Digimon TCG Worlds Vlog & Thoughts

[@johnnystephens259]

I’m personally surprised anyone took sec con to worlds considering how positive of a matchup Levia has against the deck. And considering how Levia players just kept losing to it over and over just goes to show you that if people aren’t prepared for a certain matchup, they can easily lose even if they have a normally favored matchup.

[@AVAULT]

Digimon Worlds is amazing! Really wish I could be there to experience it as well!

[@Gintaxis]

Pete earned his spot, and played the deck well. The gripe I have with seccon is that it's the same feel & play style as stax is in MTG, which is abysmal to play against. Game states that end up becoming un-enteractive or stall tactic don't make for enjoyable games. Loosing a game is whatever has to be a winner & looser. Loosing because you can't play the game or your opponents life resource is a weapon against you now feels even worse

[@andershepherd9637]

All of the finalists look like they had a ton of fun! Thanks for sharing your adventure with us

[@explosean4058]

Interestingly, in the "Bandai Organjzed Play - Tournament Rules Manual" under "The Championship Match" section it does say that "Time limits do not apply for the Championship match of an event. The match is played until there is a clear winner." So Bandai was running a separate set of tournament rules for the world championship.

[@East_ML]

This is simply not true and I don’t know why people started saying this (you’re not the first person who I’ve heard say this). It clearly states the overtime rules in the tournament rules section here: world.digimoncard.com/event/championship2023/ I also confirmed with the players in the finals after the match if they were aware of these rules before the tournament and they answered yes.

[@explosean4058]

@@East_ML Ah, my apologies. I didn't realise they'd published a separate set of tournament rules for the world championship. I did say that they appeared to be using a different set of tournament rules in my comment though

[@SilentMagician7]

They 100% need to get rid of the clock for the final match in both Nats and Worlds. That should deter people from playing Sec Con.

[@Vaeltis]

I agree, that said being a BCF event, they had the One Piece finals that needed to also happen afterwards, thereby meaning that the whole event has a schedule to keep up. Having the Digi Finals go long because of no clock means that the OP will either go long also or be hyper shortened. If each game had its own event or atleast separate streams so that the finals for both games can happen at the same time, that would then eliminate this issue.

[@mbbtcg4833]

I think Sec Con is a fine and fair deck. It goes in and out of metas as there are often natural counters to it depending on the format. As an example, it was bad vs hybrids, hunters, full power Xros heart, BWG with Yuuya. BT16 MagnaX can often ignore it. On top of that, most decks can adapt their playstyle to counteract what the deck is doing. It just requires playing with a different mindset. I have only truly thought sec con was OP when reinforce memory boost was at 4, and even then, it was still the 3rd best deck. I understand nerfing for the “viewing experience” but otherwise I think players just need to adapt. Also I feel bad for mis-speaking on camera. Apocalymon was 10 - 0 favored vs sec con, Anubis has to work for it. Anyway, great video and was a pleasure meeting East while in Japan.

[@East_ML]

I could not agree more! Thanks for the kind words chief! I’m super glad I got to meet and play together while you were here, and I hope you enjoy the rest of your trip!

[@Schlipperkind]

Well, I can only speak for Europe or rather for the countries with the BO3 format, which is btw the far more balanced approach to any type of TCG IMO. (There shoud not exist any big tournaments ESPECIALLY WORLDS with a lousy BO1 format.. periodt.) That said, Sec con's power lvl is not the slightest problem - like any other deck it has its good and bad match ups. The main issue like previous speaker already mentioned is the viewing expience because its not very interactive and the skill expression is pretty low due to lack of possibilties (1. Play tamer, recover or remove). Mirror matches making it even worse. The much bigger other problem is that it is f***ing up the "balanced" BO3 formats due to the lack of time and those grindy matches sec con forces the players into. Therefore every BO3 becomes a BO1 and BO1 s*cks. Especially in the digimon tcg where a single lucky bomb at the right time in security can shift a game drastically. If we would still play without mulligan ( still do not understand how any player with a bit of tcg experience and competitve sense could even dare to speak against mulligan....), the game would be a pure lottery.

[@East_ML]

Yeah no one arguing with you there, I would love if Asia had Bo3 and all of worlds other than top 4 was Bo3. More games = less variance

[@CosmicDarkLord]

@@East_ML This is also why I have questioned past Japanese tournament results. I have often told local players to take top lists from japan with a grain of salt cause so many posting were either small sample size like 30 person locals or done in best of one formats.

[@East_ML]

@@CosmicDarkLord I advocate for the same thing. Bo1 and Bo3 create for differences in formats. I think for folks in the west, its best to use early results from JP as a base, and then build from there.

[@latitude990]

Watching coverage was so sick, I just wish there was a better way to follow what was in each player's hand. Most of the enjoyment I get out of watching coverage is trying to figure out what the correct play is, then watch to see what the players do and how the game unfolds. I dunno how other major card games do it, but in mtg they have a "spotter" keep track of the cards in each player's hand. I really do think that coverage of huge events like this is worth every cent to Bandai, and making it the most entertaining for people to watch would be a great step forward (especially since these events are so few and far between)

[@GlobalDigitalEmpire]

Having a time limit in the top cut is a travesty.

[@jambotcg0291]

Lan’s so true for that, best of 1 does suck

[@ATXEagleXGaming]

Timed finals are fine imo. If you watched the BSS worlds finals, they almost went into a 3.5 hour mirror match but the game two was clutched just short of the 2 hour mark. The rules were known going into the tournament

[@nickromano3087]

The myth of slow play seccon players got blown out on tape. All of the levia players took more than twice the time to play against it. Also RIP Asia because playing an older set in a 30 day game is so hard.

[@Oops-All-Agumon]

Sec con plays fast because they do less, playing 1 card a turn and passing turn takes almost 0 thought. But when a deck does more they not only need to think how they need to set up their plays for the future but now adding in playing around the opponents security gives them more to think about. This means it will require more time to process their turn than normal.

[@latitude990]

That's the nature of Sec Con tho. You build your deck such that you make a simple play every turn but force your opponent's entire game plan to be warped completely into an entirely different game/subgame. Pretty hard to blame the opponent for taking longer turns when Sec Con is literally forcing them into that situation. Yeah sure, there are situations where they take longer turns than they should, but in general the fault is not entirely on them for the match taking longer. It will be nice tho hopefully next year all regions will be on the same format (or at least close). Having to play 3 formats ago sounds rough, especially if it wasn't one of your favorites

[@CosmicDarkLord]

yeah hopefully that gets fixed with next year being on the same set. I also dislike playing in a set thats different than the one you qualified with. You could be the best player for the ex5 format but not for the bt 15 format. But that might just be my personal take on it.

[@Oops-All-Agumon]

@@CosmicDarkLord that is also a fair point as the meta can change dramatically and worlds is basically a super locals where these players can play whatever they want.

[@VortexTCG]

The biggest issue here for me is that Bandai chose to do a different ruleset, which of course plays into decks like Security Control. This just cannot happen, and we need to have standard time rules when it comes to these major events otherwise, what's the point? We might as well all play Security Control, slow play and then get a win through this weird ruleset if it was to be used again.

[@East_ML]

If the rules were not different for the final match, and regular game rules were used, I believe the situation is actually worse. Because it would be most security, unless both players are above 3 and then it would be whoever has most cards in deck. In this case, the person going first would simply pass 3 times and by the inherent game rules because they don’t draw turn 1, they would automatically win. I still think the best answer is to simply not have a time limit for the final match.

[@latitude990]

@@East_ML I think they mean the time limit is considered "outside the rules." Unless I'm mistaken I thought it says in the tournament rules manual (or w/e it's called) that the finals of top cut is supposed to be untimed. A lot of people were guessing that it was timed due to the fact that they had a strict schedule/were streaming multiple events at the same time, which if that's the case is pretty alarming considering it's the world championships lol.

[@East_ML]

You are not the first person Ive heard say this and it’s simply not true. The tournament rules for the event states clearly what the tiebreaker rules are: world.digimoncard.com/event/championship2023/ Additionally, I confirmed with the players after the match if they were aware of those rules before the event and they said they yes, they were.

[@latitude990]

@@East_ML Yeah I'm not saying they changed the rules during the tournament or anything, just that they made a specific ruleset for Worlds instead of using the tournament rules manual. Maybe i'm just not understanding your point, is the JP rulebook different than the EN one? I get that there are some things that have to be clarified, but changing stuff like BO1/BO3 and time limits is wild to me.

[@East_ML]

@@latitude990 Oh I see where you're coming from. The only issue here is that world's is an event that combines 2 regions with different rule-sets (EN and JP) I don't think its right to automatically assume that your regions rule-set would be used for such an event. In this case, I think they made the right choice to create a completely separate one to encompass both regions.

[@stealthsneak]

Man i wish i could see jpn reaction to the match and win

[@tiazimtiaz7588]

Im 100% glad i attended this. Watching this live was a great experience. Even though i hate secCon with a passion, Pete had me rooting for him both rounds. Just wished i was able to see our Boy Will play on stage. Big congrats to all these champions. Getting to worlds is no small feat.

[@East_ML]

10,000,000,000% this

[@exvy]

Pete's words were amazing

[@peoplewithnoname1326]

Blessed SecCon, taking the W for NA! Honestly, great play from Pete! Despite people trash talking SecCon, there's nothing quite like watching SecCon checks, hits the same head space as gambling, lmao.

[@PeteTheShmeat]

You know what, I shouldve asked for a hat 🤣😭

[@East_ML]

LMAOOOOOOOO

[@chaostamer9843]

Based take. ❤❤❤

[@k-liliando1147]

Not gonna lie, i was rooting for pete, and i suffer sec con every locals night xD

[@East_ML]

I can respect the hell out of this. I hate fighting against SecCon, but I will die on the sword that Pete 100% earned that win.

[@retzu321]

I think the issue people take with seccon and tie breaker situations is that in general seccon matches *do* go to time, regardless of which player is taking the longer by nature of seccon's strategy to win (wall up and out-resource the opponent) it leads to longer games which go to time. Seccon could be ok(?) in a Bo1 format but in a Bo3 format this is very detrimental. Add to that fact that the deck type that usually results in long/tie breaker situation also has an advantage in tie breaker situations due to how tie breakers are determined.. and you have a problem. Yes you cant make everyone happy with tie-breaker ruling, but for your example with digimon count and something like dbrigade having an advantage.. on average dbrigade and swarm style decks do not go to time because their game plan is about overwhelming their opponent as quickly as possible. Tie breaker's should not reward the defensive style decks that tend to lead to those situations in the first place. Congrats to Pete though! Phenomenal player and well deserved win regardless of peoples issue with how bandai is currently implementing tie breakers.

[@masterlinktm]

And now you have favored wide blocker decks that also go to time. And we are back to square 1.

[@retzu321]

@masterlinktm Not sure which wide blocker decks youre seeing, in any case a deck that goes so wide that it would gain an unfair advantage should be able to push for lethal more often than not. But sure, if a deck comes along that spits out bodies and dies not want to swing 💁‍♂️

[@Avacadoloco]

thank you for the video!!!

[@Poogimuns]

Yellow security deck look so cool nice ear antennas 💯💦📡🦔📡🌈🎶

[@TheLazzo]

Man, i am kinda glad and overall relieved to hear your thoughts after seeing SO MANY people go WILD against sec con winning or even worse, against Pete winning, when the levia player was -weirdly- taking TOO much time to finish his turns even when considering between probably not huge lines of play, or when no matter what he did the outcome would've been the same (Like when he was on his already-decked-out last turn struggling to find some answer with little memory). Like i get it, Sec Con is jarring to go against and can become boring or egregious if they just keep highrolling the good options (Trust me i HATE going against sec con, i once got hit with 7 [SEVEN] chaos degradation on the span of 2 games playing Alphamon, 4 of those coming from security, and lost that set 2-0) but we should honestly chill down the hate here, these are WORLD CLASS players, and i'm not saying "cut em some slack because they've top player privilege" or some bs like that, i mean they're clearly above decent at the game, and can STILL make mistakes, get thrown on a loop, succumb to their nerves and resort to playing way slower than they should've (probably) played otherwise, and that's okay, we're all human beings, and it's not inherently "the guy who's playing the boring deck" 's fault, come on.

[@verve1858]

best skin in the game

[@richix64]

There is a real problem with security control being able to abuse the time rules to win. Not to take anything from pete because Frozen misplayed a lot when he could have won 2-0 if he did not play two rookies into the revelation of light security effect

[@chaostamer9843]

To me it seemed the only one trying to take advantage of the time rules was the runner up.

[@yusheitslv100]

Oh, G-d, not Digimon, too. (I play Yugioh. Time rules and their exploitation are a little atrocious there.)

[@Oops-All-Agumon]

I appreciate your positivity but watching the event was not fun at all and to me only highlighted the flaws with the rules and mechanics of the game making me want to play it even less than i do now. The chat for both Twitch and YT was the most toxic i have ever seen out of the digimon community. Pete played well and frozen did not so yes he earned his W. After looking at social media and how people reacted to this event it was easily one of the worst things that happened to the game in a long time. I hope Bandai uses this to make some meaningful changes so that the game can improve. I am not holding my breath though because I know most of JP doesn't play sec con and Bandai only cares about JP data when it comes to making any changes. as far as looking at solutions to fix this I think time rules need to change in some way. They also needing to stop printing good recovery tools like magnaangemon (BT14/BT01) as that is what is enabling Sec con to begin with. Lastly they should tone down security bombs so that they might do something else out of security instead of playing an expensive option for free swinging the entire pace of the game. Security control is something that ruins the game (IMO) taking a lot of the fun out of the digimon.

[@Katztatztrophe]

I hate SecCon but Pete really deserved that win. Glad he got it.

[@Katztatztrophe]

Also adding: I believe you should not get rid of the timer in the finals. You just can't have a tournament with time rules that just switches up the environment for the final match. It would completely influence the advantages and dissadvantages of all decks and it seems more fair if people build their decks around the most common format instead of potentially being punished when entering the final stages.

[@lordofslam]

The fact that people call for banning because they can't figure out how to overcome a deck is crazy. "I can't beat, that. it's "unfun"! Ban it!" SMH my head

[@brycescott8064]

Everyone knows yellow v purple or even blue is a long ass game in general. I can play as fast as possible and those 2 colors will always add and extra 10mins minimum

[@oreox1000]

Why do so many people hate security control?

[@Oops-All-Agumon]

There is a lot of reasons why people hate on security control. - First it is a deck that abuses the rules and mechanics of the game for its own benefit like over time and security. - Second the deck is also designed to do nothing but stall and grind the opponent down which in of itself is not fun to play against. - Third it forces errors out of the opponent and takes advantage of them making it feel even worse to play against. - Forth because of how the deck is designed it changes the game and needs a completely different approach to be able to play against it which a lot of players have a hard time adapting to on the fly causing more frustration. - Fifth because it is a nightmare in events on both the TO side and the players side because of how long the games go and how often they end in over time because sec con is purposefully and actively stalling - Then lastly it has a lot of negative social stigma attached to it due to a lot of the early players using it and winning with it having a superiority complex and rule shark mentality especially when it comes to time it takes players to complete turns, it is easy for them to complain about everyone else taking so long when they don't need to think and play 1 card per turn vs the rest of the game that is playing differently. in this event it only highlighted the flaws and problems with the game and you can tell the TO's were not happy either. It might be cool to see the first time but to play against it, it is not going to be a fun experience and in this event was not fun to watch.

[@oreox1000]

@@Oops-All-Agumon appreciate the response. I get it, but part of me doesn’t hate that a deck like this exists as it helps players improve theoretically. Especially if it’s a card that you don’t see particularly often.

[@Oops-All-Agumon]

@@oreox1000like control decks are fine to have (Levia is a control deck too that made up the rest of top 4) and the ability to adapt is a good skill to have but the underline issue with the Sec con is that compared to other control decks this is designed to be unhealthy/unfun for the game. The reason why beelstar as an example doesnt have the same level of success is because she isnt taking advantage of the rules, has more natural limitations, is actually trying to win, and is doing other things that are not just stalling and prolonging the game hoping the opponent doesnt know or have an answer. The same is true with levia which makes them more fair. I use to have a sec con player at my locals so i am all too familiar with the deck and my locals just died out in part because of him and the impact the deck had on our locals scene. No one wanted to play against him so they stopped showing up especially when he won. Growing resentment end up with something needing to give.

[@sacking200]

its just goes to show that japan will move on to new decks and NA players will use and abuse a deck until they hit it. im from NA and sec con is so toxic here.

[@Salty010]

The match is worst to watch though frohze making mistake after mistake kinda understand able since it play stall game at least im enjoy jp final since both side give a game back and fourth but this like its freakin awful to watch of course they root for pete its from their people😂

[@tsvetomirsheev3882]

Time rules in a World finals is such a joke 😢

[@baritonetenor]

I've been a Digimon Super Fan since I could turn on the tv and watch Digimon Adventure. And I've never enjoyed Digimon less then seeing these finals. Security is the main mechanic that makes me like One Piece more then Digimon as a tcg. I don't even have nearly 10% of the love for One Piece that I do for Digimon. Genuinely just extremely so unfun when someones wincon is to deck you out and then win through time rules. Especially since he also won Semi's on time. It just feels so toxic when the main mechanics of the game are not used.

[@East_ML]

I think it fits perfectly within the games’s core mechanics. You get to slam a big card, and get a big effect, but at the risk of giving your opponent a lot of resources. Many of the players in this top 4 agreed the matchup is actually in the favor of Leviamon. Take-San, the Japanese player who lost by time, in his speech said that he was unfamiliar with the matchup, and as a result he lost. In the finals, Frozen mentioned he beat Pete, the SecCon player, in Swiss rounds and won the first game of the finals. The second game, he made multiple critical misplays which lead to a loss. Doesn’t it seem in these cases the SecCon player outplayed his opponents?

[@baritonetenor]

@@East_ML I don't think it's a skill issue for me I think Pete played out the cards he had well. I just do not think it alligns with how I see the Digimon tcg as a game. It feels like it doesn't play the same game as the other decks. It's the same toxic playstyle as Apocalymon except it doesn't centre around a single level 7.

[@East_ML]

After playing through an entire set of Apocalymon, I can tell you it doesn’t come close. The experience in Asia about why Apocalymon was toxic was because it had little to no counterplay and was far and above the best deck in the game, and the best you could do was play the mirror. SecCon in the finals had bad matchups into Leviamon, Red Hybrid, and maybe Numemon. It plays differently than other decks, but so does Royal Knights, or MegaZoo or Omnimon Control. Isn’t it worth preserving different types of play so that the game is more varied and diverse, and people can play in the style they want, provided there are counters?

[@muffinman7000]

Nice job by Pete. Hopefully they ban some Sec Con cards now lol. Sorry Pete!

[@stealthsneak]

Like what would they hit? Magnangelmon?

[@muffinman7000]

@@stealthsneak Yeah the old MagnaAnge would probably be the only thing. Kinda hard to justify hitting anything else.

[@snusnuterrordome]

Frozen slowplayed, imo. Misplayed a lot and wasn’t the best player.

[@johnnguyen5094]

Also a really toxic person. Made some really gross sexual comments about the Japanese female commentator for the world championships on the main Digimon TCG 2020 Discord. Have also seen him make a racist post before on there too. Glad he lost. Would be embarrassing to have someone like that be the world champion. Huge congratulations to Pete.

[@PepinHello]

Here's a ruling that would make most players happy, ban that traversty of a deck called sec con. Not only is it boring to play against or with, but goes against the main concept of the game of raising your digimon and battling your opponent. The deck is disgusting and has no place in the game so "worlds" (not really worlds till next year because of the set differences) being won by it, highlights the problem even more, makes the whole season feel pointless for most of the player base and overall keeps lot of people from feeling motivated and participate in competete play.

[@hugemclargetall]

Sec-con, yawn.

[@hugemclargetall]

Also mentioned that Japanese players rarely get to play against sec-con, because it is not fun and never will be.

[@yusheitslv100]

Also, JP has bo3. En is bo1. Could be that.

[@Oops-All-Agumon]

@@yusheitslv100 JP is usually Bo1 and everywhere else is Bo3 so you had it backwards. But JP usually like faster games and sec con purposefully stalls the game out making matches and events take longer.

[@yusheitslv100]

@@Oops-All-Agumon mb