The second week of Skirmish took place last weekend with 11 events across the USA, Australia, Canada, Poland, Spain and New Zealand. The talk of Week One was the emergence of Dorinthea as a top meta-contender. Several pilots including Rob Cygul and Davis Kingsley took versions of the deck to 1st place. However, Ira decks remained strong as well, putting up a number of top placings. Alongside the Dorinthea decks both Kassai and Rhinar put up winning results. So how did players approach the second week of Skirmish?
The Living Realms event marked the first entry of a UK store into the Skirmish series. They had a varied top eight with two Ira, two Kassai, two Dorinthea, Rhinar and Kano. The finals came down to Daniel Tripp's Ira deck versus Dan Green's Rhinar deck (which notably did not run Romping Club in favor of two Mandible Claws). Ira managed to dull the edge of Rhinar's claws, taking down the first-ever UK Skirmish event.
The US hosted four Skirmish events over the weekend and it started out with a bang for Dorinthea as Rob Cygul notched up his second Skirmish victory, with an updated build of Dorinthea, from a field of 42 players at the Comic Book World Louisville event. Notably he faced off against Brendan Patrick. Brendan is well known for his Ninja prowess; along with Sasha Markovic, he brewed the Ninja Turtle Deck that Sasha piloted to victory at the very first Classic Constructed Calling in 2020. Brendan played Ira control and has a detailed report on his blog.
Meanwhile, Dante Delfico managed to do the double and win both the Final Turn Gaming and A&H Games - Monroe events with his Ira Control list. In the A&H Games event he squared off against Brendan Patrick in the final, with Brendan eventually going down in his second final of the weekend, while in the Final Turn Gaming event he took down Dyson David for his second win of the weekend.
With Ira back to the head of table she was able to get victory at the final US event of the weekend at the Gamers Guild. Oliver Phi faced a top 8 of one other Ira deck (played by Benjamin Tang who he would face in the finals), three Dorinthea decks with Viscerai, Bravo and Rhinar rounding it out the gauntlet.
Gamers Guild Finals table with Oliver Phi facing off against Benjamin Tang
Australia saw just one event this weekend at Cardtastic Collectables in Victoria. This time it was a different Fletcher who took it down, Luke Fletcher once again took Dorinthea to the finals this time having to take on Matthew Clark's Kano deck. Dorinthea taking the lead as it extinguished Kano's flame.
Luke Fletcher Cardtastic Collectables winner
Nexus Games in Nelson, New Zealand held the very first event of the weekend. The top 4 decks continued the winning track record of Dorinthea, with all four decks featuring the hero from Solana. Matt Rogers and Jacob Pearson faced the final, with Matt prevailing and Dorinthea claiming another win for the weekend.
Finally, for the biggest event of the weekend, 52 players entered the Hobbymaster Auckland sealed deck event. After the swiss rounds stood a who's who of Auckland Flesh and Blood, including Development team member Jason Chung trying his skills in the top 8 against a field with multiple top ranked players from NZ Nationals and The Calling events. In the end Matt Rogers and Jordan Nelson-Fussell faced off. Matt once again even in a draft top 8 was on Dorinthea while Jordan was able to draft his favorite class Ninja (but this time Katsu rather than Ira), both players last faced off at the Auckland Calling 2021 top 8 and this time the result was the same with Jordan denying Matt a second Skirmish win for the weekend.
Hobby Master Entertainment Top 8 L-R Jason Chung, Matt Rogers, Iain Kenderdine, Michael Collins, Simon Austin-Wallace, Cayle McCreath, Jordan Nelson- Fussell, Kieran McEntegart
At the end of the weekend Ira took back ground lost in week one, but Rhinar, Kassai and Dorinthea are snapping at her heels putting numbers into the top 8 brackets.
Discussion Points
For those players who participated in online events, we will be fulfilling prizes over three waves through the course of the series. We will be publishing winners after the completion of this weekend's events and passing the prize information through to our fulfillment partners. Please make sure that your address details are up to date in the system in order to be eligible to win!
There was also a lot of talk about the new policy update released last week, in particular the removal of extra turns. Having trialed this previously, the strong feedback from players was that they appreciated how the introduction of this rule helped ensure that tournaments ran to time, and gave them clarity about when they needed to be back for the start of the next round.
There's been some discussion about whether this is also true of online tournaments as well. In our view, the issue is exactly the same; allowing TO's to be clear that rounds will take 30, or 35, or 40 minutes helps players plan, and to know how much time they have between rounds. To the extent that players are finding that there's not enough time in rounds to finish matches, particularly for online tournaments, we would continue to encourage TO's to address this by setting the round lengths a little longer, in order to allow enough time for games to finish!
The Week Ahead
Week 3 of the Skirmish Series sees the action moving towards Europe, starting off with UK heavy hitters, Dark Sphere, then moving across the continent! We have our first events up in Taiwan and Malaysia for the APAC circuit, and in North America there's a trio of events for players as well. All in all, a dozen events to keep you busy this weekend!
Europe / UK:
- Dark Sphere, London, UK
- Sapphire Cards, Germany
- Gamers Academy, Austria
- Good Games Bern, Switzerland
- White Rabbit Community Game Store, Germany
- Dragonphoenix Inn, Greece
Asia / Pacific:
- NowNow TCG, Taiwan
- The Games Cube, Parramatta, Australia
- AK Games Centre, Malaysia
North America:
- Mostly Games and Collectibles, Vancouver, Canada
- The Collective, Florida, USA
- Bento Gaming, Canada
For those of you looking for some deck tech for the upcoming week, we have some of the winning deck lists available for you;
Dante Delfico Ninja Deck - Final Turn Gaming Skirmish - 26.2.21
Rob Cygul Warrior Deck - Comic Book World Louisville Skirmish - 22.2.21
Oliver Phi Ninja Deck - Gamers Guild Skirmish - 28.2.21
Daniel Tripp Ninja Deck - Living Realms Skirmish - 28.2.21
Luke Fletcher Warrior Deck - Cardtastic Collectables Skirmish - 27.2.21
Also, don't forget to check out;
- The Calling Auckland 2021 Top 8 decklists here
- Jason Chung's Viserai build here
- James White's Data Doll build here (note - your results may differ from James'!)
And again, there are lots of other Armory and On-Demand events happening around the world, both in person and online. Check out here on out Event Finder for more details.
Good luck out there, and stay safe!