Howdy y’all, my name is JustAddBacon, and today I’ve got a bit of a treat for y’all. Rather recently we had our first Skychampions tournament, and to say it was hype would certainly be an understatement. However, of all the crazy games we had, I don’t think anyone would argue with me when I say that finals were easily the wildest. So, I tracked down the two players who competed in those insane finals games, Rain and Yexxas, and interviewed them! This is a bit different from my normal content, so make sure to let me know what y’all think of it. In any case, enjoy the article!

Questions

(Both participants were interviewed separately)

Bacon: Let’s start with something simple, tell us about yourself! What brought you to Skyweaver, and what kind of decks do you like to play?

Rain: I've played Hearthstone a lot and was advised to try Skyweaver. I love fast tempo decks like Fox the most, although I used to play a lot on control decks.

Yexxas: So, currently, I do security research on smart contracts, on the EVM ( Ethereum virtual machine). So I started Skyweaver back when it first moved into a real economy, think that was about 1+ year back? And interestingly, this game was also what brought me into the esoteric crypto/blockchain space. Back then, I was really curious about this whole crypto fiasco and wanted to explore blockchain games and how it can be used and somehow found Skyweaver! It became the only game I played and the whole idea of a player owned economy where assets, including real life currencies are freely tradable was what really got my interest. I'm personally really looking forward to this paradigm shift in web3 games. The decks that I like to play are usually the ones where I feel I'm in control of the game. The Iris deck that I brought would be a good example.

Bacon: What would you say have been the strongest things in the meta leading up to the tournament?

Rain: I've mostly played Fox so it's hard to say.

Yexxas: I think Fox is really strong right now. In its current state, he’s extremely difficult to build a counter for it and you can't really completely dominate it. Even its most terrible matchups are still only marginally unfavored. Though I don't think I play a very good fox so I didn't bring it.

Bacon: What exactly were you expecting the tournament meta to look like?

Rain: Expected to see a lot of Banjo Gato Sitti Death and Fox.

Yexxas: Coming in, I expected many Fox decks, or decks that bring many dust effects to stop Sitti Death. And because of this, I didn't think that many would bring Sitti Death as it is prone to getting countered. I'm not sure how many brought death Sitti in the end but I believe fox was the most popular one.

Bacon: Can you tell us some about the decks you brought? Why did you bring them?

Rain: Titus and Axel were built specifically for the tournament, I decided that they would be stronger than those that are now popular in conquest. And just Fox.

Yexxas: So this tournament format was 3 decks choose 2 before semi finals and the decks I brought had this in mind. So I brought an extremely greedy Sitti Death deck that can easily beat control but definitely lose to Fox or any aggro deck - but that doesn't matter since I can use my other 2 decks depending on my opponent's lineup. This means that my other 2 decks need to do reasonably well against aggro lineups, hence the control Titus and control Iris. Also, I do not think that anyone with 3 aggro decks would be able to reach semis as variance in playing such decks is too high.

Bacon: Were there any decks you were hoping to counter? Hoping to avoid?

Rain: I didn't try to target specific decks because of the format features, my lineup had a good chance of winning against other popular decks.

Yexxas: As much as I tried to bring counters to fox, I couldn't really find any combinations of cards that works well against it and yet can match other archetypes. So seeing fox in my opponent's lineup would definitely be bad for me. I think throughout the tournament, many of my losses was due to fox. Instead, I was looking forward to playing the long control matchups as I'm pretty confident in them. Players tend to make many mistakes in these long games so even though my Iris and Titus is less greedy, I think i'm still decently favourable. Also, any zoo-based matchups such as Zoey, Zoo Sitti, Horik would all be quite good for me.

Bacon: Any players you were worried about?

Rain: Probably not.

Yexxas: Not really actually. I don't think that there is any player whose skill's level is above mine so much for it to matter. The lineup brought would be far more important.

Bacon: Were you nervous going into the tournament?

Rain: I was a little worried during the games.

Yexxas: Not really nervous, haha. I came in not expecting to win actually since I don't actually play as much anymore. The decks I brought were also highly experimental with random tech cards and I didn't actually have much time to test out. The Sitti deck I brought was a last minute replacement. I originally planned to bring Fox too.

Bacon: How were you feeling after getting to quarter finals?

Rain: A little tired, but was hoping to win the tournament.

Yexxas: I have actually never won this sort of single elimination Skyweaver tournament before such as the ones hosted by community gaming or Xborg or indiGG, so it was quite exciting actually. Perhaps this was my time to win it all?

Bacon: Any matches you want to highlight? If so, why those games?

Rain: I missed lethal in Titus mirror vs Yexxas and didn't complete a turn in Axel vs Iris (sad moments). I played most of the tournament against metal Fox and didn't expect Titus and Axel to handle it well.

Yexxas: The game where I played Sitti vs Titus was quite interesting actually. I think this happened in the finals, the one where I finished the game with 3 Cannon into Glitchbreak. I went back to look at the replay and saw how almost everyone thought that I was in an unfavourable position throughout the game and especially after the Kha's Wrath turn where my Pharonis, Casket, and Old Fogy got dusted. But in my mind, I was never behind and on that turn where I played Rising Doom, I knew that it was over and the only way Titus could win is to pull out my Cannon with Desert Golem, so all I needed to do was to keep a unit in hand on the left most position before my Cannon. I think the stark difference in opinion on the odds of who is going to win between the spectator and me made this a really interesting match to watch. Of course another would be the Titus vs Titus (I think? or Axel) where I drew lethal with Ifrit draws right after my opponent missed lethal.

Bacon: What did you think when you figured out who your opponent was for finals?

Rain: I thought about why he pick these strange decks and why I need to play the final with him. I needed more practice in wisdom mirrors to win haha (but I hate wisdom mirrors).

Yexxas: When I saw Rain made it into the finals, I thought I had a pretty good chance as I was quite confident in playing my lineup against his. He certainly would be able to get a win with the hyper fox deck, but the rest of his decks, I think I could handle them.

Bacon: Looking back, was there anything you would've done differently in the tournament?

Rain: I'm generally happy with the lineup and didn't seem to make any blunders until the final games, my last 3 games were terrible (vs Yexxas). In each of these games there was a critical moment after which the game was almost lost.

Yexxas: Hmm probably be more careful when checking for my opponent's deck! The match I had vs Marble, I saw his lineup wrongly and brought Sitti into match 1, which was a terrible choice for all 3 of his decks. Was really lucky to still be able to win there I think.

Bacon: Final question, what do you plan on doing with the prize money?

Rain: Hmm, nothing yet 🙂

Yexxas: No immediate plans! Probably will just leave it lying around as backup funds.

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