This Is Why You Lost

When you are scooping up cards at the end of a Weiss Schwarz game, a thought that commonly passes through your mind would be, “Man, I had that game won, if only _____….” and that thought is often completed by a variety of things. If you had blocked more, if you had landed more, if you had just been “more lucky”, you would have had it.

I find that, when first getting into the game, newer players often draw incorrect conclusions about why they lost the game. Although there are a lot of small decisions made during a Weiss Schwarz game that can lead to positive or negative outcomes, I want to discuss some general concepts that may help you understand why you lost and how to prevent it from happening as often in the future. Let’s start with something that new players often struggle with:

Your deck was in a bad state and you didn’t do anything to try and mitigate that

This happens all the time when players are first starting the game because they either don’t realize the situation they are in, or they minimize the consequences of the bad deck they have. For context, when I talk about “bad” deck states, I’m generally referring to a decompressed state where you have few climaxes and many damage cards. It can mean other things based on what deck you are playing with/against. It could mean you don’t have finishers in a location where you can access them and you are close to level 3. It could mean you don’t have access to a key event that makes your end game possible. It could mean that you don’t have access to the climax you need at the time you need it.

While milling out cards has the possibility of improving your deck state, it’s important to remember that any milling without refreshing the deck can only take climaxes away. If you mill from your deck without getting to a refresh point, you have the possibility of hurting yourself even more.

There’s numerous examples of this happening during a game, but let’s examine a typical one.

-Deck has 3 climaxes with 15 cards remaining
-With available mechanics you can clear the remainder of the deck with 2 stock
-You are level 1/5

Should you clear the deck? Probably. While you stand a decent chance of just attacking three times and having a relatively decent deck, the possibility exists of taking significant damage if your attack step triggers. Considering your current level, you want to maintain the compression that exists in your clock. If you refresh before the next turn, you will save the possibility of 7 additional cards going into the deck. Therefore, we should mitigate any bad scenarios by milling the deck and refreshing.

Your deck was in a good state and you didn’t preserve it through preventable means

Inexperienced players will often fall victim to this problem. It’s important to understand what you need to win the game and what your opponent needs to win the game and maximize the former while minimizing the latter. To that end, if you are already in a good deck state compression-wise, your hand is healthy and you have enough stock to execute all your near-term decisions, then stop taking actions and move to attack step. It’s also important to remember our previous comment about milling that doesn’t refresh. Finally, don’t keep doing things for the sake of doing them. You can quickly damage your deck state or resources by performing unnecessary actions in the name of making something less important happen (recomboing at level 1 or 2, unnecessary sculpts, unnecessary refreshes, trivial milling).

Here’s another example that can come up often during games.

-Deck has 4 climaxes with 25 cards remaining
-You cannot refresh the deck with available mechanics
-You are at level 1/3

Should you try to mill the deck? Probably not. You can’t clear the deck completely so any milling that you do will likely result in losing climaxes. This can lead to taking more damage than you would like. Is it possible that your deck state can improve from milling? Of course. Is it also possible you can strand 8+ damage cards in the process? Of course. You should mitigate the outcomes of this deck state by preserving the climaxes you have and trying to reset the deck on the following turn. If you do any milling, you have to acknowledge the possibility of damage you can cause yourself.

Your opponent presented a board/game state that shifted the game in their favor and you didn’t/couldn’t respond to it

This is very common in Weiss and is a thing that is often not considered as strongly as it should. If your opponent presents a board or game state that is very favorable for them (minus souls, very high power, decompress combo, etc.) and you either: don’t respond to it because you don’t realize how bad it is or can’t respond to it because you don’t have the correct answers available, then the game is likely to become very difficult to win. Leaving open lanes can leave you vulnerable to large packets of damage hitting and pervasive game states that affect your damage (they decompress you, they reduce your souls on combo) can make you lose turns of effort or allow your opponent to cause tremendous damage to certain deck states.

As an example, if your opponent presents a board that is oppressive on power (triple Kishibe, etc.), not responding to that can cost you significantly in a few ways. It’s obvious that you will lose lanes, however, in addition to that, you are causing several other bad outcomes. -Your opponent is getting significant hand advantages, which allows them to compress and sculpt for future turns when you finally do answer -Your opponent is getting significant stock resources, which allows further compression -At some point, your opponent will have enough advantages to not have to clock, creating damage leads -You are opening lanes for significantly higher damage potential -You are draining your hand and stock resources more consistently

It’s also very possible that you don’t have any way to respond to your opponent’s threats. That happens all the time. The best thing you can do in these types of situations is to sustain your resources as best as possible and plan for the next time you will be able to respond, either at the current level or at the next level. Maybe you can respond to an oppressive level 1 board with your level 2 game.

You didn’t block late in the game and your opponent did

All card games have luck to them. This one is no exception. There’s going to be games where you did everything correctly but you still lose. That’s just life. I think it’s important to acknowledge that you will always lose some games due to this. However, I would submit that it is a lot less likely for you to play 100% perfectly. I would recommend recording some of your gameplay just to get a sense of the mistakes you are making. The first time I did it, I had to turn it off because it was so difficult to watch. It is likely some of your own errors led to the game states that made you lose. Continuing to work on those mistakes will lead to much better outcomes in the future.

Weiss is a game where there’s a lot of drama. Very few games are so one-sided that your opponent cannot play at all and you get to win with very little resistance. Often, it is these small mistakes that can be the difference between victory and loss. Knowing what your opponent wants to do and denying it while making sure you can do what you need to for your gameplan will lead to much better results in the long term. The first step in solving a problem is admitting there is one. Losses will be easier to analyze if you know what leads to them and hopefully, you can mitigate these circumstances when it counts.