gonna be real we didnt do much besides eat lol

bonus post tournament pics (:

honestly i am way less mad about this bubble than my scrubout in top 8 at vancouver last year since i had no control over my losses (and i think i played quite well!), but im still pretty mad about bubbling like this LOL
hopefully i can do better at vancouver in january!

my relatively easy run gives me very poor tiebreakers, and i end up in 24th place ))))):
4(!!!) of my locals end up in top 16, and one of our relatively newer players score 3rd which he fully deserved after the work he put into preparing for the event!

this gives him double mai and a 1 soul lane which barely kills me from 3-1, the literal last instance of damage from the mai soul damage kills me. any healdown wouldve kept me alive so this was all astronomically bad luck

since i cant feasibly kill on his 7 cx refresh (would need to basically land a 3 past refresh then land two more swings which would all be for 4+), i pass the turn without attacking hoping he cant get to the 1 riki
he draws clock draws and finds the riki on the second draw in the new deck...

i dropsearch to find a healer to maximize my survivability, but there are none in deck
at this point hes at 2-4 with 2 non cz in deck, 5 cards in hand, 1 riki in waiting room, and two open lanes i cant clockkick

R7 SBY 8 door 2nd ❎️
opponent had a really rough start in terms of cx placement but i couldnt find a cx to capitalize; the bar didnt appear until turn 4 which was already near the end of his first deck
i misplay a bit with boardstate allowing him to assemble two mai in hand, and i get pushed to 3-1

hilariously, he hits 3 of my 4 cx in my sizeable deck using my 6 stock; he STILL fails the kill because i healed so much
swingback kills him for free since he had no cards in hand at 3-4

R6 BTR door bar 2nd ✅️
spooky game. he couldnt find nijika brainstorm on triple combo turn and end up discarding for handsize, and didnt seem to know how to control his decksize throughout the game. i healdown to 2-2, he decides to attempt kill with triple ryou stockswap

he does end up getting a second kill turn with 3 costing the lv3 i kill, but without onplay soulpump it isnt enough to kill me and i basically guarantee kill with clockkicka on swingback

R5 NIK shot bar 1st ✅️
he turn 2 trifielded with a shot and barely had cards the entire game
his kill turn was single noir single blanc single 2/1 noir, which doesnt even bump me to lv3 (this was spooky because i couldnt actually kill both lv3s with just ep+saaya and he triggered a bar)

R4 AZL 8 pants 2nd ✅️
this guy played two (2) mill 3 counters like a sicko
my cancels were average and he didnt manage to do ccx more once with two copies
they tried to kill me from low 2 with double enterprise but it fails, i kill on the swingback w/ taki brainstorm to shut off backups just in case

R3 AZL 8 pants 2nd ❎️
took a ton of damage midgame while compressed, and even with healdown it wasnt enough for me to basically lose a turn before the game ended. not much i couldve done i think; my opponent could barely drop single enterprise at the end but i still died

we hit time this game while i was performing finisher but he gave me the win, i took a lot of slow turns this game to decide my routes midgame which contributed to the clock
couldve probably put more work into the matchup to avoid this
clockbomb put in work here too by clockkicking an aqua!

R2 TSK standby pants 1st ✅️
this was a 2023 world finalist and i had info about them being on TSK beforehand, which didnt reassure me one bit given that i had trauma from playing into it with MDE
luckily they couldnt deploy triple mjurran fast enough and was really unlucky with cx placement last deck

they also unfortunately forgot the ccx condition but i dont think it mattered because their board wouldve been clockkicked and their hand was quite poor, so the kill wouldve just been delayed a turn if i didnt end up eating 6 straight on the swingback

R1 HOL kanata sora 2nd ✅️ (@cctwintail.bsky.social)
the double clockbomb cx swap change i put in last minute put in work this game - their sora turn ended up being one turn late which let me push them fairly high before soras were deployed