threats are irrelevant because you will do more damage faster than their deck, so you will win. When comparing two rush decks for use in PvP there are two things that matter - which deck is on average faster, and which deck is more consistent. The deck that is both of these things is the superior deck, period. There are times when one deck is slightly faster and the other slightly more consistent, all other things being equal choose the deck you like more.
Death RushHover over cards for details, click for permalink
52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52h 52h 52h 52h 52o 52o 52o 52o 52o 52o 52t 52t 52t 52t 52t 52t 8pkThese decks are designed to slow the opponent’s cards enough that you get the win. They will beat a rush deck generally by destroying a few key creatures in the rush deck and have enough of their own damage in play to still win the game. The best example of this deck type in the game is
Antagon’s Grabbow. It is easily mistaken for a rush deck because it plays so quickly, but the use of lightning, fog shield and freeze give it enough control to blunt a faster rush and retain enough speed to destroy much of the rest of the field.
Antagon’s GrabbowHover over cards for details, click for permalink
4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4vh 4vh 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 52q 52q 55q 55q 590 590 590 590 590 5c1 5c1 5f6 5f6 5i7 5og 5og 61q 61q 8pmThese decks are similar to control decks in that they are built to slow the opponent down enough to give you the win, however instead of destroying the enemy creatures they merely delay the opponent long enough to allow you to get your win condition into play. Many OTK (One-Turn-Kill) decks fall into this category (such as
Instosis - which uses sundials to stall until your winning combo is drawn)
Poisondials,
RoL-Hope, and many other decks fall into this category. In general though stall decks "counter" the effects of other players cards (as opposed to destroying them) with shields, sundials, healing or denial.
PoisondialsHover over cards for details, click for permalink
6rm 6rm 6rm 6rt 6rt 6rt 6rt 6rt 6rt 710 710 710 710 710 710 710 718 718 718 718 718 718 71a 71a 7q9 7q9 7q9 7q9 7q9 7q9 8pqThese are a particular flavour of Stall deck - instead of merely negating the effect of the opponent's cards they
Deny them the opportunity to play them at all, usually this is accomplished by destroying their quanta production, but with rewind and nightmare it may also be accomplished by denying their draws.
Pestal is a classic example of a denial deck, it uses Fractal - Pest to shut down the opponent's production and then once they are unable to play cards it slowly kills them with fractaled vampires.
DBH (Discord BlackHole) also fits into this category, as does
Nightmare's of the Past the opponent is denied the ability to play cards, because they are denied the ability to draw cards. Whether by draw lock or by quanta lock denial decks shut down the opponent and then slowly kill them. I deal with Denial decks separately from normal stall decks however because they suffer from different weaknesses and strengths
Although Denial composes a large amount of the metagame, likely a larger amount than stalls, I don't feel that Denial deserves to be its own deck type purely because different denial decks don't have similar strengths and weaknesses. Reverse Time denial, for example, is great against Rushes, especially ones with Immolation and Nova. Earthquake, however, is generally not a good choice against rushes and almost useless against Immolation and Nova decks. As for Discord and Black Hole, what matters more is the quanta sources, and not the deck type. Discord is great against Monos and Duos, while Black Hole is effective against Rainbows. Earthquake is great against Sanctuary Stalls (which are the more common ones,) Discord is decent against them, Devourers are weak, and Reverse Time is nearly useless. To summarize, there's next to no correlation about deck type advantage between different denial strategies, and this makes it difficult to call its own deck type when comparing the strengths and weaknesses of deck types.
PestalHover over cards for details, click for permalink
7t6 7t6 7t6 7t6 7t6 7t6 7ta 7ta 7td 7td 7um 7um 7um 7um 7um 7um 7um 7um 7um 7um 808 808 808 808 80i 80i 80i 80i 80i 80i 8puHybrids are probably the hardest decks to play against because they fall into two categories - are you a Rush deck packing some control (an argument can be made that this is Antagon’s Grabbow), are you a stall deck packing significant control, such as
Firestall? Are you a Rush deck, built around a solid denial engine, such as
TADAbow? Because these decks fall into two categories they shore up some of their weaknesses and are strong against a broader range of decks - if you can bring something in this category to a tourney you will do well - unless its an obvious deck and people are packing counters.
FirestallHover over cards for details, click for permalink
5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f5 5f5 5f5 5f5 5f6 5f6 5f6 5f6 5f7 5f7 5f8 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 5li 5li 5li 5lm 5lm 5lm 8pq Spoiler for Metagame Model #2: A Continuum:
A ContinuumThis view of the metagame divides all cards into either cards that help you win faster, or cards that “help” the opponent win slower. On the one end you have the fastest rush decks possible, on the other you have decks that slow the opponent to a grind and deck them out over forty turns or more. All other decks fall somewhere in the middle.
In this model it does not matter the method of slowing the opponent, destruction of their cards, countering their effects or denying them the ability to play their cards. Instead it is a matter of knowing where in the continuum you fit. A typical “control” deck, loaded with cards to kill creatures struggles with most “stall” decks because the cards the “control” deck is using to slow its opponent have little to no effect on the “stall” deck, in other words, the control deck might be a faster deck, but the “stall” deck is capable of slowing the “control” deck down and the “control” deck is not capable of doing the same. The best cards can fall into more than one category: Nightmare, Rage Potion and a few others can fall into more than one category as individual cards, but it is hard to build a deck that can use them as either.
The diagram above is from this excellent article After all that reading and thinking and preparing, you’re now ready to start planning for this week’s tourney, and while I always want to jump into deck building its usually a good idea to take a few minutes to think through the cards available in this tourney and see how this changes the metagame. Here’s a set of questions you should ask yourself (and hopefully have answers to) before you start to build any decks.
- What common/forum decks can be built with this week’s cards?
- What obvious combos are there in the legal cards?
- Do these decks (from 1 & 2) fall into one category of meta?
- Can I counter these decks by playing a certain archetype?
- Are there particular forms of control that are banned?
- No PC (Permanent Control) - This makes permanents stronger
- Is there no means of removing high HP creatures? - This makes flying Titans attractive
- Are there particular forms of control counters that are banned?
- No counters to discord? Play Discord
- No counters to Earthquake? Play Earthquake
- Are creatures the only means of winning other than deck out? Play mass CC and plan on decking them out
- Is there a particular deck type that is banned or severely limited by this week’s rules? Play a deck that only that deck type can counter.
It is hugely beneficial to do this step with at least one other person, they will likely see things that you do not, or will reinforce ideas you have. It truly does not matter if this person is going to play in the tourney with you - it improves the odds for both of you and if you meet before the final it still improves the odds of the person advancing.
Step #3 - Deck Building: Finally I Get to Do SomethingWhen time permits and I have the drive to do so I typically come up with 7 - 10 deck ideas, most of them usually have a deck list thrown together, but at this point it’s important to know that you will likely not use more than 3 decks during a tourney, very occasionally 4 decks. Two decks sometimes happens and one on the rare occasion but having at least 3 prepared is important.
Testing your decks serves two purposes: first it allows you to get the card balance right: do you have enough speed vs enough control? do you have the right quanta balance in the deck? But perhaps more importantly it allows you to refine your deck list down to the 3 decks you want for the tourney. You want to know which deck is the fastest? Which is the most resistant to control? Which is able to control the broadest range of enemy decks. Testing against ai3 is of value for determining card & quanta balance and for estimating the speed of decks, but is largely useless for determining the strengths of decks against what you expect to face. When testing match ups for the tourney use the
trainer and play both your deck and the opponent’s deck against the ai. It will give you a better feel for what your decks actual strengths and weaknesses are, the ai is often too dumb to see a solution to a problem your deck presents, but you’ll see it the first time you sit in the opponent’s chair. Better than the trainer play your decks against your partner from the previous step to get a feel for what a real opponent can do with or against you deck.
Step #4 - Put on Your Tournament Music“What!” you have no tournament music, well that’s the problem there, if you have nothing try
this perhaps it will inspire you to epic feats of epicness.
Step #5 - Know your opponentsYou want to manipulate them into playing the deck you want them to play, failing that predict what deck they will play next, and failing that to identify what deck they are playing as soon as possible, ideally after seeing their mark and their first quanta source. Your knowledge of the metagame from your tourney preparation will help here, but so will having experience against lots of PvP opponents. You’ll get to know who likes to rush, who hates stall decks, who throws control cards into every deck they play. Beyond gaining experience make sure you watch chat you’ll notice occasionally someone bragging about the deck they built, or complaining about a deck that destroyed them. Make note of it in case you meet them later in the tourney. And finally, I never suggested this, use
spectate liberally. Scout out your next opponent, scout out people in the other bracket you expect to make top 4 or 8. Knowing what decks your opponent has in their inventory and what they are likely to lead their first match with can help lots. However, using spectate is significantly frowned upon, if you use it don’t brag about it. If you don’t use it don’t feel self-righteous about it.
Step #6 - Choose your Decks WiselyIf you can master the skill of manipulating your opponent’s deck choices you will win lots of tourneys. The trick is with your first deck choose a strong deck that has an obvious counter. If you win convince them to counter your previous deck and play a deck that counters what they are now going to play. If you lose convince them you are going to counter their first deck, expect them to counter your new choice and counter that deck.
Warning: The game of bluffs and double bluffs can be effective, it can also kill you. If your opponent is not smart enough to know what they should do, you can end up being surprised by their deck, or if they are smarter than you expect they may end up one bluff ahead of you and playing counter to your deck. In choosing a counter deck make sure its not a silver bullet, a deck tuned specifically to beat one other deck. Always choose a deck that is a solid competitor on its own merits, that way if you screw up your prediction your deck can still win on its own strength.
Against names I do not recognize I will often choose to lead with a forum deck, this is for two reasons: first, forum decks tend to be strong decks in their own right, often able to win on brute strength over a newer players home built deck. And second, it masks my stronger decks from those who might be using spectate against me.
Step #7 - Don't Get Tunnel VisionSome combo players believe they must play their combo to win, other players play all their cards on their last turn just because they can. DO NOT make these mistakes. Everyone
here who says they always finish their turn is one day going to run into
this situation. One day you will accidently play a sundial from hand the turn before you deck out, or some other mistake that will cost you the game. Worse those combo players that feel the need to pull off a certain combo as a finishing move occasionally miss the opportunity to win conventionally a turn sooner. A Buff and PU deck that get a slow start sometimes need to PU the opponents creatures as opposed to waiting for your combo. Its called The Danger of Cool Things take a look at
this article for further explanation.
Step #8 - Know Which Deck is the Aggressor and which the DefenderThere is a classic MtG (Magic the Gathering) Strategy article called,
Who's the Beatdown?, which I referenced earlier. Suppose we are both playing rush decks - it is obvious that the faster rush deck wins. But suppose we are both playing a little control in our decks, its turn 3 and I have a choice between playing another graboid and BBing your lavagolem, it is important for me to know which deck is the faster deck. If my deck is the faster deck I should pursue my win condition, if however I am the slower deck I should BB you and plan on catching up next turn. Knowing which is the faster deck helps make these sorts of decisions.
However, there are two things to note here. I am making assumptions about which deck is faster based on my guess as to what your deck list is. I may be wrong,
It's A Trap! plays exactly on this mistake, it fools you into thinking you are facing a standard grabbow and than uses your own creatures to kill you. If however you knew what deck you were facing you would simple CC his creatures and kill him around the doll. The other alteration to which deck is "The Beat Down" can be starting hands. You may have a perfect rush draw with an otherwise slower deck that changes the balance of power and gives you the opportunity to pursue a more aggressive win.
On a side note: Decks that take advantage of this play mistake are few and far between, this is a largely unexplored facet of deck building in Elements, a skill which, if you can master, will drive the tourney veterans crazy and allow you success as you capitalize on other's play mistakes.
Step #9 - Prepare to Build Decks on the Fly If you have been using Spectate, you will occasionally see a brilliant deck idea you never considered. Copy it! Grab a few minutes after a match and put together a deck list, play a game or two against ai3 with it (as long as its not a stall deck) to make sure you have got a workable quanta balance. If you are not sure add an extra pillar or two, until you are sure. Beyond using Spectate it occasionally becomes important to counter a deck a during a match, if your opponent is running a strong deck which you expect to see a second or third time you may need to throw a counter deck together quickly. If you have a laggy computer you are likely out of luck, but with any reasonable machine throw together your counter deck and then triple check everything, open up the forum post with the tourney rules and make sure you did not include a
banned card. Try not to use more than the three allowed minutes - but if a bathroom break is needed by all means take it. Note however abuse of this rule will likely result in a far more legalistic enforcement of this rule, to the detriment of everyone s tourney enjoyment.
ConclusionRemember you play this game to have fun, take time to enjoy your tourney experience, if you are eliminated early, take time to hang out with someone else in the same boat, talk about your experience, what did you learn, what decks did you see, what did you think would be strong, take time and Spectate a match or two see if you can learn anything from those you think are pros. Or if a pro got eliminated early, take time to talk to them, pick their brain, get them to look at your deck lists. Then come back next week and Destroy them all!
