Hey everyone, my name is humans! 
Introduction:
With my recent tournament performance I thought it might be nice to offer some insight to the community on Tournament play. In the last ~4 weeks I have played in 4 tournaments, placing second twice and first twice! I could show my decklists and talk about in-game strategy, but my decks werenât anything surprising, and my plays werenât spectacular. Balance will change those over time, but tournament strategy is likely to stay the same, or at least similar.
Last month leading up to the start of the Duelyst World Championship Circuit I decided to start working on my Duelyst tournament skills. I come from a strong tournament background in other games, from Magic: The Gathering and Hearthstone, to League of Legends and Heroes of The Storm. Tournament âmetaâ can be VERY different from âladderâ or âcasualâ experience, especially when the structure and rules of tournaments can vary a lot. I had entered one Duelyst Tournament about 4-5 months earlier and came in top 6, losing to tournament star nowayitsJ, so I had a slight understanding of what to expect.
Snowchaser Cup:
My first tournament was the Snowchaser Cup. The tournament has a two day structure, day one being Swiss format with unlimited sideboard where the top eight qualify for day two, with single elimination and decklist with 4 card sideboard. That meant two things, firstly I could lose at least one match, MAYBE two on the first day, and still win the overall tournament. Secondly, it meant I could use day one to get an idea of the meta, strategy and my opponents so that I would be better prepared for day two. This is something that tournament players should focus on in any tournament or league spread over more than one day. The players that adapt and evolve their strategy based on their experience are the most likely to come out on top, even if they didnât start there.
The generals I selected were Vaath and Argeon. Vaath is considered a tier 1 general and I am experienced and skilled at this general. It is a good strategy to take at least one general that you feel is both tier 1 and confident playing, if you donât have that then part of your tournament preparation should be to GET that. Argeon was part of a different strategy. Firstly, the deck has an on average around 50% winrate vs the top tier decks based simply on being aggressive and drawing well, so AT WORST I felt I could just roll the dice with the deck. Secondly, there exists a tech card called âHollow Grovekeeperâ that is very strong against Lyonar. Almost any time someone sees Lyonar in their opponents lineup they will put at least one of these in their deck, and if you play Lyonar even once, they will often put in two or three. This works well for me because the card is generally pretty terrible against Vaath.
At the end of Day One this strategy paid off nicely, I only dropped one match and qualified for the top 8. Day two however I could not afford to drop ANY matches if I wanted to win, so I had to do A LOT of preparation. The biggest thing I had learned day one, was that a particular general Cassyva was a HUGE threat. So I spent several hours working out how to win this match up, understand the weaknesses of the deck, especially the version I expected top 8 players to run. This paid off as I managed to 2-0 my opponent playing Cassyva round one. I also focused on preparing exactly what cards I would sideboard against certain decks that I expected from my possible opponents, when to change it up and when to stay the same. This meant that after every game I was instantly ready to go into the next one without worrying about swapping cards in and out, I could be entirely focused on my plan. The rest of the tourney was âeasyâ for this reason, and I finished FIRST in my first tournament.
EYOS Tournaments Last Month:
Since the Duelyst World Championship Circuit didnât start until August, I would have about two or three more weeks to fully prepare for points tournaments. EYOS tournaments provided a convenient time and a relatively quick format. Single elimination tournaments offer more variance, but they are relatively quick and easy to play through. I decided to use these tournaments to practice other generals and continue to observe the meta. Duelyst formats currently restrict you to picking ONE general from a faction. I felt both Vanar generals, Kara and Faie, were viable tournament options, so I wanted to try each one out in a tournament. I committed to playing those generals almost exclusively with disregard for how well I might do. While generally not a good idea in the long term, this is a very good strategy to test how good a general does in the meta, and what people can do to counter it.
Overall they both performed well, coming in second place both times. The overall feeling I had though was that while Faie is certainly strong, she is a lot easier to counter, certain decks make it really hard for Faieâs strategy to work. Kara on the other hand, while potentially not as strong, actually has a really good time building against opponents. While I did lose in the finals against Cassyva with Kara, I knew that next month I would be taking Vaath to counter Cassyva, and that there actually is a way to make this match up around 50% with Kara, I just hadnât put in the time to learn it yet.
August EYOS Tournament:
August heralds the start of tournaments giving points for the Duelyst World Championship Circuit, and boy did the tournament scene explode because of it. The previous EYOS tournaments were around 30 players, but this month the tournament was a whopping SIXTY PLAYERS. I was prepared though, I knew exactly what three generals I wanted to take (Argeon, Vaath and Kara) and I had about 20 different decks constructed, ready and waiting for almost every possible outcome. The tournament was unfortunately single elimination and before the semi-finals was best-of-three. That meant that in my first four matches I could lose AT MOST one game each.
Luckily I got a first round bye, so that was nice. But round two started horribly with me losing the first game of the match. A lot of players will just give up at this point, or will suffer a heavy hit to their mindset and start misplaying. The important thing to remember, is that until you see the defeat screen, itâs not over. Even the best players in the game sometimes give up huge leads, miss obvious lethals or just generally misplay. You always have some small chance of winning, and winning is all that matters, if your opponent concedes turn two, or you battle it out after being behind all game, only the win matters. With this in mind, I managed to win the next two games and get the round win.
After winning that match I felt more confident than ever, and managed to win my next two rounds 2-0 against highly skilled players. I felt ready for the semi-finals after making it out of the best-of-three rounds, the matches would finally be best-of-five. Turns out that it was absolutely required for me, because again I came into the match from behind, this time losing two games straight away. One game with each general (Vaath and Kara) that I thought was the best. Even the casters commented that it seemed very unlikely I would win the match from there, not only had it shown that my strategy wasnât working, but psychologically the effect would be crushing. They were wrong though, because I had been here before, and I knew what had to happen. I stuck to my strategy because I knew it was just some bad luck, and I won game three.
My opponent then switched generals, it seems he considered the Vaath mirror match to be too luck based, and instead considered Cassyva to be strongest. This is where my previous tournament experience and practice paid off hugely. I knew Cassyva well and how to beat her. I will admit that I certainly had some luck on my side by the end of the match, but at this level you can not win on skill alone, and considering my first two games were unlucky, I wasnât too ashamed to be the lucky one by the end.
Then we come to the finals. If you are reading this you may not know who Solafid is, but trust me you should. He is certainly one of the best players in the game, right up there with The Scientist. Coming into this match was the first time I didnât feel confident. Game one didnât help much when he managed to pull off a super aggressive turn three lethal! But seeing his strategy, I actually knew I could beat it. He had decided to take Faie instead of Kara. While I had chosen Vaath for the first game, and he had crushed me, I knew that by taking Kara from then on, I would be very favored to win.
Amusingly, he switched to an aggressive Argeon deck, using the same strategy that I had considered. But my Kara deck was built to handle it perfectly, and I responded with a turn four lethal on him! Seeing that he was unlikely to win with Argeon, he switched back to Faie. Again, I was prepared for both his Mechazor AND Wall decks. Having played a lot of Faie myself, I knew how to beat it, especially with Kara whom I had decided was the better of the two generals. Again there was certainly some luck on my side, at the highest level of games like this you always need some luck to win. Solafid played well, but I feel that he was not as prepared as I was for the finals, and I managed to win the finals, and thus the entire tournament.
Thank you for reading. Normally I do a TL;DR: around the end, but I feel that this post is best not to be summarized into single sentences. If you liked reading this, and want to stay up to date with my Duelyst progress towards the Duelyst World Champipnships then check out and follow me on twitter and twitch:
