March 24/2018 Locals Report - Thighmaster

This one is gonna be strictly Vanguard as I won't be able to participate in our YGO tournament tomorrow (or the next two for that matter).  That said on with the show!

Vanguard

I came in with some EXFO Special Editions with the goal of pulling Called by the Grave since it's kind of a great card and the secondary goal of maybe pulling a 2nd Electrumite for my Zefra deck.  Turns out I don't and have one of the worst pack openings possible by pulling 3 straight "check THIS out!" guy and getting a purple Mekk-Knight.  Whoopie.  Woodhouse on the other hand buys 5, gets 3 Called, Inspector Boarder, Electrumite and 2 Jackal King.

WELL OKAY THEN.

Then we made a deal in which I got all of his stuff I wanted since he owed me for Kagero stuff and what he gave me cut the amount by half.  So now I have 2 Electrumite, 2 Inspect Boader and 3 Called by the Grave for Zefra.  Sweet!

After that it was just a matter of waiting to start the tournament.  Our one Chaos player wasn't present meaning I wouldn't have to worry about getting shit on while playing any of my not Gear Chronicle decks (I had lent Victor out so that a friend could have a tournament run with it.  It NEEDED to happen) so I decided to go back to my roots and bust out Regalia seeing as the deck got support in Set 14 and it's not half bad.  It's been a good 3 years since I played the deck and 4 if we're talking about the classic Angelica/Minerva deck.

Are you ready to deck out at the speed of light?

Round 1 - Bye (Win)

Turns out I would have to wait a bit before getting started as I got the first round bye.  I guess so.

Round 2 - vs Nubatama (Win)

The game speaks for itself.  Nubas without Rinne are very weak and much like my deck if the opponent is able to survive both Rinnes, you rund out of steam and lose.  As it is I crush him under the might of Thiccnerva's thighs.  I should note that by my second stride I had drawn/milled 14 of my triggers including having 3 heals in hand.

Round 3 - vs Victor (Win)

Both of us were undefeated at this point so it makes sense we'd meet.  Still it's silly that we get paired up after I lend him Victor.  He's only had the day to learn the deck but having originally owned the thing it doesn't surprise me he picked up on the things you can do (after I explained how the timing worked with Kachiwall) and after telling me he didn't want to mulligan I proceeded to shit my pants since I had to go first.  At this point I had to do two things; deny him first stride and win on my 2nd Minerva turn at the latest.  I do so by staying down on Grade 2 for a turn and checking nothing on my first stride (as we knew I would) and he shows me just how bonkers his hand is with Golsachi + Jerohawk + 2x Kachiwall with Winning Champ.  Ladies and Gentlemen that right there is a setup that lets him get to GB8 on his next turn.  To say that I'm fucked if I don't win on my turn is an understatement.  He proceeds to do Winning things and I get pushed from 2 to 5 while hitting some defensive triggers to keep my hand up going into my 2nd Minerva and I basically decide to put everything into this turn by resolving as many draw and buff skills as I could to make my attacks huge.  The result is I had a 19k line and a 22k line for RGs while my Vanguard swung for 52-58k and he had no PGs or heals in hand to block it.  I flip a crit on his no guard and win the match and getting first place.

And that was that.  One guy was hoping to get 1st since he was playing Dominate with Rinne and asked for a game after the tournament.  Despite the matchup being in his favour I decided sure why not.  We gradestall for a bit and I win first stride and push him to 5.  He doesn't have a G-Guard so I don't have to worry about Rinne's GB3 however I don't hit defensive triggers and he flips Stand/Crit and my hand is not able to block all of that so I die.  As much as I hate to sound like a certain member of our community I think I actually would have won if either of those two things went the other way as he had difficulty dealing with Minerva the first time, didn't check a PG and I had a full board going into the turn.  I'm pretty certain my 2nd Stride Minerva would have won.

Then again in that scenario any good clan's second stride would have won so moot point?  Oh well, next week I'm playing ZtB.

Mar 17-18/2018 Locals Report - The Winning Formula

Vanguard

My Star Gate order came in (literally the day of the stream where the Reset was announced) so I decided to play Victor.  According to one (retarded) person it was the best deck of the format pre Set 14 but here in the real world where Aqua Force boners don't cloud our judgement I'd say it's a solid 2nd best.  Post Set 14 the deck has fallen to middle of the pack for Tier 1 (it's peers being ZtB, Dominate, Deletors and Regalia/Chaos/Overlord) but it's still very good and nobody at my locals have finished Set 14 decks so as long as I can dodge Chaos I probably have a reasonable chance of running away with the whole thing.

Round 1 - vs Victor (Win)

By the way our format is Best of 1 now.  Best of 3 takes too long when the tournaments start at 1:00.  If it was 11 or 12 the arguement could be made but when rounds take 20-30 minutes per game, time will be an issue.

That being said my first round with Victor ended up being the Mirror.  Except my opponent didn't have his Star Gate stuff in as he didn't want to spend the money on what he didn't pull on Set Release day because of there being rumours of a second print run and with it a lowered market value on what he doesn't own.  I'm pretty certain the Nation Boosters aren't getting a 2nd print?

Mind you if Solemn Vanguard had simply never bitched about Victor in all of his videos the price of his cards in the set wouldn't have doubled.  Him yapping about Nubatama has also driven up the price of Dominate out of the new set.  Why?  Because it beats the terror that is Nociel Gyze which has been "topping left and right" and because Solemn's fanbase is numerous and don't think, they cause undue hype.  The comparisons to Azneyeswhitedragon and MegacapitalG are definitely warranted as he is that kind of shitter channel.

...in any case my opponent is basically playing Set 10 Victor with Zubats and I'm playing "Tier 0" Victor.  I also get first stride and have a pretty good hand that were it not for his two defensive triggers probably would have won me the game through Winning Champ.  As it is I build up enough resources to live through his Meteokaiser turn and kill him on my follow up Winning Champ.

Round 2 - vs Luard (Win)

Even if my opponent didn't miss ride or draw sub-optimally it wouldn't have mattered.  Luard gets absolutely destroyed by Victor as a deck like it hates being multi attacked and Victor does it with increasing power through Winning Champ and I do exactly that here by taking him from 3 to dead on my first stride.

Round 3 - vs Chaos (Lose)

Apparently Victor was BDIF because it has unlockers for days.

Yeah about that...no.

You can have unlockers for days, but if your hand is weak or Chaos draws well you're still kind of fucked.  I'm able to fight for first stride but my hand is literally 0 shields, a Zubat and 2 Grade 1s so my ability to combo is weak.  I try to make it work but the lack of Golsachi/Ninjaad shows as I'm unable to get enough procs off of Winning Champ in order to hit GB8 on my turn and have to fall back on Pogchamp to try and win on my second stride after unlocking my board.  Unfortunately his hand is like 12 cards including a Perfect Guard and 2 G-Guards (plus my board is still small as fuck.  I needed boosters to make my swings work) so Pogchamp fails and I die.  Should have I gone for Winning Champ instead?  I don't know.  12 cards is a lot to power through.   I'll try next time.

Round 4 - vs Overlord (Win)

I got the feature match!

...Actually I had forgotten to record another person's round earlier and decided to do mine.

I'm gonna straight say this.  Woodhouse misplayed this game badly.  Instead of searching out DOTD for a matchup where multiple retires (and through resist) are extremely value he opts to get DOTE out of his deck so he could attempt to sack draw it off riding DOTL.  That's just greedy logic.

In any case I stay on G2 for a turn to get first stride (and try to get out of G-Assisting) and knowing that he had checked a Heal on his turn I structure my rather generous hand to play around Denial Griffin.  I push him to high damage through repeated Golsachi swings on the Winning Champ turn, he fights back with a Ziegenburg to build up hand and I respond with a 2nd stride GB8 and Gunzdon turn that kills him.

We all get our Promo commander Laurels and I make myself want to die by playtesting Amaruda against Set 10 Victor before calling it a day.

Mar 10-11/2018 Locals Report - RNG Wheee

To my delight this past weekend our local game store Comic Readers became able to host Vanguard local tournaments, right down to using Bushiroad's tournament software and being able to give out Shop Promos.  This should hopefully provide a nice shot in the arm for our community as by having tournaments we can eventually get Sneak Peeks which is a great thing to have going into a new series.  Furthermore now that there are prizes on the line (hot Stamped Laurel right now), people will be more inclined to actually try to win which will raise the level of competition which is fine by me.  Tougher opponents means that I'll have to work for my wins rather than steamroll people because I'm playing an optimized list vs their for funsies build.

That being said I sadly wasn't able to get my Nova Grappler cards in time for this so I had to fall back on my next best finished deck in Neo Nectar which had me a little concerned since we have 2 Chaos players in the room and I'm still having PTSD of my games with Nightrose in that regard.

Round 1 - vs Brave (1-1)

Game 1 - He wasn't able to ride Altmile v3 which is brutal as while Brave likes to keep a low hand for its keyword, you also kind of want to have a hand vs Bloom.  In any case this game takes up almost the entire round as we spent a good bulk of the game counterplaying each other through the form of resource denial and trying to keep our damage low for the other's push turn (Velhemina for me, Fides for him).  I eventually push him to 4 going into a Vel turn and manage to kill him...only for him to get a 6th damage heal and survive into his Immortal Fides turn.  Thankfully I had stockpiled up on Perfect Guards through multiple Ihnes blooms and I was able to barely make it through his push and promptly killed him with my GB8.

Game 2 - Time got called pretty quickly after this and we ended up playing out Turns 0-3 with highest damage as the loser.  Long story short I try to turtle out the game by setting up a defensive hand and taking the lead in damage but my plans are foiled by him being able to come up with a Multi-Attack turn that forces me to 5 damage which in itself isn't enough to lose me the game (and if the game ended in a draw then I won the round) but then he flipped a 5th damage heal to go down to 4 on the last turn and I lost.  Lolreeeeeeeee.

Round 2 - vs Deletor (2-0)

Game 1 - It's not Allen so I'm considerably less frightened as he's the only person I know who plays the deck properly (ie the Given combo) wheras this guy is just playing a less explosive variant.  Thing is when Deletors don't play to kill on the Turn 3 ride and the opponent gets to their Grade 3, it becomes harder to kill them since they're likely to have G-Guardians that allow them to block Rearguards even when he Vanguard is deleted (lol Antero) and the longer the game goes for Bloom, the easier it becomes for the deck to kill.  Not that it matters here as I skillfully flip 2 crits on him to take him to 5 and kill him on my next turn with Lieta.

Game 2 - Same deal here.  I know at this point he's not playing Given or the CB2 call a Deletor from deck guy so damage denying him isn't as important here thus I just play the game out as normal.  I do make it a point to field Dianne and Kera so he can't lock my attackers and I end up killing him on my 2nd stride.

And that was it for me as I got a bye after this and finished in 7th place (tied for 4th).  Rip.

Guess we'll see what happens when I play Victor.