Our latest player spotlight leads me to a discussion with Sharif Shaaban, the first player in the United Kingdom to reach 1,000 XP. His name has been a regular appearance in our weekly Skirmish updates this year, fighting his way into the Top 8 with Dorinthea on more than one occasion.
While Sharif played some TCG’s casually in his childhood, it wasn’t until recently that he got back into the scene, looking to pick up something new in the chaos of 2020. He then stumbled across Flesh and Blood while watching one of Alpha Investment’s videos on YouTube.
‘The first thing that really drew me in was the art. It was completely different to the other games I’d played, and I thought it looked amazing. I decided to look into the gameplay, and thought ‘hey, this looks simple to pick up, but it’s got a lot of depth behind it’. Then I got really excited because I saw that it was about to come to the UK, I think about a month or two after I saw the video.’
‘There’s something about joining a TCG right at the ground level that’s very interesting. I got my hands on some product, got a bit of a feel for it, and that’s when I went “okay, well now I need to get some games in.” I was figuring out how to do that with Covid-19 restrictions still in place, so I started looking online for a community… That’s how I got started.’
Of course, at the time of writing this article, Flesh and Blood has only been in the UK for around eight months. With Sharif getting involved right as the game was being released in Europe, we talked about his experiences with the local community.
‘The community here is great. Part of me wants to really shout out to the whole community, and start listing twenty, thirty names of the people who really make this an amazing community to be in, but I feel like it would be unfair because I’ll still miss some people off the list.
Honestly, the community in the UK has been really inviting. We have a lot of people who are very competitive and who really enjoy the game and try to make each other better, and I think that’s one of the strong points of Flesh and Blood. For a lot of people in the community, I think Flesh and Blood came at a time where Covid-19 restrictions were still in place in the UK. Everyone was trying to find something to do and to invest their time in, so when Flesh and Blood came, I think it was a great escape for a lot of us. The community brought us together. I consider a lot of people in the community friends, even though I haven’t met them yet.’
From there, Sharif elaborates a little more on his introduction to the community, his first event experiences, and how early on he’d already begun to meet some other international players.
‘Around the start of December, there was an event I joined and I was still learning how to play. This event was hosted by one of the pillars of the UK, his name is Simon, and a lot of the players who joined that event are now big names in the community. However we did have a couple of international players, and one of them was Dante Delfico. This was my first event, and I played against Dante- he destroyed me!’ When Sharif says this, it’s with a laugh, and he sounds genuinely enthusiastic about his defeat. ‘That was our introduction to each other, it was a lot of fun.’
Keeping in mind that this was Sharif’s first event, and he reached 1,000 XP in May, exactly how did he reach such a massive milestone in such a short period of time? Like many others, Sharif went on to talk about scheduling events, and figuring out how to work them into his week.
‘I played a lot of Armory events, especially at the beginning. There were a few stores that were beginning to have weekly Armory events, and I realized I could fit my week around when the events were happening. I think before the Skirmish season started, I was averaging two to three Armory events per week.’
That trend only continued once the Skirmish events began.
‘I really enjoy playing the game, and I’m quite a competitive person, so I wanted to give it my all. At the time, there was a player in the UK who was ahead of me on the XP board, so I started joining more and more events, watching my score rise on the leaderboard. At this stage, I was seeing Dante multiple times per week- I was seeing him more often than I was seeing my close friends, because he was joining every event possible. So it almost became this point of “well if Dante can do it, why can’t I?”’
I started climbing the ladder, I was trying to get as many events in as possible, and then suddenly I noticed that I was actually getting better at playing the game. I started to understand its depths a little bit more, not just with my hero, but with other heroes, and it kind of became this hunt to get better, and keep improving.’
‘I saw that my score kept rising and I thought to myself “well, maybe I can reach 100XP”, and then I noticed that I was already at 300XP. So then I thought I’d aim for 500. Just little by little, it’s really quite surprising how quickly it happened. I got to the 1000XP milestone and thought “well, okay… now what!” I haven’t looked back since.’
Sharif spoke a little bit more about the Skirmish events, mentioning that while the extra XP had been one incentive, he would have played regardless.
‘One thing that I don’t think we talk about enough with Skirmish is that because you end up playing in this big international scene, you get to see what the metagame is like in other regions, you get to meet a lot of great people from different places all around the world, and it’s just really fun. I really enjoyed the Skirmish events. There were a lot of hours played, a lot of weekends spent staying up until 5 a.m. and then waking up the next day at 10 a.m.. There were some weeks where I was averaging around six to nine events over the weekend.”
With the last event behind us, I asked Sharif about his favourite moment in the first season of Skirmish events.
‘This is a tough one, but I think my favourite moment was winning one of the UK Skirmishes. That one was special because it was all UK players, so it was just our community, and as much as I’ve enjoyed the international scene and making friends from all over the world - the field for this Skirmish was a lot of UK players I really respect, a lot of really good players... There’s just something really special about winning a ‘home’ Skirmish.’
At this point, I turn the conversation to heroes. Like many other players, Sharif’s choice of hero remained consistent throughout the Skirmish season, and both of our featured decklists from Sharif are built around Dorinthea. What is it about the young warrior that calls Sharif to pick up the Dawnblade?
‘Dorinthea was my first hero. I learned with the Dorinthea starter deck- I think I always gravitated towards her. I did try a few other heroes, but I played my first event with the Dorinthea starter deck, and that was kind of it for me.’
‘I was actually deciding between Dorinthea and Ira, for Skirmish events, and I was trying to get better with Ira. I had a very ‘go wide’ Dorinthea, and my very first Skirmish, Tower Number Nine won that, with a tall Dorinthea. Now the UK community saw that, and suddenly we had an influx of tall Dorinthea’s within our meta. I changed my deck to a tall Dorinthea, I kept getting better and better with it, and when I started to see results, I decided to stick with it.’
I asked Sharif if Dorinthea was his favourite hero, and he answered immediately.
“Definitely. No questions asked. Even with all the new heroes that came out in Monarch - I really enjoyed Prism, Botlyn’s a lot of fun, Chane is great, Levia- all the heroes are great, but Dorinthea will always be my go-to hero.”
My final question, as always, is on the topic of a world championship, and the ability to play in the event when that day arrives.
‘I’m definitely going to try my best to qualify. I think at this stage, I’m looking at Flesh and Blood and thinking “this is something I can commit to” - and like I said before, I am a very competitive person! If I’m trying something, I want to go all-in, and I think especially with the Road to Nationals events, this is something I’m really excited to try to do and to compete for.
‘I think the thing I’m most looking forward to, if I do make it to the World Championship, is seeing the people that I’ve got to know through the international scene. I’m most likely not going to see these people in the UK. Dante, Davis Kingsley, Eugene Phua, Christian Weißling, all these people that I’ve played against countless times, I feel like I know them really well and yet we’ve never met, so I think getting to meet them and finally play against them would be a really great experience. Well, provided that they make it to Worlds, but I think at least some of them will!”