Loudererer (1st, etc. ACC)

Hot off the heels of American Continental Championships, what an exciting weekend we just had, Rielle really took the day with this one! The fundamental theories from Loud carry through to here, but with some of the edges smoothed out by a new(ish) card pool!

We return to some tools from the Prana-Keeling prisons of old with Warroids on the menu, which can protect both Prana Condenser and The Holo Man, with the latter being able to move in for snuggles and share Warroids with Prana on the turns that they aren't scoring, which is pretty neat! It's fun! We like to have fun in QtM.

To be honest, I had lost a fair bit of faith in this build ahead of the event. It had been tuned for the very early RwR meta, and I felt it was a step behind in some choices ahead of the event. I had just moved across the continent and hadn't been keeping up very well, so wasn't sure yet what to change. I was fully prepared to shelve the deck for a bit. Rielle has this infectious enthusiasm though, and had become very enamored with the deck and asked if we could play it, so heck, why not? At the very least, we'd deal (or prevent, we're nice) lots of net damage, and stay true to our principles.

Rielle really carried it, she's an amazing player with a lot of tenacity and aggressive style that really does well with the archetype. I'm incredibly fortunate to have such talented teammates who appreciate and carry such enthusiasm for my idiosyncratic builds that draw a lot of skepticism and head scratching. I've been trying to push a truly competitive Personal Evolution that leverages net damage for scoring tempo (and sometimes we accidentally kill a runner but we blame them for those) for basically as long as I've been playing the game, and I think I've accomplished it several times over. I am eternally grateful to Rielle for really carrying it into the spotlight though.

Now, personally, I think I should have probably listened to my internal misgivings about the build ahead of the event. At that point, Cupellation was finally on the rise as others were catching on to how strong it is, and it's more than a bit awkward with Warroid. Between that and demonstrating that I'm uniquely skilled at drawing Fujii 5-6 times per game, and the mental and emotional fatigue from a massive move, I just wasn't in for it that day. I think the build was tuned incorrectly for the meta going into that event and I wouldn't make the exact same choices in the list today, either, were I to sleeve it up for an event. That Rielle took the day with it anyway makes it all the more impressive.

I'm so very happy with how QtM has developed over the past year and a half. I am constantly impressed by the skill, compassion, and camaraderie out of the group. Truly, I had no idea we'd actually succeed in becoming the force that we are in the game. Time to own it though. Congrats Rielle, and I'm sorry it took so long to get the decklist up.

Now to work on the rest of my backlog... Anyone think there might be a good Freedom deck out there somewhere?