Been a while since I've posted something here and I apologize for it. My original ideas that I had for the blog ended up being used in my "Waking the Dragons" Youtube series which has pretty much killed alot of post ideas I had on here. Why? Well simply put I don't want to post something on here only to take everything I've written and regurgitate it onto Youtube. Instead I'll just post some other stuff on here, such as how my few trips to Locals turn out. Let's begin!
Due to my work schedule I usually only get one Saturday off per month which limits how often I'm able to duel people IRL. Thus its usually a bit of a special occasion when I'm able to come down to Comicreaders and take part in the tournaments. This month is especially awesome in that I got TWO Saturdays off and two chances to go and participate. The first time around I took Miracle Heroes as my main deck with Blackwings for on the side testing and both performed well. Unfortunately in that tournament I got sacked out by Six Samurai in the first round and due to the small number of people that come to the tournies losing even one round will cost you a top finish, regardless of winning your remaining matches 2-0.
That said I was feeling pretty good that barring some really bad luck I would do alot better this time around and decide to stick with Miracle Heroes as my main deck while bringing a surprise to use in for fun duels on the side. I arrive downtown at about 11:30 and hit up Tramps to buy some packs and see if they have the Mega Man Tribute artbook yet. Sadly they didn't but I DID see Duelist Revolution packs in...at 10 bucks a piece. No thank you. I get a D-Hero Plasma tin (pulled Ulti Broww) and Extreme Victory packs (pulled Ulti Wonder Magician) before finding out that starting next year Tramps will be holding their Yu-Gi-Oh! Tournaments on Sundays and Pokemon Tournaments on Saturday. This is great as I get the chance to play people more than once a month! I can do decent testing now! On the other hand this means I'm probably going to play Pokemon even less than I do now as between the two games, I prefer Yu-Gi-Oh! far more and if I had a choice between either tournament I'd go with it over the mons. Delighted at this news I head over to Readers.
While there I see they have the Psyren manga in stock which I immediately nab (shit's awesome) and buy some HA 5 Packs (pulled only 2 Gem-Knights) and more Extreme Victory Packs (pulled Power Gladiator, Mystic Piper and 2 Rush Rhino). I go in to meet the others and chat it up while doing some trades. I'm able to get my hands on a much needed Koa'ki Meiru Boulder, 2 Smashing Horn, 1 D.D. Designator, 1 Dark General Freed, 2 Gem-Knight Fusion, Gold Enemy Controller, Fabled Ragin and Super Rare Masked Dragon (!!). With these I've now got all that I require to make the Koa'ki Meiru deck, add more to my collection binder while aiding my Dragunity Extra deck since I'm running a build with Cerburrel. I do some duels with both of my decks before the tournament begins. I'm paired up against someone that's new and before we can begin our match some late entries show up, so things have to be redone. New pairings are announced and I'm going up against Magnus, the guy who got Top 8 at the Winnipeg Regionals I went to;
Round 1 - vs Tengu Guide Plants (0-2)
He wins the dieroll and gets a Thunder King + Dustshoot off on me, revealing my hand of Alius, E-Call, Dark Hole, Dustshoot, Gemini Spark and Maxx "C". I lose the C and he asks if I'm going to blow up his Rai-Oh and search Stratos. I decide to do this when looking back on it, I should have held the Dark Hole and tried to crash with T-King. I lose my set Dustshoot to his end phase MST and we kinda trade blows (I lost my set Gemini Spark to another MST) until he summons Ally of Justice Catastor and I have NO means of getting rid of it! I sit behind Alius + a D Prison I got off of Duality hoping to draw into an out when I top into Super Poly and scream mentally. Why? Because I could have summoned Escuriado if he were out here yet! My god that card is going to be so good. Eventually he tops Heavy Storm and attacks over my Alius. My Monster Reborn into Stratos into Alius into Utopia attempt is killed by Warning and I concede.
Game 2 he's able to clear my board of monsters with removal while MSTing any Gemini Sparks I set while I bounce his Synchro monster with Evacuation Device but after that, we both draw spells and traps! Worse yet I draw into all 3 of my sided Dimensional Fissure in a row and as the result I end up on the receiving end of a Maxx "C" beat down. That's right, I'm being poked for 500 damage and I can't stop it X_x. I'm eventually able to rid it, summon Thunder King (which he Warning'd, then I Solemn'd) and I start swinging. The game ends when I attack and he chains Mind Crush to get rid of a limited card that I didn't have (showing him my 2 D-Fissure). This leaves his field completely bare, allowing him to drop the Gorz which I've got no out to. At 1250 LP with no form of protection my T-King is not going to survive the next turn so I scoop it up.
Once again I'm paired up against arguably the best player in the City in the first round (seriously it's happened so many times that we both have said "again!?" when the pairings are announced) who as usual draws what he needs while I don't. Our duels usually come down to who has the better hand and what decks are being played (Mags will usually, but not all the time run something that has recently topped a YCS and then edit it while I've mostly used Disaster Dragon. I've only managed to defeat him a few times due to opening the nuts, otherwise we've had close duels where he draws the one possible out to my board or I draw what I would have needed to STOP the derping a turn too late. I've also only gotten one match win against him and that was because I was running super sacky Debris Plants and drew the outs to his outs). One day I'm going to 2-0 him. I swear.
Anyway I lose the round which eliminates me from any chance of topping so my remaining duels are meaningless, but I still continue for the sake of competing against actual, real people instead of the retards we call Dueling Network users.
Round 2 - vs Watts (2-0)
Raise your hand if you cringe whenever you see someone play with an unsleeved deck that has effects that shuffle it. Those poor cards. Anyway this is a pretty easy duel. The guy was playing a new deck and probably was still new to the game while my deck was running as any Hero deck does. Alius and Stratos were able to put pressure on his monsters while Gemini Spark cleared away that ever annoying Wattcastle field spell and Maxx "C" + Compulsory Evacuation Device killed his Synchro plays. Miracle Fusion into Shining puts the game out of reach.
Game 2 was the same as the first. I summon a beater, spark stuff while compulsing his Synchros after plussing with Maxx "C" and Shining was a beast.
Round 3 - vs Gladiator Beasts (2-0)
He sets a monster and some backrow while I open Alius + Spark and an E-Call. Remembering how my duel with Magnus went I go with the Alius first and swing at his monster, which turns out to be a GB Hoplomus. I immediately spark it knowing that GBs hate having their monsters killed from my experiences testing AHL Glads. I set some backrow which keeps him from getting an attack through and another Alius is able to apply the pressure (also getting a Solemn Warning on Gyzarus helped). Unfortunately this turned out to be a not so good GB deck as I saw him playing the equip spells and Wabokus and trying to War Chariot my Stratos' effect without a GB on the field. I win this one easily.
The second game was pretty much identical except I get Dustshoot off and leave him with a hand of S/T and the Level 5 GB. Compulse, Book, Prison and Spark kept him from attempting to Toolbox while a timely Effect Veiler before his battle phase allowed me to survive a turn without monsters and not be hurt by those tag effects.
Thus my tournament ends with a 2-1 finish and once again I miss out on the top (and after an unsatisfying first round loss I go up against two newbies so those wins felt very empty). I see the finals consists of decks that Heroes match up well against and ALOT of people are running T.G. hybrids. T.G. Plants, T.G. Chaos, T.G. STUN, T.G. Gadgets, T.G. T.G.! This is why I ran 3 Dimensional Fissure in my side deck! I also noticed that a pair of experienced players had ripped off a new guy and one of his friends chewed them out for it. The new kid traded a BLS Envoy for 3 shitty Malefic cards which I totally agree was a rip off.
Mini-Rant that kind of stuff in general pisses me off. It's not right that people will take advantage of guys who don't know any better, especially little kids. I find that kind of stuff fucking deplorable and those guys should be ashamed of themselves. Not only do I never plan to trade with them, even if they have good stuff in their binders (they probably value their stuff too high anyway) I plan on avoiding them as much as I can. For that they did, they've lost my respect as duelists and as people. I don't care if that's how the world of Yu-Gi-Oh! is nor do I care that some of the most famous Yugi-Tubers not only do that, but urge people to do the same. That's still something distasteful and its one of the reasons Yu-Gi-Oh! gets such a bad rap compared to Pokemon TCG and the upcoming Card Fight Vanguard. Our playerbase is made up of the biggest douchebags in TCG gaming.
Okay, enough raging and onto the fun part of this entry. My funsies duels! I decided on a whim the night of the tourney to rebuild an old deck of mine that I had been working on since Feburary of 2010. That's right. I'm talking about this one;
Divine Grace - Northwemko. Aww yeah, fun times!
I won't go into much detail over what this deck does as I want to do a video profile on it. Long story short is this is a Ritual Lockdown deck with some Chaos added in.
The decks I faced were Anti-Meta T.G., Six Samurai, Ice Barrier, Genex, Counter Fairies in addition to the Plant Synchro, Zombie, Dragon, Hero and GB decks I went up against in DN testing. Counter Fairies was extremely difficult as he always had a Seven Tools or Dark Bribe to negate my Decrees and I ended up decking myself out in game 3 instead of waiting for him to deck out on his turn, but otherwise my results were very favourable as in almost all these games I was able to achieve lockdowns that resulted in scoops. The power of disabling Special Summons, Traps and Spells with a destruction immune monster is really daunting to get around and when rematched it forces the opponent to play in a timeclock manner; they HAVE to get their shit going as fast as they can or lose. The addition of Xyz summons really helped the deck in putting out beaters to work alongside Northwemko (Utopia) and having Chimeratech Fortress Dragon in the extra made for much lulz when I Monster Reborn'd Cyber Dragon and fused it with 2 Genex Synchros to drop a 3000 beater.
This is why you have cards in your Extra Deck, even if you don't Synchro or Fuse.
All in all it was a good day as I got cards I needed to finish one of my decks and I was able to shock and amaze people with my "original deck" in Divine Grace - Northwemko (such a lockdown strategy had never been seen before to some of the guys there) while getting some nice pulls from packs. Still upset I couldn't get what I needed for Gishki and Gem-Knights, though.
Until next time!
