How I felt watching my opponent Extra Link me.
I figured this should be something I write down as I still have the event fresh in my mind and some thoughts to share as I don't play Yu-Gi-Oh! very often (who would have guessed) but still keep tabs on the game. Honestly the best way to describe the current state of the game is "this is what Yu-Gi-Oh! is now" and it's not in a complimentary way. I have issues with the game that I'm not alone in voicing as I'm sure any YGO player worth their salt has thought these. Sure you'll have people who'll say "things are fine, quit bitching" but the honest truth is no things are
not fine as I have seen this game
when it was fine. This is not fine.
My issues is a very long winded rant that will probably get me irritated to the point of irrationality but it does serve as a backstory as to
why I don't play as often as I used to which has resulted in me being out of form for a solid couple of years now and I know this. I've thought about trying to get back into the way I used to be years ago but goddamn does Konami like to make it hard to want to. We've got;
-The speed and complexity of the game increasing to the point that literally every fucking deck in the game is either a glass cannon 10 minute wombo combo type that basically plays like Infernity with the goal of "break my board or you die"
or you play a degenerate stun deck with what seems like is 30 fucking floodgates because that is literally the only way you can stop the first type of deck. Decks in between are seldom seen or good.
-Core set design has been extremely shitty with the sole exception of 1-4 cards and they are printed as
Secret Rare in the TCG. Literally everything else almost never matters as they aren't nearly as powerful as these chase cards. It is incredibly unlikely to see a really good, format defining card be printed as a Common or a Rare. In addition to this the more recent sets are starting to
short print these Secret Rares which causes them to become ridiculously expensive. The result is that literally every time a new set comes out players have to spend 300 or more dollars for a playset of
one fucking card because fuck living in Canada and our shitty dollar. For 300 dollars I could buy 2 Vanguard decks or a top of the line Pokemon Deck (post Lele Reprint). This overall makes sets a huge waste of time as you almost never care about whats in it if it's not a Secret Rare most of the time. They have become comparable to Loot Boxes and honestly I've always seen Konami as no better than EA to begin with. Their greed and desire to nickle and dime the player base knows no bounds.
-The new End of Match Procedure while understandable has been poorly executed. Players are legitimately being robbed of games that they should have won because they had literal game on board but time was called before they could actually kill their opponent so they end up losing the game and the match or getting a draw. Konami
must change this to let the player finish their turn.
-Konami's wishy washy way of handling the Banlist has become incredibly frustrating when the speed of the game causes formats to become toxic in record times. Our current format is barely 3 months old and it's already become one of the worst I've seen. I don't fucking care if "it's better this way as they can hit the problem cards easier" when Konami has repeatedly shown to be inept at actually addressing the issues because of their obligation to sell specific sets or to pander to the weeaboos who'll blow a fucking gasket if Nightingale got banned. Either go back to giving us set dates so people can know how long these increasingly cancerous formats will go on for or actually follow up on your promise of hitting things when they're a problem by actually doing it. Emergency Bans are not a bad thing! Don't worry about the fact it might give off a bad image of your game in the eyes of people; players of other card games already see Yu-Gi-Oh! as a fucking joke. And most of them are former Yu-Gi-Oh! players who quit because of the increasing levels of bullshit!
Yet I still keep putting time, money and effort into this game. I can even show it by the fact that during this weekend in Winnipeg I picked up Ghost Belle, Evenly Matched and Danger! cards. Speaking of the Regionals...
I played Vendread Knightmare as you can probably tell at this point I think the format is a fucking joke (I would rather play
Mega Man X7 than YGO right now) and decided to just yolo the event with a deck that suicidebombs pretty hard but when it goes off
oh boy you're fucked. It's basically like Gouki, except you play cool zombie cards like Goblin Zombie, Mezuki and Zombie Master and thanks to Nord and Magnus I got to use high rarity versions of those cards. How did it go? Well
Round 1 - vs Hero Link (0-2)
Game 1 I go off with the combo and could have Extra Linked him but I forgot to resolve the Manditory Draw effect of Vampire Sucker until I had performed 3 more searched after that. This caused an irreparable game state which I knew so I scooped it up. Game 2 he opens with A Hero Lives which I Ash but he counters with Gamma and his Omega hits my Solitare out of my hand so I also scoop it up as even if he made a shit board it'd still have Dark Law and I kind of didn't have an answer to it in my deck.
Round 2 - vs Trickstar Sky Striker (1-2)
Game 1 I Extra Linked him, Game 2 he opens with Lightstage into Candina into Reincarnation which he shotguns on my Standby and subsequently bricked my hand and I make the mistake of trying to see if I could make a comeback when I should have scooped as Game 3 started with time looming and he wasn't able to do much to me other than beat over Uni-Zombie with a 1700 Kagari and I was able to summon Revendread Executioner which would have put me in the lead in LP...but time was called before I could do that and I lost.
Round 3 - vs Zoodiac True Draco (1-2)
Game 1 I extra linked him, game 2 I lost due to him having answers (and drawing bricks) and Game 3 I have no choice but to Soul Charge for 4 in order to try and extra link him. I fuck up multiple times trying to Extra Link into Gumblar Dragon as he Reaper'd my Tri-Gate (yet he didn't choose Firewall) and we argued over my ability to use Gumblar's discard effect each time which ended up wasting too much time before we finally called a judge over it. The result is there is a minute left going into his turn and he summons a Dino-Might fighter, swings which I stop with Linkuriboh and he chains to and
takes forever to resolve it as he has to find and set his trap and starts shuffling. And shuffling. And shuffling. I tell him "just cut the deck!" and he does so and passes and as I try to get to my turn and kill him time is called and I lose. Was he maliciously stalling for time? I want to say no, he's just one of those people that take way too long to do anything because they are for a lack of a better term to put it partially handicapped. In any case I'm furious as this was the 2nd round in a row I lost because of the End of Match procedure and in this case because my opponent was slow witted. In hindsight I'm also to blame for both losses as had I looked at things logically I could have had time on my side and instead
win.
Round 4 - vs Sky Striker (2-0)
Oof. I have to play a teammate and it doesn't go well. I win the dieroll, extra link him Game 1 and OTK him Game 2 as he had to Hayate for Engage which I Ash'd.
Round 5 - vs ??? (2-0)
My opponent was 5 minutes late in getting to the table which as anyone who reads the rules know is a Game loss (I handed out
10 Tardiness Penalties at the last Regionals) so we went to Game 2 which he let me go first. I extra linked him and won.
Round 6 - vs Domain Monarchs (2-0)
In 2018? According to Cobb this guy really wanted to top this regional and quit the game and figured he'd crush Gouki since they use the Extra Deck but got paired up against non Gouki decks instead which made him think the scorekeeper had it out for him. Oh but he didn't own any hand traps like Ash or Ogre. And he expected to top in a dominating fashion. Riiiiight. I extra Link him in both games and he never saw or got to Domain in either of them. He also got mad when I Ash'd his One for One and cited that as a problem card. I don't entirely disagree with him but could you imagine Yu-Gi-Oh! without its current hand traps? Without Ash Blossom? It'd be a
far worse game than it is. Everyone who thinks Ash is awful for the game are the ones that don't own them. Subsequently this week we'll see
many people suddenly think Ash is a fine card.
Round 7 - vs Gouki (1-2)
Ah! A legit deck! Game 1 he Extra Links me, Game 2 I Extra Link him and Game 3 he Extra Links me and I make the mistake of not shotgunning the Kaiju I had in hand to break his board and instead use Pre-Prep which he
chains Artifact Sanctum to and brings out Scythe to lock me out of my Extra Deck...while I have an Iblee on the board. Yeah I'm fucked.
So in the end I went 3-4 with 2-3 of those loses being dubious to some extent. I literally could have won 2 of those 3 matches if I played better and who knows how a Game 3 would have went against the Hero deck. Am I presumptuous enough to say that I punted away a possible top? Eeeeeh not really. If I won those two matches that I lost to time I would have been paired up against not mouth breathers and who knows how it would have gone. My deck was built to blind first and die going 2nd and I barely have any experience against Altergiest which was present. I
was winning most of my Dicerolls though and didn't brick as much as I thought I would. I did however draw my garnets constantly including Iblee.
Decklist;
2x Revendread Slayer
2x Vendread Battlelord
1x Revendread Executioner
1x Vendread Stryges
1x Vendread Core
3x Mezuki
3x Gozuki
1x Zombie Master
1x Goblin Zombie
1x Bacon Saver
3x Shiranui Solitaire
2x Uni-Zombie
1x Shiranui Spiritmaster
1x Knightmare Corrupter Iblee
3x Pre-Preparation of Rites
3x Revenread Origin
3x Revendread Evolution
3x Called by the Grave
1x Foolish Burial
1x Burial from a Different Dimension
1x Monster Reborn
1x World Legacy Succession
1x Soul Charge
2x Vampire Sucker
2x Knightmare Goblin
2x Knightmare Phoenix
1x Firewall Dragon
1x Topologic Gumblar Dragon
1x Knightmare Unicorn
1x Knightmare Cerberus
1x Knightmare Mermaid
1x Summon Sorceress
1x Tri-Gate Wizard
1x Linkuriboh
1x PSY-Framelord Omega
2x Evenly Matched
2x Twin Twister
3x Red Reboot
3x Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring
3x Ghost Ogre & Snow Rabbit
2x Gadarla the Mystery Dust Kaiju
Props
-I played in a Regional for the first time since last year
-I got to play with a sick as hell Vendread Deck. I didn't think I'd actually go through with my vow of "I'll play this deck at a Regionals" that I told the guys in our group chat
-I got to play with max rarity zombie cards
-My deck going off
hard like a mofo
-Gumblaring People. I managed to do it for 4 cards once!
-Finished the Ritual Monster Collection, again
-Almost got the Link Monster Collection done
-Picked up Danger!
-Hanging out with my homies in Winnipeg
Slops
-I played Yu-Gi-Oh! in this format
-I played
poorly in this format
-Couldn't get Borrelsword Dragon, the
one card that I wanted the most
-I spent waaaaaay too much on cards. I had a solid budget going into this but I definitely got a bit reckless at the beginning. I still have to order Granblue cards for a card game that I actually like!
-Handtraps make my deck sad and I can only do so much to stop them.
-My deck bricking. When it does, I'm sad.
-This format in general. Firewall Dragon is
not an okay card. It and Summon Sorc (and Goblin) are literally enabling degenerate shit like this. This is
awful.
