Disclaimer: I waited on this post for super long and I have forgotten a lot of the exact details.
Off to Boston, for FOUR slots vs New York's 2!
Last year, we had trouble getting eight people to even get the four slots (stole a Magic player off the street, gave him a vanilla deck)
This year, twenty four people showed up, including quite a few people from New York qualifier.
In fact I saw two of the people I played in NY, Jonny Li and Leonardo.
Chance of cannibalization was high, since we were bringing EIGHT of us. (Littledagger wasn't playing, and Setrajonas had a trial deck, but Moku, K, AngelofSol, Sumazndude, Comic-z, and I were out for blood)
I was really hoping to dodge all of those guys plus the guys I played from NY.
.
Game 1: vs Da Capo G Himeno/bodyguard, Ryan G, 1st
Antman continues to enforce his Da Crapo meta on his local scene by donating 9001 Da Crapo decks to all locals without actual decks. However, this deck he donated was actually not all vanillas, but a Himeno/bodyguard deck. Himeno does this annoying thing where she gets summoned by an event at level 2, summons more clowns from their clock when she climax combos and heals to field and gets around Hibiki/Verniy, and in general gets very annoying. I remember he did just that at level 2. I remember I tried to kill Kotori bodyguard off and even though I knew he had a counter I miscalculated (since I wanted to kill Himeno later as well) as counter power stays on the char (especially useful on a bodyguard who stays buffed). At level 3 he put down the RRR version of the stock replacer but didn't have enough to replace my 8+ non climax stock so thank god for that. If I remember correctly even though his field was pretty big from level 2 onwards I didn't really care as I had a ton of stock, was really compressed, had Junyou, and was just doing damage. I think Kotori was actually still alive at the end of the game when I won.
1-0
Game 2: vs Kantai Collection G/Y Shima/Akagi/Musashi, Leonardo F, 1st
Same guy from Flushing, same deck! I have however opened a slot to put clockcore 1/1 Yahagi in my own deck, and I run a single level counter Zuihou now. This game if I remember was pretty funny. Leonardo sort of slow plays level 0 and level 1 which I'm not really sure why since those are the easiest parts of the game to play for the G/Y Shimakaze variant in my opinion. Either way, we end up Shimakazeing each other for a while, I remember the damage race is much much closer this time, however two key events happen, which is he clockcores a climax from Yahagi, and his refresh climax is a climax as well. In the end Musashi very nearly ends me and leaves me at 3/6 but I luck out super hard.
2-0
Game 3: vs Da Capo Newspaper, Carl G aka Antman, 1st
The man the myth the legend, and also the organizer of last year's Boston quals that called time on Comic-Z and me 10 minutes early! Since he didn't qualify at Flushing #1, he's forced to play in his own tournament and have an assistant run it instead. He's playing newspaper this time of his bazillion Da Capo decks, and running 3 soul draw 1 climaxes which I honestly had never seen until this match. This match was wacky. After the normal storm of Riccas at level one, there wasn't much else coming down. More or less by level 2 I stopped clocking since I had so much stock and card advantage...however Carl decided to just not take damage for the entire rest of the game using that 2 stock shuffler. He whiffed his brainstorms multiple times, and then would triple cancel, and this lasted for some comical amount of turns, while I slowly took damage from level 0s ramming into my field. In the end, I had to try to Akagi force in something like 5 damage and of course it cancelled. Angelofsol kept saying I had misplayed by playing Akagi and dumping all my stuck (of which there was 12? 13? by then but a couple climaxes in there) but honestly he was just refusing to take any damage anyway, I was probably not killing him that turn but it's not like I had much chance living through that turn as well.
2-1
3 rounds was enough to determine top 4 and unfortunately I lose to AngelofSol by .0111 points or w/e according to Swiss rankings. Comic-z, sumazndude and Moku all fail to qualify as well but AngelofSol and K get in at 4th and 1st respectively. Johnny Li also was 2-1 and apparently misplayed very badly against K, he was running Little Busters this time and played his mill 3 counter and put a trigger on their deck counter in the wrong order that would have saved him. Carl wants a top 3 Da Capo finish (Angel was running DC) so top 4 proceeds to determine final placing. In the end K forfeits to Angelofsol and so the 1 2 3 Da Crapo result for Boston quals is achieved. This was really our best chance to qualify and we failed so it is back to Flushing again the next week for another qualifier.