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“And I swing at the pitch… for lethal, I think? Unless you’ve got anything?”
The kid- he must have been about 16 or so- sitting across from Tiana thumbed through his hand of cards, brow furrowed. Around them, a crowd of spectators looked on breathlessly, eyes glued to the board, waiting for the words to be said. Beyond them, the hustle and bustle of the Tlopps convention, the omnipresent chatter of people trading singles, buying merch, and gushing over signatures from their favorite artists. Tiana would join them soon enough.
“Nnnnnnah, you got me,” the kid tossed his hand down onto his playmat, “gg, Tiana.”
“Pew pew!” Tiana replied, with finger guns and a wink, “Good game! You almost had me in that last turn, I was sweating!”
The kid chuckled, scooping up his cards and rolling up his mat. “Thanks. You want me to go report match results?”
“Nah, I got it! Wanna stretch my legs before finals. Go enjoy the con!”
The kid wished her luck and waved goodbye, repacking his bag and slinging it over his shoulder. As the crowd of spectators dispersed, Tiana closed her eyes and took in a deep breath, relishing in the feeling of a win. It was a familiar feeling, but just as sweet this time as the first. Then she scooped up her own stuff, separating out her sideboard and slipping her cards and counters back into her one-of-a-kind custom-printed UltraPro deckbox, threw it and her mat in her enamel pin-covered backpack, and skipped off.
As the bored judge behind the counter inputted her semifinal results, she took a look at the standings. Her finals opponent had already finished their games, which was unsurprising considering that a bad matchup had caused Tiana’s semifinals to drag a little. Whoever it was had entered the tournament under just the name “S,” and seemed to have had a tough run of it, dropping to loser’s bracket pretty early on before clawing their way back. With closed decklists, Tiana had no idea what they were running, but it couldn’t be that bad.
“Your opponent’s waiting for you at table A,” said the judge in a dull monotone, pulling himself off of his chair like there’s nothing he’d rather do less, “I’m judging, let’s go get this over with.”
Tiana gigglesnorted at his indifference. Some people just didn’t have a love for the game.
The two of them picked their way through the sea of tables, occupied by small groups of people cracking packs or playing casual games of Topeka Highlander. The energy in the air was electric, and Tiana couldn’t be happier. All of these people from all over the Plane, not just collecting Tlopps but playing with them, building decks that did crazy cool stuff with them? It was her dream come true. She bounced and hummed across the convention floor, searching for table A. When she spotted it, her eyes widened at her opponent.
“Oh my god, SCORES BASERUNNER!”
The fenmaid looked up from her phone, grinning a sharp-toothed grin. She sat in a plain black manual wheelchair, a messenger bag strapped to one of the arms. A pair of rectangular rimless glasses framed her scaled face, her long sea-green hair pulled back into a tight braid. Her crumpled, tan t-shirt said “Q4Q” in a tacky font over a graphic of two chess queens, and a battered, unmarked journal floated ominous over her shoulder.
“Hey,” she replied, casually, “Tiana Takahashi, right?”
“Yeah!” Tiana took her bag off with a flourish, sitting down from her opponent, “I didn’t know you played Tlopps! Your rookie card was a key combo piece in the Red/Blue BloodStorm deck I was running for a while.”
“Cool, but uh, I barely know what that means. I just started playing, what, a week ago? This is my first tournament.”
“And you made it all the way to finals!? Wow! Way to go, girl!”
“Yeah well,” she grinned again, the glint in her eyes giving off an air of quiet, mischievous intelligence. “Beginner’s luck, I guess.”
“Well, we’ll see if your luck lasts,” said Tiana, grinning back, “people say I’m pretty good, y’know.”
“Yeah, I might have heard that.”
The two of them grinned at each other like dorks for a minute, and then Tiana zipped open her bag and got out her deckbox and mat. And then the worst thing in the world happened. SCORES opened her messenger bag, pulled out her deck, and Tiana gasped in horror as she saw that the cards were unsleeved, held together by rubber bands, just completely exposed to the elements.
“Y-you don’t use sleeves?” She said, aghast, gripping the edge of the table with white knuckles as she attempted to keep her composure.
“Uh, no?” SCORES looked at her with a puzzled expression. “Why does everyone keep saying that? They keep being weird about playmats too.”
“Y-y-y-you don’t use sleeves OR a playmat!? Bu- wh- but what about the wear on the edge of the cards when you you pick them up off the table or the microscratches on the surface, or- or-” Tiana had to take a minute to breathe, lest she hyperventilate.
“Dude, they’re just cards. You sound like my girlfriend whenever I touch her Nintendos.”
Tiana didn’t even KNOW what to say to that, so she just started silently shuffling up. The young woman nearly cried as she watched SCORES mash shuffle the poor things, cardboard edge colliding violently and indecently against cardboard edge. She winced in psychic pain at the feeling of the poor raw cards against her fingers as she cut SCORES’ deck.
“Good luck, h-have fun,” she said shakily, passing the deck back and taking her own.
“Yeah, you too,” replied her opponent offhandedly, already drawing her opening hand.
Tiana shook her head clear. She would worry about the material degradation of SCORES’ deck later, but for now, she had to worry about what the cards actually did. She looked at her hand- decent curve, she could have a pitcher out turn 2, and a single piece of removal in Crow Dive if she needed it. Three weathers, two different basics and a dual, so she’d be starting off with two mana sources for each colour. Basically ideal, she could play pretty much anything she drew, especially since her deck only topped out at 5. This was her finely tuned Red/Yellow tempo deck, aka Bird Blooded, she’d been working on for the last little while. Didn’t do anything fancy, but midrange was always fun.
“Keep,” she said, confidently.
“Keep. Do you just wanna go first so we don’t have to bother flipping for it?”
“Uh.” Well THAT was unusual. That was the sort of thing you might hear for a casual match, but the finals of a tournament? Now that raised some weird flags. “Sure, I guess, thanks!”
SCORES just nodded, fingers tapping on the table, staring at Tiana with an inscrutably neutral expression. Refusing to be phased, Tiana played out her turn-
“Basic bloodrain, tap for red, play Will Statter Jr. in the outfield, pass.”
“Draw for turn, play a basic flooding, pass.”
“Draw for turn, basic peanuts, go to pitch, WSJ on the plate and you don’t have a pitcher, so-”
“Tap for blue,” SCORES interjected, “play Slip Up, return him to your hand.”
“Ooookay,” replied Tiana, raising an eyebrow. Weird to spend a card to prevent 1 run and take a 1-drop off the field, but whatever. “Second main, tap for R Y, play Nick Mora on the pitching mound, pass.”
And thus the game continued. Tiana was able to divine some things about her opponent’s deck; it was white/blue/purple, your classic control colours, and it certainly fit the control bill with all the card advantage and board control it seemed to have. But it also didn’t seem to… DO anything. It was certainly dead-set on making sure Tiana couldn’t do anything, removing her players almost as fast as she could put them down. But as for an actual gameplan? Anything resembling a wincon? No idea. It ramped out weathers for seemingly no reason, and drew cards to play nothing but removal and a single pitcher. Was SCORES gonna, what, drop a bunch of Nagomi Mcdaniels at some point with all that mana? But no, she just kept playing removal until, run by agonizing run, Tiana eventually won. If SCORES’ wincon was to exhaust her, emotionally, she was certainly getting there.
“Good game,” said Tiana with a sigh of relief, as she finally swung through her tenth run, her deck halfway depleted. What a marathon!
“GG,” replied SCORES flatly, picking up her phone, “just lemme know when you’re done sideboarding, k?”
Tiana furrowed her brow. “You’re not… gonna sideboard?”
“Nope.”
“But… you lost!”
“So?” The fenmaid swiped lazily at her phone, leaning back in her chair.
“So-” Tiana couldn’t believe it. Who wouldn’t sideboard out of an obviously bad matchup!? What the heck was going on!? And that was only the start of all the weird things that SCORES was doing. There was something awfully fishy about Tiana’s opponent, and it wasn’t just the gills on her neck.
“Okay, that’s it!” Tiana put her palms flat on the table, rising dramatically to her feet. “I know you just started playing a week ago, but you’re being so! Weird! You’re telling me you got to the finals of a 200 person tournament having just started playing a week ago using a deck that… that doesn’t do anything!?”
“Yeah.” SCORES lifted her fingers into a V next to her face, and the sound of a camera shutter came from her phone.
“No way!” Tiana pointed a finger accusatorily, her eyes narrowing, “you’re up to something, and I wanna know what it is!”
The crowd of spectators gasped. SCORES raised her eyes to meet Tiana’s, and slowly lowered her phone.
“Are you sure you wanna know?” Her tone was calm, but with just the barest hint of devilry.
“Yes!!!”
SCORES put her phone down, and pushed up her glasses as she began. “Based on your recent tournament activity, both in-person and on Tlopps Arena, as well as the social media posts you made in the two or so weeks that led up to this tournament, I calculated an 88.7624% chance that you would run not just your Red/Yellow tempo deck in this tournament, but the specific variant of it that you’re- if I’m not mistaken, and I’m not- running right now, which is tuned to have more sustain and board control against the numerous aggro decks that are popular in the current meta. I lost the first game to make sure you were playing exactly that deck. Following so far?”
Tiana opened her mouth, but SCORES continued before she could speak. “Now, I assume that while you were inputting match results you took a look at my tournament standings, why wouldn’t you? And you probably noticed that I, well, struggled to get here. To be honest, my deck doesn’t fare particularly well against the current meta. So why run it? Well, because what it IS good at is exactly one thing.”
“Beating my deck,” said Tiana, her eyes widening as the realization struck her. That was why it seemed like she couldn’t get any batters to stick, why SCORES seemed to have an answer to everything she did. Because… she did!
“Exactly. I really did start playing Tlopps a week ago, to be clear. But I did it for exactly one reason, and one reason alone- beating you, Tiana Takahashi.”
“W-why?” Tiana could feel the arm she was supporting herself with start to shake, and she realized how hard she was pressing down into the table.
“Eh, I was bored.” SCORES picked up her phone again and slumped back in her chair, all tension in the air rapidly deflating, “like I said, lemme know when you’re done sideboarding. Should be easy enough- you think I’m a control deck, so you’re gonna side out all your low-cost interaction in favor of a more aggressive board presence in an attempt to get under me.”
“But…” Tiana slowly lowered herself back into her chair, “...you are a control deck, right?”
“I dunno, am I?”
Shakily, Tiana sat down and began to gather up her deck, pulling her sideboard out of the deckbox. And she did, in fact, side out all her low-cost interaction in favor of a more aggressive board presence, because of course SCORES was running a control deck, right? Right? She was just trying to get into Tiana’s head by implying otherwise. Calm down, girl. Focus. You got this. Don’t let this… swimming swindler get to you. She’s only been playing for a week, and there were some advantages that theorycrafting just couldn’t buy. The two placed down their decks, cutting each other’s with perfect synchronicity.
“Good luck, have fun!” Said Tiana, with an aggressively chipper tone.
“Good luck have fun,” said SCORES with a grin, that now seemed menacing, her carnivorous teeth glinting in the convention hall light.
And then they played. The second game went about the same as the first, except now, Tiana understood. She understood that every piece of removal in that deck was put there specifically to counter her, probably even to counter her specifically after sideboarding. She understood that all of the card draw and all of the ramp was going somewhere, though she didn’t know where. After that speech it certainly wouldn’t be something as pedestrian as a bunch of Nagomi Mcdaniels. Whatever was coming would be specially crafted just for her. But as hard as she pushed to win before it came, scrounging up a run here or a run here, Tiana wasn’t going any faster then last game. And then SCORES hit 14 weathers, and it happened.
“Gimme a minute,” she said, pushing up her glasses, her eyes panning slowly between her full grip and the board. “Okay, so. First, I’m gonna play Heavy Weather Warning, meaning that all of my weathers tap for one extra this turn.”
A classic combo starter, Tiana knew. And she was explaining her cards like she was an anime villain, which was never a good sign.
“Then, I’ll play a Fifth Base. Then, I’ll play Lootcrates’ Protection, meaning that you can’t target my events or permanents this turn. And then I’ll play a Season 12 Chorby Short onto the plate.”
Tiana took a minute to look at the first batter SCORES had played this whole match. She was a 2/2/2/2 for 1 blue, which was good stats for cost, but with ‘as long as this player’s batting is less than 4, it will hit a foul on every swing.’ A steep downside.
“Then, I’ll play Minor Repeat, targeting Chorby, and while that’s on the stack, I’ll play Happen Again with X equals 3 targeting Minor Repeat, filling all my bases with 1/1/1/1 token copies of Chorby that die at end of turn. Then, I’ll play Glittering Gala, targeting my Chorby on the plate, which lets me fetch equipment from my deck and attach them to target player until all their equipment slots are full.”
“But…” Tiana puzzled, as SCORES searched her deck, “Chorby only has one equipment slot, how are you- unless-!”
“Unless,” SCORES finished her sentence, revealing a card from her deck sharply, “Evolution Cap, bumping her equip slots up to four, which then lets me also attach three Double-Bladed Glass Bats, which double Chorby’s batting from two to four to eight to sixteen. Chorby Short, Chorby hit, Chorby’s gonna wreck your $#!%.” She flinched at that last word, as if swearing caused her physical pain.
“Okay,” responded Tiana, swallowing nervously, “So you get a pentaslam. 5 runs. And then your tokens die, your glass bats break, and you’re out of cards. Big deal.”
“Am I out of cards? Are you sure of that?”
Tiana looked, and sure enough, SCORES had exactly one card left in hand. “Don’t tell me…”
SCORES casually tossed it onto the table, leisurely tapping the mana required. “Bucket’s Blessing, all runs scored from a home run this turn are doubled. That’s ten runs on the board right now, and that’s game for me. GG.”
“I- what-!” Tiana was shocked. She had seen pentaslam combo decks before, of course, but none that used Season 12 Chorby Short of all players, and none built into a control shell this utterly streamlined. Under normal circumstances it probably would barely work, but it was so perfectly tuned against Tiana’s deck’s weaknesses; her small cheap players, her lack of ability to interact with effects, the fact that all of her fast removal was targeted.
“Let me know when you’re done sideboarding,” repeated SCORES, grabbing her phone, “not that there’s a card in your whole pathetic deck that can beat me,” she added with a smirk.
“You take that back!” Tiana yelled, suddenly filled with indignant rage, “my grandpa’s deck has no pathetic cards!”
“Wait, your grandpa built that deck?”
“Nah, he’s like, a retired accountant living in Osaka, he’s got no idea what’s going on. But it’s more dramatic to pretend he did.”
SCORES just laughed, relaxing into her chair. Tiana grabbed her deck and sideboard, rummaging through them desperately. There had to be an answer here somewhere, some miracle solution to this insurmountable problem. And then, somehow, there was. In a joke card, that she had slipped into her sideboard at the last second. Something that people could laugh at after decklists were revealed, at the idea that the world champion would run that card. The card that was about to win her the whole tournament. If she drew it, of course.
Tiana finished boarding, and the two of them shuffled up, splitting each other’s decks coolly. This time there was no good luck, have fun. Both women knew where they stood. One way or another, this game decided it. Through pure luck of the draw, this one started off well for Tiana, with a nice early double before her lineup got wiped. But it still wasn’t going to be fast enough. SCORES ramped up to 13 weathers, and, at the beginning of Tiana’s turn, as she drew her last pathetic card, she closed her eyes.
And when she opened them, it was THE card.
She took a deep breath, trying not to completely freak out. SCORES raised an eyebrow at her as Tiana played out a normal turn, setting herself up for, in theory, a lethal triple next turn. She was counting on SCORES not caring, because she was about to combo off instead, and almost breathed a sigh of relief when her opponent indeed played a basic into Heavy Weather Warning. SCORES, unphased by the boardstate across from her, went through the motions of her pentaslam OTK combo, shortcutting through it so fast that Tiana almost missed her window.
“... Glittering Gala, targeting Chorby, fetching Evolution Cap, D-”
“Wait!”
SCORES paused dramatically, looking up in confusion. “Uh, yeah?”
Tiana took in a deep gasp of air, and then all at once, “WhileGlitteringGala’sonthestackIplaySipper’sEdictandyourChorbylosestwobattingstarsuntilendofturn.”
“...what?”
She swallowed hard, composing herself, untensing her muscles. Tapping for the one red mana she needed, she placed the card firmly down onto her mat.
“While Glittering Gala is on the stack,” she repeated, slowly and deliberately, “I play Sipper’s Edict, and your Chorby loses two batting stars until end of turn.”
“Uh, I don’t know if you noticed, but Lootcrates’ Protection is still active, so-”
“Sipper’s Edict doesn’t target.”
“It doesn’t-” The fenmaid’s eyes went wide, and she grabbed the card, reading through it frantically, “thenon-pitcherplayeryouropponentcontrolswiththemostbattingstarslosestwobattingstarsuntilendofturn. Uh- uhm-”
“Meaning,” continued Tiana, gaining confidence, “that your original Chorby goes down to zero batting stars. That resolves, and then you attach your cap and all your glass bats, doubling it’s power three times, from zero, to zero.”
“B-but, wait… what-” stuttered SCORES, who just stared, immobilized, at the card in her hand.
“And then, my turn. Untap, upkeep, draw, go to pitch, and swing,” she made finger guns at the frozen Flower, “for lethal. Pew pew. GG.”
The crowd erupted into cheers as Tiana lept from her seat, finger gunning at the sky. With a chanting of, “...go Tiana, it’s your birthday, go Tiana, it’s your birthday…” she broke into a dorky dance, everyone around her completely losing their minds. She was wrong, earlier. Winning always felt good, but it had been a long time since winning felt like this, flooding every inch of her body with endorphins. Her heart pounded, and she whooped and hollered at the top of her lungs. What a match, what a win, with that perfect mix of luck and skill that made the whole game worth playing. Of course, it wouldn’t be worth anything without a great opponent. But when Tiana turned to shake SCORES’ hand and thank her for a great match, she found the fenmaid with her head in her hands.
“How…” she said, her voice quivering.
“Hey, don’t worry about it, you-”
“How DARE YOU!”
The outburst silenced the entire crowd, who stared at SCORES in shock. SCORES stared straight at Tiana, her teeth bared, her eyes wild, her breathing ragged.
“How dare you!? I never lose! And I did the math! I knew I would win, I knew, and- and- how DARE you beat me!” SCORES flung herself onto the table, sending cards flying, clawing herself across it to Tiana. “My win was mathematically certain, and you destroy it with- with Sippers Edict!? With DRAFT CHAFF!? You petulant, net-decking child! I will end you! I will destroy you!” She screamed right in Tiana’s face, her voice pitching to a falsetto, “I’ll kill you! I WILL KILL YOU IN MINECRAFT!!!”
The entire convention floor hung in absolute silence. Everyone within eyesight stood unmoving, while beyond them whispered rumors began to ripple through the rest of the space. The two competitors stared at each other, SCORES’ razor-sharp mandibles inches from Tiana’s face. Slowly, deliberately, Tiana lifted a finger, and pressed into SCORES’ nose.
“Boop! You wanna go get some ice cream?”
“Yeah, sure, sounds good.”
SCORES hopped backwards off the table, deftly catching the wheels of her chair so she wouldn’t roll backwards. The crowd breathed a sigh of relief, thankful that nothing violent had happened. Tiana knew that it never would, of course. SCORES was just doing her cartoon villain thing, and it was honestly hilarious.
“Hey, do you mind helping me grab my cards off the floor? I gotta text my gf about this extremely un-poggers loss.”
“Totally! But you really gotta put these in some sleeves, y’know.”
“Why? They’re just cards!”