8. How To Enjoy A Vault Tour (Even When You Don't Win A Game)

[00:00:00] Is it worth it to go to a vault tour, even if you scrub out? Like me? This is Key Forge Public Radio.

The Philadelphia Vault tour was this past weekend. I went, I had a blast. Also, I want O two in the Archon tournament. I was hoping to do much. I brought a good deck, I practiced well, and then I lost by one amber in both games.

So we're going to cover what happened in those matches if you want to stick around for some of the kind of strategic and matchup talk. And my opponents were fantastic by the way, very kind people. But the event was still a lot of fun and I'm very glad I went. Now am I happy about the 0-2?

No. I want my name up on the Vault Tour winners list as much as anybody else. Uh, but O2 is [00:01:00] not exactly a whole lot of momentum towards that particular goal. However, I had a great time at the Vault Tour. There are some ups and downs but we're gonna cover those,

and I think Ghost Galaxy actually in some of my talks with the employees there , they are aware of things and looking to improve in various different ways. So, I know they're working on the problem, and honestly, as a fan of the game, as a content creator, that's the biggest thing I care about, is that they know, they're applying their brains to it, and they're making moves.

That's great.

Myself and the other, some of the other Athens Forgemasters went to the event location on Friday morning. Friday afternoon is when everything started, and that's when they revealed to everybody there was a freight issue, a lot of their stuff didn't arrive. However,

I don't think it had a huge impact on the vibe of the event. One, because everybody was happy to be there. Two, we don't know exactly how high end and amazing looking it all looks when their freight arrives on time.

And guess what? We got to play a lot of Key Forge. You got to play all the Key Forge you wanted to. So we still had Sealed [00:02:00] Alliance that evening. They flew in a staff member with the decks. That was awesome. And we played Sealed Alliance with three decks from Winds of Exchange in the past, Ghost Galaxy has had sealed alliance tournaments at Key Forge Celebration Where you just had two decks and you open those up you look at the pods and you pick which ones you want to play And you can actually change out from all the pods that you opened change out what pods you're using as the day goes on I think it's a lot of fun.

I've enjoyed it a lot. Going up to three decks, made a very large amount of decisions possible, right? You can swap in and out any number of pods. so a lot of decisions there, especially because you can kind of sideboard in between rounds, right? And that was a lot of fun. They got the decks there in time.

I opened a deck with the Berserker token, the special five power Brobnar token that enters play enraged, and it has after fight destroy Berserker, so it enters play fights and blows itself up, except, uh, it's a little more powerful, right, than maybe it would, I mean, maybe it looks as [00:03:00] powerful as it is on the surface to you, because this thing enter plays ready, and if there's no enemy creatures, It can just reap and not destroy itself.

And I got a Star Alliance upgrade called FOF transponder, which says this creature gains destroyed, make a token creature, attach FOF transponder to that creature. Kind of practically what that ends up doing is always keeping a token in play. And with berserker, every time the FOF transponder creature is destroyed, even if it's a Berserker, it creates another Berserker.

And if I'm in Brobnar, I can fight with it, blow it up, and create another one ready. So you start to hit the rule of six real quick with this thing, and you can just fight off the opponent's board five power at a time, because you keep blowing up your own Berserker and keep playing a new one.

And you just do that until the board's clear, and then you reap with what's left. So, it's pretty good, and honestly, that was most of the power of my deck, was as soon as I saw FOF Transponder, I just played Brobnar most of the rest of the game. I had things in, Unfathomable, like Abyssal Sight. I had some [00:04:00] halfway decent stuff in Star Alliance, but the thing that was the biggest out was just playing Brobnar, and...

the games in which I tokenized the rest of my Brobnar were a bit slower. The games in which I got to see the rest of my Brobnar and play it out went a bit better. I had a fantastic game on stream. I will link it in the show notes. The Tabletop Royale guys streamed the game between me and, Dominque Hurov, and it was a fantastic match.

Uh, it's, I won't spoil it for you. It's pretty dramatic. It was a great spectator sport.

So, I won't spoil what happened, but it was awesome. Going into Saturday. So, Ghost Galaxy, has been trying out double elimination as a format. So you lose twice in these rounds, then you're out.

If you keep winning, say if you go 5 0 and you don't lose any matches, that gets you into the winner's bracket. So there's gonna be a top cut. If you lose twice, you're out, and people just keep playing. Until you have, enough, enough people to start, a winner's, regular winner's bracket of eight people.

So, my first round, uh, I was against one of the [00:05:00] hosts of the Weekend KeyWarriors podcast, Second Act, a. k. a. John. Now, John has a strategy podcast about Key Forge. I have a strategy podcast about Key Forge. John and I have played online. I happen to know that John is a very good player who has thought about and played Keyforge a lot and is very strong.

Both of us brought Mass Mutation. He brought Dis, Logos, and Untamed. In Mass Mutation, I brought Dis, Shadows, and Logos. So, real close, he had a lot of tricks like, uh, Keyfrog, Resurgence, Gloriana's Attendant... Uh, Savage Clash, which allows you to resurgence, pull the Gloriana's Attendant, pull the Keyfrog, play the Keyfrog, play the Gloriana's Attendant, and play Savage Clash, which kills all of your creatures except your lowest power creature.

And so that's going to kill the Keyfrog, which has destroyed Forge Key, and it has an Amber Pip on it. So, there were a number of mounts he had, including Zenza Zenza Zenic in Logos, lots of speed. We both sat there and looked [00:06:00] at our deck lists for maybe. A full three minutes or so. And, as we set the decklist down and shuffled up and started to look at playing, John looks at me and John goes, These decks are really evenly matched.

I think this is going to be decided by a fortunate draw. And in my mind I'm like, or if I, you know, make a huge mistake and I just punt the game. But, yeah. Fortunate draw and playing it right. On turn three... I've drawn up my hand, and I've put it down. I don't look at it, so I can focus on what John is doing, analyze what's going on.

Jon plays Mindfire, which has, uh, some version of play, discard a random card from your opponent's hand, discard one amber for each amber pip on that card. It's really good, because the person discarding the card doesn't get to play that amber, and then it gets stolen. Or it's, uh, one per bonus amber, excuse me, or bonus pip, excuse me.

So he plays Mindfire. I pick up my hand I haven't looked at, I shuffle it, and in this deck I have a single ritual of Tognath. It has three amber pips [00:07:00] and it has play, destroy, two friendly creatures. This is a key card in my deck.

I use it to blow up some creatures and then I play Infurnace and I purge it. That's a six amber swing. But Jon hit it with Mindfire and got the six amber swing long story short. Another, gosh, 40 minutes later, we're at the going to time rules. And I lose by one amber. If I had gained one more amber, I would have won on the tiebreaker rules, but instead we go down to the third tiebreaker, which is who has more creatures of a single house, I believe, in play.

And he did. So, that was my round one loss. We shook hands, and I said, Well, you guessed it. This was an even match, and it came down to a fortunate draw, which, all other things being equal, was your Mindfire hitting my Tognath. So, John still played well. I don't want to take away from, you know, his skill at all.

He was an amazing pilot of the deck. Made great plays. Uh, knew how to be the beatdown when he needed to. Knew how to play control when he needed to. And squeaked [00:08:00] it out on the tiebreakers. Great credit to him.

It was an amazing game, and I am proud of that loss. It was the best loss I could have asked for. I wait a couple hours, which is an experience a number of people had, and Ghost Galaxy's looking at, looking at how to upgrade this experience. I wait a few hours, and then I play round two. In the loser's bracket, where I now, you know, every game is an elimination match against somebody else who is playing every game as an elimination match.

I sit down across from a lovely gentleman named Andy P. He's got this, uh, another mass mutation deck. It's a mirror match as far as houses are concerned. Logos, shadows, and Dis for mass mutation. He does have triple Mark of Dis, no Infurnace, so I'm not as worried about the Infurnace.

And some of my creatures aren't so important, I can't just pitch them for Mark of Dis, so I'm not too worried about it. However, it's still a beast of a deck. It's going to be an uphill battle. So we sit down. We start playing. He plays the Sting. This is a Shadows artifact. It's a [00:09:00] rare. It says, Skip your forge a keys step. You gain all amber spent by your opponent when they forge keys. So I was about to forge. I'd gone to check. He played the Sting.

He took my six amber as I forged that key. So now at some point with the sting you need to go back into shadows and use the action sacrifice the sting or blow it Up from a different house so that you can then start forging your keys again. However stealing six exactly like that early in the game He's definitely gonna have a chance to go and turn it off, right?

Use that action ability in shadows or maybe kind of blow it up out of house somehow I was not very excited about this. However, I had just drawn "Borrow", which lets me take control of an enemy artifact. So, he's on check for his first key, I just forged my first key, I play "Borrow", I take the sting. And then he forges his first key, and I get enough amber for my second key, but I'm skipping my Forge a Key step.

The game goes on. He forges his second key. I get all that amber because I haven't blown up the sting yet, and I'm not drawing into any more shadows. Eventually, I take a turn, and [00:10:00] while this wasn't explicitly wrong at the time, there may have been a different strategic choice I could have pursued here. I could have played, I had my dark amber vault out, which draws me a card after I play every mutant, and I had a few...

Logos creatures in hand and I could have started to play that out before he's on check that I mean looking back I would have wanted to try that right But I take a shadow's turn so I can finally start threatening to forge keys because I at this point I actually have 12 amber and so I take a shadow's turn.

I drop down one shadows creature shoulder id and I pop the sting We get towards the end of the game, I eventually forge my second key, but he, to get to check for his third key, plays out three creatures, three shadows creatures, including Bo Nithing, so he steals one from me. Plays out those three total creatures, off a draw pip, I believe, or at the end of last turn, uh, on the Bo Nithing, or drawing at the end of last turn, draws a third shadows creature, plays that out, and plays one last job.

And one last job purges all his friendly shadows creatures that are in play, and then steals one. for every creature purged this way. Remarkably powerful. You only really want to [00:11:00] use those creatures once anyways. And so, boom. They're gone. He steals four total in that turn. And then by one amber I can't keep him off.

It might have been a strategic error not to go Logos one turn earlier and I would still have been giving up my Forge of Keys step because my draw into Shadows had been so bad. But Andy played clean. Andy played without mistakes. Andy played smart. And he admitted to me afterwards. He went, I thought the game was over when you stole my sting.

I thought the game was over. So it was a great match. but here's the thing. When you start a KeyForge strategy podcast and vault tours come back. And you pick a deck that's really good, that you've had competitive success with, and you show up to your first Archon Vault Tour.

And you've been playing this game for five years. It's the first Vault Tour in, uh, over three years. And it's the first time you've gone to an Archon Vault tour. You'd like to do better than 0-2. Right? You'd like to do better than 0-2. And getting knocked straight out. So, I took some [00:12:00] time. Um, I was, uh, just upset at the situation, not at Andy.

I tried to just make it clear, cause he was, he was very kind, and I said, Hey, I'm upset, but I'm not upset at you. I'm just upset that I've scrubbed out. I'm wearing this dang hat. Ha ha ha ha. So, there was a little storage area. Behind, uh, behind the, behind the ballroom we were playing in, I went, I just hung out there.

I just hung out there for about half an hour, just sitting there staring off into the abyss. Processing. Processing. Processing. So, the good thing... You're going to have to process those kinds of things, because they're going to happen. Everybody has misplays. Everybody makes mistakes that get them knocked out of a tournament, even if they're one of the greatest players ever, right?

Everybody's going to make some misplays. Sometimes those misplays mean you're out. Sometimes they mean you lose a critical game. Sometimes you get bad matchups, and while perhaps I had a strategic error in the second game, I mean, I would have loved to see how that played out, I [00:13:00] don't know if that would have been the difference between the win or the loss, while sometimes you have those.

You've got to live with them. Not very many people are going to perform errorless the entire time. And, uh, if they do, then perhaps they've been practicing, you know, with more time than I've got. And I practiced a good bit. I practiced a good bit. Um, but like I like to say here on KPR, learn from your losses.

Make sure your losses are educational. Where did the loss come from? In these games, I had very good opponents, absolutely top tier, piloting very strong decks that were easily on par with mine. And in fact, in one or two of the in at least one of the matches, it was probably a bit of an uphill battle for my deck.

Maybe a bit of an uphill battle. But, Shard... can hang, the deck I was playing, H. R. H. Fearshard, the Sizzling Despot, it can hang with those decks. And sometimes you're going to lose on the third tiebreaker. And that's okay. What made me feel a lot [00:14:00] better once I was ready to appear back in the room, right?

With all these Keyforge friends I have. People I've known from real Keyforge. I've met through Keyforge who have become my real friends, other content creators I enjoy spending time with. As I came back in, talking to the community was really the salve I needed. Uh, I was walking up and I talked to Nathan of Tabletop Royale who I don't even think I mentioned my record to him and he just starts casually talking about a game losing mistake he made just a few games ago.

And I was like, wow, Nathan's one of the best players in the world. He's already got a vault tour to his name. And he's just treating, you know, a game losing mistake like it's normal. And you know why? It's because he's played competitive card games a lot. And it is normal. Do you want to make those mistakes?

No. If you're taking the game. You know, really serious. Do you want to kind of train and try to remember things and [00:15:00] practice so that you don't make those mistakes and you make them less? I mean, yeah, that's great. That's the kind of practice and reflection that I enjoy. Right. And I had a lot of chance for that this weekend, right?

Because as I mentioned in episode three, one of the factors here could be, uh, that maybe. Is that deck not strong enough? Do I have another deck that's strong enough? Do I have some teammates here at the community team I have locally? We're not a competitive team in the sense that we're recruiting from all over the U S and we're saying, Hey, you've got to win, got to win, got to win.

But we're a local team who likes to support each other and practice and try to do better. Does somebody else have a deck I could borrow that is really strong and maybe a good match for the field, especially all the mass mutation we saw. So there's things to reflect on. There's things to think about.

Maybe I'll practice with fear shard and say, you know, fear shard is still good. And it really was just, I got the absolute worst matchups and worst luck on that mindfire. And I made a easy to make strategic [00:16:00] error with not going logos that one turn and keeping the sting out a little bit more. I don't know, but I'm going to reflect on it.

I'm going to talk about it with my team, and you know, I feel better already. And I'm not ashamed of the fact I went 0-2. I think if I, if I hid that, it'd just kind of be funnier because, I mean, eventually maybe the bracket will get published or, you know, you'll be talking with people who were there and you go, oh no, yeah, Zach was O2.

So rely on your Keyforge friends. Rely on your Keyforge community. That's how to have fun at a Vault Tour. Because here's the thing. The side events, which I didn't play much in because I was actually filming a lot of content, the side events are a ton of fun. There are mixer kinds of events like the Unchained Duels were at Keyforge Celebration where you just find people you haven't played yet and, and rack up wins with your crazy Unchained decks.

There's Second Amber where you go and it's a drop in, drop out tournament by going on on the side and every win you get is a raffle entry for awesome prizes and then there were sealed pods Just [00:17:00] if you want to play some real fun sealed and round robin with people You can go to a vault tour go o2 and have an amazing time with some friends and play key forge the whole time so how do you have fun at a vault tour?

If you scrub out, if you go to, well, find some key forge friends. It's great to find some people who will go with you. If you go to one of these things, find a group, find a person, or find a group of people. If you see me, come say hi, right? Come, come talk with me, come sit with me at one of these things. I'm TBD at exactly which of these I'll be at.

Uh, for the rest of the year, but talk to some people, and you ask somebody for a game, especially if Unchained Duels are going on, that's a great way to get to know somebody, because being a part of a community is the biggest way to realize what you really love about this game, and it was the people, it was the people who have played card games for even longer than I have, even though I'm Uh, oh gosh, probably around ten years at this point.

You know, talking with those [00:18:00] people who have played a lot of card games, talking with those people who are newer, who are doing it because they enjoy it. Maybe they came from board games and they're like, you know, I actually could play this for fun. A Vault Tour is fun to go to. No matter who you are, no matter how hard you're trying.

Go for the Sealed on Fridays, play Second Amber all day on Saturday, if you want to, right? And then watch those top cuts, cheer people on, maybe get some people together from your community.

So, Sunday, I got to watch some friends play in the Top Cut. I had a lovely Airbnb with a couple of friends, and we actually had two of them in the Top 4 for the Alliance Tournament. It was the most stacked non hotel lodging situation, right? It was absolutely fantastic to cheer them on, see how they were doing, and just really encourage them and be there for them.

I shot a lot of interviews, a lot of different kinds of videos that I'm gonna figure out how to edit and get up for you all to enjoy that as well. Uh, we got the Vault Master Decks, which are decks, uh, a kind of deck exclusive to Vault Tours, and I think they're so much fun. Um, so it's a great incentive if you want to grab a Vault [00:19:00] Master Deck to head to a Vault Tour near you, now that we've got some international ones announced.

It was just, it was a great time. It was a great time. my team, the Athens Forgemasters, had a great time just supporting each other. We had somebody make Top 4. And it was so fun. And I know all of us, you know, we want to do, we want to do that work to say, Okay, what can, can we make an alliance brew that'll maybe make top cut, top cut if we really develop it?

Can we, pick a really strong deck from our collection or go obtain one and then practice it? And maybe we're actually going to get some really strong results there?

is to make some keyforge friends. Maybe turn some friends into some keyforge friends if you can, or go find some keyforge people and turn those keyforge people into friends. Then find a vault tour, get out there with them, and then hey, if you're going solo... Or just with a partner or spouse.

Excellent! Go, hang out and then find some people. [00:20:00] Ask, just walk up to somebody who looks like a giant nerd at the event location and say, Hey, you wanna play a game of Key Forge? And believe me, when I'm at these I'll look like a giant nerd. And you can walk up to me and say, Hey, you wanna play a game of Key Forge?

And if I've got the time, I'll say yes. So anyways, thanks for coming to my confessional about my first Archon Vault tour. This has been Key Forge Public Radio. We do have a hat in the store now if you saw me around in some coverage or some other or some, or you actually saw me in person at Philly.

I've got the KPR hat in the store now. So that's a lot of fun. So rock that if you want to. I think they look great. Thank you so much to everybody supporting Key Forge Public Radio on the Patreon, especially our Airwave Advocate level supporters like Paul Roadrunner.

You all do so much to help keep the show going, and I am so appreciative of it. And of course, dear listener. Like your radio dial, may your keyforge skills always be well tuned. Even if you scrub out, because then you can learn a lot and still have fun with your friends.

And maybe do better next time.

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