BSF Philly Ramblings and Match Writeups

Hey guys, Ben here with a new thing for the blog. I was at BSF Philly, and went 4-2 bubble out at 13th with Joker and Nova (GGs guys!) but given that I didn’t make it to top cut, I decided to record some audio commentary instead. It … kind of sucks to listen to, from me holding opera glasses for quarters and hurting my hands in the process, to the standard lulls in gameplay mixed with the inability to properly identify all cards that were being played while I was recording the audio. Also, there’s infinite background noise since I was just recording on my phone. I'll admit that this post is pretty all over the place, but I was really hoping to get it out before BCS Rosemont, and so ran out of time to refine it down a bit more. In future, if I do more write-ups like this, it'll be a bit tighter (and I'll know how to record game audio for myself so that I can actually, fully accurately, know how to recreate the game state post-event.)

I’ll try to record turn by turn the details I’m able to recall and glean from the recording, and in between yap a little bit. If you think I’m full of it or have fundamental misunderstandings about how things work and want to let me know, feel free to leave a comment on whatever episode happens to be available or ping me on discord at jazzy_reporter. I’m always trying to learn more and get better at playing and analyzing Weiss Schwarz. (I quit Twitter a while back, so uh, while I appreciate people pinging us on there I rarely realize when stuff is popping off on there.)

In the top 8, I ended up standing next to table 2, watching the Bang Dream mirror match between one of the North California representatives and (if I recall correctly) a North Virginia rep. The Bang Dream mirror match is one that is infinitely depressing to think about to me, in the sense that it’s one of the purest distillations of the worst possible feelings you can have playing Weiss Schwarz possible. Both players are at once playing one of the best decks in the format and also hold the keys to making the other player lose on the spot (one stock stock swap). At the same time, if you eat a level and the opponent doesn’t, then there is really no recourse except pray extremely heavily that the opponent also takes a level at some point while you triple block. (As shown in the finals match that I couldn’t see properly where in the final mirror one player lived for 3 turns after hitting 3-6 while the other player was at 2-0 for five turns. The player who hit 3-6 first also almost won.)

There is no defensive counterplay (except if you play Tomori finisher), there is no real difference of tools and outcomes besides, who got Oblivionis? Who got the stock compression? Who flew too close to the sun and got stock swapped for their life and livelihood? Who blocked just that much more?

At least with the Tomori finisher, it’s possible to actually have the reach to try and end the game if the opponent is 2-4 and you have your deck set up. With Doloris? While it is a powerful finisher, the amount of times where you need the opponent to block instances so that you can have the reach to end the game is uh. A bit rough at times.

All that to say, there’s no depression quite like refreshing 7 back in with clock compression, a full hand, and 8 clean stock, into immediately taking a full level. Which the mirror, when played out many times over tens of hundreds of games, is fully capable of giving to either player.

Turn one opens with an interesting card choice for the NoVa player, one that’s not a standard inclusion in Bang Dream lists, Sisterly Figure, Soyo Nagasaki.

He doesn’t end up resolving the end of attack search, and the game goes to a standard 0-1 to 0-3 after the NorCal player takes the direct.

Turn 2

Trigger bar on first attack for the NorCal player, with the second attack triggering soul and getting blocked by a door. Both players now have a bar in hand, with a door in the NoVa player’s waiting room. The NoVa player’s turn 1 Soyo gets to live.

Both players to 0-3.

Turn 3

NoVa player resolves an on play riki and plays Amoris to the board. Riki for level 1 combo. The most likely riki that was played seemed to be this Soyo, and the Soyo from the previous turn wasn’t contested by the NorCal player, so this will turn out to be a 3 swing turn. Helmet goes to the backrow purely to not go overhand. Soyo double-trigger reveals no climaxes during triggers, and then pays out to search for the 3rd copy of the Oblivionis 1 combo. Amoris reveals the Oblivionis 3/2, and on the opposite end the NorCal player took all 3 swings to go to 1-0.

Going into the next turn, the NorCal player resolves the aqua riki to reveal a copy of the one combo and the Anon 3/2.

Turn 4

Clocking to 1-2, the NorCal player goes for a quick draw ditch with the Rui before he puts a LOCK and two Sakikos on the board. Going into Oblivionis combo first, he reveals a bar, an Amoris, an EP healer, and the second copy of the Anon 3/2 and adds the healer to hand. Triggers LOCK for clean, gets blocked on two. Second combo reveals a door and two Uika changers, and then immediately triggers door. There’s now a blind stock in the second stock card and a door on the fourth stock card. Door resolves to add Sakiko changer to hand, two damage sticks to 0/6. No LOCK effect, and triggers a soul into empty lane for four damage which gets blocked on four, leading to LOCK bounce back into hand.

NorCal player now with known four climaxes out of deck (three in waiting room one in stock) at 1-2. NoVa player with also four climaxes out, with three in waiting room and a bar in hand currently at 0-6.

Turn 5

Fairly straightforward turn for the NoVa player, given that he has 3 level one combos in hand. The annoying decision making comes in the fact that both players have access to Buns For Luck (reprinted as You Can Do It Bread), and thus while it’s tempting to go for incredible stock compression with a full hand, there’s the permanent demon lingering to punish if the opposing player is able to draw into it.

While the NorCal player is only running one copy, he’s also running the Rui draw+ditch that gives a bit more drawing ability than other Bang dream variants to have more chances of sacking into the stock swap.

Not worrying about it to start though, triple Oblivionis starts with checking a bar and then a character to throw immediately into the stock. Trigger for two, blocked by a bar. Second combo adds an unknown character to hand before triggering a soul for three sticks to 1-5. Third combo sees bar, looks one more, and sends a level 0 character into stock. Trigger for two, sticks to 2-0.

One card left for the NoVa player’s deck at 1-0, NorCal player left figuring out what to do at 2-0. seven climaxes in NoVa player’s waiting room before refresh, five climaxes currently in the NorCal player’s waiting room with a door two stock down.

Turn 6

NorCal player clocks to 2-1, fields Sakiko changer and Uika changer, then uses the Rui with a brainstormer on field to pay out the door climax to EP heal with Mortis healer. Audio’s a bit messy, but it seems another Oblivionis combo gets fielded for double one combo plus Uika changer. Uika gets assigned the on attack check triggers effect from the brainstormer, and the NorCal player is now hoping for at least some damage to take before the game spirals out of control.

First combo checks Doloris finisher, checks Anon 3/2, adds Anon to hand, and triggers for two. Two takes after penalty for NoVa player to hit 1-3. Only one card left in the NorCal players deck, meaning that the Uika trigger check effect won’t have any value at this time, and if you resolve the one combo then you’re left to the mercy of what’s there.

He adds the last card of deck to hand, a Rui. Refresh penalties him to 2-1. Trigger for three, sticks opponent to 1-6. Final swing with Uika changer checks the top card as clean, and then gets blocked.

NorCal player at 2-1, having refreshed with 6 climaxes back into the deck, NoVa player at 1-6 after refreshing 7 and blocking once to have one climax in waiting room at this time.

Turn 7

NoVa player clocks to 2-0, finds a Sakiko Changer and a Doloris finisher to hand. He has a door in hand, and currently no way to get to bar. Helmet to brainstorm, brainstorm hits two to get to Uika changer and climax swapper, and climax swap to bar from waiting room. He chooses to field triple one combo, and adds Sakiko to hand off the first combo. Triggers for two, blocks. Second combo adds Amoris to hand, triggers for four, and sticks opponent to 2-5. Final combo adds card to hand? And triggers bar willingly with the brainstormer trigger assign on the final combo card.

NoVa player at 2-0, NorCal player at 2-5. Unsure of the exact milling that occurred here for the NoVa player, so not sure that he milled out any climaxes. Double block leaves 3 in the NorCal players waiting room.

Turn 8

NorCal player does decide to clock to 2-6. First fields the 2/1 Amoris assist to sacrifice the EP healer sitting in the backrow, then plays the Rui to discard the aqua riki. Brainstorm hits to salvage Mortis healer and another character to hand. 7 stock for the NorCal player and 8 stock for the NoVa player at this time.

Rui plays out a Mortis healer, and then mills three with Sakiko on play. Current swinging board is a one combo, a healer, and an unknown card that’s effectively vanilla, which proceeds to trigger a door on the first attack to stick two to the opponent. Side attack with the healer sticks another two damage to opponent, sitting at 2-4.

The NorCal player then opts to pass turn with 3 cards remaining in the NorCal player’s deck, sitting at 2-5. NoVa player is sitting at 2-4 when turn goes to him.

Turn 9

NoVa player decides to clock to 2-5. Attacks with Uika Changer and two one combos. Uika swings first to be blocked with the climax going back to the next deck for the NorCal player. Combo checks a bar, a character which goes to stock, and then triggers door, adding Doloris finisher to hand. The NorCal player penalties a door and blocks over new deck, leaving him at 2-6, incidentally meaning he guaranteed has a target for the Anon 3/2 next turn.

On the final combo, the NoVa player reveals a Sakiko on one, keeps digging, EP healer on two, continues digging, and then reveals a bar and a door climax. And these are the kinds of plays that I can never approve of.

This is effectively the pivotal point of the game. Before this mill, there’s an expected 5 climaxes left in the deck (one in play, one triggered, one in waiting room). The NoVa player is either at max or near max hand size. While it is more likely than not that four cards reveal clean, what happens on the off chance that one or more climaxes gets revealed is that the opponent is given a lease on life in the game.

Especially since as far as I recall, he ends the turn at 11 stock. Thus, even if you dug all four clean, it actually just makes any stock swap even more likely to chop off your head of climaxes. Because the NoVa player is at 2-5 as well, with a deck refresh likely, it’s absolutely dangerous territory since the NoVa player ended up crashing their board/sending their board to memory as well.

The absolute safest play is to check 0. Obviously, if there was a bar on the literal top deck ready to blind a door, then some games aren’t meant to be won. But the potential consequences of willingly digging deeper when the worst case scenario is effectively “I give my opponent the ability to win the game”, does exactly that here.

With a deck of ~15 cards and now five climaxes out of the deck, the NorCal player is now pretty much free to send it on either double Doloris Anon with a stock swap mixed in or not.

Turn 10

The NorCal player, having blocked the previous turn, clocks himself to 3-0 and proceeds to do his level best to take advantage of the opportunity given to him. After drawing two cards with a Rui and an Amoris assist resolve, he does resolve the stock swap, which needs to hit two climaxes to get additional value from paying out the previously triggered door climax. (It ultimately does so).

Without enough stock to resolve much else, the NorCal player fields one Doloris finisher, one Oblivionis one combo, and one Anon 3/2. The Doloris finisher sticks 4 to send the opponent to 3-2, crucially also removing the clock compression for miracle blocks on the last deck. The level one combo swings and gets blocked by the last climax in the NoVa player’s deck, keeping it out of the deck and ultimately meaning that 5 will go back into the new deck. Finally, Anon swings with the trigger check effect to try and fix for the burn, but ends up just doing perfect damage with burn 1 and swing for 3 to end the game.

For the future games, I end up putting down the opera glasses and thus lose the minor additional visibility I had for seeing cards getting triggered, played, and added to hand. So I’ll be experimenting with doing a more slimmed down write up instead.

In the semifinals round I was able to see, I ended up watching the game between JustTato and Jason, which was a Hololive Chloe/Marine list into another Bang Dream list.

As opposed to Bang Dream, Chloe/Marine is one of the most stock standard lists in Weiss Schwarz right now it feels like. Extremely efficient finisher, with the ability to extend with cards such as the Reine 3/2, as well as an additional ability to find door climaxes with the Anya 2/1 that’s also capable of answering board states in the mid game. In effect, it’s a really good deck if you block twice a turn and can recur the Chloe level one combo nearly every single turn for resources. Hrm…

(Shoutout to Beanwolf who I can hear in the background of all of the recordings I did)

The level 0 goes a bit slower than usual, with extra blocking leaving both players out with ~4 climaxes heading into their level one games. Prinz is able to resolve Amoris sacrificing Nyamu (aqua riki) to go overhand while answering JustTato’s Noelle chaser. 3000 is just not quite big enough all the time in this format.

In a scary moment, JustTato nearly forgets to sculpt the 3/2 La+ required to resonate with Chloe in order to resolve her combo with. Getting bailed out by the Summer premium booster, he’s able to drop salvage for the La+ helmet + bonder, searching out the resonate target in the end. It did cost him his entire life and livelihood hand and stock wise, and with one extra stock flip from the Chloe combos and a door triggered on the last attack.

Jason ends up getting a nice enough turn to stabilize somewhat, refreshing the deck with a triple Oblivionis resolve. It leads to two cards added into hand and one to stock alongside a bar trigger to guarantee recombo on the next turn. (Bonus points for randomly freezing JustTato’s drop salvage to the backrow to prevent it from shifting up).

It won’t really matter though, as a climax raw draw and brainstormer hit leads to triple Chloe combo on the crackback, as well as revealing that a climax was blind stocked by Jason when the damage is stuck before the deck refreshes. Double stock plus off of this turn plus the Anya in hand means that everything is going right on schedule for the Chloe/Marine list.

On the opposite side, things are starting to slip, with single Oblivionis combo and an unable-to-be-used Sakiko changer swinging alongside a healer. The single combo both mills and triggers a door, and with adding a Rui to hand alongside JustTato’s double block, the game is fairly shaky for Jason. The hand is fairly weak (3-4 cards in hand? One is a known Rui, which doesn’t exactly lead to much on a 3-4 card hand), and the block disparity is slowly creeping up on him.

Flush with resource and mildly respecting buns for luck, JustTato pays three to encore a chloe combo before resolving Anya to get his third Chloe turn in a row. One extra stock on this turn and good enough salvages, JustTato sends Jason to 2-5, and Jason is stuck with …. Effectively nothing.

Jason chooses to clock and brainstorm to hit level 3, and barely gets an Anon and Doloris onto the board out of effectively nothing. And ultimately, Single Anon/Doloris and a vanilla Rui swing plus stock swap is the gamble for Jason. Not only does JustTato not rest counter, the stock swap gamble is unsuccessful with Doloris getting blocked on two and then one with four cards in JustTato’s deck. This effectively dooms the attempt at lethal, alongside the Anon burn 4 and swing for three getting cancelled as well. The stock swap is still capable here of messing with JustTato in some way, with it ultimately ripping the climax swapper out of availability for JustTato, but in the end, Hololive Marine continues to be one of the most efficient and reliable to field finishers in the game at this time.

Ultimately, after retaining enough stock with Marine, JustTato refreshes the deck with milling to shuffle back the four Marine climaxes back into the deck to search for a copy with the Anya, which leads to game for JustTato as Jason blocks to 3/6 but is unable to heal with the last card in his hand before the deck out.

I ended up following JustTato into the finals to watch him play against one of the other NorCal players, Neem, playing on NIKKE. I was curious to see if he would end up having a particularly bad game state handed to him, aside from nearly forgetting to add the La+ resonate piece into hand in the first game. After all, Weiss Schwarz tends to be an easier game to win if you double block every single turn while resolving an advantage combo for value after every such blocking turn. On the other side however, previously mentioned Beanwolf has written an in depth guide on the apple turning experience that is NIKKE, revealing a deck that is tricky to pilot but also incredibly consistent when piloted well.

In theory, Chloe/Marine is exactly the type of deck that NIKKE should pair well into. There aren’t amazing Alice answers besides Anya, who then opens herself up to being top decked on the next turn, and this list in particular wasn’t running the double downgrade, meaning that once NIKKE gets established it should be difficult to pick it apart. Well, if NIKKE gets established onto the board.

Having brought up the apple turning guide, it is worth noting some of the differences in lists here. Neem’s NIKKE deck only runs one Sin, one Biscuit, and chooses to run one Guilty. Combined with only three copies of the Modernia 3/2, it actually seems relatively likely that early standbys at level two will just not spawn a useful level three card to the stage unless it’s explicitly discarded with Rapi. And with only one Sin in the list, how likely is it that Guilty will be standby’ed onto the board with Sin in play to actually give it enough power to scale other level three’s without issue? Two 3500 level two backups are here, I suppose, but paying additional stock to upkeep the board or to unlock the ability to pay three stock seems counter-intuitive.

Going into the actual game, JustTato made sure to search out the La+ this time just to make sure that he’s got it with the La+ helmet, with Neem responding with two Tia’s that funnily enough hits two Marines and two Chloes into JustTato’s clock. Both players stall out a bit early, with JustTato hitting level one without climax swap to field Chloe and Neem not having many playables besides what he filters into with Tia.

While Neem proceeds to resolve single Modernia combo, swinging with a Tia that lives and a Scarlet that ultimately didn’t find much but a second Scarlet, JustTato double blocks and begins to take some hold over the game with raw drawing an additional copy of Chloe to resolve alongside a climax swap and the Chloe originally in his hand.

Drawing into a second copy of Rapi, Neem is holding onto a door and a standby and ends up resolving helmet to have two copies of Modernia on the turn, currently at 1-5 to JustTato’s 1-1.

It begins with Neem swinging with the non-Rapi-buffed character first and immediately triggering standby, getting Roseanna, while JustTato blocks on one. Next, Neem resolves Modernia combo, stocking a 3/2 Modernia and triggering the only copy of Sin in the list. JustTato blocks on two. Final Modernia combo does not put an extra card into stock, but Sin is now two stock down and the standby climax is now four stock down, something that will likely not be remedied. JustTato takes to 1-3, leaving him with the anticipated life advantage going forward.

Not for nothing here, JustTato had a door go to the bottom of his stock early on, with no climax draw on the next turn. Poking out one, one, one, Neem gets to keep his clock compression but immediately penalties a climax into cancelling the final swing, leaving his deck two with actually five climaxes instead of seven. In the process of that, JustTato also triggered another door, so now both players are having mildly tricky climax scenarios. The issue is heightened for Neem however: NIKKE is a door/standby list, not eight standby. While he’s lucky in the sense that he can pay out the Sin to make it available to be standbyed, blocking with a standby on fresh deck has left him with only two opportunities to actually trigger standby, which is now rather unlikely.

For now, he’s able to resolve Alice to heal to 2-0 and double modernia combo, and while it seems like it’ll be ok, Neem triggers door with both Modernia combos after stocking both a Modernia 3/2 and a 3/0 event before swinging clean with Alice. On the opposite side of the table, JustTato triple blocks and draws into a Marine climax.

Brainstorm mills no climaxes but does mill out the climax swapper, drop salvage finds the Chloe climax, alongside a Chloe already in hand means a new combo turn for JustTato. He decides to not Reine for a second Chloe, meaning that Neem will get to keep both Alice and Modernia on this turn after getting one block to keep the game stable.

The best outcome that Neem can go for is spamming Alice heals and poking out damage by top decking, but because JustTato is also crashing into Neem’s board, there’s not actually as many characters to top deck and try to stick packets with. With two direct swings for three, JustTato double blocks to stay at 2-4 while Neem pays out the double trigger fiasco to refresh with seven climaxes back in again.

Right up until Neem penalties a door climax. Ouch. Hagan does not manage to get the Chloe climax again, and does something that’s rather more annoying into the NIKKE player: poking him for one, one, and two to stick Neem to 3-1. With no standby available, a door in hand, and a board of Alice’s that aren’t doing anything else, Neem swings JustTato for four and immediately gives JustTato the license to immediately end the game by sticking the one packet of damage required to send JustTato to level three.

In arguably a not important stock swap, JustTato effectively cuts Neem’s deck in half, but it’s followed by a Reine 3/2 that snipes a climax off the top of Neem’s remaining deck and a Botan that shuffles back some clean cards followed by double Marine. With no Modernia, no Event in hand, and barely not enough climaxes to block with, Neem takes the damage and JustTato (alongside the rest of his team, not for nothing) takes the event.

It may be a bit messy, but at the same time this is likely the only form of record there will be of any of the games from this event. I'll strive to record some more accurate information for myself and all of you next time should I do this sort of thing again (Rosemont if I miss top cut I suppose), and hopefully actually they'll allow someone to set up a stream/recording set up at any of the BCS's this year for game footage to be available.