YGO Locals Report - Its so good yet so dirty

Remember that feeling of general surliness from the last Regional blog post?  Yeah long time readers will know that when I usually get smashed at an event the following Locals I participate in I'll usually be playing some kind of degenerate strategy and this time was no different as I decided to play pure Yang Zing which of course meant one thing; floodgates!  Floodgates aplenty!

What I ended up playing was a near exact copy of Pirasath Surane's list from Winnipeg's recent Regionals which had main decked Kaiser Colosseum which is quite legit vs the format at the moment.  The guy got 2nd place with it and smashed damn near everything with it and I've talked to the guy (really chill person who LOVES dragons!) so I figured why not play it.  As cool and "better" as the Zefra Turbo build may be I've mentioned before how bad the Majespecter matchup is and I did not want to play something that literally loses to Wavering Eyes when I was expecting Ryan, Matt, Magnus and Woodhouse to all be playing Pendulum decks that mained it.  Turns out Ryan decided to play Chris Leblanc's Synchro Fusionist deck while Magnus played Tele-DAD.  Wump wump.

Round 1 - vs Exodia Stall (2-0)

Game 1 I opened with Kaisers, Anti Spell and Lose 1 Turns but turns out I'm up against an Exodia deck so half of my hate was dead here.  I end up running him out of options as he's relying on things like Threatening Roar while hoping to raw draw the pieces.  Game 2 I make a Trishula and hit a limb so he's done.

Round 2 - vs Red-Eyes (2-0)

Both games he never dropped Archfiend Black Skull which literally screws my deck over, so it's good as I just had to deal with his Black Flares and backrow.  He negates my first Baxia with Champion's Vigilance but because I'm good at this game I play Soul Charge and make another one, while in another game I Baxia away 3 of his sets during his MP2 and win with it + an Armades.

Round 3 - vs Synchro Fusionist.dek (2-0)

Figures that vs Ryan I open all of the helmet cards and I lock him out of both games here as G1 I had and kept Kaiser Colosseum in play while grinding out the game while in G2 I bait out a Herald of the Arc Light negate so that I can flip Rivalry of Warlords which Synchron decks just lose to.

Round 4 - vs D/D (0-2)

Then I get my come uppance as I make 1 mistake in each of these games in how I structure my plays so that I end up with sub optimal boards (that's right.  This deck does have a degree of technical play despite being a helmet build) and I get punished for it by having Vanity's Emptiness flipped and can't clear it.  To say I was unhappy was an understatement as it was literally that one fucking card that locked me out of the match as under normal circumstances D/D are not an issue for Yang Zing to deal with (hell I had multiple Creation set up so that I could have gone considerably plus) but nope, not this day.  It's matches like these that show just how bullshit Emptiness as a card is and why it needs to be banned from play.  I'm also aware that I probably come off as a hypocrite bitching about losing to a floodgate despite playing floodgates the deck.  However to that I say my deck is made up of several floodgates so it's not out of the realm of possibility to see one or two over the course of the game given that I'm running 3 and 2 ofs.  Vanity's Emptiness on the other hand is a bullshit sack card that you have a what, 12% chance of opening with?  Fuck RNG.

Top 4 - vs Batterymen (2-0)

This was Ben's first time playing against any form of stun deck out there and he was quite disappointed.  All I'm thinking is "you're so lucky you didn't have to play against Shard for the last year" as my cancer isn't near the level that was full strength Qliphort.  Anyway I've got Skill Drain and Kaiser both games and he can't answer them so after I slowly whittle his LP away with Taotie I make a push and kill him.

Finals - vs Tele-DAD (1-2)

Oh hey, it's Magnus.  First time we've squared off in a while if I'm correct.  I'm sure Nord will tell me since he's been re reading all these blog entries from the beginning.  Anywho Game 1 he can't clear my Chaofeng that was summoned with Darks, Game 2 I make a rotten donkey anus of myself by completely forgetting about my own Lose 1 Turn and making plays that caused an irrepairable game state, so I scooped it up while Game 3 I brick, play out of it, but don't get a whole lot to work with the following turns and end up taking a small Maxx "C" challenge when I probably shouldn't have as I planned to make a battle immune Herald of the Arc Light...but he drew into the cards needed to clear my Kaiser, dropped Dark Armed Dragon and I was dead.

So that was that.  I did make some trades towards finishing up Odd-Eyes Magicians while picking up Magnus' BLS Regionals Mat (trading off an Odd-Eyes Fusion that holy shit has doubled in value) and afterwards we called it a day.  The deck performed well and I can see why Pirasath played certain card choices over others while this tournament as a whole made me realize that god damn, I legitimately like Yang Zing as a deck.  Despite their weaknesses and flaws, the deck is actually quite flexible in how it wants to play.  You can play an advantage game with your floaters, a stun game with floodgates (and the best ones at that) OR you can play an aggressive OTK/Giant Board Lock with the Zefra build.  Now that Shaddolls and Nekroz are RIP, I'd say that Yang Zing are probably the most technically oriented deck of the DUEA-era.

Props
-Got to play Yang Zing at a tournament where Macro Stun wasn't present!
-Trishing an Exodia Piece.  GOD that felt good.

Slops
-Vanity's Emptiness
-Misplays

CFV Locals Report - ROAD ROLLER DA!!!

No long winded intro this time given that I brought Brawlers to this, so let's go!

Round 1 - vs Alfred.dek (1-2)

Game 1 ends up taking more time to get done than most of the matches this round as I open weakly and have to deal with his damned magic numbers to my crossridden Knuckle Buster but through repeated board wipes run him out of resources to the point where Conquest can finish him off.  Typical Brawler game plan.  Game 2 I have to G Assist and lose shortly after while Game 3 all I can say is that he flipped triggers and I couldn't.  It's really difficult to come back from a Crit Heal Heal check putting you at 4 to their 1 but by god I nearly did it.  Then he flipped a crit and I died.

Round 2 - vs Messiah (2-0)

Wow.  This deck is not threatening to Brawlers when your opponent doesn't cheat with it.  He takes away my options for at turn, I remove his options entirely.  It's kinda freaky how much Narukami has surpassed Link Joker when 2 years ago Eradicators legit struggled against them.  Then again Link Joker's only good when Chaos Breaker Dragon is relevant so until January...

Round 3 - vs Revengers (2-1)

Ryan gets gradestuck game 1 and loses, I get gradestuck game 2 and can't deal with his zerg rush and lose while game 3 he ends up Legioning for Abyss while we were both at low damage (I think it was 2 to 2), flips a heal so he can't restand and I end up punishing him for it with Knuckle Turbo blowing up his board, then I Conquest him for two straight turns and win.

I ended up getting 2nd place after it was done with Peter Cheng-I mean Brandon getting "first" with Sanctuary Guard.dek.  Not much else I can say here.

Props
-MUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDA

Slops
-WRRRRRRYYYYYYYYY!!!!

Winnipeg Regionals Report - The worst one yet?

To be honest I really don't feel like writing this up, but I've done a report for each of the Regionals I've been to each this year and with this being the last one it's obvious I'm going to do one.

For this event I considered either Yang Zing or PePe as I felt the first choice had a strong Kozmo matchup and before arriving in Winnipeg we were told there'd be a fair amount of them, could maindeck every good floodgate in the game and the Zefra build was ridiculously fast.  However I ultimately discounted it as the Zefra build loses to Majespecter really badly and I didn't like the hands I was seeing with the stun build, so I went with PePe featuring Samurai Cavalry of Reptier as the Vector/Painful build just wasn't cutting it for me after we spent a long time talking theory with the group of Winnipeg players that we know (and happen to be their best ones at that) and realizing that playing Vector requires playing Painful which in itself isn't a great card and is not worth the 40.00 CDN tag.  I got my Painfuls for 12 though so no real loss there.  The result;

I opted to keep it simple.  Run 3 of the Performage Scales, 3 Luster and 3 more low scales in the form of Samurai Calvary of Reptier as his on field effect was passable.  I also opted to run a single copy of storm as a 3rd MST of sorts as there would be times were I needed to clear my scales and I didn't have Wavering Eyes OR I could just pop a Plushfire to pop a backrow and go off.  As for how it went...

Round 1 - vs Traptrix Tellarknights (1-1)

This one was a long, tedious grind as he got off two straight Myrmeleo summons and off the first one searched a Space Trap Hole which is an obvious tell that he has Bottomless and my hand was not equipped to just throw monsters into backrow until they were gone.  So I spend most of game one trying to keep him from building up advantage while whittling away at his backrow and ultimately come up short and lose.  Game 2 on the other hand I blew him completely out of the water by resolving Storm for 4 in an attempt to game shot him...except he has Flying "C" so I couldn't do that.  It's okay though as I end up ramming the Flying "C" and Jigabyte into his Diamond so that I end my turn with an Archfiend Eater and an Xyz Universe set knowing he has an Altair in hand and was likely going to make Castel to clear it and try and kill me.  He does and I Universe his monsters into D/D/D/ Kali Yuga which takes him by surprise and I blow up his freshly set backrow on EP and win as time is called with the match ending as a draw.

Round 2 - vs Kozmo (2-0)

Just going to say right now Shard is not the player that he thinks he is and this weekend proved that very well.  After talking with Ryan his build was fucking awful, his play with the deck has been equally bad and he is a very linear thinker.  His deck choices reflect this and in this match I absolutely crush him.  At least I'm sure I do as I don't remember much about it other than I deal with his spaceship easily enough and clear his Storming Force game 1 while in Game 2 he opens with a Spaceship and nothing else to my OTK hand.  Not so tough now without your infinite fucking floodgates, are you?

Round 3 - vs Burning Abyss (1-2)

A deck that got smashed via the list and in the hands of someone who literally just started playing the game a week or so ago?  Sounds like an easy win, right?  No brother.  That was not the case as in the first game I drew terribly.  I open with mismatched scales and am unable to keep a monster on board to his multiple monsters that I eventually clear and make the mistake of not using Warning to stop a traveller that kills me.  Game 2 I kill him in two turns and in Game 3 I brick again with a Plushfire, Time Space Trap Hole and multiple Wavering Eyes and never draw into another monster while his hitting Cir/Graff off his Dante mills, so I end up getting smashed by a noob.

Round 4 - vs Kozmos (1-2)

While this guy was a step up from Shard as a Kozmo player, now that I've had time to reflect on it I don't think he's an amazing player either as he made some very sketchy plays and tried to use handtraps in ways they weren't supposed to be used, such as chaining Maxx "C" to a Pendulum Summon, then trying to take it back when I decide not to Pendulum and instead set a monster.  Wtf?  We also had to call a judge over to explain how Chimeratech Fortress Dragon worked because he didn't think I could contact his Dark Destroyer.  Read the fucking card!  It's fitting then that in Games 1 and 3 I lock him out of the duel with Emptiness, but I end up getting greedy in the latter case in an attempt to gameshot under Maxx "C"...and he draws into Dark Destroyer and summons it via his Strawman to ruin that.  He drops another Destroyer and time is called as I have Luster, Plushfire, Wavering Eyes and Cyber Dragon in hand.  I set my scales to which he tries to Ghost Ogre but I tell him he physically can't as I'm just setting the scales and play accordingly, chaining Wavering to when he activates the ogre to Luster's effect.
I take a long time, maybe a minute and a half to figure out how to go about resolving this as I needed to make Emeral, shuffle back Chimeratech and tribute summon Cyber Dragon in order to contact fuse again and leave him crippled.  In the end I add Samurai Cavalry and summon Damage Juggler, ram it into a Destroyer so that I could search Plushfire, Pendulum for 4 to make Ignister to out his Kozmotown and Emeral to do the play I just mentioned to which his mind was fucking blown.  Now left with a Farmgirl in hand and nothing else to my board of 5850 damage, the only way he could win was to topdeck Raigeki which he fucking did.  To say I was crushed was an understatement.  I'll admit that the greedy game push I made earlier was dumb and I should have slow rolled him to a potential win under Emptiness, but dammit I managed to turn it around at the end.  He apologized profusely and said he did not deserve to win that one and with this I was now eliminated from top cut contention.

So with my spirit broken I should have dropped out of the tournament and just walked around like last time.  Instead I made the mistake of playing it out and I'll just sum it up here as I played some pretty scrubby people that I had way too much trouble with, losing to Yosenju PSY-Frames and D/D/Ds, with the last one being due to a game loss and him opening Anti-Spell + Wavering Eyes in Game 3.  I also played an Ignight player but against him I opened the literal tits both games.

And that was the tournament.  I finished horrendously and my will to play this game took a huge dive as I've now been to five regionals this year and I've choked at each of them.  I've hit a brick wall that I haven't been able to clear since September 2013 and it's fucking frustrating as hell.

So after all that we did the usual things we do post Winnipeg Regionals and saw Rhonda Rousey get fucked up in her fight among other things.

Props
-I smashed Shard.
-I made some really clever plays

Slops
-Misplays
-Brick Hands
-Raigeki banned please
-Not topping
-Losing to bad decks?  I'd say that Yosenju anything are not good and D/D/Ds are definitely not a good deck in the competitive sense.

YGO Locals Report - Goodnight Sweet Princes

Last opportunity to play Nekroz at Locals before the new banlist?  You bet I'm gonna do it!  Here's what I played;

Basically the same list I ran last time, except I put in Gishki Chain as a 7th Ju which worked out well enough and tweaked the side to deal with our local meta easier.  As for how things went...

Round 1 - vs Masked Heroes (0-2)

Game 1 he opened with Darklaw which I was able to eventually out thanks to Gishki Chain and Forbidden Lance but he ends up dropping an Acid afterwards and shotguns Vanity's Emptiness and I lose because of no mainable outs to the damned thing.  Then Game 2 I opened badly with Lance, MST, RoTA and Decree but no Brio, Unicore, Ju, Prep or even another RoTA so I could search out Clausolas and Shurit for defensive purposes and eventually die to repeated pokes by his monsters and Cowboy.

Congrats Konami.  You ban Exciton because it's in your mind an unbalanced card but you leave Emptiness alone?  I can't count the number of times I've seen games end because someone flips this fucking thing and it can't be cleared.  Christ.

Round 2 - vs Performage Shaddolls (2-0)

Norden had also lost his last round to Floodgates featuring Qliphort so this meant that whoever lost this one wasn't going to top and wouldn't you know, I open the literal nuts this match with a Turn 1 Diamond and Abyss Dweller to what would have been a bonkers hand of El Shaddoll Fusion + 4 monsters and Game 2 he opened an all monster hand with none of them being Dragon/Squamata so I OTK him.

Round 3 - vs Junk Doppel (2-0)

Nothing to say here as this guy was starting out, made some horrendous plays and didn't know what my deck did so I scraped him.  The only notable thing here was that he took for fucking ever to get his shit together as he was doing a trade as the round started and fielding offers from everyone while I waited.  I even attempted to do a trade myself which was difficult when you have Allen standing nearby going OODFPSDFKJDSFLKDSFJ:DSLKFDSJFDSL:KFJSLDKF when I'm trying to get say a Mist Valley Apex Avian.  Because him and Woodhouse fucking lose their shit whenever a money card comes up, people become much less likely to let go of the card and as the result the trade falls through.  Norden ends up getting the shit I wanted because he had a much better offer than I did and I end up getting screwed because of Allen had kept his fucking mouth shut after I told him to shut up several times this situation may have been different.

And that was it.  Because of bullshit in the first round I didn't top and thus my time with Nekroz ends on a sour note, as has often been the case.  I wonder if had I been playing in a better environment such as Winnipeg or even Saskatoon where I would only have to worry about building my deck to handle Dolls/BA during earlier formats and not having to deal with faggot decks like Darklaw Turbo/Qli/Burn my overall experiences with the deck would have been different.  At the very least if I lost it would have been to legitimately good players thus I could gain from the experience as outside of Ryan and Magnus, most of our playerbase is either awful (Kody) to moderate (Colby), or just outright sack you (Woodhouse).  You can't really "get good fagget" off of people scumbagging with Floodgates or opening Honest/ripping BLS.  It's really a shame too as I really do like Nekroz and I'll make some attempt at playing it post banlist at least once before completely shelving the deck.  With Shurit banned and people saying the deck no longer exists it means that some day I can take advantage of this and annihilate people because they forgot that Trishula exists and will play into it Turn 1.

After that we went to Robins where a round of Vanguard was held.  I let Norden play my Brawlers and he seemed to enjoy it while I tried out my revised Musketeers that I built based off some theory I had.  Long story short a good majority of the people or decks that I really hate to play against (Pokemon Scott, Machining) happen to be of the GB kind so if I can stay stuck at 2 while maintaining a large amount of pressure, I can lock them out of the game because their entire deck is vanilla while I'm still good go to.  Once they get to 5 damage I Legion with Vera and kill them because they've used most of their hand to block my 19-21K columns.  It's the same concept that Japanese Sanctuary Guard and Ripple players use and after executing it I can see why the North American playerbase considers this tactic to be cancerous and with certain decks it makes playing against them unbearable.  I'm not sure how Bushiroad is going to be able to handle this as they can't just say "no you HAVE to ride a Grade 3 if you have it in your hand" as players will respond by playing a Grade 2 rush deck, like Ripple Rush.

Props
-Got to play Blue Cards one last time
-Pulled off some really sick plays
-Made a 5 Material Diamond

Slops
-Got to play Blue Cards one last time :(
-Vanity's.  Emptiness.