The Last

Welcome to the Krim Blog where we have the greatest competitive GA content around! Today we have a banger: Grand Archive World's Runner-Up tries the McRib for the first time.

"What the hell is this?"

"That's a lot of sauce..."

"What is this meat? Look how thin it is!"

Shawn wouldn't be Shawn without finding the best line:

"I need a fork."

I think moments like these were my favorite during my time in GA; the juxtaposition of having the most amazing talents in the game just doing the most mundane things. 

Can you say the National Champ and your wife attempted to wall-mount a TV? I sure can!

So many times, Grand Archive almost felt like just the backdrop of content my friends and I used to crack jokes, to generate discussion, and to work towards something together. 

Join the Yap Club Patreon today! A subscription includes personalized training with any deck from 5 World-Class tutors!

You too can learn how to make a 5/4 Baby Red!

Sometimes I take a step back in these moments of training to take it all in, how cool stuff like this is. How often can you say you're going to learn a deck and the Worlds Runner-Up, National Champion, a Top 5ish in the World-level player, and two of Yap Club's biggest goons hop in a call to help you? Does it sound like I'm bragging? You're damn right I'm bragging. I'm super blessed that I'm in such a unique position where I'm able to DM, play with, and be true friends with players and people of this caliber. 

This could be a Worlds Finals match and it casually happens on my dinner table

As you can probably tell from the clickbait title and maybe some people can tell by my behavior recently that this will be my final blog post and that I will be officially quitting GA. This is probably a "this isn't an airport, you don't have to announce your departure" sort of deal for some, but I think I owe it to my friends to celebrate them and to people that have enjoyed reading and supporting me through this journey to give everyone (including myself) closure. I've been on the record saying I haven't had fun since Chicago and that the wind was really taken out of my sails with the direction of AMB and the banlists. I honestly can't remember the last time I actually had fun playing. It was perhaps a bit before Chicago when I was still grinding away on Tristan. 

The game feels like it changed a lot from when I first started playing and when I returned to the game a bit after Ontario. I used to feel like Ally-based board battles were more important in ALC, but it's gotten to a point where you usually just point it all face and hope to sack. In many of my recent training playtest games, it would eventually get to a point where we ask each other: "Do you have it? Am I dead? Yeah? GG. No? Guess I win next turn instead then." 

The community also changed quite a bit during my time here. When I first started GA, there would be maybe 5 people at CardArt and Magitek. Magitek was close to dropping GA, but I came back and made the declaration that I would help grow the community. At our peak, we had around 40 people at locals in the early MRC days. We lost quite a bit of the playerbase when they returned to Digimon, but still held pretty strong, averaging 20 people. I alluded to it before, but there are some players in the community that I would rather not interact with, so it got to a point to where if I knew they would be there, I probably would not participate. Even if I would probably beat them anyway if we played, the prospect of ruining my time by interacting with them was enough for me to sit out. Along with my frustration with the game, my 5x a week locals schedule suddenly became 5 locals a season with AMB. 

I had a few people check up on me as to why I wasn't around anymore, and it was a humbling experience knowing that people cared about me. Most understood that it just didn't seem worth the effort for me. I could find higher-quality practice elsewhere and the only reason to show up to locals was to support and bolster the community. I do have to admit that in my own self-centered way, it was gratifying to see the locals scene dwindle to 5-10 at best at each store. I feel like many people downplay my impact on the local community, while people who don't show up to locals and aren't regularly in the trenches get idolized. But, I did hope that someone or a group of someones would pick up the slack and be the new pillar of the community that I was. The thing about pillars is, you can always build new ones.

This probably all sounds like bitter bitching and moaning along with trashing the community on my way out, but it was still a difficult decision to make. I mostly started out as a fan of the game and was pretty happy being casual and watching all these pro players do well at the big events. I think I just happened to have a rapid trajectory of improvement along the way which is pretty rare in this game. I still remember talking to Christian at Worlds; I had a dream season and I asked him how to stay motivated and what was the next step. "We just do it all over again." I remember feeling a bit hollow upon hearing that, which should have foreshadowed things to come. 

I had also talked to Steven pretty recently since people suggested I become a mercenary of the game because I had the skills and had already put in the work, so I might as well try to cash in by winning as many prizes as possible. I had underestimated how much my love and passion for the game was propping me up. Steven told me that he's essentially a "competition junkie" and he loves to compete no matter what the TCG. I would usually brush off a comment like that, but it's actually a personality I've encountered multiple times over my TCG career. I have realized I am a very different person from that. 

All the things I've been good at in life, I strove to improve because I truly loved what I was doing and everything that came with it. GA was the same thing. I used to love the art, game mechanics, the decks I was playing, building, competing, everything. I used to have aspirations of winning Ascent, winning Nats, winning Worlds, repeating over and over and becoming the GOAT. Somewhere along the line, I lost all of that. I started finding the mechanics uninteresting, the gameplay less engaging, the art looking more and more AI-generated. I used to want to go to every locals, store champ, regional, Ascent, etc, but now it seems like people always have to try to drag me, which I feel pretty guilty about since nobody should have to practically beg someone else to go play an event. 

Some friends have asked me if the new set is better, has a healthy meta and all that, would I change my mind? Sadly, I don't think so. I don't think this game has much of a future with the way the developers are making decisions. It almost feels like the game is being catered to the more casual player now. Regardless, with the way the local community is, I'm not sure there is much to go back to. I don't think I'll ever be able to get over how my friends and I sometimes get treated now. For some reason it always feels like someone from the competitive player group has to go up and advocate for us; people are allowed to berate, name-call, and insult us, then we get a talking to if we try to defend ourselves. I also dislike how sometimes the points we bring up seem to fuel content creation for others. It makes it very difficult to actually want to help in the public channels because it's hard to know if someone actually wants help or is just fishing. I'm sure some people will be happy that I'm leaving though because they feel like I'm one of the instigators. 

I guess I got a bit off-topic and went into a spin cycle of negativity, but I hope people will take it as they will and maybe address and fix some of the problems I see in the local community if they want to improve it. Something good that came out of all that division was that it sort of pushed many of us into smaller cliques and knowing who our true friends are...which was supposed to be the main reason for me writing this final blog: celebrating my friends. 

I came to GA after playing FFTCG and I was super jaded about the friends I made in that community. Nobody really wanted to be closer friends there. When I returned to GA after Ontario, I came back to locals and chatted with Justin and John (pretty much the whole locals scene at the time), who I got along with. I randomly asked Justin if he wanted to carpool to the VPC SC that season and he said he would drive (which worked out because he likes to drive and I don't). I didn't realize at the time how many doors of opportunity it would open for me in this community. It started becoming a tradition for us to stand outside and talk for hours after locals, go eat at Everest Cuisine, then talk even more into the late hours of the night. We dubbed ourselves the True Everest Cuisine Gamers (TCG) and suddenly we sought each other out as buddies during locals and events. 

After a while we added Weilun, Michael, and Kevin to the mix and truly became the Yap Club. It sort of became our secret club where we could speak and joke freely about things (and occasionally strategy) that probably couldn't be said in the main server or in front of the more PC members of the community. It will always be funny to me how people started recognizing Yap Club as an actual faction in the community when it and its members were supposed to be a secret. Yap Club definitely made me stay in the game a lot longer than I thought I would and is definitely one of the bright spots of my time in GA. I'm not sure I have ever laughed as much and as hard as when I hang out with these guys. 

I had been waffling back and forth on when I would quit. If my friends stayed, I would stay at least until Worlds. During training, I underestimated how much disdain I had for the game. I must have played 20 matches with Justin and it was just a smackfest of taking the best line and just killing each other over and over. By the end of it, I didn't even want to go to Ascent Santa Clara anymore. Most people by now have seen me selling pretty much my entire foil collection. Omni rewards, my whole foiled Tristan deck, CSRs, CURs, Nats Invites, even my Spirits are up for grabs. I used to think I would take it all to the grave with me given how rare they are, but I don't feel much pride in having them anymore. But, Steven and Christian encouraged me to take one last ride with the boys since it was in our backyard. I owe a lot to these guys and I feel like I owe it to them for their guidance and friendship on this journey to see it through. I'm not quite sure if I'll do well since it really feels like my heart isn't in it anymore. The lines are there, but it almost feels like I'm just going through the motions instead of playing and competing. Still, whether I win the whole thing or whether I go 0-3 drop, this will be it for me.

In the back of my mind, I almost wanted VPC SC to be my final event. I didn't even intend to play that day, but I ended up submitting my pet deck and somehow wound up 4-0. It was a very interesting tournament because I hadn't really played in a while, but I was playing off pure intuition and making good reads. I end up in the Finals against none other than my good pal Christian. All of us apes were rooting for my victory to "usher in the new age of pirates" (I started watching One Piece recently). Alas, my hands were pretty weak and Christian took excellent lines while I went too aggressive in game one when I should have held my Stifling Trap. Game two I put myself in a position to win if I found an ally, but I found the wrong one after going through 6 cards off the top. I tried my best and it would have been really cool to be a back-to-back Store Champion, but players that good are good for a reason (that reason usually being they are really hard to beat). I think I would have been okay if my last match was against Christian and I finished 2nd again. It's poetic, in a way. But, I will keep my word and see Santa Clara through.

I'm going to share a photodump of the great memories I made training these past few weeks. I love these guys.

NorCal's greatest fighting force working together

Molly Tea, soju, cards, and great friends; what more could you ask for? 

Nothing better than Hot Pot with the boys

The better the player, the funnier the misplay

At the end of the day, a table is a table, a playmat is just rubber, cards are just cardboard, a room is just a room. The people around it are what makes it special. 

I really hope you guys enjoyed sharing these memories with me. If you happen to see me at Santa Clara, feel free to shake my hand, give me a hug, or whatever you feel like. It might be the last time I go out to a big GA event. I won't say I'll totally retire as maybe I will borrow some cards and terrorize an event as a mercenary someday. It wasn't always a great time, but I'm happy for my time in the community and satisfied with how I'm leaving. 

• ALC Norcal Regional 5th
• Ascent Worlds 3v3 6th Place
• ALC Ascendant
• MRC GK RWC Store Champion
  
• Yap Club formed
• Good friends with Shawn, Christian and Steven

I never thought I would be able to achieve any of these things, but I was lucky to be born during this era in NorCal with so many generational talents around me to help me improve and keep me motivated. 

Thanks to everyone who enjoyed reading the blog. I hope some of the gameplay stuff was helpful and I hope you had a great time reading all the stories. I hope this shows that there's always stories out there if you look. I always enjoyed helping people and found it amusing that people thought I was "scary to play against" at locals since I was probably more afraid of you than you were of me. It was fun being many people's bridge to more competitive play.

This will be Peter aka Krim aka the Wind Allies God signing off for the last time. Krimation Ritual sacrificing self for cost. Draw 2 in the next chapter of my life.