Honestly I didn't plan on writing this one but hey it's the last time I'm playing under this format so ultimately I've changed my mind. That being said this day did not turn out as I had planned due to several factors I won't go into. Suffice to say though that due to some miscommunication (and one person as usual not thinking things through) my dreams of finishing the format with Atlanteans ended up sinking faster than the Finebros good-shitty reputation as without Mermail Abyssleed, Genex Undine/Controller and Moulinglacia the deck goes from being an offensive juggernaut that will kill you blinding second with the ability to set up/hand loop you going first to being a glass cannon. Not many people realize this which is why despite not actually owning the deck since Sept. 2014 I'm still the best water player in the city. Nobody can fucking touch me with the deck and it became pretty clear after I talked a bit with the other water player in the room and from our conversation I learned that he's bad. Rude? Oh definitely but I've got the ability to back up these claims.
Anyway because I couldn't build water I had to hastily throw together Zefra Yang Zing which can do neat things but has largely struggled to keep up post BOSH format as Solemn Strike just ruins the deck.
Round 1 - Dark Magician (2-0)
Game 1 he played Swords of Revealing Light and it flipped up my Chiwen to which he decided to pass. I Archfiend his Swords and ram Chiwen into his Prisma which confuses him but more importantly he lets it through rather than flipping up a garbage Yugi card like Magic Cylinder meaning I get to pull Jiaotu out of my deck with 2 Yang Zing in hand and he lets it resolve. I spin his board away and end with a Titanic Galaxy and he eventually loses.
Game 2 he goes first and sets a monster to pass while I open with Jiaotu + 2 Yang Zing and enough search cards to set up a Pendulum Scale so I end up summoning 3 Baxia and a Void Ogre Dragon to his open board and he's hella dead.
Round 2 - vs Atlanteans (0-2)
I lose the dieroll and he makes me go first and my hand is Chiwen and nothing else. Given that this is Atlanteans we're talking about here I decide to just scoop it up as knowing he can OTK me through my monster. Game 2 he goes first and sets just one backrow and passes to which I'm like "YES!" but then I draw for turn and my hand is literally unplayable. I use Upstart and 2 Chicken Games and draw into 2 Maxx "C"s but no summonable monsters and decide to scoop it up right here knowing that he'll OTK me regardless of my hand traps.
Round 3 - vs Stick Chair Pals (0-2)
Game 1 is a bit on the unfortunate side as he goes off a bit and makes Evilswarm Uroboros and with it he ends up discarding one of my Yang Zing which ultimately loses me the game as I start my turn being one card short of a Jiaotu combo string and I die on the next turn after he uses draw cards to eventually hit Face-Off. Game 2 I straight up brick with 4 Scale 7s, a Path and a Strike so I'm basically playing with a 2 card hand and against any Dracopal variant that's pretty much a death wish. Him resolving Draco Face-Off on the following turn didn't help any.
So that was that. After the tournament I had a few games of Vanguard with Kaiser vs Messiah which I steamrolled because Woodhouse didn't want Saishin to kill his starter and instead allow me to land 4 Chatura hits so by the time I was able to stride I was at 17 cards in hand and he died. Then I vs'd Harri and I'm still trying to figure out what happened. I want to say I played it well enough as I killed his starter and pressured with Deathscythe but timely crits put me at 5 damage to his 1 or 3 and I couldn't flip a heal for the life of me.
Then after that we went to Applebee's and split.
Props
-I played YGO for the second time in a month. I've now gone from Legend to Part-Timer.
-Applebees was quality food.
Slops
-Not being able to play Waters
-Bricking
-Draco Face-Off can definitely go to one. Fuck that card.
-90% of our players have become really irritating to be around from a gaming standpoint. Between the grabbing your shit before you've even finished opening your packs/evaluating your pulls, the people standing behind you as you're playing and trying to backseat duel but suck at the game and the constant whining from others I find myself becoming increasingly agitated by just being in the room. Stop giving me more reasons to not show up Regina.
This one's gonna be short due to shenanigans happening that honestly ticked me off (which I'll get to) while my rounds themselves weren't anything noteworthy. The notable thing about this day was that it was the Set 6 Sneak meaning I had a chance to pick up pirates and I got a PGG and an Undead Dragon. Someone pulled Nightrose and I couldn't get it, but Nord did and there's the (slim) chance I might get it off him. If not then I'm just gonna bite the bullet and order 4 with the money I had made off selling my YGO cards and buy the rest of the deck and GR Ahsha (maybe) on my next paycheck as people are starting to see that the G-Neo Nectar deck post Set 6 is actually quite legitimate when it doesn't have to face Link Joker.
Unless of course you're a fucking blind idiot.
Anywho after trades were done we ended up having a tournament and I decided that this time I'd play Gear Chronicle since I have 4 Nextage now and decided to give Brawlers a break....
Round 1 - vs Altmile (2-1)
...and get paired up against one of Brawler's better matchups. Gdi. Anyway I have to G-Assist Game 1 but flip crits during my Nextage pushes and win off of that while Game 2 I brick and die. Game 3 I got to play Vanguard and savaged him through tucks and Nextage + Crits.
Round 2 - vs Sanctuary Guard (0-2)
This deck is already not fun to play against. Simple as that. Game 1 he opens with double Benon and rushes me to 4 damage to his one then kills me after riding Regalie thanks to checking triple triggers wheras Game 2 I misride twice which is pretty much an auto loss vs this bullshit. Him flipping 2 crits didn't help me any.
Round 3 - vs Chaos (2-1)
After this match I learned several things about this game when it comes to vsing Ryan;
-It is almost physically impossible for him to critsack you. Even with a 12 card deck.
-He is one of the few people in this city who is actually good at this game and is not a raging sacklord or someone who is shit at the game but thinks otherwise. The others I can think of off the top of my head are Jordan and myself.
-Whenever Jordan or I play him the match is almost never a blowout but a long, grindy affair where outside of the 5% chance of savagery occuring the game usually comes down to who makes the better plays/can capitalize on a misplay and use it to win. Deck choices will rarely matter in this as Ryan can play the best deck in the game/format and I can play something a tier lower than it but we'll have an even match or vice versa. As the result our matches will usually take around 30 minutes or more.
So basically the kind of pace that our Yu-Gi-Oh! matches we used to have back in 2013-2014.
Now the reason why I'm mentioning this is as after I honestly played like shit in our first game and for most of our second one which by the way was already reaching the 20 minute mark, we ended up having a long ass Game 3 that by the time we were a few turns in Chingo announced that they were skipping to top cut before our match finished. That's right we were taking so long to finish our round that they basically booted us out of the tournament on account of our records not being good enough when by the looks of it I actually would have gotten into Top 4 if I won this.
Umm...what the fuck? I didn't realize we were playing at Springfest Atlanta because that is some bullshit judging right there.
Like seriously they literally couldn't stand waiting for us to play out our long, grindy game because when you're playing against Chaos the way to beat them is to grind them down and make them deck out or never call much of a board unless it's for a big push which is what I did here. Outside of a Relic Master Dragon to tuck one of his guys the only time I put cards on the board was because of Universe's skill. Aside from that I made it a point to never let him get a full board lock off, never let him get to Limit Break by regulating his damage/tucking his Enabler and saving Nextage for when I was able to have a booster to get full value. That and I also got off 3 Heals which I'd like to say is pretty sacky...but I'm gonna claim it's karma paying me back for never letting me get a 6th damage heal as often as the rest of Regina.
So eventually I win the match and we leave and I talk Kagero theory with Ryan as while I'm not interested in playing the deck post Legend release, I did have some ideas that I wanted to get out there. Basically if I were to play the deck I'd be trying to apply as many Narukami traits to it as possible as Narukami's more aggressive traits have shown to be effective in the current block.
Props
-Halfway done Seven Seas
Slops
-That feeling when the number of Granblue players in the city went from 2 to 6 in the last month. Mirrors are going to be dumb.
No you're not reading that wrong. I actually played Yu-Gi-Oh! today. It's only been over a month since the last time I participated at locals which had some...things happen since. Anywho I'm not gonna go into all of the what and the why other than I simply don't have much of a desire to play Yu-Gi-Oh! at the moment as I'm not a fan of the current format considering your deck building options are;
-Play a deck that goes first and makes an unbreakable board unless your opponent opens the nuts, then kill them on your next turn.
-Play a deck that OTKs the opponent regardless of what they're playing going 2nd.
-Play a Helmet Deck with floodgates.
Thus I've been taking a break from the game as if I'm gonna lose to bullshit on a consistent basis, I may as well stick with Vanguard where the bullshit is so commonplace I've come to (mostly) accept it. Now I'm not going go so far as to say that Vanguard is 100% the better game despite it being the only TCG that I play now and everything other than it is bad despite said game having massive problems with power creep because I'm not like our Force of Will player base. It just so happens to be that Yu-Gi-Oh! doesn't have anything that really appeals to me enough to actively play at the moment. For Vanguard I have currently 2 decks that I enjoy playing at just about anytime and an upcoming deck that I'm really excited to play and will actively use for the next couple of months. Yu-Gi-Oh! doesn't until Shining Victories (Blue-Eyes) and Revival of the Divine Dragon (Felgrand) come out. Oh sure I COULD go out of my way and play DracoPals, Atlanteans, Kozmo or BA once Premium Gold comes out and its known that Atlantean/Mermail is one of my favourite decks of all time...but that's still one deck in the game compared to 4 decks in the other.
Anyway those are my current feelings on the game of YGO. It also doesn't help that I've got zero competitive motivation since the next Regional is being held in May which should be a different format from now so aside from a few games on the side there's no reason for me to get serious...which leads me into today's post where instead of going at it like what hipsters would call a try hard I decided to embrace my inner memester and decided that on this day I would unleash memes upon everyone at locals. How would I do so? Well first up I would need an awesome deck and thankfully there was just the thing thanks to the magic of the interwebs which allowed me to build a sweet looking Photon/Galaxy list that had a lot of solid theory behind it; turbo into Cyber Dragon Infinity with Number 23 Lancelot and hope to god it works. While this goal makes the deck sound like one of those scubby Infinity Turbo builds (Soldier, Quickdraw, etc) the deck itself has a consider amount of varied combo plays that I've only been able to find about 10 of through goldfishing and play. 3 card combos are what make the deck work but what you DO with those 3 cards can be many things.
So after borrowing some cards from Derrick to finish the deck I was done the first part of my master plan. The second involved finding an appropriate mat to play on and for that I busted out none other than the Swaground playmat (a bath towel) and finally upon arriving to Tramps I made my return to Locals in the most meme of manners;
I even did the Shane-O-Mac shuffle. It was glorious. Then the tournament started;
Round 1 - vs Magician/Familar (2-0)
Game 1 I open with a hand that's one card short of comboes so I pass with Emptiness and Twin Twister set. Turns out my opponent thought were still in 2015 as he summoned Trick Clown and Jigabyte and went into Feral Imps to search out another Jigabyte. I flip Emptiness before he's able to extend his play and take the 2300 before I topdeck Brilliant Fusion, blow up his lone set, go off and kill him. Game 2 he goes first and sets a monster and plays Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon before passing over to me with a hand that would let me make a Rank 5 + Rank 8 board which I do. It just so happened to be said board consisted of Constellar Pleiades and Galaxy-Eyes Prime Photon Dragon which would allow me to attack directly for 9100 damage (6600 + 2500).
Round 2 - vs Monarch (2-0)
I knew that he was playing this deck beforehand and I died a little inside as vsing Monarchs is A never fun and B that deck never bricks against me. Game 1 he gets Erebus + Dominion off to my hand of triple Galaxy Wizard, 1 Expedition and an irrelevant card and he hits the Expedition. Rip. However because I played 5 games against Chingo yesterday some of his talent must have rubbed off on me as I draw Reasoning and play it, he calls 7 and I hit Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon and he can't clear it. I proceed to win off the back of my 3k beatstick which is lol. Game 2 he lets me go first and I make Infinity + Lancelot which he does out, but because he had to do awkward things he can't handle a second turn of meming and I win. It also helped that he called 7 with Reasoning all the time.
Round 3 - vs Igknights (1-2)
Game 1 I win the dieroll and open with double Reasoning and Expedition. I hit 2 Wizards and proceed to make Durendal, Infinity and Lancelot which is damn near impossible for anything to beat. Game 2 he opens with Library and through Igknight plays has Bottomless and Warning set which I power through and make Tachyon Dragon in order to negate he scale effects since he had no cards in hand or extra deck but he topdecks Raigeki and I proceed to whiff on my third Reasoning, draw Soldier and 2 Trade-Ins while he pend summons a bunch of 4s and I die. Game 3 I open 2 Trade-Ins, 2 Decree and 1 Twin Twister going first and he opens Library and a full hand of Igknights. Before I scoop I see that he had Warning and Raigeki so even if I had something I was pretty much dead in the water.
And yet we still have fucking retards asking why I want Raigeki banned on the next list.
Despite this I somehow made it into Top 8 so I still had a chance to avenge myself.
Top 8 - vs Monarch (1-2)
Except not. Game 1 I brick and can't out Domain so I lose. Game 2 I make Infinity Lancelot with Twin Twister which he does clear but he doesn't have domain and I Twister his backrow so he loses. Game 3 I brick even worse by drawing into all 3 of my Maxx "C" off of Upstart + Trade-In and when I finally got to summon Soldier he had a Veiler for it and Stormforth'd it for Majesty's Fiend.
So that was that. I ended up sitting around and talking random theory with people while Ryan lost in the finals due to his opponent having some ridiculous hands and played cards that Ryan deemed were no longer relevant to the format (yet just so happen to be seeing widespread play recently) and said card blew him out which got him mad.
Sidenote and this is gonna be tough to word without pissing people off but I'll try anyway: As I write this it just dawned on me that this is the second time in 2 months this kind of thing has happened and I wouldn't be surprised if there have been more instances where Ryan believes he's going to roll someone, said person however plays a card/build that he believes nobody should be playing because it's "dated", he loses the game because of it so he becomes tilted then ultimately loses the match which makes the tilting worse. I'm noting this as this is the kind of thing people are going to start exploiting sometime down the road and if Matt and Evan are also able to be tilted like this then all three of them are going to have problems at Nats where people will be willing to try just about anything and everything to try and get that top. The reason I mention Evan and Matt is that they share a much more similar mindset to Ryan than I do in regards to the game so what Ryan perceives as janky and shouldn't be played they may perceive as well (though I could be wrong in this. It's not like both of them are as impressionable as Woodhouse is). Compare this in contrast with Magnus who will likely agree with him on most aspects but is much more open to seeing it and trying it from the other side. I'd say that this open minded aspect in regards to the game is one of the major reasons the guy is on a level nobody in the city is touching anytime soon.
So to TLDR if you play a build/cards that Ryan perceives as outdated, chances are he'll be blindsided and you have a good chance of winning the match and don't expect the majority of Regina's players to be following the ARG/Regional/YCS circuit and change their lists accordingly because prepping for that shit's not going to work here when it's literally all hands on fucking deck as far as our community goes.
There, got that one off my chest. A bit ranty and I'm sure some people may think I'm shit talking like I did with Shard in the past (which he found out about and well...) but that's not my intent. I know Ryan and Matt read this blog and I'm hoping what they see here is not an attack but critiques that I felt like needed to be brought up since I won't be playing YGO again for another month and a half probably.
That said for my first tournament in a while I did better than I expected. Ryan tells me to play more often than I should since I'm one of the few people who can give him legit competition and I've somehow managed to make myself come off as one of those guys who can play meta decks but can play rogue/wonky decks (that aren't shit) well if I believe said deck has a chance of winning which truth be told I have and will do. I have to admit I do like playing something that nobody has an idea of how it works as I can usually take advantage of a player's misplays and win off of it. It's how I handled my matches with Disaster Dragon when sitting on Koa'ki Meiru Drago wasn't going to work.
Anyway after all that I profiled the deck, gave Derrick his stuff back while telling him my experiences with the deck and pretty much convinced him to put the Brilliant Fusion engine into it. It helped.
Over
-Made my return in glorious fashion. Now to fully complete the parody by not showing up next week.
-My Swaground got a tremendous pop. It was probably more over than Roman Reigns.
-Once again memed over people. Apparently I was savage.
-In half of my games I got the main combo of Infinity + Lancelot off going first. Considering this is just a prelim build that's actually quite scary.
-Sold off several excess cards or cards I picked up for a tenth of their current value. DOLLA DOLLA.
Buried
-Bricking. On the other hand when I didn't open well I outright lost.
-Raigeki. That's now a Regional and an undefeated record I've lost to this thing being ripped off the fucking top.
-Monarchs. But then again who (with a brain) doesn't hate that deck? Now that the one Monarch player in our circle has a finished DracoPal deck he can finally spread his wings and take flight into the skies and combo, combo, COMBO.
This post should be short as there really isn't a whole lot for me to talk about on this day. I played Brawlers because most of our players run RG dependent decks and blowing them away is good Yugiohs. Unfortunately this didn't pan out well because;
Round 1 - vs Chaos (0-2)
I've come to utterly despise this deck as much like Claret Sword Shadows it's a deck that just fucking sacks the shit out of you because this player runs 12 crits and checks them every turn which is a huge hindrance to me as a good player as it means I am always in danger of being critsacked at low damage, thus I'm forced to overcompensate for guarding on a frequent basis.
Thing is unlike Claret Sword this deck is actually good despite being a fucking pile of sack. HADOUKOKURYUUU, AURAGEYSER DAMNEDOU on the other hand is fucking garbage and it only wins because Shadow Paladins are imbalanced.
Anyway this match was not fun. Game 1 he has to G-Assist which means I should win, right? Lolnope I get critsacked at 4 damage when he was down to only 2 crits left in deck. Then Game 2 I was gradestuck for a turn, he hits 2 Heals and I draw two of mine when they would have been otherwise 5th or 6th damage heals that would have gone off.
Seriously you try to play good because relying on miracle heals is awful and you get punished for it by drawing the heals whereas everyone else fucking yolos, gets luck and they win because they're raging sacklords.
Round 2 - vs The X (2-1)
This match in general is basically trying to avoid having our guys get nuked, except I have the ability to rush early game. Game 1 I don't and I eventually get some wonky draws so I'm forced to no guard a stride attack and he flips a crit. Game 2 I rush with Chaturas and Skyhowls before he can get going and I never let him resolve a DOTE which can stymie the deck long enough for me to Conquest and kill. Game 3 he's gradestuck at 1 so I just murder him.
Round 3 - vs Aqua Force (2-0)
He's not running Blue Wave or Ripples so my already good matchup became damn near unloseable and wouldn't you know my deck just gets ROLLING here. Game 1 he's stuck at 2 for several turns but I keep terrorizing him with 21k Chaturas and eventually flip a crit to kill him. Game 2 he just can't handle Buster, Turbo, Buster with PGGs in hand so I roll him.
Then we played a for fun Gear Chronicle vs Neo Nectar game and I got to resolve a +7 Metallicaphoenix.
Top 4 - vs Diablo (2-0)
Remember how I said Shadow Paladins are imbalanced? I present to you exhibit A: A guy going undefeated off the back of the fucking Legend Deck with tweaks to the triggers.
Anyway he knows that my deck can board wipe so he sort of plays conservatively, but not really as I'm still able to get value off my Knuckle/Turbo and land several Chatura hits to out advantage him in both games. It also helps that I flipped a crit during my Conquest Dragon turn which is something that never happens against Jordan or Norden MOST of the time.
Finals - vs Chaos (1-2)
I forget how the first game went other than him flipping a crit as he was able to constantly recycle one of them wheres in Game 2 I triple crit him. In game 3 I have a strong start but am unable to close it out as I see no bullets for Buster until it's literally too late so he's able to push with 18K columns and ultimately kill me because while he's down to 4 cards in deck, they're all triggers and I didn't have enough shield to block his 3 crit side. Had I lived through that turn? I would have wiped his board and made him deckout.
After that disappointing loss I ended up hving a game against Allen playing this deck and RNGesus continued to hate me as after I flip 2 crits to get the win he double heals and on his turn checks 3 crits. Good fucking god I fucking HATE this deck. Chaos has become SO fucking sacky that literally ANYONE can pick up the deck and win off of it. I'm also mighty sick of critsacking in general. Like can we PLEASE get a limit of 4 crits per deck like heals? I want THAT to be an experimental format.
But then I vsed his Sanc Guard deck with Brawlers and crushed him because even Royal Paladins can't handle multiple boardwipes.
Props
-Sold off some Yugioh stuff and got some people interested in my wares.
-Got to 2nd place with Brawlers. Soon I'll get that first place.
