Exi Fox

Now that I finished my run at Singapore I want to address the Dhawally drama. First of all I really enjoy the game Riftbound, around May right before unleashed I decided to drop what I was doing and give competitive Riftbound a go. Some of you who know me might know that I am an ex Hearthstone pro, Riftbound is my first physical tcg and it has bene an overwhelming experience mechanically, a lot of rulings/triggers you need to know to play at high opl. Rq Sydney is the first event I went to with a real tryhard mindset, that’s the event I played Dhawally, in R3 while at 3/0. Of all the rqs I played, there isn’t a single opponent I’ve had more frustration to play against than Dhawally. I was expecting a good match since he was houston winner and I never has any issues during previous tournaments in China. Because I play with Chinese cards and a new set came out Dhawally asked for what cards do which is perfectly normal and I explained and translated every time the game proceeds normally, then I blew him out with Aurora and cleared his board which was uncommon at the time in Fiora. As soon as this happened the game changed, playing Aurora my deck is slow and starts with a point deficit, which can be an issue in time. Once I played the aurora and blew him out, Dhawally just started sitting there, with no units thinking of plays while non stop saying hes thinking of a way to win when I had the game completely locked and ends up passing turns with all his runes up while taking 3-4 minutes saying wait wait. While constantly telling me that if it gets to game 3 time he would just concede if he thinks he can’t win with his hand to make me feel more comfortable. Game 2 starts, Dhawally chooses to go first plays 2 drop pass, I keep all 4 cards with complete nuts into Aurora and I play a card called Sheppard heirloom instead of fiora turn 1 to play around moonfall, sheppard heirloom say on play gain 1 exp, spend it to equip, it’s not the first time I played the card in the match, before he asks for the translation again as the card is Chinese again and I give it to him. On his turn he plays Diana and passes, when I play fiora and attempt to equip and ramp with heirloom he tells me I don’t have exp, even though i explain to him how the card works he tells me I didn’t announce the trigger to gain exp and nowhere did I display. He knew what the card did and I previously used it properly with no issue since equipped on same turn. He calls judge and the judge ruled it in his favor and then I appealed to head judge and he ruled that exp had to be displayed at all times which basically means I played a card that does nothing and my way of ramping was gone since heirloom does nothing. To make matters worse we had 2 more judge calls for various other triggers as he’s stalling making me feel compelled to scoop the game on the spot a few turns later. Now game 3 happens, we are already getting close to time, we are shorted quite a bit of time because you never get the full time extension and Dhawally has been stalling a lot of the match and taking his time in sideboard saying he doesn’t know the matchup maybe this card that card. The game proceeds in a crucial exchange I attack my 4 might fiora into his battlefield with a student and Diana play punch first and he was holding up 1 rune he plays a Flash that I Riposte and he then tries to play existential dread to stun my fiora back to blow me out of the game. I thought it was game over until realized that he was actually tapped out and Diana ability was already used. After it was pointed out he said I’m so sorry that looks really bad. At the time I didn’t realize that was actually a way to cheat and thought he was miscounting his runes as mistake but still felt angry about the whole situation and being forced to play fast for points because of time.I don’t believe such an experienced player would be unable to count his runes and in a crucial spot « forget » he could not play the card.