So, as I stated in the past few posts, I decided to go to Regionals yesterday. I went with my Nordic Diva deck after having not played it for a month. Eh, it's not like I forgot how to play the deck, as complex as it can be. I mean, the mind games you can pull are crazy, but that's a story for another post.
Before the tournament started, I bought a Hieratic Dragon King of Atum and a Queen Dragun Djinn. So, now I have the whole Hieratic deck, basically. I also pulled a Hieratic Seal of Reflection from my entry packs. That was the only holo...
There ended up being 506 players there. Quite a lot, but thankfully not enough for ten rounds. As such, there would be nine rounds...
Round 1: vs Newbie HEROes - OO
-It was his first time at a Regional, and he said his friend make the deck for him.
Round 2: vs Chaos Dragons - XX
-I lost to a Tour Guide play and BLS after countering his first swarm with Scrap Dragon in the first duel. I lost the second duel on turn four to Future Fusion and a crazy amount of boss Monsters.
At this point, I considered just going to locals to beat on all of the newbies, but I decided to keep going, since many of the other regulars from locals were still here, like vadangchoinga and tsgreen.
Round 3: vs Gravekeeper's - OO
-I was able to just keep control of the duel with Reborn Tengu and Mind Control in both games. He only drew one Necrovalley each game, and I was able to get rid of them both games.
Round 4: vs Tele-DAD - XOO
-In the first duel, he started by searching Stratos with RotA, then using it to search D-HERO Malicious, which was discarded to special Summon Dark Grepher. Malicious and Emergency Teleport for Krebons made Stardust Dragon, and he overlaid Stratos and Dark Grepher for Utopia. He Set the rest of his hand to his back row, and I knew it'd be quite difficult to win. In the other two duels, he didn't draw nearly as well, so I was able to slowly whittle away at his card presence and win from there.
Round 5: vs HERO Beat - OO
-I won the first duel pretty decisively with all of my crazy Nordic plays, which he didn't have answers for. He got pretty mad after that, but wasn't able to do anything to take revenge in the second game.
Round 6: vs Inzektors - OO
-He made a crucial misplay with Threatening Roar in the first duel, activating it on attack declaration, which allowed my Scrap Archfiend to still kill his Inzektor Dragonfly. I drew a bunch of my side cards in the second duel, so I was able to take it even though I made a pretty silly misplay.
Round 7: vs HERO Beat - OXO
-I won the first duel because he really didn't know how to combat my Nordic tricks. I lost the second duel by getting beat down by Blade Armor Ninja, and my counter play was stopped by Skill Drain. I won the third duel because Gorz is broken; I dropped it when all he had left was a face-up Skill Drain, a Set Starlight Road (from Duality), a Stratos, and an Alius.
Round 8: vs Chaos Dragons - OO
-I drew such an aggressive hand in the first duel, and he only had one Dark to banish to make his plays, so I was able to just keep pushing with Synchros backed by Gachi Gachi Gantetsu courtesy of two Deep Sea Divas. He drew pretty badly in the second duel, too, opening with three Effect Veilers. I was able to capitalize and just keep beating him down.
So, by this point, word had spread about some weird Nordic deck that was somehow X-1. This was from players whom I had beaten, players who were sitting next to me during my matches, and judges who would randomly stop to watch this weird Nordic deck somehow keep winning. It was pretty cool, actually. During the final round, there were like four judges just watching my match; they really wanted to see Nordics top.
Round 9: vs Dino Rabbits - XOX
-I lost the first duel to two Evolzar Dolkkas. If he had played a third one, he would've won that duel even faster. In game two, I was able to chip away at his card advantage pretty well, finishing off the rest of his cards with a Black Rose Dragon before beating him down with massive advantage. I lost the third duel because his opening hand consisted of two Rescue Rabbits and two Tour Guides. The other cards didn't even matter; that's enough to win a duel without anything else.
Oh well, it happens. Honestly, I expected to go X-2 and drop by Round 5, but I was able to do much better than expected. It was cool, though, that my deck had made such an impression on the people there. My friends told me that they overheard people talking about my deck and such. One of the judges who was watching my final match even came up to me and told me that he was sad that I lost that round. "Me too," I replied. It was sad to lose, but it made me happy that I was able to do so well with an obscure deck and influence people because of it.
And it's not like I completely failed. I did go X-2, but I was one of the highest X-2's, tying for 12th place. Nice, Top 16; that's the best I've done so far at a Regional. I already have my invite, so I didn't care about that. But, I got a few packs of Galactic Overlord; the best card in there was Gagaga Gardna, so they were pretty bad, unfortunately.
As for my friends, basically all of them went X-3 or X-4, and none of them got their invites or anything. That's what they get for playing stuff like T.G. Stun, Chaos Dragons, and Six Samurai, heh. Oh, and another "slop" about the Regional was that the Head Judge wasn't very good at his job (he didn't even understand how and why certain effects miss timing...).
So, it ended up being a pretty good day. Unfortunately, I won't be able to attend a tournament next weekend, as I'll be busy with finals (not studying for them, of course, but one of my finals is on Saturday...). However, after that, I'll be free of school for a few months, letting me concentrate on other things, like Yu-Gi-Oh and Kaijudo. I may even do some Magic drafts or something, though I'll need to figure out what to do with the random cards I would get if I were to do that...
Edison Deep Dive: Gladiator Beast
6 months ago
Omg so many people. I will die just to be with so mnay players
ReplyDeleteYeah, Regionals in my area are usually have at least a few hundred players. This was one of the biggest Regionals we've had in a while, but there have been Regionals where there were so many people that we would have to play ten rounds. It can get crazy.
DeleteWhy you no kill six sam. All hail the Six Sam killer. Fear him shi-en!
ReplyDeleteHeh, I didn't get to play against any Six Samurai players. That was what I expected, though, since my Nordic Diva has a tough match-up against them. The only deck I can easily slay Six Samurai with is my Scrap Worms deck.
Deletewow congrats! :)
ReplyDeleteThanks. I still need to work on beating Dino Rabbit, though...
DeleteThat's what i get for playing chaos dragons XP. X-3 while nordic diva who refuses to play tour guide is X-2....
ReplyDeleteIndeed. Not only X-2, but Top 16.
DeleteAnd I'm not refusing to play Tour Guides, I just think that Deep Sea Diva is a better fit for my Nordic variant. If I had Wind-Up Zenmaines, then sure; I'd play Tour Guide. But for now, I'll settle on Gachi Gachi Gantetsu and my Level 5 Synchros.
Admittedly though, the Level 5 Synchros were kind of worthless yesterday, as none of the top decks care about Catastor, except for maybe HEROes, I suppose. So maybe Tour Guide would be worth getting, but my deck can't make effective use of the Rank 3 Xyz Monsters I have.
Also, the fact that Deep Sea Diva is a Tuner allows me to make use of it even if it gets negated by Effect Veiler. Due to the everlasting field presence my deck is able to generate, I'll almost always have a Monster out to tune Diva to. If Tour Guide gets Veiled, then it'll just be sitting there next to my Super-Nimble Mega Hamster or Reborn Tengu doing nothing.
I was at that regionals. Everybody in the back during round 8 thought you were using odin and shit lol.
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting. To be fair, I only summoned Thor once during the whole tournament, so I could see why people would think that. Either way, Odin is pretty bad this format. All it stops is attack-response Traps, since everything else is either Chainable or summon-response.
DeleteBut yeah, I didn't hear any of these rumors directly, so I'd be interested in hearing what people thought.
They figured that dragons couldn't get over a 4k beater that keeps coming back. Not sure if they knew if thor even existed lol.
DeleteWell, Dragons can't get over a 3500 ATK beater that keeps coming back, either. The only time I summoned Thor, though, was against the Tele-DAD player to go for an OTK during game two.
DeleteBesides, it's hard to summon Thor against Chaos Dragons. They just swarm and kill everything before I can establish field presence. My strategy against them was to just apply constant pressure with big Synchros like Scrap Dragon and aggressively counter everything they drop. My Rykos killing their Rykos helps, too.
Well Tour Guide is better than Diva because she gives access to Black Luster Soldier EotB. I play Tour Guide in main deck and often side them out in duel 2 for Deep Sea Divas and Shadow-Imprisoning Mirrors.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the biggest problem I have is that the deck runs out of resources too fast. I tend to draw at least 1 Guldfaxe in my starting hand, so I can only make 2 Tanngnjostr play per duel at maximum. That's bad because one of the two is often a Black Rose Dragon to clear my opponent's field. It's bad drawing dead Tanngnjostrs and Gleipnirs in late game.
I don't want to run BLS if the only Darks I'd be using are the Tour Guide engine. Besides, I like to Pot of Avarice everything back and reuse everything, which conflicts with BLS. BLS is broken, but I'm not going to sacrifice consistency just to try and fit it into the deck.
DeleteAnd, you're not supposed to be using Tanngnjostr so aggressively that you run out of resources. With all of the advantage gaining cards like Super-Nimble Mega Hamster and Ryko, you should be grinding for advantage during the early stages of the duel. With such advantage, being able to only use two Tanngnjostr should be enough to win. In fact, I only run two Level 7 Synchros because any more is simply unnecessary. Also, I rarely used Black Rose Dragon during the tournament. I always had access to it, but I wouldn't need to use it; there are just so many other plays you can make.
In my experience, I've only been disappointed to draw Tanngnjostr when it's my only Monster. If I have something else to let die so that I can Special Summon it, it's usually okay. But, if your opponent is afraid of attacking Set Monsters, you can Set Tanngnjostr as if it were a Hamster or Ryko, and your opponent will treat it as such. That's one of the mind games you can play.
There's a lot of tricks that the deck can pull off; it doesn't revolve entirely around the Tanngnjostr/Guldfaxe play.
What do you think of Photon Sabre Tiger? Has some cool tricks and I suppose works ok with tour guide/veilered tanngnjostr but is really combo-ish and seems a bit subpar without running craploads of protection.
ReplyDeleteI did consider using it a long time ago, seeing as how it works with Super-Nimble Mega Hamster. But, it's not worth the space and such.
DeleteIt may work well with a Veiled Tanngnjostr, but so does any Tuner or Level 3 Monster. I mean, that's why I run Deep Sea Diva and can tolerate drawing Lost Blue Breaker.
Photon Sabre Tiger is by no means a bad card for the deck, but there are many better options.
Well about less than 50% of your duels were against top tier decks so your match ups were a bit weaker. I have to congratulate you because I really wanted you to top as well! All you needed to do was win your final round!
ReplyDeleteI'm the kind of person who actually wants to see Empty Jar, Chain Burn, Final Countdown, Exodia or some troll deck top a YCS. Then people can appreciate the struggle they have to go through. It may also send a message that you don't need an expensive deck to top a very tough event.
People fail to realize that these decks need a lot of skill, wise use of resources, and memory as well. Some people came close but there's just too many top tier decks out there.
Thanks for the kind words. I will admit that I got kind of lucky facing stuff like HEROes and Gravekeeper's, since they're generally good match-ups for me. But, at a Regional like this, there's bound to be a lot of weaker decks. It kind of compensates for the fact that we have to play more rounds than we would at smaller Regionals, which would consequently have higher concentrations of top tier decks.
DeleteTo be fair, my match-ups against the top decks aren't bad, and I was prepared for them. I did 2-0 Inzektors and Chaos Dragons, while the match I lost to Chaos Dragons was due to BLS and Future Fusion. And aside from the third duel in the Dino Rabbit match-up, in which my opponent opened with such a crazy hand, we were pretty even. Of course, it's hard to have a good match-up against Dino Rabbit, but it's manageable.
As for random decks topping events like YCS's, I don't think that people would necessarily "appreciate" their struggles. The expected reaction would be to dismiss the win as luck or attribute it to other factors. Besides, if such a deck tops, then it would be unlikely to top again, due to the fact that that deck would take more skill to pilot, as you mentioned, and because players would be prepared for it the second time around.
But, most people do like to see something other than the top decks do well. The meta gets stale very quickly, and seeing something original top an event can help inspire people. However, inspiration isn't nearly enough to jolt the meta; people will still play the decks that are the easiest to win with.
By the way, your comment implies that you were at the Regional. Would I be correct in making that assumption?
Congratulations for your accomplish. All this remind myself a year ago, when I went 5-1 on a regional with nordic plants.
ReplyDeleteI'm happy you find your own way to win in this format with a deck made it for yourself.
Thanks. I'm glad I was able to come back to Nordics after I had set them aside for a while. I like the deck a lot, but it's too bad that your Plant variant was hit so hard by the ban list.
ReplyDeleteI think that you could still run Plants and Mark of the Rose in Nordics, though. Three Naturia Marron and one Naturia Pineapple can be a pretty effective engine, especially since Pineapple doesn't conflict that much with the usual Nordic Beast engine. Maybe it's something I'll look into.
But Pineappple will conflict with my syncro options.
DeleteI tried to use xyz plant monsters, because they are easier to summon than syncro plant monsters. I'm not sure is a good idea.
Well, Pineapple basically conflicts with every Xyz Monster you can bring out as well, but that's not the point. Pineapple is just another option in case you haven't brought out a Synchro or Xyz Monster yet. The deck doesn't have to revolve around it.
DeleteThoughts on this type of scrap deck that topped in Japan recently?
ReplyDeletehttp://shriek.twoday.net/stories/97045372/
I can imagine tengu being godly in there with horn of the phantom beast.
It was obviously a Stun variant, but I like this one over past Scrap Stun variants. Photon Thrasher gives it some speed, and all of the searching and draw power help with consistency. I would expect it to lose to stuff like Six Samurai, Dark Worlds, and other such decks. I guess that it's good for the OCG meta, though.
DeleteCongratulations Grunty! Glad to see another Nordic deck top a tournament!! Btw did you only use 3 of each beast or did you use Vanadis too?
ReplyDeleteI didn't even use three of each Nordic Beast, and I did not use Vanadis. Vanadis is kind of a waste of space, both for the Main Deck and the Extra Deck. Odin's not very good this format, so yeah...
DeleteDeep Sea Diva helps by being my other Tuner, so I don't really need to use Vanadis.