Calling Phuket 2024

 Calling Phuket 2024 recall

Been ages since my last blog post!!(which was for Calling Singapore back in 2023)

So me and a bunch of friends went and attended the Calling Phuket 2024 which was held in Phuket(lol), and here’s a recount of the whole experience, main event, side event, games, collection growth, laughters and all the best/worst things to happen at the tourist favourite island of the friendly Thailand!!

Before the actual recounting, here’s a shout out to the group of awesome company and friends, Alex, Darrell, Hermann, Jonnie, Joon, Kaiser, Mark and Ryan. (No fighting, alphabetical order :P)

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Day minus 1 (04/04/2024) - Calling day minus 2

Me and Mark went for the Friday early morning flight instead of the Thursday one like a lot of the other guys did due to real life reasons and we barely had any sleep on Thursday. For me, it was the final tuning of my deck list and tournament excitement that kept me awake for majority of the night before the flight.

I copied the Hatchets Dorinthea list by “The Runaway Guys” who did well for PTLA and did some tuning. Below is the link to my list:

https://fabrary.net/decks/01HTA62MJJYJYW92ZZ8JRG0JHM

Changes I made are as follows:

2 x <Steelblade Shunt> blue

2 x <Nasty Surprise>

My reasoning for blue <Steelblade Shunt> was for the warrior mirror, I knew Joshua Lau was going to be there so that’s at least 1 other <Dorinthea Ironsong> in the field and I really did get paired into him!! Though I eventually lost to him in the game, but I could have won if not for the major misplay, more on that later when we arrive at that game.

As for <Nasty Surprise>, it was more of a tech card again <Pummel>, but I didn’t face a single <Victor Goldmane>, so for me it was just another blue block 3, oh well…

I brought my Blitz <Dorinthea Quicksilver Prodigy> and Commoner <Olympia> thinking if I bombed my calling main event, I’ll play in the side event and farm some TIX, but these 2 decks never get to see the light. However, I was able to help 2 friends with their missing cards from my decks though, so it’s a win after all~~

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Day 1 (05/04/2024) - Calling day minus 1

The journey from Singapore to Phuket was uneventful. Me and Mark arrived at the hotel just before the double TIX draft was closing their registration and we missed the registration because the check in to the hotel took some time, but it was a blessing in disguise as we found out that it was single elimination. No way could I go 4-0 in a draft that I had almost no practice in, so we basically just hang out and waited for our buffet lunch.

Talking about the lunch, this is something I really enjoyed over the experience of Calling Singapore 2023 even though we spent more overall. The hosting of the events, the convenience of the lodging and overall good food provided for both breakfast and lunch all made it worth it. On top of that, you get to chill and hang out with friends before and after the event, which is the best part of any day for the whole event.

After lunch at 2pm was the first event we played in, it was the <Ravenous Rabble> sealed. The games were a blur to me now, but what still sits in my memory is that in the first pack of mine, I opened a RF <Send Packing> and a NF <No Fear>!! After defeating round 1 opponent with a 33 card deck against his 40 card deck, he commented:” you had both <Send Packing> and <No Fear>???!!!” and we both chuckled~ So I won the first game, lost the next 2 and split with my last round opponent to som TIX.

Right after that I signed up for the CC super armoury to playtest my list for a final few games before the actual calling. Got paired into Liam Thomason, who I faced off against in last year’s Calling Singapore(which I wrote about in the last blog post) and got destroyed by his <Azalea, Ace in the Hole> then next round paired into a hybrid <Viserai, Runeblood> and god destroyed once more. By this time I thought to myself “maybe today is not my day” so I dropped from the event the joined the boys for dinner.

Since this is a gaming blog, I’ll leave out the dining and walking about stuff.

One particular thing to note is I played 2 games against Darrell on <Dromai, Ash Artist>  which was conventionally a bad match up for <Dorinthea Ironsong> no matter which weapon we’re on. In the two games I realised if I could clear dragons as efficiently as possible and using my D-reacts against his attack actions as much as possible, I could fatigue him and had my mind fixed on trying to fatiguing <Dromai, Ash Artists> in the calling. From the results, I can say this plan works, but of course not always, as y’all will read in round 9.

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Day 2 (06/04/2024) - Calling day 1

And so the actual day cometh, woke up at 7:30, had a good breakfast at the hotel restaurant with the boys and I was ready to play some card games.

9am, event hall, round 1 pairing - Joon Chien….

When we saw the pairing, we both were sighing that it was a friendly fire. I mean what are the chances out of 206 players…

So we sat down at our table and just started setting up our arena for the game. I boarded in all my poppers and forgot to take out my red <Blade Runner> and <Spill Blood> from the main deck, but just rolled with it, planning to block with them anyway. Joon’s draw was not great in that his second <Rake the Ambers> came rather late and his game plan against me was to hold onto double <Rake the Ambers> and race from there. I had my poppers when I needed them and eventually he couldn’t keep up with the damage of my <Dawnblade>. Throughout the game, I was mindful of the number of dragons I’m leaving on the board so that he couldn’t just stop summoning and full block to reset my <Dawnblade> counters. When I know he has no more <Rake the Ambers>, I’d purposely leave 1 <Aether Ashwing> on the board so that I could swing into it the next turn to maintain my <Dawnblade> counters. Eventually, Joon was out-gassed if that’s a word. So W1 in the bag.

Round 2, I got paired into another <Dromai, Ash Artist> player who was from Malaysia. Game went pretty much similar to game 1. In the mid game, opponent had 3 <Burn Them All> on board and I was paying with a blue for every <Aether Ashwing> attack and I was able to endure long enough that all 3 of the <Burn Them All> went into opponent’s graveyard. Eventually I won through running opponent out of gas. X-0.

Round 3 saw me paired into Jin Han, who was also an opponent in last year’s calling but this time round, he’s on <Kano, Dracai of Aether>. Having bad match up after bad match up made me quite uneasy at this point. Game went by with me having rather good draws and Jin Han not seeing his second <Blazing Aether> after he was forced to block with his first. But the first half of the game had me on teh edge of my seat constantly, Jin Han was pulling <Sonic Boom> into red <Aether Spindle> and <Sonic Boom> into <Swell Tidings> to drop me below 26, which was the threshold of lethal for unbuffed <Aether Wildfire>, <Lesson in Lava> and <Blazing Aether> combo. But I was lucky to draw into a <Take it on the Chin> to be my safeguard. Jin Han’s go off turn was forced by my playing a <Command and Conquer> after 2 <Hatchet> swings, he did not find his <Blazing Aether> after <Aether Wildfire>, but still I was dropped to 13 life. On the next draw, I saw 4 read cards including <Spill Blood> and <Oasis Respite> and Jin Han was at 1 life with no armour block available. My decision was whether he can dish out 13 damage to me if I choose to play my <Spill Blood> or should I play it safe and arsenal my <Oasis Respite> and just swing for 2. Ultimately what made me decide to risk it with a “Dominated” 4 was the fact that the longer the game drags, he may be able to combo off again with a <Potion of Deja’vu> so I took it and Jin Han did not Kano into killing damage. X-0 still, going strong!!

Round 4 I got paired into Brodie Spurlock on Azalea, who eventually took the championship of the tournament. For the first couple of turns of the game I was still trying to chip in damage and kind of race Brodie but that was just stupid of me. The game plan should be to block as much as I can and hope my D-reacts can out block his damage. Similar to the game plan during the UPR days where rangers were the primary fatigue target because they do not posses a real weapon to attack with. Took my loss and now we’re X-1.

Round 5, the Joshua Lau game!!

My deck was quite well tech-ed into the warrior mirror so I was ahead in both cards and life up until a critical turn. Along the game I was counting his number of <Spill Blood>, <Blade Flurry>, red <Hit and Run> as well as <Command and Conquer>. i was blocking efficiently and trading life with him to reach at a state where he has no more of the above mentioned cards in his deck and I was at 8 and JL was at 3. From a couple of turns prior, I noticed I had more cards than him and my life was ahead, so my game plan was to just block out and fatigue. But somehow I decided to move away from this winning plan. He played <Spoils of War> into a <Hatchet> swing for 4, I decided to skip blocks and go straight into blue <Steelblade Shunt> and got duly punished by a red <Biting Blade> and took 4 to the face. And on the next swing I blocked with 1 card and <Valiant Dynamo>. So now we’re at 4-3, I was still trading efficiently and walking him down his deck size until I drew my <Heart of Fyendal> and he swung for 2 with “Go Again”, I knew he had a <Rout> in his deck and he’s down to 3 cards in his deck, there was just no way I could block it out due to the <Heart of Fyendal>, so I took my second loss of day 1. X-2.

Before the game started, I challenged him for the coin, he has only 1 of the 2024 coin remaining so he put the 2022 coin that he’s been carrying around on the line for me to win, but I did not. However, here’s the turn. After our game, JL commented that I was a very good warrior player and I was playing very fast and made the long and draining mirror less of a grind. So he was feeling nice and said:”Now, if you made day 2, that is if you win the next 2 games, you get this coin from me.” I was THRILLED!!! It was a very nice game played by both of us and If not for the sudden change of game plan, I would have won easily even through his <Biting Blade> and <Rout>. During the game, we were chatting and basically just enjoying the game to the fullest!!

Round 6, another Dromai. Opponent sat down and we greeted each other which was about the only time we were friendly to each other. My game plan stayed the same, full fatigue. Opponent apparently had an idea that I may go fatigue and was very aggressive in his attack actions. When he starts to generate <Ash>, he was using a translucent red dice with orange pips on it which was very hard to read and so I suggested that he use my dice instead but he refused. So I called a judge and judge agrees that his dice were hard to read and also propose that he use my dice, then he went on and said that it was a matter of luck and he doesn’t want to use opponent’s dice etc. two judges rules that if he insists on using his own dice, he has to also maintain a proper tracking, he was observably pissed, I was thinking to myself:”fuck yeah, go tilt over this kind of shit!. As the game proceeds, opponent was lucky to draw all 3 of his <Tome of Imperial Flame> within the first 6 turns so I took heavy hits early game. When he start to summon his dragons, none of them were properly presented as dragons as he was keeping the “Invoking” face up on the table, so every time I had to ask him what is the power/toughness of the dragon and just nice a judge walks by and told him to either flip his card to the dragon side or use extra card to represent the dragons properly, he can be seen to be pissed once again, bonus point number 2! A couple of minutes later, a judge walks by and noticed opponent was not using a proper FAB hero card but instead was using a printed foil token with the LSS art frame on it and asked him about it, another tilting point I guess. We went on with the game and he played out a <Burn Them All> and attacked with a <Cromai>, I blocked with a card from hand, he said: “OK” then pointed to his <Burn Them All> saying “1 arcane”, so I called judge saying he missed the trigger. Obviously he argued that it’s not a missed trigger, but he couldn’t defend the fact that he didn’t say anything other than “3!” as he pushed his <Cromai> forward and indeed said “OK” when I put a card to block. Judge ruled that it’s not far beyond the point of trigger and we could rewind back to the trigger to which I agreed and paid for the AB with my <Fyendal’s Spring Tunic> counter. The game went on for a few turns after that with me clearing his dragons and preserving life while trying to gain life with things like <Heart of Fyendal>, <Oasis Respite> and <Fyendal’s Fighting Spirit>. Eventually we reached a stage where I had <Last Ditch Effort> and 2 other blues in the deck and my had was <Goblet of Blood run Wine> and 10 counters on my <Dawnblade> with 3 life remaining and a <Copper> token>. Opponent had 2 life, 4 cards in hand, 2 cards in deck and a <Kyloria> in the arena. I played my <Goblet of Bloodrun Wine> and attacked with a 13 power <Dawnblade> using my <Fyendal’s Spring Tunic> counter, opponent full blocked with his 4 cards which had his last <Fate Foreseen> and resetting my <Dawnblade> but he had no cards in hand and only a <Kyloria>, when we go to his turn, time was called, so I knew I had 1 more turn to kill him. He attacked with <Kyloria>, I took 1 arcane from <Burn Them All> and blocked with a card, going down to 1 and giving him my last <Copper>. At the final turn of the game before forced draw, my <Agility> and <Vigor> were activated, with those I swung my <Dawnblade> at his face, forcing a card. Then played out my <Last Ditch Effort> and he couldn’t block it out and I won!!! X-2

Later on I found out this dromai player won a nationals champion before, kinda surprised at how unsportsmanlike he was. Oh well, take the loss and be sad about it, learn your lesson to play the game properly.

Round 7 I got paired into a Singapore player, also a friend of mine on <Kayo, Armed and Dangerous>. I won the game with a <Steelblade Shunt> against his <Mandible Claw> attack when he was on 1 life and I was on 2. But the game did not feel as close as it looks. I was under pressure the whole game and was basically forced into blocking with my entire hand for a good part of the game just to stay alive, I got lucky that he decided to attack with <Mandible Claw> first instead of an actual attack action. Lucked my way into day 2 at 34th standing.

By the end of Calling day 1, I approached Joshua Lau and asked for the coin. I know it’s not a proper way of getting it, but I want it badly. JL was cool enough to honour his words and now 

I AM A PROUD OWNER OF A 2022 THE CARD GUYZ COIN!!!!

As the calling day 1 came to an end, the second <Ravenous Rabble> event fired, this time it’s CC format.

Round 1 I got paired into another Singapore player who was nice enough to give me the win because he was going for a walk with his friends soon after and I was still chasing TIX.

Round 2 I got paired into a Victor who I managed to fatigue out through luck and careful piloting, though not sure if I was still careful enough at this time of the day after the 7 gruelling rounds of calling games, lol

Then comes round 3, when we heard the announcement, we checked our phones and a familiar name appeared on it, Ryan Liu, one of the buddies that came with me as a group to Phuket and we were shaking our heads again as we walk together to the table. I beat him while chatting away and planning of what to eat after the event as he just got back in “Flesh and Blood” not long ago so was still learning the game in a sense.

Round 4 was a split because it was almost 8pm and we haven’t eaten since lunch, so that was another 1K ish TIX in the bag. By this time I had enough to redeem for an <Agility> token and I did.

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The boys were going out to have some fun after dinner but I decided against it and went back to hotel room to get some rest and mentally prepare myself for Day 2. On hindsight, I kinda regret not going out with them, who was I to think I could go any further than making day 2, should have just enjoyed Phuket while I had the chance, lol

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Day 3 (07/04/2024) - Calling Day 2

Round 8 was against a <Kayo, Armed and Dangerous> player from Taiwan who was kinda sad he got paired into a <Dorinthea Ironsong> as it was his bad match up and I soon ended his suffering.

Round 9 I got paired into the 4th <Dromai, Ash Artist> of the calling. I was like WTF, 4 Dromais???

The game basically ended when he dropped his first 2 dragons, which were <Miragai> and <Yendurai>, one had 4 toughness and the other 6. Had he summoned any other 2 dragons, I would have a chance of clearing them out, but apparently he’s well prepared for this match up. Also my D-reacts didn’t line up well against his attack reactions and eventually I lost my only <Dromai, Ash Artist> game through the whole weekend.

Being X-3 not, I know my chance of top 8 is gone so once again, I’m at the spot of playing for a ash finish and then I got paired into a <Decimator Great Axe> <Ser Boltyn, Breaker of Dawn> which I stood no chance against. Just some fun to share, I got CnC-ed 8 times in the game, :P

Now we’re X-4, the chance of cash finish is also very slim, only way was to pair up against someone with X-3 and I win them, but GEM says otherwise. I got paired into Nick again and upon seeing our standing, he proposed a split as he was lower than me on the standing and we just chilled for the last round.

Final standing came and I was 31st, so once again no cash finish at Calling.

The rest of the day is a blur to me now as we were just hanging out waiting for the final <Ravenous Rabble> event to get our promo and Mark and I needed to head to the airport for our flight back to Singapore.

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Total Loss:

4 games in calling, a bunch of games in other side events

Total Win:

3 x <Ravenous Rabble> promos

1 x <Sigil of Merlion> promo

1 x Sigil of Merlion playmat

1 x The Golden Son playmat

1 x CF <Agility> token

2 x CF <Vigor> token

1 x CF <Might> token

1 x Blade Flurry playmat

All 4 of my warrior Marvels(Kassai and Olympia young and adult) submitted for grading

*Getting to play a game face to face with Joshua Lau, getting my alpha <Biting Blade> signed by him and “winning” THE COIN!!

**made day 2 of two callings in a row, though 1 year apart

***having met up with a bunch of fun FAB players from all over the world and really enjoying the game as a social tool

****solidifying the friendship with the WB boys, once again in alphabetical order:Alex, Darrell, Hermann, Jonnie, Joon, Kaiser, Mark and Ryan.

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That’s a wrap for Calling Phuket 2024, hope I get to attend more of calling in the near future~~