"The game officially begins. Both players draw lots. We see... Xu Changfeng draws blue. He will choose the map in the first round!" As the female commentator's voice sounded, a map selection box appeared on the big screen. Xie Mingzhe quickly gathered his mind and focused on the game.
The map Xu Changfeng chose is "Misty Forest", the home map of Fenghua Club.
This is one of the most difficult obstacle maps. The dense forest is full of trees, which greatly restricts the movement of cards. Moreover, fog rises every once in a while, which interferes with the players' vision. Compared with the blood pool hell that Qin Xuan made, which is easy to see at a glance, the complexity of this map is simply not the same level.
Due to the obstruction of the trees, the card needs to move a lot. Unless it is a ranged group attack skill, it is not easy to aim at the opponent with a single attack skill.
The tournament mode is a common blind card mode.
During the stage when both sides showed their cards, Xu Changfeng showed five open cards, including the acceleration flower card "Hyacinth" with group cooldown reduction, the protective plant card "Windproof" that can absorb damage; the "Green Wind Vine" with the skill of strangling a single vine; the "Windmill Grass" with a single wind blade attack and an attack speed bonus after hitting; and the "Wind Box Tree" with a range wind blade attack.
Just looking at the five visible cards, two single attack cards, one group attack card, one protection card and one group control card, the deck data tends to be balanced. For the remaining two hidden cards, he may bring output cards or control cards.
Xie Mingzhe can now briefly analyze the players' decks and ideas, but he doesn't know if his guesses are correct.
On the other hand, Shao Dongyang showed five cards, all of which were beasts - Wolf King (summons a wolf pack to fight together and cause area damage), Lion King (summons a lion cub to bite the target and cause single damage), Bat King (summons a group of bats to suck blood in a range), Brown Bear (a defense card to protect teammates), and Cheetah (a single attack card with extremely high agility).
Judging from the cards, Shao Dongyang is mainly attack-oriented. Four of the five cards on display are attack cards. Moreover, the beasts' attacks do not require skills like other cards. Most beasts rely on "normal attacks" to make a living. For example, beasts such as wolves, leopards, and lions can bite directly at close range to cause damage, and do not need to use skills. This is indeed in line with the decisive style of the Referee Club.
Xie Mingzhe thinks that judging from the card, Shao Dongyang has a slightly better chance of winning. A siege by a pack of beasts will be difficult to handle, and the card can only be considered killed if the Beast King is killed. Once the opponent summons a large number of wolf cubs and lion cubs, it will be too confusing to find the Beast King.
However, as soon as the game started, Xie Mingzhe found out that he was wrong.
He underestimated Xu Changfeng's wisdom!
The terrifying thing about the acceleration flow is that it reduces the group CD. Among Xu Changfeng's open cards, there is a "Hyacinth" that accelerates the group, and among his hidden cards, there is also a "Wind Bell Grass" that passively reduces the CD of teammates and provides group treatment!
With double card acceleration, all his card skills cool down very quickly. Originally, a large group attack would have at least a 25-second CD, but after double acceleration, the cooldown time is only 12 seconds, and the cooldown time of a single attack even becomes 8 seconds!
He also has a single attack card hidden in his hidden cards, so he has four output cards in his hand, one group attack and three single attack. When the CD of these four cards are all reduced, the skills can be connected almost seamlessly.
At the same time, his Hyacinthus also has a super powerful control skill - group levitation!
As Shao Dongyang's herd of beasts just approached his plants, Xu Changfeng directly activated the air control, and as the snow-white hyacinth petals were thrown into the air, the opponent's herd of beasts were directly blown into the sky!
Levitation, like Meng Po Tang's forgetfulness, is a "domination" skill and cannot be immune or removed.
Moreover, the "floating" control not only allows the opponent to fly into the sky and be unable to attack, but when the control effect ends, the card falling from the sky will also suffer a critical hit damage.
The design of the Hyacinth plant card is very clever, combining group CD reduction + floating control + falling group attack. Its own skill CD is also very short, which can be perfectly matched with Xu Changfeng's other cards.
The wolves were blown into the air, and soon after, the Green Wind Ivy seemed to have eyes. It swung its green vines violently, accurately tied up the wolf king of the wolf pack, and pulled him into the encirclement of the plants.
Xu Changfeng used several output cards to focus on the Wolf King, and in a blink of an eye the Wolf King was crippled. Shao Dongyang immediately summoned the brown bear. The huge brown bear moved over with clumsy steps and stood in front to help his teammates resist the damage.
Xu Changfeng's plan to kill the Wolf King in one second failed, so he changed his target and tried to kill the brown bear.
Shao Dongyang summoned a leopard at the same time, rushed over swiftly, and started biting his healing card, the bellflower!
In most cases, when the cooldown time of the healing card is relatively long, the game will prioritize dealing with the opponent's output cards. As long as the output cards are all dead, the opponent will fall into a slow death situation where they can't deal any damage. But today is different. Xu Changfeng is the strongest acceleration player in the league. When his healing card is double accelerated and has its CD reduced, it can increase a single card every 5 seconds and a group card every 10 seconds!
If the healing card is not dealt with, then his other cards will never be killed.
Shao Dongyang was obviously very decisive, he seized the treatment card and killed with all his might.
Xu Changfeng was equally calm. Since the brown bear had a passive skill that allowed him to "bear all damage for teammates when their health was below 30%, if he didn't deal with the brown bear, he would still not be able to kill Shao Dongyang's other beast cards. He crippled the wolf king just to force the brown bear out.
The two quickly grabbed each other's key cards and launched a wave of attacks. The various skill light effects were almost blinding -
Xie Mingzhe was sitting in the stands and was really excited watching the performance!
It was so exciting! It was indeed a duel between two equally matched masters, with skills going back and forth and the cards' movements dazzling. Xie Mingzhe watched the game from a God's perspective and could clearly see Xu Changfeng's calm control of the game and Shao Dongyang's measured advances and retreats.
Card analysis and winning rate prediction are nothing but empty talk when it comes to actual combat.
No matter how powerful a deck is, it won't be as powerful as it used to be in the hands of a rookie.
Xu Changfeng's CD play style opened Xie Mingzhe's eyes. When all seven cards were on the field, the double acceleration cards could make all skills seamlessly connected, so fast that it was thrilling!
Xie Mingzhe was also impressed by Shao Dongyang's calmness. The beast group had strong attacking power, but control was a weakness. They were repeatedly blown into the sky by Xu Changfeng. Most people would probably go crazy, but he could always adjust his position and find the fastest shortcut to kill the opponent's key card.
The two sides fought at an extremely fast speed for several minutes, and the healing card and the defense card died almost at the same time.
Xu Changfeng's healing card "Wind Bell Grass" also has a passive skill of group acceleration. The death of this card will have a great impact on his rhythm, and the double acceleration becomes a single acceleration. In Shao Dongyang's deck, the brown bear is a strong meat shield. Once the brown bear dies, the weakness of the beast deck is also exposed.
It is still unclear who will win or lose.
Xu Changfeng remained calm after losing an acceleration card. His output card also had some passive skills that reduced CD, and he also had an auxiliary card for wind protection. At the moment when the opponent summoned a pack of lions and wolves, Xu Changfeng calmly used his skill - Wind Wall!
A green light quickly formed a wall with a soft luster. The ripples on the wall were like a breeze blowing through the forest - the wind wall skill directly blocked the attacks of all the beasts in Shao Dongyang.
Just then, a wisp of mist filled the forest.
Shao Dongyang, who realized something was wrong, immediately led the herd to retreat. However, in the mist, a green vine crawled rapidly along the ground without anyone noticing. The moment the mist dissipated, the Green Wind Vine directly tied up the opponent's Lion King and threw the lion hard into the sky. The Lion King fell to the ground from the sky with a bang and was directly crippled!
Immediately afterwards, the windmill grass emitted beautiful green wind blades. The dense wind blades swept over like a knife, killing with one blow!
Xu Changfeng found the rhythm when the forest was fogged up and killed the opponent's single attack card Lion King.
Although Shao Dongyang responded calmly and killed an output card of the opponent, as time went on, Xu Changfeng's annoying floating control and vine binding finally made Shao Dongyang gradually fall into a bad situation.
——In the first game, Xu Changfeng finally won with a thrilling one-card advantage!
Xie Mingzhe was amazed and stared at the court intently, forgetting that Tang Muzhou was sitting next to him.
In the second game, it was Shao Dongyang's turn to choose the map, and he chose Scorched Earth without hesitation.
Xie Mingzhe was very familiar with this map. In the previous intramural competition, Xiao Ke's opponent had chosen it in the finals. Scorched Earth burned the player every second, causing him to lose mental strength, forcing the player to summon seven cards at the beginning of the game and fight head-on.
The scene in this picture is very vast, with no visual obstructions, like an empty square with a burnt ground.
On a map like this, few people can stop the beasts' all-out attack!
Even though Xu Changfeng had the protection of the wind wall, the beasts' attacks were too terrifying, and his wind wall couldn't be opened all the time. Not long after the game started, his two acceleration cards were killed.
The two sides tied 1:1.
The deciding round is a random map, and the map randomly selected from the system gallery is "Fountain Square".
Whoever wins this round will advance to the quarterfinals.
Xie Mingzhe secretly hoped that Xu Changfeng would win because he was his senior's partner. But objectively speaking, the referee Shao Dongyang was also very strong, so the outcome of this game was still unpredictable.
The game was very intense. At one point, the two sides were deadlocked until 5 cards died, leaving only a 2v2 situation.
Xie Mingzhe held his breath nervously.
The situation was very unfavorable for Xu Changfeng. All his treatment cards and output cards had been killed. There was only a floating control card with a skill inactive left on the field, and a hidden card that had not appeared.
Shao Dongyang still has a low-health cheetah and a wolf king with about 50% health left.
Cheetahs and wolves do not need to cool down their skills, and can deal extremely high damage with normal attacks alone. The beasts surrounded Xu Changfeng's plant and stared at it eagerly, and were about to kill it in an instant. At this moment, a green plant suddenly broke out of the ground in the center of the square -
Phoenix Tail Bamboo, skill "Wind Blade Sky Attack"!
Countless bamboo leaves, like continuously spinning sharp blades, swept towards the beast herd in Shaodongyang from the sky to the ground!
The sharp blade killed the bloody leopard in an instant.
Following this, trigger the second skill "Wind Blade Pursuit" - when Phoenix Tail Bamboo successfully kills the target, the bamboo leaves can immediately spin and add a 30-meter range wood-type group attack damage.
After two consecutive large group attacks, the wolf king, whose health was already not very healthy, fell down.
Shao Dongyang: "..."
The audience was stunned for a moment, and then burst into deafening cheers!
Xie Mingzhe, who was sitting in the private room, almost jumped out of his chest. Is this the way to play? Xu Changfeng was too patient. He kept this Fengweizhu card hidden until the last moment, and only released it when the opponent only had two cards left. It was a one-shot kill!
Additional damage, this design has been thought of by someone a long time ago.
Xie Mingzhe thought of the Sun Shangxiang he designed. In fact, the principle is similar. After killing a card, the output is added, but Sun Shangxiang adds single attack, while Fengweizhu adds group attack. In team battles, if the opponent has more low-health cards, Fengweizhu's output is unstoppable. Wind blade chasing, non-stop group attack, too scary!
Xie Mingzhe had always thought that the card skills he designed were very good, but after watching the duel between the two masters today, Xie Mingzhe also clearly realized that in fact, in terms of skills alone, there are many talented designers in the Professional League, and he has no qualifications to be proud of it.
Whether it was Shao Dongyang's beast swarm attack or Xu Changfeng's CD acceleration play, Xie Mingzhe had no confidence in defeating these masters. He could only bully the kids in Fenghua Team 2 who had no experience in big competitions. To be honest, if it was these experienced masters, Xie Mingzhe wouldn't even have a 30% chance of winning...
Fortunately, his senior brother woke him up in time and made him realize the gap between himself and the top players.