The Winter Cup was exciting for a lot of reasons. It was the first time in North America to hold a 3v3 triple deck format, team competition. The intricacies of deck construction introduced a unique challenge, as each trio had to avoid any overlap in their card choices. Winter is considered the offseason, so many of us were itching to play competitively with the latest set. When it was first announced, I immediately wanted to form a team with Anthony Apigo, one of my guys locally with whom I’ve bonded with over the course of last year playing competitively. We both regularly bounce ideas off each other while competing on the RVA weekly tournaments. As I deliberated over potential teammates among those attending the event, I encountered a challenge – many of them were already committed to existing groups. In reaching out to Brian Cevallos, who had yet to commit to any trio, I envisioned him as the ideal addition to complete our team.
Deck Profiles
Deck #1 – Women & Dragons
I’ll touch upon the deck building approach our team did for the event. After the events of the European Winter Cup, Wol 7 had solidified itself as the deck to beat. Elsewhere in Japan, Ice Water NED was making a splash because of how well it dealt with Wol 7. We knew that aggro was the meta and we needed to find answers to potentially three aggro decks. After playtesting a ton, we came up with Mono Water as our Deck A. Anthony’s list was one of the deck’s we felt most comfortable about because it handled all aggro decks decisively (except mono ice). Running 19 EX Bursts certainly helps, but what really puts it over the top in matchups against Wol7/FF13/Ice Water was the amount of EX Burst manipulation it runs. Astrologian can set up an EX burst for your opponent’s next turn. Leviathan 10-125H meant that any Leviathan 14-113R you drew weren’t useless, but can be manipulated into an EX-Burst. And we initially wanted to run the blanking Porom in this list, but Brian’s Cat IV deck needed it more so we substituted it for the EX Porom instead. The card that made the Wol 7 matchup a breeze for his deck was easily Shinryu 14-115L. I’ve been preaching it for a long time, the old Shinryu is underplayed in the current meta. While ideally you want to play the new Shinryu, the old one is just as good. It deals with all 3, 6, 9 costs, which means it deals with Neo-Exdeath/Griever decks, it wipes Magissa (just remember to blank the Yuzuki), Wol 7 decks, and it wrecks mono ice forwards that are under 7k (Rufus, Charlotte, Lasswell, Reno). There is no reason not to be running this card in mono water, especially with the high number of Loporrits and Tonberries in the deck to cycle them out if you need to. Another choice we made was to run 3 Tonberries instead of 3 Blue Wyrms. The main reason was so that we could discard Shinryu in the event we needed to. Both monsters accomplish the same thing, but honestly Tonberries might be better since it can attack more than once per game.
Deck #2 – Gilgaman
For our second deck, we ran countless deck combinations to try to figure out: is there a deck that is more consistent than Wol 7? The answer was no. Wol 7 had a favorable matchup across the board, except against Anthony’s mono water. We ran countless simulations and ultimately threw in the towel. If you can’t beat them, join them. Ultimately, I felt that if we were to enter a tournament and did not run the best deck in the format, we wouldn’t do well. We did make some changes to the Alex Winter Cup list. I had to take the Edge out because Brian’s list was using it. I also disliked Setzer—I felt I was never in a position to utilize it after I played it. I ended up modifying the backup line slightly because Cloud was a way better card than a third Samurai. Cloud as a backup was incredibly flexible: it allowed me to handle Porom/Laswell/Charlotte in the early game if I needed to, or just add another copy of Wol to my hand. Another card I added was Garland (IX), which was a card that felt incredibly unfair when flipped on turn 1 or 2. The main reason I ran this card was because during testing, double Arcanist meant there was no way for Wol 7 to win due to the lack of unique attackers available. If a control player can set up two arcanists, Wol 7 will deck out 100% of the time. I was so afraid of running into Arcanists, I also ran Vincent.
Deck #3 – Crystal Cat IV
Our third deck was a little tougher to decide on. Brian Cevallos is known for his Cat IV decks (he also invented the Golbez Warp deck). We tested countless decks against his new Cat IV deck and the first few iterations were…not great. He didn’t have a great win rate against any of the meta decks initially. We changed the forward line many times, we altered the backup line many times, we tested with summons and no summons… you name it. We were tinkering with the deck up to the night before and somehow, we ended up with the best version of the deck the night before. Suddenly, his deck felt different. The one advantage of a rogue deck is that no one knows how to play against your deck, nor know what to expect. Brian’s list is not the most intuitive, so head on over to his deck breakdown video to see what it’s all about.
Recap
Day 1 – 3v3 teams
We entered as A-B-C with Anthony as A, Brian as B and myself as Player C.
Round #1
Anthony vs Alex Tessmer (Wol 7), Brian vs John (Earth), me vs Chris Adams (Ice). All three of us won our games. My match was very straightforward and even felt imbalanced because Chris drew extremely poorly while I did whatever I wanted. Anthony’s game was also lopsided because his mono water was built to counter Wol 7. Brian’s game went to the wire with John decking out.
Round #2
Anthony vs Tin Tran (Mono Fire Samurais), Brian vs Wind Water Monsters, me vs Lisa (Archfiends). My game was another lopsided victory. Brian ended up playing vs a deck very similar to Torrey’s monster list. Since Brian had played against Torrey’s deck many times in the past, he knew best how to play the matchup. All three of us ended up winning our games.
Round #3
Anthony vs Brendan Tawa (Ice Lightning), Brian vs Sam Tuell (Water Earth), me vs Sergio Garcia (Wol 7). I had the mirror match and I knew it was going to be a coin flip. I knew Anthony was going to have a free win because ice lightning sucks vs mono water. I somehow drew better, cancelled his Wol 7 from flipping, twice. The matchup is silly because whoever resolves Wol 7 usually wins. We collectively went 9-0 by end of round 3.
Round #4
Anthony vs Timmothy Mai (Wol 7), Brian vs Steve Sause (Ice), me vs Aaron Williams (FF6)
This was the first loss of the day. Brian and I both dropped our games while Anthony won his on stream. Like we predicted, Wol 7 vs mono water is just unfair. My game was very bad. I ended up playing Wol 7 into an Amaterasu and he ended up sticking Sabin and Edgar on the field. Since I had to cast my forwards normally, it meant they just died on the next turn for free to Sabin special. We ended up losing this round 1-2.
Round #5
Anthony vs Matt Rice (Fire Water Twins), Brian vs Justin (Mono Lightning), me vs Cody (Ice Lightning)
This time around, Brian and I both won our games and Anthony ended up losing his game. My match was extremely unfair and ended easily. I had practiced the Ice lightning matchup plenty of times in the past so I knew it was a very difficult matchup for Ice Lightning. I had originally planned on playing Ice Lightning Shinryu for the event, but quickly found out that the matchup against Wol 7 and all the other meta decks were dreadful. We were 4-1 overall by end of round 5, with each of us going 4-1 each, which was surprising.
Top 8
Anthony vs Hunter Nance (Wol 7), Brian vs Dorian (Ice), me vs Will Coghill (FF13)
For the playoffs we were seeded 3rd and matched up vs. the 6th seed. This team composed of 2 NA finalists that participated in the World Finals, plus their local. I was on the featured stream match against the FF13 player and it was not close. I got cancelled by Amaterasu twice, and basically had no outs for his aggression. However, Anthony again was expected to win vs Wol 7 and easily won. It was up to Brian. Brian managed to stabilize after taking 6 points of damage. His match concluded on stream and we moved onto top 4.
Top 4
We had a rematch against the team from Round 5 and they reversed us this time. I still won my match with ease, but unfortunately the rest of the team did not. My match was a rematch of the Swiss rounds and we both knew the matchup was unfair in my favor. Brian ended up losing his match because his opponent learned very quickly how to play around it. The most surprising thing to me was Anthony losing his match against the twins’ deck, but Matt Rice was able to figure it out by applying pressure to deck him out. It was over for our tournament run so it felt bittersweet but I also felt a sense of accomplishment nevertheless. The three of us ended the day going 5-2, a feat I couldn’t fathom in the morning entering the tournament. By the end of the semifinals, it was pitch dark outside. We opted to go celebrate instead of watching the grand finals. We later learned that the team we lost to, also lost.
Team RVA Weekly
Prizing
The entry fee was $30 per person. 2 packs, Sleeves, 5 promo non-foil cards, and the winter cup playmat was the base entry prize. Top 16 (which was half the teams) received a Y’shtola deck box. Top 8 received a WOFF playmat from 2020. Top 4 received “signed Kageyama cards”, PR A-003 and PR-049. First place received a trophy, 3 deck box, and a foil set of Opus 14. I thought the first-place winner would have to split the prizes between the three of them, but each member got one each. Top 8 also got 10 packs each as additional support prizing.
Day 2 – Singles Competition
I brought two additional decks with me for consideration of the event in case I wanted to have fun. Anthony convinced me to stay on Wol 7 because we spent time and money to travel this far. Might as well run the best deck in the format and the one I had the most practice with because the prizes for day 2 were on par with day 1. It was a winner take all situation where the only undefeated player on day 2 would claim first place. For some reason the store capped the event at 64 players and many players including myself almost missed the entry because we were still playing in the finals the previous day. It was an odd choice because day 1 had 90 players so the rest of the players who didn’t sign up in time were out of luck and had to settle for draft or other less exciting events. Brian ended up missing the signup cap. Going into day 2, I added back Edge and took out Garland because I didn’t see anyone running Arcanist.
Round 1 – Adam Kassar Magissa (Fire Wol 7)
I bricked my first 10 cards and with an absolute awful start. After mulligan, my first play was to either discard 2 and go to 5, or discard 2 to play Firion. I played Firion. He doesn’t have a whole lot of value since I couldn’t punch over his forwards. Things were not good. I was able to somehow stabilize by playing Taivas and stalling for a few turns. In a crucial turn, I swung with Firion and he chose to block with Magissa, to which I responded with discarding a 4 color Wol Eventually, he had over extended his board and had close to 5 forwards on the field with 1 card remaining. However, that was exactly what I needed because I had a full grip with Cyan and a few backups. Since I knew he had no way of hitting his Magissa to bring out Yuzuki, and no CP to play Amaterasu either, Cyan wiped his board clean. Eventually we were both in top deck mode and I drew into Gilgamesh for the win. I felt this was a match I shouldn’t have won, if he played a little more conservatively—either save his Ifrit for Magissa or have Amaterasu in hand, then things would have been different.
Round 2 – Jason Richardson (Fire Water)
This game was on stream and I think I got away with a steal this game. I had the feeling Jason didn’t feel comfortable piloting the deck because he missed a few triggers playing the Porom early game. He was able to stabilize eventually, having a porom that was blanking one of either Akstar or Zeromus meant that I had a difficult time to punch through his field. At a crucial moment, he tried to cast Leviathan on my forwards, but I had Wol 7 special to cancel it. He had an opportunity to Porom action ability in response, but he did not. Since it resolved, Zeromus’s end of auto ability turned his field sideways, allowing me to take the win. I honestly shouldn’t have won this game, if he played his game correctly. He could have also used Porom’s ability to blank first, and then respond to my ability with the Leviathan summon. Another thing I noticed from from the stream was – he got back Yuzuki and then played it for free with Taivas, which he didn’t need to because if he kept the card, it could reactivate his Firion on his turn and be able block on his turn. He had a lot of outs and he missed them.
Round 3 – Amethyst Rowe (Ninjas)
This was the first time I played vs Ninjas and although I haven’t practiced the matchup, I knew enough about the core engine to know how to deal with it. Amethyst opened with a backup and Edge, to which I immediately Wol 7 into. I think I was able to remove Edge pretty early on, so she was playing from behind from the start. She eventually played Yuffie and attacked, but I had Amaterasu to counter and block and that was basically game.
Round 4 – Anh Trong (Wind Lightning)
Wind/Lightning was a deck combination nobody saw coming and I wasn’t sure what to expect. Anh opened with two crystal backups and passed. I knew immediately that playing Wol 7 was free since I didn’t have to worry about Amaterasu or Leviathan cancelling my trigger. I don’t exactly recall much after playing Wol, it wasn’t much of a game because he couldn’t stop my board from flooding his field. He didn’t draw into Y’shtola and I think that was his only board wipe, other than Ixion.
Round 5 – Sergio Garcia (Ark Chaos)
I played vs Sergio the day before and it was a mirror match. He won the roll I think so he played a water Yuna backup off a Yuna forward, which confused me. He later went Thordan to search for Rydia which led me to believe he was running Ark/Chaos. Since I knew he wanted to play Rydia on curve, I played Taivas into Mog to prevent him from searching. Not having a good option against Mog, he played Shantotto off 2 backups, which was a good trade for me since it got 3 cards out of his hand. I somehow lucked into only playing fire backups, so when he played Chaos, it was either 5 or 7 cost and never really better than that. I had one of those situations where you never want to play something before you attack because you might hit an EX Burst. I ended up going to attack phase and getting Ark casted on me, losing both my cards in hand. It was one of those rare situations where it was much better to play the Faris in my hand to search for the Wol for protection in main phase 1 before going into attack phase because I knew I could potentially get Ark’d. Some back and forth later, I managed to remove his two Arks from the break zone with Edge and with the third Ark in damage, I knew I was in the driver’s seat. Some turns later, I was able to Cyan and blow up his board with 5 crystals.
Round 6 – Torrey Kelly (Wind Water Monsters)
Going into round 6, I knew I had to either face one of Torrey or Anthony because they were the other undefeated pair in round 5. I did not want to face Anthony’s mono water deck because we prepped that deck to specifically beat Wol 7. I had played vs. Torrey’s monster list the night before, going 2-1 in my favor so I thought it was the better matchup for me out of the two. Luckily for me, Torrey managed to win his game so we ended up playing in the final round for the top prize. The game was on stream, so you can go check it out here.
To give a little bit of a background, Torrey and I are both on the same team and I like his list a lot—to the point I was considering building it for the event. I just so happened to not have all the cards to build the deck, so I didn’t. The odd thing about knowing how to play against someone’s deck is that it tends to warp the way you think about approaching the game. I knew all of the cards in his list, which is knowledge you normally wouldn’t have during Swiss rounds. I knew that he was only running 1 Auto cancelling Leviathan in his deck and if I could resolve Wol 7, I would be in the driver’s seat. The other matter is to not overcommit on forwards, because he’s running monsters and Shinryu, there’s also a high chance of Shinryu for 2 leading to a board wipe.
He went first, went for a water backup. My opening hand, I didn’t draw Wol, but I did have Sarah FFL, so I was able to go search for the multi-Wol and Wol 7. However, I wasn’t comfortable committing my entire hand on turn 1 to play the Wol 7, which also meant throwing away two Amaterasu’s in my hand to do it. Amaterasu is one of the most important cards in this matchup, and losing both was not something I wanted to do. On the off chance he did have Leviathan in hand, I would’ve traded 5 cards for 3, which would have ended the game immediately. Unfortunately for me, he drew the Leviathan on the next turn and left the water backup up. It was another series of unfortunately events for me, because I drew into an unplayable hand: another fire card an ice backup with no way to play it. When I saw the water backup up, I knew the chances of getting cancelled by Leviathan was very high, but I had no choice: it was either dump 3 cards and play the Wol 7, or discard 2 and pass. I had to make the play, and I got cancelled by Leviathan as expected. But it wasn’t all bad since I still was able to hold onto two Amaterasu’s for the mid game. While Torrey built his backup line, I was just poking with Wol 7 slowly and holding onto my hand. Eventually I was forced to play Taivas but again, I didn’t want to play anything for free as a free forward because that opened up Shinryu as a play for him. I think this was probably my biggest mistake: not searching for Mog. I was too afraid of the Shinryu, I forgot that Mog can prevent a free search.
Torrey was also playing extremely odd, because I was expecting the Relm to come out but it never did. He even committed multiple forwards onto the field, which took Shinryu out of the equation. Therefore, was free to start adding more forwards to the board. When Tidus came into the field to target Taivas, he was already at 4 damage. This meant both of his monsters were online. I knew what Tidus does – it gives him an incredible amount of advantage if it resolves: 2 card draws and 1 crystal. I had 2 Amats and 1 Wol S to play with. But since Taivas cannot be protected by Wol S, I used Amaterasu to cancel. When the Tros attacked, I opted to use the Wol special to block the bounce and then block to kill it. He then attacked with Atomos, which I also knew gave him a ton of value over the course of the game, so I chose to Amaterasu the auto. In hindsight, that probably wasn’t the correct play because I spent all 3 Amaterasu’s on that turn. Atomos was probably just ok, I could’ve and should’ve just traded with the Akstar and called it a day. On his next turn, he was ramping up a ton of value with the Crystals and returning Taivas to my hand with Ninja. The Ninja is essentially just a 2-cost bounce that drew him a card because Tidus refunds the crystal. He had to target Taivas because he knew I had Wol S in hand. By the way, a lot of people forget, but you need to remember Taivas cannot be protected by Wol S. I knew things weren’t looking good for me because he had a ton of ammo and I didn’t have enough to deal with it. My next turn I drew into Ward and Zeromus, which was terrible because any other fire card meant Taivas would’ve been able to search Ward and play him to kill Glaciela. But since I drew into ward, I could not play him for any value. My only play was to attack and bait out the Wol death so I can replay it. He spends some resources to kill both my forwards. I had the Wol 7 in my hand, but I thought about the gamble aspect of it. If I played it this turn, it meant that anything that came out would be dead on his turn with Glaciela and 2 crystals on the board. Plus I already attacked, so any hasters like Gilgamesh would simply be wasted. I opted to wait 1 more turn to roll the dice, in case I can draw into another Wol for protection. My next turn I drew into 2 Zeromuses, still no fire cards to play Taivas to free play Ward. My only play was to play Wol 7. Unfortunately for me, he had Lenna S ready to raise Y’shtola to try and cancel my auto. Luckily for me, I realized I had 1 crystal and edge in the BZ, so I removed his Y’shtola from the game before Lenna can resolve. It was a cool interaction, but ultimately didn’t really matter because the forwards that came out didn’t do a lot. Faris entered the field, but he blasted it before it can deal damage to everything. After that point, I was super behind and couldn’t keep up with the constant bounce pressure and eventually lost. Looking back, I think I made the best out of what I had. If I had to do it all over, I would’ve searched Mog off Taivas the first time around, and the second thing to just block with Akstar instead of spending 2 Amaterasu on it. Big congrats to Torrey for taking it all!
Torrey Kelly, King of Monsters
Conclusion/Wrap-up
Overall, Wol 7 proved to be extremely consistent. Every game I was able to resolve Wol 7, I won. Every game where I had Wol cancelled, I lost. I went 5-2 the first day, and 5-1 the second day. Coming into top 4 for both days felt validating because it meant I was able to produce results consistently. In fact, only Anthony and I accomplished that feat for both days. The mono water deck did incredibly well this weekend and went undefeated vs Wol7. Brian didn’t get a chance to play in day 2, so that was unfortunate. Overall, it was a great event. Torrey was able to show the world the results of his deck building and I love how the meta is still evolving despite everyone thought Wol 7 was the boogieman. The 3v3 teams event was really fun and props to the RVA group for running a successful event. It was a shame we only had enough time to do Swiss for day 2, but we’ll take what we can get. It was also really cool that all three of my teammates got to talk on stream, which gave me a huge sense of accomplishment.
