A legit report this time around in case you were wondering.
It's been a bit but the blog is back in action with more tales from locals (worth mentioning) as following Regionals I had to work, then I had to sit out last week's CFV locals and made the mistake of playing YGO locals at a time in which I'm not fond of the game. Come the movie pack/Felgrand structure my interest will be renewed but right now I'm NOT enjoying the game which is a point I've made clear and have been indirectly mocked for because of my preference for a game that is by all accounts even more flawed and horseshit than Yu-Gi-Oh! yet I still find enjoyable enough to play despite this. I attribute this to a few things but the main one is that at the moment Vanguard actually has decks I find appealing enough to play that I'm willing to put up with the game's bullshit to get the chance to play them. Yu-Gi-Oh! has had nothing like that for me since Nekroz and Clown Blade got slaughtered on the Banlist.
You see the heart of the matter is my shtick in TCGs has always been I play what I find appealing enough to stick with for a long time (like how I played Disaster Dragon from 2010-2012 and Mermail from 2012 to 2014) whereas I know people who have openly admitted that they have to keep changing up decks otherwise they become bored of the game and others will build literally everything under the goddamn sun. Sometimes what I choose to play happens to be a rogue deck. Other times it happens to be a meta deck and in some rare cases it's the best deck of the format. In all cases I try to apply competitive theory and technical play to whatever I pilot.
Granted since Sept 2012 when Mermail came out what I've found appealing has usually been Tier 1 or near Tier 0 and almost every format to have come since I've wound up playing a Tier 1 deck and because of the time I've spent playing those decks people have probably come to expect me to be like Ryan or Magnus who will play strictly the best stuff when in fact that's false. Why bring this up? Because honestly ever since Pre-DOCS format there hasn't been a deck that I've favoured enough to continue playing regardless of the state of the format with the occasional appearance of Yang Zing (a rogue deck) and I refuse to play that deck when I think its a bad call. I've built some shit but usually grew bored of them (Magician) or flat out disliked them (Kozmo) or the deck has more bad hands than good that I drop the thing like a bad habit. As the result if the game does not have a deck I find appealing enough to want to play regardless of outcomes I'm more likely to sit the format out because I'm far less willing to put up with Yu-Gi-Oh!'s bullshit.
Which brings me back to my original point in that I currently favour Vanguard over Yu-Gi-Oh! because I'm willing to put up with its bullshit to play the decks I find appealing; Narukami, Granblue and Gear Chronicle. Yu-Gi-Oh! has no deck like that for me until July and so I'm going to continue to sit it out and save myself the salt and increasing desire to quit that comes with getting your shit pushed in by people that I have no business losing to on even my worst day because they drew god/floodgates or I drew crap/no outs to floodgates.
So long story short people can back off on me choosing to focus more on Vanguard, Vanguard Theory and Vanguard Discussions over Yu-Gi-Oh! content at a time that I have way more interest in Vanguard than Yu-Gi-Oh! and respect my decision. I'd like to think that I've at least earned THAT much after all this time.
Oh right. This is a Vanguard Locals report. Ahem;
This tournament was a 2v2 type where the losers of each team would play each other if there wasn't a 2-0. Odd. I ended up being partnered with Derrick which was fine by me as his tendency to flip double crits would hopefully make up for my flipping no triggers and as such I placed myself in the player B slot figuring that most teams would put their best player/12 crit player up first which I wanted to part in playing against. I also opted to play Seven Seas Granblue with a heavily modified build that could do the usual Hollow shenanigans in order to have counter plays against Link Joker but I also ran cards that would help me maintain a board so that I wouldn't auto lose to Shadow Paladin. The theory behind my list also took G-Guardians into account as their introduction into the format has now made games go a few turns longer which my original list couldn't handle and would deck out under.
With this in mind the pairings were done up and the day began
Round 1 - vs Altmile/Alfred (Win)
Thing to note is that these games are best of ones for each player and as the result we had 2 Nociel Decks in the room which would normally never see play otherwise.
Anyway this game takes a while as we are both able to adequately guard each others Aerial Knight/Nightmist plays thanks to 15k shields and G-Guards though since he doesn't run any retire cards I'm able to steadily build up advantage through my Amber Clone which culminates in 2 Break Ride turns and flipping Stand Triggers that I shuffled back into the deck off them to enable about 5 attacks of roughly 21K or more in both cases. I run him out of hand and win while Derrick suffers from a trigger drought against Gears and in the third game doesn't have enough guard to live a 5 attack Altmile turn.
Round 2 - Bye
After losing our round we get the bye. Great. Furthermore Jordan and Evan who are both playing Nociel get paired up in the mirror which is about as exciting as watching Bujin play. Team Rip indeed.
Round 3 - vs Legend/Rebirth (Win)
Yeah...until Blademaster Taiten comes out this matchup is horrendously one sided in my favour. Not much I can say here as I kept going after him with 4 attacks a turn and letting my Hollow'd units dodge his stuff. Derrick won against Darkface.
Top 4 - vs Chaos (Lose)
Well this game happened. Simply put variance was not on my side this time around as; in 3 turns I only saw 2 triggers on offense and defense so I never had the power to push through his hand, I drew my Heal Trigger for turn 2 turns in a row ad milled my third, I drew only 1 Perfect Guard and I drew way too many Grade 3s and thus couldn't stop a 21k RG lane with crit to my 4 damage. Really disappointed in this one as he had used up his Universes early and I was starting to get my deck rolling before I had a brick shoved in my face. Derrick also lost his game as Jordan got to resolve multiple Refros and no hand in the world is going to help you against that.
So that was that. We finished third and Derrick and I had a Granblue Mirror of Nightrose vs Nightmist and then I left.
Props
-Sold off the Darklady I got in Winnipeg at last
-With the exception of vs Chaos, my deck performed very adequately. I'm going to tweak my G3 and G1 ratio as I drew way too many 3s too often but Colombard worked well and the Pokkur tech got in there
Slops
-My Chaos game.
Saturday, 4 June 2016
Sunday, 22 May 2016
YGO Locals "Report" - Par for the Course
Since I had to work this past weekend I had to take a pass on coming down to Tramps and trying to bounce back from my Regionals performance. So instead I'm going to have a little fun here and write up a totally legit (fake) report that'll somehow wind up being pretty close to legit considering how hilarious(ly awful) locals can be. Ahem;
After what happened last weekend I decided that this time around I'd play a deck that I felt 100% comfortable with even though I have no idea how its Kozmo matchup is in the form of Blue-Eyes. Due to my amazing powers of amazing I got a hold of a playset of Alternative White Dragon and when I asked Nord if I could play them he was all "like fuck you are" but then I gave him his set and he was like "ayy lmao" and that was that and by that I mean he played the deck too.
Round 1 - vs Fire King Kozmo (2-1)
Of course I'm up against Magnus. Wouldn't be a locals without us paired up round 1. Game 1 I open with a Spirit Dragon play backed up by Emptiness which he can't clear so I steal the win while in Game 2 I open pretty poorly and can't clear his Dark Planet + Kaiser Collosseum setup so I lose. Game 3 I can't even call a game as he opened with all of his field spells + Terraforming and it all goes downhill from there.
Round 2 - vs Magician Pendulum (2-0)
I need to come up with a nick name for this guy since calling him Ryan would be confusing since the Ryans I usually talk about on the blog are either good at the game (which this guy is not) or don't play anymore (which I wish was the case here). Anyway Game 1 I open with Spirit Dragon which pretty much shuts his deck down if he can't clear it which sadly this guy does as he opens with Raigeki and a Pendulum Summon play, but nothing threatening while I've got Wingblast + Ancient Stone + Silver's Cry to crack his board followed up by Alternative White Dragon and Gospel of Revival in order to make Galaxy-Eyes Cipher Dragon to take his Odd-Eyes Absolute Dragon, Rank it up into Darkmatter Dragon and cripple him. Game 2 he makes me go first and I open with a hand that lets me make Spirit Dragon AND Silver Dragon with Wingblast set so he pretty much can't play the game. I think I made him cry.
Round 3 - vs A pile of shit.dek (2-0)
So somehow Phillip managed to stall out Woodhouse long enough to raw draw Exodia 2 games in a row and that's why we ended up playing at this point of the day. WELL OKAY THEN. Game 1 I slowroll a win off Azure-Eyes bringing back Dragon Spirit to clear his grind cards and being able to make Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon because his deck is bad and usually gives me the time to do convoluted things. Game 2 he goes first and sets a monster with a backrow and passes while I opened Melody + Trade In + Gospel so I cleared his monster, brought back Blue-Eyes and made Darkmatter Dragon before playing Lullaby of Obedience to summon his Winged Dragon of Ra - Phoenix Mode out of his deck (he misread the card and thought I got to choose what happens and for the lulz I choose not to argue) and beat him with it.
Top 4 - vs Raidraptors (2-0)
Ultimate Falcon gets summoned in Game 1 but I beat it over with Darkmatter Dragon and flip Emptiness when he tries to make a comeback while in Game 2 I chain Ghost Reaper to his Double Force and banish all his Ultimate Falcons to completely blow the game out. So this is what it's like to Hungrybox people.
Finals - vs Blue-Eyes (2-1)
Figures the first tournament where legit Blue-Eyes are played Nord and I have to play the mirror in finals. Sadly this match was straight up bullshit as in Game 1 we both bricked terribly. I opened with all 3 of my Blue-Eyes and Ancient Stones while he opened with all of his draw spells. I eventually topdeck an Alternative White Dragon and start playing the beats game with it and Spirit Dragon before he finally starts to see some monsters. Unfortunately the game is too far gone and I start seeing my revival spells to clear his board and win. Game 2 I make a Spirit Dragon backed by Emptiness but it gets offed by a Kaiju and he promptly goes off and kills me. Game 3 I open draw spells + monsters and Soul Charge so I wind up making a board of Azure + Silver before normal summoning Ko'aki Meiru Drago and setting Wing Blast before passing. He draws Maxx "C" a turn too late and scoops since I have 2 Gospel of Revivals in grave so he has no way of clearing my board and winning.
So I end up finishing the day with only 2 whole losses which is a nice step up from Regionals while Nord and I talked Blue-Eyes theory which included potentially maining Kaiju since most of them are Trade-In targets. In addition to that Woodhouse started asking people for Koa'ki Meiru Dragos since we both played the card and because Aliens won an regionals last weekend Evan ordered the deck. After all that we went to Robins to play Nord's "special" cube where all archetypes work with each other and it was just as much of a gong show as you could imagine.
Props
-Shrekked everyone
-Got to play Blue-Eyes!
-Beating Phillip with his own card
-Sacking the utter shit out of Bad Ryan.
-Ghost Reapering a Towers clone. God it feels so good telling them "no, we ARE going to play actual Yu-Gi-Oh! Get that shit out of here."
-Seeing Kody get shit on by Crystal Beasts
Slops
-Bricks
-Sacking the utter shit out of Good Ryan
So whatcha think? Pretty accurate if I do say.
After what happened last weekend I decided that this time around I'd play a deck that I felt 100% comfortable with even though I have no idea how its Kozmo matchup is in the form of Blue-Eyes. Due to my amazing powers of amazing I got a hold of a playset of Alternative White Dragon and when I asked Nord if I could play them he was all "like fuck you are" but then I gave him his set and he was like "ayy lmao" and that was that and by that I mean he played the deck too.
Round 1 - vs Fire King Kozmo (2-1)
Of course I'm up against Magnus. Wouldn't be a locals without us paired up round 1. Game 1 I open with a Spirit Dragon play backed up by Emptiness which he can't clear so I steal the win while in Game 2 I open pretty poorly and can't clear his Dark Planet + Kaiser Collosseum setup so I lose. Game 3 I can't even call a game as he opened with all of his field spells + Terraforming and it all goes downhill from there.
Round 2 - vs Magician Pendulum (2-0)
I need to come up with a nick name for this guy since calling him Ryan would be confusing since the Ryans I usually talk about on the blog are either good at the game (which this guy is not) or don't play anymore (which I wish was the case here). Anyway Game 1 I open with Spirit Dragon which pretty much shuts his deck down if he can't clear it which sadly this guy does as he opens with Raigeki and a Pendulum Summon play, but nothing threatening while I've got Wingblast + Ancient Stone + Silver's Cry to crack his board followed up by Alternative White Dragon and Gospel of Revival in order to make Galaxy-Eyes Cipher Dragon to take his Odd-Eyes Absolute Dragon, Rank it up into Darkmatter Dragon and cripple him. Game 2 he makes me go first and I open with a hand that lets me make Spirit Dragon AND Silver Dragon with Wingblast set so he pretty much can't play the game. I think I made him cry.
Round 3 - vs A pile of shit.dek (2-0)
So somehow Phillip managed to stall out Woodhouse long enough to raw draw Exodia 2 games in a row and that's why we ended up playing at this point of the day. WELL OKAY THEN. Game 1 I slowroll a win off Azure-Eyes bringing back Dragon Spirit to clear his grind cards and being able to make Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon because his deck is bad and usually gives me the time to do convoluted things. Game 2 he goes first and sets a monster with a backrow and passes while I opened Melody + Trade In + Gospel so I cleared his monster, brought back Blue-Eyes and made Darkmatter Dragon before playing Lullaby of Obedience to summon his Winged Dragon of Ra - Phoenix Mode out of his deck (he misread the card and thought I got to choose what happens and for the lulz I choose not to argue) and beat him with it.
Top 4 - vs Raidraptors (2-0)
Ultimate Falcon gets summoned in Game 1 but I beat it over with Darkmatter Dragon and flip Emptiness when he tries to make a comeback while in Game 2 I chain Ghost Reaper to his Double Force and banish all his Ultimate Falcons to completely blow the game out. So this is what it's like to Hungrybox people.
Finals - vs Blue-Eyes (2-1)
Figures the first tournament where legit Blue-Eyes are played Nord and I have to play the mirror in finals. Sadly this match was straight up bullshit as in Game 1 we both bricked terribly. I opened with all 3 of my Blue-Eyes and Ancient Stones while he opened with all of his draw spells. I eventually topdeck an Alternative White Dragon and start playing the beats game with it and Spirit Dragon before he finally starts to see some monsters. Unfortunately the game is too far gone and I start seeing my revival spells to clear his board and win. Game 2 I make a Spirit Dragon backed by Emptiness but it gets offed by a Kaiju and he promptly goes off and kills me. Game 3 I open draw spells + monsters and Soul Charge so I wind up making a board of Azure + Silver before normal summoning Ko'aki Meiru Drago and setting Wing Blast before passing. He draws Maxx "C" a turn too late and scoops since I have 2 Gospel of Revivals in grave so he has no way of clearing my board and winning.
So I end up finishing the day with only 2 whole losses which is a nice step up from Regionals while Nord and I talked Blue-Eyes theory which included potentially maining Kaiju since most of them are Trade-In targets. In addition to that Woodhouse started asking people for Koa'ki Meiru Dragos since we both played the card and because Aliens won an regionals last weekend Evan ordered the deck. After all that we went to Robins to play Nord's "special" cube where all archetypes work with each other and it was just as much of a gong show as you could imagine.
Props
-Shrekked everyone
-Got to play Blue-Eyes!
-Beating Phillip with his own card
-Sacking the utter shit out of Bad Ryan.
-Ghost Reapering a Towers clone. God it feels so good telling them "no, we ARE going to play actual Yu-Gi-Oh! Get that shit out of here."
-Seeing Kody get shit on by Crystal Beasts
Slops
-Bricks
-Sacking the utter shit out of Good Ryan
So whatcha think? Pretty accurate if I do say.
Tuesday, 17 May 2016
Narukami Lists - Post Fighter's Collection 2016
We all know that when it comes to Cardfight!! Vanguard I love me some thunder dragons. Well I figure why not periodically post my decklists while making updates to them throughout the year like some other blogs while occasionally giving my thoughts on how certain builds fair in the format.
So with that said let's get this show on the road!
Kaiser
4x Dragonic Kasier Crimson
3x Dragonic Kaiser Vermillion
1x Dragonic Vanquisher
4x Demonic Dragon Berserker, Chatura
4x Voltage Horn Dragon
3x Dragonic Deathscythe
4x Dragon Dancer, Anastasia
4x Crown Holder Dragon
4x Mighty Bolt Dragoon
2x Rising Phoenix
8x Crit (4 Malevolent Djinn, 4x Lightning of Triumphant Return, Reseph)
4x Draw
4x Heal
1x Lizard Soldier, Saishin
4x Conquering Supreme Dragon, Conquest Dragon
4x Conquering Supreme Dragon, Dragonic Kaiser Warning
2x True Eradicator, Finish Blow Dragon
1x Lightning Dragon Knight, Zorras
1x Air Element, Seabreeze
2x Metal Element, Scryew
1x Dark Element, Dizmel
1x Lightning King Spirit Emperor, Vritra
Brawler
4x Brawler, Big Bang Knuckle Buster
4x Brawler, Big Bang Knuckle Dragon
4x Brawler, Skyhowl Dragon
2x Brawler, Big Bang Slash Buster
2x Brawler, Big Bang Slash Dragon
4x Demonic Dragon Berserker, Chatura
4x Dragon Dancer, Anastasia
4x Secret Fist Brawler, Koukon
4x Mighty Bolt Dragoon
1x Brawler, Wildcloak Dragon
8x Crit (4 Malevolent Djinn, 4x Brawler, Street Fight Dragon)
4x Brawler Draw
4x Brawler Heal
1x Lizard Soldier, Saishin
4x Conquering Supreme Dragon, Conquest Dragon
4x True Brawler, Big Bang Knuckle Turbo
1x Lightning Dragon Knight, Zorras
2x True Eradicator, Finish Blow Dragon
1x Air Element, Seabreeze
2x Metal Element, Scryew
1x Dark Element, Dizmel
1x Lightning King Spirit Emperor, Vritra
Vanquisher
4x Dragonic Vanquisher
3x Blitz Spear Dragoon
4x Demonic Dragon Berserker, Chatura
4x Voltage Horn Dragon
4x Rock Climb Dragoon
4x Dragon Dancer, Anastasia
4x Mighty Bolt Dragoon
4x Chain-Bolt Dragoon
2x Rising Phoenix
1x Malevolent Djinn
4x Lightning of Hope, Reseph
3x Draw
3x Dragon Dancer Vianne
4x Heal
4x Conquering Supreme Dragon, Dragonic Vanquisher "Voltage"
4x Conquering Supreme Dragon, Conquest Dragon
1x Lightning Dragon Knight, Zorras
1-2x Conquering Supreme Dragon, Voltechzapper Dragon
0-1x True Eradicator, Finish Blow Dragon
1x Air Element, Seabreeze
2x Metal Element, Scryew
1x Dark Element, Dizmel
1x Lightning King Spirit Emperor, Vritra
So with that said let's get this show on the road!
Kaiser
4x Dragonic Kasier Crimson
3x Dragonic Kaiser Vermillion
1x Dragonic Vanquisher
4x Demonic Dragon Berserker, Chatura
4x Voltage Horn Dragon
3x Dragonic Deathscythe
4x Dragon Dancer, Anastasia
4x Crown Holder Dragon
4x Mighty Bolt Dragoon
2x Rising Phoenix
8x Crit (4 Malevolent Djinn, 4x Lightning of Triumphant Return, Reseph)
4x Draw
4x Heal
1x Lizard Soldier, Saishin
4x Conquering Supreme Dragon, Conquest Dragon
4x Conquering Supreme Dragon, Dragonic Kaiser Warning
2x True Eradicator, Finish Blow Dragon
1x Lightning Dragon Knight, Zorras
1x Air Element, Seabreeze
2x Metal Element, Scryew
1x Dark Element, Dizmel
1x Lightning King Spirit Emperor, Vritra
Brawler
4x Brawler, Big Bang Knuckle Buster
4x Brawler, Big Bang Knuckle Dragon
4x Brawler, Skyhowl Dragon
2x Brawler, Big Bang Slash Buster
2x Brawler, Big Bang Slash Dragon
4x Demonic Dragon Berserker, Chatura
4x Dragon Dancer, Anastasia
4x Secret Fist Brawler, Koukon
4x Mighty Bolt Dragoon
1x Brawler, Wildcloak Dragon
8x Crit (4 Malevolent Djinn, 4x Brawler, Street Fight Dragon)
4x Brawler Draw
4x Brawler Heal
1x Lizard Soldier, Saishin
4x Conquering Supreme Dragon, Conquest Dragon
4x True Brawler, Big Bang Knuckle Turbo
1x Lightning Dragon Knight, Zorras
2x True Eradicator, Finish Blow Dragon
1x Air Element, Seabreeze
2x Metal Element, Scryew
1x Dark Element, Dizmel
1x Lightning King Spirit Emperor, Vritra
Vanquisher
4x Dragonic Vanquisher
3x Blitz Spear Dragoon
4x Demonic Dragon Berserker, Chatura
4x Voltage Horn Dragon
4x Rock Climb Dragoon
4x Dragon Dancer, Anastasia
4x Mighty Bolt Dragoon
4x Chain-Bolt Dragoon
2x Rising Phoenix
1x Malevolent Djinn
4x Lightning of Hope, Reseph
3x Draw
3x Dragon Dancer Vianne
4x Heal
4x Conquering Supreme Dragon, Dragonic Vanquisher "Voltage"
4x Conquering Supreme Dragon, Conquest Dragon
1x Lightning Dragon Knight, Zorras
1-2x Conquering Supreme Dragon, Voltechzapper Dragon
0-1x True Eradicator, Finish Blow Dragon
1x Air Element, Seabreeze
2x Metal Element, Scryew
1x Dark Element, Dizmel
1x Lightning King Spirit Emperor, Vritra
With the release of the G-Guardian mechanic I should note that it's going to be harder for some G-Units to do their thing. Finish Blow Dragon is going to struggle with Scryew being able to make it easier to 2 pass the thing while Dizmel makes Dragonic Kaiser Warning turns considerably weaker than they used to be. Thankfully most decks only run him at one so once you've baited the first one out, then you can attempt your final turn push. With the expansion of the G-Zone Brawler, Kaiser and Vanquisher can all max out on Conquest Dragon and their signature boss strides without question, followed by some number of Zorras and Finish Blows for the first two decks as one is a costless form of pressure that will bait a PG or get some needed binds for Vritra while the other can still potentially kill the opponent if you're reading that they don't have a PG or a G-Guard play. Vanquisher has the option to run Voltech due to its focus on binding and the card is pretty solid as a 1-2 of that can potentially clear and bind 3+ cards after the deck gets rolling which will make Voltage turns that much stronger. He also punishes Gear Chronicle players who leave any of their units permabound and will have potential in the Chronofang matchup if that ever becomes a thing. Lastly Seabreeze needs to be ran as a one of as Narukami has some good GB1 units (Voltage Horn, Vianne) that can punish people who try to play the Grade 2 game. Vritra will be replaced when we get our clone of Denial Griffen who I hope to got gets to retire something in the front row and bind it upon being placed on Guardian Circle.
Monday, 16 May 2016
Winnipeg Regionals Report - Punting harder than WWE Creative
Just ONE thing. You just had to do ONE thing. Alas much like not booking Taker vs Sting at WM last year and now kicking yourselves for it I basically fucked myself out of a likely top due to a really bad mental slip and it's going to be something I won't live down for a long time.
But how did we get here you ask? Well let me tell you!
For this Regionals I borrowed Matt's Kozmo deck with a list in mind that I felt had solid theory though Ryan was unsure and Evan immediately disagreed despite my reasoning which I thought was sound. Then when Cody (Winnipeg's best player and one of the best in Canada) came to the place we were staying at and showed his Kozmo deck he ended up saying the exact same things to which I mentally fist pumped as it meant at the very least my line of thinking was correct in that you did not want to run 3 ofs for pilots in the Fire King build as you need more ships to pop and drawing the things will make it harder to combo. You're better of summoning them off your ships during the EP. In addition we had both said that maining Farmgirl was awful as you rarely ended up being able to summon it and land a hit as long as Prime Monarch existed among other things. With that in mind I finalized my main deck and spent a good amount of time tweaking my side before hitting the sack and for once getting more than 3 hours of sleep. The next day we arrived at the venue, I picked up 2 Magic Deflectors and after a long process of getting my decklist legit the tournament began;
Round 1 - vs Deskbots (2-0)
This was his first Regionals and he definitely showed signs of having the jitters that come with being at an event of this type for the first time. In addition to that he was playing Deskbots which are a awful no matter what r/yugioh tells you so I stomp him in both games.
Round 2 - vs Kozmo (2-0)
Game 1 he doesn't see Kozmotown and I do which in itself makes winning the mirror match an uphill battle thanks to my considerably higher advantage. In addition to that I'm certain he didn't see my 2nd Forerunner coming and I had Deflector for his E-Tele to win Game 1. Game 2 he opens with a Pilot into Darklady set backrow play and shotguns Emptiness during my Standby Phase which I can only assume was out of expecting me to side in Kaiju. Well in a rare case of meeting one sack draw with another I opened with Raigeki and used it to nick that problem, drop a Wickedwitch and start beating face as he doesn't draw a ship and eventually has to CotH his Lady back which I eventually deal with as I had a hand full of ships and I'm certain I resolve a Tincan at one point. Basically I opened better both games and won because of it which is pretty much any mirror match in Yu-Gi-Oh! these days. Skillful play my ass.
Round 3 - vs Yobooboo (2-1)
Game 1 I brick really terribly with a hand of multiple Maxx "C" which are terrible vs his deck and some other unplayable cards. I set a bluff to see what he would do and scoop without revealing what I was playing in order to get the advantage in siding. It pays off as he doesn't know what to bring in and I open with an Island combo to make a board that he can't answer and I win in a few turns. Game 3 is more of a back and forth game as he opened with Macro Cosmos for the third straight time among other floodgates that I eventually answer thanks to Kozmotown allowing me to recycle Slipriders and Pilots while he thankfully never sees Card of Demise and as such his deck becomes the pile of shit it actually is and he loses.
Round 4 - vs Yobooboo (1-1)
Of course I play this cancer twice in a row. Turns out an entire team of cancer players came that Cody warned us about. Lucky me.
Anywho we get deck checked and while nothing bad happened the fact that my deck is returned organized as monsters/spells/traps means I have to do a considerable amount of shuffling to ensure I don't brick and sadly my shuffles weren't enough. I open pretty poorly and have to deal with a turn 1 Emptiness that I can't clear for the life of me. Worst off I make a brutal misplay by failing to realized I could have used Kozmojo to out the Emptiness by forcing out a Secret Move to self destruct the Emptienss before he entered his attack step and afterwards tag out to a ship he couldn't clear. Instead I do it on attack declaration and miss my chance. I eventually concede and we head into a retarded game 2 where Anti-Spell and Iron Wall are active because what the fuck is playing actual Yu-Gi-Oh! right? God this game is shit. Regardless we're doing a fine job of not letting the other play as I stick a Dog Fighter on the board which I ran specifically for Demise.dek as the Tokens are bigger than Yosenju and Qlis but this guy ends up taking it off Creature Swap which normally would be GG, right? No this is where the match becomes silly as during my Standby he makes a token and I summon Forerunner in response to his Iron Wall flip or something. I just know I have the thing in play. During his Standby he summons another token followed up by 2 Yosenju but realizes he can't bounce Forerunner with 1 and passes to which I hold my breath as if he gets greedy and summons a third token during my Standby I win the game....and he does! I mentally fist pump as he has now filled up 4 of his 5 monster zones with monsters and as the result he can't drop multiple Yosenju in order to out my Forerunner and now Darklady off CotH. He realizes this during his turn and ends up throwing a Token into my Lady in order to clear space to summon his guys which I successfully kill with Lady as he for once doesn't have a Secret Move. At this point time is looming and my LP is at 7500 so I make it a point to not attack, gain life with Forerunner, negate his monsters with Lady and eventually get a Tincan out, resolve its effect and tribute summon Landwalker to ensure he can't break my board. At this point we have a crowd around us and people are lolmazed at the game state of his 5 set backrow including Iron Wall and a Tenki that I negated with Deflector, Dog Fighter and 3 tokens to my Anti-Spell, Kozmotown, Forerunner, Darklady and Landwalker. At this point I've almost got the game in hand and the draw secured but I draw Yaksha for turn and realize if he stays alive for a turn and I draw into Wickedwitch (which thanks to mulligans would happen) I can Utopia the Lightning and beat him to death. This succeeds as he doesn't attack my set Yaksha and on the following turn I flip it up, summon Witch, make Lightning and clear his board. He reads him a few times to understand the effect and between his effect, Darklady and me making it clear that I was only going to attack wit Lightning until he died he ended up scooping.
Round 5 - vs Xyz Monarch (1-2)
Game 1 he summoned Majesty's Fiend and I outright lost. Game 2 I open with Anti-Spell and am able to drop a Dark Destroyer off Tincan backed by Mojo which I use to clear his one of his sets followed by Sliprider killing his other set before I go off and kill him the following turn. Game 3 I open with a bad hand made worse by his Erebus hitting my Teleport to completely kill my chance of playing around Either/Stormforth which he did have. On his turn he does more Monarch things, drops Either and another Erebus and OTKs me in what was probably the most sacky game of the tournament.
Round 6 - vs Xyz Monarch (2-1)
Game 1 he drops Majesty's Fiend and I outright lost. Getting real tired of this shit. Games 2 and 3 though he opened with triple Brilliant Fusion and I'm going to assume Garnet as he never played them in order to at least get a chump blocker and as such I kill him quickly.
Round 7 - vs Fluffal (0-2)
Game 1 I open with the worst hand of the day; Both Island, mini Garunix, Terraforming and Kozmotown. I scout to see what deck he plays and scoop it up and move into Game 2 in which I open much better and even do a decent job of keeping him from going completely off as Fluffals can kill you out of nowhere. I even get to the point where I have an OTK set up and ready to go...except either because I was still tilted from Game 1 or because I got way ahead of myself in excitement I make the misplay of summoning Shark Fortress thinking Cyber Dragon Infinity's attack would be too low to get the OTK...except I don't use his effect! By the time I realize this it's too late for me to do anything about it so I swing with everything to leave him at 300, leave a Stawman with Dark Destroyer in hand and Dark Lady on the field to make sure that Fluffal Wolf can't nuke my board. He starts comboing which I expected because Toy Vendor is actually a horribly unbalanced card, the player is apparently a notorious sack and after seeing that I wasn't going to use Wicked Witch to negate his Fluffal Tigers and instead save it for his Wolf...he plays Dark Hole to wipe my board, power through my Forerunner and other ships and I whiff off my tincan search and lose the game as the result.
So because of my deck utterly crapping out when I desperately needed it to not and because of my own stupidity I ended up losing out on what by all accounts a guaranteed top as I know for a fact that if I won Game 2 I very well would have won Game 3 due to playing what was the superior deck and at the risk of sounding like a smug bastard also being a better player. Unlike the situation with Fat Chris I kept my cool and no salty tears were shed and I was able to keep calm for the most part. I'd say that a good portion of this came from the fact that my spirit was broken out of what happened and I if I was angry is was the "too pissed to get mad" kind.
After that we went to Movados, played Magnus' Cube in which I made a Lightsworn Deck and brought out Exterio with Metamorphisis. The next day I picked up a Blue-Eyes deck core and wrote this report.
In regards to the deck I played it ran well for the most part. Kozmos as I mentioned before have a decently high brick rate and the Island build does not run enough defensive cards to play out of its brick hands which is an aspect I dislike about the deck. The vaunted Fire King Combos also do NOT happen nearly as often as people hype it up to be. Instead you're going to just Island a Ship, bring out Strawman and bring back the ship to summon Tincan/Darklady and pass. In regards to the game itself I think it's utter shit and I don't see that changing until after Nats. For the love of god Konami just nuke the fucking format.
Props
-Picked up Reapers
-Picked up everything for Blue-Eyes. Just need Alt. Dragon and Chaos Max
-Despite a losing effort I still finished higher than last time. 17 and under club represent yo!
-Fucking up Deskbots. I'm going to say right now that anyone who plays that deck competitively is a shit player.
-My Cube deck was sweet
-Picking up OTS foils
Slops
-In 3 days I already have no more tolerance of Dat Boi memes.
-Not topping, obviously
-Misplays
-Bricking
-Losing to Floodgates featuring monsters
-That Round 7 punt. I might as well call myself McCallum.
-Ryan cutting a guy off in the parking lot. I'm still speechless.
-No Olive Garden. I was so hyped...
But how did we get here you ask? Well let me tell you!
For this Regionals I borrowed Matt's Kozmo deck with a list in mind that I felt had solid theory though Ryan was unsure and Evan immediately disagreed despite my reasoning which I thought was sound. Then when Cody (Winnipeg's best player and one of the best in Canada) came to the place we were staying at and showed his Kozmo deck he ended up saying the exact same things to which I mentally fist pumped as it meant at the very least my line of thinking was correct in that you did not want to run 3 ofs for pilots in the Fire King build as you need more ships to pop and drawing the things will make it harder to combo. You're better of summoning them off your ships during the EP. In addition we had both said that maining Farmgirl was awful as you rarely ended up being able to summon it and land a hit as long as Prime Monarch existed among other things. With that in mind I finalized my main deck and spent a good amount of time tweaking my side before hitting the sack and for once getting more than 3 hours of sleep. The next day we arrived at the venue, I picked up 2 Magic Deflectors and after a long process of getting my decklist legit the tournament began;
Round 1 - vs Deskbots (2-0)
This was his first Regionals and he definitely showed signs of having the jitters that come with being at an event of this type for the first time. In addition to that he was playing Deskbots which are a awful no matter what r/yugioh tells you so I stomp him in both games.
Round 2 - vs Kozmo (2-0)
Game 1 he doesn't see Kozmotown and I do which in itself makes winning the mirror match an uphill battle thanks to my considerably higher advantage. In addition to that I'm certain he didn't see my 2nd Forerunner coming and I had Deflector for his E-Tele to win Game 1. Game 2 he opens with a Pilot into Darklady set backrow play and shotguns Emptiness during my Standby Phase which I can only assume was out of expecting me to side in Kaiju. Well in a rare case of meeting one sack draw with another I opened with Raigeki and used it to nick that problem, drop a Wickedwitch and start beating face as he doesn't draw a ship and eventually has to CotH his Lady back which I eventually deal with as I had a hand full of ships and I'm certain I resolve a Tincan at one point. Basically I opened better both games and won because of it which is pretty much any mirror match in Yu-Gi-Oh! these days. Skillful play my ass.
Round 3 - vs Yobooboo (2-1)
Game 1 I brick really terribly with a hand of multiple Maxx "C" which are terrible vs his deck and some other unplayable cards. I set a bluff to see what he would do and scoop without revealing what I was playing in order to get the advantage in siding. It pays off as he doesn't know what to bring in and I open with an Island combo to make a board that he can't answer and I win in a few turns. Game 3 is more of a back and forth game as he opened with Macro Cosmos for the third straight time among other floodgates that I eventually answer thanks to Kozmotown allowing me to recycle Slipriders and Pilots while he thankfully never sees Card of Demise and as such his deck becomes the pile of shit it actually is and he loses.
Round 4 - vs Yobooboo (1-1)
Of course I play this cancer twice in a row. Turns out an entire team of cancer players came that Cody warned us about. Lucky me.
Anywho we get deck checked and while nothing bad happened the fact that my deck is returned organized as monsters/spells/traps means I have to do a considerable amount of shuffling to ensure I don't brick and sadly my shuffles weren't enough. I open pretty poorly and have to deal with a turn 1 Emptiness that I can't clear for the life of me. Worst off I make a brutal misplay by failing to realized I could have used Kozmojo to out the Emptiness by forcing out a Secret Move to self destruct the Emptienss before he entered his attack step and afterwards tag out to a ship he couldn't clear. Instead I do it on attack declaration and miss my chance. I eventually concede and we head into a retarded game 2 where Anti-Spell and Iron Wall are active because what the fuck is playing actual Yu-Gi-Oh! right? God this game is shit. Regardless we're doing a fine job of not letting the other play as I stick a Dog Fighter on the board which I ran specifically for Demise.dek as the Tokens are bigger than Yosenju and Qlis but this guy ends up taking it off Creature Swap which normally would be GG, right? No this is where the match becomes silly as during my Standby he makes a token and I summon Forerunner in response to his Iron Wall flip or something. I just know I have the thing in play. During his Standby he summons another token followed up by 2 Yosenju but realizes he can't bounce Forerunner with 1 and passes to which I hold my breath as if he gets greedy and summons a third token during my Standby I win the game....and he does! I mentally fist pump as he has now filled up 4 of his 5 monster zones with monsters and as the result he can't drop multiple Yosenju in order to out my Forerunner and now Darklady off CotH. He realizes this during his turn and ends up throwing a Token into my Lady in order to clear space to summon his guys which I successfully kill with Lady as he for once doesn't have a Secret Move. At this point time is looming and my LP is at 7500 so I make it a point to not attack, gain life with Forerunner, negate his monsters with Lady and eventually get a Tincan out, resolve its effect and tribute summon Landwalker to ensure he can't break my board. At this point we have a crowd around us and people are lolmazed at the game state of his 5 set backrow including Iron Wall and a Tenki that I negated with Deflector, Dog Fighter and 3 tokens to my Anti-Spell, Kozmotown, Forerunner, Darklady and Landwalker. At this point I've almost got the game in hand and the draw secured but I draw Yaksha for turn and realize if he stays alive for a turn and I draw into Wickedwitch (which thanks to mulligans would happen) I can Utopia the Lightning and beat him to death. This succeeds as he doesn't attack my set Yaksha and on the following turn I flip it up, summon Witch, make Lightning and clear his board. He reads him a few times to understand the effect and between his effect, Darklady and me making it clear that I was only going to attack wit Lightning until he died he ended up scooping.
Round 5 - vs Xyz Monarch (1-2)
Game 1 he summoned Majesty's Fiend and I outright lost. Game 2 I open with Anti-Spell and am able to drop a Dark Destroyer off Tincan backed by Mojo which I use to clear his one of his sets followed by Sliprider killing his other set before I go off and kill him the following turn. Game 3 I open with a bad hand made worse by his Erebus hitting my Teleport to completely kill my chance of playing around Either/Stormforth which he did have. On his turn he does more Monarch things, drops Either and another Erebus and OTKs me in what was probably the most sacky game of the tournament.
Round 6 - vs Xyz Monarch (2-1)
Game 1 he drops Majesty's Fiend and I outright lost. Getting real tired of this shit. Games 2 and 3 though he opened with triple Brilliant Fusion and I'm going to assume Garnet as he never played them in order to at least get a chump blocker and as such I kill him quickly.
Round 7 - vs Fluffal (0-2)
Game 1 I open with the worst hand of the day; Both Island, mini Garunix, Terraforming and Kozmotown. I scout to see what deck he plays and scoop it up and move into Game 2 in which I open much better and even do a decent job of keeping him from going completely off as Fluffals can kill you out of nowhere. I even get to the point where I have an OTK set up and ready to go...except either because I was still tilted from Game 1 or because I got way ahead of myself in excitement I make the misplay of summoning Shark Fortress thinking Cyber Dragon Infinity's attack would be too low to get the OTK...except I don't use his effect! By the time I realize this it's too late for me to do anything about it so I swing with everything to leave him at 300, leave a Stawman with Dark Destroyer in hand and Dark Lady on the field to make sure that Fluffal Wolf can't nuke my board. He starts comboing which I expected because Toy Vendor is actually a horribly unbalanced card, the player is apparently a notorious sack and after seeing that I wasn't going to use Wicked Witch to negate his Fluffal Tigers and instead save it for his Wolf...he plays Dark Hole to wipe my board, power through my Forerunner and other ships and I whiff off my tincan search and lose the game as the result.
So because of my deck utterly crapping out when I desperately needed it to not and because of my own stupidity I ended up losing out on what by all accounts a guaranteed top as I know for a fact that if I won Game 2 I very well would have won Game 3 due to playing what was the superior deck and at the risk of sounding like a smug bastard also being a better player. Unlike the situation with Fat Chris I kept my cool and no salty tears were shed and I was able to keep calm for the most part. I'd say that a good portion of this came from the fact that my spirit was broken out of what happened and I if I was angry is was the "too pissed to get mad" kind.
After that we went to Movados, played Magnus' Cube in which I made a Lightsworn Deck and brought out Exterio with Metamorphisis. The next day I picked up a Blue-Eyes deck core and wrote this report.
In regards to the deck I played it ran well for the most part. Kozmos as I mentioned before have a decently high brick rate and the Island build does not run enough defensive cards to play out of its brick hands which is an aspect I dislike about the deck. The vaunted Fire King Combos also do NOT happen nearly as often as people hype it up to be. Instead you're going to just Island a Ship, bring out Strawman and bring back the ship to summon Tincan/Darklady and pass. In regards to the game itself I think it's utter shit and I don't see that changing until after Nats. For the love of god Konami just nuke the fucking format.
Props
-Picked up Reapers
-Picked up everything for Blue-Eyes. Just need Alt. Dragon and Chaos Max
-Despite a losing effort I still finished higher than last time. 17 and under club represent yo!
-Fucking up Deskbots. I'm going to say right now that anyone who plays that deck competitively is a shit player.
-My Cube deck was sweet
-Picking up OTS foils
Slops
-In 3 days I already have no more tolerance of Dat Boi memes.
-Not topping, obviously
-Misplays
-Bricking
-Losing to Floodgates featuring monsters
-That Round 7 punt. I might as well call myself McCallum.
-Ryan cutting a guy off in the parking lot. I'm still speechless.
-No Olive Garden. I was so hyped...
Friday, 29 April 2016
Quick update
Had some free time that normally I'd have spent shooting discussion videos/deck profiles but since I'm still not 100% over my cold talking for a prolonged amount of time wasn't an option. So instead I redid one of the sections on here that was going to be a Wikipedia style database for X-Stars...except I haven't been bothered to work on any fiction for over a year now so it was literally sitting there doing nothing and as such it's GONE. Now it's just a page full of all the OG cards ideas I came up with over the last few years that I'll update every now and then as I find some of my old jot notes from the Edmonton Trip a few years ago. You can find it here if you want to check out the initial batch of Abyssal and Storm Deity (now remade as a "combo on me? I'll punish you bro" deck) cards.
As for the next part as I'm sure it's apparent by now my lack of desire to Yu-Gi-Oh! has not gone away. If anything it's only gotten worse as the direction the game is going in addition to just how fucking whiny the player base has gotten keeps pushing me away. At this point I have no doubt in my mind that once the Movie Pack and the rest of the Blue-Eyes Support comes out I'm done putting any money into the game and the following Regionals I go to will probably be the last as a player. I'll still keep involved in the game as a judge since Locals is going to need somebody with a head on their shoulders to handle that stuff but when it's getting to the point that Matt is talking about quitting and Ryan hates the best deck in the game then you know things are going downhill.
As for the next part as I'm sure it's apparent by now my lack of desire to Yu-Gi-Oh! has not gone away. If anything it's only gotten worse as the direction the game is going in addition to just how fucking whiny the player base has gotten keeps pushing me away. At this point I have no doubt in my mind that once the Movie Pack and the rest of the Blue-Eyes Support comes out I'm done putting any money into the game and the following Regionals I go to will probably be the last as a player. I'll still keep involved in the game as a judge since Locals is going to need somebody with a head on their shoulders to handle that stuff but when it's getting to the point that Matt is talking about quitting and Ryan hates the best deck in the game then you know things are going downhill.
Sunday, 24 April 2016
YGO Locals Report - Headaches abound
Before I go into this I just wanna say ofc I'm starting to develop a cold 3 weeks before an upcoming Regionals. Hopefully I can get over it in time as I've always believed that you don't go on a road trip with people when you're ill as it's kind of a dick move to give everyone in the car and the venue what you've been putting up with.
That being said on this particular day I wasn't feeling 100% due to having a headache that lasted through most of the day so I was not in the mood to do a whole lot of thinking which immediately ruled out Burning Abyss, Pendulum and Xyz Monarchs as decks to play. Well it's a good thing I opted to play Kozmos (at Ryan's insistence after testing yesterday) as it's going to be the best deck post SHIV once Fire King Island, Darklady and Darkwalker are released so it's for the best I try to get as much practice as I can and figure out my matchups along the way. So after building a deck off of what Matt had and borrowing a 3rd Mojo and 2 Strikes from Ryan I had a list in mind that was based on Tincan/Soartroopers interactions as I felt it raised the deck's limited ceiling somewhat.
Round 1 - vs Trap Xyz.dek (2-0)
First game in a tournament setting with the deck and I...brick. Like drawing multiple Kozmotowns, big ships and Mojo/Calls but no pilots for turns. He lands a couple Assault Halberd hits before I get fed up and Twin Twister my field spell and one of his backrow which turns out to be one of those shitty trap monsters from a recent set. Excuse me wut? Burgesstoma aren't out yet and even then that deck is garbage as fuck. Anyway I get my ball rolling and kill him in a couple turns before realizing I could have done it faster through Farmgirl. Gentlemen behold, the one person who can misplay with Kozmo even harder than Woodhouse!
Game 2 I open all 3 Kozmotowns and draw jackshit for a few turns which was beginning to annoy me. Allen and Woodhouse open legit bonkers in every game I've had against them but I draw fucking aids? Fuck off.
Anyway I eventually start seeing Tincans after taking a few hits and establish big ships backed by Mojos which is gg vs any rogue deck as Ryan has pointed out repeatedly.
Round 2 - vs Domain Monarchs (2-1)
He wins the dieroll, goes first, summons Erebus and drops Vanity's Fiend + March to my hand of Kozmotown, Pilot + Ships with Twin Tisters so I scoop it up without revealing what I'm playing and side appropriately. Turns out he's playing a different (bad) build that maxes out on both fiends, Pot of Duality and as you could tell March so I bring in Restricts and hand traps. Don't see either in Game 2 but I go off hard and kill him in a couple turns so it was irrelevant. Game 3 on the other hand was aids as he dropped a Chaos Hunter that I couldn't clear for the life of me for several turns and had to sit behind a Wickedwitch backed by Mask of Restrict. Thankfully he didn't side in any backrow hate so he couldn't clear the Mask at all while I finally drew into a Tincan and managed to put a Dark Destroyer in the graveyard and Call it back to out his Hunter. He summons another one but since my card peen is bigger I beat him down with it and s-l-o-w-l-y win the game because Prime Monarch makes it difficult to get hits in when you only run 5 bigships that can beat it over.
Round 3 - vs DMoC Turbo (2-1)
So in a move that blindsided me Ryan opted to build something he saw off of Aznpersuasion's channel (who I find to be a reputable yugituber btw) as the concept of it looked neat. That being said as he'll obviously go into (in possibly great detail) on his blog rogue vs Kozmo is an abysmal matchup because of how badly designed the bigships are. I won't go so far as to say the matchup was one sided though as he does have the advantage of my inexperience with the deck, my tendency to brick when playing good decks and our matches usually drag out long enough that he has a chance at winning if I wind up being the first of us to make a glaring misplay that the other can capitalize on. As such our match eventually goes into time as Game 1 I open complete aids where I have to yolo Allure and I get rewarded, but my hand is still poop and I have to mulligan...into an equally bad hand. I'm talking summon Farmgirl set backrow pass bad. He promptly kicks my ass.
Game 2 is a bit hazy as I know I flip up Mask of Restrict though I'm not sure how much of an effect it had. I know I eventually win it which gives him the chance to go first game 3 and he goes off hard. He creates an incredibly powerful board that I spend most of the game trying to fight through thanks to Prime Monarch allowing him to survive what would be normally gameshot turns. I eventually kill him after drawing into Soartroopers while having another one in the grave with Farmgirl so I'm able do rank 3 shenanigans.
Top 8 - vs DMoC Turbo (2-0)
This match on the other hand was straight up BS on my part as I inadvertantly channeled my inner Armando and sacked the shit out of Ryan off of my mulligan and establish a Dark Destroyer backed by traps he can't clear. Game 2 he opens poorly and is never able to get Prime Monarch in the grave so I kill him in a few turns.
After this I contemplate dropping and heading to BK with the others as I was getting hungry and my headache was becoming harder to deal with. Had I been paired up with any of our Monarch players in top cut I would have done it. Instead I was paired up with Derrick's D/D/Ds.
Top 4 - vs D/D/D (0-2)
This match I straight up punted. Between several misplays and straight up brainfarting I took 2 games I had no business losing and I wind up getting utterly shitstomped. My tilt was pretty real by the end of it so I was only too glad to be done with the day and so I was.
Props
-Flipping Mask of Restrict on Monarchs. Not so fun when you can't play Yu-Gi-Oh!, isn't it?
-Shoutouts to Evan for coming in after 1:30.
Slops
-Kozmo are bullshit. I honestly did not enjoy playing the deck as much as I thought I would. Imo Magicians and BA are more of my thing. Unfortunately post SHIV Kozmo are so good that if I want to get my invite I'm pretty much required to play the deck.
-Proving that you CAN misplay with a deck that is extremely simple to pilot, though I won't deny that it's play ceiling is definitely higher than that of Qlis and Tellarknights. It's just that unfortunately the best way to play the deck is Tincan set backrow and hope it gets you there.
-The level of awful my headache was by the end of the day. I'm JUST over it as of now.
That being said on this particular day I wasn't feeling 100% due to having a headache that lasted through most of the day so I was not in the mood to do a whole lot of thinking which immediately ruled out Burning Abyss, Pendulum and Xyz Monarchs as decks to play. Well it's a good thing I opted to play Kozmos (at Ryan's insistence after testing yesterday) as it's going to be the best deck post SHIV once Fire King Island, Darklady and Darkwalker are released so it's for the best I try to get as much practice as I can and figure out my matchups along the way. So after building a deck off of what Matt had and borrowing a 3rd Mojo and 2 Strikes from Ryan I had a list in mind that was based on Tincan/Soartroopers interactions as I felt it raised the deck's limited ceiling somewhat.
Round 1 - vs Trap Xyz.dek (2-0)
First game in a tournament setting with the deck and I...brick. Like drawing multiple Kozmotowns, big ships and Mojo/Calls but no pilots for turns. He lands a couple Assault Halberd hits before I get fed up and Twin Twister my field spell and one of his backrow which turns out to be one of those shitty trap monsters from a recent set. Excuse me wut? Burgesstoma aren't out yet and even then that deck is garbage as fuck. Anyway I get my ball rolling and kill him in a couple turns before realizing I could have done it faster through Farmgirl. Gentlemen behold, the one person who can misplay with Kozmo even harder than Woodhouse!
Game 2 I open all 3 Kozmotowns and draw jackshit for a few turns which was beginning to annoy me. Allen and Woodhouse open legit bonkers in every game I've had against them but I draw fucking aids? Fuck off.
Anyway I eventually start seeing Tincans after taking a few hits and establish big ships backed by Mojos which is gg vs any rogue deck as Ryan has pointed out repeatedly.
Round 2 - vs Domain Monarchs (2-1)
He wins the dieroll, goes first, summons Erebus and drops Vanity's Fiend + March to my hand of Kozmotown, Pilot + Ships with Twin Tisters so I scoop it up without revealing what I'm playing and side appropriately. Turns out he's playing a different (bad) build that maxes out on both fiends, Pot of Duality and as you could tell March so I bring in Restricts and hand traps. Don't see either in Game 2 but I go off hard and kill him in a couple turns so it was irrelevant. Game 3 on the other hand was aids as he dropped a Chaos Hunter that I couldn't clear for the life of me for several turns and had to sit behind a Wickedwitch backed by Mask of Restrict. Thankfully he didn't side in any backrow hate so he couldn't clear the Mask at all while I finally drew into a Tincan and managed to put a Dark Destroyer in the graveyard and Call it back to out his Hunter. He summons another one but since my card peen is bigger I beat him down with it and s-l-o-w-l-y win the game because Prime Monarch makes it difficult to get hits in when you only run 5 bigships that can beat it over.
Round 3 - vs DMoC Turbo (2-1)
So in a move that blindsided me Ryan opted to build something he saw off of Aznpersuasion's channel (who I find to be a reputable yugituber btw) as the concept of it looked neat. That being said as he'll obviously go into (in possibly great detail) on his blog rogue vs Kozmo is an abysmal matchup because of how badly designed the bigships are. I won't go so far as to say the matchup was one sided though as he does have the advantage of my inexperience with the deck, my tendency to brick when playing good decks and our matches usually drag out long enough that he has a chance at winning if I wind up being the first of us to make a glaring misplay that the other can capitalize on. As such our match eventually goes into time as Game 1 I open complete aids where I have to yolo Allure and I get rewarded, but my hand is still poop and I have to mulligan...into an equally bad hand. I'm talking summon Farmgirl set backrow pass bad. He promptly kicks my ass.
Game 2 is a bit hazy as I know I flip up Mask of Restrict though I'm not sure how much of an effect it had. I know I eventually win it which gives him the chance to go first game 3 and he goes off hard. He creates an incredibly powerful board that I spend most of the game trying to fight through thanks to Prime Monarch allowing him to survive what would be normally gameshot turns. I eventually kill him after drawing into Soartroopers while having another one in the grave with Farmgirl so I'm able do rank 3 shenanigans.
Top 8 - vs DMoC Turbo (2-0)
This match on the other hand was straight up BS on my part as I inadvertantly channeled my inner Armando and sacked the shit out of Ryan off of my mulligan and establish a Dark Destroyer backed by traps he can't clear. Game 2 he opens poorly and is never able to get Prime Monarch in the grave so I kill him in a few turns.
After this I contemplate dropping and heading to BK with the others as I was getting hungry and my headache was becoming harder to deal with. Had I been paired up with any of our Monarch players in top cut I would have done it. Instead I was paired up with Derrick's D/D/Ds.
Top 4 - vs D/D/D (0-2)
This match I straight up punted. Between several misplays and straight up brainfarting I took 2 games I had no business losing and I wind up getting utterly shitstomped. My tilt was pretty real by the end of it so I was only too glad to be done with the day and so I was.
Props
-Flipping Mask of Restrict on Monarchs. Not so fun when you can't play Yu-Gi-Oh!, isn't it?
-Shoutouts to Evan for coming in after 1:30.
Slops
-Kozmo are bullshit. I honestly did not enjoy playing the deck as much as I thought I would. Imo Magicians and BA are more of my thing. Unfortunately post SHIV Kozmo are so good that if I want to get my invite I'm pretty much required to play the deck.
-Proving that you CAN misplay with a deck that is extremely simple to pilot, though I won't deny that it's play ceiling is definitely higher than that of Qlis and Tellarknights. It's just that unfortunately the best way to play the deck is Tincan set backrow and hope it gets you there.
-The level of awful my headache was by the end of the day. I'm JUST over it as of now.
Saturday, 16 April 2016
CFV Locals Report - Bound For Glory
Man it's getting harder to come up with entertaining introductions, compelling matches or even good finishes these days.
So that means the title of this report is more than appropriate.
Anywho I had a chance to play at locals and decided to do so while also hoping to grab some millennium packs which I did but pulled jank. Also pulled jank from Hi Speed Riders (Terrortop fishing FAIL) and moved some stuff before the tournament began and my choice ended up being G-Narukami as I had forgotten to bring my dice so Neo Nectar wasn't an option and Vanquisher.dek is one of 3 Narukami variants that I haven't played in a tournament yet (the other two are Nobles and Dungaree) so I decided to pilot that. Turns out I was rewarded as nobody played Sanc Guard or Link Joker so we were all allowed to have fun for once.
Round 1 - vs Raizer (2-0)
He doesn't see Cat Butler in either game. That's literally the only way this deck can win. It also helps that I landed a few Chatura hits and got him to 7+ cards bound going into my Voltage turns and either killed him or ran him out of hand.
Round 2 - vs Diablo/Darkspray (2-1)
Game 1 I have to G-Assist for my Grade 3 Ride but hit enough draw support to get out of it and eventually Voltage him while he's at 5 cards bound to kill him. Game 2 I get a giant Voltage play that he doesn't have enough cards to guard with and takes all 3 hits like a champ...and 6th damage heals out of it and proceeds to crit me the next turn.
3 weeks now. 3 weeks in a row that I've legit killed someone but a 6th damage heal saves them the game and I get killed on the following turn. WHY.
That said he draws aids Game 3 and I establish my board of multiple Chain Bolts with Chatura/Voltage Horn/Rock Climb so his bind zone is pretty large by the time I'm able to Voltage him and flip a crit for good measure.
Round 3 - vs Vortimer/Diablo (0-2)
Playing against this guy is very frustrating as he will often say he never gets lucky, complain about trigger wars never going his way but proceeds to trigger sack me all the time. Ofc this also happens to be the match where my deck decided to do it's best Monarch impression and I draw aids in both games while he's able to rush, play the grade 2 game while I can't and in the case of Game 2 hits a trigger every turn. The fuck am I supposed to do against this level of bullshit when in all of my attacking turns he hits either a Heal that goes off or a draw trigger and thus going into my Grade 3 turn I've got 2 cards in hand to his 10? After him checking the 4th draw trigger I literally picked up my cards and walked away because I was not having anymore of this shit. Playing it out would have only made me more frustrated and potentially super salt.
So that was it. I wound up finishing 2nd overall and the Vanquisher deck isn't THAT bad in play now that I've had time to think on it. In fact I'm gonna go so far as to say Vanquisher has tremendous potential depending on what it's third set of support does as Voltage is a very scary card and if Bushi gives Narukami more ways to bind your opponent's cards by your second stride then it could end up being as potent as Diablo or at the very least Bloom.dek. It's obviously got its failings in that as a G-Deck you lose to rush/gradelocking and as a Dragon Empire deck it doesn't generate advantage which in G-Era is a huge problem. Taking cards away from the opponent is as Jordan said archaic as fuck as Kagero/Narukami/Nubatama aim to spend 1-2 CB to remove 1-2 cards a turn...but all of the best decks generate +5s for 1-2 CB so what the fuck life even?
Brawlers are the one exception to this as Turbo can wipe a board for CB1/SB1 which as ridiculous as this may sound is actually the perfect cost. Given the progression of this game's power creep and how easy it is for Paladins to fill the board up off of next to nothing Turbo's power is just strong enough to counterbalance it. Oh no the X killed a column and another front row! Well I guess I could call my Violinist who calls Benon who calls Richard and get a draw and render what you did to be pointless. Oh no Big Bang Turbo killed my board! ...shit that's actually not good. Now I have to actually throw down my hand to continue.
It's really hard for me to put what I want to say into words but basically if your deck's focus is on field control and you aren't able to consistently kill 3 or more units for cheap then your deck is awful. This is why The X, Blademaster, Perdition, Vanquisher, Eradicator and Kaiser all suck in the format and will be joined by Dragonic Overlord the Legend.
Props
-Playing Narukami is always a good time for me
-50000+ RG Lanes were a thing today
-Picked up a 4th Big Bang Turbo and some trade fodder
Slops
-The bricks were too real round 3.
-My pack pulls were atrocious
So that means the title of this report is more than appropriate.
Anywho I had a chance to play at locals and decided to do so while also hoping to grab some millennium packs which I did but pulled jank. Also pulled jank from Hi Speed Riders (Terrortop fishing FAIL) and moved some stuff before the tournament began and my choice ended up being G-Narukami as I had forgotten to bring my dice so Neo Nectar wasn't an option and Vanquisher.dek is one of 3 Narukami variants that I haven't played in a tournament yet (the other two are Nobles and Dungaree) so I decided to pilot that. Turns out I was rewarded as nobody played Sanc Guard or Link Joker so we were all allowed to have fun for once.
Round 1 - vs Raizer (2-0)
He doesn't see Cat Butler in either game. That's literally the only way this deck can win. It also helps that I landed a few Chatura hits and got him to 7+ cards bound going into my Voltage turns and either killed him or ran him out of hand.
Round 2 - vs Diablo/Darkspray (2-1)
Game 1 I have to G-Assist for my Grade 3 Ride but hit enough draw support to get out of it and eventually Voltage him while he's at 5 cards bound to kill him. Game 2 I get a giant Voltage play that he doesn't have enough cards to guard with and takes all 3 hits like a champ...and 6th damage heals out of it and proceeds to crit me the next turn.
3 weeks now. 3 weeks in a row that I've legit killed someone but a 6th damage heal saves them the game and I get killed on the following turn. WHY.
That said he draws aids Game 3 and I establish my board of multiple Chain Bolts with Chatura/Voltage Horn/Rock Climb so his bind zone is pretty large by the time I'm able to Voltage him and flip a crit for good measure.
Round 3 - vs Vortimer/Diablo (0-2)
Playing against this guy is very frustrating as he will often say he never gets lucky, complain about trigger wars never going his way but proceeds to trigger sack me all the time. Ofc this also happens to be the match where my deck decided to do it's best Monarch impression and I draw aids in both games while he's able to rush, play the grade 2 game while I can't and in the case of Game 2 hits a trigger every turn. The fuck am I supposed to do against this level of bullshit when in all of my attacking turns he hits either a Heal that goes off or a draw trigger and thus going into my Grade 3 turn I've got 2 cards in hand to his 10? After him checking the 4th draw trigger I literally picked up my cards and walked away because I was not having anymore of this shit. Playing it out would have only made me more frustrated and potentially super salt.
So that was it. I wound up finishing 2nd overall and the Vanquisher deck isn't THAT bad in play now that I've had time to think on it. In fact I'm gonna go so far as to say Vanquisher has tremendous potential depending on what it's third set of support does as Voltage is a very scary card and if Bushi gives Narukami more ways to bind your opponent's cards by your second stride then it could end up being as potent as Diablo or at the very least Bloom.dek. It's obviously got its failings in that as a G-Deck you lose to rush/gradelocking and as a Dragon Empire deck it doesn't generate advantage which in G-Era is a huge problem. Taking cards away from the opponent is as Jordan said archaic as fuck as Kagero/Narukami/Nubatama aim to spend 1-2 CB to remove 1-2 cards a turn...but all of the best decks generate +5s for 1-2 CB so what the fuck life even?
Brawlers are the one exception to this as Turbo can wipe a board for CB1/SB1 which as ridiculous as this may sound is actually the perfect cost. Given the progression of this game's power creep and how easy it is for Paladins to fill the board up off of next to nothing Turbo's power is just strong enough to counterbalance it. Oh no the X killed a column and another front row! Well I guess I could call my Violinist who calls Benon who calls Richard and get a draw and render what you did to be pointless. Oh no Big Bang Turbo killed my board! ...shit that's actually not good. Now I have to actually throw down my hand to continue.
It's really hard for me to put what I want to say into words but basically if your deck's focus is on field control and you aren't able to consistently kill 3 or more units for cheap then your deck is awful. This is why The X, Blademaster, Perdition, Vanquisher, Eradicator and Kaiser all suck in the format and will be joined by Dragonic Overlord the Legend.
Props
-Playing Narukami is always a good time for me
-50000+ RG Lanes were a thing today
-Picked up a 4th Big Bang Turbo and some trade fodder
Slops
-The bricks were too real round 3.
-My pack pulls were atrocious
Sunday, 10 April 2016
YGO Locals Report - Fiery Finish
Whoa man another YGO Locals report. It's almost like as if I'm getting back into the game. I sort of am. The issues I mentioned a few reports ago are still present but the banlist somewhat addresses it in that the deck that tries to make the unbreakable board and kill you the next is gone and as such everything else in the format will no longer have to build themselves to beat DracoPals. I'm curious to see where this goes.
Anywho I really wanted to play some form of Burning Abyss today as for some reason my interest had been piqued in the last couple of weeks. Probably because the deck is complicated to play compared to the other options I had on the table. That and Ryan had literally everything I needed to borrow in order to build Big Monster BA which imo is the best variant going forward.
My reasoning is that most decks are aiming to blind first which Big BA is fine with. You can build your deck to go second and break through it or if you're forced to go first make Beatrice with a Maxx "C" and pass. Beatrice + Maxx "C" is strong by the way. I also favour the pure BA over PK Fire due to its greater consistency as the latter deck runs more cards that can wind up dead in your hand which I'm not a fan of. Lastly the deck doesn't need Solemn Strikes to compete which is fine by me.
So with my deck hastily built and almost no experience playing it outside of 3 DevPro games where my opponents were all bad I was in for an adventure;
Round 1 - vs Synchrons (2-0)
Some baddie who plays Main Character decks. Not much to see here. Granted he did serve as a chance to practice my play routes but lets be real here. Yugi/Jaden/Yusei/Yuma decks are fucking terrible. Yuya gets a pass due to Performapals and Magicians not sucking atm. Anyway I fucko his board with Beatrice and when he tried to combo under Maxx "C" I decided to E-Con his Hyper Librarian so that I'd get 2 Draws off per synchro. He promptly stopped after summoning Jet Warrior and bouncing it. Then I killed him. The other game Downerd Magician's piercing gets in there.
Round 2 - Monarchs (0-2)
Game 1 he has Stormforth into Majesty's Fiend and I do not have an out so I scoop. Game 2 I'm pretty sure I straight up punted as I didn't realize Pilgrim Dante's discard triggers if I ram it into my opponent's monster and I probably could have won the game off it as he had only 1 card in hand and I had been doing a fine job of running him out of resources. Unfortunately he unbricks and kills me.
Round 3 - Magicians (2-0)
Did I ever mention how this asshole that nobody likes was my first opponent in this game when I started in 2010? How the hell do you stay a scrub after 6 years of playing!?
That aside I just destroy him. Game 1 I got in there with 3 Dante pokes for 7500, made Beatrice then on his Standby dumped Barbar to burn him for game. Game 2 he tries to Wavering Eyes after using Pendulum Call and passes with an open board. Unfortunately I'm 1400 short of killing him but I've got Twin Twisters to break his scales and he dies.
Top 8 - vs Kozmo (2-0)
"How in the hell does this deck beat Kozmo?" I asked myself when building this deck. Honestly I still don't know but somehow I managed to beat Allen game 1 despite him opening strongly. Granted I was able to set up Dante/Cir shenanigans while he never saw Kozmotown game 1 and only resolved 1 Mojo so I was able to drag out the game enough that I could eventually Raigeki his board and kill him. Game 2 I resolve System Down after forcing out a Warning and a Strike and beat him to Barbar range which he realized as I had one in graveyard, 2 Dante on the board and a Libic as a material.
Top 4 - vs Kozmo (2-0)
And then we have the idiot who runs Mistake in Tincan turbo here. On the plus side he doesn't own Strikes and/or many Mojos so his backrows were things I could work around while I also opened with Maxx "C" to his E-Tele which is always nice. Game 1 was a long, dragged out affair as I couldn't fight through his damned monsters while he didn't out my Utopic Future for whatever reason. I mean I guess if you don't like winning you can not try to search Kozmotown, Kozmojo and Goodwitch with the Tincan that I couldn't beat over for 4 turns. In the end he pays himself down to Barbar range so I dump one and burn him for game. Game 2 I have the Maxx "C" again and I break his board by making him Kozmojo his ship to out my guy, then I get rid of his Wickedwitch with a Kaiju and clear his board. He allures and loses his hand and I draw System Down so he's done.
Finals - vs Dracopals (0-2)
Being on the other side of this deck I can definitely see why people complain about Pendulums. It really is difficult to grind out a win vs the deck unless you can break their scales which I sadly don't do either game. I can also see why Face-Off is getting the hit here too as the card is literally bullshit incarnate at this point and Wavering Eyes has become a get out of jail card for correcting mismatched scale hands.
So yeah Ryan kind of savages me here as I expected. I pretty much needed to open the literal nuts to out a typical Dracopal board with this deck given my experience level with it and that didn't happen in both games. Also in Game 2 I found out I was running 4 Sea Kaiju so oops I'm immediately done.
After that we went to Rock Creek which I'm immediately regretting. Oh god.
Props
-Eyyy I played
-Eyyy I got into finals
-Eyyy I savaged Kody
-Eyyy I beat not one but two Kozmo decks with a deck that in theory can't win Game 1.
-Eyyy I E-Conned a Librarian while having Maxx "C" in play
Slops
-FUCK my mills were bad at times. Like milling 2 Cirs or milling a Scarm when I had one in hand to use for summoning Beatrice
-FUCK Misplays. Oh I know I made them
-FUCK Monarchs
-FUCK Me.
Anywho I really wanted to play some form of Burning Abyss today as for some reason my interest had been piqued in the last couple of weeks. Probably because the deck is complicated to play compared to the other options I had on the table. That and Ryan had literally everything I needed to borrow in order to build Big Monster BA which imo is the best variant going forward.
My reasoning is that most decks are aiming to blind first which Big BA is fine with. You can build your deck to go second and break through it or if you're forced to go first make Beatrice with a Maxx "C" and pass. Beatrice + Maxx "C" is strong by the way. I also favour the pure BA over PK Fire due to its greater consistency as the latter deck runs more cards that can wind up dead in your hand which I'm not a fan of. Lastly the deck doesn't need Solemn Strikes to compete which is fine by me.
So with my deck hastily built and almost no experience playing it outside of 3 DevPro games where my opponents were all bad I was in for an adventure;
Round 1 - vs Synchrons (2-0)
Some baddie who plays Main Character decks. Not much to see here. Granted he did serve as a chance to practice my play routes but lets be real here. Yugi/Jaden/Yusei/Yuma decks are fucking terrible. Yuya gets a pass due to Performapals and Magicians not sucking atm. Anyway I fucko his board with Beatrice and when he tried to combo under Maxx "C" I decided to E-Con his Hyper Librarian so that I'd get 2 Draws off per synchro. He promptly stopped after summoning Jet Warrior and bouncing it. Then I killed him. The other game Downerd Magician's piercing gets in there.
Round 2 - Monarchs (0-2)
Game 1 he has Stormforth into Majesty's Fiend and I do not have an out so I scoop. Game 2 I'm pretty sure I straight up punted as I didn't realize Pilgrim Dante's discard triggers if I ram it into my opponent's monster and I probably could have won the game off it as he had only 1 card in hand and I had been doing a fine job of running him out of resources. Unfortunately he unbricks and kills me.
Round 3 - Magicians (2-0)
Did I ever mention how this asshole that nobody likes was my first opponent in this game when I started in 2010? How the hell do you stay a scrub after 6 years of playing!?
That aside I just destroy him. Game 1 I got in there with 3 Dante pokes for 7500, made Beatrice then on his Standby dumped Barbar to burn him for game. Game 2 he tries to Wavering Eyes after using Pendulum Call and passes with an open board. Unfortunately I'm 1400 short of killing him but I've got Twin Twisters to break his scales and he dies.
Top 8 - vs Kozmo (2-0)
"How in the hell does this deck beat Kozmo?" I asked myself when building this deck. Honestly I still don't know but somehow I managed to beat Allen game 1 despite him opening strongly. Granted I was able to set up Dante/Cir shenanigans while he never saw Kozmotown game 1 and only resolved 1 Mojo so I was able to drag out the game enough that I could eventually Raigeki his board and kill him. Game 2 I resolve System Down after forcing out a Warning and a Strike and beat him to Barbar range which he realized as I had one in graveyard, 2 Dante on the board and a Libic as a material.
Top 4 - vs Kozmo (2-0)
And then we have the idiot who runs Mistake in Tincan turbo here. On the plus side he doesn't own Strikes and/or many Mojos so his backrows were things I could work around while I also opened with Maxx "C" to his E-Tele which is always nice. Game 1 was a long, dragged out affair as I couldn't fight through his damned monsters while he didn't out my Utopic Future for whatever reason. I mean I guess if you don't like winning you can not try to search Kozmotown, Kozmojo and Goodwitch with the Tincan that I couldn't beat over for 4 turns. In the end he pays himself down to Barbar range so I dump one and burn him for game. Game 2 I have the Maxx "C" again and I break his board by making him Kozmojo his ship to out my guy, then I get rid of his Wickedwitch with a Kaiju and clear his board. He allures and loses his hand and I draw System Down so he's done.
Finals - vs Dracopals (0-2)
Being on the other side of this deck I can definitely see why people complain about Pendulums. It really is difficult to grind out a win vs the deck unless you can break their scales which I sadly don't do either game. I can also see why Face-Off is getting the hit here too as the card is literally bullshit incarnate at this point and Wavering Eyes has become a get out of jail card for correcting mismatched scale hands.
So yeah Ryan kind of savages me here as I expected. I pretty much needed to open the literal nuts to out a typical Dracopal board with this deck given my experience level with it and that didn't happen in both games. Also in Game 2 I found out I was running 4 Sea Kaiju so oops I'm immediately done.
After that we went to Rock Creek which I'm immediately regretting. Oh god.
Props
-Eyyy I played
-Eyyy I got into finals
-Eyyy I savaged Kody
-Eyyy I beat not one but two Kozmo decks with a deck that in theory can't win Game 1.
-Eyyy I E-Conned a Librarian while having Maxx "C" in play
Slops
-FUCK my mills were bad at times. Like milling 2 Cirs or milling a Scarm when I had one in hand to use for summoning Beatrice
-FUCK Misplays. Oh I know I made them
-FUCK Monarchs
-FUCK Me.
Saturday, 9 April 2016
CFV Locals Report - Garden Hazard
Not much of a lead up into this one as this locals was relatively tame outside of the obligatory "STNAD MY AVARTAR BLAZSTER BURRREIdO!" nonsense from the loud people who conveniently sit on another side of the room most of the time.
That said this time around I decided to spice things up a bit and play one of my decks that I always say I'm going to build and play in a tournament but never do in Ranunculus (aka Ahsha.dek) due to the fact that the set 6 support is REALLY good and pretty much makes it the de facto best Neo Nectar deck now. Bloom in itself is actually a very strong ability due to most units not having a once per turn restriction which makes cloning turns really powerful. Furthermore since they trigger when a named unit is called at any time you no longer care about drawing your clone targets, your cards will bloom anyway. Furthermore because Bloom has a trigger and a PGG in its name they're searchable through the effect of Ihnes on ride or on call skill which is really helpful in setting up your defenses against aggro decks. Lastly Ahsha's new support is also really potent as Glorious Bloom can buff your units by 15000-20000, Thuria enables so many bloom plays and Primavera can now let you swing for ridiculous numbers. It also doesn't completely die to control (Narukami) as you do have the ability to rebuild your board after a nuke (you just can't do it consistently) and fight back.
Anywho with my deck built and no sign of Chingo it looked like today would be a hilariously fun day as long as I dodged Ryan as he was playing Messiah and I wanted nooooooo part of that. How would it start? Well;
Round 1 - vs Neo Nectar/Ahsha (2-1)
First game with the deck in a tourney and it's the fucking mirror match. WELL OKAY. Worse yet it's against Armando's GF who is just as much of a trigger sack as he is, though her sacking comes in the form of flipping crits on her G1/G2 attacking turns. Still it basically means games against her usually involve having to play out of being down 5 damage to 1 going into her first stride turn.
Anyway we play the swing with 1-2 lanes game and she ends up getting first stride but I'm able to guard well enough while I stride into Primavera to push her to five damage, then kill her on my following turn as I had searched out defensive cards off Ihne's Bloom Skill. Game 2 we both end up having to G-Assist to ride to 3 (we both hit Ahsha thank god) and she comes at me with a Dream Spinning Ahsha of low value while I've got "the combo" Primavera which I'm going to take a moment to explain;
-Primavera on attack allows you to put 5 normal units from drop zone to the top of the deck, then discard to call up to 4 copies of two cards you have in play.
-Bloom Units trigger when a same name unit is called on top of them as per the double Dorint + Blaster Dark ruling.
-With this in mind if you have Primavera clone Katerina + Thuria, you will call "four" Katerinas which will cause the first one to bloom 4 times (+16000 to the Katerina B, C and the 2 Thuria that are Katerina D and E) while the two new ones being called will bloom 3 times (+24000 to Katerina B, C, D and E) for a total of 10 Blooms triggered with that play.
-This will give your newly called units a minimum of +40000 and thus your rearguard lanes are 96000. This is the most literal case of PG or die out there.
So anyway I get the combo off after attacking with an 11k and 13k RG lanes to start with while my VG gets PGd. Rip. Anyway she can't guard the rearguard lanes so she takes both hits and I kill her...except she 6th damage heals, rips a Stride for turn and double crits me because I checked no PGs and couldn't guard her Dream Spinning Ahsha.
What.
So for those keeping track this is now two weeks in a row in back to back games that I've literally been fucked out of a win due to a miracle heal. Ugh. Game 3.
This time around I get the option of first stride after we trade some blows and we're both sitting at pretty low damage, My Dream Spinning turn puts her to I think 3-4 while her Dream Spinning isn't nearly as potent due to not having anything to attack with as she can't draw 2s this game and still runs Pia (which are horribly outdated btw) who sit in the back. I live it and stride into Glorious Bloom and make my Green Shots super buff and swing with a 40k line, 60k Vanguard line that I flip a crit with and a 60k RG line. Glorious Bloom is stupid.
Round 2 - vs Gear Chronicle (2-1)
Speaking of Armando, here he is and our games tend to go one of two ways now; one of us (usually him) critsacks so hard that it's usually over after first stride or I'm able to live the initial wave of Vanguard bullshit and grind out a win after a very long, hard fought game where I play my ass off. Game 1 was this as I basically had to take small victories here and there by getting him to 3-4 damage so that the next turn I'd either kill him or leave his hand as shit, repeat because he checked a heal and finally just kill him with Glorious after living not one but two Nextage pushes. Game 2 my hand is not the kind I needed to deal with Nextage while at 4 damage so I'm forced to no guard and hope I don't get critted. I do. Game 3 on the other hand I completely destroy him as I drop Primavera and pull off the combo and check 2 crits while I'm at it so my Rearguard lanes wind up being 101000. to his no PG hand and 5 damage.
Round 3 - vs Messiah (0-2)
Couldn't dodge Ryan after all and things went as I expected. Link Joker regardless of the variant is just a horrendous matchup. Like we're talking damn near auto lose since this clan relies on having same named units in play to gain buffs and well...locking kind of fucks that. In addition every Link Joker Deck in Regina seems to be blessed with the ability to randomly critsack good players (and fizzle vs baddies) and I'd like to think I'm one of the better players in not just this city, but in Western Canada.
Not that it really mattered here as long story short we both tried to play the grade 2 game since whoever gets first stride here wins and he ultimately got that in both games. After that it just usually snowballed as while I didn't outright die to any of his Amnesty Messiah turns or even his Excelics pushes, in both games I wound up having to burn basically everything in my hand to guard his stuff and that also meant throwing away my combo pieces and thus my own stride turns were utter shit. Game 2 I get at least a Glorious Bloom play off to make my 3 Katerina's 26000 but aside from that I knew I was not going to win this round at all.
And that was it. Jordan bought packs and pulled a Nightrose which Ryan got, Marco pulled an SP Vortmer and I pulled my 6th copies of Ihnes and Liliga. RIP.
Props
-Got to play Neo Nectar in a tournament for once. In this one tournament I also proved that I'm our best Neo player and subsequently raised the bar for the 3 other Ahsha players to reach.
-Played and won the Neo Nectar Mirror. It was silly
-Got the Primavera combo off. Multiple times. This is also silly as despite being a valid win condition that the deck can pull out of fucking nowhere, it's not the win condition (multiple Glorious turns are) meaning this deck doesn't play like some linear ass scrublord deck that tries to shoehorn itself into its one and only good play and hope to god that single gimmick of your deck gets there and if it doesn't you've automatically lost. No Ahsha actually can do things outside of Break Riding Bad End Dragg-I MEAN striding Primavera.
-Completely destroyed two of the most crit sacky people of our locals with a deck that by the way it operates doesn't sack due to the fact it's constantly putting non triggers back into the deck.
Slops
-Misplays. They happened a few times.
-Obligatory bricking that comes in Vanguard.
-Those games against Ryan. I just got destroyed and usually I can put up a better fight than what I did and take off at least a stock or 2. This was the equivalent to getting Rest'd 4 straight times.
That said this time around I decided to spice things up a bit and play one of my decks that I always say I'm going to build and play in a tournament but never do in Ranunculus (aka Ahsha.dek) due to the fact that the set 6 support is REALLY good and pretty much makes it the de facto best Neo Nectar deck now. Bloom in itself is actually a very strong ability due to most units not having a once per turn restriction which makes cloning turns really powerful. Furthermore since they trigger when a named unit is called at any time you no longer care about drawing your clone targets, your cards will bloom anyway. Furthermore because Bloom has a trigger and a PGG in its name they're searchable through the effect of Ihnes on ride or on call skill which is really helpful in setting up your defenses against aggro decks. Lastly Ahsha's new support is also really potent as Glorious Bloom can buff your units by 15000-20000, Thuria enables so many bloom plays and Primavera can now let you swing for ridiculous numbers. It also doesn't completely die to control (Narukami) as you do have the ability to rebuild your board after a nuke (you just can't do it consistently) and fight back.
Anywho with my deck built and no sign of Chingo it looked like today would be a hilariously fun day as long as I dodged Ryan as he was playing Messiah and I wanted nooooooo part of that. How would it start? Well;
Round 1 - vs Neo Nectar/Ahsha (2-1)
First game with the deck in a tourney and it's the fucking mirror match. WELL OKAY. Worse yet it's against Armando's GF who is just as much of a trigger sack as he is, though her sacking comes in the form of flipping crits on her G1/G2 attacking turns. Still it basically means games against her usually involve having to play out of being down 5 damage to 1 going into her first stride turn.
Anyway we play the swing with 1-2 lanes game and she ends up getting first stride but I'm able to guard well enough while I stride into Primavera to push her to five damage, then kill her on my following turn as I had searched out defensive cards off Ihne's Bloom Skill. Game 2 we both end up having to G-Assist to ride to 3 (we both hit Ahsha thank god) and she comes at me with a Dream Spinning Ahsha of low value while I've got "the combo" Primavera which I'm going to take a moment to explain;
-Primavera on attack allows you to put 5 normal units from drop zone to the top of the deck, then discard to call up to 4 copies of two cards you have in play.
-Bloom Units trigger when a same name unit is called on top of them as per the double Dorint + Blaster Dark ruling.
-With this in mind if you have Primavera clone Katerina + Thuria, you will call "four" Katerinas which will cause the first one to bloom 4 times (+16000 to the Katerina B, C and the 2 Thuria that are Katerina D and E) while the two new ones being called will bloom 3 times (+24000 to Katerina B, C, D and E) for a total of 10 Blooms triggered with that play.
-This will give your newly called units a minimum of +40000 and thus your rearguard lanes are 96000. This is the most literal case of PG or die out there.
So anyway I get the combo off after attacking with an 11k and 13k RG lanes to start with while my VG gets PGd. Rip. Anyway she can't guard the rearguard lanes so she takes both hits and I kill her...except she 6th damage heals, rips a Stride for turn and double crits me because I checked no PGs and couldn't guard her Dream Spinning Ahsha.
What.
So for those keeping track this is now two weeks in a row in back to back games that I've literally been fucked out of a win due to a miracle heal. Ugh. Game 3.
This time around I get the option of first stride after we trade some blows and we're both sitting at pretty low damage, My Dream Spinning turn puts her to I think 3-4 while her Dream Spinning isn't nearly as potent due to not having anything to attack with as she can't draw 2s this game and still runs Pia (which are horribly outdated btw) who sit in the back. I live it and stride into Glorious Bloom and make my Green Shots super buff and swing with a 40k line, 60k Vanguard line that I flip a crit with and a 60k RG line. Glorious Bloom is stupid.
Round 2 - vs Gear Chronicle (2-1)
Speaking of Armando, here he is and our games tend to go one of two ways now; one of us (usually him) critsacks so hard that it's usually over after first stride or I'm able to live the initial wave of Vanguard bullshit and grind out a win after a very long, hard fought game where I play my ass off. Game 1 was this as I basically had to take small victories here and there by getting him to 3-4 damage so that the next turn I'd either kill him or leave his hand as shit, repeat because he checked a heal and finally just kill him with Glorious after living not one but two Nextage pushes. Game 2 my hand is not the kind I needed to deal with Nextage while at 4 damage so I'm forced to no guard and hope I don't get critted. I do. Game 3 on the other hand I completely destroy him as I drop Primavera and pull off the combo and check 2 crits while I'm at it so my Rearguard lanes wind up being 101000. to his no PG hand and 5 damage.
Round 3 - vs Messiah (0-2)
Couldn't dodge Ryan after all and things went as I expected. Link Joker regardless of the variant is just a horrendous matchup. Like we're talking damn near auto lose since this clan relies on having same named units in play to gain buffs and well...locking kind of fucks that. In addition every Link Joker Deck in Regina seems to be blessed with the ability to randomly critsack good players (and fizzle vs baddies) and I'd like to think I'm one of the better players in not just this city, but in Western Canada.
Not that it really mattered here as long story short we both tried to play the grade 2 game since whoever gets first stride here wins and he ultimately got that in both games. After that it just usually snowballed as while I didn't outright die to any of his Amnesty Messiah turns or even his Excelics pushes, in both games I wound up having to burn basically everything in my hand to guard his stuff and that also meant throwing away my combo pieces and thus my own stride turns were utter shit. Game 2 I get at least a Glorious Bloom play off to make my 3 Katerina's 26000 but aside from that I knew I was not going to win this round at all.
And that was it. Jordan bought packs and pulled a Nightrose which Ryan got, Marco pulled an SP Vortmer and I pulled my 6th copies of Ihnes and Liliga. RIP.
Props
-Got to play Neo Nectar in a tournament for once. In this one tournament I also proved that I'm our best Neo player and subsequently raised the bar for the 3 other Ahsha players to reach.
-Played and won the Neo Nectar Mirror. It was silly
-Got the Primavera combo off. Multiple times. This is also silly as despite being a valid win condition that the deck can pull out of fucking nowhere, it's not the win condition (multiple Glorious turns are) meaning this deck doesn't play like some linear ass scrublord deck that tries to shoehorn itself into its one and only good play and hope to god that single gimmick of your deck gets there and if it doesn't you've automatically lost. No Ahsha actually can do things outside of Break Riding Bad End Dragg-I MEAN striding Primavera.
-Completely destroyed two of the most crit sacky people of our locals with a deck that by the way it operates doesn't sack due to the fact it's constantly putting non triggers back into the deck.
Slops
-Misplays. They happened a few times.
-Obligatory bricking that comes in Vanguard.
-Those games against Ryan. I just got destroyed and usually I can put up a better fight than what I did and take off at least a stock or 2. This was the equivalent to getting Rest'd 4 straight times.
Sunday, 3 April 2016
CFV Win A Box Report - We be in there? Narr....
Third time's the charm right? After all I've been to three of these now and have proceeded to miss top cut due to dubious circumstances *cough trigger sacking cough* so clearly I'm due for a break, right?
Sadly no. Sadly no.
The day started off well as I in a shot in the dark manner decided I'd try to yolo build Seven Seas Granblue if I could and as fortune would have it I was able to borrow just about everything I needed off five people to build the deck minus Waterspout Djinns which I decided to offset through running 2 starters; 1 Peter the Ghostie and 1 Undying Departed, Grenache. The build itself was based on a profile Team No Guard put up from a few years ago whose theory I applied here;
I should note though that since we're now in Stride Format and that Granblue has better units to call from drop zone I opted to run Ruin Shades to turbo mill and ultimately set up my Nightmist Strides.
Round 1 - vs Diablo/Dark Spray Dragon (2-0)
In both games my opponent drew hands that definitely could have been better while I drew hands that let me resolve multiple Banshee/Cutlass to build up hand, then play the game of call value units from drop zone and replace them with Slash Shade/Nightcrow when I could in order to maintain a board or as I'm calling it "playing the Nightmist game". Between my 4 attacks per turn and decent hand (of 3 PGs) I'm able to win well before the danger of deckout presents itself.
Round 2 - vs Thing Blaster (0-2)
Game 1 I had to G-Assist for a Grade 1 Ride and miss it so I proceed to scoop it up given that I was up against Royals. Game 2 I get my ball rolling and play damage control but ultimately lose to a mixture of misplays, him having 2 PGs during my Nightrose turn and running out of Heals while he's now at enough counterblast to get multiple Thing Savers off. I scoop.
Round 3 - vs Witches (2-0)
This matchup started off hilarious as I kept letting my hollow'd units die so he couldn't fucko with them...but then I forgot Phantom Blaster Diablo existed and almost get punished for it. Luckily this guy isn't Derrick so I don't get Critsacked at 3 damage, live and push his shit in with a 5 attack Nightrose turn. Game 2 he's able to get his one Legion off that makes me call 0s from my deck but I wind up calling Banshee and Ghostie Family so the damage was nelgible while I kept terrorizing him with Negrorook into Slash Shade swings and maintaining a field so I wouldn't lose to Diablo. Needing 30 k for my RG lanes plus a PG or no Guard my Vanguard for several turns will take a toll on slower decks such as his.
Round 4 - vs Revengers (0-2)
Crit. Sacking.
Like I really wish I could go into more detail on this but Revengers are one of the most linear, auto pilot decks out there at this point and we've all played against them enough to know how the matchup goes. Maintain hand/board so that you can guard PBD/RFD/Diablo, kill off their own RGs so that they have to call units down to eat and hope to god they don't sack you. Thankfully this guy is not a pleb who runs 12 crit because in order to play Raging Form now you have to draw into your combo pieces. But no I've gotta crit them to death yoloswagon360.
And as the result both games were back and forth as I tried to regulate his damage so that he couldn't get maximum value but also get him to a point where I felt safe pushing but eventually he would either break my guard with double crits or in the case of Game 2 after I put lethal damage on board he 6th damage heals twice and I lose to deckout. Like fuck RNG. Seriously.
So that was the day. I ended up missing out on top cut again due to loltriggers which was annoying as the box that was the prize for this tournament ended up having a Secret Rare Ahsha which is 150 CAD at the time of this post. On the other hand I had a blast playing Granblue and the Seven Seas deck in itself is a different kind of beast from Nightrose. Its fast, can generate soft and surefire pluses and has a ridiculous stride game. I can definitely see why the deck has taken off in Japan as it's legit as fuck. Not looking to playing mirrors though.
Props
-First player to play Granblue at our locals in like forever and I'm gonna go on a limb and say I've already played the deck better than most others. Suck it "I played this deck before it was cool" hipsters!
-Definitely the first to play Seven Seas at our locals.
-My Decklist name: "Salty 7c's."
-Picked up a Nightrose G4 and a Negrolazy
-Fucking destroying Witches.
Slops
-My Game 1 against Ryan
-My Game 2 against Evan.
-My pack pulls were godawful.
Sadly no. Sadly no.
The day started off well as I in a shot in the dark manner decided I'd try to yolo build Seven Seas Granblue if I could and as fortune would have it I was able to borrow just about everything I needed off five people to build the deck minus Waterspout Djinns which I decided to offset through running 2 starters; 1 Peter the Ghostie and 1 Undying Departed, Grenache. The build itself was based on a profile Team No Guard put up from a few years ago whose theory I applied here;
I should note though that since we're now in Stride Format and that Granblue has better units to call from drop zone I opted to run Ruin Shades to turbo mill and ultimately set up my Nightmist Strides.
Round 1 - vs Diablo/Dark Spray Dragon (2-0)
In both games my opponent drew hands that definitely could have been better while I drew hands that let me resolve multiple Banshee/Cutlass to build up hand, then play the game of call value units from drop zone and replace them with Slash Shade/Nightcrow when I could in order to maintain a board or as I'm calling it "playing the Nightmist game". Between my 4 attacks per turn and decent hand (of 3 PGs) I'm able to win well before the danger of deckout presents itself.
Round 2 - vs Thing Blaster (0-2)
Game 1 I had to G-Assist for a Grade 1 Ride and miss it so I proceed to scoop it up given that I was up against Royals. Game 2 I get my ball rolling and play damage control but ultimately lose to a mixture of misplays, him having 2 PGs during my Nightrose turn and running out of Heals while he's now at enough counterblast to get multiple Thing Savers off. I scoop.
Round 3 - vs Witches (2-0)
This matchup started off hilarious as I kept letting my hollow'd units die so he couldn't fucko with them...but then I forgot Phantom Blaster Diablo existed and almost get punished for it. Luckily this guy isn't Derrick so I don't get Critsacked at 3 damage, live and push his shit in with a 5 attack Nightrose turn. Game 2 he's able to get his one Legion off that makes me call 0s from my deck but I wind up calling Banshee and Ghostie Family so the damage was nelgible while I kept terrorizing him with Negrorook into Slash Shade swings and maintaining a field so I wouldn't lose to Diablo. Needing 30 k for my RG lanes plus a PG or no Guard my Vanguard for several turns will take a toll on slower decks such as his.
Round 4 - vs Revengers (0-2)
Crit. Sacking.
Like I really wish I could go into more detail on this but Revengers are one of the most linear, auto pilot decks out there at this point and we've all played against them enough to know how the matchup goes. Maintain hand/board so that you can guard PBD/RFD/Diablo, kill off their own RGs so that they have to call units down to eat and hope to god they don't sack you. Thankfully this guy is not a pleb who runs 12 crit because in order to play Raging Form now you have to draw into your combo pieces. But no I've gotta crit them to death yoloswagon360.
And as the result both games were back and forth as I tried to regulate his damage so that he couldn't get maximum value but also get him to a point where I felt safe pushing but eventually he would either break my guard with double crits or in the case of Game 2 after I put lethal damage on board he 6th damage heals twice and I lose to deckout. Like fuck RNG. Seriously.
So that was the day. I ended up missing out on top cut again due to loltriggers which was annoying as the box that was the prize for this tournament ended up having a Secret Rare Ahsha which is 150 CAD at the time of this post. On the other hand I had a blast playing Granblue and the Seven Seas deck in itself is a different kind of beast from Nightrose. Its fast, can generate soft and surefire pluses and has a ridiculous stride game. I can definitely see why the deck has taken off in Japan as it's legit as fuck. Not looking to playing mirrors though.
Props
-First player to play Granblue at our locals in like forever and I'm gonna go on a limb and say I've already played the deck better than most others. Suck it "I played this deck before it was cool" hipsters!
-Definitely the first to play Seven Seas at our locals.
-My Decklist name: "Salty 7c's."
-Picked up a Nightrose G4 and a Negrolazy
-Fucking destroying Witches.
Slops
-My Game 1 against Ryan
-My Game 2 against Evan.
-My pack pulls were godawful.
Monday, 21 March 2016
YGO Locals Report - Less than ideal
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.
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.
Saturday, 19 March 2016
Vanguard Locals Report - Murphy's Law
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.
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.
Sunday, 6 March 2016
YGO Locals Report - King of Memes
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.
-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.
Saturday, 5 March 2016
CFV Locals Report - I want Crits banned
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.
Slop
-Getting critsacked. All. Day. Long.
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.
Slop
-Getting critsacked. All. Day. Long.
Saturday, 27 February 2016
CFV Locals Report - Outta Steam
This locals was relatively uneventful with the exceptions of a few people normally not seen showing up. Their presence more or less influenced what I was going to play as our resident Spike player has a style that Brawlers can't really take advantage of which is only make plays when he's at 5 damage whereas Bermuda Triangle doesn't call much of a board for me to punch. So I went with Gear Chronicle instead and ran a more "balanced" build as far as G-Zone goes.
Round 1 - vs Ripples (2-1)
When the hell did Woodhouse get back into the game? Well anyway he's (mis)playing Jordan's Ripple deck today and wins the first game due to me being gradestuck for about 5 turns wheras Game 2 I dunk him with Nextage and Game 3 I'm Gradestuck again but due to his misplays I'm able to not get killed and steal the win through Gear comboes.
Round 2 - vs Harmony Bermuda Triangle (2-0)
Both games played out the same; I got first Stride into a Metallia Phoenix that usually disabled his setup, then flipped a crit during my Nextage turn and killed him with a fat Chronojet to his hand of all G1s and above.
Round 3 - vs Memesaurs (1-2)
Megamonkey in one single tournament has invalidated every single Tachikaze player to come before him and this matchup was very close. The first game he got to stride into Gluttony Dogma and while I live the turn my hand is so shit afterwards that I'm never able to take the game back after my Nextage fails to close the game out and since I at the time could only Nextage once per game I pretty much lost any chance to close the gap and win. Game 2 on the other hand he has a weaker start and I'm able to set the pace and never stop as my Phoenix puts in work and Nextage kills him. Then Game 3 happens where I have to G-Assist for 3 turns and while I ultimately make a match of it, I just fall short of the comeback as I'm unable to pull off the vaunted double Heal out of 6th damage like our other Gear Chronicle player around here.
And that was that. I finished third while Memesaurs got second and Altmile got 1st. After this several of us decided to give Relay Fight a try and I was paired up with Chingo and Brando. After considering our options for decks I convinced them to play Chaos and Thing Saver respectively while I played Brawlers. My reasoning was simple; Chaos as 1st Fighter has the ability to lock the opponent down and draw cards for the 2nd fighter to take advantage of. The second fighter just happened to be me and well Brawlers definitely benefit from having a sizeable hand and loaded drop zone. Our last fighter was Brando and between Chingo and I there was no way he wouldn't have the soul or CB needed to kill the opponent with triple Thing Saver Dragon. How'd this play out? Well...
Round 1 - vs Ripple, Claret Sword, Sanctuary Guard
Chaos vs Ripples is already an auto win so it was really just a matter of how long the game dragged on and Woodhouse made the mistake of trying to win a losing battle when he should have let himself die with a decent hand. As the result the two play a back and fourth game at 4 damage with Woodhouse's board being locked down before he finally dies. Derrick comes in with Claret but only has a shit hand and as the result is unable to stride. He beats Chingo and gets one attack off on me but by that point I had a 15 card hand and go straight for the throat with Conquest Dragons and win. Fatty Ding Dong comes in last with Sanc and he makes a Sanc Guard push which I fend off then go into Legion and put Malevolent Djinn into the soul before punching his board. He kills me but that's fine as I leave Brando with a sizable hand, 4 unflipped damage and a 7 card soul for Thing Saver Dragon. Brando kills him after 3 Legion attacks.
Round 2 - vs Gear Chronicle, Angel Feather, Spike Bros
Chingo gets paired up against Jordan and the two have it out. This one goes a bit quicker as Chingo hits a few triggers before Jordan can get to Nextage which is good as Arpy comes in and as I expected uses Raphael's GB2 skill to take the damage lead. Chingo's able to close the gap eventually after he locks his board down through Universe and Big Crunch and Arpy thankfully doesn't know the wombo combo for Angel Feathers so it takes a while for him to eventually win it. Then I step in with a 12 card hand (lots of triggers in it tho) and proceed to Legion, Conquest, Turbo in that order with Kokon's in play so that Arpy ends up using way more cards to block than intended before dying and forcing Tommu to come in with a much smaller hand than Spike Brothers would have liked to work with. He makes a stride play which I block not because of wanting to live but because I had checked multiple PGGs at this point and I wanted to unflip as much damage as possible before dying. I stride into my last Turbo to punch away his board and force him to near death before he Crush rushes me and I'm done. Brando comes in and I've set him up to get 4 Thing Saver Dragon attacks off provided he doesn't draw into multiples. He does and is forced to make due with 2 but that's still enough to kill off Spikes after they've made their one big play and we win.
Victory goes to team Barqs! We DO have bite!
And that was that. We finished just as the store closed so after talking a bit of theory about Relay Fight we all split. Honestly I find the format to be VERY fun and as a once in a while kind of thing I'm all for it. Relay Fight actually adds another dimension to this game which is sorely needed as the way you go about deck building, your playstyle and how your stuff interacts with your team mates is really cool. Now there are people out there who'll shit on the format as its gimmicky but this game is all about the gimmicky stuff. Official events are for the most part not one vs one but 3 vs 3 and I would not be surprised if Bushiroad intends for Relay fight to be the new standard for these things. Now I do love me some one vs one as in that environment most of the time it comes down to who is the better raging sacklord but I also like the comradery aspect that comes with Team Fight and Relay Fight. And above all else the format is fun as hell.
Props
-Flipping my Royal Paladin stuff after buying them for really cheap. Does this make me a baller/vendor now? Not really. I find the idea of trying to be a baller/vendor in Regina laughable.
-Played Relay Fight
-Smashed everyone else at Relay fight. Hurray for the synergy between Link Joker, Narukami and Royal Paladin
-Witnessing the power of Memesaurus Rex
Slops
-My 1st Place streak with Gear Chronicles was broken.
Round 1 - vs Ripples (2-1)
When the hell did Woodhouse get back into the game? Well anyway he's (mis)playing Jordan's Ripple deck today and wins the first game due to me being gradestuck for about 5 turns wheras Game 2 I dunk him with Nextage and Game 3 I'm Gradestuck again but due to his misplays I'm able to not get killed and steal the win through Gear comboes.
Round 2 - vs Harmony Bermuda Triangle (2-0)
Both games played out the same; I got first Stride into a Metallia Phoenix that usually disabled his setup, then flipped a crit during my Nextage turn and killed him with a fat Chronojet to his hand of all G1s and above.
Round 3 - vs Memesaurs (1-2)
Megamonkey in one single tournament has invalidated every single Tachikaze player to come before him and this matchup was very close. The first game he got to stride into Gluttony Dogma and while I live the turn my hand is so shit afterwards that I'm never able to take the game back after my Nextage fails to close the game out and since I at the time could only Nextage once per game I pretty much lost any chance to close the gap and win. Game 2 on the other hand he has a weaker start and I'm able to set the pace and never stop as my Phoenix puts in work and Nextage kills him. Then Game 3 happens where I have to G-Assist for 3 turns and while I ultimately make a match of it, I just fall short of the comeback as I'm unable to pull off the vaunted double Heal out of 6th damage like our other Gear Chronicle player around here.
And that was that. I finished third while Memesaurs got second and Altmile got 1st. After this several of us decided to give Relay Fight a try and I was paired up with Chingo and Brando. After considering our options for decks I convinced them to play Chaos and Thing Saver respectively while I played Brawlers. My reasoning was simple; Chaos as 1st Fighter has the ability to lock the opponent down and draw cards for the 2nd fighter to take advantage of. The second fighter just happened to be me and well Brawlers definitely benefit from having a sizeable hand and loaded drop zone. Our last fighter was Brando and between Chingo and I there was no way he wouldn't have the soul or CB needed to kill the opponent with triple Thing Saver Dragon. How'd this play out? Well...
Round 1 - vs Ripple, Claret Sword, Sanctuary Guard
Chaos vs Ripples is already an auto win so it was really just a matter of how long the game dragged on and Woodhouse made the mistake of trying to win a losing battle when he should have let himself die with a decent hand. As the result the two play a back and fourth game at 4 damage with Woodhouse's board being locked down before he finally dies. Derrick comes in with Claret but only has a shit hand and as the result is unable to stride. He beats Chingo and gets one attack off on me but by that point I had a 15 card hand and go straight for the throat with Conquest Dragons and win. Fatty Ding Dong comes in last with Sanc and he makes a Sanc Guard push which I fend off then go into Legion and put Malevolent Djinn into the soul before punching his board. He kills me but that's fine as I leave Brando with a sizable hand, 4 unflipped damage and a 7 card soul for Thing Saver Dragon. Brando kills him after 3 Legion attacks.
Round 2 - vs Gear Chronicle, Angel Feather, Spike Bros
Chingo gets paired up against Jordan and the two have it out. This one goes a bit quicker as Chingo hits a few triggers before Jordan can get to Nextage which is good as Arpy comes in and as I expected uses Raphael's GB2 skill to take the damage lead. Chingo's able to close the gap eventually after he locks his board down through Universe and Big Crunch and Arpy thankfully doesn't know the wombo combo for Angel Feathers so it takes a while for him to eventually win it. Then I step in with a 12 card hand (lots of triggers in it tho) and proceed to Legion, Conquest, Turbo in that order with Kokon's in play so that Arpy ends up using way more cards to block than intended before dying and forcing Tommu to come in with a much smaller hand than Spike Brothers would have liked to work with. He makes a stride play which I block not because of wanting to live but because I had checked multiple PGGs at this point and I wanted to unflip as much damage as possible before dying. I stride into my last Turbo to punch away his board and force him to near death before he Crush rushes me and I'm done. Brando comes in and I've set him up to get 4 Thing Saver Dragon attacks off provided he doesn't draw into multiples. He does and is forced to make due with 2 but that's still enough to kill off Spikes after they've made their one big play and we win.
Victory goes to team Barqs! We DO have bite!
And that was that. We finished just as the store closed so after talking a bit of theory about Relay Fight we all split. Honestly I find the format to be VERY fun and as a once in a while kind of thing I'm all for it. Relay Fight actually adds another dimension to this game which is sorely needed as the way you go about deck building, your playstyle and how your stuff interacts with your team mates is really cool. Now there are people out there who'll shit on the format as its gimmicky but this game is all about the gimmicky stuff. Official events are for the most part not one vs one but 3 vs 3 and I would not be surprised if Bushiroad intends for Relay fight to be the new standard for these things. Now I do love me some one vs one as in that environment most of the time it comes down to who is the better raging sacklord but I also like the comradery aspect that comes with Team Fight and Relay Fight. And above all else the format is fun as hell.
Props
-Flipping my Royal Paladin stuff after buying them for really cheap. Does this make me a baller/vendor now? Not really. I find the idea of trying to be a baller/vendor in Regina laughable.
-Played Relay Fight
-Smashed everyone else at Relay fight. Hurray for the synergy between Link Joker, Narukami and Royal Paladin
-Witnessing the power of Memesaurus Rex
Slops
-My 1st Place streak with Gear Chronicles was broken.
Saturday, 20 February 2016
CFV Win a Box Report - Too Many Crits
Well this was a letdown. Won't go into too much detail in this post because there really isn't much for me to talk about today. We had a Win-A-Box tournament and I entered with my best deck (Brawlers) and I got savaged due to this being one of those days where the Vanguard Gods simply don't like you and want you to go down hard. Like I swear I got buried harder than Sandow today;
Round 1 - vs Gear Chronicle (0-2)
Game 1 he strides into Fiery March Colossus and swings while preventing me from using my hand of 3 Perfect Guards and he flips a crit while I'm at 4 damage. Do I heal? No.
Game 2 he strides into Colossus and does it again except I'm at 3 damage so I opt to no guard it. He flips 2 crits and I don't check a Heal.
Round 2 - vs Gear Chronicle (2-1)
Game 1 he has to G-Assist and his deck is bad so I thrash him.
Game 2 he flips 2 crits to put me at 5 damage to his 1, has Guard for days and I only see 1 Heal out of 8 Checks so there's no way I can close the gap before he flips another crit and I die.
Game 3 he G-Assists and I thrash him again, even pulling off a double crit of my own, except he gets a Miracle Heal. I kill him regardless because Conquest Dragon.
Round 3 - vs Perdition Dragons (1-2)
Game 1 I have to G-Assist but because he's playing Kagero which is arguably my best matchup I'm still able to make it a game as I play damage control with him (ie forcing him to take damage to enable his retire cards, but in doing so he loses his starter to Saishin and thus Chatura is more likely to hit) but unfortunately I don't make the complete comeback and lose because of some wonky draws.
Game 2 I don't brick and just savage him. I'm talking countering his rush with Skyhowl, then rushing him back with Chatura and Slash Dragon and finally wiping out his hand with Turbo and Conquest. Basically like how Kagero vs Brawlers is supposed to play out.
Game 3 Is much more back and forth as I did not have a hand that would allow me to adequately maintain a push thus I was forced to attack with my VG only for a few turns while he hits 2 heals which is a problem. By the time I do start getting things rolling (ie I'm able to call my Rearguards) I check absolute garbage and am forced to no guard a hit and hope to god he doesn't crit me and he does. I don't hit a heal despite shuffling several into the deck for legion and I'm done.
A heartbreaking loss as I played my ass off to try and keep in the tournament but as I already mentioned there are just days where Vanguard hates you and this was one of them. I didn't bother to stick around to see how the top cut played out though as by the way it looked like none of the good players were in it.
At least the one positive to come out of this was my Reckless Rampage boxes were decent for pulls. I got nothing I wanted of course but I was able to move everything of value within minutes. The path to becoming Ninpo-Ryuu has begun.
Round 1 - vs Gear Chronicle (0-2)
Game 1 he strides into Fiery March Colossus and swings while preventing me from using my hand of 3 Perfect Guards and he flips a crit while I'm at 4 damage. Do I heal? No.
Game 2 he strides into Colossus and does it again except I'm at 3 damage so I opt to no guard it. He flips 2 crits and I don't check a Heal.
Round 2 - vs Gear Chronicle (2-1)
Game 1 he has to G-Assist and his deck is bad so I thrash him.
Game 2 he flips 2 crits to put me at 5 damage to his 1, has Guard for days and I only see 1 Heal out of 8 Checks so there's no way I can close the gap before he flips another crit and I die.
Game 3 he G-Assists and I thrash him again, even pulling off a double crit of my own, except he gets a Miracle Heal. I kill him regardless because Conquest Dragon.
Round 3 - vs Perdition Dragons (1-2)
Game 1 I have to G-Assist but because he's playing Kagero which is arguably my best matchup I'm still able to make it a game as I play damage control with him (ie forcing him to take damage to enable his retire cards, but in doing so he loses his starter to Saishin and thus Chatura is more likely to hit) but unfortunately I don't make the complete comeback and lose because of some wonky draws.
Game 2 I don't brick and just savage him. I'm talking countering his rush with Skyhowl, then rushing him back with Chatura and Slash Dragon and finally wiping out his hand with Turbo and Conquest. Basically like how Kagero vs Brawlers is supposed to play out.
Game 3 Is much more back and forth as I did not have a hand that would allow me to adequately maintain a push thus I was forced to attack with my VG only for a few turns while he hits 2 heals which is a problem. By the time I do start getting things rolling (ie I'm able to call my Rearguards) I check absolute garbage and am forced to no guard a hit and hope to god he doesn't crit me and he does. I don't hit a heal despite shuffling several into the deck for legion and I'm done.
A heartbreaking loss as I played my ass off to try and keep in the tournament but as I already mentioned there are just days where Vanguard hates you and this was one of them. I didn't bother to stick around to see how the top cut played out though as by the way it looked like none of the good players were in it.
At least the one positive to come out of this was my Reckless Rampage boxes were decent for pulls. I got nothing I wanted of course but I was able to move everything of value within minutes. The path to becoming Ninpo-Ryuu has begun.
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