Tournament Report 9/29/12

So, starting this weekend, I'd only be able to go to locals once per week.  As expected, I decided to go today (really yesterday, since it's after midnight...).

First was the Vanguard tournament at the usual card shop.  There were seven people there, but it was basically single-elimination.  I lost the first round because I got gradestuck on Grade 1.  My opponent was really bad, too, but he just kept getting Critical Triggers and I didn't get any Grade 2's.

After that was the Yu-Gi-Oh tournament.  There were about 25 players there, and I used my Nordic Diva deck, as usual.  I was too lazy to try and make a new deck, but I did add a Spined Gillman to my deck so that I can still call out a Level 3 Sea Serpent with Deep Sea Diva if I'm unfortunate enough to draw Lost Blue Breaker.

Round 1: vs Wind-Ups

This guy wasn't a regular, but he apparently topped the recent Regional that I didn't get to attend with Wind-Ups.  That doesn't necessarily make him a good player, of course, but he was above average, for sure.

-Duel 1: I opened with a Set Sangan.  He opened with Mind Control, Wind-Up Magician, and Wind-Up Shark.  Alright then...

-Duel 2: I opened with a Set Sangan.  He opened with Mind Control and Wind-Up Rabbit.  He overlaid for Zenmaity to grab Magician, then Special Summoned Shark.  Alright then...

XX

Round 2: vs Dino Rabbit

This was my Round 3 opponent from this tournament.

-Duel 1: I was able to make my Nordic plays unhindered, since the only Monsters he drew were Dinosaurs.

-Duel 2: He only draw one Monster: Sabersaurus, which I killed with a Guldfaxe boosted by Gachi Gachi Gantetsu.  So, I just beat him down from there.

OO

Round 3: vs Monster Mash

I was playing against JB.  Yugilo filmed our match, so the videos will be up on his YouTube channel.  I won't spoil the ending for you all, as if any of you care...

Round 4: vs Wind-Ups

This was my Round 3 opponent from this tournament.

-Duel 1: I opened up with Spined Gillman and Lost Blue Breaker.  He opened up with Wind-Up Rabbit and Wind-Up Factory.  He just kept generating advantage off of his Factory, so I couldn't do much.

-Duel 2: He made a desperate play with Rat and Shark to try and make a push.  I banished his Zenmaity with Bottomless Trap Hole, forced the game into a top-decking war, and won from there.

-Duel 3: He opened with Wind-Up Rabbit, then drew Factory as his seventh card.  I didn't have anything to destroy the Factory, so I lost.  That's basically what it comes down to, now.  I can deal with the Magician/Shark swarms if I don't die, but the Factory just sets them up for more swarms.

XOX

That ended up being the last round of the tournament, so yeah.  I didn't win anything, having gone 2-2 and such.  I did play some fun games with my Gem-Knights against my Round 2 opponent and my friend who plays Vanguard (who won the Vanguard tournament earlier, which shouldn't be a surprise).  I kind of want to play Gem-Knights, but they just aren't consistent enough yet.  As soon as we get Gem-Knight Zirconia, it'll be great.

So, after the tournament, my friend who plays Vanguard and I went to the other card shop for their Vanguard tournament.  I had added a few copies of Highspeed, Brakki to my Invincible Overlord deck so that I wouldn't deck-out as fast.  It's a common tech choice for decks that don't make effective use of the Soul.

Round 1: vs Gold Paladin (Starter: Kyrph)

This was one of the incompetent Gold Paladin players there.  He didn't know how half of his own cards worked...

-Fight 1: I didn't draw a Grade 3, so I lost.

-Fight 2: I drew all three Dragonic Overlords and beat him down with them.

-Fight 3: I finally drew my Mr. Invincible/Dragonic Overlord combo and won with it.

XOO

Round 2: vs Gold Paladin (Starter: Vortimer)

-Fight 1: He missed his ride chain, so I was able to beat him down pretty easily.

-Fight 2: He healed three times, so I decked-out before I was able to win.  Quite sad.

-Fight 3: I won with my Mr. Invincible/Dragonic Overlord combo, as expected.  It's my "winning image", as they say in the anime.

OXO

Round 3: vs Gold Paladin (Starter: Spring Breeze Messenger)

-Fight 1: I had to ride up to Dragonic Overlord, but I was able to draw a Mr. Invincible and another Dragonic Overlord to enable my combo.  I beat him down with it, since Dragonic Overlord supported by Bahr forces a 20k guard to protect Lop Ear Shooter when I use Overlord's Counterblast.  That's what you get for playing 9k Grade 2's.

-Fight 2: I had to ride up to Dragonic Overlord, but he basically dumped his hand onto the field.  When he only had three cards in hand, I used my Vanguard Dragonic Overlord's Counterblast and destroyed one of his rear-guards.  My drive check got me a Draw Trigger, so I gave the power to my Overlord and wrecked his whole field before finishing him off.  I should've said "Final Turn", but oh well.

OO

Round 4: vs Oracle Think Tank (Tsukuyomi)

-Fight 1: He missed his ride chain completely and rode up to CEO Amaterasu.  Every time he checked the top card of his deck with Amaterasu's skill, it was a Critical Trigger.  Not only that, but the card below that was another Critical Trigger.  I got double crit'd twice.

-Fight 2: He missed his ride chain completely, and I was able to rip through his field with my Mr. Invincible/Dragonic Overlord combo.  I'm glad that Goddess of the Full Moon, Tsukuyomi is only at 9k in the rear-guard circle when you miss the ride chain.

-Fight 3: He got his ride chain off perfectly, with a Psychic Bird to put that sixth card into the Soul.  I drew all of my Heal Triggers over the course of the game and lost to several double triggers again.

XOX

Either way, that was the last round of Swiss, and I made it into the Top 4.  Again, my friend who plays Vanguard failed to do so.

Semi-Finals: vs Kagero

-Fight 1: He rode up to Dragonic Lawkeeper (but I don't think that he bases his deck solely on Lawkeeper; it just seemed like a random beatdown-style deck).  He attacked while I was at three damage and I let it through.  Double Critical Trigger, as if that hadn't happened to me enough today.

-Fight 2: I didn't draw any Grade 2's, so I lost.

XX

I was supposed to play for 3rd place, but my opponent was tired and just gave me the win.  So, I ended up getting three packs of Set 2.  I pulled the effectless Grade 2 for Bermuda Triangle and a RRR Sky Diver.  Still, no Demonic Dragon Mage Kimnara...

But yeah, a lot of the people who I played against told me that they didn't want to play against my deck.  I guess they were scared of the thought of me being able to use Dragonic Overlord's Counterblast every turn.  Most people also don't know how to deal with Stand Triggers.  I'm actually thinking about playing eight Stand Triggers for next week, since I always felt like I didn't have enough Stand Triggers...

So yeah, I'm not sure what else I can do in terms of Vanguard.  My card pool is very limited, so I'm going to be playing the same deck for quite a while, unless of course my friend lets me borrow one of his decks for the tournament.  He's trying to build two different Great Nature decks and also improve his Gold Paladin deck with the new rabbit-based cards from Set 7.

As for Yu-Gi-Oh, the format is still quite stale, so I don't really have much reason to work on any new decks.  Aki and I are going to record videos tomorrow (really today, since it's after midnight...), and I'll probably just use my Gem-Knights, since there's really nothing else.  Aki was able to make his Yubel deck, so that'll be cool.

And of course for Kaijudo, there's really nothing new happening until November, so we'll probably concentrate on other things for the time being.  I mean, we've gotten basically everything we can out of the Core Set, so we'll just have to wait for the new set to come out, then hopefully for tournaments next year.  But yeah, we'll see what happens.

"Skill" in Vanguard

So, since nothing is really happening with regards to Yu-Gi-Oh and Kaijudo, I figured I'd do a post about Vanguard.  Basically, I'm going to explain how all of the "skill" in Vanguard just boils down to basic math.  In fact, I'm basically going to go over everything you need to know how to play Vanguard effectively.  Basically, if you've watched the first season of the Vanguard anime (or even just the first few episodes), then this post should teach you everything you need to know to play better than most people.

Alright, so the first thing is attack order.  Assuming you don't run Stand Triggers (which most people don't, because it makes them think harder than they have to), you can easily attack with your Vanguard first and apply the additional power from any Triggers you pull effectively (depending on how your opponent guarded).  You can attack with one rear-guard line first if it's powerful enough (to force at least a 10k guard) or if you want to kill their rear-guards (either because they're Interceptors or because they're scary, like Dragonic Overlord).  You don't want to attack with both rear-guard columns first in most situations (for instance, you can do that if you run Nova Grapplers, where your Grade 3's are turned into multi-Stand Triggers).  You can also attack their rear-guards if your rear-guards are too weak to attack the Vanguard effectively.

But, how do you determine if your rear-guards are powerful enough to attack your opponent's Vanguard effectively?  In the TCG, players refer to certain values of power as "magic numbers."  Basically, if your opponent has a 10k Vanguard, then if you can attack them with at least 15k power, then you will force them to guard with at least 10k worth of shield.  Similarly, if your opponent has a 11k Vanguard, then 16k is sufficient to force a 10k guard.  So, for every 5k extra power you can add to your attack, you force your opponent to have to guard with 5k more than they would have had to otherwise; it's basic math.  Certain decks try to hit 20k or 21k power lines so that you can force 15k guards, but not all decks can do that.

This idea of "magic numbers" is useful when setting up your columns.  You can easily put your 6k booster behind a 10k attacker to make a 16k line.  If you've got units that attack for 12k, like some Megablasters or cards like Dragonic Executioner, then you can use 8k boosters to make them into 20k lines.  Obviously, you have to take into account the power of your opponent's Vanguard.  So, making a 20k line is just as powerful as making a 16k line against an 11k Vanguard; again, basic math.  As I said, making 20k or 21k lines can be difficult for many decks, so consistently making 16k lines is often enough.

And of course, knowing about "magic numbers" helps when you're defending as well.  So, if your 10k Vanguard is being attacked by a 16k line, then you have to guard with 10k worth of shield.  But it's not only useful for guarding, you can also determine whether or not to attack your opponent's rear-guard.  If your opponent makes a 20k line (like Gigantech Destroyer supported by Gareth), then you can attack that rear-guard so that you can break up their 20k attacking line.  It makes guarding easier for you if you can take down their rear-guards.

So you know how to protect yourself against your opponent's rear-guard attacks, but how do you properly guard against their Vanguard?  Have you seen this scene (from 8:58 to 11:58)?  It's an example of how to properly guard against the Vanguard, and we also get a nice lesson from Yuri of Team Caesar.  In general, you want to guard against your opponent's Grade 3 Vanguard with 5k more than what would normally be necessary.  So, if you have a 10k Vanguard and your opponent attacks for 16k, then you would have to guard with at least 10k.  But, if your opponent gets a Trigger, they could give the extra 5k power to their Vanguard and force the attack through.  So, to avoid that, you guard with 15k instead, so that if your opponent gives the 5k from a Trigger to their attacking Vanguard, the attack still wouldn't go through.

Of course, if they pull two Triggers, take a risk, and give both to their Vanguard, then the attack would go through.  This is why people say "Two to pass" when they guard like this; they would need two Triggers for the attack to go through.  Does that mean that you should guard with an extra 10k instead so that their attack won't go through no matter what (which is called "No pass")?  No, you shouldn't do that normally.  For instance, in the fight between Misaki and Yuri, if Yuri had guarded with 20k against Misaki's Vanguard's attack, then she wouldn't have had enough cards left to guard against the rear-guard Tsukuyomi that would get the extra 10k from the two Triggers.  It also wouldn't give Misaki the opportunity to misplay by misappropriating the extra power from her Triggers.  However, if you have a mess load of cards and want to ensure that you make it to your next turn, then go ahead and waste the extra shield to protect yourself.  It's basic math (again), if you guard for "No pass", and your opponent pulls two Triggers anyways, they'll give the power to their rear-guard(s) and you'll have to guard for a lot again.

Using this type of reasoning (read, "basic math"), you can determine when it is appropriate to guard with the minimum amount of shield against a Vanguard's attack.  This is called "minimum guard" or "One to pass", because one Trigger will break through the guard.  Consider the following example: It's very late in the game, and you're at 5 damage.  Your opponent has their 16k Vanguard line and a 15k rear-guard line against your 10k Vanguard.  You have 20-25k worth of shield left.  In this situation, it's appropriate to minimum guard against your opponent's Vanguard's attack.  Why?  Because if you guard for 15k against your opponent's Vanguard, then you won't have enough to guard against their rear-guard if they pull a Trigger; you'd have to guard with another 15k, and you'd only have 5-10k left.  However, if you minimum guard and they don't pull a Trigger, you'll have enough cards left to guard their rear-guard's attack.  Of course, if they pull a Trigger, you'd lose either way; that's just something you'd have to deal with in that situation.

That's basically all of the basic math that you need to know to do well in Vanguard.  There are some more advanced strategies that you'd have to employ if you do stuff like use Stand Triggers, but it's very easy to run a deck that doesn't use Stand Triggers.  If you want a quick tip on how to use Stand Triggers effectively, here it is: Attack with one rear-guard line before attacking with your Vanguard, and use the rear-guard line that has an attacker that has enough power to hit their Vanguard (or at least one of their rear-guards) unboosted.  For instance, if your opponent has a 10k Vanguard and your rear-guard lines are 9k boosted by 7k and 10k boosted by 6k, then you attack with the 10k rear-guard first.  That way, if you pull a Stand Trigger, then you can stand your 10k attacker and give it the 5k power from the Trigger, which will force another 10k guard out of your opponent.

And of course, memorizing the cards your opponent reveals off of drive checks can be helpful as well, but since most good players use revealed cards within the next two turns (either as guards or rear-guards) to prevent you from knowing their whole hand, it's not necessarily that helpful.  There's also the idea that you should try to guard early in the game, since it's easier to guard for 5k earlier than for 15k later, but sometimes you won't be able to.

But yeah, that's basically it.  So, like I said, if you've watched the first few episodes (at least episodes 1, 2, 4, and 11) of the Vanguard anime and can remember the strategies outlined in this post, then you now know how to play Vanguard relatively well.  Of course, there's still a lot of luck involved, but employing these strategies will help you win.  At least kind of, anyways...

Tournament Report 9/23/12

So, Aki and I went to locals today.  This'll probably be the last time we get to go to locals on a Sunday in a while, since my school starts back up this week.  I'll still be going to locals on Saturday for Vanguard, Yu-Gi-Oh, and then possibly another round of Vanguard.  We'll see, though.

Regardless, first was the Kaijudo league.  Aki and I fixed up his deck, taking away many of the useless Nature cards to add Water Blockers.  We then played one game, which Aki won; my answer to his Bolgash Dragon was Lord Skycrusher, but he bounced it with Veil Vortex, then killed me on the following turn.

I then played against Riku.  He was able to wipe my field with Stormspark Blast twice, but I was able to recover by killing all of his attackers so that he couldn't break my shields before he decked-out.  After that, I played against tsgreen.  Basically the same thing happened, except that he only has one Stormspark Blast, so I just controlled his Creatures with various Spells so that he couldn't kill me before he decked-out.

With my three Kaijudo duels for league out of the way, it was time for Vanguard.  I lent Aki my Invincible Overlord deck so that he could practice playing against my friend who plays Vanguard and his Gold Paladins.  This was basically Aki's first time playing, but he knew what he was doing since he watches the anime and can add multiples of 1000.  He also knows about "magic numbers", which is referred to as "line theory" in the OCG.  So yeah, that's basically all you need to know to play, though I think it would've been better if we were able to start him off with a more linear deck.  As far as Vanguard decks go, Invincible Overlord is relatively complex.  Still doesn't take much skill, though.

After a while, the Yu-Gi-Oh tournament started.  There were like 40 people there today, so that was cool.  I used my Nordic Diva deck, as usual.  I kind of do want to change the deck, but I'm not sure what I would change.  We'll see, I guess...

Round 1: vs Psychics

This was my Round 3 opponent from this tournament.

-Duel 1: I went first with a Set Reborn Tengu.  Yeah, a Set Reborn Tengu.  The other Tengu was in my hand, along with a bunch of Nordic Monsters and Spell/Trap destruction.  He used Mind Control to steal it before attacking me with Card Trooper and handing back the Tengu.  I beat him down with two Tengus on my turn, but then he Set Serene Psychic Witch, which is the key card, believe it or not.  With it, he got Esper Girl, and he summoned another Witch to Synchro Summon Magical Android, netting him a free card.  He killed one of my Tengus, and I Special Summoned Tanngnjostr (black goat) from my hand.  He considered using Dark Hole, but decided to just end.  I used Monster Reborn on his Esper Girl and used Tanngnjostr's effect to get Guldfaxe (not in that order, of course).  I Synchro Summoned T.G. Hyper Librarian, then Stardust Dragon to draw a card.  The card I drew was Lost Blue Breaker... I summoned it, since it would be exactly game with that field, but he dropped Swift Scarecrow after I killed his Android.  He then played Miracle Synchro Fusion and Grandsoil, and I lost.
-Duel 2: He opened with Skill Drain, but no real Monsters.  So, I just beat him down with Guldfaxe for most of the game.
-Duel 3: Time was called at the end of the previous duel, so this duel would be decided by the first change in LP.  He went first and opened with Emergency Teleport and Giant Rat, so he made Psychic Lifetrancer and healed to win.  Eh, it kind of sucks to lose like this, but my matches against him are always so interesting, so I didn't mind.

XOX

Round 2: vs Newbie Dark Worlds

"Newbie" because he didn't have a Side Deck and had to read all of my cards, including stuff like Scrap Dragon.

-Duel 1: He used Dragged Down, Mind Crush, and Deck Devastation Virus to kill me.
-Duel 2: He didn't have Grapha, so I just beat him down.
-Duel 3: He drew all three Graphas and beat me down with them.  I had a Scrap Dragon that cleared out his whole field while the last two cards in his hand were Beiige and Grapha, but then he drew Dark World Dealings, so I lost.

XOX

So that was kind of stupid.  Oh well, it happens.  So, I dropped and got my Kaijudo pack, which had nothing of note.  Aki decided to drop, too, and we just played Vanguard.  This time, Aki used my friend's Gold Paladin deck.  So yeah.

Throughout the day, Aki, my friend who plays Vanguard, and I discussed a possible budget Vanguard deck for Aki to use.  Aki just wanted to use a beatdown deck with a bunch of vanillas from different clans.  We eventually decided on a Royal Paladin deck.  Using the Drangal/Galahad ride chain for potential free rides, the remainder of the cards in the deck are just beaters like Gallatin and Lamorak.  There are also a few cards like Toypugal and Borgal to function as powerful boosters that could be searched out by High Dog Breeder, Akane.  The Grade 3's are kind of random, since my friend has three Lohengrin and one Palamedes, but nothing else that's really relevant.  We even have to use Holy Disaster Dragon as a filler Grade 3...  That's basically it; it's a pretty linear deck that focuses on making 20k/21k columns.  But yeah, my friend basically has the whole deck, so he's going to gather up the cards and I'm going to put the deck together next Saturday.

Aki also put together his Yubel deck.  I got the last two Yubels from Fwazalaza, but it cost me one of my Razorpine Trees... So yeah, Aki is going to try out his own Yubel variant, and then we'll see what happens from there.  There's a lot of ways to play a Yubel deck, which makes it kind of interesting.  But yeah, Aki and I will probably meet up to film more duel videos next Sunday.  And, if I can put together his Royal Paladin deck on Saturday, I might try it out at the evening Vanguard tournament.  So yeah, we'll see what happens next weekend.

Tournament Report 9/22/12

So, as usual, I went to locals today (really yesterday, since it's after midnight...).  I got there early for the Vanguard tournament, but again, there weren't enough people.  So, we just got our free promo packs, and my friend who plays Vanguard and I played Yu-Gi-Oh, Vanguard, and Kaijudo until the Yu-Gi-Oh tournament started.

There were 22 players there for the Yu-Gi-Oh tournament.  I was running my Nordic Diva deck because I'm lazy and didn't want to fix up my deck at all.

Round 1: vs Wind-Ups

This was my Round 1 opponent from this tournament.

-Duel 1: He did some crazy shenanigans using Tour Guide to go into Zenmaity to grab Magician, letting him Special Summon Shark from his hand and swarm.  He misplayed, though, so he just made Maestroke and Zenmaines to defend himself.  I made a Zenmaines of my own, and we just sat there for quite a while.  I eventually summoned Scrap Dragon to wreck his field, then he was able to kill my Scrap Dragon with another Zenmaines.  I made a reversal with Catastor, which he killed with Tiras, which I killed with Scrap Dragon, courtesy of Monster Reborn.  Honestly, this game took up most of the time in the round, so it would've been odd for me not to have drawn a bunch of power cards by then.
-Duel 2: I dropped Scrap Dragon quickly to dominate the field.  He didn't draw his combos, so he couldn't gain any card advantage, so I won.

OO

Round 2: vs Newbie Six Samurai

This guy wasn't horrible (you have to be pretty bad to play Six Samurai incorrectly), but he didn't have a Side Deck, hence, "Newbie".

-Duel 1: I had the perfect cards to counter his Synchro swarms.  Basically, I had two Guldfaxe and non-Tuners to pair them with.  So, I was able to force him into top-decking mode, which Six Samurai can't deal with.
-Duel 2: He swarmed and almost OTK'd me.  But, since I was still alive, I made a Thought Ruler Archfiend to run over his Leviathan Dragon, then his Excalibur, to gain back LP and win.

OO

Round 3: vs Wind-Ups

I was playing against spondo.

-Duel 1: He did his usual shenanigans and I didn't draw anything to stop him.
-Duel 2: He made a risky Zenmaity play by wasting a Rat and Shark from his hand, and I just shut it down with Book of Moon.  Guldfaxe killed his Set Zenmaity, and he couldn't do much after that.  I basically just beat him down with Guldfaxe all game.
-Duel 3: He made Zenmaioh to destroy my whole field, and I lost because I couldn't Set Monsters to protect myself.  I had two Traps to deal with the Zenmaioh, but I lost them to Dust Tornado and Mystical Space Typhoon, so yeah.

XOX

After that round, there were only two undefeated players left, which meant that there would only be one round left.  That was cool for us, since my friend who plays Vanguard and I wanted to go to the Vanguard tournament at the other card shop.

Round 4: vs Newbie Six Samurai

This guy wasn't horrible (you have to be pretty bad to play Six Samurai incorrectly), but he didn't have a Side Deck, hence, "Newbie".

-Duel 1: I opened with a really passive hand and lost to a quick swarm.
-Duel 2: He didn't make Shi En, so I was able to just deal with the smaller Six Samurai that he put out.  I had to drag the game out a long time to capitalize on my Super-Nimble Mega Hamsters, but I was eventually able to keep control of the board.  Oh, and Mist Wurm helped tremendously in this duel.  There's a reason why it's there...
-Duel 3: He opened with United, Kageki, Kagemusha and drew two off of United.  He played another United, then Synchro Summoned.  He went for Catastor (after the match, I asked why, and he said he wanted to do something different...) and Set a back row.  I used Mystical Space Typhoon on his Set back row, then summoned Thunder King Rai-Oh and Set three back rows.  He attacked, and I used Book of Moon.  I was able to run over the Catastor and control with Rai-Oh for all of one turn before he topped Dark Hole so that he could swarm again.  I had a Hamster to fall back on, so I was able to control him with that long enough for me to draw into more powerful cards.  I was able to win with Scrap Dragon, as is usually the case against Six Samurai.

After the match, he told me that playing against me was the only challenge he had today.  Um, I saw him lose the first round to my friend who plays Vanguard and his Photon/Gagaga deck.  If you want more of a challenge, play a deck that takes a significant amount of skill (yes, every deck takes some degree of skill, but Six Samurai and Lightsworn are basically at the bottom of the skill-requisite ladder).

XOO

So, since spondo ended up getting 1st place, and my Round 1 opponent ended up going 3-1, that helped my tiebreakers, netting me 2nd place.  I got more sleeves (my third unopened pack, but it's better to have them stockpiled than not to have them), a Kaijudo pack, and some Vanguard packs.  Set 2: Onslaught of Dragon Souls; it has the Kagero stuff I need like Gattling Claw Dragon and Demonic Dragon Mage, Kimnara.  I pulled neither of those things, but I did get a Spirit Exceed (Granblue Grade 3, RRR).

Either way, my friend who plays Vanguard and I abandoned Fwazalaza (how sad) and went to the other card shop for their Vanguard tournament.  When we got there, I had to buy a Lizard Soldier, Conroe; two Mr. Invincibles; a Gattling Claw Dragon; and an Iron Tail Dragon to complete my deck.  Since their singles are overpriced, it cost me $12, but my friend who plays Vanguard is going to reimburse me for some of my expenses since he was supposed to get me those cards anyways.  But, that made my deck more-or-less complete; I still needed more Gattling Claw Dragons, at least one more Kimnara, and some better Grade 2's.  Regardless, I entered the tournament with my Invincible Overlord deck.  There were 21 players there, which is more than usual.

Round 1: vs Granblue

-Fight 1: He never had more than three rear-guards out at a time, so I was able to guard easily and put pressure on him, even without Dragonic Overlord.
-Fight 2: He guarded incorrectly towards the end of the game, and I was able to win pretty easily.

OO

Round 2: vs Spike Brothers

-Fight 1: He got a Critical Trigger when he was attacking with his lone Vanguard, but that just let me retire his Mecha Trainer with Berserk Dragon before he could do anything.  I rushed him and guarded appropriately to win.  I'm glad I randomly decided to watch a match between Goku Kagero and Spike Brothers on YouTube (I was researching Goku Kagero and realized I don't really want to make it).
-Fight 2: I drew my one Gattling Claw Dragon to retire his Mecha Trainer, and the rest was just a repeat of the first game.

OO

Round 3: vs Royal Paladin

-Fight 1: He never got to Grade 3, so I just rushed him and pulled a bunch of triggers to win.
-Fight 2: He rode up to King of Knights, Alfred, but only had three rear-guards.  I was able to guard easily, since he wasn't really putting any pressure on me, and I killed him with the combination of Dragonic Overlord and Mr. Invincible.

OO

Round 4: vs Angel Feather

-Fight 1: He was using the ride chain (do Angel Feathers have more than one ride chain?  I don't know, but I assume not) and got his chain off perfectly.  He kept healing, and I couldn't keep up with all the healing.
-Fight 2: I was able to win with the combination of Dragonic Overlord and Mr. Invincible.  That's the point of the deck, yo.
-Fight 3: We each only got three turns, which kind of sucked.  I drew too many Grade 3's and I couldn't guard, so he won at the end of the six turns.

XOX

Either way, that was the last round of Swiss, and I made the Top 4.  My friend went 3-1, but had bad tiebreakers, so he didn't make it.

Semi-Finals: vs Narukami

This guy saw one of my matches earlier and commented on how "original and unique" my deck was.  Invincible Overlord isn't by any means a new idea, as far as I know.  Once I figured out the concept, I heard that it had been done before, so while it may be unique for a deck to run multiple clans, this combination isn't anything new.

-Fight 1: He got very few triggers on his drive checks, while I got Draw Triggers on my damage checks and various triggers on my drive checks.  I probably pulled three times as many triggers as him, which is jacked up.  Either way, he used Vermillion to attack my front row once, and it killed two of my cards.  I made sure to guard early so that I could take the attack and not lose too much to it.  After that, I was able to beat him down with Dragonic Overlord and Mr. Invincible.
-Fight 2: We both had very few cards left and he basically had me.  We were both at five damage and it was his turn to attack.  I guarded against the first rear-guard's attack, then let the Vanguard's attack through.  I only had enough left to guard the other rear-guard (it may be odd that I guarded the first rear-guard, but my reasoning is that I know exactly how much I need to guard against it, and if I take it and get a Heal Trigger, I would still have to over-guard against the Vanguard; this way, I at least make sure that I live if he doesn't get a Critical Trigger and I get a Heal Trigger).  He got no triggers on his Twin Drive... Damage check: Heal Trigger.  I guarded against the third attack and won on the following turn.  This game is mostly luck, yo.  He was a good sport about it, though; he overheard me saying that I was going to get Set 2 booster packs for Gattling Claw Dragons and decided to give me a couple Gattling Claw Dragons after our match.

OO

Finals: vs Angel Feather

This was a rematch against my Round 4 opponent.

-Fight 1: I had to ride up to Dragonic Overlord, which was helpful defensively, but I couldn't put on the constant pressure that I would've been able to if my Vanguard were Mr. Invincible.  Either way, I was able to draw a second Dragonic Overlord and a Mr. Invincible.  That let me mount an offensive.  Unfortunately, I was pretty close to decking out after having to Soulcharge every turn.  At one point, he only had five cards left in his hand to guard when he was at 5 damage.  I attacked using Dragonic Overlord after using its Counterblast, and he guarded with two cards.  I had three cards left in deck, and one of them was a Stand Trigger.  I used my Vanguard Mr. Invincible to attack his Vanguard.  He guarded using two more cards.  Twin Drive, first check: Nehalem; second check: Nehalem... The last card in my deck was Lizard Runner, Nafd!  I lost by decking out.
-Fight 2: He declined to attack my Vanguard because he was afraid of giving me damage with which I could use Dragonic Overlord's Counterblast.  Alright, I call Hungry Dumpty, ha ha.  I was able to use Dragonic Overlord's Counterblast basically every other turn to keep killing all of his rear-guards before finishing off his Vanguard.

At this point, his ride showed up, so he had to leave.  Since the match was even, I offered to split the prizes for 1st (14 packs) and 2nd (6 packs), so we'd each get 10 packs.  He was quite grateful and accepted, so he got 10 packs of Set 6: Breaker of Limits, while I got 10 packs of Set 2.

I opened them with my friend, and I pulled the Granblue Megablaster, a Chain-Attack Sutherland (horrible Kagero RR), and a perfect guard for Spike Brothers.  I pulled some other stuff like Mecha Trainer and Dragon Egg, so those weren't bad Rares.  As for the cards I was looking for, I pulled two Iron Tail Dragons and two Gattling Claw Dragons.  So now I have three Iron Tails, which I wouldn't need more than two of, and five Gattling Claw Dragons, which I can only use four of.  I also got a Lady Bomb (Megacolony Grade 2) which replaced the Flame Edge Dragon in my deck.  Soulcharging isn't very useful for my deck.

But yeah, so now my Vanguard deck is actually viable, and I'm surprised that I made it so far in the tournament.  But yeah, I still need some better Grade 1's and 2's, though my Grade 1 line-up is about as good as it's going to be for now.  I wish Kagero had more Grade 1 8000 Power vanillas, but I guess that'd be way too good.  Iron Tail Dragons are a decent substitute, I suppose.

So yeah, I'll be going to the Kaijudo league tomorrow (really today, since it's after midnight) with Aki.  And I still need to look for the cards Aki needs for his Yubel deck.  But, I'm way too tired, so I'm going to do that in the morning if I have the time.  So yeah...

Random Stuff #50

Apparently, Thursday is now Random Stuff day.  It probably won't be that way for long, since my school starts back up next Thursday.  But yeah, I have nothing really to do until then...

So, my friend who plays Vanguard said that he told a couple of people at locals last weekend that they should start playing Vanguard, and they were all like, "Alright," and dropped like $80 on Trial Decks and booster packs.  Wow.  Well, at least there should be enough people for the Vanguard tournament Saturday morning.  So there's that.  My Vanguard deck is still incomplete, but it should be good enough to beat some newbs, given they don't get super lucky.

I've actually been wondering if it's worth running a deck focusing on Mr. Invincible and Dragonic Overlord.  Yeah, I can utterly destroy the front row, but it's the back row that's really important.  I mean, they can replace their Grade 2's and 3's in the front row and still force out 10k guards.  But, if I destroy the back row, they can't replenish them as easily, allowing me to guard with 5k against their rear-guards.  Obviously, the best-case scenario is if they can't replace their front row units and lose those attacking lines altogether, but people play more Grade 2/3's than Grade 1's (not to mention people play up to 4 perfect guards, which are almost never used as boosters).  It makes me feel like I should switch to a Goku Kagero variant with multiple copies of Demonic Dragon Mage, Kimnara so that I can kill all of their boosters.  Dragonic Overlord would have to take a back seat, and it's pretty gimmicky anyways.  For now, it doesn't matter, but I will discuss it with my friend who plays Vanguard when I get the chance.

I fixed my Kaijudo deck, adding a Fire section while trimming down the Light and Darkness sections.  The Water section basically stayed the same, since I like the 12 Water cards I've been using.  It's helpful to be able to stack the bottom of my deck with Reef Prince Glu-urrgle so that I can hit double criticals on my drive checks.  Oh wait, wrong game.  And I don't even like using Critical Triggers.  I might just go back to using all Stands, we'll see.

As for Yu-Gi-Oh, I haven't really been working on a new deck.  It feels like there's no point, since my Nordic Diva deck works well enough.  I'll probably try Atlanteans when they come out, since I have my Duel Terminal Genex Undines and Genex Controllers sitting here on my desk.  I could probably borrow one of Aki's Gungnirs, and that should do it until Abyss Rising comes out.

Aki has actually been working on a Yubel deck that uses Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys.  For some reason, our box of Ra Yellow Mega Packs that we got a while ago only had one first form Yubel, so that's kind of inconvenient.  So, if anyone at locals who reads this happens to have any Rare Yubels from Ra Yellow, then let me know.  We need two more for the deck.  I'll probably text all of you guys tomorrow anyways, since half of you only read my blog on the weekends.  You know who you are...

Maxx "C" ended up being one of the Super Rares in the Hanzo tin... what a surprise...  But yeah, now I might spend some money on the new tins.  We'll see what the other promos are.  I also have to save money for the new Kaijudo booster that's coming out early November, and that honestly takes priority over Yu-Gi-Oh.  And, now that I think about it, I might not even be able to make a trip to the flea market to pick up the tins if I want them.  Hmm, we'll see what happens, I guess.

Tournament Report 9/16/12

So, as I said in yesterday's post, I went to locals for the Kaijudo league and Yu-Gi-Oh tournament.

A lot of my friends who read my blog for last week's Kaijudo league were kind of confused at the lack of detailed descriptions of each duel.  That's because there's really no point.  Basically, the way that you get the most points possible for the league each week is to duel three different people, make sure one of those people is someone whom you have never dueled before, and win at least one duel of those three.  It's not really competitive at all, so I didn't feel the need to go through the duels in detail.

But yeah, this week, I was using my fixed up Light/Water/Darkness control deck.  I felt like it didn't have much power aside from Stormspark Blast, which lets a field of Blockers wipe out the opposing field, so I considered adding Fire again.  So yeah, I played against Fwazalaza first and lost.  I didn't draw anything with which to put pressure on him, so he just drew his Stormspark Blast first and killed my whole field.  I'll be changing my deck for next week to make sure that this doesn't happen anymore.

Then, I played against someone who I had never played against before.  He was playing Water/Darkness control that focused on hand control with Specter Claw, Gigastand, and Fumes.  I personally don't like hand control in Kaijudo, but it does work if you draw it early enough.  Unfortunately for him, he didn't, so I just amassed a field of Blockers and killed his whole field with Stormspark Blast before winning.

Lastly, I played against one of the regulars.  He was playing Water/Darkness control that focused on hand control, as well.  He doesn't play any boss Creatures, though, instead opting to use stuff like Finbarr, Council of Logos and Rusalka, Aqua Chaser.  Well, I just killed his Finbarrs with Bone Blades and such, then amassed a field of Blockers to kill his field with Stormspark Blast.  I really don't like having to rely on Stormspark Blast to win like that.  So, I'll change my deck for next week...

But yeah, my friend who plays Vanguard showed up, so I let him use the Light/Nature deck I made for him to play.  He ended up playing a few duels, and he gave me the Mighty Shouter promo he got.  We noticed that the Light/Nature deck doesn't have any really powerful plays, so I'm going to try and fit in a Fire section.  Raging Goliant is good, but I don't know if it'll make the cut once I add the Fire cards.  Either way, my friend learned a lot about Kaijudo today, so that's good.  We also established that Roaming Bloodmane is his Blond Ezel (which we call BEzel, pronounced bay-zel), since you basically can't guard it, and also because there was only one in his deck, like how Aichi only has one BEzel in the anime.

So, after a while, the Yu-Gi-Oh tournament started.  There were about 24 players there today.  I used my Nordic Diva deck, since I didn't have any time to change my deck since yesterday.

Round 1: vs Frog Monarchs

-Duel 1: This duel took almost the whole 40 minutes.  He ended up winning with a series of Creature Swaps towards the end of the duel, and I didn't draw my Tuners, so I couldn't really make any aggressive plays.
-Duel 2: We went into time on this duel, and I won by pushing through a little damage with Super-Nimble Mega Hamster, which I Normal Summoned.
-Duel 3: This duel was sudden death, and he just happened to open with Creature Swap...

XOX

Round 2: vs Dark Worlds

This was my Round 5 opponent from this tournament.  I haven't played against Dark Worlds with this version of my Nordic Diva deck, so I was interested in seeing what would happen.

-Duel 1: She went first with Dragged Down, but my hand was five good cards.  She made a few small plays with Gates and Snoww, but I had Mystical Space Typhoon and Thunder King Rai-Oh to stop her plays.  I killed almost all of her Monsters, then just started poking for damage with stuff like Guldfaxe.  She didn't draw any Monsters (the only ones left in her deck were Trance Archfiend and Fabled Raven), so I won.
-Duel 2: I had sided in a bunch of cards, and she didn't have Dragged Down on the first turn, so I played Dimensional Fissure.  She didn't have an out, so I won.

OO

Round 3: vs Dino Rabbit

This was my Round 4 opponent from yesterday's tournament.  I noted that this match was for much lower stakes than yesterday's match.

-Duel 1: I had counters to all of his plays, and he didn't draw Rescue Rabbit or Tour Guide, so I was able to win pretty easily.  I just plain opened a lot better than him.
-Duel 2: He summoned Evolzar Dolkka under the protection of Forbidden Lance.  My hand was all Monsters, so I lost.
-Duel 3: All he did was summon Thunder King Rai-Oh, and my hand had both Maxx "C" and Effect Veiler (which I only had one of each of in the deck), along with Tanngnjostr (black goat) and other stuff like Guldfaxe.  I Set a random Monster in an attack to safely put Tanngnjostr on the field, but then he summoned Sabersaurus.  I sadly couldn't deal with a Sabersaurus, so I lost.

OXX

Oh well.  I just decided to drop at that point.  From there, my friend who plays Vanguard and I just played Yu-Gi-Oh (I used my Gem-Knights against his Photon/Gagaga deck), Kaijudo, and Vanguard.  He was pretty eager to practice playing Kaijudo, since he realized that he didn't know how to play properly.  But yeah, as I stated before, he improved a lot over the course of the day.  So, with an improved deck, hopefully he'll do a lot better next weekend.  We'll just have to wait and see.

As for me, I'm planning on adding a Fire section back to my deck.  I kind of want to cut the Darkness section from my deck, but Darkness removal cards are just too good.  I think that I'll focus on Fire, Water and Light, but also tech Darkness removal cards like Terror Pit, Bone Blades, and maybe Razorkinder or Death Smoke.  I'm not entirely sure yet; it's hard to balance a 4-color Kaijudo deck.

And for Yu-Gi-Oh, I think that I'll continue using my Nordic Diva deck because I can't really figure out anything else to use.  I'd like to use Geargia, but they're too expensive.  If I can figure out a new deck by next weekend, then perhaps I'll try it out.  Otherwise, I'll just get lazy and use my Nordic Diva deck again.

Tournament Report 9/15/12

So, I got to locals at 11:00 in the morning for the Vanguard tournament.  Unfortunately, the only other people who signed up were two little kids who barely know how to play.  My friend who plays Vanguard didn't even show up for some reason.  So, everyone who was there just got the Vanguard promo pack thing that has Knowledge Drunkard and two other (bad) cards.  I got the Kagero one, Dragonic Valblade, which isn't completely horrible.  It's better than Yaksha...

But yeah, the Yu-Gi-Oh tournament started after a while... There were 21 players there today (really yesterday, since it's after midnight...). I used my Nordic Diva deck, since I failed to come up with a new deck over the past week, and also because I was lazy.

Round 1: vs Lightsworn

This was my Round 1 opponent from this tournament.

-Duel 1: He opened with Card Trooper milling Wulf, which is pretty messed up.  I was able to make a reversal with a few Synchro plays, and it went back and forth for a while.  When I was at 1300 LP to his 1900 LP, he summoned Lumina to revived Aurkus and attack my Set Ryko (he knew it was a Ryko since I got it with Super-Nimble Mega Hamster).  I used Ryko's effect to destroy my bluff Heavy Storm, since I couldn't target any Lightsworn Monsters.  He then attacked directly with Aurkus and I dropped Gorz.  He decided to overlay for Acid Golem for some reason, so I just waited until he burned himself out.
-Duel 2: I rushed him with Thor and Scrap Archfiend, making it so that he could only win if he dropped two Judgment Dragons on the same turn (I had like 5600 LP).  He had one Judgment Dragon, but milled the other two, and therefore couldn't win against Thor.  He decked out before I was able to kill him.

OO

Round 2: vs Machina Gadgets

This was my Round 3 opponent from this tournament.

-Duel 1: I opened up with a pretty good hand, but so did he.  The difference was that I had no Traps, while he drew a bunch of Traps.  So, while I was able to make a few aggressive pushes, he was able to counter them all with his Traps and Machina Fortress.  I ran out of cards before I could kill him, so his Gadgets were able to kill me.
-Duel 2: He didn't draw any of his Machinas, so I was able to win pretty easily.  It's not hard to kill a bunch of Gadgets with Guldfaxe or even Lost Blue Breaker.
-Duel 3: I summoned Catastor after clearing his back row to destroy his Machina Fortress.  He used Fiendish Chain after reviving his Fortress again, but then I Tribute Set Cyber Dragon and fused it with his Fortress for Chimeratech Fortress Dragon.  He used Solemn Warning, paying down below 2000 LP.  So, I was able to push a bunch of damage through a Gadget using Thor to win.

XOO

Round 3: vs Wind-Ups

This was my Round 3 opponent from this tournament.  He knew that I was either playing Nordics or Gem-Knights, while I knew that he was playing Wind-Ups.

-Duel 1: I opened with a decent hand, except that it was a horrible hand to start with against Wind-Ups.  It was something like two Guldfaxe, a Veiler, and some back rows.  I Set two back rows and ended.  He played Mystical Space Typhoon on my MST, then made his Magician/Shark play.  I used Veiler on the Magician, leaving him to make Utopia and attack directly.  I topped Super-Nimble Mega Hamster and Set it and another back row.  He Normal Summoned Wind-Up Rabbit and attacked with Utopia.  I used Book of Moon, then he attacked with Wind-Up Rabbit.  He took damage, and I got Tanngnjostr (black goat) in face-down Defense Position.  He Set one back row to end.  I Flip Summoned Tanngnjostr (black goat), and it got negated with Effect Veiler.  So, I Normal Summoned Guldfaxe and tuned it to my Hamster to Synchro Summoned Scrap Dragon.  Using Scrap Dragon's effect, I destroyed my Tanngnjostr (black goat), and his Set Dimensional Prison.  I attacked his Utopia and ended.  He summoned Tour Bus and overlaid with it and Rabbit for Wind-Up Carrier Zenmaity.  He detached the Rabbit to Special Summon Rat from his deck, then used Rat's effect to Special Summon Shark.  He used Shark's effect to level down, then overlaid for Leviathan Dragon.  I wanted him to make Acid Golem, but he had Book of Moon to turn my Scrap Dragon face-down so that he could run it over with Leviathan Dragon after boosting its ATK.  But, when Scrap Dragon was destroyed in battle, I got to Special Summon Tanngnjostr (black goat) from my hand.  I used it to call out Tanngrisnir (white goat) and Normal Summoned my second Guldfaxe to Synchro Summon Thor.  That Thor ended up winning me the game, since Wind-Ups don't have outs to Thor.
-Duel 2: He went first with a bunch of back rows.  I copied him and Set a bunch of back rows.  We ended up just making a series of small exchanges.  While he didn't draw any combos to generate advantage with, most of my Monsters generate advantage by themselves, so I was able to take control pretty easily.  Not to mention that he messed himself up by playing Dimensional Fissure and preventing himself from using the Effect Veiler he was holding.

OO

Round 4: vs Dino Rabbit

This was my Round 1 opponent from this tournament.

-Duel 1: He opened with Thunder King Rai-Oh, which gave me some trouble since he used Solemn Warning on my Super-Nimble Mega Hamster.  We ended up making a bunch of trade-offs where he steadily lost LP while I steadily lost card advantage.  We got to a point where I was top-decking and he summoned Thunder King Rai-Oh to attack.  I had plenty of LP, but he was at 1200 LP.  I drew into Mind Control, then another Hamster so that I could overlay for Utopia for game.  Mind Control should really be banned.
-Duel 2: He opened up with a pretty passive hand (he had Sangan and Dark Mimic LV3), so I set up my field for a big Synchro play, but then he dropped Maxx "C".  He had a Kabazauls on the field with a couple cards in hand, so I just decided to go for it.  "I'm going to make you draw into all of your Dinosaurs," I declared.  I let him draw like four times, but I was able to make T.G. Hyper Librarian and another Synchro Monster so that I could draw as well.  With that, I wiped his field, and he drew to seven cards in hand, while I had seven cards total.  He summoned Tour Guide and I negated it with Effect Veiler.  He scooped at that, showing me that he had drawn three vanilla Dinosaurs off of his Maxx "C".

OO

Round 5: vs Six Samurai

I was playing against Shien, and since we were the last two undefeated players, this was the finals.  We decided not to split, because there was really no point.

-Duel 1: He was able to get out Shi En quickly, but he didn't have any back rows to support it.  I was able to drop Gorz and take control of the duel pretty easily.
-Duel 2: He didn't seem to draw any Monsters besides Kizan, but he had a mess load of back rows, including Rivalry of Warlords, to lock me down.  I Tribute Set Gorz, since I couldn't Synchro, but he bounced it back to my hand with Compulsory Evacuation Device.  I lost this duel by getting beat down by Kizan.
-Duel 3: He didn't draw that many Traps, instead drawing a bunch of swarming Spells like Asceticism, so my Thought Ruler Archfiend was able to take control of the duel after my Ryko killed his Colossal Fighter.  After I used MST blindly on his Mirror Force, I knew that Thought Ruler would be safe, and the rest of his back rows were things like Dimensional Prison and Compulsory Evacuation Device, so he couldn't protect himself from Thought Ruler.

OXO

So yeah, I ended up going undefeated and getting 1st place.  I'm glad that I only played against regulars today.  Honestly, there are better players at my locals, but it was nice to play against the relatively good players.  It'll probably be more difficult tomorrow.

Anyways, I got some sleeves and some Kaijudo Core Set packs with my winnings and pulled a second Meteor Dragon.  I wanted to get Crimson Wyvern or Tatsurion the Unchained, but oh well.  Fwazalaza wanted the Meteor Dragon and a set of Patrol Leader, Paladio, so he traded me a Lord Skycrusher and a Shaw K'Naw for them.  So, it worked out.

But yeah, tomorrow (really today, since it's after midnight...) will be the Kaijudo league and another Yu-Gi-Oh tournament.  I don't think that Aki is coming, but he might.  And my friend who plays Vanguard might show up for the league to use the deck I built for him, but yeah, we'll see...

Random Stuff #49

So, I've been trying to come up with an innovative new deck for locals.  Since I haven't gotten many new cards in a while, it's been difficult. I kind of want to play a deck using Geargiarmor since it's good, but it's hard to do that without any cards from Return of the Duelist.  So, I've kind of given up on making a new Yu-Gi-Oh deck at the moment.  I did fix up my Gem-Knight deck, though it's not made for competitive play.

But, I've been working on some Kaijudo decks.  I fixed up my Light/Water/Darkness control deck; I'm going to try out a bunch of different cards like Flare Inhibitor, Thought Probe, and Trox.  Most of the people at my locals play either control decks or basic rush decks, so I've built my deck to combat them.  However, seeing EarthP0w3r's most recent video makes me worry about Hyperspeed Dragon and Bolgash Dragon.  It makes me want to play Death Smoke, but Razorkinder is just so much better.  And that reminds me that I'm disappointed about not pulling any Razorkinder Puppets or Skull Shatter.

Either way, I also built a couple of decks for a couple of my friends (vadangchoinga and the one who plays Vanguard).  vadangchoinga wanted a deck similar to the one I had pre-Core Set, so I made him a Water/Darkness/Fire control deck.  And, since he's a rarity junkie, I made sure that most of the cards in the deck weren't First Edition.  I think that only the Tornado Flames are First Edition, but that's because I don't have three Tornado Flames from the Core Set.

For my friend who plays Vanguard, I made a Light/Nature deck.  His favorite Civilization is Nature, and he wanted to use Light Blockers, hence, Light/Nature.  I wanted to have the deck use The Great Arena as a draw source, but it's kind of a lackluster card.  So, I just made it a fairly basic deck with elements of both aggro and control, since my friend is kind of new to Kaijudo.

And, I fixed up my Vanguard deck in case my friend is unable to get me the rest of the cards I need by the Vanguard tournament this Saturday.  Yeah, my locals is starting to have Vanguard tournaments on Saturday mornings, so I'll be going to that.  So, if my friend isn't there to loan me his spare deck, I'll have to use my unfinished deck.  But, seeing as how many of the people who play Vanguard there are little kids with Royal Paladin or Gold Paladin Trial Decks without sleeves, it shouldn't be too difficult.  I mean, I saw one of them call a Grade 3 unit to the back row for no reason...

I've noticed that the skill level for most of the people I've seen play Vanguard is very low.  It's not surprising, but at the same time, it is surprising.  I mean, all you have to do is watch the anime and listen to when Kai or Miwa comment on certain plays to learn how to play correctly.  The anime seriously teaches you everything you need to know, except for what TCG players call "magic numbers," which should be self-explanatory.  I literally learned everything about Vanguard from watching the anime (and knowing how to add multiples of 1000); it's not a difficult game.  Whatever, I guess it makes it slightly easier to win against people who barely know how to play.

That's about it for this post.  I would talk about The Seal of Orichalcos or the Hanzo/Heliopolis tins, but everyone has already talked about those things already.  I guess it's nice that Shock Master is being reprinted, but I already have one, so I don't really mind.  I mean, there's not much point in worrying about expensive cards getting reprinted; everyone who you should be worried about having those expensive cards already has those expensive cards.  It's not like the little kids with Starter Decks will be able to use Shock Master or Maxx "C" effectively, and the casual players will still be casual players; competitive players already have all of these cards.

Tournament Report 9/9/12

Today was the first day for the Kaijudo league.  Unfortunately, because of that, I had to get there two hours earlier than usual, meaning that I couldn't sleep in.  But yeah, I picked up Aki and we went to locals.

We signed up for the Kaijudo league and got those little point-tracking cards.  After that, we sat down and fixed up Aki's Kaijudo deck using some of the cards I got from the box of the Core Set I got yesterday.  We then played a duel, which I won.  After that, we each got a Fire/Nature/Light starter deck so that I could get Grand Gures and Stormspark Blasts.  I took the small Fire section out of my deck to fit in the new Light cards and such.  So, now I'm only running Light/Water/Darkness, like every other control player...

After that, I played a few more games against a few regulars, including Fwazalaza.  He's now running Light/Water/Darkness like me, but he didn't have any Stormspark Blasts.  So, we both put up walls of Blockers until he decked out.  Yes, that's why I run a 45-card deck.

Aside from that, all of us completed as many goals as we could for the league, and Aki and I were able to get up to 20,000 points, letting us each get a Flare Inhibitor (and the new Mighty Shouter, but that's unimportant).  I think I'll run a Flare Inhibitor, but I won't know until I redo my deck later this week.

But yeah, the Kaijudo league was pretty cool.  There were like ten people there, so that was cool.  Hopefully it becomes more popular and tournaments start soon.  Until then, it's just a fun casual game.

So then, the Yu-Gi-Oh tournament started.  There were about 30 players, and I was running my Nordic Diva deck, as usual.

Round 1: vs X-Sabers

This was my Round 3 opponent from this tournament.  Again, he wasn't too happy to play against me, since I always run weird decks.

-Duel 1: We both started by just Setting a bunch of Monsters.  He made a push with two Hyunleis (I negated them both) and I pushed back with T.G. Hyper Librarian and Gaia Knight.  He topped Dark Hole with one card in hand, while I had my field and one card in hand.  I couldn't recover from that, and lost the top-decking war.
-Duel 2: We both started by just Setting a bunch of Monsters.  Honestly, X-Sabers are more passive and less explosive than Nordics, which is saying something.  But yeah, enough time passed so that I could draw outs to everything he had and start applying constant pressure.  It's these types of games that reflect the skills of the players, since when both players draw half of their decks, the effect of luck on the game is reduced.  So, I slowly killed off all of his Monsters after baiting out all of his back rows.  I put Dimensional Fissure up after using my Maxx "C", then controlled the board with my Monsters.  He was able to make a reversal with a Gottoms' Emergency Call, but I had been holding Dark Hole for the whole game.  I destroyed his field and swarmed to kill him.
-Duel 3: This duel went into time on my turn.  So, on that turn, I decided to just swarm and do as much damage as possible, since the game had just started.  I dropped Gaia Knight and Scrap Dragon with a bunch of Flip Summoned Monsters and their effects, then Normal Summoned Thunder King Rai-Oh to lock him down.  He had Gorz to block two attacks, but he still took 1900 damage.  And since he couldn't deal any damage on the following two turns, I won.

XOO

Round 2: vs HERO Beat

This was my Round 4 opponent from this tournament.  He was using the HERO beat deck of my Round 1 opponent from yesterday's locals.

-Duel 1: He wasted a lot of cards on Xyz Summons, and I was able to make his Heavy Storm into a minus when I Chained Gleipnir and Compulsory Evacuation Device (on his Utopia).  With that, he had one card and I had four, and he didn't draw Miracle Fusion, so I won.
-Duel 2: I made a Scrap Dragon with Guldfaxe and Reborn Tengu, and he used Super Polymerization with his Alius and the second Tengu for Great Tornado.  Quite an interesting move; I had used up my Scrap Dragon's effect already, but I had a Smashing Ground for the G-Tornado anyways.  He drew Miracle Fusion later, but I just made Mist Wurm to bounce his The Shining and leave him without Monsters.

OO

Round 3: vs Valhalla Fairies

This was a regular whom I've never played against before.  But, I knew what he was running and vice-versa.

-Duel 1: He opened up with Valhalla and Kristya, while I opened up with Ryko and Mystical Space Typhoon.  He didn't draw another Valhalla after I destroyed the first one, so he lost.
-Duel 2: He opened up with Valhalla and Darklord Asmodeus.  I didn't have any back rows, so I just took an attack and dropped Gorz.  He destroyed it with Dark Hole to get his Asmo and Deus Tokens and killed me with those.
-Duel 3: The game started much more slowly than the first two.  He didn't start with Valhalla, so I was able to set up my field more easily.  Once he did draw a Hecatrice to search Valhalla, I had Fiendish Chain for the Hyperion he tried to drop.  Unfortunately, he had Gozen Match to lock me down somewhat.  But, since I knew how his deck worked (Aki made a Valhalla-based Darklord deck a while ago), I left his Hyperion on the field until I could OTK him.  All that involved was me drawing a Dust Tornado, which happened like five turns later.  He couldn't do anything since all he had were Level 8 Fairies, so I just set up to OTK and did so.

OXO

At this point, there were four undefeated players left, including myself.

Round 4: vs "Plant" Synchro

This was my Round 1 opponent from this tournament.  He asked if I wanted to split, and I thought about it for a bit.  I kind of wanted to get Kaijudo, which he doesn't play, but I decided that half a box of Return of the Duelist is pretty nice, too.  So, we played without siding to see who would go on to the finals next round.

-Duel 1: I opened up with an amazing hand while he opened up with two Reborn Tengu.  So, I was able to out-advantage him like crazy and win pretty easily.
-Duel 2: I've drawn Lost Blue Breaker quite a lot.  It's not fun.  But yeah, that was my only Monster, so I wasn't able to do much as he made his Synchro plays to kill me.
-Duel 3: Lost Blue Breaker, I like you, but I'd also like you to stay in the deck until I call for you.  Seriously.  I drew other Monsters this time, though, so Lost Blue Breaker ran over his Tour Guide.  He drew into his second Tour Guide to grab Night Assailant and make Acid Golem after a while.  He attacked directly with it, and I dropped Gorz, with the intention of burning him out with his own Acid Golem.  So, I just kept Setting stuff until his Acid Golem ran out of Xyz Materials and he ran out of LP.  When he was at 1800 LP, he Flip Summoned his Snowman Eater to try and destroy his Acid Golem, but I dropped the Effect Veiler I had been holding for a while.  Honestly, I considered using Veiler on his second Tour Guide (I didn't have it for the first one), but a Rank 3 Xyz Monster really isn't that threatening, especially since I had already killed his Wind-Up Zenmaines.

OXO

Round 5: vs Dino Rabbit

This was my Round 3 opponent from this tournament.  I had offered him a split, but he declined.  He said that he would've split with me if I hadn't already split with my Round 4 opponent, since he didn't want to just get a third of a booster box.

-Duel 1: He went first with Rescue Rabbit into Evolzar Laggia and a bunch of back rows.  I was able to resolve a Ryko to destroy the Laggia, but he used Monster Reborn on it, then flipped Skill Drain when I tried to make a comeback.  I was too far behind in card advantage for me to be able to recover from that.
-Duel 2: I drew three Guldfaxe and Lost Blue Breaker.  Lost Blue Breaker, why do you do these things to me?  Guldfaxe is okay if my opponent plays Synchro Monsters, but Dino Rabbit doesn't, so yeah, I lost.

XX

So, I ended up going 4-1 and getting a Hobby League Giant Rat.  Aki went 1-2 drop with his Destiny Debris deck.  I paid for both of our entry fees, so I got both Turbo Packs.  They were out of Turbo Pack 8, so we just got a couple Turbo Pack 1's that didn't have holos in them.  Oh well.  Today was pretty fun, though, minus the last round.

But yeah, after that, Aki and I got a second box of the Kaijudo Core Set, which we made a box opening video for.  I'm going to review the video and put it up tomorrow if I do decide to put it up.  It didn't seem that great, since we were both tired, and we weren't really concentrating on opening the packs in front of the camera, but I won't be sure until I edit it.  But yeah, if I decide to upload it, it will be tomorrow.

Besides that, I'm going to start working on Kaijudo decks for both vadangchoinga and my friend who plays Vanguard so that they can play in the league, if they can make it.  I'm not sure if I'll have enough cards to make two more coherent decks, but I'll see what I can do.  With all of the reprints the Core Set provided us with, I'm sure that I'll be able to figure something out.

"Regionals" Report 9/8/12

Those are quotation marks in the title, in case you're questioning your eye-sight.

{Begin relatively irrelevant preparation stuff}

So, yesterday (really two days ago, since it's after midnight), I got everything prepared for the Regional, including my Nordic Diva deck list and food so that I wouldn't have to buy overpriced slices of pizza and such.

That night, vadangchoinga texted me asking if he could borrow a Hieratic Sun Dragon of Heliopolis from me; I was going to lend mine to my friend who plays Vanguard, but I remembered that AquaBass has one.  So, I asked AquaBass if vadangchoinga could borrow his Heliopolis and he said yes.  He then asked me if he could borrow an Elemental HERO Escuridao from me.  I told him that I was supposed to sell one to vadangchoinga, so I could sell it to him and they could borrow each other's cards.  He said that's fine, but then said that he hadn't been to Regionals before, so he wasn't sure what to do to get to the convention center.  I told him that Fwazalaza, my friend who plays Vanguard, and I would be meeting at locals and driving from there, since the Regional would be like five minutes away from locals.  I invited him and he accepted.

So, while AquaBass got to locals at 8:30 in the morning, the rest of us arrived exactly at 9:00.  Like, Fwazalaza had just parked when I was pulling in to the parking lot, and my friend who plays Vanguard (who had been walking from his house to locals) was like 20 meters away.  Quite convenient.  So everyone piled into my car and we headed to the Regional.  We split the cost of parking evenly (the point of driving together) and went to get in line.

Once we got to the end of the line, I called vadangchoinga, who had arrived early, to tell him that AquaBass was here to lend him the Heliopolis.  I also told vadangchoinga to bring us those registration sheets so we wouldn't have to go get them.  He did, but he didn't have the Lightray Sorcerer I wanted from him as part of the deal for my Escuridao.  So I just sold AquaBass the Escuridao and he lent vadangchoinga the Heliopolis.  After that, we filled out our registration sheets and waited in line...

{End relatively irrelevant preparation stuff...}

So, after waiting in line for three hours, the Konami staff announced that there would be a cut-off and registration was closed.  Apparently, there were almost 1000 players there, and they only had room for like 600.  That was somewhat disappointing, but to be fair, the biggest Regionals in the area hadn't gone over 600 players before.  So, our little group didn't make it in, but vadangchoinga and Shien did.

Because of that, we all went back to locals for the tournament there.  But, since our locals is five minutes away from the convention center, a mess load of other people who didn't make it into the Regional went there as well.  There were like 70 players for the usual Yu-Gi-Oh tournament.  It was so cramped that the store owner had to make the tournament single-elimination so that there'd be room for the Magic event later that night (and also so we all wouldn't suffocate...).  So, locals report:

Round 1: vs HERO Beat

I knew that he was running HEROes and that he wasn't very good.

-Duel 1: He drew two Miracle Fusions, but no HEROes, so I just beat him down with Reborn Tengu for most of the duel.

-Duel 2: He played all three Miracle Fusions on me and I lost because he made three The Shinings backed by Skill Drain...

-Duel 3: He drew two Gemini Sparks to go with his Stratos and Alius, and once I was finally able to get rid of all of his cards, he draws Miracle Fusion against my Thunder King Rai-Oh.  I make Catastor to kill The Shining, but then he played another Miracle Fusion for Escuridao, using the Maestroke I negated with Solemn Judgment.  This is why I wanted Miracle Fusion limited in some way; they reward bad players as much as they reward good players, much like Gorz.

OXX

So, I lost to a total of seven Miracle Fusions and dropped from the tournament.  I got nothing from my Turbo Pack 8.  My friend who plays Vanguard entered the tournament with me paying his entry fee, and he also lost the first round to HEROes, so he gave me his Turbo Pack 8, which had just as much nothing as my Turbo Pack.

After that, we played Vanguard a little bit.  He said that his friend had the rest of the cards that I needed for my Vanguard deck, so I'd have to wait to get them from him.  After getting gradestuck so many times with his Gold Paladins, he decided to use his Nova Grapplers, letting me use his Gold Paladins.  I forced him to change the Gold Paladin deck, since his grade ratios were weird (8/12/13...), which is part of why he gets gradestuck so easily.  I took out a Grade 3 (Sagramore) for a Grade 1 to even out the ratio and also took out another Grade 3 Sagramore (since I hate them) for a third Garmore.  So then, we played for fun for a while.

Once it was about 4:30, we left for the other card shop for their Vanguard tournament.  It's supposed to start at 6:00, but their Yu-Gi-Oh tournament was running late, so it started late.  Also, my friend wanted to sell some of his extra cards and get more Vanguard brand sleeves.

After a while, the tournament started.  The inside of the store was taken over by their Yu-Gi-Oh and Magic events, so the Vanguard tournament would take place outside.  It was dark, and the tables and the area in general were disgusting.  But yeah, I was using my friend's Gold Paladins, and since Vanguard is a very simple game, I had already mastered them after playing them only for that day.  Seriously, Vanguard is easy.

In the first round, I played against a fairly incompetent Granblue player.  I won the first game fairly easily, lost to a Critical Trigger in the second game, then won with a Critical Trigger in the last game.  I was at 5 damage and he was at 4, and he got a Heal Trigger as the first damage, meaning that he couldn't heal.  I felt quite evil because of that; "You can't heal," I said, before he even tried to.

I had to play against my friend in the second round.  He got gradestuck in the first game on Grade 2.  So, I just slowly gained advantage over him with my Twin Drive and was able to win fairly easily.  In the second game, I got gradestuck on Grade 2 for one turn, luckily getting the one copy of Spectral Duke Dragon he runs off of a drive check.  Using Tripp to unflip my damage, I was able to use that Spectral Duke Dragon's Limit Break three times that game.  That's like Super Special Over the Limit or something.  By the time I used it for the third time, though, I had dumped my last two units onto the field, and had to also feed the Tron boosting Spectral Duke to its effect.  Not that it mattered, since he had nothing left to guard with.

However, I decided to give him the win because he's supposed to have a better shot at the Top 4 than me.  My third round opponent dropped, so I watched my friend play against a fairly incompetent Gold Paladin player.  My friend misplayed quite a bit since he was tired (it's hard to believe that there's such a thing as misplaying in Vanguard, but it's very simple stuff that you can figure out with basic math; he was just too tired to add multiples of 1000).  But, he still won because it's Vanguard and you don't need to play well to win.

Okay, so there were a total of 15 there for the Vanguard tournament, but for some reason, the tournament organizer decided to cut to Top 4 after the third round, even though there were still multiple undefeated players left.  That was annoying, since I was 5th after the third round, so I didn't make it.  Since my friend was technically undefeated, he made it, of course.

I watched him play against another incompetent Gold Paladin player and win 2-0.  Come on people, Vanguard's not hard.  The thing is that these people don't even have the basics down.  I mean, it makes sense that these people remain as incompetent as they are, though.  In a game like Vanguard where you can be carried through games on luck (much like playing Six Samurai or Lightsworn), you don't have to strive to be a better player; you can just rely on good luck for wins and blame bad luck for losses.  It's sad, really.

I didn't get to watch the finals between my friend and the same Kagero player he lost to last weekend when playing for 3rd, but apparently my friend got gradestuck again.  Perhaps the Kagero player was stacking his deck or something, since he was shuffling weird.  I don't really know.

Either way, my friend got five packs of Set 3 (the Demonic Lord whatever one).  He pulled an SP Nightmare Doll, Alice (that Pale Moon one).  I was able to get a box of Kaijudo Core Set for $70, so that was cool.  I actually did make a box opening video, but it was really rushed and uneventful.  The highlights of the box were me pulling two Logic Cubes, one Crystal Memory, one Thought Probe, one Moorna, one Bolgash Dragon, one Bolshack Dragon, and a Stormspark Blast and Ra-vu from the same pack.  Everything else was pretty bad, so I'm disappointed with the box.  Kaijudo boxes should be good, but I only pulled seven holos and only three of them were good.  Not only that, but there's too many effectless Creatures in the Core Set, and they're all bad.

Also, I got three of the Water/Darkness starter decks from the usual locals for $12 each.  I just got them for the Dark Scaradorables, and the packs in the starter decks were all bad.  I just can't believe that Manabind is a Rare, what a waste.  Whatever, it doesn't really matter.  Hopefully the box Aki and I get tomorrow (really today, since it's after midnight) will be better.  We'll see, I guess...

Random Stuff #48

Another Thursday without a new episode of Burn Notice... Oh well, might as well spend this time productively.

So, I've got a Regional to go to on Saturday, as I've said in probably every post for the past few weeks.  I was kind of excited for it before, but now I feel like I don't really care.  I feel as though part of it is due to me reading Michael Bonacini's post on why Regional tops don't mean much, but that's not really news to me.

The main reason would be the fact that before we knew what the ban list was, there was a lot of hope that Konami would fix the game.  They usually do a fairly decent job on their September ban lists, so we could hope for a real ban list that would deal with the problems of the format.  However, the ban list really didn't do anything.  The only thing it really did was kill Inzektors, which I'm happy about, but it wasn't enough.  Wind-Ups, Dino Rabbit, Dark Worlds, and other sacky decks still exist.  It's been pretty obvious that Konami doesn't care about the health of the game; they just want to reward players who open with Wind-Up Magician and Shark or Rescue Rabbit.

Don't be mistaken, I don't really care that Wind-Ups and Dino Rabbit specifically are still around.  I just care about the fact that Konami doesn't care.  I was hoping for a fun new format where innovation would be rewarded, but based on the results of YCS Toronto (minus Psoil, which I'll get to in a moment), nothing has changed.  The same decks are still at the top, minus Inzektors, of course.

As for Jeff Jones' Top 2 with Psychics, that's cool, I guess.  It's impressive, but the deck is really just being hyped.  It's like when Chaos Dragons got two Top 2's on the same weekend, and everyone jumped on the deck.  Then, everyone figured out how to deal with them, and the deck lost all of its power.  With Psychics, if you don't have Serene Psychic Witch, you can't do much; that's why Jeff Jones ran two Giant Rats in his final build for the YCS, or so I assume.  Having a deck so dependent on one card like that isn't good.  Besides, now that people know how Psychics work, there's nothing stopping them from playing Dimensional Fissure to wreck them.

But yeah, I just feel as though this format isn't as exciting as I had hoped.  I'm still playing Nordic Diva; I wanted to have to go out and find a new creative deck to deal with the meta, but since the meta didn't change, there was no reason to.  And so, my deck is already ready for Regionals.  I haven't even touched the deck since I finished it, since I don't really care how well I do at the Regional.  Yes, it's cool to Top 8 and get a nice mat (actually, I think it's the Prophecy Monster mat, so I guess it's not that nice), but all it takes is getting lucky nine rounds in a row.  It's not like I'm not going to try, it's just that I don't care.

Either way, I'll be going with Fwazalaza and my friend who plays Vanguard.  They'll be using Six Samurai (like always) and a Gagaga deck, respectively.  Yes, Gagaga.  Apparently, he wanted to make a Gagaga deck for a while, but since it didn't work on its own, he mixed Photons in with the Gagaga Monsters.  But now that we have the proper cards to support the Gagaga archetype (if it can even be considered an archetype), he has made a more-or-less pure Gagaga deck.  That's cool, I guess.

So yeah, if we scrub out, then we'll probably go to the other card shop and play in the free Vanguard tournament again.  My friend who plays Vanguard will have the rest of the cards I need for my Vanguard deck on Saturday, so I'll be able to complete my deck and never spend time looking for Vanguard cards ever again.  Of course, if my friend wants to give me more cards for free, I'm not going to turn them down.  And I don't know if Fwazalaza would come with us.  I told my friend who plays Vanguard to bring an extra deck for him in case he does come; it's probably the usual Nova Grappler deck or perhaps a Royal Paladin deck.

But yeah, with Yu-Gi-Oh not being a very skilled game at the moment, and Vanguard never having been a skilled game, I turn to Kaijudo for a true challenge.  The Rise of the Duel Masters Core Set will be released tomorrow, but as I have said many times, I'm not planning on going out tomorrow to go get it.  It's honestly a waste of a drive, since the card shop is a fair distance from my house, and I'm going to be there on Sunday anyways.  I don't know for sure though, I may break down and go because I have nothing better to do tomorrow.  I was planning on finishing preparing for Regionals tomorrow, but there's nothing left to do but print out my deck list, so I do have time.  We'll see, I guess.

Either way, Aki and I are planning on getting a total of two boxes between us.  I think that if I do decide to go tomorrow, I'm going to get one box, then wait to get the second box until after the tournament on Sunday.  I mean, if I can win the box tournament, I might as well get a box of Kaijudo.  Though, I don't have any cards from Return of the Duelist, so I may want that.  Eh, I'll decide tomorrow if I even go.

Regardless, the Core Set looks really cool.  I'm surprised that Crystal Memory stayed the same from Duel Masters while Logic Cube and that Nature search card were pretty severely weakened.  I mean, they were really good in Duel Masters.  Using Logic Cube to search for Hyperspatial Dravita Hole to get back Logic Cube is pretty crazy...  But yeah, I'm happy that we'll finally have Stormspark Blast, and that it's in one of the starter decks along with Grand Gure.  I expect that we'll be getting three of each starter deck mainly for the cover cards, but the cards in the starter decks (that we know of) aren't bad either.  I know that Aki wanted to use Vorg, which is in the same starter deck as Stormspark Blast.  Not to mention, we need six copies of Stormspark Blast...  It's Stormspark Blast, yo.

It does seem like a lot of money though.  A box of the Core Set would probably be around $85, while each starter deck would be $12 or so.  That means that Aki and I would each be spending $121, which is a lot on a children's card game.  However, it would be the last time we spend this much on Kaijudo all at once.  I mean, each new booster set would most likely only be a 60-card set, meaning that we'd only need to buy one box at the most.  And I don't think that they'll be releasing starter decks with each booster pack.  I guess we'll discuss our plan on Sunday when we go to the Kaijudo league.  Either way, expect a box opening video on Monday at the latest.

So yeah, that about does it for my weekend plans.  To summarize: there's a Regional on Saturday, but I don't really care about how well I do; if I scrub out, I'll go play Vanguard; Aki and I are going to the Kaijudo league and Yu-Gi-Oh tournament on Sunday; and we're going to buy a bunch of Kaijudo cards.

Tournament Report 9/2/12

So, as usual, I went to locals again.  I took my Nordic Diva deck of course, having changed two cards in the Side Deck and one in the Main Deck.  I felt as though I didn't have enough side for random Synchro decks, so I added Dimensional Fissures.  Yes, Dimensional Fissures.  They hurt my deck a little, but if I have it out, their Junk Synchrons can't really kill my Guldfaxes.  Unfortunately, I didn't get to side it in today, so I don't know how well it'll work.

But yeah, before the tournament started, I played a couple games of Kaijudo against Fwazalaza, and my friend who plays Vanguard arrived and gave me about half of the cards on the list I sent him.  He said he'll have the other half next weekend.  Unfortunately, he didn't bring Mr. Invincibles, so I couldn't change my deck at all.  If I were to have them, then I wouldn't need to run Sagramores anymore, which is the main thing I want to change.  I guess I'll have to wait, then, not that it matters since I'll be at Regionals next Saturday.

So yeah, there were 33 players there today (really yesterday, since it's after midnight...).

Round 1: vs Blackwings

This was my Round 2 opponent from this tournament.

-Duel 1: I whittled away at his card presence, even though he had drawn a very good hand, including Shura, Blizzard, and Kalut.  Unfortunately for him, he didn't draw any Spells/Traps after a while, and while I opened up with all Monsters, they were the more proactive Monsters, like Super-Nimble Mega Hamster and Deep Sea Diva.  So, I was able to just out-advantage him and steal his Armor Master with Monster Reborn while he couldn't do anything.
-Duel 2: I just get hit with too many Icarus Attacks and Kaluts to do anything.  Oh, and I didn't draw many Monsters; just a couple Rykos, I think.
-Duel 3: I opened up with Gorz, Guldfaxe, D.D. Crow, Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror, Morphing Jar #2, and Monster Reborn.  Since Shura is horribly disruptive, I couldn't just Set Guldfaxe and Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror, so I had to just pass.  He opened with Tour Guide into Tour Guide and attacked directly with one.  I dropped Gorz, and he overlaid for Acid Golem.  I topped Smashing Ground to destroy his Golem, then attacked with Gorz and Set the Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror.  He destroyed my field with Dark Hole then attacked me with a Bora.  I Set Morphing Jar #2, since I had drawn another Guldfaxe, and ended.  He played Nobleman of Crossout, which he apparently sides just for me, to banish my Jar.  He then attacked directly with Bora again.  I used Reborn on Gorz in a desperate attempt to kill Bora, but he had Kalut, so it didn't matter.  After that, I just kept setting the Guldfaxes I was holding and tried to hold out for something, but I couldn't draw anything to save myself.

OXX

With that, I considered dropping.  But, there'd be nothing to do, and my Round 1 opponent said that I should stay in in case I get paired up.  So, I decided to keep playing.

Round 2: vs Newbie Deck

Oh look, I was paired up against the guy who got a bye in the first round.  He wasn't very good, and his deck was built almost entirely from cards from the Battle Packs.  A couple regulars had helped him with his deck before the tournament, so it wasn't that bad.  Either way, I just Synchro swarmed him both games to win.

Round 3: vs Dino Rabbit

This guy was a regular who I haven't played against in years, so I'm not going to bother looking up the last time I played against him.  He knew what I was running and such.

-Duel 1: He opened with five back rows.  Apparently he drew no Monsters, and he only drew two Monsters for the rest of the duel.  So, I was able to take my time Setting my Flip Effect Monsters and baiting out all of his back rows.  He just drew really poorly, but that's a risk you take when you play low Monster-count decks that run a bunch of Normals.
-Duel 2: I don't really remember what happened, but I basically had answers to any possible plays that he could've made.  For instance, there was one point where he could've made a Laggia or a Dolkka against my Set Ryko and my Set Mind Control.  I had Gorz and Smashing Ground in hand.  He went with Laggia and lost it to Ryko.  I did Set the Mind Control earlier to influence his decision, but I had the Smashing Ground to deal with a Dolkka, just in case.  I ended up winning with a Gorz that I dropped on another Laggia.

OO

Yay, 2-0'ing Dino Rabbit.  It's mainly just luck, unfortunately.  It's kind of like how Six Samurai were back in the day; they could open so well that you couldn't do a thing to stop them.  But, if they don't open like that, then it's not so difficult to win.

Round 4: vs Blackwings

This was my Round 3 opponent from yesterday (really two days ago, since it's after midnight).

-Duel 1: He opened with three back rows and a Shura.  I played Heavy Storm, and he negated with Solemn Judgment.  I played Dark Hole, then Deep Sea Diva, and he negated with Solemn Warning.  Alright, down to 2000 LP already.  He made a Blizzard play soon afterwards, but I was able to shut it down and make a reversal after baiting out his last few back rows.  After I had cleared his field, I made Catastor to attack directly and win.  Obviously, I should've made T.G. Hyper Librarian, but I used Catastor because that's the card I won both of my games against him with in our previous match.  It was also so that he wouldn't know that I had a Librarian.
-Duel 2: I don't really remember what happened this game.  I think I just had Traps to deal with all of his Monsters and was able to win with random beat-down from Gaia Knight.

OO

Round 5: vs Tele-Tefnuit

That's what that deck that uses Hieratic Dragon of Tefnuit, Emergency Teleport, and the Destiny Draw engine is called, right?

-Duel 1: He made a few Xyz and Synchro plays, but I was able to counter them all, and I ended up beating him down with Scrap Archfiend.  Bottomless Trap Hole dealt with his Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning, and Mystical Space Typhoon destroyed his Return from the Different Dimension before he could use it.
-Duel 2: This turned out basically the same way as the first game, except he wasn't able to make as many power plays as the first game.  Again, I ended up beating him down with Scrap Archfiend after negating his Inzektor Exa-Beetle with Effect Veiler.  Scrap Archfiend is just bigger than Gaia Dragon, the Thunder Charger.

OO

Personally, I don't think that decks like that work very well.  I had seen some of my Round 5 opponent's duels earlier, and it seemed like he drew Emergency Teleport a lot more often than he drew Krebons, and he also drew stuff like Return from the Different Dimension, Tefnuit, and Destiny HERO Malicious quite often.  I don't know what was going on there, but I'm just skeptical about the consistency of decks that use Emergency Teleport as an engine.  Though, now that I think about it, the way that he played made it seem like he only ran two Krebons.

Anyways, I ended up going 4-1 and getting 3rd place.  Fwazalaza lost in the finals and got 2nd place.  The guy who won didn't seem very good; he made very questionable plays in the matches I saw him play in, but drew well enough to win anyways.  Well, it's Yu-Gi-Oh, so it unfortunately happens.  Not to say that Fwazalaza should have won the tournament.  I mean, he plays Six Samurai, so he kind of rode through the tournament on luck as well, at least based on the matches I saw.

So, I'll spend this week preparing for Regionals and such.  I have yet to read through the coverage for YCS Toronto, but I heard that Wind-Ups won.  I can't say I'm surprised.  Anyways, I'll probably just take my Nordic Diva deck as it is, or perhaps I'll change up a few cards.  I mean, it did pretty well at the last Regional I took the deck to, and I wasn't even testing it at locals before that.  But yeah, if it fails this time, then I'll probably look into other decks.  Oh, and if it fails quickly enough, then I could drop and go play in the free Vanguard tournament at the other card shop, assuming I get the Mr. Invincibles and such by then.

Tournament Report 9/1/12

Yes, the first tournament of the new format.  I didn't really get to test much, but I guess that's why I went to locals this week.  But yeah, I went with my Nordic Diva deck, since there's really not much else I would want to play.  Gem-Knights would theoretically be better this format than last format based on Inzektors and Wind-Ups being hit alone, but they also lost Future Fusion.  It shouldn't matter that much, but I just wanted to use a more consistent deck.

Also, when I walked in, the store owner told me that they would start having Vanguard tournaments every Saturday morning before the Yu-Gi-Oh tournament, and Kaijudo league would be every Sunday morning before the Yu-Gi-Oh tournament.  Both of these things would start next weekend, so that's cool.  While I'll miss the Vanguard tournament due to the Regional on Saturday, I'd actually be able to go to the Kaijudo league.  I still won't be able to get the two boxes of the Core Set that Aki and I wanted before then, though.

But yeah, there were about 24 people there today, or so.

Round 1: Newbie Deck

This was my Round 3 opponent from this tournament.  He plays Exodia, and he tried to stall with stuff like Marshmallon to draw into it, but Thor kills Marshmallon.  2-0.

Round 2: vs Dino Rabbit

-Duel 1: He opened with two Thunder King Rai-Ohs, which admittedly give my deck trouble sometimes.  Usually I can just push through them, but he had a bunch of back rows to support it.  When I was finally able to get rid of them, then protect myself with a Wind-Up Zenmaines, he used Monster Reborn on a Rai-Oh, then summoned a Sabersaurus and overlaid for Photon Papilloperative to kill me.
-Duel 2: I quickly made a Gaia Knight, the Force of Earth, and he couldn't kill it, so he scooped.
-Duel 3: He opened with one each of Kabazauls and Sabersaurus, and I was able to kill them so that he couldn't overlay.  But after those and me using Solemn Judgment on his Tour Guide, he topped Pot of Avarice to draw into a Rescue Rabbit and save himself.  He drew another Rabbit after that and there wasn't much I could do.

XOX

Round 3: vs T.G. Stun

-Duel 1: He didn't draw many Monsters, and I just made a Catastor and kept killing his T.G.'s.  He was able to flip Skill Drain with Barabros, but Book of Moon protected me, and he just had no answers to Catastor.
-Duel 2: This time, he drew quite a few Monsters with not many back rows, so I didn't have any trouble ripping through his defenses.

OO

At this point, my friend who plays Vanguard told me that he would be going to another nearby card shop to participate in the Vanguard tournament there.  He was just waiting for a ride from his friend.  So, I kind of rushed my next match; since I had already lost once, there wasn't a very good chance for me to top, so I might as well just drop and go play in the Vanguard tournament.

Round 4: vs Junk Doppel

This was my Round 1 opponent from this tournament.  He jokingly complained about having to play against me, since he knows that I run really random decks that he's never prepared for.

-Duel 1: I made a Wind-Up Zenmaines and a T.G. Hyper Librarian to protect myself from his Synchro plays since I had no back rows.  He played Mind Control to steal my Librarian, then summoned Lonefire Blossom to get Dandylion, and played One for One by discarding Spore to Special Summon Effect Veiler.  Obviously, he used my Librarian against me, and that was the turning point of the match; I just couldn't recover from all of that advantage.
-Duel 2: I didn't draw any back rows, but I drew a bunch of Tuners.  Needless to say, I couldn't do much with them, and he was able to run them over with Card Trooper and pick apart my hand with Spirit Reaper.  It was kind of a horrible way to lose.

XX

With that, I dropped.  I got a Turbo Pack 8 since I actually remembered that Fwazalaza wants the Super Rare Gadgets.  I opened my pack and went to ask him, "You still need a Green Gadget, right?"  He said yes, and I said, "Well, I didn't pull one."  Ha ha, it was a Lost Guardian.

So, then I went to the Vanguard tournament with my friend who plays Vanguard.  I used my $29 Gold Kagero deck that has too many Sagramores.

My first round was against Angel Feathers.  I knew how they worked in general, but I still had to read all of his cards.  I won the first game because he got gradestuck on Grade 0.  I was able to deal 6 damage before he got to Grade 3, so that was kind of sad.  He won the next two games because that didn't happen.

My second round was against my friend's friend's little brother.  He didn't know how to play, so I was basically telling him what to do for half the game.  I still won 2-1 because he kept calling his Critical Triggers and Heal Triggers as boosters.

I played against a Kagero Trial Deck with cards from Set 2 (the Dragon one, whatever it's called...) and Mr. Invincibles.  I lost because he kept getting Critical Triggers, which was saddening.

The last round was against a Gold Paladin deck that uses the Vortimer evolutionary line.  In the first game, he got gradestuck on Grade 2, so I won.  In the second game, he successfully evolved all the way up to Spectral Duke Dragon to get two free superior calls off the top of his deck, then pulled a Critical Trigger when attacking with the Spectral Duke Dragon before using its Limit Break; I didn't have enough to guard, the second attack, so I hoped for a Heal on the first attack, but that didn't happen.  I lost the third game somehow; I don't really remember.

So, all of the games I won against the competent players were due to them getting gradestuck.  That's quite a valuable lesson: you can win against anyone in Vanguard as long as they get gradestuck.  It's kind of stupid, honestly.

My friend who plays Vanguard made it to the top 4, but lost in the semi-finals to double Triggers.  He proceeded to lose the cardfight for 3rd place by getting gradestuck both games.  He still got two packs of Set 1 (the King of Knights, Alfred one) and pulled a Lozenge Magus, which is cool.

Either way, he said that he'll be at locals tomorrow and that he'll bring the cards I wanted.  I texted him a huge list, so hopefully he'll have what I need for my deck.  I'm hoping that once my deck is more focused and doesn't use the stupid Grade 3 Sagramore anymore, it'll do a lot better.  Honestly, I lost a lot of games because I drew too many Sagramores or because I didn't draw my other Grade 3's.  Well, it's all luck, so I don't really care.  I'm still going to play in the Vanguard tournaments at locals on Saturdays because they're free and I can get free stuff.  So yeah, I'll be at locals tomorrow (really tomorrow, since I finished this post before midnight).