Locals Report - Return of the Salty Duelist

God damn the weather can be a bitch, even for Sask.  In this case we went from having to trudge through slushy sidewalks because of the above 0 temperature to braving arctic wind gusts that cut into the soul itself.

I almost wanted to stay home.  Probably should have.  The next time the weather is this douchy I won't bother.  Just not worth it.

That said for putting up with the weather I rewarded myself with a box of Valiant and pulled alright.  I got the second most valued Secret in the set but no ARK or Exciton Knight which made me sad.  I did pick up some rarity upgrades for other decks, however.  I wasn't judging today so I decided to play the Hieratic Rulers I had been testing on DevPro this week.

Round 1 - vs Dragon Plant (2-1)

Having to play while wanting to use the restroom really does affect your thinking (and lack of sleep) as I basically punted Game 2 on a misplay after dominating game 1.  Then I open with Dracossack + Stardust Game 3 and take it from there.

Round 2 - vs Bujin (1-2)

I don't know what it is but Bujin give every deck I play problems and this was no different.  There has to be a way that I'm supposed to go about battling this deck as trying to force out Crane, Turtle and Hare is an enormous problem in a deck that runs limited monster removal, especially of the non targeting kind.  Game 1 I open with multiple Drains but no monsters to take advantage, Game 2 I burn his resources out and Game 3 I brick.  I was able to take his Yamato with Memory of an Adversary (which I waited too long to do) but can't deal with Honest, Kaiser Colosseum and I forget what else.

Round 3 - vs Noble Knights (2-1)

Game 1 he goes off with the 3700 Artorigus with assloads of protection, but I survive with just enough LP to Blaster his Excaliburn and M7 his Knight and ride to victory.  Game 2 I got Woodhoused and Game 3 I used Memory of an Adversary to take his Artorigus and I put lethal on my board next turn.

Top 4 - vs Chain Beat (0-2)

This game took far too long and I just couldn't do jack shit against his five million floodgate and anti cards.  Must be fucking nice to open with the turn 1 Dimensional Fissure and Thunder King and I can go on.  Game 1 I really only had Trap Stun to work with and couldn't get to Su for the life of me so I lost damn near my whole deck to that DiFi (and later Macro) and Game 2 it was more of the same garbage.  I finally lost it and snapped, swearing and just generally being a ReRe.  In my mind I thought I heard one of the more hipster people in the room snickering so I went back in and did a snarky retarded laugh with utter contempt in my voice.  Then I felt bad and apologized.  Floodgate.dek really brings out the worst in me and I need to work on it.

It's still fucking bull though.  I sided in 3 MST and 2 Wingbeat and couldn't see any of them yet he god draws the perfect setup?  Fuck that shit.

In fact for Regina Locals?  Fuck playing combo decks in general.  The most popular decks at locals are strictly stun based or something derpy; Fire Fist, Bujin, Prophecy, Stun and Dark World.  Playing Dragons right now would be fucking suicide.  I'm better off counter attacking with Anti Anti Meta and few decks do that better than Harpies

...Mistake is pushing 50 dollars?  FUUUUUUUUU-

Props
-I bought a box of Yugioh cards and didn't get completely pooped on for it?  Alot of the commons and rares in the set were actually pretty good, which was why I bought it to begin with.  Even if I didn't get Black Roach Dragon, I'd still have gotten stuff to work with.
-Upgrading Mermails even MORE.
-Getting Scraps!  I just need Orthros at this point!

Slops
-Being not allowed to play Yu-Gi-Oh!

Reflecting on BNU - Part 1 (The Avidgamer Stint)

 It's hard to believe its been 10 years now.  I know how incredibly cheesy this sounds but it really does feel like it wasn't that long ago when in 2004 that a webpage that I could consider to be a home of sorts was opened; 

I'm talking about Mega Man Battle Network Universe, a message board with the premise of 3rd person text based roleplaying (hereby referred to as RPing from this point on) between its members.  For those that may not familiar with the concept think of it as an interactive fanfiction done in real time between other writers.  They were REALLY popular in the early 2000s and I remember being in a few of them during high school.  To make a long story short I came across one based on the Mega Man X series called Cybertropolis and after working my way up from lowly newb to admin through my writing talents (I was bar none the best RPer on the site and had pretty much surpassed even the staff in ability from the get go) I pitched the idea of creating a sister site to CyberT in the form of a Battle Network RP as I saw that the series was REALLY popular with older fans like myself and newer people.  The head Admin who we all call "Jazz" liked the idea and thus Battle Network Universe was born on the website Avid Gamers.  I originally wanted no part in the site itself as I had never played any of the BN games but Jazz insisted I join anyway as he figured given my creativity I'd be able to manage something and so I did.  I took my character from the X series campaign in Obelisk the Green Slayer shown here;

And rebooted him as a Net Navi in the form of Obelisk.exe;

I also created a human operator for him that was basically a spitting image of myself, right down to my name.  I never liked that and regretted not being able to come up with a more flashy operator name for a long time.

Anyway the site started off simple enough.  Sub Boards based on various parts of Battle Network's history were made along with original areas.  A good majority of the members RPed original characters however as alot of people just weren't fond of playing the canon characters which is something I may talk about later.  The admin had the honor of being able to RP multiple characters and they usually had about 3.  These were usually a mix of an OC, Canon character and a boss character for the other members to fight though it was really Jazz that did this the most frequently.  Eventually I got promoted to staff *again* for god knows what reason and ended up being the one who got to RP Lan and Mega Man in addition to myself and Obelisk and later on Prisma Shatterstone and Crystal Man.exe.  That being said things progressed smoothly with a nice little conflict involving eco terrorists followed by some random trying to attack everyone with his own organization but was ultimately snuffed out by the LARGE number of heroes on the site.  The good guy to bad guy ratio between the members was 10 to 1 which is something that looking back on it may have been an issue.

But I digress after some time had passed I decided to try my hand at creating a conflict for the site and I did so with a band of criminals referred to as the "Mavericks."  I even got some of the other members to join my stable!  There were attacks from them along with attacks from Jazz's own criminals that caused quite a bit of havoc on the site.  In addition to this there was an N1 Grand Prix tournament being set up and it was going to be a Zoids Style team tournament with navi groups fighting in royals and stuff.  Obelisk and I were pretty much at the center of the Maverick Storyline due to being the puppet master and due to my talents I had made quite the reputation among the other members as being the guy who usually wrote up massively descriptive, layered posts with strategy behind my fighting.

Which made it all the more exciting when the moment finally came that I fought Jazz.  The reason was simple.  Obelisk posted an open challenge in the Undernet and Jazz accepts after being out of the fold and missing for what I think was several months in story and people were PSYCHED to see this fight happen.  To say that this was a marquee matchup was an understatement as it was a battle between the two best RPers and the two most prominent admins (I got another promotion lulz) and we tore the house down.  The battle ended up being a draw for reasons I don't remember but it's a fight that I still remember to this day and its easily one of my all time favourites.  Jazz at the time was not a great RPer compared to me but that fight made him raise his game and he'd keep improving from there on.

Turns out this would become a thing of mine.  People who became involved with me got better in some manner be it as an RPer or IRL in some cases.  I was like The Undertaker in that sense.  That said the fight left Obelisk so damage he had to be upgraded to his v2 form;

After this things became a little hazy in regards to the Jazz storyline.  He did do some more things but the major focus was on my Maverick Storyline and the N1 Grand Prix as after another incident the big bad leader of the Mavericks appeared and declared he'd be in the tournament.  He also had Obelisk chase him into places unknown and disappear.  Teams are formed and the tournament starts.

Sadly this part of the storyline never get very far as things spiralled out of control due to everyone having some form of finals coming up (it was May ish).  Ultimately Sigma appeared with Obelisk as an ally and they proceeded to OWN everyone.  I actually got complaints for being too much for the people to handle (think a Tier 0 deck like Tele-DAD going up against Cyberdarks.  That was the gap) but it didn't matter as the blow off occurred a few weeks later with Sigma becoming a colossal sized real world Navi that was above the world and everyone banded together to fight him.  Obelisk turns face and sacrifices himself to mortally wound Sigma and leaves Mega Man with his Soul Unison transformation to finish the job;

Charge attack was a 2x3 Slash that ignored Shields, Barriers, Auras and Invis, Elec Chips can be charged up for a x2 damage 9 panel explosion, Ominishoes are active and upon Unison all panels changed to water.

The world is saved and things go back to normal with the heroes taking a vacation at Willy's Water Works.  However shit gets bad and the water works are out of control.  Obelisk's operator returns with a new Net Navi based on my original writing hero but at this point we're all getting fed up with an increasing amount of server crashes from the site's host Avid-Gamers.  Over the last few months it was possible to go days without being to log in which made posting in exciting storylines extremely difficult.  I had often made cracks about AG's shittiness and wished there was an alternative.  Jazz found one in Proboards and the decision to jump ship was unanimous from the userbase...at a cost.

Everything we had done at this point would be discarded.  If we went to a new board we would have to start all over with a clean slate.

So be it.

In the end it was a hell of a ride.  I grew as a writer and RPer despite everyone around me not being up to my level and I got my first real taste of what being a moderator/admin meant.  Dealing with unruly members and whatnot.  I was sad to see everything we all worked on be basically forgotten but I was also jumping at the chance to RP Obelisk again.  I regretted killing him off and hated my new character, so a reset was fine by me.  Thus the new Battle Network Universe was made and everyone moved over as the old site was basically blown up, but not before I took one last screenshot of member activity;

Jesus.  I was a BEAST.  And wow.  Miaka was really fucking active for a newbie.

That being said I hoped you enjoyed this little tale from the past.  With BNU's 10th anniversary coming up I definitely plan on posting more snippets heading into summer.  I don't know when the next one will come but it'll be interesting in its own right as I get to talk about what I call "The Glory Years."

This'll be fun.

Locals Report - Value

This was one of those rare weekends where I get BOTH days off and can go to both my Cardfight!! Vanguard AND Yu-Gi-Oh! Locals.  This also means I could also write two blog posts except in this case I chose not to.  Instead I'd rather make both reports in a single blog post as the content per post ratio is very, very high value and I know some people out there are all about value.

Saturday

I took Dragonic Descendant/Buster to this one as my order for the cards came in a few day before.  Yes I literally ordered the entire deck online.  So sue me.  I knew full well that there would be at least 4 other people I'd have to compete with to build Eradicators so I saved myself the trouble and overpaying just to get all the cards I needed to build the deck as I saw fit.  I ran a build very similar to some Japanese lists I saw with an emphais on Castor and Rising Phoenix to draw into cards but admittedly wasn't able to get a fully ideal build done.

Round 1 - vs Bermuda Triangle (Win)

The guy I played was awful to be honest and Narukami in general are a better deck.  Gauntlet ate up resources early and Descendant did clean up.

Round 2 - vs Royal Paladin (Win)

He milled his only Majesty Lord Blaster and had to switch to Sanctuary Guard Dragon beats but I won it out afterwards.

Round 3 - vs Aqua Force (Lose)

This one pissed me off so much.  Between him missing a ride, me dominating the entire game AND making no misplays he still managed to bullshit a win out of me.  It basically comes down to Descendant attacking and not hitting triggers on both the first attack and the restand as he's able to block everything I throw at him, drop Malestrom Glory on Trans-Core Dragon and kill me because I don't have enough shield to guard the damn thing.  I seriously fucking hate Malestrom Glory with a passion now as it's bullshit I can't Perfect Guard and I need to basically have 5 10k shields because he always gets a crit or some kind of trigger on it.

Round 4 - vs Eradicators (Lose)

This one was kind of back and fourth but unfortunately he hits two triggers off his Twin Drive and I die.

Round 5 - vs Nova Grapplers (Win)

This guy also wasn't good and I rolled him easily.  Now how's THAT for confidence?  I can only beat scrubs but choke against anything competent.

Round 6 - vs Eradicators (Lose)

I take the risk and no guard a Descendant at 4 damage and he crits.  Not much else to say on that.

Round 7 - vs Liberators (Lose)

Stupid plot armour.  That aside this was silly as Megamonkey and I were being weeaboo dramatic ala the anime.

After that we went to Cam's where many things happened, including talk of starting up a Beyblade League.  This was awesome.  LET IT RIP MOTHERFUCKERS.  After that I go home, build Harpies and fall asleep.


Sunday

I get to judge today!  Awesome as I honestly felt like being silly so I brought Chaos Lightsworn Dragon and Funbags with Wings (Harpies).  I also bought a Mermail Deck for a good amount (160) and only need a single Megalo to finish it.  Not going to lie, I missed playing Mermails alot.  One of the things I've really regretted is trading that off.  That and getting rid of my Scraps.  I'm trying to get those back as well for when Factory comes out.  I also picked up Generation Shifts and can now build Fire Kings the legit way.  Onto the tourney!

Quick Reminder - When I judge my opponents automatically win the match and we play things out for fun.  That said I'll say what REALLY went down.

Round 1 - Harpies vs Chaos Dragons (2-1)

Game 1 - I open with Pet Dragon and after wanting to kill myself and he puts BLS, Stardust and stuff on the field to my one Harpie Lady.

Game 2 - I open Summoner Monk and Hysteric Sign and it snowballs from there.  Lightning Chidori clears any real threats and I push for game.

Game 3 - I resolve a Sign again and it goes from there.

Round 2 - Harpies vs DN.dek (2-0)

Honestly this one is not much to write about.  The guy is honestly handicapped and had a 60 card mishmash of things.  Both games I picked apart his board and murdered him with Hysteric Sign.

Round 3 - Harpies vs Spellbooks (2-0)

I was originally going to switch to Chaos here but then I realized I'd be playing against Fate.dek and that'd be bad and I wanted to see the Harpie vs Book matchup.  Hunting Ground cleared Tower and popped face downs, I Torrential'd his Justice with a Maestroke on board and beat him down with Harpies game 1 then Chained a Blue Boy, Warning'd a Priestess and Evac'd Kycoo game 3 with a Dracossack and a Harpie 1 on the board which was enough damage for game

Top cut ended up being Harpies (another guy), Dragunity, Madolche and Chaos Dragon.  Unfortunately I fucked up with the results as a Dark World player was 3 - 0 and I thought he was 2 - 1 (he didn't report his win to me and I misheard what his opponent said) so I ended up costing him a top.  I legitimately felt bad about this but made amends by buying him food after locals at Robins.  While there I showcased the awesome power of Chaos Lightsworn Dragon, smashed the living hell out of Spike Brothers and bounced ideas off my friends for a potential trip to Regionals in Feb.  I may go to this and I may play Lightsworn.

We'll see.

Props
-Descendant/Buster is far and away better than either of those guys with Vowing Sword.  I have to fine tune it but the strategy is very sound.  Buster pressure for 2 turns, then Descendant finish.
-Picking up Mermails and finishing Fire Kings
-Kicking ass with Harpies.  These things are legit good.  Hysteric Party is honestly a viable choice to be hit on the list.

Slops
-Scrubbing out with "the best deck in the game" for Vanguard, until Link Joker come out.  *Shudder*
-The fuckup with the tournament.  I take this stuff very seriously and if it were a regionals there would be consequences.

L-l-l-loc-c-c-cals Rep-p-p-p-ort-t-t-t

First off before I go into this I'd like to take a moment to shamelessly promote my fanfiction;

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9625138/1/Yu-Gi-Oh-X-Stars

It currently has 3 chapters, is based on the concept of the game being played in space in a Star Trek like era and the main character is basically Aki 2.0;

This costume is awful.  I'll need to change this next story arc.

This definitely won't be the last time I discuss any of my writing on here.  Between my Original stuff, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Mega Man Battle Network stuff I've got more than enough subjects to ramble about.  That said back to the report for this locals which can be summed up as IT WAS TOO DAMN COLD.

-50 C is stupid.  I swear we must have been colder than the Arctic.  Whatever its the new banlist and last week I was in some Skype calls with a few of my friends from the Dragon Community discussing what Disaster could do this format.  I decided I'd try some of the things we talked about and took this there;

1 Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon

1 Blaster, Dragon Ruler of Infernos

1 Redox, Dragon Ruler of Boulders

1 Tempest, Dragon Ruler of Storms

1 Tidal, Dragon Ruler of Waterfalls

1 Yamata Dragon

3 Flamvell Guard

3 Masked Dragon

2 Blizzard Dragon

2 Koa'ki Meiru Drago

2 Delta Flyer

2 Exploder Dragon

1 Debris Dragon

1 Totem Dragon

3 Dragon Shrine

3 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Book of Moon

1 Burial from a Different Dimension

1 D.D.R. - Different Dimension Reincarnation

1 Gold Sarcophagus

2 Castle of Dragon Souls

2 Fiendish Chain

1 Burst Breath

1 Bottomless Trap Hole

1 Compulsory Evacuation Device

1 Torrential Tribute

1 Mecha Phantom Beast Dracossack

1 Number 11: Big Eye

1 Gaia Dragon the Thunder Charger

1 Abyss Dweller

1 Star Eater

1 Trident Dragion

1 Red Dragon Archfiend

1 Scrap Dragon

1 Stardust Dragon

1 Stardust Spark Dragon

1 Ancient Fairy Dragon

1 Black Rose Dragon

1 Exploder Dragonwing

1 Dark Hole

2 Smashing Ground

1 Eradicator Epidemic Virus

2 Vanity's Emptiness

2 Rivalry of Warlords

2 Dust Tornado

2 Light-Imprisoning Mirror

2 Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror

To further prove how serious I was about this, I busted out my 2012 Regional Mat that I got with this deck.  How would I fare?  Well...

Round 1 - vs Chaos Dragon (2-1)

Game 1 was a bit disappointing.  Despite being able to establish REDMD and Stardust with backrow I was not able to keep the deck from exploding and establishing an unbreakable board.  Games 2 and 3 were "protect the Drago."  The game was somewhat difficult to keep concentrated on due to an autistic slapnut constantly ReReing it up over what is banned and what is not.  You want to know how to figure out what's banned?

www.google.com

Round 2 - vs Photons (2-0)

Naturally I have an advantage on this deck because of Koa'ki Meiru Drago.  However I also know that this guy plays a fuckton of anti monster cards to protect Galaxy-Eyes and Fegrand so I have to force that stuff out with Masked and Rulers, but ultimately win the first game without too much trouble and grind out the second game.

Round 3 - vs Dual Axis Fire Fist (1-2)

Game 1 he opens up the combo which ends up with a Horse Prince, Rooster, a Tensu and a Tensen set.  At this time I have no real way of breaking such a board with my main.  Don't get me started on Fire Formation Gyokku always hitting my Book, Bottomless or Torrential and never the bluff Castle of Dragon Souls or Shrine that I set.  Game 2 he doesn't open the combo and his deck functions more like 4-Axis.  Despite Vanity's Emptiness in play I win because Blizzard Dragon and Koa'ki Meiru Drago are beasts in a Grind.  Game 3 he opens the combo with a Swallow coming, pops my monsters and kills me with Tensen.  Finals ends up being the same.

Top 4 - vs Gravekeepers (2-0)

I damn near lost Game 1.  I was down 100 LP to his over 7000 at one point but then I realized "wait he's playing Decree, he can't stop me from doing ANYTHING!" and dropped Yamata Dragon, swung to a hand that allowed me to revive Blaster from grave, make Dracossack and proceeded to stomp on him.  The look on his face and the way he seemed after I managed to make the Game Plane in a turn told me everything.  He was disappointed that once again Dragons can still function.

Game 2 I again smacked him around because Gravekeepers without traps are not threatening in the least.

Finals - vs Dual Axis Fire Fist (1-2)

See round 3.  More of the same.  It looks like I need a great deal of disruption to stop that Leopard/Tensu combo and the sheer advantage it brings.  That and actually drawing them.  Fiendish, BtH and Evac would have been hella nice game 3.  And fuck Gyokku.

An ultimate Tenki was pulled but I couldn't get it.  I did pick up everything I needed for Harpies so that'll be a thing in future reports.  Then we went to Robins and I played games of Vanguard trying out a very, VERY different tactic than what I normally do.  It doesn't work with Eradicators.

In regards to the deck itself these are some things I've noticed;

-Shrine is definitely a good card.  The grave setup is really, REALLY good and it's technically a card that when maxed out gives you a 34 card deck.

-I...don't really like Debris.  Without a constant target like Kidmodo or Mythic Wood he's just not as helpful.

-Yamata is far superior to Light and Darkness Dragon.

-Masked Dragon is the best of the normal summonable monsters.

-Castle was good for what it was.

-Burst Breath is amazing.  Definitely better than Mirror Force for this deck.  Chainability is integral.

-D.D.R. I'm on the fence about.  We'll see how 2 work.

Props

-Playing Disaster in a tournament for the first time since GAOV's release.  Damn it's been too long.

-Converting yet another person to the Disaster Dragon philosophy.

-Getting Harpies.  Funbags with Wings will be a deck!

Slops

-My Fire Fist games.  They went so badly.

-The cold.