As we are all aware, having been situated in a pandemic for the past year means that local stores are unable to hold in-shop events and we have resorted to alternative means in order to enjoy our shared hobby of playing children’s card games. With the current statistics, the province of Alberta is not holding up well and it doesn’t look like things will return to normalcy anytime soon. Our local Weiss community has taken up to playing on regular occasions, online, since September of last year. Holding a 3-4 round Swiss style webcam tournament weekly (join the Calgary Weiss Discord if you want to take part, anyone is welcome). As the person responsible for organizing these weekly events, I have been holding on to quite a bit of data that I want to share regarding our local games.
Overall
Total Unique Sets Played: 48
Highest Win Rate Set Regardless of Games Played: SAO 10th Anniversary (4W-0L)
Lowest Win Rate Set Regardless of Games Played: Accel World & Gurren Lagann (0W-3L)
Most Played Set: Da Capo (41 games)
Metagame Analysis
I have created a simple bar graph displaying sets from highest Win/Loss ratio to lowest, to analyze our local metagame. There is one criteria to be qualified, however, and that is the set must have over 12 total games played. This removes most outliers and focuses the data around sets that have been played throughout at least 3-4 Swiss tournaments.
Series Rundown (Top 10 Sets)
Kaguya (18 games played: 14W-4L)
This Kaguya record is due to the credit of David, who is also the server owner of the Calgary Weiss Discord and runs the Wild Wild Weiss blog as well as the Twitch/Youtube Channels. I believe he runs a Book/Gate build with the Blue Ai level 1 plussing combo and resonance engine along with the Red level 3 Kaguya top end. He has played the deck to great success in many of our local tournaments and it currently holds the position of the strongest set. Overall though, the total play count of the series is still on the lower end so I am paying attention to how it will develop in the future. Can it hold this dominating win rate over a longer period of time?
Da Capo (41 games played: 30W-11L)
Mainly played by myself and my friend, Adan. I am quite surprised it is the most played set at our local events and with such a high win rate as well. While the most popular build of Da Capo is based around the Circus 20th Anniversary cards, a majority of the games played here uses a <<Student Council>> centric deck. The goal of the deck is to gain compression using a wide range of level 0 cards that go to memory and set up a wall of multiple Otome level 3s at level 2 using the Anniversary Otome Changer. The other Da Capo builds played were <<Newspaper>> and <<Kazanashima>> focused.
Nanoha (19 games played: 12W-7L)
A true dark horse at our locals. It’s another deck that has been mainly piloted by me with both 8 Shot and 8 Gate builds. The deck has powerful plays but lacks the consistency and fallback of modern utility cards that newer sets have access to. In addition, the deck’s healing options are only available at Level 3 with a lack of a good EP healer. Both the Shot and Gate builds have effects that require reversing opponent cards with minimal support to facilitate that, which can be a major weakness as well. In my opinion, this is a set that will drop in win rate as time goes on but is nice to see perform well locally; showing that the Weiss metagame can be quite open.
Konosuba (Current Meta/Old Meta: 20W-12L/13W-12L)
As there are two distinct highly performing Konosuba decks, I’m going to throw them together as “current meta” and “old meta” builds. The current meta list uses mainly cards from the movie booster featuring the Level 1 Megumin CXC that returns to hand in combination with the new Level 3 Aqua that combos with a Pants trigger to consistently loop the Megumin Gate climax. This build enables an aggressive early game with back to back CX pushes, followed up by a top end with efficient healing and burns to help beat your opponent in the damage race. The old meta Konosuba build is a much greedier playstyle that involves generating and hoarding resources using various Yunyun cards, such as the CXC and backrow, to hopefully pull off an explosive finisher turn using the level 3 Megumin from the first set, along with other support cards. Our local Konosuba players are Chad and Soonping who pilot the current and old meta builds respectively.
Date A Live (39 games played: 23W-16L)
I believe the (in)famous DAL 8 Standby deck does not need much introduction. Early on, I was the only pilot of this deck locally, but it has gained a lot of popularity with the community with its English release and many local regulars now also own the English edition of the deck. It’s the second most played set (tied with SMP), with a solid track record behind it. Most of the games are 8 Standby builds with a small amount of choice/standby.
Slime (21 games played: 12W-9L)
It should not be a surprise that this set is up here, Slime is well known in the Weiss community for being a long time meta-contender. Most of the games locally goes to the credit of Chad who has been winning a lot with the series. There is a mix of the old Gate/Pants slime build with a newer 8 Choice build. The old build relies on memory cards such as its Shizu Level 1 CXC to build compression and drag out the game with cost efficient heals. The 8 Choice deck hinges on the new level 3 Rimuru CXC for a more combo based and explosive top end.
Persona Series (13 games played: 7W-6L)
While I say Persona Series, it is pretty much Persona 5 carrying the franchise on its back. Adrian and David are our local Persona 5 players. I believe Adrian holds most, if not all, of the play count with a Wind/Gate build using the Joker level 2 CXC and a combination of Panther and Joker level 3s for the top end. I’m honestly not too familiar with the deck but it has yielded good results for such an old series.
Fujimi Bunko (15 games played: 8W-7L)
The first set that really popularized the 8 Standby playstyle from what I remember. The deck boasts high power both offensively and defensively with efficient damage mitigation tools such as an EP memory healer and soul suppression event counter. Unfortunately, this deck is not quite the powerhouse it once was. While the boards it makes can be oppressive in the power department, the deck lacks modern utility and offensive top ends that newer 8 Standby decks have such as DAL and Slime. Tim is our local Fujimi player who also plays other Standby decks including Adventure Time and recently, DAL.
Summer Pockets (39 games played: 20W-19L)
Finally, the last set in our top 10 sets (with Konosuba counting as 2 since I’m lazy to do more), is Summer Pockets (SMP). Tied with DAL as the second most played series, it has quite the popularity. There is a mishmash of decks played with this series utilizing various styles and CXCs from the set, so the data here is really quite diverse. From what I recall, there has been 8 Standby, Choice/Gate, Choice/Bar, and 8 Bar decks played with probably many others. A good chunk of the SMP games are from Adan who has experimented with many SMP builds. I have seen this set move up and down tier lists from various sources throughout the last while but it is well deserving of its top 10 spot at our locals.
Closing
For everyone who made it this far, I’m glad that you have taken an interest in our city’s local metagame and other articles on the Wild Wild Weiss blog. If anyone would like to play at our local events or meet any of the awesome community members from the article, you can find us on Facebook at Weiss Schwarz Calgary and join our Discord server. Perhaps I will do a follow-up post later, covering other sets that are seeing more play recently. If anything, there will be a wrap-up article for when the pandemic “ends” and local tournaments can be held in shops again. Thanks for reading!
Wild Wild Weiss 