Went 7-1 with R/P Minerva this Weekend at Baton Rouge
Just wanted to share this since I've spent the past few weeks or so trying to make pre-GD-04 Minerva Squad work. I feel like this deck has a ton of interesting lines of play that vary from matchup to matchup.
The games were as follows:
Round 1: B/W Unicorn. Lose. This was my one loss. I bricked extraordinarily hard. We went about 25 cards deep into the deck and I did not see a single Baby Impulse or Force Impulse, so he was able to grind me out. Unfortunately because my one loss was R1, I was not able to do better than top 16.
Round 2: W/R Qubeley. Win. Opponent opened very aggressively and was able to get me down to two shields before I stabilized. I was able to trade linked Force Impulses into his big links and stabilized as he ran out of cards.
Round 3: B/R Banshee. Win. This is usually my weakest matchup, but my opponent was playing a lower curve version with Ankshas and Guntanks which improved my chances. The game went super late and I had to hold up 5 resources for Improved Technique + Battle of Aces so that I wouldn't lose to a Banshee link on the spot. (I had already spent all of my Close Combats at this point).
Round 4: W/G Wing Zero. Win. My opponent drew very lopsided - he got a bunch of Kiras and Aile Strikes but no Wing Zeros. The most crucial play this game was using burn to remove Altron before it became a problem.
Round 5: Blurple. Win. I opened 1st From, Adapt and Mika so I was able to hide my red color for a while and used it to catch my opponent off-guard. I fought for board control all game, until I found all 3 Gquuuuux. Then I took out all 6 shields over two turns.
Round 6: Blurple. Win. The closest of the three Blurple games I played today, but also the one where I misplayed the most. I planned around having symmetrical pings in had when I had none, so I ended up wasting a close combat burst on an Anksha that I ended up trading into anyway. I was able to stabilize with a Force Impulse link cleaning up the board and floating into a blocker.
Round 7: Blurple. Win. This one was also fairly close, but he ran out of cards before me. I was sitting on two Battle of Aces, and drew into two Adapts which let me clear any threats he put on board.
Round 8: Unicorn OYW. This was by far the toughest game. My opponent just kept drawing cards and going wide. Cycling Force Impulse into Blast Impulse was the only thing keeping me in the game. As this round was going on, I overheard that the downpair won (edit: lost), so this would be the last round of the event - meaning that I had to win to have any chance for an invite. The game actually hinged on my last shield being a burn command or a base - and it was a base. My opponent was crushed when this happened, but he was a very good sport afterwards. Kudos, Matt - you'll top the next one, I'm sure.
Overall, I'm happy to have done well with a deck that was considered off-meta in GD-03. Since GD-04 will significantly shake up this archetype, I'm retiring the list after today.