"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...