So there's a big event coming up. It's been a while since my team's done any work on UFS, and we're a bit rusty. Sound familiar? If so, then let me share with you some of the training exercises we go through to get back into tip-top competitive shape. Some of you may already do some these things, but if you don't, I highly recommend them. Let's begin, shall we?

My first order of business, however, is to fix a mistake I made in my last article. I erroneously claimed that Gravelord's Super Rare Cervantes deck made top 8 at worlds, when in fact it was actually an undisclosed build designed by Nick Abrishamcar. Apologies to Nick, hopefully in the future deck registration and reporting can fix these issues. That said, let's get to it.

Team Training

Here in Tampa, we love team events. We're all about them. So much so, that we often neglect our singles practice and performances. It's paid off very well, as have several hypotheses that we like to fiddle around with and many of them have been very effective.

However, as we were preparing for the next tournament in Fort Myers, my teammate Harold dropped a doozy of a surprise on us.

"You won the coin toss," he says as places three character cards in front of us, "these are your opponent's characters. How do you pair up?"

I was pretty confident in our deck selections right up until this moment. For the sake of discussion, let's assume this is the top 8 of a team event. You know these guys are for real.

How do you pair up?

A lot of assumptions and predictions have to be made in team formats, especially in the early rounds.  An example of what you need to be asking yourself is whether your opponents are trying to deceive you. Promo Alex, for example, can be very deceptive. Six months ago, many people had pegged him down as a purely aggressive character. Fast forward to the present and you know he can abuse Revitalize with Military Rank, or he can do his Unpredictable 8^th Bill combos a la Team Venture. He can even mill you out.

How do you pair up?

All that, and we still have two other characters to assess, and mind you, you don't have all the time in the world. When you win the coin toss your choice is crucial, because your opponents are trying to predict your choice so they can arrange the last two pairings in their favor. You want to pick a pairing that favors your team, but you also want to make sure that you aren't sacrificing teammates in the process. Your choice should make their choice as hard as possible while maintaining a favorable matchup.

"Yun-Seong is a mill deck, you saw it playing earlier," says Harold. "That's all you know."

Again, a situation like this is very likely. The more information you have on your opponents the better off you'll be when the time for deciding pairings comes along.

"We have to assume the absolute worst," says Efrain, my second teammate.

This is absolutely true. So we go down the line.

What is the optimal build for each character?

Donovan has us all scared out of our wits. He IS packing Addes, of that we can be certain. He uses that card to break the symmetry of his ability and pull so far ahead of you that you can do nothing but lose. As for new tech, I would use Ira Spinta to set my opponent farther back, so I would bet my opponent is doing that also. He aims to kill you in one big hit, probably Ryu's Shin Shoryuken, as that's what successful Donovans have done in the past. He is a nightmare for our team.

This is what should come to you when looking at an opponent's character.

Alex is likely Fire aggro, only because we know Yun-Seong is a mill deck, and Donovan is a control deck. Teams are very unlikely to run three slow decks for fear of forcing draws. We can handle this guy with a tank, or a mill deck of our own, but is it the best pairing?

We know Yun-Seong is mill, and if it's the Mr. Clean version, we have to kill it in one shot because of Revitalize. In fact, Revitalize is a given, who can kill this guy in one hit? Is it the favorable pairing?

Here's another variable. Say you know that your teammates can take Alex or Yun-Seong, but no one on your team can take Donovan. It's your duty then to sacrifice one player to Donovan in order for your teammates to take on the two they actually can fight. You don't scoop, you give it your best shot-that's important.

Now, let's flip the tables a bit. Let's say your opponents won the coin toss. Have you just lost? Their Donovan feels comfortable against anything, the deck is a monster. They know they can field it against anything you bring to the table, it's almost a guaranteed win, so their job is to secure another win with the first pairing.

Every team needs to have a tech monster like the Donovan mentioned above. A monster that has a good chance against anything, regardless of what's on the other side of the table. It makes pairings that much easier. Finding and building that monster, however, is much harder to do. The reason the three above characters were chosen is because they can be very ambiguous. In fact, without scouting, you can't really be too sure. Thus, another tactic would be to choose three very ambiguous characters and leave your opponents scratching their heads. This particular strategy has worked very well for us in the past, as it has made our opponents essentially waste their first pick on something they really had no idea what it did. This strategy also benefits you when you are picking first, as you have already chosen a favorable matchup, and your opponents are completely shooting blind at the last two pairings.

Unfortunately, there is a downside to this strategy, and that is that often times there are better characters to choose from. Most of the time, a character is an unknown because his abilities are too narrow, or his symbols don't fit his abilities. Good characters are known and chosen for a reason after all. You are fighting uphill when you try to confuse your opponents with odd characters, especially if you're playing against a really creative opponent that can figure out your deck on the fly. This isn't to say, however, that surprise is completely without value, as this definitely is not the case.

Allow me to illustrate. Let's say you're in the finals, one of the top 2 teams, and these are your opponents.

How do you pair up?

Cases like these would seem like adequate reasons to prepare for surprises. One of the ways in which this can be done is to practice with another team. My team is large enough to provide us with a steady stream of new opposition, and it's not uncommon to see a  new deck turn up just about every day in the weeks leading up to a big tourney. Playing against a wide variety can help you determine reoccurring weakness, such as high damage attacks, CC Hax, or degenerate loops.

Going Solo

You're going to want the help of your team when preparing for a singles event, because you'll want to play against a variety of decks and strategies in order to gauge the overall effectiveness of your deck. You want others watching you play in order to receive comments on your playstyle. I can't tell you how often I have one or two teammates biting their lips or grunting as they watch me play, which is a sure sign that I'm making a mistake.

The goal is to bring your deck and play as close to perfection as possible. I would argue that playstyle is easier to improve, as deck composition has any number of bad choices that are not readily apparent, such as sideboarding Extreme Rivals at an event where there are very few commit effects.

A lot of pride is associated with deck building, and it's often very hard to admit when we make bad choices, but knowing when to scrap a mediocre deck will increase your success in this game. As I mentioned earlier, mistakes in deck building are not always obvious, so here are a few indicators:

If you experience any of these, it may be time to switch your deck out.

• Your deck has no guaranteed matchups, certain archetypes that simply cannot beat you.
• Your deck is just 50/50 against everything else. Luck of the draw is the deciding factor. Many aggro decks suffer from this.
• Your teammates beat you more often than you beat them. Chances are you're the new guy, or you're friends with your teammates and they're being nice to you by telling you everything's fine, but everything's not fine.
• You always seem to check badly as you try to finish your opponent off. If you find yourself saying, "I would've had you" pretty often, you're losing pretty often.
• You find yourself losing because symbol X lacks card or ability Y.
• Your deck and strategy relies entirely on drawing one specific card, and you're not playing combo.

Many players fall into a ‘creative trap' by refusing to play great decks just because they were made by someone else. This can only be described as foolishness, especially if said players don't already have a great deck. There is a lot to learn from someone who is already successful and re-inventing the wheel every time you want to build a car is akin to madness. While the problem does exist in my playgroup, it's not hard to convince your teammates if you take it upon yourself to demonstrate the greatness of these decks. It's not uncommon to see an entire top 8 proxied up and played in my home. Some of my teammates will adopt some of the decks, others are marked as decks that absolutely must be countered, but the entire process can only be described as positive, and I highly recommend it.

Finally, if you don't have a team to practice with, I would strongly suggest that you make or find one, preferably with players of equal skill level and comparable goals in terms of achievement desires and overall commitment to the game. There are many great players who work alone, but even they cannot denounce the effectiveness and helpfulness of working with a good team.

Deck Spotlight: Evil/Water Hanzo

I present to you another of the top 8 decks from Worlds 2008.

*Hanzo*

3 Attacks
3x 3/2 Agohani Geri (Water)

12 Actions
4x 3/5 Rejection (Evil/Water)
4x 5/4 Tag Along (Air/Water)
4x 0/6 Broken Leg (Infinity)

16 Assets
4x 0/6 Olcadan's Mentoring(Infinity)
4x 1/4 Addes Syndicate (Evil)
4x 3/3 Seal of Cessation (Infinity)
4x 4/4 Fan Blade (Evil/Water)

28 Foundations
4x 1/3 Ninjitsu (Evil/Water)
4x 2/5 Shinobi Tradition (Evil/Water)
4x 2/5 Ibis Minuet (Air/Water)
4x 2/5 Higher Calibur (Air/Evil/Water)
4x 2/5 Blood Runs True (Evil)
4x 2/5 Red Lotus of Fun (Evil)
4x 2/5 Control the Present (Evil)
4x 3/4 Trade Your Passion For Glory (Infinity)

Sideboard:
1x *Yoshitora* (Evil/Water)
3x 3/3 Ichi no Tachi (Evil)
4x 1/4 Dodge Step (Air/Misc)

This deck could not be more different than the decks I presented last week. First of all, it's an infinite combo deck, as is reflected by the attack lineup. This deck is fully devoted to the combo; you won't find any alternate paths to victory. It's also very good at what it does, controlling the board until it's ready. To that end, we see the standard Addes / Olcadan's / BRT setup. Ninjitsu and Trade clear the path for the all the necessary components of the combo to work when you need it.

The side board is also worth mentioning, thanks to the possibility of switching into Yoshitora when the situation requires it, as the situation would likely require against Ukyo or Mai.

Notice that the combo is very difficult to break up, thanks to Ahogani Geri's tricksy ability combined with Ibis. Hanzo's low life total makes the situation pretty dodgy, but thankfully Fan Blade covers that base.

The deck has the mark of genius, and is actually a refreshing alternative to the standard Evil hybrid archetype, if you're sporting the cards that is. It should be noted that Hanzo is only used for his symbols and the 8 card handsize. This deck already has an extensive predigree, and my attempts to describe is only pale in comparison to the originator's. You can find his very well-written primer here.

Conclusion

You never get anywhere by ignoring your mistakes or marginalizing them to make them seem like they are smaller or less important. In practice you should always accept the consequences of your mistakes so they stick out more in your memory. If your teammates are allowing you to take back your mistakes, they are doing you a disservice. Your practice should encompass ‘real-world' scenarios, like 2 out of 3 matches with sideboards. My teammates are always springing worst-case scenarios against me, like a pairing against Seth or Super Rare Cervantes, forcing to play without my key foundations or without the cards that don't share two symbols. One can only benefit from this type of practice. The worst thing that you can do is become complacent or proud. Other players are working hard to get any advantage they can over you, their work cannot be disregarded without any expense.

With rotation and a new set looming on the horizon, the future of UFS is completely wide open. New game philosophies are steadily trickling down to us players, such as the news that we will no longer have cards with the Infinity symbol. This news is definitely positive; it means we won't have a ridiculous number of cards that are in every deck, like Broken Leg, Olcadan's Mentoring, and Trade Your Passion for Glory. They were necessary exercises in design, I think, and I can't say that we haven't enjoyed at least some of it, but I think many more are relieved to see them go. We still have another year with some of them, provided they survive ban requests for that long, but rotation again promises to solve a great many problems. Let's hope set 11 doesn't make new ones.

-Ceejay