Top 8 at the Venice Regional. It was a very special event, full of both amazing and really awful emotions. As for the Swiss rounds and the top cut, I’ll post all the matchups later on. I played Enel — the deck is extremely solid, even though the matchup against Nami still feels like praying to the god of luck every single time (4 Varie are absolutely necessary for that matchup). Not much more to say about the deck itself. The current meta doesn’t really excite me, but playing Enel basically allows you to consistently go X-2 in most cases and then hope to make top cut. I’m really happy with this result because after a disappointing World Championship, I needed a result like this to start believing in myself again. The best moment I experienced this weekend was thanks to Roberto Rondino(@RobertoOPTCG). We played against each other, and on my lethal attack he played double spell and said, “I block.” Without overthinking it, I scooped, told him he had been a bit lucky since he had literally seen everything, and walked away smiling because there wasn’t much else I could do. While we were waiting for the next round, he thought back to the match and realized that my lethal had actually gone through, because with double spell his leader was at 11k and my Senor Pink was also 11k. He literally chased me through the venue to tell me, and even though I was completely fine with the result because I hadn’t noticed it myself, he still wanted to go to the judges and change the result. To me, this is the beauty of the One Piece community and the bond that has been created between players. After all these years, we’ve all become friends. So thank you, Robi, sincerely, for what you did. It wasn’t something to take for granted. The negative part of the weekend instead comes from the fact that a 14-year-old kid, at his very first event, got his deck stolen. Even though both @LuigiAmatoTCG and I tried to help find it, it never showed up, and he even had to drop from Sunday’s Treasure Cup. Leaving aside the deck’s economic value — which honestly wasn’t even that high (and if it had been, it would’ve only made things worse) — I find this absolutely disgusting. Especially when someone approaches card games while still being a kid, the community should protect them, not take advantage of them like vultures. For me, this was a missed opportunity to show the beautiful side of this community, something that unfortunately gets ruined by a few people who can only be described as rats. To finish, congratulations to @fedemeco_ — an incredible player, despite playing a deck with… questionable qualities (lol). Four Italians have won the last four Regionals. That’s just proof that in Italy, at least in this game, an incredible amount of work is being done, and I’m proud of that. Match up: 1) Enel W 2) Nami W 3) Lucy W 4) Lucy @RobertoOPTCG W❤️ 5) Croco (live) W 6) Nami W 7) Nami W 8) Enel L 9) Enel L 10) Nami W Top cut: 32 (Enel) WLW 16 (Lucy) WLW 8 (Nami) @fedemeco_ LL