The top 100 qualifying round is a classic format in the Masters stage, which refers to the 100 contestants in the semi-final stage, competing for the top 32 seats. The elimination rate is close to 70%. All participating contestants will be divided into the upper and lower halves, and the two halves will fight against each other. It would be terrible if they are matched with the opposing masters, so luck also plays a certain factor in this stage.
The official has an unwritten rule. In order to avoid fighting between teammates, at this stage, all players can freely choose the upper half or the lower half. Those with better results in the preliminary stage will choose first, and those with poor results can only wait to be assigned to the camp with fewer people by the system.
The choices made by the players are unknown to others before they are officially announced, so there will be no situation where they choose the same half to avoid a certain expert. But the teammates know each other's choices, so Xie Mingzhe and the other four can discuss and choose the same half to avoid conflicts in the elimination stage.
All four players from Nirvana chose the upper half.
On January 21, the list of the top 100 divisions was announced, and netizens were surprised to find that both the upper and lower divisions had 4 experts with a 100% win rate, which was a balanced strength. However, the name Fatty Uncle received special attention——
Seeing Uncle Fatty appear in the upper half, the opponents in the lower half suddenly felt cold in their hearts. It's over! This is the Boss! Uncle Fatty has been very popular recently, and the cards he made are so weird. Who knows what deck he will come up with?
All players' IDs were anonymous during the preliminary round, but Uncle Pang's deck style was so easy to recognize that there were some discussions on the forum, saying that they were completely beaten by Uncle Pang in the preliminary round, and some even exposed their deck data.
This is the trouble with being a celebrity, your deck is likely to be exposed in advance.
Fortunately, Xie Mingzhe did not use the strongest lineup in the preliminary stage, but instead brought out the Dongwu Arson Brigade that was used when the teams were divided in the arena.
This set of cards, with Sun Ce, Zhou Yu, Lu Xun, and Sun Shangxiang as the core, is actually very strong in large-scale group battles, especially Zhou Yu's Chain Iron Chain, Burning Red Cliff, and Lu Xun's Burning Camp, which can cause extremely large-scale fire group attack spread damage.
But in fact, this deck is not the best choice for individual games. Once the opponent summons too few cards, Zhou Yu and Lu Xun's combo will not be effective, and he can only rely on Sun Shangxiang to find opportunities to fire rockets, or drag the game into a dead end to harvest. Once he encounters an opponent's deck with strong focus ability, Zhou Yu or Sun Shangxiang, the two core cards, will be killed in seconds, and he will be out of luck.
However, he was confident that he could deal with this kind of situation - Xiao Qiao's treatment and Da Qiao's rescue, these skills were reserved by him for Key cards. The timing of skill release was very important. Several times when Sun Shangxiang was almost killed instantly, he used Da Qiao's "Seclusion" skill to take the Sun Shangxiang card back into his hand, and then released it again after a while, taking advantage of the opponent's confusion to reap the aftermath.
Xie Mingzhe took the risk to choose this deck. Firstly, he wanted to see how much his strength had improved after training during this period of time, and whether the same deck could be operated more delicately. Secondly, this deck was no longer a secret and had been exposed countless times on the forum. It would not be possible for people to guess the cards and target it in advance during the semi-finals and finals.
Facts have also proved that the training over the past few months has been very effective.
Especially the wheel battle match with Fenghua Team 2, and watching and analyzing every team competition in the entire season, Xie Mingzhe has slowly absorbed and transformed what he learned into his own knowledge reserve. There are many players who can imitate others, but it is very rare for them to digest and make it their own immediately after learning. Xie Mingzhe is the latter. He has been good at applying what he has learned since he was a child.
The Dongwu Fire team, which was not very good at single combat in the dark card mode, relied on Xie Mingzhe's calm and meticulous operation to achieve a terrifying record of 80 consecutive wins. The card Sun Shangxiang even had more than 200 kills, which means that Sun Shangxiang killed at least 2-3 cards in every game on average.
Chen Qianlin was also very surprised about this. He did not expect that his little apprentice had made such great progress in this period of time.
But you can’t be so wasteful in the top 100 competition.
If he was matched with reserve players from various clubs, Xie Mingzhe would be courting death if he brought out this deck. Those players would definitely know how to crack Zhou Yu's Fire Team deck, so Xie Mingzhe decisively adjusted his strategy.
He decided to switch to the Five Tiger Generals' gold deck.
This is the card he often uses in the master rank of the ranking game. Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Ma Chao, Huang Zhong, four output cards with extremely strong single-target attack. Zhao Yun is the interference card, Liu Bei is responsible for control and protection, and there is one empty slot left for random response when the time comes.
On January 25, the semi-finals officially began.
In the first battle for the top 100, Xie Mingzhe was matched with a relatively powerful master.
Xie Mingzhe has a 100% winning rate. If he matches with a player with a winning rate of about 80%, he will have a better chance of winning. But this time he was unlucky and matched with a folk master with a winning rate of 93%. Without any professional training from the club, he was able to win 75 out of 80 games in the preliminary stage. This folk master with the ID "花开花落" must be very powerful.
Even though Xie Mingzhe was full of confidence, he did not dare to be careless at all. He could easily fail if he underestimated the enemy, so he had a good chat with his master before the game and made some tactical preparations.
The top 100 competition is a classic best-of-three format. Each side chooses a map. If the score is 1:1, a random map will be used.
During this stage, the official will also arrange live video broadcasts of the competition. Of course, you can't see the players' faces in online competitions, but you can see the players' decks and operations.
Xie Mingzhe did not publicize this event on his personal homepage, but fans are omnipotent. Die-hard fans quickly found out Uncle Fat's game schedule from the official, which was exactly at 8 o'clock on Friday night. So, fans spontaneously organized themselves and flocked to the live broadcast hall of Phoenix Star Domain during the game time to watch this important knockout game.
The league will not arrange official professional commentators for the "Top 100 Qualifying Tournament" stage, but some well-known competitive anchors will be invited to comment on the competition. The anchor invited tonight is a handsome man with a humorous style and good looks, who comes with a lot of fans. Therefore, the ratings of the "Fat Uncle vs. Flowers Bloom and Fall" game hit a new high, nearly a hundred times higher than the afternoon game!
At 8 o'clock, the competition officially began. The host smiled and said, "Everyone should be looking forward to this round of the Top 100 Contest, because among the contestants in this competition, there is a fat uncle who has become very popular recently, and he is using a rare character deck!"
Fans of Fat Uncle in the live broadcast room started to frantically swipe the screen to cheer for Fat Uncle.
The anchor continued, "The player Huakaihualuo is also very famous and often appears on various rankings. He uses plant cards and has already reached the master level with several hundred stars in the qualifying competition. It can be seen that he is also very strong."
At this point, the game interface has been loaded and is divided into three screens: left, middle, and right. The left and right screens are the first-person perspectives of the two players respectively, and the middle screen is the God's perspective. The audience can choose to watch one of the screens and switch at any time.
Fat Uncle's fans all entered his first-person perspective, and saw a lottery box appear on Fat Uncle's interface. He casually drew a blue one, and got priority to choose a map. Fat Uncle submitted the map without hesitation - Desert City.
This is a map from the official gallery. All cards on the map are automatically slowed down by 50% due to the influence of sand. The reason for this choice is that his Ma Chao card has a speed-up function for the entire group, which can create a speed difference and quickly focus on killing the opponent's key card. The slowing down of the earth system is much simpler than the slowing down of the water system. There is no negative state of water poisoning, which is just convenient for his critical strike style.
In terms of decks, Xie Mingzhe announced Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Ma Chao, Huang Zhong and Zhao Yun, all cavalry teams!
Fat Uncle's fans screamed excitedly: "Oh my god, a row of character cards riding horses, so cool!" "I've heard of this deck before, but today is the first time I've seen it. Fat Uncle must be a color control artist, Zhao Yun and Ma Chao are both so good-looking!" "Loyal fans, come and give Fat Uncle a thumbs up, I look forward to Fat Uncle entering the final round!"
Xie Mingzhe could not see the fans' discussion. He concentrated and quickly checked his opponent's deck.
As the name suggests, Flowers Bloom and Fall all chose flower cards. Xie Mingzhe sent out Lin Daiyu, who is an expert in flowers, without a second thought. As another hidden card, he chose Liu Bei, the protection card of the Shu Kingdom team, which just happened to trigger the Peach Garden Oath with Guan Yu and Zhang Fei.
At the beginning of the game, due to the slowdown of the scene, the movement speed of the opponent's flower cards was restricted. Xie Mingzhe seized this opportunity and sent Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, and Ma Chao to attack first.
Guan Yu ignores defense, and with one slash, he can almost take away half of the life of a squishy card. Zhang Fei gets a bonus when playing against high-health cards, and Ma Chao gets a damage bonus when playing against low-health cards. With the cooperation of the three, they actually killed a key flower card on the opponent in less than 5 seconds after the start of the game!
This speed stunned the spectators. From the first perspective, everyone was completely unable to react!
When the Cavalry Card activates its skill, it will have a 500% speed bonus. The movement speed is so fast that fans are dazzled. Some girls even feel dizzy and have no choice but to switch to the bird's eye view.
Only then did everyone realize the ingenuity of Xie Mingzhe's card arrangement.
Looking down from a bird's eye view, you can see that his cavalry cards have always been in a strange position, with Guan Yu at the front, Ma Chao and Zhang Fei on the two wings, and Huang Zhong at the back. The four cards maintain this formation and rush forward together. Guan Yu strikes with a knife, Ma Chao makes up for the damage, Zhang Fei cuts off a lot of health from the thick-skinned card, and Huang Zhong follows closely from a distance and shoots a sharp arrow, knocking off half of the health of the opponent's highest health card.
Looking at the critical hit damage data popping up on the screen, fans exclaimed: "The critical hit of gold cards is so high!" "I love gold cards the most. It feels so good to hit them with a critical hit, but gold cards are very fragile. Uncle Pang's card may be counter-controlled." "Uncle Pang is really brave for not bringing a healing card. If something goes wrong and he gets killed instantly, it will be troublesome..."
For Huakaihualu to have such a high win rate, he is not a fool. He had long discovered that there was no crowd control or healing in Fatty Uncle's deck. Such a gold deck has a high output, but its defense is also terribly low. He immediately summoned the flower-based strong control card "Epiphyllum", and was about to release the illusion strong control skill of "Epiphyllum", but at this moment, Lin Daiyu appeared, waved her slender jade hand decisively, and beautiful petals fluttered - Daiyu buried the flowers, and she killed you directly without any hesitation!
This predictive ability is simply amazing!
The fans were all wide-eyed. They had originally come to watch the game with the intention of just looking at the cards and joining in the excitement. Everyone knew that Uncle Fatty should be pretty good, but when they actually saw the game, they realized that Uncle Fatty was actually that good!
The Epiphyllum on the opposite side was killed instantly by Daiyu before she could even use her skills. She really died with regrets...
After Daiyu killed the opponent's strong control card in seconds, Liu Bei came out right after her and put a gold-based death-proof shield on Guan Yu, who was beaten to death in the front line, and at the same time activated the three brothers' joint skill - Peach Garden Oath.
Just as Guan Yu and Zhang Fei finished a round of fighting, the eldest brother appeared and said: Let's do it again.
So, fans saw a very bloody scene - Guan Yu and Zhang Fei carrying swords and spears, rushed into the flower cluster again and chopped the poor plants fiercely. Guan Yu even killed a bloody card with one sword because of the true damage feature of ignoring defense. It was extremely violent and he didn't listen to reason!
Hua Kai Hua Luo was terrified and had no choice but to use the whole group's healing skills to save their lives, but the next moment, Xie Mingzhe activated Ma Chao's acceleration - all the cavalry group's skills were cooled down, and he began to retreat as a group.
This actually imitates Tang Muzhou's cooling-down style of play, but with Ma Chao's acceleration, the retreat speed will be faster.
The audience with a bird's-eye view can find that even when retreating in a melee situation, Uncle Fatty's cards still maintain a very perfect formation. Huang Zhong is protected in the middle and cannot be hit by the opponent's skills. Zhang Fei and Ma Chao each retreat in different directions to avoid being hit by the opponent's group attack at the same time. Guan Yu, who has a damage-free shield, walks at the back to block skills for his teammates.
Guan Yu, who was walking at the end, was targeted and his gold shield disappeared. He eventually died after withstanding a large amount of damage.
At this time, 3 cards of Flowers Bloom and Flowers Fall had been killed.
Xie Mingzhe relied on the speed bonus to withdraw from the 30-meter attack range, but the opponent's long-range card was chasing him closely, so Xie Mingzhe had to summon Zhao Yun.
Changshan Zhao Zilong is not only good-looking, but also very flexible. With the "Seven Ins and Seven Outs" skill activated, he can sprint seven times in a row in a specified direction and cause damage to the target on the path. Although the amount of damage is not high, it can stop the opponent's pursuit!
Xie Mingzhe's deck did not have any healing cards, so he decided to sacrifice Zhao Yun to protect his teammates.
Zhao Zilong really lived up to his high expectations. His flexible seven in and seven out operations stunned the audience. He made seven consecutive sprints without any mistakes. Every time he hit the opponent's card in a straight line, it was too terrifying...
What's more troublesome is that when Zhao Yun is at low health, he can self-destruct, activating the explosive skill "Full of Courage" to cause a wave of explosive damage to the surroundings!
Although he died, he killed a low-health card on the opponent's side, so it was not a loss at all.
After the cooldown time of Huang Zhong, Ma Chao and Zhang Fei cards ended, Xie Mingzhe activated Ma Chao's acceleration. Even though Ma Chao and Zhang Fei had low health, he was not afraid and rushed forward directly to kill the opponent's flower cards.
This approach is actually very smart. He has more cards and his opponent has fewer cards. The one-for-one strategy will make the opponent more and more passive.
In the end, Fat Uncle cut off 7 of the opponent's cards in a row, and he only had Huang Zhong and Liu Bei left, thus securing his first victory in this game!
Fans were excited watching the live broadcast screen.
Uncle Fat is simply a god!
Not only can he make various handsome and beautiful character cards, his operation during the game is also extremely delicate and calm. His prediction ability and positioning ability are already first-class among netizens, and even in the professional league, he is not inferior at all!
Many fans couldn't help but sigh: "You are the right fan of our Pang Pang. I don't know how to praise the uncle enough." "I saw many people in the forum say that they were completely defeated by Pang Uncle in the arena. I didn't believe it. Today is really an eye-opener!" "Is this the first time for everyone to watch the live broadcast? Pang Uncle used to attract fans with cards. Starting today, there will definitely be many more fans who like his competitive skills!" "Pang Uncle, you are the pride of the fans. I look forward to your entry into the professional league. I will definitely buy tickets to support you then!"
Xie Mingzhe was so focused on the game that he didn't realize that his fans were growing in number. His personal page followers surged again, breaking through the 2 million mark!
After the first game, he found out that his opponent's level was indeed quite good, and was considered top-notch among netizens, but to be frank, his awareness and reaction were still a little behind his.
Xie Mingzhe was full of confidence and used the same tactics again in the second game to defeat the opponent.
2:0, won the top 100 qualifying match, Fat Uncle successfully advanced to the final round!
As expected, he got a ticket to the professional league.
But he will not be satisfied with this, because he wants to win the championship in this Masters Invitational.
As Chen Qianlin's apprentice and Tang Muzhou's junior fellow, he joined the alliance as the Grandmasters champion so as not to bring shame to his master's school!
The author has something to say:
The bug of the plant card has been fixed. The second card made by Chen Qianlin has been changed to [Black Elderberry]. Thank you for your support!