Skirmish Season 1 Recap & Prize Update

Monarch preview season has come and gone, we're taking a chance to look back at the first season of the Skirmish Series!

Skirmish was a series born out of necessity. In September / October last year it appeared that COVID was coming under control and we were making preparations for a series of Pro Quest events feeding into a Pro Tour, and even starting to think about the possibility of a World Championships. Sadly, that was not to be; November and December saw second waves hitting the Northern Hemisphere and lockdowns back in place, and we had to scramble to put together a tournament series that would provide players with a meaningful and accessible step up from weekly Armory Events. Skirmish was that series.

The concept for the series was that players would be able to get to a couple of larger tournaments in their region / state with some bigger prizes on the line, and we thought we might see 16 - 32 players showing up for a reasonable sized event. Little did we know...

While COVID kept surprising everyone on the downside, with lockdowns lasting much longer than anticipated, the Flesh and Blood community absolutely stunned us on the upside with the response to the series. CompetESport opened with a 65 player event on the first weekend, and it wasn't long until we saw the 100 person mark broken by ChannelFireball, and peaking out with Most Excellent Comics & Gaming cracking 150 players. The final week of the series saw nearly 1,000 players turn out across 26 events.

It was equally special to see small communities getting a chance to take part in the series as well. Small but dedicated communities from stores like ZZ Games in Denmark, SideQuest in Poland, Classroom Cafeteria in Malaysia and Elandrial Games in Australia hosted events as part of the series the photos and social media posts coming through from these groups in the community as well.

It seems somewhat appropriate that we chose Scar for a Scar as the art for the first season of Skirmish, as Ira turned out to be the hero to beat for the series. With defensive Ira builds taking the game long, the combination of Harmonized Kodachi along with her +1 ability allowed her to consistently chip away for damage while still presenting big threats on the third chain link to force blocks and strip cards from her opponents hands.

Tall Dorinthea was the foil to this strategy. Dropping all the big attack action cards from the build to try and neutralise Flic Flack, and instead stacking huge amounts of damage with cards like Overpower, Dorinthea looked to neutralise core aspects of Ira's strategy. Ira decks adapted though, and through the season she kept putting up the event wins.

Rhinar and Kano decks were floating around the edge of the meta game, often breaking with one or two Top 8 slots and occasionally putting up the odd win. Kano is a deck with a very steep learning curve (especially compared to Ira), and this was likely a cause of his results getting better as the season went on. Both decks also have risks regarding consistency that make it harder to take out an entire tournament, especially as they went longer with player numbers picking up. The ban on Drone of Brutality towards the back end of the season opened up the field some more, and in the final weeks Bravo and Viserai started showing up at the top tables.

However, the season belonged to Ira; the first hero we ever designed proved to be the deck to beat for the first ever season of Skirmish.

The season also saw a number of players making names for themselves, while others took the opportunity to build on their reputations. One of the best things about the season was how Skirmish brought high level OP opportunities to the community in North America and Europe / UK. Seeing the 90 Day XP leaderboard fill with flags from across the world was fantastic, and with the online tournaments taking place through the season, there was an unprecedented opportunity for players from across the world to face off against each other.

Canada's Dante Delfico was the name that stood out at the end of the season, winning more events than anyone else with his Ira, Crimson Haze deck. He was being chased through the season by the US trio of Davis Kingsley (Tower Number Nine), Rob Cygul (Tolarian Dropouts) and Jacob Burns. From Singapore we saw both Eugene Phua and Gino Varella broke through the 1000XP mark, and over on the European circuit Sharif Shaaban of the UK, and Christian Weißling from Germany topped the field. Down at the bottom of the Pacific, Jacob Pearson and Matt Rogers put in strong performances across New Zealand, while in Australia Luke Fletcher, Leigh Fletcher and Hayden Dale dominated the results in Australia.

In the end though, this season was designed for the communities around the world, and we just wanted to take the chance to thank the thousands of you who came out and played during the eight weeks that the series ran for. Thanks to the store owners who put the events on, the content creators who provided all the coverage and analysis. The spirit that the events were run in was fantastic, with lots of great stories of experienced players taking time to help new people with rules and strategy, and lots of patience shown as internet connections jammed at various crucial points.

We hope you had as much fun playing as we had putting the series on for you. We've got the next season of Skirmish coming up soon, and the build up as we start looking forward to the Road to Nationals qualifier season. In the meanwhile, we wanted to finish off with a recap of the final week of Skirmish and the list of winners from the final round of prize draws.

Fable Hobby

One of the largest events this season, Fable Hobby’s Skirmish event hosted 96 players from 12 different regions - USA, Singapore, Netherlands, Australia, Canada, Germany, Denmark, Greece, the UK, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Brunei.

For the last time this Skirmish season, Dante Delfico took the tournament, facing off against Dorinthea player Adam Roach to steal the crown. Dante Delfico has picked up plenty of wins this season with Ira, Crimson Haze, taking the Drone of Brutality ban in-stride as he continued his Skirmish streak. Adam Roach has also appeared in multiple Skirmish events, winning his first competitive event during the fourth week of the season!

Shuffle 'n' Cut

Fifty-one players made the perilous journey to the streets of Newmarket for New Zealand's final Skirmish event. In spite of wielding the power of the Dawnblade, fan-favourite Dorinthea was squeezed out of the Top 8, with Kano players taking on the Ira's in the final battles of the day.

The winner of the day, Rohan Khanna, beat Jacob Pearson in an extremely close game in the quarterfinals. Jacob played Life for a Life, then when Rohan decided not to block, Jacob followed it with a Razor Reflex, threatening to take the last of Rohan's life. Rohan responded with Blazing Aether off a blind Sonic Boom for lethal damage, winning the game.

1. Rohan Khanna (Kano)
2. Nish Nammagadda (Ira)
3. Darshan Patel (Ira)
4. Ethan Sih (Ira)
5. CJ Quitazol (Ira)
6. Edward Kim (Ira)
7. Jacob Pearson (Ira)
8. Ang Nayyar (Kano)

Kai of Cards

In partnership with The FAB Five, Kai of Cards also offered first edition Monarch as part of their Skirmish event, with each player receiving four boosters. They also gifted a booster box each to eight lucky randomly-selected players! The ultimate winner was Mariusz Suchanecki with his Ira deck.

Ludiworld

A smaller event coming from the French local game store Ludiworld, this battle saw Marc Figard’s Kano beating Simon Duruy’s Dorinthea in order to take the win.

Skirmish Prize Update

We also have the final waves of our Skirmish prizes to announce! We'd like to apologize for the delay in announcing these details, but the prizes should already be in most peoples' hands by now. If your name is on the list and you haven't received your prize yet, please contact the team at op@fabtcg.com and we'll get straight onto our fulfilment partners to sort things out.