Hey Everyone, Reygon here again for a new article. Today we will be talking about my experience in the first ever season of Alpha Clash online.

The tournament had approximately 65 people join from countries across the world with the largest representation from the USA and the Philippines. There were 7 rounds of play, with 4 days allowed to fit in each round. This allowed flexibility for you and your opponent to find a time to play that worked for your schedules. Top 8 finishers from the season qualify for Online Worlds at the end of the year so it was my goal to try to make the cut!

TCG Arena was the main host for online games but there was also the option of playing on Table Top Simulator. TCG arena was great because it was free to play and could be played on a browser instead of requiring a download so it was accessible to everyone. The downside was everyone was learning the ins and outs of the system and how to execute basic game functions within the constraints of the program. But this should be expected as a first time use of the platform, i would imagine every season to improve.

So first, lets talk about the positives I saw from the online season. The biggest one is it brought together different regions of people and allowed them to play and compete and get to know each other even better. This brings the community together and breaks down those regional divides! Also everyone I played was friendly and respectful which made the entire experience a positive one.

The only real negatives was the difficulty of trying to schedule with opponents who are 12+ hour differences in time zones. But everyone was flexible and I was able to play every round and didn't have to split any rounds.

The deck i chose to play was my 3 color absence build that I previously shared and did an article on. https://www.deckplanet.net/alpha_clash/deck/692c0782-a561-4aba-a0ab-5e75f1f141cd. I ended up finishing 8th place and qualified for online worlds later this year! Overall absence was a great deck and performed well. The main weakness was torque, which accounted for both my losses. With that in mind, I have already started to make adjustments to keep up with the Torque Meta check deck!

Now I'm going to try and recall each round, but I am old and will probably not remember all the details exactly so bear with me.

Round 1 versus Sigiotto on Valen (1-0)

Was able to take this round 2 to 0. I had actually been testing Valen pretty heavily before the tournament so had a good game plan against her. I simply just played slow, didnt attack her to let her start drawing and healing. I kept the portal open, kept drawing and stacking my hand with all my discarded, then turn 6 and after i just unloaded my hand and hit for big attacks resulting in a clean 2 - 0!

Round 2 versus NoPro on Kilimanjaro (2-0)

Once again I was able to take this round 2-0 so we got off to a hot start. But funny enough this was NoPro's only loss of the tournament and ended up finishing better than me! I was worried about Kilimanjaro decks coming into the tournament but i do think my 3 color absence build matches up well. The ability to use Alpha Aster, the Preeminent to slow down clash card attacks and be a good blocker for contender attacks. I also just went real wide with my discarded, linn, and pesitlence package which stopped all attacks and my absence card advantage let me snowball this win both games by a healthy margin.

Round 3 versus Josef on RUG torque. (2-1)

I ended up losing this match 0-2 and was the matchup I was concerned about the most. I had to be on the aggressive end end and hope to out tempo him. In game one I had my biggest blunder of the entire tournament. I had 14 life left, and I was attacking with my board to put him on 5 or less life with easily enough damage on the follow up turns even knowing he had a boom coming next turn with 2 cards in hand. Instead of playing my magnate's plan to remove his crimson scales, I got in a tunnel vision mode and used all my resources to spam activate the portal and buff my contender for 2 meaningless points of damage. If you remember I was at 14 health, he has a torque in hand and a boom in hand. He then proceeds to top deck a second 1 drop torque. He plays both of them, booms, then uses his contender and crimson scales to buff his torque for 2 bonus damage and attack me for exactly lethal, bummer. Game 2, I went second and got ran off the table. Any clash card I played got easily removed, and couldn't match his tempo.

Round 4 versus Knoopy on Haven Ring Control (2-1-1)

This round we split 1-1 versus a very unique clarity ring build I had never seen before. He was looking to play the long control game and eventually win with a safeguard haven equipped with a Heavy Power Armor! Well round 1, I was drawing pretty well and putting a ton of pressure on the board. But he was able to keep answering my board pressure with 2 to 3 copies of shocking revelation to send me back to the stone age. I would recover but then would utilize shadowstrike (a card i undervalued until this round) to remove my attackers and keep gaining life. I ended up losing game 1 to decking myself out while he slowed gained health and recovered. Game 2 was similar except he couldnt quite draw enough shocking rev's to stop me. The key move was using my magnates plan to remove a shadowstrike trap before he could use it. I attacked him for exactly lethal while i had minimal cards left in hand. That haven 12 ability is really brutal in this matchup!

Round 5 versus Doms on Sinai (3-1-1)

Game 1 I just had all my discarded cards in my starting hand. Ended the game with 3 krungs in play and a Trugg bringing them back if they ever died with his action ability. Game 2 was closer but did work with low earth orbit, 1 drop absence, and Trugg to bring him back a few times. Attacked for like 7or 8 with contender to win last turn. Both these games I had pretty ideal draws, so luck was on my side this round for sure. Going wide with lots of attackers and blockers plus card draw of Absence let me control this round.

Round 6 versus Mido on Kilimanjaro (4-1-1)

Similar to round 2, I was able to take this one pretty easily both games. My deck matches up extremely well with Kilimanjaro so was happy to see it across the table. Early game I just ramped and blocked with havens, got out alpha aster, then flooded the board with linn the nanite assassins with removal to steal back cards for more blockers. Game 1 and 2 played out about the same so no need to go into great detail.

Round 7 versus Tragic on RUG Torque (4-2-1)

Going into this round, I had about a 90% chance of making top 8 if i split, 100% if i win, and about 20% if i lose. It was in my best interest to win at least one game but of course I had to play my worst match up. Game 1 I put up a good fight but couldn't overcome his removal and big flare. He had just enough removal and pressure to take me out game 1. Game 2, I lost pretty bad and never really stood a chance at any point in the game. With that loss, I was reliant on the results of others and the fate was out of my hand. But luckily I ended with the best tie breakers for my points total and snuck into spot my 8!

Overall, I think I made the right choice playing Absence, but the version I played had a bad matchup into one of the other best decks in the tournament which cost me 2 rounds. Torques ability to use crimson scales combined with torque engage plus pestilence cards or Anzudak ping increasers was my real downside. I only had little bodies with low defense that were mean to go wide that torque could easily pray on. Going forward I think I will stick with absence but have to modify how the build to drop the discarded package and find another solution to the meta! But into every other match up the deck felt favored and powerful! The card that performed the worst was probably Restoration, the ideal situation of buffing a saving a guy plus returning a Linn or Pestilence came few and far between. My biggest over performers were low earth orbit as a win condition and moracs to search for the cards i needed that game.

I do plan to keep playing in future seasons this year as I really enjoyed myself and felt challenged each round and learned to play the game at a more competitive level. It was fun to see the Meta's of different regions the differences between the approaches! I played pretty well, with only a few OBVIOUS mistakes, but thats part of it. Hopefully I get to play more of you in the future seasons!

Thanks for reading :)

Reygon