Visiting Nipponbashi

Many who visit Japan are aware of Akihabara (Akiba for short) in Toyko, often talked of as a Mecca for nerds, geeks and otaku. Far fewer are aware of the Osakan equivalent, Nipponbashi, also know as Den Den Town. Whilst not as sprawling as Akiba, this means there is still a good selection of shops within easier walking distance of each other.

Since most of those who would read this are TCG players (mostly Weiβ Schwarz), I’m going to be concentrating on what they can check out in Nipponbashi.  There’s much more besides this, but you’ll have to check them out on your own.

Getting There

If you can work out your way around the Osaka underground, the easiest thing to do is get to the Nipponbashi station and walk from there. There are several other stations near to the central area of Nipponbashi, such as Ebischuo and Nanba, so it will depend on which is easiest for you to get to.

When you get out of the ticket gates at Nipponbashi there should be some stairs going up to street level on your right. There are pictures of food from local restaurants on the wall next to the stairs, so they’re a bit hard to miss. Once at street level you’ll see a road directly in front of you. Turn slightly to your left and follow that down. When you have a chance, crossto the other side of the road.

Keep going forwards until you reach a crossroads, with some small patches of grass on one of the corners. As you might have guessed from the sight of the maid cafe on the opposite side of the crossing, you’re pretty much there now. I would normally cross over the road and then turn right, continuing straight until you reach another left turn. This is the start of the main shopping street in Nipponbashi, and where you’ll be spending a lot of your time.

The Shops

One well known chain of card (and more) shops in Japan is Yellow Submarine, which has several shops in close proximity to each other. If you’ve entered from the direction I talk about above, the first one you will come across is the Namba 3 Yellow Submarine. On the ground floor they have a display of Weiβ Schwarz cards for usually the most recent couple of sets. A few older cards can also be found on the 2nd floor. The ground floor also has a good selection of sleeves and general card goods. Several other TCGs are split between the first 2 floors.

If you go up to the 3rd floor (and 4th if its open), you can find some play space. This could be just for free play, but sometimes they’ll have tournaments, since they’re one of the places that holds official shop tournaments for Weiβ Schwarz.

If you turn right after the Yellow Sub there is an Amenity Dream ( アメニティードリーム) hidden down the side street, which can be pretty easy to miss. I went about 6 months before finding out it was there. Just look for the floor which has  アメニティードリーム listed. They seem to have a good selection of WS cards, but I don’t think I ever bought from them. They also have a fairly large playing space, but this seems to mostly be taken up by Magic players.

If you go straight on from the Yellow Sub there is another hidden card shop on your right, just after the Warhammer 40k display. If you take the lift up to the 2nd floor you’ll be able to spot it from all the Yu-Gi-Oh! posters. They’re mostly a Yu-Gi-Oh! shop, but do sometimes hold Weiβ Schwarz events. Although in my experience, outside of the WGP preparation event, they get less than 5 players.

Continue further on and you’ll reach a crossroads with several different card shops nearby.

Directly on your right will be the Card Pal. This shop mostly deals in Yu-Gi-Oh! and Weiβ Schwarz, with play space upstairs that sometimes holds tournaments for both. They have a good selection of Weiβ Schwarz cards, and it’s generally worth looking in their PR display if you’re after some hard to find cards.

They’re also one of a couple of shops in Nipponbashi that you can request cards from their massive selection of cards behind the counter. They have many folders on display which you can look through to see if they have any cards in stock. If you want a card, you need to write down the game, it’s name, the code, the price and so on, then they’ll look for the card for you. Be warned though, it’s a very cramped space for writing down card names, and you’d better hope you’re not after cards like this.

If you return to the crossroads, you’ll notice there are two more Yellow Submarine’s just on your left. The first is a figure shop, whilst the 2nd (Nanba 1) is another TCG shop.

The Weiβ Schwarz cards on display here are a little older than the ones in the first Yellow Sub, but they also have plenty of folders to look through for any cards you might be after. They also have play space on the 2nd floor, and sometimes hold tournaments. Upstairs also has a good selection of board games if you’re into that.

Returning to the crossroads, if you continue straight on from where you started (So car park on your right), you’ll come to Gamers. There’s a little card shop hidden on the left just before you get, next to the retro game shop with the Mario outside. They have a tiny bit of play space, but it’s usually fairly empty. There’s a little bit of Weiβ Schwarz, but a lot of space is taken up with things like Yokai Watch medals, and one of the DBZ TCGs.

Gamers is one of the big general purpose Otaku shops in Nipponbashi, but if you’re after cards you need to head down the left side of the shop, where all the Gashapon are. Here you’ll find stairs down into the first of 3 C-Labo.

This shop has a good selection of cards on display, mostly Weiβ Schwarz, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Cardfight! Vanguard. There’s also a sleeves display that can sometimes have rare or valuable ones on display. If you’re after something from here, make sure you check out the other two C-Labo as well, since prices can vary.

There is also probably the largest free play area in Nipponbashi down here, so its a good place to go for free games. Sometimes they do hold tournaments, or have other special events that completely close off the free play area, so you won’t always be able to use it.

If you return to the main road and continue forward you’ll soon come to a T junction, with some more card shops in the vicinity.

On the left you’ll find a Hobby Station, which is another of the big card game chains. They have a good selection of Weiβ Schwarz, Yu-Gi-Oh and a few other games, plus a big display of card sleeves. Sometimes it can be worth asking if they have certain cards behind the counter, because they aren’t always on display. I managed to get some really cheap Patricias from Lucky Star because of this.

Upstairs are even more card games, and a playing space. They often hold official tournaments here, and it’s one of the most popular, so make sure you get there and register early if you want to play.

Going back to the main road, you’ll find a shop called Dragon Star just past the T junction.

They have two neighbouring shops, with a good selection of cards from many different card games. You can often find rare Weiβ Schwarz cards here, and pretty cheap ones too. Make sure to check out their ‘damaged’ section for good deals if you don’t mind some barely noticeable damage. They also have a huge collection of rare Yu-Gi-Oh merchandise, such as Worlds Prize cards and trophies.

Be warned, the shop can be very hard to move around in, and it’s not a good place if you’re claustrophobic. Thankfully recently they expanded the space around the Weiβ Schwarz area, so it’s not quite so painful to look any more.

Just after this, a new TCG shop opened recently, but I can’t recall its name. It’s on the 2nd floor, near a maid cafe, so make sure you go into the right shop. There’s a free play space and a good selection of cards, but I wasn’t there long enough to give a proper junction.

Also along this street is a shop that often sells character-yaki, if you’re after something novel. In the past they’ve had Madoka and Vocaloid.

If you keep going straight, you’ll reach a big building with an Animate and several other shops. You can’t miss it from the signs down the side. Animate is good for anime / manga, and they’ll sometimes have special exhibits for series like Nozaki-kun.

If you go up to the top floor you can find another C-Labo. It’s worth looking here because the selection and price can be different from the others. There’s also a free play area, but you need to pay a small fee or buy from the shop if you want to play in there.

The Animate building is pretty much the end of the main street in terms of major shops, but that doesn’t mean we’re done yet with the card shops.

If you return all the way back to the Card Pal, and this time go left rather than straight, you’ll find a couple more shops.

Up first is Torekapaku (Trading Card Pack?), which has a good selection of cards, sleeves and general TCG products. Keep an eye out for weird things like the bread or pizza playmats. They have a free play area, where you can sometimes find people to play against. Sometimes they’ll have full sets of Comeback PRs for cheap, so make sure to keep an eye out for them.

Continue to the end of the road and you’ll find yet another C-Labo. The product selection is about the same as the others, but with the slight variations you would expect. They have a free play space that can seat about 40-50 people, and is generally good for free play.

If you’ve been keeping up on my blog, this was the shop where I’d take part in tournaments every Sunday from 5pm. They were unofficial ones with a ¥100 yen entry fee, but were usually well attended. At the end of the event, you’ll get some random cards as a prize, with higher placement getting to earlier and more picks. Due to this, even if you come last, you might get a good card out of it.

Usually numbers would be in the high 20s, early 30s, dropping below 20 on a slow week, or above 40 once.

It’s a nice play environment, and there are a lot of good players who attend. People will usually change up decks from week to week, and won’t always go super competitive. Some weeks you might be facing Kancolle and Nisekoi, the next mono-Sara Da Capo or Noise. Once people lose a single game, they tend to switch decks, so its still fun even if you don’t top.

If you manage to win one of the blocks they’ll even put a picture of your deck up on their Twitter account (@nanba2_labo), and they’ve recently started streaming some of the games on Niconico.

If you leave the C-Labo and look left, you’ll spot a Big Magic. This is mostly a Magic shop, but does also stock Weiβ Schwarz and other card games. There’s free play space on the 2nd floor, but it’s usually pretty busy with Magic players.

It can be a pain to see some of the Weiβ Schwarz cards, since they’re directly under some of the Yu-Gi-Oh folders, which are usually being looked at.

If you continue past the Big Magic and go to your left, you can find a few more card shops, such as Card Kingdom, but this can be a bit expensive. Due to this, they do have quite a wide range of cards in stock. In addition they have free play space, and often hold official shop tournaments.

If you headed to the right instead, you’ll eventually get back to the crossroads where you started all of this.

There are probably even more card shops dotted around, but these are the most prominent. If you can venture out a bit further, make sure to try and find Hurricane Shinsaibashi (you will probably need to look that up in Japanese, or find it on the official site). This shop is the official gold / silver bag trade in station for Osaka, so you might be able to get some rare items if you have any lying around.

If you’re after figures make sure to check out the shops down the left hand side of Nipponbashi, next to the main road. Just go straight from the station instead of turning. Make sure to check out the big arcades too if you get a chance.

As you wander around, you’ll have no doubt noticed plenty of maids (or shrine maidens, school girls etc) handing out fliers, so if you’re into that there’ll be plenty to keep you occupied.

If you have any further questions about visiting the area, don’t hesitate to drop me a message on here, or you can find me on Twitter @Xagor1.

Adventures in Nipponbashi: Friendlies

Just a quick and short article this time, covering some of the friendlies I managed to get in at the start of Golden Week. I decided to take out some of my Standard or more fun decks.

The first game saw my Miyuki Deck Out deck facing off against Sword Art Online, and as no surprise to anyone, SAO won. I got some nice set ups with Suginami, but it didn’t help that SAO has Wind Triggers.

For my second game my No Attribute deck faced off against Vividred Operation. This really went in the No Attributes deck favour, with it ultimately winning whilst still in Level 2. Saten was able to smash past the Level 1 Vivid Green, and even managed to crush a Level 3 when she hit 15,000 Power. Thanks to Kunikida I was able to search any cards I needed, and my supports meant my Counters were free. Lucia and Saten managed to close the game out together with my opponent’s resources nearly completely depleted.

A third game saw my Glasses deck facing off against a weird mish mash of a Standard deck where I’m not even sure of the theme. Maybe top deck check? It featured cards from SAO, Symphogear and Mai Hime to name but a few. The game got off to a weird start, with my cards repeatedly crashing into Kirito Loners for even trades.

I can’t recall much of Level 1, except getting help from the Alarm effect of Miyuki’s mum. Level 2 ended up being the usual case of Chihiro supporting Lit Club Yuki and giving me a tough to break wall. Battle Mode helped me ward off any attacks, even stopping a 15,000 in its tracks. I closed it out with some Shiroe, just because I could.

My fourth game saw Tabitha taking on one of the Red varieties of Da Capo. I was unable to pull off the 0 to 2 change, but at least I got in the 1 to 2 change, after a double Climax combo. I basically relied on that Tabitha for the rest of the game to cause extra damage and kill things off. The game ended with a big blow out of Brainstorms and Bounce. The former allowing me to give an extra 2000 to one of my cards, due to the Level 1 Tabitha support, whilst the latter was supplied by a Climax combo and then a Wind Trigger. I cleared my opponent’s Stage out and somehow won.

The final game saw Lucky Star facing off against a Kantai Collection deck that could gain huge amounts of Stock. Lucky Star basically walked all over it Power wise and won during Level 2 whilst I had 10+ Stock.

Adventures in Nipponbashi: Even more Lucky Star

As usual, I was off to Nipponbashi last Sunday for yet more card games. I arrived into Nipponbashi fairly late in the day, meaning I didn’t have much time for pre-tournament games, especially after picking up a Moguera figure first. I did manage to get two games in with my friend though.

Due to the fact that all of my tournament games recently have been with Lucky Star, I’ve been using friendly games as an opportunity to use my other decks. With this in mind, I started things out with the Wooser deck, which I was finally getting a chance to play. I’d managed to pick up [Everything is within a dream Wooser] the day before, so I thought it would be appropriate to try out the deck with the Wooser Rares. I opted to use all of them except [White Day Wooser], because I figured I’d never actually get enough Stock to play him. As it turned out, I might have actually gotten the chance to pull this off.

Wooser was facing off against my friend’s Symphogear deck, which got off to an utterly terrible start, allowing me to get an early lead. Once I reached Level 1 I put down two copies of [Proof of Manliness Wooser], which allowed me to build Stock up for the rest of the game. The Level 1 game wasn’t really much of an issue either, because [Go on a journey Wooser] is a 1/1 10,000. When it was eventually defeated, during my friend’s Level 2 I think, I used my journey to scout for what packs I might want to buy later.

Once I got into Level 2 I decided to use [Shopping Wooser], because why not, and bought a pack of Milky Holmes 2. I just so happened to pull [Saku & Hirano & Tsugiko, Phantom Thief Incident Investigation Team], which is one of the Green RRs in the set. With only 9000 Power it wasn’t particularly useful in game, but an RR is an RR. When I finally reached Level 3, I had 13 Stock, meaning that if I’d used White Day Wooser, and held off on Stock earlier, for example [Shopping Wooser], then I’d actually have been able to win with it.

Instead, I just put down [Everything is within a dream Wooser] in the centre, alongside a [Wants to destroy the world Wooser]. The latter card cleared both of our Stages out, and I Encored the former in case I lost on the next turn. [Wants to destroy the world Wooser] ended up striking for game anyway.

Afterwards we had a game with my new and improved Glasses deck against his Genei deck. Despite the distinct lack of Red in the deck (bar the Level 0 Kanji), it still had the Gate Climax in it, which actually ended up being fairly useful. There was a bit of back and forth at Level 0, and then once we were into Level 1 I used Shiki to clear his Stage out. Once I got into Level 2 I was able to put down copies of Chihiro and Lit Club Yuki, but beyond that I don’t really remember the Level 2 game all that much. I probably used [Battle Mode] at some point I suppose?

In Level 3 I was able to finally use a decent attacker, in the form of Shiroe, who could be pretty big. I can’t actually at this point recall how the game ended, and whether I won or not. I either won the turn I played Shiroe, or completely forgot about his top deck check ability when he was attacked, because I never used it. I think it might have been the latter…

Once this game was wrapped up we headed over to the C-Labo for our regular Sunday tournament, which had an unusually large turnout of 20, which would mean we’d be going to 5 rounds for the first time. I was still unable to break my habit from previous weeks, once again finishing on an X-1 record.

My first round, and only loss, was against a Blue Macross deck, which was really quite an embarrassing loss. Given that he somehow also went 4-1 in the tournament, at least I wasn’t the only one to lose to him.

I really honestly cannot say what went wrong in this game. I think we had a bit of back and forth at Level 0, but he couldn’t really stand up to my Level 1 game. By the time I got my 2/2s out they could pretty much defeat all of his cards, whilst constantly gaining me new cards due to their Climax combo. Then I just died at Level 3 after taking 4 damage in a row. This wasn’t a good start.

For the second round I was up against my friend, who was using his Miku deck. We both seemed to get off to terrible starts, with him sending out his Len Brainstorm on turn 1, and me having to use a Climax so [Kung Fu Master Konata] could get over it. It didn’t get any better for him after that, sending out 39 Miku for a direct attack, due to having no other Level 0s. After we both sort of stumbled through the Level 0 game, things got a tiny bit better at Level 1.

Unfortunately for me, I was lacking in both supports and Otaku, so both [Battlefield Konata] and [Summer’s Day Konata] were unable to reach their full potential, whilst my opponent was able to put down stronger cards, thanks to his 1/1 vanilla Miku, supported by extra copies of the Miku support. Thankfully though, I had two copies of [Innocent Konata] to hold off his attacks and keep my Stage. By comparison, I don’t think the Miyuki counter would have had enough Power, but it did mean I was spending 2 Stock to keep my guys around.

On my next turn I was able to make my own Stage better, whilst hitting against a mostly empty Stage, and I think I left him at 1-5. I didn’t make a final direct attack, because I assumed that at this point his Level 1 game wouldn’t be able to keep up. This was correct, and I was able to build a bit more advantage.

What happened between here and the very end of the game escapes me right now, but eventually we reached Level 3 and my opponent put down two [“Electronic Diva” Hatsune Miku] and one factory chief Miku, but without the Climax combo. I think I might have had a Kuroi-sensei counter to protect one of my characters, but I lost the rest. On the following turn, I think I won though, by dealing enough damage to end the game.

For my 3rd round I was facing of against an SOS Brigade version of the Haruhi deck, so I was relatively confident that this wouldn’t be too hard a game. This turned out to be correct, because it ended up being the easiest one of the day. As I’m writing this now, I only just realised this game was a battle of the Aya Hirano characters.

I started out with [Kung Fu Master Konata] backed by supports to defeat my opponent’s opening character. My opponent then followed up with the plays that were probably his downfall. He decided to send 3 characters after me, and one of which was [Kyon & Koizumi], which he sent right into Konata, not realising it was Level 1. (Despite the fact I let everyone know this when I play her). This knocked me into Level 1, at which point I stopped Clocking, and didn’t do so for the rest of the game.

My Level 1s dealt easily with his Level 0s, and then his own Level 1s couldn’t really keep up either. After sticking him at Level 1, like in my previous game, I was able to gain even more of an advantage over him in terms of both card advantage and Stock. He wasn’t really able to do much of any use until Level 3, when he put down a bunch of [Trouble Girl Haruhi] and used her Climax combo, but this wasn’t enough to finish me off. I cleared his Stage and won the game on the next turn.

My 4th round was against yet another Junes deck from Persona, in what was generally a poor game all around for me. I don’t recall getting any supports early in the game, at least not without searching them with Miyuki, which lead to me generally having problems in terms of card numbers throughout. We had a bit of back and forth on the Stage during the game, but my opponent always seemed to be ahead on cards. I also kept on clocking cards that weren’t immediately useful, then regretting that choice a turn or two later.

As the game was reaching a close I made what could have been a mistake, by using my Level 3 Miyuki to heal 1, meaning I didn’t have enough Stock for [Stand Up! Konata] to Stand again. This ultimately didn’t matter though, because my opponent cancelled all 3 of my attacks that turn, meaning that even the extra attack wouldn’t have been enough. My attacks had at least been able to deal with some of his Level 3 cards though.

On the following turn my opponent tried to go for game, but I cancelled enough to stay in the game, helped by the fact I’d just hit my Refresh. By this point I was really low on cards, but I knew my opponent had already gone through most of their climaxes, especially based on the previous turn. I had the +2 Soul Climax in my hand though, and it looked like it might finally be a chance for the card to shine. To get enough cards to attack though, I had to move supports up, and play Kuroi-sensei to the Stage. My opponent ended up taking 7 damage straight, the last hit being from my Counter.

I didn’t really feel like this win was deserved, but I was glad to have won. It’s exactly for these kinds of situations that I’m playing 1 copy of the +2 Soul Climax.

My final round was against King of Fighters, which was also using a copy of [Assisting Shiyoko], in order to increase the number of attributes on the Stage.

Level 0 got off to a reasonable start, thanks to [Kung Fu Master Konata] being hard to kill, however she wasn’t at full Power due to not having enough supports. Instead I’d had to place a copy of the Otaku Trio back stage and hope for the best. Later during Level 0 I debated sending a support to take out his [Chris] card to prevent the Change, but decided I’d rather keep the support card.

I seem to recall really not getting much in the way of Level 1 cards at first, instead having to rely on the Otaku trio to beat the 1/0 vanilla that [Chris] could change into. However, once it got up and running the King of Fighters cards couldn’t really fight back.

Later in the game I debated whether to hit my opponent into Level 2, because I actually need to be able to win at some point, or leave them stuck at Level 1 longer, so I can drag things on some more. I decided to go for damage, because my opponent had been getting loads of cards via Gates, Brainstorm and Event cards, such that I wasn’t confident that they’d run out of cards quick enough. This allowed my opponent to use [Ryo Sakazaki] to switch one of my supports out onto the Front Stage, which put a bit of a dent in my Power.

When we finally reached Level 3 it was time for [Plunderer Ash] to come into play and start sending some of my guys off to Memory. They first came down during my Level 2, meaning that most of my Konata weren’t strong enough to hold off Ash, however my Level 2 + the Kuroi-sensei counter managed to take at least one of them down. On the following turn I put some [Favourite Food Konata] into play, allowing me to heal a bit, and also reduce the number of attributes on the Stage by getting rid of my Level 2 (and it’s Net Game attribute). Since all of the cards I had left only had Otaku and Manga, it meant Ash could only gain 2000 Power from my side of the field, making defeating Ash a little easier.

On the second turn in Level 3, my opponent made use of [Ryo Sakazaki] again in order to weaken my supports once more, alongside the Climax combo for Ash, which boosted his Stock levels back up, after exhausting it all. I think both of Ash’s attacks were cancelled though, with my only damage coming from Ryo. I did lose a support to Memory though, which was a bit of a pain.

On my next turn I took out a few more of my opponent’s cards in battle, but I think I only managed to deal 1 damage in the process, with the rest being cancelled. At this point my opponent was running a bit out of steam, but still had a few last tricks up his sleeve, like [Omega Rugal]. I think I was on about 3-3 at this point, which meant that two hits could finish me off, but I was unlikely to go down in a single hit. At this point my opponent just sent everything at me to try and finish me off, and thanks to [Omega Rugal] he essentially got 4 attacks, due to his burn for 3 effect. I think every hit ended up being cancelled, maybe except for one for 2, but it wasn’t enough to take me out of the game.

On the final turn I had to cause 6 damage against an empty Stage to win, so went all in with 3 cards with 2 Soul. I hit for 7 off the first 2 attacks and won.

Once the tournament was over, we picked up our prizes, and I realised that not only had the Macross deck somehow gone 4-1 as well, but that another Lucky Star deck had won the whole thing. From looking at things his build was a little different to mine, but the core was probably the same.

After that my friend and I went for Sushi to finish off the day.

Adventures in Nipponbashi: Rebuild of Lucky Star

Last week I was finally able to get my hands on the missing Otaku cards for Lucky Star (at least the ones I was ever planning on using), due to yuyutei finally getting some back in Stock. Although it was split over two orders. This means I finally have 4 copies of [Favourite Food Konata] and 2 copies of [Innocent Konata]. In the latter case, the card actually arrived on Sunday morning, so I was a bit lucky in that regard. I also finally managed to get the full playset of [Overlord’s Vassal Etna] for the Prinny deck.

The most immediate, and likely permanent change I made to the deck was to switch out one copy of [Strongest Character Miyuki] for a copy of [Favourite Food Konata]. This would still leave me with a Miyuki for ridiculous plays if it ever came to it, but would allow me to heal more consistently. I’m currently not sure the deck needs 4 of the Konata, but I got the 4th one just in case, knowing that the card is very hard to come by.

On Saturday I swapped out one copy of [Way of Hobby Konata] for [Innocent Konata] to try and see how much difference it made. So far I’ve not been a fan of the former, since it rarely seems that necessary, but having access to a Brainstorm is always useful, so I’ve kept one copy in. On Sunday I also decided to swap out the Miyuki counter for the Konata one, once again to see how much difference it made. In theory being searchable by [Swiftly Running Girl Konata] is a big plus for the card. Also, I suppose the Soul Trigger helps to cause damage, not that the Lucky Star deck is particularly wanting for more Soul Triggers.

On Saturday there wasn’t really much to report. I was tired and generally just had problems asking people to play. Had one game with Otaku where I lost, at least partly due to hitting 3 climaxes in a row on my last turn. Not much you can do about those games.  Then played one with Miyuki and lost, but that deck is more for fun / to see if I can ever pull it off. I also modded my Glasses deck, but haven’t had time to use it yet.

Sunday got off to a bad start, but gradually got better. Pre-tournament I had two friendly games against my friend’s Project Diva deck, and managed to lose both of them, which was a remarkable change from the last time we played. In game 1 I’d gone through 6 Climaxes by the time my second turn started, so I was probably due to lose that one anyway.

In game 2 I held off my +6 Soul counter, hoping to use it on the 3rd attack, rather than the second. I died on the second hit. Turns out that if I had played it, I would have survived that hit, and cancelled the 3rd hit. I would then have had a good shot at winning on my next turn. It was a 50/50 choice there, I just made the wrong one.

Afterwards it was time for the tournament, and at first it looked like it was going to be a very small one, partly because some of the regulars were playing in what looked like a Level Neo launch event. (I don’t know anything about that game, other than the fact it has Kara no Kyokai / Garden of Sinners and Wake Up, Girls! in it). We eventually managed 16, which is one of our larger events, but 6 of them promptly dropped after Round 1. I once again managed a 3-1 record, with some very close games, but X-0 still evades me.

For round 1 I was up against a Junes deck, which was a pretty bad game for me. I was still feeling pretty exhausted and out of it at this point, and my deck really wasn’t cooperating. Except for the Kuroi-sensei counters, I didn’t draw a single card that was above Level 2 all game (well except maybe opening hand, where I don’t really need them). This meant that I couldn’t really keep up with my opponent Power wise, or in terms of damage output.

As the game was drawing to a close, I’d hoped to use Miyuki to search for a copy of [Stand Up! Konata], who would then try to fish another Level 2+ from the top of my deck. However it turned out I only had 1 Level 3 left in the entirety of my deck. My attempts to end the game that turn predictably failed, because I had to somehow cause 7 damage in a turn without access to 2 Soul characters. I lost the following turn.

This game was also a bit weird, because we had some mixed Japanese / English communication between us, since my opponent was trying to help out by using English where he could.

For Round 2, I somehow ended up against Junes again, which was being piloted by a friend of my first round opponent. The two of them looked to have very similar decks. Due to the number of drops in Round 1, it was also a pair up for me, so this wasn’t looking like a great start for me.

Thankfully, my deck actually functioned this time and I was able to put up a better fight. I think for 0-1 we were fairly evenly matched, with us generally just trading off against each other. I think I made a few dents here and there, but thanks to his Climax combo he was able to keep his card numbers up. Once we started to enter the late game, my Level 2 Konatas were able to make short work of anything below Level 3, and even some of his 3s fell before my Counters.

We reached a very tense point once I got into Level 3, when I realised I was down to 0 Climaxes in deck. My opponent was running relatively low on cards at this point, and only had 1 Level 3 out on the Stage. With them sitting at 3-2, it felt like do or die on that turn, and I was pretty confident I could get through, given that I only needed two successful hits. I decided to go after his Level 3 first, figuring there was really nothing he could do, and that I didn’t care much if my [Favourite Food Konata] lost, given that I wanted to end things that turn. What I didn’t realise (largely thanks to lack of knowledge on sets I don’t use / play regularly with), was that my opponent was playing [Jack Brothers], an event counter that lets my opponent Rest one of my characters. This cut out one of my attacks, and left me short of game. Given my opponent’s follow up hand, I’d have won that turn if I’d attacked his Level 3 last.

Fortunately for me, my opponent had also made a mistake by playing that Counter, because it left him with only 1 Stock, meaning he could not play a single 2 Soul character. He also didn’t have any Climaxes, which is how I knew I would have won last turn, had I not been stupid. This meant a tense turn of watching what my opponent triggered, because at that point I knew that 1 or 2 triggers and I’d be dead (either from attacks or Refresh). Thankfully I only took 3, and was able to end things on the next turn after an extra heal. I think my opponent conceded before all the attacks went through, because he was on I think 3/6, and knew he’d lose whatever happened.

For my 3rd round I was up against Madoka, which I strongly suspected given his Ultimate Madoka sleeves. Oddly I’m not sure if he actually played that card at all, instead forgoing it for the new Homura PR.

Level 0 started well for me, but badly for him, and this generally seemed to be a theme for most of the game. I got down a 4500 Kung Fu Master Konata early on, and this pretty much just beat up every card that he played, never really finding a way around it.

Once we got into Level 1, it was time for the Apples combo on his part, with him putting one of his Kyoko front Stage, in order to keep his Brainstorm Homura back Stage. On the next turn [Battlefield Konata] and friends swiftly dealt with these cards, putting my opponent even more on the back foot. It wasn’t until my opponent got all the way into Level 3 that he was able to mount some kind of comeback thanks to Sayaka and the deck Refresh Homura. Sayaka took down [Swiftly Running Girl Konata], with Homura falling to my Kuroi-sensei counter. I decided to Encore my Konata and spent the rest of the game sitting at 2/6, refusing to clock myself higher.

Next turn I tried to ram my 13k Konata (boosted by Miyuki), into his Sayaka, but he of course used healing wish to heal himself. On my opponent’s final turn he still wasn’t able to knock me off 2/6, and was fast running out of cards. In the end there was only the vanilla 1/0 Sayaka left up front for him, and I was able to finish him off that turn. I was a little annoyed when my Side Attack for 1 turned into 2, and got cancelled, but my final attack finished him. By that point I’d amassed 3x [Favourite Food Konata], alongside 1 copy of [Strongest Character Miyuki] and [Innocent Konata], but never had to need to use them.

For my final round I was up against Love Live! in what was really a closer game than it should have been.

We both got off to fairly bad starts, with me having to do stupid things like use a Climax so Miyuki could beat things. After a turn or two I was able to get out [Kung Fu Master Konata] though, who pretty much controlled the rest of the Level 0 game.

Once we progressed into Level 1 my opponent immediately dropped 3 lots of Eri (who gains 500 per Music), and two global Music supports. This crushed Kung Fu Konata, but I was able to fight back with cards like [Battlefield Konata] on the following turn. After some exchanges with counters and Encore being involved, my opponent was eventually down to just 1 copy of Eri on the Front Stage and 3 cards in Hand.

It was at this point that I decided to break from my normal style of play and actually get a use out of my +2 Soul Climax. I’d realised that my opponent was down to either 1 or 0 Climaxes, so I decided I would hit him hard. In hindsight I really should have just killed off his Eri and dragged out the Level 1 game longer, in order to establish complete control over the game. This would have meant a much more comfortable and smooth game. As it was, I hit my opponent for 8 damage and then the final card in their deck was a Climax.

With my opponent now shifted into Level 2 they were able to shift momentum back towards them, and it certainly didn’t help me when they got a +2 off of their Brainstorm. (Although admittedly, this would contribute to their defeat later). Between that and Gates, they suddenly had lots of cards again, and I found myself on the back foot for most of the rest of the game.

As the game was drawing to a close I realised that I’d need to just keep on hitting my opponent for damage, because they were running low on Climaxes by this point. Unfortunately so was I. I realised 2 turns from the end that I only had a single Climax card left in my fairly large deck, and that I was likely in a lot of trouble. I was at 2-6 at the time, so could afford to take another 8 damage, but I really needed to win the game as well. I decided the best way to go about this was to simply ram everything in and leave myself open to direct attacks. This would increase the damage I took, but hopefully also push me closer to that 1 Climax, which could save me. I didn’t feel that just side attacking, then taking 6 damage would be a good idea, because I’d add no damage to my opponent. I think they cancelled a good amount of my Front attacks though, so I didn’t actually cause much damage, but I’m sure them drawing a Climax would have been worse for me.

My opponent hit no triggers, and I blocked the middle attack, leaving me at 3-5. On the following turn I had about a 7-8 card deck, with 0 Climaxes left after I’d drawn for the turn. I thankfully had a bunch of Stock, but couldn’t really do much with it. I did have a copy of [Stand Up! Konata] though, who I could use for deck thinning, and didn’t really care what card I picked up with her. Unfortunately I could only get 2 other Otaku on Stage, because the rest of my hand was Counters, which I either couldn’t play or weren’t Otaku. This meant I could only thin the deck down by 3.

Once again I decided suicide runs would be the best bet, because at least I’d get a slim chance of a cancel post-Refresh. I have a feeling that I needed at least 1 Soul Trigger to win here, but thankfully about half of the Otaku deck is Soul Triggers, so this wasn’t too tall an order. What was a bit nerve wracking was the fact that I hit a 2nd Soul Trigger on what would have been an attack for game, even without it. My opponent was so low on Cliamxes though that it managed to all go right through.

After all these games I’m still not convinced about the [Innocent Konata] counter. I haven’t yet had a time where it was more relevant than the Miyuki counter, except maybe for the fact it has a Soul Trigger. Not that the deck is really lacking in that department anyway. The fact the 2/2 can search it, thus essentially giving you a 13.5k on the defensive, should be an advantage, but this hasn’t come up yet. I’ll really have to play some more games, and test some more to be certain.

Adventures in Nipponbashi: Not so Lucky Star

Last weekend I took my Lucky Star deck out for another spin, but also decided I wanted a few friendly games with some of my other decks for the sake of variety. Since I now have 9 different decks it’s getting a bit unwieldy to take them all in at once (not to mention heavy), especially since I no longer have enough room in my Haruhi storage box for all of them. Since they’re slightly more unusual decks I decided I’d bring my Miyuki deck out and Usual Haruhi decks, in the hope that they would give my opponents some new playing experiences.

Before heading to Nipponbashi there was something I wanted to try out in Senri-Chuo, so I made my way over there for lunch. The Attack on Titan burger promotion had recently started at Lotteria, and I had to try it out, even if just for the experience. Since I was going to be spending a relatively large amount of money on it (¥2000 / nearly £12), I decided I had to go for the 10m class burger (named after the Titan class, not the actual size of the burger), which came with 10 patties. I didn’t see the point in going smaller if the price was going to be the same.

In addition to this the burger came with a choice of keyring and burger voucher for a future visit. I opted for the 3D maneuver gear one, which came with a voucher for a shrimp burger. However, there were no accompaniments, so I also got a Melon Soda to drink.

The burger was pretty large, at about the same height as my drink, but it was sort of disappointing compared to crazy things, like the burger that I’d tried in Bristol a few years ago. Then again, I’d advise against trying something like the latter, because there’s very little chance of you finishing it, or feeling well afterwards. Each individual patty was quite small, both in width and diameter, which meant finishing all of the 10m class wasn’t really a problem.

It was more a matter of how to actually eat it. As you might imagine, the burger was not structurally sound, and was threatening to collapse as soon as I unwrapped it. There was also the issue that at its full size it was impossible to take bites out of it. Without a knife and fork, I also couldn’t split it up easily like the Bristol burger. In the end I decided to split it in half using the wrapper, and work through a half at a time. Barring issues of things falling apart, it wasn’t that hard to finish.

Having now eaten it, I can’t say I’d want to try it again, but it’s really something you do for the spectacle more than anything else. There was nothing amazing about the taste, it was just a normal burger, but bigger. For slightly less crazy people, I think 5 patty burgers are also a regular option at Lotteria now, and much cheaper too. I’m not entirely sure if you can go bigger or not though.

Having now consumed my burger, I set off for Nipponbashi once again. Prior to playing any games I did some quick scouting around the area, looking for cards once again. Some friends back in England were after some higher end Monogatari stuff, and I was still on the look out for some final Lucky Star cards, and the Etna that was eluding me. I was only successful in spotting the former, which was mainly just a matter of price / stock check for now.

After finishing my search for cards, I met up with my friend again for some pre-tournament friendlies. I started things out with the Miyuki deck, which predictably lost. Given it’s only ever won against someone who had no idea what I was doing, this wasn’t really surprising. The fact the deck sends Climaxes to Memory did leave him on edge though, and we had fun playing. After this I switched over to the Usual Haruhi deck, which generally worked with it’s whole killing everyone and being untouchable strategy. However I was really drawing too many Climaxes throughout the game and eventually lost.

Once this was done it was a quick journey over to one of the C-Labo for their weekly tournament. In previous weeks the numbers seemed to have been growing week on week, but this time we barely even scraped 8 players, partly thanks to someone who entered with a Kantai Collection TD to up the numbers. A late entry would later increase this number to 9. The tournament had its share of unlucky moments for me, but I still managed to come out with a respectable 2-1 record. I’m determined at some point to pull off a clean sweep.

Round 1 saw me facing off against an IdolM@ster deck, which I really didn’t experience many problems against. However, a mistake on my part arguably lead to my defeat. I was leading most of the game in terms of field presence and stock, regularly wiping out all of my opponent’s cards, and completely outmatching him in Power. Even his early play Level 3s were no match for Fast Girl Konata, and it wasn’t long before he’d also thrown away most of his support cards at me.

Arguably my mistake in this game came a couple of turns before the end, when I used Composed Type Miyuki to boost Fast Girl Konata over his Level 3. At the time I had a good hand already, and didn’t really see any reason to trade off any of my cards for ones from my Deck, so I didn’t use her first effect, especially since I was also planning on doing Fast Girl Konata’s Climax combo. In hindsight I should have used this chance to grab a copy of Strongest Character Miyuki, who could have saved me later in the game.

Come my final turn I was on 3/6, with about 12 cards in Stock and a small enough deck that I was probably going to take Refresh damage on the following turn, whatever happened. If I’d had Miyuki I could have healed to a safe amount, and probably also set up Stand Up! Konata to help finish my opponent off. Instead I just had to hit my opponent and hope enough damage got through for me to win. It didn’t and I lost on the next turn. This was a disappointing result given my dominance in the game, but it was giving me better ideas for future games.

For Round 2 I was up against a Vividred Operation deck and had possibly the worse opening hand I have ever seen in all my time playing the game. It consisted of 2 Book Triggers and one of the +2000 +1 Soul Climaxes, of which I drew another copy post-discard . This meant that before the game had even begun, I was already out of half of my chances to cancel. I’d hung onto the latter because at least I didn’t lose cards by playing it, and given my terrible hand I’d be needing it help get over some of my opponent’s cards. I was just about ready to write this tournament off at this point.

This turned out about as well as you’d expect early game, with me being forced to use Climaxes in order for Kung Fu Master Konata to get over anything. As we transitioned into the Level 1 game I’d managed to get copies of Sundress Konata, and Battlefield Konata, meaning that I was finally able to put together a decent stage and fight properly against my opponent.

Most of the rest of the game was a back and forth between my huge Konata and his cards, with his Level 1 reverser proving particularly annoying. My opponent kept on using Morning Special Training Aoi, obviously hoping to dig for cards from his deck, but this felt like a waste of Stock to me. I was quite happy that he wasn’t able to keep a decent Stock up because of this.

Thankfully in this game it didn’t look like my opponent was drawing many of his Climaxes, so I wasn’t taking too big hits every turn, it did however mean he was cancelling my hits quite a lot though. Pre-Refresh I think I cancelled a whole 1 time, which was when I was down to my last Climax, which was about 2 or 3 from the bottom of my deck. Throughout the entirety of the game I think I only cancelled about twice. However thanks to my field presence I was able to keep the damage I received down to a minimum, even if my hand was being damaged by this.

As we got down to the conclusion of the game, I was on 3-6, with the fate of the game resting on this turn. I can’t recall exactly my opponent’s Stage, but I really had no choice but to send everything I could into his characters whether I could beat them or not. After all of my attacks my opponent was at 3-6 as well, but with only 2 cards left in his deck. Unless my opponent had a heal in his hand, or could draw one, it’d all be over since they weren’t even able to attack me once. I could tell that my opponent didn’t have the healer in his hand, so it was all down to the draw. He drew his card and conceded the game, realising that victory was impossible.

I’d somehow turned around a terrible start and managed to win a very tight game, so I was feeling a bit better about my prospects for the day. In hindsight in that last game, if I’d realised my opponent’s last cards were not Climaxes, I might have been able to win outright, rather than leaving it to a tense luck of the draw. However I can’t recall if they hit their final Climax in that turn, or whether it was already gone.

My final round was against a Genius 4 / Police deck from Milky Holmes, which I honestly do not remember all that much about. I remember being really stupid early on, which could have cost me the game, but I ended up winning out in the end. The Level 3s in this deck really did not put in much work today, but I think in this game at least, Miyuki did a bit of healing.

My big mistake was due to unfamiliarity with cards, and not bothering to read them, instead just making assumptions about their effects and what Power they could reach. I was nearly undone by Self-Proclaimed Genius Beautiful Girl Kokoro, who gains 1500 every time one of my characters Rests. I did not realise this, and attacked her last, after resting every single one of my characters, meaning that she was at 9500, and I rammed by Battlefield Konata right into her. If I’d just attacked her first, I wouldn’t have lost a card for no reason, and been in a much better position for the rest of the game.

Despite this, I was able to win out in the end, although I would have liked it to be a smoother game.

Following the tournament I played a few friendlies against my last round opponent, whilst his friend (my 2nd round opponent) watched. I managed to play a game each with the 3 decks I had on me, with Lucky Star being the only one to win.

I started things off with the Miyuki deck against Guilty Crown, which actually had a fantastic start for once, managing to build up Stock with Laharl & Etna, and due to generally having a good Level 0 field. In the rest of the game I only ever drew 1 copy of Suginami though, which really messed up my Stock gaining capabilities for the rest of the game, and made it a bit harder to keep my card numbers up.

For some reason my opponent decided it was a good idea to use a Stock boosting Climax combo that let him put the top of his deck into Stock when he beat one of my guys. This could have gone disastrously for him, because you do not want to be blind-stock things against this deck. Unfortunately for me, he never did Stock a Climax via this.

By Refresh I’d put 4 Climaxes to Memory, and left him with 3 in deck. Unfortunately I lost before I was able to get rid of the final climaxes and play Miyuki though.

After this it was Usual Haruhi vs a Sara Da Capo deck. The deck pretty much did what it was meant to do in terms of field presence, but it just kept on drawing Climaxes, so I took too much damage in the end. This is especially bad for a deck which relies on taking direct attacks all the time to increase cancel chances. I think I even managed to blind Stock a Climax with the deck’s one Gold Bag Trigger.

We ended the day with Lucky Star vs Railgun, where I have a feeling my opponent deliberately chose a deck to mess up Lucky Star deck. (I’d let him choose which of my decks I’d play). He was running the Level 3 Mikoto who could kill Level 0s, so it really hurt my game to have the Sundress Konatas sent to the Waiting Room. Despite these kinds of problems, I was eventually able to win thanks to the +2 Soul Climax, and the fact my opponent was down to an 8 or so card deck, with no Climaxes in it.

Adventures in Nipponbashi: The Debut of Lucky Star

With my Lucky Star deck now complete (Deck Profile coming soon!), it was time to actually get some practice with the deck and use it in some real games. Until that point I’d only been thinking about how it might work, and trying to form strategies, but actually playing it would be a whole other matter. It turned out I’d pretty much gotten the right idea about this in my head prior to playing any games though.

To start off with, I got some friendly games against my friend, two vs Miku and two vs Day Break Illusion – il sole penetra le illusioni / Gen’ei o Kakeru Taiyō, which for convenience I will call Gen’ei from now on.

The final score was 3-1 to me, with the only loss being in one of the games with Gen’ei. I think it was my second game with the deck, and I drew lots of Climaxes and didn’t really deal with it well. From these games I realised just how deadly the deck could be, and just how much Power it could put on the Stage when things were functioning correctly. Which thanks to Miyuki and Patricia was most of the time. A field of 8500s with Encore is quite a scary prospect during Level 1.

I’ll save most of the playstyle talk for the actual Deck Profile, but there are some parts of the deck which are quite different from other decks I’ve played. The deck encourages a focus on the Level 0 game, otherwise it cannot get set up, and then builds on things from there, whereas normally I’m more used to trying to prepare for later as soon as I draw my first hand. Secondly the deck has a lot more supports than I’m used to, and finally it’s still a bit weird playing a deck with a decent amount of Soul Triggers.

After the practice games it was time for the deck’s first tournament outing, which unfortunately had a bad start and didn’t really let me test properly.

Round 1 was against a Green Rewrite deck(piloted by the Da Capo player from last week), which I made some stupid mistakes against. For example I played a 500 attack card whilst the opponent had an effect in play which dropped all my Front Stage cards by 1000, so you can imagine how that went.

I also made a terrible mistake on the last turn of leaving a tiny card out vs the Level 3 Lucia who can hit to Clock, even though I was on 3-6 at the time. Fortunately he didn’t have the combo, but I still lost anyway. I think at some point I just fell too far behind on damage due to early climaxes, and just couldn’t pull it back, even with Stand Up! Konata double attacking.

My next two games were against beginners, so didn’t really count as proper practice.

Round 2 was against a Nanoha deck focused on Hayate, but it was mostly full of vanillas or other underpowered cards. It was really no match for the brute strength of the Lucky Star deck, and I think I’d reduced him to about 1 card by the end of the game, and had stopped clocking pretty early on. I wanted to do the Stand Up! combo, but won before she got to attack even once.

For the 3rd round I was facing a newcomer with a Miku deck, who basically just kept on throwing cards and climaxes at me. I took 9 straight damage at least in a single turn at one point, which was not nice. By pushing me ahead in damage it meant he had no chance of beating my Konata cards. I think I stopped clocking at 2/1, and actually stayed at that point for a couple of turns. Eventually his Level 3s started falling before my 2/2s, and I was pretty sure I was going to be able to win, due to his rapidly dwindling resources.

There was a very scary moment when I was on 3-2 and got hit for 5, but thankfully I cancelled that hit. I finished them off on the following turn, by which point they only had 1 card left.

An end result of 2-1 wasn’t bad, but really two of those games were unfair. The main revelation I had during the event was realising why people play the 1/1 vanilla counter over the 1/0 vanilla counter. It is simply the fact that the former is an Otaku, meaning you have a counter that can be searched by the Level 2 Konata, whilst the latter cannot. I’m still not convinced this is worth it, but it’s not a terrible deck building choice.

The following weekend, which last weekend from now, my friend had Saturday off, so we managed to get a load of practice games in. In fact we had so many that I’m not really sure how many we managed in total. I played 2 games against Gen’ei, and either 5 or 6 against Miku, managing to come out on top in every single one of them.

This included games with terrible starts where I could not set up my supports, and even one game where I did not get a single Level 3. I’d done the Level 2 Climax combo hoping to get a free search for a Level 3, but it turned out that I actually had none left in my deck at the time, so I had to fall back on the Level 2s for the rest of the game.

I had a couple of games where I was able to nearly win at Level 2. In one case winning at 3-0 on my first turn at Level 3, without even needing to play any of the 5 Level 3s in my hand. From my games it was quickly becoming clear that the Power output of the deck was substantial, and that it could generate huge piles of Stock.

The next day it was time for another tournament, and this time I was quite pleased with my performance, although I know it could have gone better.

Round 1 saw me facing off against a Symphogear deck. I can’t recall too many details about the game, barring the fact it was getting pretty close at the end, and the fact my opponent was using an illegal deck.

Early on in the game I saw something go to the Waiting Room that I was sure looked like an iM@S character. Later when he played that card I was still sure of it. I asked to read it, and confirmed it was indeed an iM@S card, and he was playing a Standard, and thus illegal deck.

I informed the guy running the tournament of this fact, and my opponent was given a loss and had to alter his deck. Feel a bit bad about winning in this way, but he couldn’t get away with using an illegal deck.

For Round 2 I was up against a Railgun deck, and thanks to some of my encounters with the Eva deck, I was a bit more ready to face this than some other decks. Throughout the Level 0-1 game I pretty much dominated the Stage, but my opponent kept on hitting gates, which allowed him to keep his number of cards up.

Once we reached into the Level 2 game, things started to sway his way a bit more, as his Level 3s started coming into play. It was during this point that I made a terrible mistake that probably in the long run cost me the game. After he wiped my stage out, for some reason I just let my 2/2 go, rather than Encoring it, even though I had a massive pile of Stock at the time. If I’d kept it around, not only would I have been able to do its Climax combo on the following turn, but I’d also have been able to kill his Level support that he’d brought to the front Stage.

Instead I was just forced to ram 3 Level 0s into his guys. Once we were into Level 3 proper, I was staring down a big field of things that were between 13 and 14k, which was a bit of a problem. I tried digging for a certain card with Stand Up! Konata, but it turned out it had actually been in my Stock at the time, so that didn’t really help. It even made things worse by going through at least 2 book triggers. In hindsight, if I’d realised this and just looked at 1 card with both copies of Stand Up! Konata, then I’d probably have cancelled all my opponent’s hits on the next turn, and had at least one final turn to strike back.

Instead I got knocked to 3-6, and had my last Front Stage card killed by Mikoto & Kuroko, which of course meant defeat for me.

After kicking myself a bit for the stupid mistakes, it was onto Round 3!

This time I was up against IdolM@ster, which was a game that generally went my way for most of the match, although my opponent did make at least one glaring mistake.

Starting off with 2 Summer Dress Konata and a Kung Fu Master was a pretty good start for me,  but my opponent had the Runner, so the two cards pretty much dodged around each other for most of the Level 0 game. Once we moved into higher Levels I started to put on more pressure with higher power cards, which were able to just about beat over his.

At one point he made a big mistake by sending his Reverser Makoto into Kung Fu Master Konata, hoping to top deck it. After him and his neighbour trying to explain what was going on, and me looking confused, I let him know my card was Level 1, and he realised his effect did not work. I knew there was no way there’d be a Level 0 card that could top deck a Level 1 card like that.

Once we got into Level 2 and 3 I was mostly relying on the 2/2 Konata to push me onwards. My opponent’s resources were gradually dwindling as he was forced to move his supports into battle, and some of his Level 3s were falling to my Level 2s. This was whilst I was still managing to hang on at Level 2. I was using up quite a lot of stock keeping Konata around when his combos managed to get over her though, at least she could strike back and win on the next turn usually.

On his final turn he wasn’t even able to field 3 things that could attack, and he was finally able to get me to Level 3. I didn’t actually need to play any Level 3s though, and was able to finish him off with 2 copies of the Level 0 Miyuki and the 2/2 Konata. Since he was at 3/5 at the time, I figured there was no need to bring in the big guns, especially since their Stage was nearly gone, and they only had 3 cards left it their hand, which they’d been unable to play last turn.

The first Miyuki got cancelled, the second one let him use a heal counter, but hit for 1. By this point Konata was at 14.5k, meaning she could walk over my opponent’s last Level 3 and finish the game.

For my final round I faced off against a Sword Art Online deck, in a game that could have gone much worse.

I opened up with Kung Fu Master Konata, a draw Climax, 2 copies of Kuroi-sensei and a Level 3, dumping the latter three only to draw into 2 Book Triggers. That right there could have been a death sentence for me, because not only was I already out 3 Climaxes, but I also couldn’t get my Level 0 game up and running properly. I ended up having to use the draw Climax just so Konata could actually beat something in battle.

As you might expect I was soon in Level 1, but by that point I’d managed to get some Level 1s, so was able to field my 1/0 7500 and a 1/1 8000 (I think I had a Patricia and a Summer Dress Konata back stage, rather than 2 Summer Dress). My opponent got rather unlucky with cancels, and got stuck at 0/5 when I put my big field down, meaning he was forced to lose cards for an extra turn. When I hit him with 3 direct attacks on the next turn he took a lot of damage.

As the game went on I was generally able to keep on top of things in terms of Power, whilst wearing my opponent down. I made a couple of mistakes, like trying to pay a Climax out with Patricia close to Refresh (with no Bond target) and forgetting the Climax was actually one deeper.

By the end of the game, my opponent was practically out of cards, and had a nearly empty Stage, with I think just 1 Asuna in my way. When I put Stand Up! Konata into play, paying out 2 Climaxes, I realised that my deck only had a single Climax left in it, and there were definitely more than 10 cards left in it. This was an incredibly bad situation to be in at this point in the game.

To try and help the situation out I decided to go all out with Stand Up! Konata and look a the top 5 cards of my deck, and hope none were the Climax. Thankfully there were 5 characters, so I was able to thin my deck by 5. Ultimately it didn’t matter because I won that turn. My opponent was down to one Climax as well, which was 2 from the bottom of his deck, so he never saw it.

A final result of 3-1 wasn’t too shabby, and I think I placed 4th in the end. With the number of players we got that day, it really should have been 5 rounds Swiss, but the tournament stops as soon as there’s only 1 person on perfect score, which had happened that round. We were also 20 minutes from closing time, so it’s not like they could have done another one.

I was happy with the performance of the deck, but as a player I could have done better in Round 2. Of course, I can’t say for certain how the other 2 rounds would have gone had I won that, so I might have actually done worse overall. Something interesting during this tournament, was that whilst I was playing at the higher end (like Table 1 for round 2), I could tell some of the others were joking about it being the World Championship, due to me being English.

With 3 losses out of somewhere near 20 games, I’d say I’m happy with the deck. I still need to play against more different decks, but I’m really happy with how it plays and the style of the deck. Of those losses, I’d chalk two of them up to mistakes on my part more than anything else, so I think there’s still room to improve.

Adventures in Nipponbashi: The Search for Lucky Star

I’ve fallen incredibly behind on this feature, and now have several weeks worth of catch up to do. Because of the relatively large time frame involved, I unfortunately cannot remember games in as much detail as I’d normally like to. This means that in general I will only be providing brief accounts of them.

We’ll start things off with the beginnings of my search for Lucky Star cards, and the final outing (for now) for my Evangelion deck.

Having not really settled on a new deck for a couple of years now, and mainly just playing my Evangelion deck, I was starting to feel a bit weary of the same thing all the time. However, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to play as an alternative deck. I knew that decks like Da Capo and Rewrite were undoubtedly good, but especially in the former case there were a huge number of cards to work through before I’d be able to settle on a build.

In addition to this, I didn’t really care for either of them as series, since I’d never played or watched them. I’d much rather be playing a series I know, because I can relate to it in some way, rather than just playing to win. The only time I’d not followed this was for Robotics;Notes, because of the Science attribute, and that deck gets used a relatively small fraction of the time at the moment. This leaves me with a relatively small choice of series, because a lot of the stuff in Weiβ Schwarz I have never watched or played, and have no real intention to do so. In addition to this, I’d rather not overlap on series with namimo, which cuts out decks like Disgaea and Angel Beats!.

This left me with:

Nanoha, which I watched the first season of with the anime society, but don’t really care about it beyond that.

Madoka, which I watched and thought was a good series, but did not get blown away like lots of other people. I’d started trying to build this in English before the move was finalised, since I like the idea of what the GRB build can pull off, but never finished it. I was a little wary of going through that again, given my interest wasn’t huge.

Lucky Star, which I’d watched years ago, and had enjoyed at the time. Until very recently the set had been terrible and outdated, but with the Comeback Campaign and a new tournament PR it had suddenly gained a lot of strength. Otaku builds had a good showing at the WGP finals, managing 5th place, and were on the winning team for the New Year’s Trio Survival. Beyond that the modern version is too new for most people to have really made their minds up about, and most probably haven’t even given much thought to it. One issue I knew about ahead of time was the fact that the deck runs an old tournament PR from about 2009, which was now incredibly hard to find, and also one of the most expensive non-SP/SR/RRR etc in the game, at about ¥4000.

Zero no Tsukaima, of which I’d seen season 1. I already had my Tabitha deck for a bit of fun, but I didn’t feel compelled to build a proper deck, despite knowing it was good.

Project Diva. I know vocaloids are a thing, and like some of their songs, but I would really feel no loyalty to it.

Monogatari. I’ve not watched enough of it to justify playing the deck. Also the RR Hitagi is nearly as expensive as the Konata PR.

Out of all of these I was leaning more towards either Lucky Star or Madoka, knowing full well that the former would probably be much harder to build, although I felt more loyalty towards the series.

Upon arrival in Nipponbashi that day I decided to set out looking for the rest of the cards on my ‘To Get’ list, as well as scouting for Lucky Star cards. Still to this day the Red R Etna from the first Disgaea pack evades me.

Much to my surprise the Card Pal near where I come into Nipponbashi had one of the Konata PRs, but as expected its price was around ¥4000. At this point I was very wary of spending that amount of money, especially if I couldn’t gather the rest of the set. So at the time I passed on it, but made a mental note that it was there.

Later at one of the other shops (which might also be a Card Pal, I’m not sure), I spotted some Kung-Fu Master Konata, which is the brand new tournament PR, and another big obstacle to building the deck. That day they had 4 of them, so I bought them up right away, even though they were substantially more than the Yuyutei price (which has been pretty much perpetually out of stock). I’ve yet to see any other copies at any of the other shops, so that was a good decision.

After this I’d decided I might as well start down the path of Lucky Star, so went back to buy the first PR, which was thankfully still in stock. After a bit more searching I managed to locate a shop which was selling full playsets of both the Otaku and Twins PR sets, so I picked up one of each. With my collection of some of the harder to obtain cards growing, I was starting to think about how to complete the deck, and how quickly I’d look to be doing this.

To round out the day I participated in another tournament, once again fielding my Evangelion deck. After a good early start it went downhill, and I became determined to have a functioning Lucky Star deck by the following weekend.

Round 1 started off against a Sharuru Da Capo deck, which I’d gained some knowledge of thanks to the previous week. Barring an early mistake involving me not realising he could get a Level 1 out early, it mostly went my way and I won.

Round 2 was against Guilty Crown, where I controlled the Stage for most of the game, but came dangerously close to losing at the end.

Round 3 was where everything started to go wrong. I was up against Love Live, and thanks to lots of early Climaxes, I ended up massively behind on damage. Whilst this did mean I was able to devastate his Stage and resources due to my superior Power, I was too far behind to be able to win. This loss was quite annoying, given that my opponent was practically out of cards by the end.

Round 4 I was against Rewrite, after a bit of confusion about pairings. This went terribly. The deck just seemed to fall apart before the 2/2 9500 that comes out at Level 1. I really had no hope all game and ended up losing.

With a closing record of 2-2 I was really disappointed in the deck, and determined to try something new in the future. The following weekend I’d continue by search for Lucky Star.

To start off with, I’d be visiting Nipponbashi on a Saturday, rather than my usual Sunday outing for the tournament, and this time I’d just be looking for cards, with no intention of playing.

To start off with, I was looking for more copies of the Konata PR, alongside the PR counter if I could find it. I was quite lucky that the newly relocated Hobby Station had both, which meant I was one step closer to finishing the deck. Unfortunately they didn’t have any packs, so I’d have to look elsewhere for those.

Eventually I found that the C-Labo at the top of Animate happened to have an unopened Lucky Star box on their shelf, so I decided to buy that. After trying to ask in broken Japanese about whether that was all their stock, the very helpful shop assistant made a phone call to secure me a 2nd box. I can only assume she was either calling up one of the other three C-Labo, or their stock warehouse somewhere. I was told to wait about 10 minutes for it to arrive, so I spent my time browsing through the cards and sleeves on display.

After finally securing my two boxes of Lucky Star I decided to get into opening them right away, and working out how much more I’d need to finish the deck. The biggest issue with Lucky Star is simply the availability of some cards, so I decided boxes would be a better shot, because I’d have some chance of getting the cards I’d need, rather than no chance at all. It also meant I’d had leftovers for the Twins deck, and other cards like the Minami ones, because Chihara Minori.

Both of my Blue RRs were the 1/1 and in the end, RRs aside, I was missing 3 copies of the Patricia R, and 2 Book Triggers. Up to this point I had never found anywhere with Patricia, so things weren’t looking the best for finishing the deck.

After visiting several more shops, and revisiting ones from earlier I was no closer to finishing the deck, because everywhere was sold out of those two cards. Eventually I returned to the Hobby Station from earlier, which happened to have a Book Trigger on display. That along with more copies of Miyuki (2 for Otaku, 2 for Twins, 2 for Standard Glasses) would get me close to completion, but still not quite there. I managed to ask the shop assistant if that was all of their Lucky Star stock, and he understood which card I was looking for when I said Patricia. Thankfully they had at least 3 copies hidden away under the front desk, so I was able to finish the deck, at least barring more copies of the Level 3 PR and maybe the PR Counter.

With that out of the way, I decided to go pick up some supplies to go with the deck, such as sleeves, a deck box and a playmat. I was able to secure a Lucky Star playmat, but other supplies for the series were long gone. Instead I got Squid Girl sleeves, and a plain deck box, the latter because it was getting very late by that point. I also picked up two copies of the Log Horizon TD to mix into my Glasses deck, and some doujin Aussa sleeves for Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.

After getting home that evening I decided to start building the deck, and discussing strategy with namimo, in preparation for the following day. I also prepared a few alternatives for the deck, but I’ve yet to get around to using those.

Since this has already been a pretty long article, I’ll be splitting it into two, so come back soon to hear about the deck in action.

Adventures in Nipponbashi Part 1

Welcome back! After a long absence I’m going to be recounting some of my experiences with TCGs in Japan.

Since I’m in Osaka, this gives me access to Nipponbashi, which is essentially the Osaka equivalent of the much more famous Akihabara. Personally I prefer Nipponbashi, possibly because of my interests, or just because I’m more familiar with the area and have seen more of it. To me, Nipponbashi seems bigger, but that might just be because it’s more spread out, and has lots of smaller shops.

If you’re after card games, Nipponbashi has a huge number of card shops around, including Yellow Submarine, Hobby Station, Card Pal, at least 3 C-Labo, and many more too. The shops stock a wide variety of cards, most covering many games, with a few focused around specific titles. Series will often be split into different displays, or sometimes even different floors.

In addition to the boosters, single cards, sleeves and other playing goods, many shops will also have a play area where you can sit down and play cards with other people. These areas could be upstairs, or in the larger shops even next to the card displays.

If you’re after Yu-Gi-Oh! cards you can find these at practically any card shop, and I’m sure if you browsed the single cards for long enough, you could find practically anything you needed. It is worth shopping around though, because prices will vary from shop to shop (this is true for any of the games). There were also quite a lot of Vanguard cards around, as well as the multitude of other Japanese games, like Weiβ Schwarz, Z/X, Chaos TCG, and many more that I don’t even know the names of. I even spotted an advert for the new Attack on Titan expansion of Sieg Krone, which I imagine is popular amongst some fans.

Since for now I’ve mainly been eyeing up the Weiβ Schwarz cards, I’ve not really paid too close attention to the Yu-Gi-Oh! cards on offer, but may look closer into this later.

So far I’ve made two trips into Nipponbashi, the first of which was a rather quick look around, but the second allowed me to take things more at my pace.

My first trip to Nipponbashi was mainly in search of the special Wooser TD set for Weiβ Schwarz, which had been released that day. However, since it was only produced in very short numbers I had expected it to be quite hard to find, and my suspicions were confirmed when I could not locate a single copy. Despite seeing adverts in lots of shops, and on the streets outside, the best I could manage was finding one place that seemed to be sold out.

I also tried looking around a bit for some Weiβ Schwarz singles I was looking for, but to relatively little success.

During my return trip to Nipponbashi two days later, I pretty much had a free day, so was able to explore more and check more shops. My search for Wooser was more successful, finding one lone set in the first shop I entered (which I’d also been to 2 days ago). Despite further searches throughout the area, I was not able to locate a second set, but I’m just happy to have been able to find a single copy.

After this I set off again looking for single cards, and trying to find Hobby Station. I’d been informed they were holding a Wooser tournament, and was hoping they might have more copies of the cards too. Unfortunately they didn’t, and I wasn’t feeling up for trying to navigate my way through a tournament with Wooser at the time.

The search for singles was mixed. My main goal for the day was Literature Club Nagato (a 4th copy), the support Saten from the Railgun S TD (for the No Attribute deck) and the Chris card from King of Fighters (as a present). In addition to this, I kept my eye out for a few Signs, but those are generally too expensive to think about at the moment.

I managed to locate one relatively expensive Literature Club Nagato, but decided that I didn’t need it for that price just yet. I couldn’t locate the Saten, and do wonder if just buying the TD would be easier at this point. I did however find one copy of the Chris card, which is honestly the first time I’ve ever seen it in person before.

After searching around the shops for cards, and getting something to eat, I decided it was time to try and play a few games. This first of all involved finding people playing Weiβ Schwarz, and then working up the courage to ask them to play in broken Japanese.

Finding people to play was relatively easy, because a few of the shops had a couple of people playing, it was just a matter of picking one. In the end I settled for the C-Labo in the basement of Gamers, because it had one of the biggest playing areas. At the time I think it was mostly full of Yu-Gi-Oh! and Vanguard players, but I did manage to locate a few pairs playing Weiβ Schwarz.

Eventually I managed to work up the courage to ask for a game, and then sat down to play a long series of games with a variety of decks and against a variety of decks, using everything except my Robotics;Notes deck. It was lots of fun even if I didn’t quite understand everything that was going on, and my opponents and their friends seemed to be having fun seeing some of the fun decks I brought out.

The first game saw my Evangelion deck facing down a Love Live! deck. Things got off to a bit of an iffy start for the deck, because Shinji was nowhere to be seen, but thankfully the Level 0 and 1 Reversers were able to put in some good work. I don’t think Shinji made an appearance until really late on, when he had to go Centre Stage, to help me overcome more powerful threats.

When I got to Level 2 I was able to get two Finishing Blow Asuka out, which helped bolster Cooking Asuka, as usual giving me a fairly cheap but strong Level 2 game. Once my opponent reached Level 3 though, they soon fell before superior power.

During this time I just kept on drawing Level 3 cards, to the point I actually had 5 in my hand at one point, although one would eventually be Clocked. By the time I needed to play them, I was at 2/6, so lots of those heals ended up being wasted, but it was worth it for the board control. During the opponent’s next turn they lost their Centre Stage, either due to being forced to suicide, or thanks to Counters, but it did push me up to 3/6 in the process.

I won on the following turn with a series of direct attacks.

Next up I decided to switch to one of my fun decks, namely my Glasses deck, at which point my opponent switched with one of his friends, who I’d continue to play for the next 6 games. He started off with another Evangelion deck, but with more Blue than I choose to play.

Unlike in my previous game, he was able to start off with double Shinji, which meant he had a bit more power to work with. The glasses deck didn’t do anything particularly fancy at first, mainly having to rely on Tabitha at Level 0, then vanillas at Level 1. Thankfully, I think my opponent was lacking useful cards early on, so I was able to build a little bit of Stock.

Once I hit Level 2 I was able to fill the Back Stage with Chihiro, and start building a Stage of Literature Club Nagato, whilst generating a big pile of Stock.

I managed to fend off my opponent’s Level 3 Asukas thanks to Battle Mode, and even though a Climax combo Shiki failed to defeat another Level 3 Asuka, I managed to win whilst still at Level 2. I’d been waiting for a chance to drop the Miyuki with the silly heal combo, but never got the chance.

Next up was No Attribute vs Prisma Illya, which was my first encounter with some of the new cards, like the new Trigger. I opened with two of the Global support for the deck, but unfortunately didn’t have anything really to make use of this fact, so was quickly forced to Level 1.

Once at Level 1 I filled my Stage with 3 copies of Maya, who managed to give me some board presence for a while, thanks to their Encore. When more powerful threats appeared, the Saten Climax combo helped to deal with them.

Unfortunately, my Level 2 game was terrible, with my only Level 2 card being the Lucia Change. At the time there were no Level 3 Lucia in the Waiting Room to change into, but fortunately I remembered Triggering one on the previous turn. This meant I could pay it into there with the Stock requirement for the Level 2. Fortunately the Level 3 was able to survive through a turn thanks to my counter.

By the time the Level 3 game started I’d managed to gather 3 Saten in my hand, which I’d hope might be able to keep me in the game a bit longer, however the Illya and Miyu I was facing down made this problematic. After two of them joined Lucia on the Stage, I only had enough Stock for the final Saten to reach full strength. This meant I was only able to defeat Illya on that turn.

On the following turn my opponent played another Illya and used the Climax combo for the pair, giving burn to everyone, and making Miyu strong enough to defeat Saten. Despite the Soul reduction from my Saten, it wasn’t enough for me to survive the turn, and I was defeated by an attack from Miyu.

Next I decided it was time to switch over to the non-attribute themed decks, starting off with the Miyuki deck out. Coincidentally my opponent switch to their Lucky Star Twins deck, so it was sort of a Lucky Star showdown.

In this game it didn’t really matter what my opponent did, because Miyuki is the biggest card in the deck, and aside from her I don’t think anything else even breaks 3500 Power. In this game my opponent and his friends seemed quite impressed and excited that I happened to be playing a deck with Banana Parfait.

The deck got off to quite a good start starting out with both Kyon & Itsuki and the 3 idiots. The latter even managed to stay around for a while by repeatedly throwing themselves in front of the new Miyuki searcher PR card. I even opened up a copy of Suginami and my Encore support, so had hoped my Level 1 game was going to be set up as well.

Unfortunately though, as the game progressed I only ever had that one Suginami, so I was never able to establish my Stage properly. I was able to get rid of 4 Climaxes before Refresh, and since my opponent had triggered some of them, they ended up with a deck of 2 Climaxes.

Unfortunately because of my bad Stage position I struggled to build Stock, and due to repeatedly drawing Events I could no longer risk suiciding Suginami. My only hope pretty much rested on the opponent Triggering both Climaxes, allowing me to attack for game. Unfortunately I was defeated on the turn that they hit their first Climax.

Next I switched to the Usual Haruhi deck, which is one of the most annoying decks you could possibly face, as anyone who has ever played against it before can attest to. Initially my opponent and his friend were confused by the deck, thinking that it was maybe some kind of KyoAni deck, but once I reached Level 1 it became clearer. My opponent did seem to at least enjoy seeing this deck in action though.

The early game started off well, with me being able to use Onsen Haruhi to take out any threats, and build stock with other cards. I even had the pieces for Onsen + Dress up combo, but never had a chance to pull it off due to my opponent only playing 1 card at a time during Level 0.

By the time I reached Level 1, not only had I built a decent pile of Stock, but I also at had least one of  each combo pieces already in my possession, with the Y-shirt card, Usual Haruhi and Dress Up Mikuru in my hand and Mikuru Asahina already on the Stage. Thanks to “I have no interest in ordinary humans” I was able to complete the full set up.

From here on out it was just a matter of killing things and dealing damage with two copies of Usual Haruhi and one of Mikuru Asahina, before having everything run away to Memory. Eventually once my opponent played a Level 3, I had to switch up the Stage to allow for a second Dress Up Mikuru. Apart from this I’d just heal when the opportunity arose via the Da Capo Blue heal combo.

As usual, the deck cancelled a lot, and eventually won the battle of attrition.

Next, I decided it was time to move back to Neo-Standard, and continued the Haruhi theme with my Nagato deck. This faced off against a Shana deck, which actually had very few Shana cards in it, instead focussing around Hecate and Wilhelmina.

Early game I was able to start with the 3 Aliens card and Nagato Yuki, providing a good starting wall. My opponent followed up with Empty Existence Hecate, which meant I had to use Usual Nagato to clear their stage, and fortunately I didn’t get them to Level 1 just yet.

On the following turn I added another copy of the 3 Aliens to my Stage, bolstering the power of my Aliens some more. Once we were both at Level 1, my powered up vanillas were able to overcome his cards, and this was helped by the fact that Kimidori ended up on top of the Clock.

By the time I reached Level 2 I had a massive pile of Stock, which meant I was able to search for, and play, 2 copies of Summer Festival Nagato. I already had a 3rd copy in my hand, but at that point in time the Waiting Mode Nagato I already had on the Stage wasn’t under threat. Both Summer Festival Nagatos managed to survive the turn, so that on the following turn I could get the complete trio out. The game then turned into protect Nagato, whilst building up my hand and Stock.

The Witch counter and another copy of Kimidori helped make sure my Stage could not be broken, and with 2 copies of the anti-Climax counter in my hand, I was pretty sure I’d be safe. Thanks to some fortunate cancels my opponent’s Hecate could not break my defences, meaning that in the end I was facing a completely empty Centre Stage on the turn I finally drew the right Climax.

This allowed me to heal away 3 damage, and put Kimidori back on top of the Clock, ready to weather more attacks. However I won that turn, whilst still at 2/1, making the set up unnecessary.

For what turned out to be the final game of the day, I switched to my weakest non-gimmick deck, which is my Tabitha deck. It features nearly purely Tabitha cards, with the only exceptions being her familiar, Sylphid, and one of the Louise Concentrates. Since the deck is mostly full of vanillas and unremarkable cards, its only real play is to try and get a Level 2 8500 with Encore out during Level 0, which did not happen here.

It was facing off against a Green Rewrite deck, featuring Lucia and Shizuru, which has just a few more tricks up its sleeve.

I started off the game with several copies of Sylphid, and Tabitha of the Yukikaze, which is quite frankly one of the few good cards in the whole deck, so I was expecting to have a pretty good start to the game. Unfortunately though, my opponent Changed into two copies of the 1/0 6000 Shizuru on turn 1, which put me in a bit of trouble.

I managed to force suicides though, thanks to 3 copies of Sylphid and 2 Tabitha of the Yukikaze and a Climax card. This did dent my hand quite a bit.

Once the game progressed beyond Level 0, my deck struggled to put anything too impressive on the Stage, having to make do with the 1/1 vanilla, until Louise finally brought back the Level 1 with Change.

From here on I kept on getting luck with Climaxes, which allowed me to do better in the game than I really should have done. First of all, my opponent Changed out the Level 3 Lucia, who got bounced away by a Wind Trigger on the next turn. Then they played Shizuru a Level early, who also got bounced away on the following turn.

When the game finally reached Level 3 properly, they could both be played normally, and thanks to Lucia’s Climax combo, my Centre Stage was soon empty, and I’d taken large amounts of damage. This left me at about 3/5 compared to their 3/0. Even at the best of times the Tabitha deck wouldn’t be able to break their field, and my hand was far worse than that. Aside from the bounce Climax combo, the deck really cannot do much about Level 3s with a decent Power.

Even though I had options to play from my Hand, I decided to take my chances with Louise, and happened to hit two Climaxes, bringing back two copies of the 1/0. I added to this the Great Performance version of the Level 3, and decided to ram everyone into my opponent’s cards, hoping for a little bit of damage, and then maybe to cancel lots with an empty Stage next turn.

Instead I attacked with a 1/0, hit a 2 Soul Trigger and it went through. Then the same thing happened with the other 1/0. Then finally the Level 3 hit, once again for 3 damage, which also wasn’t cancelled. Somehow I won that game, even though in all honesty I probably should have lost. From what I could tell, I think my opponent was getting a bit of gentle mocking from his friends for managing to lose to a Tabitha deck of all things.

After that my opponent and his friends had to pack up and head off home, so after our thank yous, I also decided it was enough cards for one day.

Coincidentally during my games, another English speaker had arrived at the shop and had been playing my first opponent, and we ended up exchanging details with the chance of playing or meeting again in the future.

Please visit again, and maybe you’ll get to hear more about some of the TCG related activities I get up to.