"I Stole This List and Changed 3 Cards" - Q&A with Danny Diaz, 2nd Place at Kefka Cup
We caught up with Danny Diaz, who recently placed 2nd of 24 players at the Kefka Cup 3/3/18, and asked him about his deck. His responses are below!
Courtesy of FFDecks.com. For interactive link, click here
Hey everyone, my name's Danny Diaz. I've been playing FFTCG since the middle of Opus II and I am absolutely bonkers over this game. I main mono-colored decks but appreciate and experiment with all card types and combinations. FFTCG is an amazing game and I'm thrilled to write up about my recent experience at the largest FFTCG tournament that I participated in.
Why did you ultimately end up playing this deck at the Kefka Cup?
First, I want to state that although I had the idea to put together the ice ffvi deck since opus IV came out, I never got around to it. When I was finally ready to play ice, I looked at some of the top performing ice decks and went from there. From the list that I pulled from, which took first place in the open OCTGN tournament in (link here), there were a few changes that I made to better suit my local meta.
I disagreed with only one starter Jihl Nabaat and opted for three. The most Important change ended up taking out 4-drop light Terra and replaced her with Opus II The Emperor. This card served to be absolutely devastating in a couple match ups. There were two matches in particular where I played The Emperor and didn't think much of it, only to be told by my opponents that that what lost them the match. Absolutely insane, and if I could change anything it'd be to play two Emperors, and make space for a third Duke Larg.
One of my favorite decks to run was mono ice during Opus III. I loved the control and discard mechanics. With the release of Opus IV and the new FFVI cast, however, I saw an opportunity to run an even more oppressive and synergistic ice deck that looked like a lot of fun for the player.
It used to be good enough to run three copies of cards like Serah (1-95S), Zidane(3-154S), and Argath (1-033C) to cause discard mayhem. However, while effective at hitting your opponent’s hand, they had little synergy between them and didn't offer much pressure once on the field. Enter the new FFVI ice cards.
Setzer gets the engine rolling, while also having useful utility on the field. One thing to note is that he tutors for a FFVI character and not just a forward. One match in particular I played him turn two by paying 1 CP and ditching two Cid backups to pull out the third one. Awesome deck thinning potential.
Celes provides a unique freeze effect, on top of being a solid, on-curve 4 drop with an interesting S-ability. One of the more interesting lines of play is dropping Celes on your turn two or three and freezing your opponent’s backup. More times than not, this is going to really change their play.
Banana-suit Cid provides a straightforward way to bring out missing pieces of the VI engine. What a great outfit he has on. I need one.
Locke, with an enter the field discard ability and easy to fulfill conditions, coupled with the pressure of his Genesis-esque ability causes further discarding when he does damage. Needless to say, Locke and crew presented interesting opportunities.
Between Ice’s fantastic spread of forwards, effective summons (Shiva caused two games to be conceded 2-3 points of damage away from victory), and battle tricks such as Rinoa + Zalera or Devout + any combination of Genesis/Terra/Celes, I felt I had a versatile deck with an answer for just about anything. It made for a consistent deck that just felt good. Also, Flan proved to be an incredible little monster!
How do you feel the deck performed in a competitive scene and how do you think it is positioned for the meta overall?
The question of the meta is a tricky one to answer. The beauty of this game is that there is an amazingly versatile pool of good cards and decks where a lot of different elements are represented. And the meta truly is unique from one location to the next. From my experience within the Hampton Roads area, I saw a lot of Mono Water, Wind/Water, Standard Units, and Mono Lightning decks. In my opinion, Ice has a favorable, or at least decent, matchup against these decks.
I greatly appreciated the turnout at the Kefka Cup. It was a real pleasure seeing people of all experience levels come out and participate. I believe I was the only Mono Ice player, which made sense given the local meta had shifted away from Ice. But with this deck’s consistent performances in events, I figured that it’d be more present. Call me lucky, because the hardest match up I could think of is the mirror!
How did you perform as the deck's pilot?
I ended up going undefeated through swiss and finished 2nd place overall in the Kefka Cup. I felt focused and ready to perform, especially considering my last event was a disaster, with me placing at the very bottom. I felt I had something to prove, and a 24-player tournament was the perfect place to flaunt those little Flans.
There were some lines of play that I found to be effective prior to the event, but I found myself learning so much with every match. I was impressed with the tools I had for different situations. Matches against slower decks such as mono water allowed me some breathing room to set up the backrow and cycle through my deck. The slower matches proved to be the most straightforward matches. The ones that were most interesting where the ones that pushed a lot of pressure early on. It's difficult to rationalize using the first three turns to build backups when your opponent drops a Yang/Ursula combo on their turn one. But that was the beauty of this deck; it had answers for almost every situation.
What is your experience with large tournaments personally, and how was it different while playing FFTCG?
Up until recently, the FFTCG scene had a very small but dedicated following. Most of my experience playing in tournaments was 4-6 man events at the local LGS. One thing that proved to be a challenge was stamina. The entire event took close to 8 hours. That’s a lot of card playing. It was a hell of a lot of fun though!
What do you expect for your deck and the future of the meta with Opus V?
From what I've seen, Ice is still poised to be a dominant color come Opus V. Cards such as the 1 CP Mateus look game breaking, and Orphan looks like it might become at least a two-of in Mono Ice going forward. But it also looks like every color is getting some neat cards. All that I know is I'm super excited going forward and I expect Ice to continue to perform well. And something tells me that the FFVI ice engine will remain a fixture going into this new set.
Thanks for reading!
And thanks to Danny I-can't-believe-they-didn’t-print-a-new-Basch-card Diaz for his input!
She will always see play
Not some opera floozy
Kefka Cup players
"Corrupt" is too gentle