The past year has been very special for me, and my readers have been an important part of it.
Beginning
While Keyforge was released in 2018, I feel like my journey only started in March 2019, when I decided to go to UKGE and participate in a sealed vault tour. I realized I’m an adult now, with income and savings, and if I wanted to spend my vacation playing a game I love, I could. Part of that decision though, was that I would get better at the game, so I can actually compete.
I started this blog with the intention of documenting my journey, I did not expect to become popular, nor did I expect to reach a point where people come to me for advice. I owe the beginning of my learning to Jake Frydman of Sanctumonius podcast, who answered my very first question: When do I hold cards? And to CoDameron and Kiramode of Bouncing Deathquark for laying down the foundation upon which I could build. Without them, I would have remained an infant in the world of keyforge.
The rest of my learning I did with the help of the wonderful community over at the Sanctumonius Discord, which was nurtured Dan Johnson also of Sanctumonius podcast, but I owe thanks to everyone on there that kept the place warm, welcoming and ripe with interesting discussions.
There is something interesting about how the environment we operate in changes the way we think. When I used to browse /r/all on reddit, I realized I started thinking in meme form (part of the reason I stopped doing that). While writing this blog I started thinking in article form, which forced me to push my abstract thoughts about the game into something more coherent. This was a great help in my understanding the game.
UKGE
By the time I got to UKGE I already amassed a bit of a following, and I was asked if I was going to keep on writing after. My answer was that it depended on my result. If I went 3-3 or worse, I would likely feel like I don’t have a voice worth listening to, and would stop writing and stop pursuing competitive play. If I went 4-2 I would probably feel I needed a to pursue more knowledge, and thus continue writing. If I went 5-1 or better, I might feel I have achieved what I wanted at leave it at that.
I’m quite happy I finished 4-2, because it pushed me to keep trying. Keep learning. Keep growing.
Krakow
My second vault tour was a double vault, with both Sealed and Archon. I kept learning and writing up to it, and I felt ready to make 5-1 in sealed, what I believed was my strong suit. In Archon though, I felt 4-2 was likely, without any real prior experience. I ended up making top 4 in sealed and top 16 in Archon, surpassing all my expectations.
I had a good understanding of the game. I performed well under pressure. I even saw places where I could improve. This is a game in which I can compete with the best.
I also wrote a very impactful article on my personal experience and the keyforge community, which is one of my top read articles. It put me in a position to talk about inclusiveness in KeyFogre, and I went on Ed Pocock’s podcast Call of Discovery to talk about it.
Road to Worlds
My SO Ilana, known to many of you as Techslut, convinced me to go to Utrecht Grand Championship. I did not intend to go to any more major events in 2019, already having gone to 2. But She had made some connections with some awesome people and wanted to go, so we went. After scheduling Utrecht, I realized there is another Grand championship in Belgium, which is relatively cheap to fly to. So I decided to book a little vacation with my other SO.
Utrecht was a bit of a mess for both of us. I almost missed my top 16 match, and Ilana had her own bad luck. We enjoyed the event, but it definitely didn’t go as planned.
Belgium on the other hand, went spectacularly for me. I wanted to win, a lot, but I did not actually expect to go 9-0.
Downtime
I’m still not certain if Worlds Collide is just not my jam, and if so, why, but ever since it’s release I’ve been on the slow burn. I knew I was going to need a bit of a break after Belgium, but it has been hard to pick things up. Until this week when I popped a lovely new deck from CotA that rekindled my interest not only in playing it, but figuring out Worlds Collide. So I’m back, sort of.
2020
So what can you expect from me in 2020 you must be asking. Well, I have a lot of things I want to do, and I’m not sure which will succeed and which will be discarded along the way, but I’m here, and I have plans, and here are some of them.
Articles
I want to keep putting up articles. I have 4 different articles in my drafts folder, the most important one being about Exalt. I’m also planning to translate the wonderful foundation CoDameron and Kiramode have laid out into article form (with their permission). I want my website to have a complete series of articles someone can go through in order to get from “I have no idea what I’m doing” to having a clear grasp of how the game works.
Website
This website needs to change. I need to move it to private hosting to get rid of the ads, and have more flexibility in it’s design, and I want to give a platform for guest writers.
Your support
Reading my articles is all the support I’ve asked for, and it has been tremendously helpful in pushing me forward. Thank you!
But if I want to take this thing a step further, I could really use some more help. A patreon will likely be my first choice, but I will look into other options too.
Studies
I have already announced a study tournament to get some data about Adaptive vs Best of 3 sponsored by burger tokens (the tokens I use). I plan on running more studies of different formats to see how they work. Duplication tournaments is a wonderful tool I wish to utilize a lot.
Videos
There are certain things I just can’t effectively do in text and the most prominent one is narrating my thought process during a game. I want to do this both for my own training, and for followers that want to understand how I would play their decks (Might be a patreon reward?)
Coaching
I have started giving out a few free coaching sessions in order to get a hang of it. I intend to get better at it and offer it as a service. Possibly also as part of a patreon reward. If you’re interested in some free coaching, there might still be a couple of spots left, drop me a line on discord and we can see if you’re a good fit. I am looking for people that play a lot on TCO and are active.
My coaching method currently is watching you play, and then giving you my insights on how it played out. I may develop other methods as I go along.
Merch
While I am part of the Sanctumonius communiteam, I think there is plenty of room for people to be part of a Timeshapers subdivision. Do let me know if this is something that interests you. Regardless, I intend to make some buttons to hand out.
Contact and afterward
If there is anything you would like to see more of. Anything from the list that interest you in particular. Anything I might not have thought of. Please do let me know.
As always, you can follow me on twitter for updates. And join us at the Sanctumonious discord server if you’d like to chat with me, or join an awesome community of keyforge players.
