Entering the Field: Clarmelia Paunil

An evil falls and a legend rises. However, not every hero is remembered. Come and hear an untold tale of a Zodiac Brave.

Hello!  Welcome to our first piece in a series we like to call, "Entering the Field."  In this series of articles we will be shining the spotlight on the very special players in the community.  For this article, we will be featuring Clarmelia Paunil, known for her skill with Mono Lightning and her love for the Fire element. She is also a homegrown product of the NorCal community and has one of the greatest stories of improvement in FFTCG.

Let’s get started! Introduce yourself; tell me about your favorite Final Fantasy title and characters, and how you got started with the FFTCG.

I'm Clarmelia. A friend of mine (Jeff L.) convinced me to play a few games with him a while back and promised I wouldn’t have to spend any money. I ended up getting way too into it, and it turns out, Jeff lied. I’ve now been playing for a full year. Facebook memories actually reminded me recently about my first night showing up at Isle of Gamers on a Saturday when only Bryan “Blue” Lue and Brian Gerbi were there. So Jeff L. and I played a few games with them, and they were super friendly and helped us feel welcome. We’ve been playing ever since! My favorite FF game is FFX mostly because of nostalgia as it was my first. Auron, Gladio, and Ignis are my husbandos (in that specific order). My favorite characters are actually probably Gladio and Ignis, character-wise. Shuyin also makes the list because he's just so insane and has the worst reasons for being a villain, but they're also just so personal, so it’s pretty relatable.

So every community has them. One or a few. You know, those individuals who don’t just like Fire, they LOVE it. They’re usually very vocal about it too. What’s the story for you? The characters, the card effects, or is it just the color red?

I actually started with playing Water Earth Monsters because in my first few packs, I managed to pull a Mira and 2 Gau, so I ran with it. It was tough because I was always afraid to swing, and I played far too defensively. A few months in, I was kind of depressed about how poorly I seemed to be doing. Deck building is not my strong suit, and card games in general take a while for me to warm up to. Frankly, I find it embarrassing that it takes me longer to pick up on rules, card synergies, etc., And playing alongside Jeff L, who has a natural affinity for building decent decks, I could see improvement in his play and none in my own.

Phillip Marciano suggested I try expanding, and showed me the Fire VI package. It forced me to be more aggressive in my playstyle, and with Cyan giving all VI forwards Brave, I didn't have to be afraid to swing. I actually won an event at Isle one night with it and the endorphin high was real. So I ran with it. It eventually got way too slow to keep up with even mid game decks in Opus 4, and had no shot against against aggro decks like Chocobos, so I moved on to Fire/Ice.

Fire is where it all started, huh? You started out near the bottom, but now you’ve become quite the decent player and even scratch the top tables at many events. Can you share your journey of improvement?

I finally felt like I was improving after switching decks and could see what was happening. I got more competitive. I started going every Friday night whether or not my buddy could go with me. I'd ask people if they were showing up to practice on off days.

It's really not an exaggeration to say that as a competitive player, I was raised by the Bay area/TBZ/Zodiac Braves community. My grinding paid off. I made it into Opus 4 Champs in the local circuit. I lost immediately in the first round, but I had gotten the taste of blood in my mouth, and I wanted to become more competitive. But once again, I hit a wall.

By ARG in San Jose, I was unhappy with everything I was playing and having to face the harsh reality that sometimes to improve, you can't play your favorite element when the meta just isn't letting you succeed. I did something that was both fun and hard: I spent several weeks on my "trip through the elements." I loved Fire but I knew that to optimize my decks and my playstyle, I needed to have a much, much better grasp of all the elements and everything they offered, if only to figure out how to beat it with Fire. For about five or six weeks, I played Mono color decks of each element, 1 or 2 elements each week. I asked the best deck builders for solid decks, asking for help and advice constantly. I swallowed my pride and my fear of admitting that needing help meant I didn't belong in the group of strong players. I didn't feel like just because I was a girl I didn't belong; rather, I was just afraid that I wasn't good enough. There are some women in the community that may put a lot of pressure on themselves to prove that they belong. As a female player, I never felt that my struggles were because of my gender, just that as a player, I wasn't good enough yet. I have my own struggles of someone who often self-deprecates but wants to be competitive and surrounds herself with good players.

Anyway, I found that Lightning did a lot of the things I wanted to do with Fire, so I ended up playing that for most of Opus 5 and 6. Opus 7 finally gave me some cards to really help make Fire Aggro work better, and so I ran with it this last circuit event and made Top 4. Looking back, I can be really proud of everything I've done in this last year. I went from never really having played a TCG more than casually to doing pretty well and being able to top events generally.

Thank you for sharing your personal stories and feelings. For your final thoughts, what do you think of FFTCG as a whole and what is your ultimate goal at the end of it all?

I think the game is a lot of fun, and that I hope it grows and matures into a game that has a lot more standardization across rulings, judges, and events. I'm really excited about the changes they've made to the Europe competitive scene for the upcoming year, and I am hoping they bring and/or adapt that to the NA scene. I guess that kind of shows what my ultimate goal is. I'm having so much fun and making friends and I want the community to grow, but my ultimate goal is to become a top contender in the competitive scene. I would like to win Worlds someday, and while it feels kind of selfish to say that, it's probably still my ultimate goal. I do want give a special shout-out and to say that my role model of a good competitive player is someone like Thomas Nguyen of MetaPotion who used to play here, but has since moved back to SoCal. He's the one who built the Lightning deck I tweaked through most of Opus 5-6 for competitive play. He's someone who is a good player, serious about his games, and while he can be super ruthless, you almost never feel bad losing to him. Whether he wins or loses, he does so in such a classy way, and that's the kind of player I want to be.

Thanks so much to Clarmelia once again for doing this interview! We’re so happy we were able to get her unique story and thoughts. Unfortunately, she will be moving away from us in the near future and she will be very dearly missed. We wish you luck in your ultimate goal of improvement and stepping towards the world stage!