Event report
QTB seemed to run smoothly overall with great sportsmanship and effort. We were fortunate to have 3 solid teams with at least 2 active players on all teams. Everyone seemed engaged and played their matches. QTB revealed itself as a deeper strategy event which could probably benefit from 3 person minimum teams and perhaps more deckbuilding restrictions. Kudos to Timpa for leading 3 newbies to OETG on Team Cardinal, while working on flash etg events. And thanks to Oa and W3 for joining us, grinding, and facing millcat abuse. Seriously..thanks to everyone for participating. At a personal level, it just helped scratch a creative/competitive itch for me. Without participants, that dynamic satisfaction doesn't occur.
Overall, the Quad team concept seems strong enough as a base for future instances. The 3-Round structure seems fine; Dawn to Dusk recommends more 'distinction' b/w the rounds in terms of deckbuilding rulesets. Judging by the range of deckbuilding decisions teams did make, offering more variance makes sense to give teams more of an 'advantage' during their home rounds.
7-games per match feels like a lot for one player to prepare for in the event one person takes on most of the deckbuilding responsiblities; consider fewer games for next instance, perhaps 5-games. Event emphasizde prior deckbuilding work and less in-match deckbuilding decisions and 'adapting' to the live situation (although that certainly occurred).
First 2 rounds felt crunched on time. Round 3 felt better. 7 days is probably too little, 10-14 day rounds is better. Initially thought we could 'squeeze' this event in before semesters began. People who work in education actually work hardest right before the semester and hard at the start. Students have it roughest at the start of the semester. I know some players were affected by this so I'm sorry if the timing wasn't ideal and left you with less time to engage.
The Millcat effect
Millcat was problematic in that the immomillcat version (nerfed after event) could avoid CC, had draw power and cheap mill CC. Even the non-immo versions were problematic and had better than 50% winrate (Corpsemillcat was 60% WR). Millcat was especially problematic for Cardinal and Material in that Spiritual could run millcats 2x per match; Mat/Card could only do so in off-element matches. Spiritual could 'double' the millcat advantage, possibly more than double the advantage if you consider in-house dark-element deckbuilding advantages.
Post-event data indicates there was about a 10% winrate boost for Spiritual over Cardinal, and 8% winrate boost over Material. Although removing millcat from the picture is impossible, it appears Spiritual still had a higher winrate in the non-millcat match-ups. If Spirit had won simply with a millcat boost, I'd understand if Material/Cardinal were angry. I'd also feel Spirit didn't quite deserve the win as well.
As a player who enjoys the game overall and doesn't have a specific element/quad preference, I'd rather see a more balanced ecosystem. So why not nerf millcat for the event in advance? It hadn't been tested enough in a pvp-event-meta to say so conclusively. Examining quad strengths/weaknesses early on, I felt Spirit was seriously handicapped with little CC and overabundance of healing. Spirit elements are often the 'tech' for other elements - dark domins, light stalls, etc. Material and Cardinal looked like more 'complete' elements and I thought that a millcat advantage might itself help balance the quad teams. Looking at things later, I see millcat really did have an OP effect. I also underestimated Spirit's resourcefulness to find solutions and strong decks beyond millcat. Honestly, I'd have to play in the shoes of material or cardinal (and I think other players vice versa) to have fullest perspective. Frankly, I'm still scared every time I face material and always feel like the underdog. To emphasize, I'm not downplaying Spirit's millcat advantage; the advantage was real and significant. I'd just like consideration to go to other factors as well..
I would like to point out that Team spirit had to still work to optimize millcat in the meta and also worked hard throughout the event in general; in other words, we could have won less with millcat if we didn't put in the time/effort. Perhaps I was the participant most in-tune with millcat and anti-millcat at the time of this event (maybe not), which may have helped amplify the millcat effect. Team Spirit also looked at how teams could counter (or try to beat) our millcats; we also prepared anti-millcat strategies against each team as well; we had theory/analsis for upgrade structures and various decks we'd face. There were definitely some untapped anti-millcat strategies in R1 (understandably so) but some increasingly explored strategies in R2/3 by Cardinal/Material. Mirage, Owl Yoink, Handrill-type decks, etc., had anti-millcat potential, in addition to fast rushes (still at the mercy of millcat's RNG), and some soft counter CC. Spirit was close to successful on a few anti-millcat strategies but slow starts didn't allow us to observe the potential in those match-ups. We felt confident enough to employ them though after some testing.
Factors such as preparation/time available/effort/player level/ in-game performance/ RNG are obvious contributors towards overall performance; in the end it's tough for me to simply say Millcat won the event for Team Spirit although I perfectly understand if others feel this way. In short, yes, Team Spirit received a millcat effect advantage, but I don't believe it was a golden ticket to winning the event.
I'd like to congratulate all the teams for their effort, sportsmanship, and for really showing some juicy decks and strategies, which I'm sure contribute to this community's ongoing PvP-meta-knowledge-base.
I loved seeing Mirage adapted for this event. Geotessdrill was inspired from Are we Idle Yet? Basically, we're tapping into the work/knowledge of the community back to beginnings of flashand taking deckbuilding to a deeper level as time progresses. Standing on the shoulders of Giants.
A few favorite event memories:
1. Playing Dawn in Cardinal round while I was very tired. Started off G1 with Geotessdrill. Literally had to stop a few times mid-game and tell Dawn I needed time to catch my brain. I hate playing those complex decks and especially so when I'm tired.
2. Playing Timpa in Cardinal Round G1. Mirror match - Tessdrill vs. our Geotesssdrill. Timpa says "Why are you playing this deck?". I say "What are YOU playing this deck?". It's obvious we were both expecting each other to play millcat and had cleverly prepared an anti-millcat deck. We're slugging it out. My brain is again exploding playing this complex deck. I eek out the win. Timpa thinks the reaper was the difference. It did help. But I think Geo was the difference. He could drill my repears but not enough quanta to play skills en masse.
3. Playing with many SoI combos, trying to understand what all the passives/skills are. And then the joy of discovering another soon to be nerfed set. Double Yoink all the way!
4. Once rounds were posted and eyeing Material round with their 17 ups, I was not looking forward to that all event. So, preparing against Material last round for 2 matches was kinda depressing. Immo millcat felt like a wash with material as they can do it 2x. SoI was a good deck to play, but felt they could similarly play 2 fast decks with ample CC and hack shields as well. One of my habits (probably irritating to my teammates at times) is to just keep exploring, tinkering, and testing. Round and Round we go...here goes Septima again testing decks we know won't make the cut. Looking for impossible solutions. The deck I'm most happy about in R3 is not Ferrari millcat or SoI Boomstick. It was actually the Mono Dark deck with the Vader sader cloak deck a close second. I felt pathetic trying to make effective monos during this event. Sometimes even asking asd to 'please build us a good death mono' when I felt lost. Honestly, I felt those decks helped a 50/50 matchup vs. material give me a slight edge. A lot of deck exploration happened before settling on those options. It's nice when effort pays off (sometimes).
5. 'Optimizing Geotessdrill. Certainly not an original strategy, but tweaking it for pvp was nice and it felt good when the team agreed it was strong enough to employ. In fact, the understanding of how to build and play this deck got stronger. It really shows how much depth there is to this game. I love it.
Team report
Lost in Nowhere -
After considering playing Spiritual in affinity at first, I chickened out and went with Water. I'll be honest, I believed Material and Cardinal quads were stronger (and perhaps they are in that meta). So, I went with a versatile water element. Well, I got beat by LIN in Affinity convincingly. He had a good grasp for what I was doing/thinking, too, during that match and basically out-thought me, building a perfect counter deck in the last game. In fact, I think LIN is the best pure pvp-er on Team spirit. His ability to make good decisions mid-game, and in-between games, is stronger than asdw152 or myself. If he had time, I would have been happy for him to play 2x a round. LIN was very active and helpful during deckstorming. He got busy with school early on and wasn't able to test or engage as much during R2/3. I likely irritated LIN with my dominance in deckbuilding and squashing ideas he had. However, everything is grist for the mill and those ideas certainly helped with finding the decks to play. Thanks LIN. You're probably the most 'spiritual' player on this team with great faith in the cards and elements. I look forward to seeing you destroy me with Voodoolize.
Asdw152-
not active during deckstorming; he has working hard on flash death trials. Super helpful with testing and increasingly more vocal about match-ups/analysis as the event progressed. Dude definitely knows death quite well (actually oetg in general). I can tell he knows this game well by how fast he could play-test. Always a step ahead of me in that sense. Asd put up the most with my incessant deck exploration and testing requests. And incessant is true - I was dreaming about deckbuilding during naps. In time, I think you'll exert your voice more. When you do, it's quite valued by those around you. Awesome to find someone who shares some of my niche cultural interests beyond OETG.
Self-reflection -
I put in a good effort for this event as I liked the deep strategy potential for this event and like team vs. team settings. Yet, I didn't put as much effort as I wanted because of work obligations. I guess the intensity of effort had pros-cons. In the pro category was having data to support decisions for deck choices and line-ups. In the con category was simply dominating the team's deckbuilding efforts to the point I would think it was not fun for my teammates. It didn't have anything to do with distrust but rather my own enthusiasm to explore and leave no stone unturned. I'll challenge myself to be clearer with teammates in the future right from the start. I really do need to improve that habit.
I absolutely loved exploring Spiritual for this event. It was redemption for not choosing it in Affinity. I'm sad we couldn't find a way to include certain cards/combos competitively, but have not given up on their potential.
About intensity of effort - this comes not from a place of desire to win, but simply to be able to 'run with the pack'. I'm no Roger Federer of Oetg. I'm surrounded by some very smart people (teammates and competitors). To keep up I have to work harder than they do.
I also enjoyed facing Material and Cardinal's decks. The decks that stand out for me were Cardinal's Shifter quad. Unfortunately, they didn't win with it, but that was a deck during testing that made me think OMG. We really had to think about a quad deck for our G7 in R3 to try and handle this. Even the AI was burning us so we figured live play was even more challenging. CP PU Byt was also clever. Honestly, the first time I saw it I underestimated it. Later on, I realized what it can do and what decks it can beath. For Material, I'm partial to the Owl-Yoink deck. LIN explored this deck-type early; me later. We never found a convincing way to employ it. Material found a way to make it PvP-viable and get a win. Also, Pixie has to be the event MVP. Yes, not black cat. At least with Millcat, you either outrush or luck with bad millcat RNG. With Pixie, it completely messes with the overall plan of decks. Decks than can handle 3-4 others to some degree get smashed by Pixie. And one has a sense they can see pixie 4x a round. If you asked me before the event what was most troublesome from Material, I would have said Blue Nymph. Yet, Pixie ended up being the bigger headache. Thanks Material for dispersing Pixie 15x this event and Cardinal 4x! Yes, I did get pixie envy and try to build a Spirit-pixie deck. It didn't go well.
Future QTB participants -
You'll have a different balance/meta from this first instance. Have fun exploring your quad elements!