Well, I'm going to keep this one short for a change, as things weren't acually surprising to me. However, this was Water, so it was no surprise anyway - too much defense does this to people.
Our Water Patch was a strange one, for as far as I remember, none of the Colchester playgroup were known for playing Water decks. Speaking of players, we had Rob (ChaosChild), Daisy (Saccharin) and Liall (Icky) join us, the first of which was playing his favorite symbol. The rules for the Water event were Water cards only, with Rejection banned and anyone who killed with Ahogani Geri - Ibis Minuet loop did not receive any prizes. We only managed 3 rounds of swiss, which was a pain to some players but others had to leave early.
I had been planning to build Huitzil for a while for this event, but found ot my misreading of Genocide plus Huitzil's lack of a handsize were what slowed me down while people playing Feline Spike were going to kill me first. So I decided to build Juni, with extreme commiting power and a kill card in the form of High Plasma Beam.
To start with, I was in high spirits, seeing a good turnout which meant a lot of different decks being played. However, I had to face Alex (Squall14)'s Ibuki*, which was playing Feline Spike and Kasumi Suzaku in the same deck. I managed to get an early advantage on him, with Juni punishing Ibuki's larger hand size by forcing her entire staging area to commit. This led me to pummeling with lots of Shadow Blades and Plasma Beams, and got through with a 2-0 win.
Second round I was up against Rob, who was playing his favorite Galford*, with the Ibis-Ahogani loop. Fortunately for me, he didn't see an Ibis hit the field, but he did get all his Chester's Backings down. Luckily for me, I had borrowed a playset off Kyle, and attempted to match him. The game turned into a real battle of attrition, which cumulated in shouts of "I NEGATE WITH CHESTER'S BACKING!!!" and the match ending in a 0-0 tie since the lifegain got a little too silly and every time I would attempt a Plasma Beam, I failed it.
For the third and final round, I was up against Dan (Nemesis), who was playing Alba** with good old Arrogance. Dan's been on a roll of extremely competitive decks lately, and this was no different. Game 1 he beat he round the face with Darkness Blade, and then proceeded to Arrogance lock me through game 2. Despite my efforts, I managed to get him down to 3 before time was called. A 0-1 loss.
So although it was fun being in the Water Patch, it wasn't very surprising - well, except for Kyle winning with a Sakura Punch deck including Furiko Upper and Batobi Punch shenanigans. And at least I got a :::Ken::: for my troubles!