Oops. I just realized I missed my own deadline. The last 5 weeks I’ve been on a bit of summer vacation, and can’t remember to schedule things reliably. I’ll put the next round up in the next couple of days.
2 Likes
Thanks for the write-up! Just a quick comment on my concession, I’ve played that matchup from the opposite side and my opponent found it soul crushingly difficult to deal with (comparable skill level and I won in 3 straight). I’d peg you at higher skill level than I so I decided that time was better spent in a more interesting (to me, at least 
) contest.
It’s interesting to read your takeaways, I’m still struggling with identifying my deficiencies so it helps to see what other players are focusing on. Cheers! 
Giving up on a match that’s 80% lost is one of the worst gameplay errors you can make. That’s true whether you’re 80% lost on turn 3 due to the bank and matchup, or solving a survival puzzle on turn 12 for the best long-shot.
3 Likes
Sorry that I didn’t figured out Its on PS, I bought this game on steam a few months ago so I was hoping to find players on same platform.Wish you guys have fun in yomi.
Uhh PS stands for puzzle strike
I’m back, finally!
Week 18 standings
Active Roster
SuperSilver League (15+ 
)
| Player | Points |
|---|---|
| Bucky |  |
Bronze League (0+ )
| Player | Points |
|---|---|
| ZenDog | |
| Boogey2003 | |
| Hobusu |
Inactive Roster
Full List
Silver League (10+ )
| Player | Points |
|---|---|
| Skiff |
Bronze League (0+ )
| Player | Points |
|---|---|
| Bomber678 |
|
| variable |
|
| Feebs | |
| Proven |
Week 18 matches
Boogey2003/Bucky
Boogey2003 ─┐
├─
Bucky ──────┘
ZenDog/Hobusu
Boogey2003 ─┐
┢━ ZenDog ─┐
ZenDog ━━━━━┛ │
├─
Hobusu ────────────────┘
1 Like
Hobusu vs @ZenDog
Final Score: Hobusu 3 – ZenDog 1
Hobusu wins!
(Correct me if I got the score wrong)
Well, that was a fun way to get back into Puzzle Strike! Yes, you’re interpreting that right, every game I won was with The Hammer, with two of the games using a three Iron Defense Crash Gems that I got from Double Take and one involving a Double Crash Gem.
I’m not really knowledgeable enough to give much advice, but I do question adding in Mix-Master… I never really needed to use Combine since my win condition gave me pre-made 
s to drop on you, so I guess you wanted it as a way to combine off of a 
? From my perspective, it gave me a way to defuse your attempts at combining, though I didn’t focus on that too much.
An enjoyable set, including the game I lost. I look forward to next time!
2 Likes
Boogey2003 2 < 3 Bucky
Initial Bank:
Just a Scratch
Bang then Fizzle
Thinking Ahead
Training Day
Button Mashing
One True Style
Risk to Riskonade
Roundhouse
It’s Combo Time
Master Puzzler
Notably, this is the first weekly match where someone took a game off me even when I had the counterpick.
2 Likes
Week 19 standings
Active Roster
SuperSilver League (15+ 
)
| Player | Points |
|---|---|
| Bucky |
|
Bronze League (0+ )
| Player | Points |
|---|---|
| Hobusu |
|
| Boogey2003 | |
| ZenDog |
Inactive Roster
Full List
Silver League (10+ )
| Player | Points |
|---|---|
| Skiff |
Bronze League (0+ )
| Player | Points |
|---|---|
| Bomber678 |
|
| variable |
|
| Feebs | |
| Proven |
Week 19 matches
Boogey2003/ZenDog
Boogey2003 ─┐
├─
ZenDog ─────┘
Bucky/Hobusu
Boogey2003 ─┐
┢━ Bucky ─────────────┐
Bucky ━━━━━━┛ │
├─
Boogey2003 ─┐ │
┢━ ZenDog ─┐ │
ZenDog ━━━━━┛ │ │
┢━ Hobusu ─┘
Hobusu ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
Bucky 3 > 0 Hobusu
Bank:
Just a Scratch
Safe Keeping
Training Day
Sale Prices
Iron Defense (2 -> One Two Punch)
Mix Master
Self Improvement (1 -> Custom Combo)
Roundhouse
X-Copy
The Hammer
Notable points:
All three games were pressure wins, with one 4-crash backed up by several smaller Dragon Form-protected crashes.
In each of game 1 and 2, I opened with turn 1 Dragon Form, but was gifted a second cycle combine off Rigorous Training, tempting me off a more economic plan. In the third game, I bought the combine on turn 1.
In both game 1 and 2, Hobusu resigned at 12 pile when he still had a chance to survive! Speed of the Fox+ (needing to draw a Combine in game 1), Training Day a 
into Safe Keeping, eat a 1 with Safe Keeping while washing the remaining brown arrow, combine, crash.
Game 1: If Hobusu bought DCG over The Hammer, as he mentioned he should have in chat afterwards, both short and long term survival would have been much more likely.
Game 2: Hobusu had a turn 2 Double Take available, but declined it with Speed of the Fox.
Game 3: Hobusu had a change of tactics with a turn 1 defensive crash, turn 2 double take Just a Scratch. Then he bought another Scratch that he never had a chance to use; too much pressure, starting on turn 5. He passed up a defensive minicrash on turn 5 in favor of Bag of Tricks; this looked wrong at the time, but looks OK for cycling-management reasons in the replay. However, top-bagging the crash (in 1 draw) killed the cycling management and, with neither the -1 pile nor another combine before the crash, Hobusu.
2 Likes
Just a placeholder, in the middle of shiftwork + OT so not going to get more elaborate until at earliest Friday.
Great match with @Boogey2003, end result does not speak to how close the games were: 3 straight for me, all hotly contested.
2 Likes
Week 20 standings
Active Roster
Gold League (20+ )
| Player | Points |
|---|---|
| Bucky |
Bronze League (0+ )
| Player | Points |
|---|---|
| Hobusu | |
| ZenDog | |
| Boogey2003 |
Inactive Roster
Full List
Silver League (10+ )
| Player | Points |
|---|---|
| Skiff |
Bronze League (0+ )
| Player | Points |
|---|---|
| Bomber678 |
|
| variable |
|
| Feebs | |
| Proven |
Week 20 matches
Boogey2003/Hobusu
Boogey2003 ─┐
├─
Hobusu ─────┘
Bucky/ZenDog
Bucky ─────────────────┐
├─
Boogey2003 ─┐ │
┢━ ZenDog ─┘
ZenDog ━━━━━┛
Boogey2003 vs. @Hobusu
Boogey2003 wins 3-0!
GGs! i’ll write up a more elaborate report soon, just want to get this up for now
2 Likes
Bucky 3 > 2 ZenDog
Starting bank:
Just a Scratch
It’s a Trap
Chips for Free
Dashing Strike
Mix Master
Self Improvement
Axe Kick
Custom Combo
It’s Combo Time
Master Puzzler
Game 1, ZenDog’s early Mix Master foreclosed any sort of rush on my part. I tried to Just a Scratch him out of his thindeck, but it ended up too slow. He beat me to DCG and the game was effectively over when, having no defense, I missed my one window to buy Master Puzzler and didn’t 10% topdeck that DCG.
CP Mix Master -> Button Mashing; I wanted the strategic flexibility of being able to rush, and I wanted a cheap fork that wouldn’t double as a cheap Troq-washer, and I wanted an option at 3-cost.
Game 2: With no Mix Master pressure and more early arrows, my Just a Scratch did buy me enough time to get to full-cycling first (before I trashed it). From there, Martial Mastery pretty quickly took me to a DCG, then to Master Puzzler. Master Puzzler > No Master Puzzler.
CP Troq -> Gwen
Game 3: Gwen went first, full-combo’d and bought a 
. That meant I was irrecoverably behind on economy from turn 1 so I tried a Dashing Strike assisted combine rush. Gwen really showed off her early game engine here; she played Master Puzzler on turn 7 even with an early combine buy for counter-pressure. My Dashing Strike assisted rush was actually strong enough to stand a small chance - I survived the initial Master Puzzler while crashing ZenDog to 9 pile with no pile control left in his bag. But he had all three character chips and used them to cycle back into both a DCG and a Dashing Strike. Master Puzzler wins again.
CP Master Puzzler -> Gem Essence; I thought I’d stand a good chance in an engine game, as long as Master Puzzler wasn’t around to trump the engine. Gem Essence would speed up getting there while being useless for Shadow Plague.
Game 4: ZenDog got off to another hot start and got It’s Combo Time on turn 3. I settled in for a long game with Gem Essence and Chips for Free to turn my crash into a 
. A no-pressure game ensued. Zendog had trouble managing Shadow Plague, taking three wounds over the course of the game, while my upgrade-based economy pulled ahead of his. I won with a medium sized DCG hit, before ZenDog got around to buying any combines; he had It’s Combo Time in hand, but no s.
CP: Self Improvement out, One of Each in: Wanting a useful washer makes sense for Gwen in this bank, and the pig is an answer to Plague problems. ZenDog says he was worried I’d buy Self Improvement to turn off Shadowswarm’s discard.
Game 5: This was an extremely long game in which four Axe Kicks in a 14-chip deck beat It’s Combo Time and three One of Eaches in a wound-bloated deck, but only after Panic Time. I eventually ended up trashing Chips for Free outright with Martial Mastery (no 6es) for extra consistency. I also noticed that ZenDog had a lot of trouble keeping his It’s Combo Time and Gem essence fuelled. (I avoided ever buying ICT for exactly this reason)
Finally, this match taught how Chips for Free works in Grave’s deck vs. Gwen - it replaces character chips. Usually this redundancy is bad, but in this specific MU it frees Grave to discard any character chip to Shadowswarm and still do his plan.
3 Likes
Week 21 standings
Active Roster
Gold League (20+ )
| Player | Points |
|---|---|
| Bucky |
|
Bronze League (0+ )
| Player | Points |
|---|---|
| Boogey2003 | |
| Hobusu | |
| ZenDog |
Inactive Roster
Full List
Silver League (10+ )
| Player | Points |
|---|---|
| Skiff |
Bronze League (0+ )
| Player | Points |
|---|---|
| Bomber678 |
|
| variable |
|
| Feebs | |
| Proven |
Week 21 matches
Boogey2003/ZenDog
Boogey2003 ─┐
├─
ZenDog ─────┘
Bucky/Hobusu
Bucky ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┡━ Bucky ─┐
Boogey2003 ─┐ │ │
┢━ ZenDog ─┘ │
ZenDog ━━━━━┛ │
├─
Hobusu ──────────────────────────┘
boogey2003 vs. @ZenDog
boogey2003 wins 3-0!
(this became a huge wall of text, the “overall” section at the bottom is sort of a TL;DR though)
Starting Bank:
Ebb or Flow
Thinking Ahead
Training Day
One True Style
Hundred-Fist Frenzy
Iron Defense
Mix-Master
Ouch!
Pick Your Poison
Self-Improvement
Game 1:
i bought Ouch! at the earliest possible opportunity, and then won mostly just due to the bank being AMAZING for Onimaru.
i didn’t play as respectfully as i should’ve towards Surgical Strike (no draw, no extra crashes, my only respect to it was keeping my pile height generally low), which was a mistake on my part, but thankfully, the only way Surgical Strike could be chained into a Crash in this bank is through Acrobatics, which they weren’t able to use much (at all?), so it ended up working out anyway.
notably, ZenDog didn’t buy a single Combine due to the threat of Ouch! (unless i just missed it, totally possible); i don’t know if this was correct or not, on one hand, having an entire buy wasted like that is brutal, but on the other hand, Combines are extremely good.
Game 2:
Counter-Pick: Vendetta -> Rook.
i find this CP interesting: mostly, i’m curious as to why ZenDog didn’t either try to remove some of the options that make this set so good for Oni OR just pick Oni and jump into the mirror. i don’t have a solid grasp on how good the Oni vs Ven or Oni vs Rook MUs are, so maybe the Rook MU is much better than the Vendetta one and i just don’t realize, in which case, this CP makes more sense.
in the actual game, i bought Ouch! at the earliest possible opportunity, and then won mostly just due to the bank being AMAZING for Onimaru.
there was a bit more going on though; i actually took a relatively aggressive stance this game i think, forcing up Rook’s pile height quite a bit (or maybe that was mostly Strength of the Earth). at one point, i had a hand entirely full of money, and bought a with it, then later, i was able to Training Day that into a DCG, which was a big power play that gave me a lot of pile control, which i was able to win off of.
ZenDog did opt to buy a Combine this game, and it didn’t get Ouch!-ed, so it was worth it this time.
Game 3:
Counter-Pick: Rook -> BBB.
pretty much all of my statements for the last CP also apply to this one, so i won’t spend too much time on it.
i bought Ouch! at the earliest possible opportunity, and then won mostly just due to the bank being AMAZING for Onimaru… although ZenDog had a powerful economic opening this time, being able to play Cog Engine and buy a on the first turn, followed by using Upgrade the next turn for even more econ.
this lead to him getting a DCG relatively early, but i was also playing pretty economically (there was a period of “why don’t we both just buy 3 gems every turn for a while”), and got my own DCG later, and the econ didn’t exactly die down on either side from there, so we ended up with a lot of DCGs by the end.
i think ZenDog made a critical mistake at one point though where he chose to buy a 4 gem over a DCG (already having 2 DCGs, but 0 normal Crashes); he would’ve been able to survive my killing blow if he had bought the DCG instead, and what are you using that 4 gem for anyways, more DCGs? buying 2 Combines would also be a good move here.
i also made a misplay where i had the choice between Mix-Master and Combine (having 0 of each at the time), and went for Mix-Master, which i was never able to play due to not having enough actions (fun fact: i won without combining at all IIRC).
the late-game here was really just crazy silliness with constant DCGs everywhere, but i eventually managed to out-DCG ZenDog.
ZenDog got a Combine Ouch!-ed this game, and that hurts, but with his heavy econ, it’s not the end of the world; if he really wanted the Combine, it’s not hard for him to get together $4 (although he never ended up finding the opportunity in this case).
Overall:
i think i won mostly through the bank being amazingly suited to my character, with good enough play to make use of that.
i think ZenDog’s biggest weakness this set was his CPs, they didn’t do enough for him. you’ll notice that i generally focus on CPs a lot in these reports, and this is why; they can make a big difference!
switching out Ouch! for something that costs 5+ (so i couldn’t WTT for it) would’ve probably made the most sense, as the common theme was me buying Ouch! ASAP every game, while ZenDog was making no attempt to utilize it. the counter-argument to this is that there are so many good 4 cost chips here that getting rid of one wouldn’t matter, but i think it would. alternatively, just doing the Onimaru mirror as i mentioned earlier would be a decent option as well.
on my end, i completely forgot that Self-Improvement was available the entire set; maybe i wouldn’t have used it anyway, but it was still an option to consider that i just failed to notice.
sidenote: i also like how the amount of econ scaled up each game, starting with low-ish econ in the Ven game, then reasonably high econ in the Rook game, then DCGs everywhere in the BBB game.
(PS: i realized through the replays that some of my comments during the game may have come off the wrong way, sorry about that! i meant all of them in a friendly way, i think i was just a little tired at the time)
1 Like
i find this CP interesting: mostly, i’m curious as to why ZenDog didn’t either try to remove some of the options that make this set so good for Oni OR just pick Oni and jump into the mirror.
Vendetta vs. Onimaru is extremely difficult for Vendetta in most banks, and ZenDog strongly dislikes the matchup even given that. While this bank is one of the rare ones that could maybe have been salvaged off a counterpick (removing One True Style and trying to win thanks to having a fork vs. no fork), it’d still be 8-2 or worse off a decent counter-counterpick.
OTOH, it’s a bad Rook bank with the 
s as the main puzzle chips he wanted, and those only because the 
s are so strong . BBB was a better pick because the bank had a bunch of Cog Engine friendly pile control, and because upgrading 
s into Thinking Aheads is a good rebuttal to Ouch!.
(E) Rook/Oni is one of the more common MUs in this thread, and is now 6-3 in Rook’s favor across 4 matches.
1 Like
Bucky 3 > 2 Hobusu
Initial bank:
Just a Scratch
Bang then Fizzle
Ebb or Flow
Knockdown
Combinatorics
Mix-Master
Ouch!
Stolen Purples
Signature Move
It’s Combo Time
Methods of victory, briefly:
Game 1: Hobusu has 9 pile including a 
, and I have 7 pile including a . I Chromatic Orb, baiting a countercrash with the . I counter-countercrash with the 3 putting Hobusu back to 9 pile, but with no crash left.
CP: Ouch! -> Sale Prices
Game 2: Combines > no Combines, even if the no-Combine side has a fresh DCG.
CP Knockdown -> Iron Defense
Game 3: …but DCG spam beats a failed combine rush when it does have a combine. Stolen Purples could’ve turned this game around, but showed up a turn too late.
CP: Random bank!
Safe Keeping
Bang then Fizzle
Money for Nothing
Now or Later
Training Day
Thinking Ahead
Blues are Good
Pick Your Poison
Self-Improvement
Combos are Hard
Game 4: Even harder DCG spam, with even more combines. I can’t take the pressure and my Combos are Hard never goes off.
CP: Training Day -> Stolen Purples
Game 5: Hobusu uses Thinking Ahead to put two Combines on top. I decide to take a chance on the top-bags keeping him from drawing his crash or DCG (~27%) with a barely lethal 2-crash, and it works.
2 Likes
Week 22 standings
Active Roster
Gold League (20+ )
| Player | Points |
|---|---|
| Bucky |
|
Bronze League (0+ )
| Player | Points |
|---|---|
| Boogey2003 |
|
| Hobusu | |
| ZenDog |
Inactive Roster
Full List
Silver League (10+ )
| Player | Points |
|---|---|
| Skiff |
Bronze League (0+ )
| Player | Points |
|---|---|
| Bomber678 |
|
| variable |
|
| Feebs | |
| Proven |
Week 22 matches
Boogey2003/Hobusu
Boogey2003 ─┐
├─
Hobusu ─────┘
Bucky/ZenDog
Bucky ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┡━ Bucky ━┓
Boogey2003 ─┐ │ ┃
┢━ ZenDog ─┘ ┃
ZenDog ━━━━━┛ ┃
┡━ Bucky ─┐
Hobusu ──────────────────────────┘ │
├─
ZenDog ────────────────────────────────────┘
Hobusu vs @Boogey2003
Final score: Hobusu 1 – Boogey 3
Boogey wins!
The first two rounds were utter chaos because of Master Puzzler, the latter two were Jaina doing Jaina things.
3 Likes