Just Dave - Tournament Report Frankfurt

We’re going to Frankfurt: Research and preparation

I’ve decided to go to Frankfurt late into December, about a month after I started getting into the Digimon TCG. It was mostly a spur-of-the-moment decision, based on the enthusiastic atmosphere in my local game store. 

The first step of going to a big event, for me, is looking at data. Unlike at your locals, where you will start knowing exactly who will show up with which decks containing which tech-choices, a big tournament is more of a numbers game. Looking at data from previous events of similar size or very current medium-sized events will give you a rough estimate of which decks you will probably encounter at the upper tables. 

Based on this data, you can get to deck choice. In general, I want my deck to exhibit a few characteristics, in no particular order: 

1. It has a strong gameplan that it can enforce on “solitaire” lists that either wins when not interacted with or forces the opponent to interact. 
2. It can beat at least the majority of the expected meta decks or specifically counter the perceived “best” deck. 
3. It fits my play style and I enjoy piloting it.
4. I can get access to it by the time of the tournament.

If a deck does not check all of these check-boxes, I don’t think it’s a good pick in a competition. Position 3 may seem a bit out of place for a competitive viewpoint, but comfort is a very important factor when playing in longer events. If you are annoyed at the deck you’re playing, or have to actively alter the way you think about the game every time you pilot it, you will not be playing at your best for the event. 

For me, the choice fell onto Security Control. It forces interaction by threatening a deck out, has a good match up against all tiered decks that are not Red Hybrid or WGX and fit my preferred play style of slowly choking out my opponent with reactive threat containment.
Access-wise, I was incredibly lucky to get a list borrowed at my LGS so I could already play it while the singles arrived throughout the month. 

Chaos Control: Playing the Format

Let’s talk about control decks.
They are not only notoriously frustrating to play against, but are always a very debated pick for long-form tournaments. The surface reason lies in the nature of it being an inherently reactive archetype. Since your main game plan is to efficiently deal with your opponents threats until you can assemble a win condition, you need to both bring the “correct” answers to the threats that will be presented to you as well as ways to not run out of gas. This poses a challenge due to requiring you to do some accurate guesswork on the makeup of the landscape at the respective event. 

Moving one layer deeper, the deck requires a high amount of mental stamina to play. You do not have a straightforward way of winning that you can fall back on when all things fail. Playing control requires the pilot to identify, construct and realize your own win condition for each game. When you are concentrating and actively thinking, your body feels that. Your muscles tense up, your heart rate increases, it’s a whole workout. Doing that for 7-9 rounds is a strain that a lot of people don't want to put on themselves. 

The final reason is actually the format itself. Competitive Digimon matches are played in a Bo3 that need to be finished in 45+5 minutes, no sideboards (as of now). This becomes an issue when you win games slowly, since you may not have time to win that third game after you or your opponent achieving a tie. So winning that first game is very important since the worst outcome, if you happen to lose game 2 will be a tie, which is much more favorable overall. 

All of these issues need to be thought about and be addressed with preparation and deck building. So what were my solutions?

Going the distance: Managing your mental and physical endurance

A study published by Florida State University talks about the correlation of glucose levels and self control / concentration. The paper is linked here if you are interested, but what’s important for us is that we need to keep on top of our blood sugar throughout the event. 

I personally like to bring dried fruit and chew on those between rounds. I try to avoid sugar bombs like Energy Drinks because I know about myself that I tend to crash after an hour or so. They’re nice to get kick-started, but if I need keep my mental energy up for a longer period of time I stick with my dried mangoes / bananas. You can find those at most bigger grocery-stores in either the snack- or baking section. 

A small side note: You will have to eat as well throughout the event. Try to avoid overloading on carbs (wolfing down an entire thing of spaghetti or a huge sandwich with bread) since your body will naturally slow down and get tired while digesting. I try to eat gradually throughout the event, just take a few bites in-between rounds. 

Also, hydrate. Water good. Just make sure to plan for toilet breaks.

Surveying the Battlefield: Adjusting for the field

As mentioned before, it’s important to adjust your control deck to the expected field. On my case, I was expecting, in no particular order:

MelgaX: Not much to say here, best deck in the format.

BloomHydra: A strong brew-crusher that can jumpscare you with explosive 3-4 check Bloomlordmon plays while controlling the battle area with both piercing attacks and Hydramon. 

Security Control: Direct counter to MelgaX, can win any game but tends to fold hard to red due to them being able to ignore options in Security. 

Since I did not feel comfortable enough with the game yet to brew a meta crusher, I picked the deck I enjoyed the most out of these three (which was Sec-Con). This left me with choosing my contents beyond the staples of Chaos Degradation, DeathXMon and Flame Hellscythe. 

We landed on Venusmon really early. Being able to not just stall an entire turn due to her floating effect but also potentially disrupt / delay strong combo turns by turning off when attacking / when digivolving is simply incredible. An alternative I experimented with for a while was Sakuyamon, since I was having issues dealing with red decks just hanging out in raising to then go OTK me, but we deemed Venus to answer a broader amount of issues that could present them-self. 

BushiAgumon was a late addition to the list after looking over some South American Decklists. I really enjoyed the idea of being able to rush for game or put on some cheap pressure as well as have some more opportunities to bring out Viximon beyond the 4 Recovery Salamons. Special mention to Scything it back in tight deck-out situations in order to avoid recoveries or just go for a free security. 

A card that almost made it in as a 4-off was Schwarzer Lehrsatz. Lehrsatz is cheeky because it deals with broad boards that are immune to getting wiped by DeathXMon. We decided on 2 in the end since we mostly expected MelgaX which tends to just present single towers in succession instead of going wide. To be able to use it to max utility whenever it’s actually played, we played the full set of choke tamers.

Final Decklist

For the final flex slots, we decided on bringing one Angewomon for additional stalling as well as one Maycrackmon: Viscous Mode in order to be able to pop 9k DP digimons with a FHS which includes a majority of playable Level 5s. 

The rest of the list was pretty stock. I decided against running memory tamers, which I think was a mistake in hindsight. Being able to double spell in mid to late game feels like a surefire way to take over the game, even though sometimes finding the space to play them is tough.

The Tournament

HEY REMEMBER THAT THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE A TOURNAMENT REPORT? The tournament started at 10am and lasted 7 rounds without a top cut or break. The early rounds of a tournament are the most volatile ones, as you can be matched against anyone, with any deck. Starting around round 3 you will leave the “Danger-Zone” and mostly either encounter well crafted rogue brews or stock tiered lists.

Round 1: Red Hybrid // Letting your opponent make mistakes

This is an atrocious match up. Red Hybrid relaxes in raising while building their AncientGreymon stack and then just blasting through your security while ignoring all your options on the way through. 

I won’t lie, my heart dropped when I saw the Ignitemon hit the board turn 1. Out of about 15 test games I won a whopping 1 of them, and the deck was too fast to stall out. So my plan was to follow the advice of Alex Truell and Mark Chamberlain and give my opponents “Opportunities to Fail”. 

Creating mental pressure and presenting choices is the bread and butter of the control archetype. The threat of falling behind is always looming, and a good control deck will not let you catch back up. This gives you, as the control player, a lot of opportunities to offer your opponent choices. Wouldn’t he have played that DeathXMon if he had it last turn? Is it safe to develop? Do I promote or keep it in raising to threaten a final blow? Should I attack through Kari or set up for a bigger turn later on? None of these questions have definite answers, and it’s your job as a control player to ask them as much as you can. A thing I found very effective is to set up a situation where following heuristics is NOT the correct decision. If a player starts succumbing to decision fatigue, they will most likely resort to their autopilot, and that’s a pattern that can be abused. 

My round 1 opponent was very flustered and ended up committing to a Blitz-Omni after melting away my security for game even though they had 2 Digimon still on board and ready to go. With Venus on the board, the Blitz did not trigger and I was able to win the race I initiated by ramming every Digimon I could into their security. 

Second game was a standard affair, my opponent was able to construct their stack and then finish with Hybrid for game. 

Game 3 I got a very aggressive start with 3 rookies and a Maycrackmon, which pulled overtime by clearing a double rookie play on his end while keeping me on the board. I was able to barely eak out a win by getting lucky and not losing my BushiAgumon on 2 checks, allowing me to use options to clear while not giving up board position.

Game 2: JusticeMon // The value of heuristics.

Round two was up against a rogue brew. Playing against a completely unknown deck list will not only be a test of your deck, but also of you as a player. It’s up to you to identify their engine, payoff and win condition. This is where I personally value heuristics the most: When gathering data. I know how different archetypes respond to my deck , so by recreating familiar patterns, I’m able to see which angles work. You won’t always be able to create all situations, but a solid knowledge of the general card pool and the color identities will nudge you in the right directions. 

In this case, my opponent was playing a tamer heavy OTK-Strategy in black. I luckily did not see any breath of the gods, so I was able to just turtle up and start chipping away at him once his big combo got dealt with by my security. I won 2-0, MVP was definitely Chaos Degradation that really earned its name as a brew-crusher.

Game 3: D-Brigade // Dealing with pressure

Game 4: Yellow Hybrid // The importance of preparation

I was feeling good about myself when I sat down against my next opponent. The game started out quite explosive, with me getting a good amount of pressure on him by battering his security. 

Yellow Hybrid is a great tempo deck. You pressure your opponent, invite them to race, and once they do, they hand you free resources. Towards mid to late game you will have accumulated an entire gang of tamers that provide you with around 6-8 memory each turn. 

The issue was: I didn’t know this. I saw the deck in a few top 8s, flew over the decklists and just kind of forgot about it. Nobody at my locals played or talked about the deck, so I never paid it any attention. This led to me trying to pull the game into fatigue, only to get extended by Susanoomon and then get bursted for 6 with a bunch of Hybrids from hand. 

Game 2 started with 8 minutes left on the clock. I had a triple rookie hand so I tried to come out swinging, but my opponent first was able to remove my Digimon and then started regenerating like crazy. 

It’s impossible to prepare for every deck. Sometimes, one that is important in the meta will just slip past you, and it will be your first loss at a major tournament. 

Game 5: Ophanimon Tempo // The mental game

It’s really funny that I was not prepared vs Yellow Hybrid, but immediately was able to identify Ophanimon Tempo when I saw it. I happened to test this out myself a bit earlier on, but decided on full security control instead. 

Game 1 was hard fought. My opponent drew 3 of their 4 Flame Hellscythes early on and was able to play an incredibly oppressive tempo game in the first 4-5 turns by recurring an ST-10 Angewomon over and over again. I was able to slowly eak out an advantage by ensuring a draw with each spell, sometimes holding off in order to get the next Viximon out. EDENs Javelin came through big time in the early game, letting me shoot an ST10 Gatomon on sight. 

Game 2 started with 15 minutes on the clock. That’s technically a stall-able time frame, but its at the upper edge of what’s acceptable without deliberately slow playing, which I personally try to avoid. The game came down to the final extra turn, in which I forgot to hatch and was unable to play the game winning recovery. 

This was intensely frustrating, but this is part of the long game as well. The longer your tournament takes, the harder it becomes to avoid mistakes. I used to really obsess over issues like these, take them with me to the next match and start a mental downward spiral. I’ve learned recently that it helps to acknowledge your mistake, let out the anger if required (do a little yell, punch the air, throw away your trash with a bit more force than necessary), and then move on to the next game. 

This is easier said than done, but it’s a skill that needs to be cultivated. Whatever you do, do not get mad at your opponent for “being lucky”. Blaming losses on aspects outside of your control can feel cathartic right then and there, but is not just hurtful long term due to hampering your growth as a competitor, but also in the moment. If you made a mistake, you can focus up and pay closer attention next time. This feels worse right now, but you have a chance of dragging that back. Your opponent getting lucky? You “bricking”? You can’t control that. For me, that’s a special kind of existential horror. So I try to focus on what I can do instead of what happened to me.

Game 6: Security Control // On pivoting

Game 7: Alphamon // On endurance and “tilt”

The tournament had progressed in a way that there were only 2 more players in the event without a loss. This meant that I only had one more game to play. 

My opponent was playing Alphamon, a deck that can get very dangerous for Sec Con. Being able to fill the deck back up with Oryouken while not letting itself get choked out due to massive memory gains, I was planning to go for a proactive game plan. 

Control decks evoke a broad set of emotions in our opponents. This is something we should use. A frustrated opponent is prone to overcommit, misinterpret a signal or, if pushed enough, concede. We talked earlier about the correlation of self control and glucose levels. Towards the end of an event, you want to be looking closely at your opponent, really hear what they say. An easy way to lay the groundwork is asking about their tournament experience (apart from being good etiquette), as this already has the potential to recall an agitating loss or other grievances. 

My final opponent was frustrated with their deck, and was most definitely fed up playing against Sec Con. The deck was definitely over-represented at Frankfurt, probably an effect of MelgaXs dominance overseas, so my opponent was not having it. 

Game 1 was won by concession after 2 boardwipes and a missed but noticed "when digivolving" effect from my opponent. 

Game 2 I managed to win by deck out. I decided to pivot to this win-con since I only saw one Oryouken during the high amount of searches he did, so the chance was high that at least 1, if not 2, were stuck in security. I immediately stopped attacking and instead started to turtle up. My read was correct as I only saw 1 Oryouken resolved, with Kari stealing away a lot of potential attacks due to my opponent being very eager to play before they attacked.

Closing thoughts