My corgi deck was finally completed. I wasn’t following the most optimal recipe because for that I’d have had to visit the Data Centrer, and I had my reasons to not do so while Blacky refused to guide me around. I built it based on the intended gameplay and my budget form labbying the entirety of Mariana’s deck.

Corgi units were good at keeping your hand full but not at disputing the board with an acceptable tempo. So, among them, I included spells: cheap but often conditional removal, a few negates, and a couple battle tricks to save my units from dire situations. In addition to that, I added a single pug fetching pug to the deck: it was the perfect tutor for the mixed-breed Porgi. It was a pug, it was a corgi, it had the worst of both worlds. It costed 3 and had the following effect:

Breathing issues. Waterproof butt. Walkies: discard up to three corgis or pugs that cost 3 or less, activate their walkies and legstretch effects. You cannot discard another copy of Porgi with this effect.

Waterproof butt meant they took 1 less damage from water-based spells and waterdogs. Pretty useless most of the time, as Retrievers and Poodles, the most common waterdogs, were not breeds meant for direct combat.

I spent a few moments in my room tweaking the deck further, deciding on the amount to run of each card, and, when I was done, I headed for the Warden’s room.

The whole way there I feared getting lost, or killed by dogs made of fire or lava or coke flavored soda. When I arrived, the warden wasn’t even there, so I grabbed bag of tennis balls and sued it as a puff to take a nap. I assumed no vile entities would dare enter the room where a giant mechanical anthropomorphic jackal spent the majority of tis time.

Of course, I was right, like always, and woke up not-dead. Well, not more dead than usual. Getting isekaied by a truck and all…

Eventually the Warden, dressed in a pink suit and wearing a pin depicting Ryan Gosling, returned to the room.

“Hey, what were you up to?” I asked so casually.

“In the data center, watching a film with the Clerk.”

“How did the Clerk leave the store and reach the Data Centrer without me noticing? I was labbying cards there not long ago.”

“We can teleport and create doubles of ourselves. It comes with the job.” He took a cigarette out from between the plates of his body and began smoking it. “Do you want one? Oh, wait, you cannot, it would be almost cannibalism!”

I noticed certain annoyance in his voice.

“You found out about my discorgi deck?”

“Yes, you absolute tobaccoless fag.”

I crossed my arms and dedicated him a tired stare. “Can you go on a day without calling me a slur?”

“No. The goddess pays me an extra if I do.”

I groaned and signaled him to being a game. There was only one reason for me to be in his room.

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It took several games for me to get used to the flow of the game, but once I reached stage seventeen, I had it figured out pretty well.

I went second this game, so the Warden drew his five cards and I observed his total life points: 30. He was playing a single category deck.

He played his first card: kibble surge. That clued me in: he was playing big dogs. The card gave him two extra kibbles that turn, all for the price of one. He invested one of the extra kibbles and played a second kibble surge. Then he played a 2-cost 3/5, an old Kangal that sat like a statue, tall and proud. It had the following text:

Cannot attack as long as your health is above 6.

The Warden drew from his deck and passed. With only 3 cards in his hand, he was running out of options. But he was playing a ramp deck, most likely. He would soon try to overwhelm me with tall units my deck had no way to deal with, save throwing a wall of Corgis against them. And, what would you know, corgis function very well as bricks. If you asked me which dog would make the perfect building material for the walls of a madhouse, I’d say without a shadow of a doubt “corgis”.

In my turn, I considered the options in my hand. I had three 2-drops and two 1-cost spells to get some annoying shit out of the way: nothing I could use in a first turn. I invested and drew from my deck, ending my turn.

Turn two came and the Warden played Kibble Up, gaining an empty pellet of omnikibble. Then he drew the only card he had on his kibble deck and passed.

I played Cool Corgi, a 2/2 for 2 that had a fluffy butt and a donned a pair of darker-than-fog-of-war shades. He had a legstretch effect of adding Cool shades to your hand, and in turn, cool shades had the following effect:

When you play a corgi while this card is in your hand, add a cool counter to it. Consume three cool counters to make the shades regrow the amputated Corgi.

What this meant was that the card transformed onto another copy of Cool Corgi.

I drew from the kibble deck and passed.

“Hey, Mauro, how do you feel about being robbed?” The warden asked, donning a shit-eating grin, staring smugly at a card on his hand.

“Nostalgic,” I answered in earnest.

His smile quickly went away, “Holy messiah, stop being a fucking latino for a single fucking game.”

I raised a finger and shook it while closing my eyes. “Wishing for impossible things, are we?”

The Warden slapped the kibble card onto an inexistent table. I zoomed on it to read its text.

If your kibble deck is empty, steal 1 kibble pellet from the adversary.

The dark blue ball of mysterious bleu substance broke free form my side of the field and floated slowly through the air, until it inserted itself as a refilled pellet on The Warden’s side. I’ll say goodbye for the two of us by Exposé started playing as this happened.

“Do you have the rights for that?”

The Warden let out a whistling laugh.

“What are they gonna do, send an interdimensional DMCA?”

The warden then played a 4 cost 7/7. IT was a massive Kangal with a hearth inserted on his chest. In said hearth, a boulder was being heated over the fire.

I checked his text, to see why it had such big stats to begin with; every turn, this massive dog consumed one unit of omnikibble.

MAURO: 26

WARDEN: 30

Nobody had attacked yet, and his board was already a collection of walls. The warden drew from his deck and my turn came. He had two cards in hand now, having used most of his resources to ramp. If I could set up a veritable wall of corgis, I’d be fine.

I played my kibble card, discarding the top two units from my deck. One of them was Corgi pup, that played itself from the Rainbow Bridge when discarded. So I already had 3/3 of stats on the board. Pretty good, considering he only had 10/12 of raw pummeling power. I was fine.

Fine as in, about to be flattened to the size of fine print.

I summoned another one of my two drops, as I had just the two kibble. Twerking corgi. I don’t need to describe this one. I refuse. Get a mental image of… of a corgi twerking. Then bleach your brain. He had 2/1 stats, Lick Wounds and the following Walkies effect:

Discard the top 3 units from a player’s deck, then shuffle it.

I targeted myself with it and, ignoring the fluffy butt twerking centimeters away from my face, checked the Rainbow bridge to see what had been discarded. “Fuck me!” I calmly shouted out loud in a non-whisper: Pug fetching pug had fallen prey to the mill.

I drew from my kibble deck and ended my turn.