YGO Locals Report - Punting intensifies

Doing the same thing as last time where I include a mini Vanguard report as I had a chance to test some decks and the following things happened;

-Aqua Force with the new Trial Deck is incredibly underwhelming at the moment.  Thavas and Magnum Assault are amazing but without Kelpie Rider, Nicky you're SO slow at going off compared to the rest of the decks.  I want to say going straight up Malestrom Reverse is the better way but I was not drawing optimally with that deck either.  I'll see how Tetra Drive/Thavas and Tetra Burst/Zaharias works now.
-Musketeers with Sylvia are far better than what I had before.  The turn 2 rush the deck has is right up there with Aqua Force if you hit anything remotely decent off your top calls.  Cecillia was passable.
-Royal Paladin vs Kagero was stupid on Saturday as I either crit sacked to win or Megamonkey 6th Damage Heal'd and killed me with the Cross.  Game 2 he pulled off 3 of them!  Thing Saver and Saint Blow are dumb.

Now onto the Yu-Gi-Oh! portion of the day.  Initially I was not sure if I wanted to play and even considered just sleeping it off but ultimately the notion of this being potentially the best locals we'd have for a long while made me participate.  I was torn between using Nekroz or building Heroes but in the end blue cards won as I didn't have the time to construct a Masked Hero deck out of thin air and the 2nd place list from YCS Bogota had really solid theory behind it so I went with it substituting Vanity's Emptiness for a 3rd Valkyrus, a decision I would come to second guess alot.

Round 1 - vs Satellarknights (2-0)

He didn't have his Seraphs yet and his build was not good at all so I steamrolled him with Denko and well timed MSTs.

Round 2 - vs Yosenju (2-1)

Not much I can say on this one as I had Denko Game 1, overextended Game 2 and got killed by Raigeki after taking some heavy damage Game 2 and Game 3 I had 2 Decrees for his traps and MST for his scale in order to keep Secret Move off.

Round 3 - vs Nekroz (2-1)

I opened really strongly going first with a potential Djinn lock game 1 (without protection mind you...) but opted to pass it up in favour of what I thought was a play that would have put me in a position to go off in following turns but misplayed with my search effects instead.  The result made me say "fuck it" and scoop Game 1 before my turn ended and we sided out our Djinns.  Nord's hand was pretty bad Game 2 as he had no Valks to stop either of my pushes and in Game 3 I had Maxx "C" and Veiler for his Valk + Unicore play which allowed me to Trish and win.

Round 4 - vs Something (2-0)

I think there was a round 4 and if there was I won it as I didn't lose a match in swiss.  I can't remember for the life of me if this happened.

Top 8 - vs Burning Abyss (2-1)

Game 1 I got beat to death by a Mathman because bricking + being a retard can lose you games.  Then I resolved Trish and Brio lots in the other games.

Top 4 - vs Infernoid (2-0)

I won't dive too much into this one as the match itself was iffy as he chained Void Seer to my Trish and we had it ruled that Trish would not banish what was on field but would hit the hand and yard in this instance which allowed me to out his board and Djinn Lock Game 1 while in Game 2 he was able to fuck with my Graveyard with his guys for a bit, I Trished him again and won.  After the match he told me that he looked up rulings on Wiki and it said that in the situation we had earlier with Trish and Void Seer that Trish would have fizzled.  That's unfortunate but these things happen and I opt to leave after he starts asking to play more games as part of me suspected that if we did and he won any he'd claim that he'd have won the match or something.  From what Ryan tells me this particular player is NOT above pulling that kind of shit so it was a good call on my part.

Finals - vs Nekroz (1-2)

Game 1 I lost again due to a critical misplay that ultimately started a huge spiral that I really should have just scooped on.  Game 2 I Veiler'd a Valk and Trish'd and Game 3 went back and forth until I had a brainfart and left a Daigusto Emeral on board which at the time seemed like a smart play, except he hadn't played Cycle yet and there was a Trish in grave.  You can guess how that went.

One dejected loss later we head over to Robins and more games are played and I watch Woodhouse use the OTT Deck that I had literally sold him hours ago against Damon's Bluish Flames and what do I see?  All of the 8k attackers cut and Luck Birds being thrown into a deck that runs no soul.

Props
-Traded off my Shaddoll cards for Hero cards.
-Sold off OTTs.  Profit!
-Built a kick ass Dragon deck in draft.  Everybody was fucking doing it wrong

Slops
-Misplays.

YGO Locals Report - The Hunger Games

And a Vanguard report sort of as I played more games of that this weekend than Yugs.  In fact I can summarize the entirety of ALL of my Vanguard matches this weekend as follows;

-Do I have Silent Tom?
-Can I make a 16k Silent Tom column?
-Is my opponent at 4 or more damage?
-Can I crit him for the win?

Yeah Oracle Think Tank is not what I call a thought intensive deck.  You do need to keep track of what you stack on the bottom of the deck through your filter skills but otherwise it's just maintain a sizable hand and win through advantage.  Compared to Dragons and Paladins the deck is very boring to play and I'm running it solely as something to use that doesn't suck until better options become available.

Now that all the CVG is out of the way onto Yugs!  On this day I decided to play Nekroz under the assumption that Ryan would not be present therefore I wouldn't have to worry about the Mirror.  Turns out Ryan was in fact present having superman'd his way back from Winnipeg before the tournament could start so my decklist went from being really good to really bad whereas he had a list for the mirror with Solemn Scoldings which had become the hot tech this weekend.  Here's what I ran;

Had I known that Nord would be playing there'd be Mind Crushes and Shared Rides and shit in the deck.  Instead I opted to tech it out to deal with Burning Abyss, Yosenju, Shaddolls, Tellarknights and rogue with the double Trishula and my sideboard.  How'd it go?  Well;

Round 1 - vs Burning Abyss (2-0)

I have no idea if it's either an outdated build or way of thinking, but Matt's Burning Abyss needs work.  I steamrolled him pretty hard with answers for days G1 and floodgates G2.  Between Vanity's Emptiness and Band Played on he couldn't play any Yugs.

Round 2 - vs Satellarknight (1-1)

This was stupid.  He had negations for days as Game 1 I was hit by; 3 Stellarnova Alpha, 1 Solemn Warning, 1 Breakthrough Skill while he was able to loop Call of the Haunteds with Triverr while I struggled to get my engine going with a hand containing double Book of Eclipse.  Pretty damn sad you have to book Triverr just so it can't knock a Brio out of your hand.  I was able to cycle up Brio once or twice but I eventually ran out of ways to search and fizzled out.  Game 2 I utterly destroy him with Trishula and beat him down to 600 in Time where I Cowboy him for the draw.

Round 3 - vs Masked Heroes (2-0)

Nice guy who is a part of a group of Smash Bros players that have been coming recently.  He only started playing though so his build was not optimal at all and he bricked both games.  He was able to drop Darklaw on me, but I had outs for it both time around and Djinn locked him afterwards.  Then I talked Hero theory with him.

Top 8 - vs Constellars (2-0)

Apparently half of Regina can't handle Pleiades and that's really, really sad.  Well I didn't give him the chance to make it as he let me go first and I Djinn locked him.  He scooped the match saying he was really hungry and wanted to eat.

Honestly I can't blame him on that as I was starting to get pretty damn hungry.

Top 4 - vs Shaddolls (0-2)

I'm forced to go first and have to settle for Kaleidoscope into Unicore and try to protect it with Book of Moon and Eclipse.  Between those two he shouldn't be able to out it with anything other than a Construct + a Normal summon.

Turns out he had Dark Armed Dragon and subsequently went off with a series of plays to make him live to which I immediately had to BoM lest I lose EVERYTHING.  Unicore dies to Construct and I take a hit from something else and he Mask Change IIs into Darklaw to hit me for a bunch and sets Falco.  Come my turn I Eclipse his board and set up a Trishula play by Cycling up Brio

And this is where things go downhill.

You see I summoned Brio with the intent of bouncing Construct away when it flipped up, however upon summoning it it I came to the conclusion that if it was flipped face up it would no longer be counted as summoned from the Extra Deck.  Incredibly flawed logic as now that I've had time to think a monster does not forget if it was summoned from the Extra Deck if it was flipped down by Book of Eclipse then flipped up at the end of the turn.  Book of Moon I'm still not sure on as that actually Flip Summons the monster.

In any case in my mind I made the wrong play and should have brought up Unicore as I wouldn't be able to answer that Construct immediately and it would proceed to terrorize me the duration of the game, despite using 2 Trishes it kept coming back.  Worse yet I completely blanked that I could have summoned Valk and fetched Gungnir to make it safe from Construct's effect and I punted the game because of it.  The entire thing took damn near half an hour and upon realizing I'd have to win Games 2 and 3 against Shaddolls AND play a potential mirror match which is another hour I gave him the win.

Thus I ended the day in 3rd place which was...alright.  I'm disappointed that I once again cost myself dearly with a misplay though I really did not want to play out the whole tournament anyway.  I played it out solely to Djinn lock Woodhouse and drop, lelz.

I ended up watching the finals where Ryan played vs Dolls and he won G1 easily enough, even using Lance with Djinn to beat over a Winda.  He got locked out of G2 Thunder King + Vanity's and Game 3 his hand was aids vs Thunder King set many.  It was pretty bad as he had to Lance T-King to keep a Shurit from dying, then using Gungnir on the next turn, but then he ribbed Book and started going, putting the opponent in a bad spot with Trish + Unicore (I think).  However the opponent dropped BLS and Construct and went to attack the Trish and turn the game around when;

"Damage step.  Forbidden Lance on BLS."

This in addition to having Decree AND Denko Sekka in the wings pretty much sealed it.  We all went back to Robins, talked and there were games before calling it a day.

Props
-Bounced back a bit from my Regionals with a respectable opponent
-Made a killing in pulls

Slops
-dhrfh srgh srhgf *yanks foot out of mouth* Dem brutal misplays.

Brawler, Big Bang Knuckle Turbo - It's Blaster Joker all over again...

And it's not in a good way.

Now before I go into the main focus of this post I do want to follow up on an earlier article I wrote this year talking about Narukami in the G-Era as the second set of the series has support for both generic and Eradicator based decks.  Initially I was disappointed that Eradicators were getting support over Brawlers as their concept of field control has become outdated and worse yet Bushiroad keeps trying to make Tempest Bolt Dragon.dek the way to go.

Well imagine my surprise when after the new set dropped that Eradicators started topping tournaments.  Turns out the deck is doing quite nicely and it's ironically enough not because of the new Eradicator support but rather the G-Units and Voltage Horn Dragon's compatibility with First Thunder Dracokid, the Forerunner that can Superior Ride Sweep Command Dragon after you've popped a card.  This has become the basis of what is called Sweep/Descendant Stride and the deck as a whole is very solid with multiple vanguard attacks alongside field control.  Plus the ability to bind units from the drop zone has turned out to be far more powerful than people imagined as losing triggers, PGGs and Legion units can cripple a deck such as Kagero's DOTX build.  One can even argue that Eradicators have an extremely good matchup against the once best deck in the game because of your bind cards.  You either shut down The X's ability to loop or you force them to pitch cards to block your attacks, thereby erasing the hand advantage the Kagero player usually has over other decks.

Vermillion.dek on the other hand hasn't done much.  It topped a small tournament after set release but aside from that it's pretty much inferior to the new Eradicator Deck and Brawlers which leads me to the main topic at hand; G-Era Brawlers.

While the deck largely got shafted from BTG2 with no direct support, the deck has improved with the release of Demonic Dragon Berserker, Chatura, Voltage Horn Dragon, Mighty Bolt Dragoon and the G-Units which have helped expand the deck's options for when you aren't able to dickpunch things with Knuckle Buster.  It too has shown some results with a top in a recent tournament and with the impending release of Fighter's Collection 2015 the deck is going to become even stronger.  Remember how I've lamented over Brawler's lack of G Support?  Well Bushiroad clearly heard my ranting and they've answered my prayers...and then some with this guy;

True Brawler, Big Bang Knuckle Turbo

G4/Triple Drive!!/Narukami

Stride (Released when both players' vanguards are grade 3 or greater!)-Stride Step-[Choose one or more cards with the sum of their grades being 3 or greater from your hand, and discard them] Stride this card on your (VC) from face down.

[ACT](VC)[1/Turn][Counter Blast (1) & Soul Blast (1) & Choose a face down card from your G zone, and turn it face up] If you have a heart with "Big Bang Knuckle" in it's name, until end of turn, this unit gets "[CONT](VC):When this unit would choose a unit to attack, choose three of your opponent's units for each of your heart card instead, and this unit battles all of the chosen units in one attack." and [Power]+5000 for each face up "True Brawler, Big Bang Knuckle Turbo" in your G zone.

Hoo boy...where do I even begin on this one?  Not surprisingly a good portion of the community is up in arms over this guy and how "absolutely broken" he is and I believe that these people are idiots.  They're even calling for this guy to be put on the banlist!  I swear to god this is Blaster Joker all over again what with the loudest portion of the community got super buttmad over his effect but have now come to the same conclusion as the rest of us in realizing that Blaster Joker was a incredibly underwhelming card whose effect was really no different than a Triangle Lock.  Joker's support on the other hand is actually solid with the 7k Rester and your Gallatin clone but I digress, Joker himself is not that great.

Now am I implying that Knuckle Turbo here is not a good card?  Definitely not.  He's an incredibly solid unit and provides a huge boost to the Brawler deck as it opens up options on turns that you can't Legion, can't use Knuckle Buster's skill due to a lack of fodder for cost or if god help you Knuckle Dragon is your vanguard.  Being able to attack 3 Units Pre-Legion and 6 Post is really strong and pretty much fucks over combo decks that have to commit cards from their hand in order to advance their game state like Nova Grappler and Aqua Force.  The extra power gain for each copy of himself is also cool as it's basically a Blizza but better and all you need is an open CB and 1 card in Soul.  Knuckle Buster helps set this up, though I feel that additional ways to fuel the Soul may need to be looked into such as the Zuitan clone for Brawlers.  I should also note that if you're able to hit 6 things with Turbo, then your Slash Dragons will get +18000 allowing them to swing for 27000 (Slash Dragon) and 29000 (Slash Buster) unboosted, requiring a minimum of 20k shielding.

That being said there are still some issues I have with the deck.  As good as this guy is there remains the problem of Paladin Decks being able to remake their board for literally no cost and being able to rush you to death while you try and set up (Brawlers are kind of slow), decks not committing much to the board because they're playing vs Dragons and that's just the smart thing to do and Brawler's lack of a kill play.  This has been a problem with Narukami for ages now in that they have no problems taking cards away from the opponent and you can make an argument that they can do it even better than Kagero, but they can't finish things up like them.  Are G Kagero doing anything?  Hell no!  G Kagero are terrible in comparison to The X and Perdition as those decks have kill plays with Restanding or Pinging.  Royal Paladin have Thing Saver and Saint Blow, Aqua Force has Savas and Glory Malestrom and Dimension Police have punting.  Vanguard is a game where if your deck doesn't Restand, Guard Terrorize or Guard Crush then your deck is bad.

All of the field nuking, mass locking or spamming that many decks these days can do means nothing if you have no kill play and ultimately that's why Brawlers despite the addition of Knuckle Turbo will still not achieve the level of success that I'd like it to.  I won't deny that the deck will become really good and it'll smash alot of things into the ground but it's going to wind up in the position of Vanguard's Borderline Tier.  Far better than EVERYTHING else in the Tiers below it, but not nearly as good as what'll be in OU.

Here's hoping the other Narukami G-Unit in FC2015 will be something that gives the clan a kill play.  Make it a Descendant upgrade.  Restanding Triple Drive plz.