Semifinals: Cypher wins, 4-3, after a lengthy discussion about how Double-KOs work in this tournament.
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Game 1 Caralad has started with Menelker before, and it’s a matchup I’m comfortable with, so I opt to start with Midori. Brother battle! Duffing his throw with an early straight keeps me fueled up, and despite getting hit with a few Black Face Cards, I do enough Dragon Things™ to win the game.
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Game 2 sees my opponent counterpick with Argagarg, but it doesn’t work quite as well for Caralad as it did for VengefulPickle. The game’s really close, but I manage to wait out his Aces until he plays them as Blowfish Spikes instead of Bubble Shield, dodging them with a topdecked 9. I manage to take it, but it’s quite the nailbiter until the end.
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Game 3 went great for me… right up until it didn’t. I’ve still got a lot of action in-hand, but a very brave throw from my opponent puts me on the ground, and then I get crossed up for the win. Very strong game from Caralad.
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Game 4 I swap to Grave, and our spectator comments “second time this tournament I’ve seen Grave counterpicked into Argagarg!” and then promptly realizes “hold on, Cypher, that you the other time, too, wasn’t it?” It doesn’t go as well for me this time as it did against Vengeful Pickle, despite good throw timing on my part. Last turn I decide to go for a raw TPoS instead of the “high percentage” dodge, and I get blown up for it.
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Game 5 is where things get crazy, as I decide “screw it, I’m doing fast-timer Persephone again!” and it seems like my opponent is just as excited as I am. I don’t play perfect (far from it, really), but I play well enough! The first two vortexes get stuffed easily enough, but one eventually sticks long enough to fill my hand and let me start mixing up between dodges and On Your Knees. Eventually I decide to chip my opponent down to 1 hp (even though I forgot to retrieve my Q from discard, earlier), and throw to close it out. I take a few minutes to compose myself, since fast-timer Persephone is stressful.
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Game 6 sees the strong counterpick of Gwen. It’s (famously) Persephone’s worst matchup, but thanks to my match against MysticJuicer in Lum’s Lucky Lottery (in which his Persephone soundly bodied my Gwen), I now at least know how to play it from the Persephone side. I am helped immensely by Jokering a massive wombo-combo very early in the round. Eventually, it’s down to the final combat before time-out, Caralad’s got the Dreadlands Portal in hand (and two more hit points than I do) while I’ve got On Your Knees. Both moves are lethal. I desperately want throw what I’m reading as a dodge, but no throws in hand! So I dodge, rather than attack into Gwen’s dodge, and after the Shadow Plague evens up the life-totals 15-15, the game ends in a draw!
Serious GG;WP to my opponent, Caralad. An extremely tense set that literally came down to the wire. We don’t know if a double-KO counts as a win-for-both or as a win-for-neither, so we’ll set up a few more rounds if we gotta.