1 Zi Mei
Assets (8):
1 The Evil-Doer Destroyer 4/4
4 Seal of Cessation 3/3
1 Giant of a Man 3/4
2 Scroll of the Abyss 3/5
Attacks (4):
4 Fury of the Ancients 6/3
Foundations (54):
4 Saikyo-ryu 0/4
4 Manifest Destiny 1/4
4 Cursed Blood 1/4
4 Inhuman Perception 2/5
3 Unorthodox Training 2/5
3 Perfect Sense of Balance 2/5
3 Lesser of Many Evils 2/5
4 Revenant's Calling 2/5
4 All Life is Prey 2/5
4 Martial Arts Champion 2/4
4 Oral Dead
2 Charismatic 2/4
4 Hulking Brute 3/4
3 Dead for 1000 Years 4/5
4 No Memories 4/4
Sideboard (8):
1 Perfect Sense of Balance 2/5
3 Valued but not trusted 2/4
2 Strife's Patronage 2/5
1 Scroll of Abyss 3/5
1 Lesser of Many Evils 2/5
Well, here you have it. Following the US Nationals bannings I felt Death would take over as the dominate symbol in UFS. Death had every type of negation and Cursed Blood and Hugo's draw support to out build opponents. The only area death lacked in my estimation was in killing potential. Therefore my mind first turned to Victor (Reanimated Loop) and later after testing to this Zi Mei build. Zi Mei's 7HS, commit ability, and damage pump far outclassed Victor and her ability to go off early if needed was invaluable.
There are a number of reasons I believe the deck did so well. Obviously it checked extremely well and only packed 8 three checks total. This allowed me to lead off with No Memories going second, Hulking, etc. Cursed Blood was rediculous in here and almost always rewarded me with foundations into my staging area (See 54 Foundations above). Meanwhile, I was able to stop anything my opponent would try to do to me with my many answers to Forms, Responses, and Enhances. In short, I could build my unstoppable foundation base very quickly while keeping my opponents from trying to do the same.
Next, the best way to defeat this deck is to attack early with many raw damage attacks. As many learned relying on multiples or other enhances will not get the job done against this deck as the important ones will be negated. Luckily I read the meta right and very few competitive decks ran many attacks. This played into my strategy. Opponent's were left with a serious catch 22. In my eyes they had two options. They had to 1) Attack me very quickly with many attacks (like Joe tried to do in game one of the finals) or 2) build up and attack me later. If opponent's choose the later they were all but defeated. Simply put, deaths foundations are better and in the long game I couldn't really lose unless my opponent had a way to turn off Responses. Hilde with Heel Snipe was also a tough match, but that's were much of my sideboard came in.
Meanwhile, if opponents decide they can't win the control war and attack me early they put themselves at risk of a early game Fury of the Ancients. Many decks that went after me on turn 2 and 3 were dealt a lethal Fury of the Ancients the following turn if they didn't get the job done (since they were commited out and had few cards in hand).
Another strong advantage of this deck was the discard elements. If a player kept merely 1 or 2 cards in hand early on they were in big trouble if i had a saikyo-ryu on the table. I could see into their hand with saikyo-ryu and stripe their card using unorthodox training after changing the zone on Fury.
As mentioned above this deck enjoyed a large card advantage. I could draw 4 cards a turn using Hulking Brute and Giant of a Man. That combined with Cursed Blood was really unfair. If my opponents tried to do the same I had Inhuman Perception, Charismatic, Martial Arts, Revenant's Calling, and Seal to stop them.
Another popular strategy committal was also dealt with using Perfect Sense of Balance, Oral Dead, and Response negation. Meanwhile I could commit others boards with Manifest and Zi Mei. Often for my kill turn I'd play No Memories or Martial Arts Champ, commit cards with Manifest and then follow up with a fury or two using Zi Mei's ability to commit. Anything I didn't commit was canceled or blanked.
In short the deck had many strengths and very few weaknesses. After all when you have negation to every ability out there, there isn't much to stop you if you can build faster. The biggest struggle I had was against strong actions like Collecting Data (No Momentum outlet) and Bringing the Master to his Knees. Other cards like Heel Snipe were also tough to fight against also.
Final words about the deck. I'm glad I did so well with this deck and I did have fun, but I don't believe this is the way UFS was meant to be played. The fact that my deck was 54 foundations and only 4 attacks really said a lot about the state of the game. I did take advantage of the meta, because I knew I could get away with killing using only 4 attacks. I am hopeful that in the future the game will be more about throwing attacks and killing early than building up walls of negation and denial.
If you have any questions about the deck please feel free to ask me any time. To all of you who supported me both in this tournament and throughout the years thank you. I feel so lucky to have won the "Greatest Prize in Gaming" and joined the ranks of many other great individuals.
Paul Bittner