There are many ways to improve your UFS performance. Some methods are quite simple and easy to follow, others require a certain amount of introspection and objectivity. It's never really easy to be self critical, especially when it comes to admitting your own mistakes, or learning from your failures. By contrast, it's very easy to blame circumstances and forces beyond your control and feel victimized. We say things like "it was bad luck" or "I would have had you next turn" which most often hides the fact that we overlooked something, however minute, that cost us the game. UFS is a game of decisions, many of which occur before we ever sit down for a game during the deck designing process, and it's very easy not to see the mistakes you made then when you enter the scoop phase. During the game itself you also have many choices. Should you play 3 cards this turn or 4? Would the game have ended differently if you only played 2? If you're not asking yourself these questions, then perhaps it's time you should.

Be Strict

Many players equate strict players and rules lawyers with derogatory names and phrases. They get frustrated when an opponent is constantly correcting their play or rulings, especially when that player is correct, and will most often lose a game or a match out of the sheer frustration of having to deal with said opponent. That is not why I ask you to do the same. I ask you do be strict with yourself and with others to encourage proper play and to discourage play mistakes. What I refer to of course, is not allowing yourself or opponents (but especially yourself) to take back mistakes once they have been made. A proper level of etiquette and respect is required to do this properly, of course, as well as the ability to admit you made the mistake, which is often the most difficult part. What this does, however, is create a certain level of discipline and expectation in yourself and those around you. Many of the best players have policies they adhere to, the most common of which is not playing with 2 checks.. Tristen from my play group shows up to weekly tournaments with rulings printouts to relevant cards in his deck, and will not allow anyone to tell him how his cards work because he knows exactly how they work, and will always call the proper authority to prove him right, and he IS always right. This often leads to 3-5 minutes of lost game time, but you know what? Tristen tends to win. His recent AoP victory over some of the top talent in Florida speaks for itself. 

The second aspect of being strict, of course is being strict with your opponent. If your opponent's last card doesn't chain, don't just let him pick it back up and replace it with another after he already checked it. Call the judge over and enforce the proper penalty. There are no "take backs" in the tournament rules, trust me I read them. Twice. Of course this means you have to be watching your opponent's cards very carefully, and really is there a reason you shouldn't? I always ask my opponent what symbol their first chain is using in order to check for it later on. Most of the time your opponent is only playing one symbol, but multi-symbol hybrids are increasingly popular these days.

The third aspect of being strict is taking an aggressive stance against cheating, especially with yourself. It may be tempting to see if you can get away with dropping a foundation in a middle of a spam that doesn't chain and see if you can get away with it, but the second you try that, you become a detriment to the game and organized play in general. The rules exist for a reason, and if you are really serious about becoming a better player, you must observe them. The same is true for your opponent. If he shows up with a 56 card deck, you NEED to call a judge over and enforce the proper penalty. You might feel guilty earning a game or a match in that fashion, but believe it or not, you've done a service to that opponent. Next time he'll be as careful as you were when preparing for the tournament, or he won't and then he'll get nailed again eventually, until at some point it becomes clear he's cheating. Consequently this is another reason why I favor deck registration at larger tournaments like AoPs, but that's neither here nor there. Undoubtedly, STG will tighten up on its policies as the game progresses. What's important, however, is that you realize how much your game suffers, and that of your opponent as well if you don't call the judge. 

Recognize Strength and Weakness

Strength and weakness are easy to spot from the other side of the table. When your opponent crushes you, you tend to notice. The inverse is also true. The hard part is seeing it either in yourself and your decks. It is quite easy to form an attachment with a deck you've been toiling over for weeks or months even, especially if it's really good. The best players, however, can tell exactly how good a deck is, objectively. They know its weaknesses, where it excels and where it fails, and you should do the same. I once met a man who played a deck with 20+ 2 checks in it. He told me he was a casual player, but the truth is he wasn't playing much at all, because he kept failing his checks. This, of course, is an extreme example, but it highlights my point. He was blind to the failure of his deck, despite the fact of how glaringly obvious it was. Many of our decks have flaws as well, except they are smaller and well-hidden from us. The best way to spot these, of course, is to practice with someone you know and respect for their ability and opinion. Eventually, you'll come to the point where you can see these things for yourself in your own decks and in others around you. One of the things to look for is the ability to know when a deck is strong, but not strong enough. When you constantly evaluate the power level of your decks relevant to those in your environment and in others, the decks that do pass your rigorous standards tend to be absolute monsters. Which leads me to my next point: 

Never Relent, Never Surrender

This is where I start to lose the casual crowd, but in all honesty, this is what separates the men from the boys. If you CAN crush your opponent, do so. I'm not talking about toying with them and stringing them on, I'm talking about a clean cut. If you can win this turn without overextending or negative consequence, do so. There is no place in a tournament for compassion and mercy. If your hard lock always takes you to time, but always sees you come out on top, bite it down as hard as you can every single time. Don't let up because your opponent is bored or frustrated. That path leads to defeat. If it means STG has to ban your cards because too many people are complaining, then so be it. Until then, however, keep on laying the field low, but be nice about it, not in the cards, I mean, but in person. Don't disrespect your opponents or their decks because they have no outs against yours. Beat them soundly, then have a friendly chat with them about other decks you've seen at the tournament. That's what works best for me. The best players have ice in their veins when they sit across from you. Know this and emulate it. 

One thing that I notice in my own game is that I tend to get complacent in game 2 if I crush my opponent in game 1. That's why I didn't top 8 in Orlando. That situation only leaves you with your back against the wall in game 3, because your opponent is definitely feeling the come back high, while you are on the come back low. This leads nicely into the second part of this point, however, never surrender. If you enter your ready phase with one life and your opponent still has full vitality, throw everything you can at him. It's never over until you're at zero. Who knows? He may never draw another attack again. Trust me, it's happened. The last thing, you want to do, however, is just throw away the match. I'm sure if you ask your opponent if he wants a game win he'll say yes, so with that question answered, don't use Kunai's enhance against a deck you KNOW has Absurd Strength when you're at 2. The result isn't pretty.

Practice, Practice, and when you're done, Practice some more 

Yeah, yeah, the age old adage, but I wouldn't repeat it if it wasn't true. If you don't practice, you won't get better. Wait, that's not it. Practice makes perfect. Yeah, that one too. This comes with a caveat, however. I can almost list this as a subsection of the Be Strict section, but that one was already too long. I'm going to go ahead and update the cliché and say that it should read GOOD practice makes perfect. Don't throw your tournament winning Tira deck, against your friend's 2-3 Lizardman. Go find that guy who placed 2^nd and beat the crap out of him some more. He's the one that will keep you on your A-game and possibly hand your head on a plate. That's the kind of practice you want. Now that I think about it, this would also fit nicely under Recognize Strength and Weakness. Do not practice against weak decks or weak players, it will only make you worse. If you have to, play solitaire against yourself, if you can. Do not practice at 3 am when you're tired, you will only make mistakes and you'll be too tired to spot them or analyze them correctly. Don't practice with distractions, like TV or music, devote your full attention to your practice, it will reward you down the road. Finally, don't play a deck you haven't practiced with. Some people can get away with this, most can't. There's nothing like floundering around the first two rounds of a tournament because you're still discovering all the nifty interactions of the deck you just built the night before. Save those discoveries for your practice time.

Keep your Cool 

As I mentioned earlier, the best players have ice in their veins. This works on two levels. For one: they don't care whether their deck crushes, bores or offends you, and two: nothing you do to them can ruffle their feathers, not even a match loss. They will simply scoop up their cards and move on to the next poor soul that has to face them, but they do so with the full knowledge of why they just lost, intent on never, ever repeating the same mistakes, or falling victim to the same tactic, because face it, sometimes, you just get outclassed. The point is, however, it's much easier to make decisions and analyze them with a level head. It's very easy to get nervous when you travel out of your comfort zone into hostile territory with players you've never seen before. A certain level of confidence in your abilities goes a long way, but be warned: too much of it can lead to arrogance, which leads to blindness, which leads to anger and defeat. Never underestimate your opponent, that's a given, but also don't overestimate him or yourself. If you ever end up shuffling up against me, don't get nervous because you know my name and I'm good with a keyboard. Know that I'm solid, and that you'll have to be solid too in order to beat me, and you'll do well. Fear me and you lose. It's that simple.

Be Prepared 

A large part of doing well in foreign cities and foreign tournaments is preparation. Getting a read on the metagame is about as much of an advantage players are allowed to have legally over other players. An advantage, however small is not to be taken lightly. Part of preparation is practice, another part is deck composition. If you expect a lot of Yun-Seong, then you'd best be prepared with answers to Criminal Uppercut and Bird of Prey. Another huge part of preparation is knowing how to play against certain match-ups. Against Yun-Seong, I would say save your high block for the BoP-you know it's coming. Against Ibuki, watch out for Kasumi Suzaku, don't block her bait attacks (unless you can safely full block), and certainly don't leave yourself open for Kubi Ori lock, which you may have to block at least 3 times before it's dead. There is no one-size fits all set up for any deck. There are always options and innovations waiting to be made. It's a simple fact that those that are prepared perform better than those who aren't.

Strive for Uniformity 

Also called endgame, this is an advanced deck building concept, but what it means is that essentially you want each game to play out exactly the same way. The first order of business is making sure that games end in your favor. Your deck has to be powerful first, consistent second. You want to draw card X every game, and you have redundancies and contingencies to make sure it happens. You want your deck to be streamlined, efficient, fast (relatively, for control, your defenses need to be faster than your opponent's offense), and deadly. Please note that combo decks often aim for this but can become convoluted when too many parts are required for the combo. Even a combo of 3 cards can be hard to amass over the course of a game of UFS. Sure, it's very probable that you can just draw every piece you need, but odds are the deck will fail at critical moments because your endgame was weak. The best combos require just two cards, and it's preferred if one of those is your character card, as you'll always have that available. Also note that the best combos are hard to disrupt. Some decks, like Void control, assemble cards like Legos in order to make for insurmountable advantages, but they definitely want the same pieces to start with as a foundation, like Yoga Mastery. Aggro decks like to fire a lot of bullets and leave no one standing when the smoke clears. In order for that to happen, the aggro player needs to check consistently. Whatever the case, you must pick your prerogative and stick to it. No deck can do it all, trying to do so only takes power from the rest of your deck.

Don't Victimize yourself 

The absolute worst thing you can say to an opponent that beats you is "I would have had you next turn." What you are really saying is "You only won because I didn't win," and this train of thought does not allow you to admit that you were defeated by forces you could control, if allows you to admit defeat at all. The "next turn" is a fleeting concept. The next turn is never guaranteed in UFS. Each turn needs to be earned through proper defense and proper play. A poor offense (overextension) can lead to the loss of your next turn and the game. You weren't ever going to have anyone next turn because you failed to keep enough blocks in your hand, and your foundations make a poor substitute for a proper defense. Others will blame losses on luck. "I rolled badly," is a very common statement in UFS. So common, that you have to wonder whether something's up. In Magic, players complain about mana screw, in UFS it's bad control checks. Yes, we all have those games, but you should never lose more than 1 in 10 games due to bad control checks. If you are, then, my friend, you have a deck building issue on your hands, which in reality, is something you can control very precisely. Like I said earlier, sometimes, you're just outclassed, but most of the time, a defeat has an attributable cause. Something as simple as a Yoga Teleport on one of your key foundations can cause a domino effect than can lead to your defeat. Realizing this is key, and setting up bait for the Teleport in the second game will be the path to victory. Glossing over it and thinking you lost to a bad draw will only insure that it happens again the next time around. Yes, luck has its place in UFS as well, but your opponents must suffer it as well, and thus the field is even in that respect. Above all, learn from your losses as much as you do from your wins. One of my favorite quotes from Avatar: the last Airbender was said by a Fire Nation general when he was defeated at the Northern Air Temple. He said, "From this defeat will come many victories." Of course he discovered the remains of the air balloon Aang and his friends used to defeat his army, but you can do the same by spotting weaknesses in your opponent's defenses even as you are losing. The information will help blindside your opponent, especially if he has not seen the mechanism your deck uses to win. Lose with dignity, don't take anything away from the opponent that defeated you. That's respect, and respect across the board will see UFS surviving for a long time.

Don't lose sight of fun 

Winning is never everything. Sometimes you win, but you made a lot of mistake along the way and it really shouldn't have counted. Sometimes you win, and you're not satisfied. Card games were made for one reason: entertainment. This business was started with fun in mind, and tournaments were created because for some they add to that level of fun the game provides. I'm all about advocating the Hugo hard lock. I like the long game, where I simply outclass my opponent, where his cards can't possibly stack up to mine, where nothing he does is powerful enough to stop me. I'm a chess player, after all, I'm used to the long game. That's fun to me, and I understand it's not fun for others, and I'm sorry if you ever have to face me but last I checked there seems to a be a 1 Hugo per tournament rule, until February, of course, where there'll be none. I can already hear the cheers, but fear not, I will find ways to make my opponents miserable again. That's why I do this. The point is, if you play only to win, then defeat will be unbearable for you, and you WILL be defeated. There is no secret that losing or scrubbing out in major tournaments can lead to deep seeded depression, and the reason for this is that the victim was playing the game for the wrong reason. You don't have to be a casual player to have fun, you just need to keep sight of the reason you started playing. For me, UFS is a very social event. Every Sunday my friends come over and we play UFS on my kitchen table while talking trash, bandying around deck ideas, and talking about other decks we've seen or heard about in the past week. The new banned list was a hot topic last Sunday, we definitely had fun talking about it. On Friday we have the Lakeland tourneys at the Colosseum of Comics. When I can make it, I always have a blast, win or lose, although I prefer to win. Losing sight of fun leads to frustration when things don't go your way. It makes players want to quit the game. That's another reason why I don't like the promo system UFS has in place. Instead of competing for the enjoyment of the competition, players are killing each other and themselves to get at these promos they can't get anywhere else. BUT, that's a story for another day.

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