Kaijudo Cube

Before I get into the main topic of this post, I should say that I did get to go to the Kaijudo tournament yesterday (really two days ago, since it's after midnight).  I played the Mono-Light Rush deck I made for the fourth Snogal, since he wasn't able to make it.  I didn't really like playing it, but I didn't really have a choice.  It was the best deck I had at the time, so I used it.  I ended up losing to Fwazalaza's LWDN Haven Control deck and a Dragon deck, so I didn't win anything.  I did get a third Shaman of the Vigil from the raffle, though.  Ray also pulled a Wildstrider Ramnoth for me, since I paid for his entry fee.  So, overall, not bad.

Part of why I didn't have another deck to play was because I spent most of my time on Friday, as well as some on Thursday (instead of studying for finals), making a Kaijudo Cube.  Surprisingly, not very many people know what a Cube is, so I had to explain it at least four times over the weekend, and I will likely have to explain it next weekend to the fourth Snogal, if he can make it.  Basically, it is a constructed pool of cards that can be used for limited formats like drafts, or in the case of Kaijudo, the Booster Brawl format.

The Cube I made is 240 different cards.  There are 50 multi-civilization cards, five from each of the ten multi-civilization combinations.  Of each of those five cards, four are creatures and one is a Shield Blast spell.  The rest of the Cube is mono-civilization cards, split evenly between the five civilizations at 38 cards each.  For each civilization, there are 27 creatures and 11 spells; two of the creatures are evolutions, and seven of the spells are Shield Blasts.  That leaves 25 non-evolution creatures and four non-Shield Blast spells for each civilization.  Also, for the civilizations that have Blockers (Light, Water, and Darkness), nine of the 25 non-evolution creatures are Blockers.  Only 15 of the cards in the Cube are holo: three from each civilization.  I wanted to use multi-civilization holos, but most of them were too good.

What do I mean by "too good"?  I mean that they would be overpowered compared to the rest of the cards in the Cube.  Saracon may not be used in competitive play very much, but it's a Double Breaker with Blocker and 7500 power that draws three cards when it dies.  The point of my Cube was to make a format with no overpowered cards.  I made sure that no creature had a base power above 8000, and any creature that reached that level of power or above (like with Powerful Attacker) was essentially vanilla.  I even went so far as to not use any evolution creatures with Double Breaker that were level 4 or less; they could end a game too quickly by themselves.  Even level 5 evolution creatures with Double Breaker seem rather powerful in this format.

However, the evo-bait isn't super abundant.  In fact, for four of the five civilizations, their two evolution creatures are of different races, so they cannot be used together.  For Light, I didn't really have a choice; their only evolutions are Enforcers or Skyforce Champions, and Skyforce Champion evolutions require way too much dedication to use in a Cube.  Not to mention the fact that most of them are incredibly powerful (since they require all that dedication...), so they wouldn't be appropriate for my Cube anyway.

As for spells, it's rather difficult for them to be overpowered, but some of them are too good.  I went into this knowing that I couldn't include Stormspark Blast, Root Trap, or Terror Pit.  Stormspark Blast can swing a game way too much, and there are several, more balanced alternatives.  Root Trap and Terror Pit are conditionless, and would be way too good compared to all of the other removal cards.  I mean, in my Cube, Kaboom! and Crystallize are actually good cards.

It may sound like I just put a bunch of garbage in my Cube, but I didn't.  I carefully considered every card to make sure nothing was strictly inferior to anything else.  There are very few vanillas in the Cube; most of them are just there as evo-bait, but they still aren't garbage.  And although I put some cards in the Cube just for fun (Steam Star Grapplog, Argus, and Astinos), there's no card in there that wouldn't have at least some use in the limited format.  Even Predict stops being horrible when you get to stack the shared deck in Booster Brawl to make your opponent draw garbage (well, the less useful cards in that situation, since there's no garbage in my Cube).

As for why I chose the ratios I did, I wanted a little over 70% of the cards in the Cube to be creatures.  There was originally going to be one more non-evolution creature and one more non-Shield Blast spell for each civilization, but there were no good choices for spells for Water or Nature (I didn't want to have to use Mark of Tritonus and Mark of Almighty Colossus), so I just left it.  Having 240 cards made it divisible by four, anyway.  And I couldn't include more than seven Shield Blast spells for each civilization because the Fire civilization only has seven Shield Blasts... Weird, huh?

There are also a total of 36 Blockers in the Cube, including multi-civilization Blockers (one of them is Rodi Gale, so it barely counts anyways).  That's a little less than one-sixth of the Cube, which seems like a lot, but I wanted players to have access to Blockers instead of trying to limit them.  Besides, a few of them can attack shields, so it's not like they would just sit there on the field and do nothing.  I also made sure to include all of the Blocker-destroying cards that the Fire civilization has to offer, except Bolgash Dragon.

My friends and I were able to play using the Cube quite a bit over the past weekend.  We didn't get the chance to draft it at all, since that would've taken too long.  So, we split up the Cube evenly and made decks out of whatever random cards we got.  Even getting a random selection of only 48 cards from the Cube, it was difficult to make a 35-card deck.  I saw that Fwazalaza simply took out the less useful cards he got (stuff like the random Drakons, since he didn't get the Blastforge Captain) and used the remaining 45 cards.

Aside from taking out evolutions and/or evo-bait that don't match, it was difficult to figure out what to leave out from our random pools when making a deck.  Every single card has a use, so it's much more complicated than cutting the bad cards you pull from your five packs in a sealed tournament.  The most prevalent strategy I saw, and also the one I used when possible, was to just drop the civilization that had the least cards or the relatively weaker cards and use the others to make a four-civilization deck.  In addition, I saw that Ray splashed in Shield Blasts from the civilization(s) that he didn't use when relevant.  For instance, he kept Oathsworn Call even though he didn't use Nature.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to do much with the Booster Brawl format.  Fwazalaza and I played a match using 80 random cards from the Cube, which was pretty interesting.  We both knew the rules already, but it was the first experience with the Booster Brawl format for both of us, so we were left to figure out the strategy behind it as we played.  It was certainly a fun and interesting way to play Kaijudo, but I'll have to play more Booster Brawl before I can say anything definitive about the strategies one would have to employ for it.

My main worry was that the civilizations might be a little unbalanced, since although I did work to balance out the card counts, I couldn't really balance out the levels of the cards for each civilization.  I feel as though it would've been unnecessary, since the civilizations have different styles, so they shouldn't be exactly balanced by level.  Maybe I'll see some trends in the future when playing with the Cube so that I can improve upon it, but it's probably about as good as it's going to get for now.

Nothing in particular seems really overpowered, which is good.  Riku noted that one of the more powerful cards was Sasha, Channeler of Light, obviously due to it's ability.  I was a little worried about putting it in the Cube at first, but I figured that it wouldn't be too bad.  I mean, it has such a high cost that it would be extremely difficult to use a tap effect immediately before summoning it.  That would mean that the opponent would have to attack with their creatures for them to be vulnerable to Sasha's effect.  That, and the fact that Sasha isn't even a Double Breaker, makes me think that it's an alright card for the Cube.

I found, unsurprisingly, that Morphing Pod seems to be the best removal spell in the Cube.  It may be completely random and a minus, but it can get any creature off of the field.  It could also be used on your own creature if the situation arises.  In one of the Booster Brawl games I played against Fwazalaza, I took Morphing Pod from the Veil so that he couldn't use it on my Wave Lancer, and I was later able to use it on his Flare Inhibitor (that got him Argus, if you care).  It may not be efficient or reliable, but the fact that it is conditionless makes Morphing Pod incredibly good in a limited format.

Overall, it was very satisfying to build and play with a Cube.  It can teach you a lot about the game, as well.  For instance, I learned that the Fire civilization only has seven Shield Blasts, whereas the Water civilization only has five non-Shield Blast spells.  Ray told me that playing with the Cube showed him a lot of cards that he hadn't seen before and gave him some ideas for his deck.  It is also nice to see some cards thrive when they would be otherwise ignored.  There are several examples I could give for this point, but I think this post is long enough as it is.

If you have a bunch of extra Kaijudo cards, I would recommend making a Cube for yourself and trying it out with friends.  There aren't many sets for Kaijudo yet, so your options may be limited, and it is rather difficult to make a balanced Cube, but it is well worth it.

By the way, I do have a spreadsheet listing each card in my Cube (I actually looked up every single card in the game and wrote up the list before going through my collection to find all of the cards), but it's kind of a mess.  Maybe I'll organize it later and upload it somehow.

Random Stuff #58

So I've had a bunch of homework and such to do recently, so I haven't had any time to post anything.  I actually wrote a 4000-word research paper about game balance in Kaijudo, but I can't really post anything from it.  I don't want my professor to think that I plagiarized from some guy on the Internet called "LightGrunty".

I still have finals to deal with.  I have to wake up ridiculously early tomorrow and Friday so that I can make it to my finals on time.  It reminds me of when I woke up ridiculously early so that I could go to the YCS in Long Beach a while ago.  Now that I look back, it wasn't really worth it, but I was on spring break at the time, so whatever.

Actually, I was reflecting on my Yu-Gi-Oh tournament experiences last week, and something occurred to me.  When I was at a Regional, during one of the rounds, my opponent tried to activate Torrential Tribute during the Damage Step in response to my Super-Nimble Mega Hamster's Flip Effect, which Special Summoned Ryko, Lightsworn Hunter.  I explained to him that he couldn't activate Torrential Tribute during the Damage Step, he asked what would happen then, and I just told him that the card would just go back to being Set face-down.  A judge who was passing by commented on how nice it was for me to let him keep his Torrential Tribute Set.

Last time I checked, the rules state that if a card or effect is activated illegally, the gamestate is rewound to immediately before the illegal activation.  Even though I explained it politely, I wasn't really being nice, I was just explaining the rules.  So, when I thought about this last week, it made me think about how prevalent rule-sharking is in Yu-Gi-Oh.  It just made me more disappointed about Yu-Gi-Oh as a whole.  That's all.

Anyway, I've been trying to make a new Kaijudo deck.  The rest of this week is devoted to finals, so I don't think I'll have much time to come up with one by Sunday, but I'm still trying to come up with ideas.  If I can't think of anything, then I may do some silly Light/Nature Rush deck with Shaman of the Vigil, which I got two of from Ray's friend.  The only other deck I can think of is a Kalima deck, but I don't really want to use that.  So, I have no idea of what type of deck to build.

I did recently look over the coverage for the Winter Kaijudo Championship, and I saw that Reverberate was used quite a bit.  It was kind of neat, since I didn't think that people would catch on to the fact that it's a great card, but I guess that's already out.  It doesn't really influence what type of deck I would want to use, though.  I've kind of wanted to make a Control deck, since I'm tired of using aggressive decks, but I don't know if I can make an effective Control deck without all of the Monarchs.  If I can't figure something out, I may just use the Mono-Light Rush deck next weekend, we'll see.

And, I haven't made any new Pokemon because I've been too busy with schoolwork.  I kind of want to make a Galvantula and a Vivillon, but I don't have the time to breed them to be perfect.  I also got a bunch of near-perfect or Hidden Ability Pokemon from Aki and one of the guys who plays Kaijudo at locals, but I don't feel like using them.

I have thought about making an all-shiny team for fun, since I have two shiny Pokemon in X, one in Platinum, and one in White.  Unfortunately, the shiny Boldore I have in White has a Timid nature, which is like the worst nature a Gigalith can have.  All of the other shiny Pokemon have the correct natures, luckily.  I'd just need two more, unless I want to include the Red Gyarados from SoulSilver, which I don't.

I can't think of anything else to include in this post, and I have to go to bed soon so that I can wake up ridiculously early tomorrow morning, so I guess that's it.

Random Stuff #57

So this past weekend was pretty uneventful.  I hardly played card games at all; I was mainly working on my Pokemon.  I also didn't get to go to the Kaijudo tournament, since I was stuck doing homework all day.  It's alright though, since I'll be able to go to at least two Kaijudo tournaments in December, maybe three, depending on how much I have to prepare for finals.

I want to try making a new Kaijudo deck before I go to another tournament, but I can't really think of anything.  The Skyforce Champion deck I have right now is neat, but it's not that great.  I'll probably have to build a more aggro deck or a Queen Kalima deck.  I could try using Megabugs again, but Herald of Infernus didn't stop being a thing like Bottle did, so I'm hesitant to use them again.  The problem is that everyone at my locals plays something different, so I can't really make a meta call.  There will be at least one of each type of prominent deck there, from Eternal Haven to Dragons to Rush, so I have to prepare for everything and hope I draw the right cards at the right times.

Regardless, I haven't been able to put much thought into a new Kaijudo deck because I used my free time over the past week to finish a Doubles team for Pokemon.  However, none of my friends have finished theirs yet, so I haven't gotten the chance to try it out.  I'm not sure exactly how well it would work, but it is a weather-based team, so I feel like it wouldn't be that great.  It has some tricks that other weather teams wouldn't normally have, but I doubt that'll be enough.  We'll see, though.

In working on my Doubles team, I was able to breed a couple of new Pokemon for my Singles team.  I was breeding a bunch of Sewaddle with Chlorophyll, so naturally some of them would have Swarm.  I ended up getting a 4V Sewaddle with Swarm, so I trained it for my Singles team.  It seems pretty good; Leavanny actually has better defenses than the Starmie I've been using, but it does have more crippling weaknesses.  I'm just trying it out, since I already had it ready, but it does actually seem pretty good.  It makes my team weaker to Fire than I'd like, so I'm going to try and fix that.

I was thinking about changing my physical and special tanks, Trevenant and Mega Blastoise.  They're both neat, but they're not all that practical.  I think that I would want something that could heal, like Flygon or Gliscor, as my physical tank.  And as nice as Mega Blastoise is, it's nowhere near as good as Regice at walling special sweepers.  But, since I can't have Regice for another month, I was considering Tentacruel or Dragalge.  I'm considering those two because they're Poison-type, meaning that they can use Black Sludge to heal.  The Leftovers is reserved for Aegislash, which will remain as my mixed tank.

It just occurred to me that most of this won't really make sense, since most of you don't know what my team is at the moment.  If you've read my previous Random Stuff post and have been paying attention to this post, then you could probably guess what the six members of my Singles team were before I finished that Leavanny with Swarm, which ended up being the seventh Pokemon I've made for my Singles team.

Either way, I don't think it's worth describing every single Pokemon on my team and haven't gotten the chance to upload any Pokemon videos.  Aki has only uploaded one 3v3, so you probably don't have that good of an idea of what my team is like.  I could try to upload Pokemon videos, but I've only been able to play against Aki and Ray.  I don't want to upload any of the videos I played against Aki, since he'll probably want to upload them.  And when I play against Ray, he plays pretty poorly.  He's used to playing Triples, which is generally much easier than Singles or Doubles, so he doesn't really prove much of a challenge, meaning that it's not worth uploading the videos.  I hope that he'll get better as we play more, but I'll just have to wait and see.

So, if I do start uploading Pokemon videos, they'll probably be Doubles videos.  I find Doubles a lot more interesting than Singles, since Singles is mostly just about trying to make a team that counters as many specific threats as possible, at least for competitive play.  I've read a little about the current meta in X and Y, and all people talk about is how everyone uses Wash Rotom, Mega Kangaskhan, and Talonflame and what they use to counter them.  That's boring.  I don't want to make a team just to counter specific threats.

Doubles is a lot more interesting because there are so many more interactions to account for.  I'm not that experienced at competitive battling, but I haven't heard anything about specifically countering Pokemon in Doubles.  If one of their Pokemon walls one of yours, you can just attack the other one, which is part of why dedicated walls are practically unheard of in Doubles.  You can't just make a team to counter what everyone else plays; you have to make a team that has synergy.  Doubles just seems a lot more challenging in general, which is what makes it more interesting.

This may sound hypocritical, since I'm using a weather-based team, but it's just something I wanted to try out.  There's one huge weakness that I hate about weather-based teams, and it's that they're based on weather... Seriously, if the sun stops shining, then my Leavanny would be all slow and probably die really quickly.  Charizard needs the sun for his Solar Power, too.  And I don't want to be playing "Protect the Ninetales in case I need to set up Drought again," since that seems really tedious.  But, I'll see how it works before I decide what to do.

I want to try making a "good stuff" team, but it's really difficult.  It would be like trying to make a Yu-Gi-Oh deck for the Yugilo Format or a Vanguard deck for the Snogal Format.  Every Pokemon on the team would have to have synergy with every other Pokemon on the team.  That's incredibly difficult.  I still have no idea of where to start, but I'll probably just choose one Pokemon and start choosing other Pokemon to support it and each other.  I'll probably start with a Rotom, but we'll see.

I think that's about it.  Most of this was just my current thoughts about Pokemon, but yeah.  Once I finish with my classes for the week, I'll probably look for ideas about how to build a good stuff team for Doubles, but I probably won't get the chance to make such a team for a while.  I'll just have to make due with my Sun team for now.

Announcement

I've decided to stop posting weekly tournament reports.  They're not all that exciting, since most of it is just my friends and I beating the little kids who play Vanguard.  That's not really worth talking about; I was really only doing Vanguard tournament reports so that I'd have something to write about, but it seemed rather pointless.

Because of that, I'm not sure what else I could use this blog for.  Although most of my free time is now being spent on Pokemon X, I don't plan on going crazy with competitive Pokemon battling, so I wouldn't have much to talk about.  I'm working on a Doubles team right now, since I like Doubles a lot more than Singles, but that'll take a while to complete.

I did make a Skyforce Champion deck in Kaijudo for fun, but it's not really worth discussing.  My schoolwork will probably take up any time I would have to go to Kaijudo tournaments, so I'm not going to make a competitive deck until after my classes are done for the year.  I should be able to attend Kaijudo tournaments throughout December, so that'll be cool.  It's a good thing, too, since the December Duel Day promo is interesting.

I do miss how this blog used to be about Yu-Gi-Oh.  There were so many ideas to explore.  But, as time went on and the game became more broken, for lack of a better description, I lost my motivation to play or post about it.  I still miss playing Yu-Gi-Oh, but whenever I think about it, I immediately realize that there's no way that the game as it is now can compare to what it once was.  Oh well, these things happen.

I feel as though I would write more about Kaijudo if I had the same drive for card games as I did before.  Kaijudo is an amazing game, but playing Yu-Gi-Oh for all those years has been a disillusioning experience.  Although I was able to make an impact on the people I met playing Yu-Gi-Oh, it didn't really last because the game has changed so much.  Because of that, I don't feel as motivated to discuss any card game as much as I used to.

So that's about it for this blog.  I don't really have much to discuss with regards to Kaijudo or Pokemon, and there's never anything interesting to talk about for Vanguard, so I can't think of anything to use this blog for anymore.  I will probably post Kaijudo tournament reports, but since I can't go to those regularly, there won't be a regular schedule for such posts.

By the way, I know that this post sounded kind of depressing since I was mostly wallowing in the sadness that is the current state of Yu-Gi-Oh, but I hope I didn't depress any of you too much.

Question About Tournament Reports

Just a few quick questions: Do you guys even enjoy reading my tournament reports?  I did get to go to locals both days this weekend, but I don't think it's worth posting about unless you guys actually want to read about it.  I mean, it hardly affects you to know what goes on at my local card shops, but do you still want to read about it?

If you do, I'll make a post about this weekend sometime tomorrow, probably.  Otherwise, I may spend that time instead making Pokemon videos.  I haven't gotten very many responses on whether or not I should start uploading Pokemon videos to my YouTube channel, so I still haven't decided on what to do for that...

Random Stuff #56

I did go to the morning Vanguard tournament yesterday, but do you really want to read about that?  Well, they changed it to best-of-three, so now it's better, but everyone there is still really bad at Vanguard.  I used my Seal Dragon Kagero deck, which I had made last weekend and was one card away from completing it.  It didn't really matter, though, since Dauntless Drive Dragon is still good, even though it's no replacement for Blockade/Inferno.

I went undefeated and got 1st place, having played against a bad Nova Grappler player, a bad Gold Paladin player (the one who hates Team Snogal), a bad Narukami player, and a bad Liberator Gold Paladin player.  I pulled a Blockade Inferno, so that replaced the Dauntless Drive Dragon to complete my Seal Dragon deck.  Aki was there too, but he didn't win anything.  I was able to get a third Machining Armor Beetle, though.

That's it for Vanguard, since we went to the other card shop, but didn't play in the tournament.

Instead, I spent my time playing Pokemon X.  I used up most of my free time over the past couple weeks chain breeding a competitive team.  It took me an entire day to find a Starly with Reckless as its ability; Starly is already a rare horde encounter, and having to use Sand Attack on every single Starly in each horde didn't make it go any faster.  In fact, it took so long for me to find a Reckless Starly that I found a shiny male Nidoran first.  Unfortunately, its IV's suck, so even though it has a good nature (Jolly), it's probably going to be pretty bad.

I also couldn't catch any Rotom except on Tuesdays, so when I finally caught one on this past Tuesday, I spent the following two days chain breeding it to get one with perfect IV's.  I wouldn't normally waste my time like that, but it's Rotom, so I'm okay with it.  Not only that, but I ended up with so many Rotom with nearly-perfect IV spreads that I could make an entire team out of Rotom, one in each of its six forms.  That's probably the next thing I'll be working on.

Other than Staraptor and Rotom, I'm trying not to make any Pokemon that I have already made in Platinum.  With the Staraptor, it was justified, since the other two Staraptor in my copy of Platinum serve different roles.  One is a physical tank, and the other is a shiny sweeper.  This new one is also a sweeper, but it has Reckless instead of Intimidate, so it's better at sweeping than the shiny one.  It also has better IV's...

Either way, I wouldn't be able to chain breed to get perfect IV's if it weren't for that Friend Safari mechanic where every Pokemon in the safari has two perfect IV's.  Luckily, Aki has a friend whose safari has Ditto, so he has been helping me get Ditto to chain breed with.  Of course, he has also started chain breeding to get Pokemon with perfect IV's.

So, since I spent the past week chain breeding my team, I spent yesterday EV training them.  It's very convenient to be able to EV train multiple Pokemon at the same time so quickly using the EXP Share and horde battles.  After that, I had to win BP at the Battle Institute so that I could get the proper items for my team.  It's nice that the Battle Institute levels up your Pokemon for the battles if they're below Lv. 50, as opposed to the Battle Maison.

Anyways, so that's why I haven't been posting or uploading videos.  Vanguard is Vanguard, Pokemon takes up a lot of time, and Aki and I are waiting for the new Kaijudo set.  As usual, when that is released (on Friday), I will be going to get two boxes.  I'll probably also get a set of the Choten's Army starter decks because Aki and I want to try out Corrupted decks.  Until then, there won't be any Kaijudo videos.

But, Aki and I were able to have a couple of Pokemon battles today, since I was able to finish my team, more or less, this morning.  He is planning on uploading battle videos soon, but there are a few issues.  He doesn't have a 3DS capture card, and given how difficult they are to get, that's completely understandable.  So, he'd just have to record the top screen of the 3DS, which isn't uncommon.  The other problem is that his game is in Japanese, so he'd have to add subtitles for everything on the screen, which seems like it would be a lot of work.

Regardless, I wouldn't object to uploading my own Pokemon videos sometime when I don't have anything else to upload.  It would certainly be better than Vanguard videos... So, I was just wondering what your thoughts were on Pokemon videos.  Now that I have a team, I could probably do random online battles and such.  It is somewhat difficult to stay connected to the online server, though, so that may be an issue.  I just kind of want to have something to upload, since I haven't been able to record any videos recently.

So, let me know whether or not you want to see Pokemon videos on my channel.  Aki will probably upload Pokemon videos regardless of whether or not I do, meaning that I would concentrate much less on them than he does.  Of course, I wouldn't have to subtitle every single video, so that helps.  And, it's pretty simple for us to record Pokemon videos, so even if we both start uploading them, there will probably be enough for both of us.  Not to mention that we could also narrate over the videos, so if we upload the same battle (as in, a battle between the two of us), we would have different narrations over them.  So yeah, just let me know what you think.

Random Stuff #55

So... Pokemon X has been taking up a lot of my time.  I've been playing for nearly 40 hours so far.  Seeing as how I got it about 10 days ago, that means that I've been playing an average of 4 hours per day.  That's a lot more than I thought, but that's because I spent a few days just sitting and playing on my 3DS, whereas I haven't been playing that much recently.  I'm still doing daily events so that I don't miss anything, but I haven't been able to do much besides that.

I didn't even get to go to locals last weekend because I was busy studying for a midterm for a class that has a lecture too early in the morning for me to attend.  I had to wake up at like 5:00 in the morning so that I could make it to the midterm on time, so that's a thing.  But, teaching myself the material over the course of the past week seemed to have paid off, though I won't know until we get the scores back.

But yeah, what I'm trying to say is that I'm still alive.  I just haven't been doing anything related to card games recently.  I still have a bunch of homework to do this week, so I won't be able to do anything related to card games until after my midterm on Friday, but after that, I should have some free time.

Unfortunately, it turns out that Team Snogal won't be getting a case of Set 11.  Since Angel Feathers are such garbage (at least in the eyes of Vanguard players), Ray was able to get most of the cards he needed to make a Zerachiel deck for free, which was the deck he was going to make from a case of Set 11.  But, since he's basically done with his deck and doesn't want to get the case anymore, none of us can.  The fourth Snogal doesn't mind much, since Tachikaze aren't exactly expensive, so he should be able to buy singles.  I don't know how Riku feels about this, but it's not like a Genovious deck would cost that much to make from singles; I guess he's spared the trouble of selling the Aqua Force RRR's he would have gotten from the case.

Aki is upset about this, since he was looking forward to playing Sweep Command Dragon.  I mean, Sweep Command Dragon is nice, but it's not going to really do that much.  I'd be more upset about not getting Cho-Ou, or however Bushiroad decides to translate it.  Cho-Ou is actually a good card that won't be thrown away as soon as Dragonic Descendant is released in Set 10.  Either way, we could always try to trade for Cho-Ou's or win them from packs.

As for me, I was planning on making two Kagero decks with the cards I would've gotten from Set 11.  Seal Dragons, of course, and a Flare Whip Dragon-based deck.  Flare Whip Dragon becomes a viable card with all of these new Seal Dragon cards, since they're all Flame Dragons.  Having a set of Flame Dragon triggers, along with Blue-Ray Dracokid and Gattling Claw Dragon, is also very helpful.  What's also nice is that I didn't need that many holos for either deck; Dauntless Drive Dragon for the Flare Whip deck, Blockade and Blockade Inferno for the Seal Dragons, and the Seal Dragon perfect guard for both decks.  Everything else is Common or Rare.

And, because of that, Ray has already been able to secure me a set of all of the Seal Dragon Commons and Rares that I need for the deck.  He's also gotten a few holos, but not many.  Anything that he fails to trade for, he will have to buy for me, since he was originally going to pay for my portion of the case of Set 11.  Either way, I get the cards I want without having to really spend anything.  The main problem is that he doesn't owe me so much money that I could have him buy a set of each of the holos I need (and a second set of Rinocross...).  I'll probably be able to only get enough for one deck.  So, I have to choose between Seal Dragons and Flare Whip.

My initial thought is that Seal Dragons would probably be more coherent and less gimmicky.  Flare Whip Dragon can really mess with people if they don't know how to add, which isn't uncommon among Vanguard players...  However, if I get Dauntless Drive Dragons instead of Blockade/Infernos, then any additional Dauntless Drive Dragons could easily be sold or traded.  It's not like people would want random RR Seal Dragon Blockades if we pull them.  So, from a more practical standpoint, it may be a better idea to make the Flare Whip Dragon deck first.

However, it depends on what cards will be available this weekend.  I'm planning on going to various card shops on Friday after I'm done with my midterm to search for Seal Dragon singles and Dauntless Drive Dragons.  So, depending on which singles they have, my decision might be made for me.  I'd be happy playing either deck.  And honestly, I could make a Flare Whip Dragon deck with any decent Grade 3 Flame Dragons.  I could just throw Blockade/Infernos in there if I can't get enough Dauntless Drive Dragons and it would work out well enough.  I suppose that the main thing is getting the perfect guards, but we'll see what happens.

I may not even play in the Vanguard tournament this Saturday, so it may not even matter.  Ray and the fourth Snogal are planning on going to the Vanguard Regional in Pasadena, which I think is a waste of time.  If they end up going, then there's not much point for Aki and I to go to locals to play Vanguard.  We'll see what happens, but I'm definitely not wasting my time going to another Vanguard Regional.  I don't remember having fun at the previous one, and it's not like anyone can win reliably in a game like Vanguard where matches are best-of-one.  If Ray and the fourth Snogal do end up going to the Regional, then Aki and I will have to figure out what to do that weekend.  The Kaijudo tournament on Sunday is an option, since I doubt I'll have any homework this weekend, but we'll see...

KMC Report 10/5/13

I was able to go to the KMC in Anaheim, since it was held at the locals I usually attend.  Aki and the fourth Snogal were also able to make it.  So, I was finally able to get the General Finbarrs I needed from the fourth Snogal.  Unfortunately, Aki's deck also needed General Finbarrs, and the shop only had one of those starter decks left, so I still had to borrow Finbarrs from Fwazalaza.  Other than that, my LWF Aggro deck was done.

There were 33 players there.  Overall, there were quite a few Eternal Haven decks and also a surprising amount of Rush and Aggro decks.  There was nothing too far out of the ordinary.  I was running my LWF Aggro deck, which I had changed a little bit since last week, Aki was running a LWFN Dragon deck that he made earlier this week, and the fourth Snogal was running his LWN Aggro deck.

Round 1: vs LF Rush

-Duel 1: I was able to rush him, but I didn't have the necessary Fast Attackers to finish him off once he had cleared by field with Blinder Beetle Prime.
-Duel 2: He started off with a Magris, so he was able to take a few shields for free.  I was able to hold him off with Star Lantern and Plasma Pincer, then go in to break his shields once I knew I was safe.  I was able to control the game well enough to win.
-Duel 3: He rushed in with Magris again, so I played the control game again.  I kept clearing his field with Tornado Flames, Blade Barriers, and such so that I could win regardless of a Shield Blast Stormspark Blast.  My plan didn't work out that well, since he was able to get me down to zero shields, so I just went in.  I got lucky, hitting zero Shield Blasts, so I won.

XOO

Round 2: vs LWFN Dragons

So I was paired against Aki, which was sad.  Four of the other players from locals were also paired against each other at the top tables, so we were forced to knock each other out early...  Regardless, since Aki and I had tested his new deck on the previous night, we had a general idea of how this would go.

-Duel 1: I rushed him before he could do anything and won using Falkora.
-Duel 2: I rushed him, but not fast enough to win before he got to 9 mana thanks to his ramp.  Fortunately, he didn't have Andromeda, so I still won.

OO

Round 3: vs LWFN Aggro

I was paired against Eman of TCGWise, who had just beaten one of his teammates in the previous round.

-Duel 1: He opened with two Pricklebacks, then followed them up with Bronze-Arm Sabertooth, and I couldn't deal with them.
-Duel 2: Same as the first duel, except he also had a Weaponized Razorcat, which I also couldn't deal with.  The creatures that I could drop that early were just too small.

XX

Round 4: vs WFN Aggro

-Duel 1: This guy just wasted all of his cards really quickly.  I was able to kill his Cyber Scamp and Aqua Seneschal before he could get any free pluses by using my Seneschal and Falkora, so I was in a good position.  I just waited for a while before I could go for game and won from there.
-Duel 2: I was fortunate enough to draw a bunch of Seneschals and Flamespitters, so I just went in and broke all of his shields while drawing a bunch of cards.  It was pretty much over from there, since before that point, I had him down to zero cards because he was being rather wasteful.

OO

Round 5: vs LWDN Haven

So at this point, there were two 4-0's, two 3-0-1's, and six 3-1's.  That means that even if all of the players with at least 9 points were to draw, then two of them wouldn't make it to the Top 8.  So, being one of those players with 9 points, I had to play it out.

-Duel 1: I got a decent start and was able to start breaking shields early with stuff like Plasma Pincer and Aqua Seneschal.  Unfortunately, he got three Shield Blasts and was able to ramp up to 9 mana to drop Andromeda after I got him down to zero shields.  That was fine, but then he dropped another Andromeda, and then another.  I strongly considered scooping, but I just played it out until I lost.
-Duel 2: I got a good start with Cyber Scamp, so I was able to just keep pushing through, even though he got Shield Blasts.  He didn't draw any ramp this time, so I was able to win well before turn 9.
-Duel 3: I opened with Cyber Scamp, but no other Water cards, despite the fact that half of my deck is Water.  So, I couldn't really keep up card advantage and quickly lost once he ramped up to 9 mana and played three Andromedas, again... Oh, and I was able to break all of his shields again, and at least three of them were Shield Blasts, again...

XOX

So that was really disappointing.  Like, seriously depressing.  Just like I lost my chance to win the KMC in Las Vegas due to multiple Shield Blasts, I lost my chance here to the same thing.  I do admit that I was playing a really cheesy deck this time, but that's because in this meta, you have to either play Control or some sort of Rush or Aggro.  Mid-range doesn't exist anymore, which is sad.

Anyways, Aki also went 3-2, and the fourth Snogal went 2-3.  I don't know what their final rankings were, but apparently I was the highest-ranked 3-2, because I got 9th place.  Well, whatever.

Fwazalaza, Eman, and Stephen L. all made Top 8.  Eman and Stephen had to play each other in the Top 8, a match which Eman recorded and uploaded to his channel.  I haven't seen it yet, but there it is.  Fwazalaza ended up playing against a Megabug player in the Top 8 (from what I could tell, he was the only Megabug player at the whole tournament, and he was running LWFN for some reason).  Fwazalaza lost that match, despite having considerable experience playing against Megabugs...

While that was happening, Aki, the fourth Snogal, and I went out to eat, since we didn't want to watch a bunch of control mirrors.  After that, we came back to hear that Fwazalaza had lost, which was sad.  The only Light player in the Top 8 also lost his match, so that was disappointing, since I had chosen Light (obviously...).

After that, Aki, the fourth Snogal, Fwazalaza, and I decided to go to the other card shop for their Vanguard tournament, since it was relatively early.  It was Fwazalaza's first Vanguard tournament, but he was quite good.  As I was telling Kaijudo players who asked me about Vanguard (because I had my SP Dungaree out while playing in the KMC), "If you play Kaijudo, then you're already overqualified for Vanguard."

When we got to the other card shop, we met Ray and his friend there.  The six of us entered the tournament: Aki was running his Shadow Paladin deck, Fwazalaza was running Aki's Vermillion Narukami deck (the easiest deck we had with us), Ray was running his Liberator garbage deck, his friend was running Soulless OTT, the fourth Snogal was running my Arboros Dragon Neo Nectar deck, and I was running my Rumble Gun/Dungaree Narukami deck.  There were about 24 players there in total.

And, because the usual card shop cancelled their Vanguard tournament due to the KMC, most of the little kids who go to the morning Vanguard tournament came to the evening Vanguard tournament instead.  I got paired against the one whom I played against in the first round of last weekend's morning Vanguard tournament.  I won 2-0 because he's still bad at this game.

Aki ended up losing his match because he got gradestuck and otherwise sacked.  Ray won his match, but his friend got gradestuck and lost.  There's more to it than that, but it's Vanguard, so it's not important.  Fwazalaza and the fourth Snogal got paired against each other, and the fourth Snogal won.

In the second round, I was paired against the fourth Snogal, so I gave him the win.  Aki and Fwazalaza were paired against each other, so Aki gave Fwazalaza the win.  Ray and his friend won their matches.  In the third round, I was paired against Aki, so he gave me the win and we played Duel Masters instead.  Fwazalaza, the fourth Snogal, Ray, and his friend all won their matches.

The fourth Snogal and I were paired against each other in the Top 8.  Ray also made it, but his friend didn't.  Fwazalaza got 9th, so he didn't make it.  I gave the fourth Snogal the win and just played Kaijudo with Fwazalaza.  Ray lost his Top 8 match to Aqua Dorks, again... The fourth Snogal won his Top 4 match, but lost in the finals, so he only got 6 packs.  We pulled nothing of interest.

We also got the new promos packs.  Out of the six of us, two of us pulled Gerard, which were given to Ray so that he could trade or sell them.  One of us pulled Machining Armor Beetle, which went to me.  The other three pulled garbage.  And, using the Gerard I gave him last weekend, Ray was able to get me a Machining Stag Bettle and a Sword Magician Sarah, so now I just need two more Armor Beetles to finish my Machining Deck.

So that was it for this weekend.  I did go to locals this morning for the Kaijudo tournament because I didn't have any homework, but no one was there except for Fwazalaza, so we just got some free promos and played Vanguard.  That's about it.  I will be going to locals next Saturday after getting Pokemon X on Friday (I assume I'll get it a day early because I have a Japanese 3DS and will be buying it from the eShop...).

Tournament Report 9/28/13 & 9/29/13

So, this is my last weekend of children's card games before I have to concentrate on school.  It started with the morning Vanguard tournament at the usual card shop.  Ray and his friend were there.  There were five other players, four of whom were bad.  I was running Arboros Dragon Neo Nectar, and Ray was running my Beast Deity Nova Grappler deck.

In the first round, I played against one of the bad players whom I always beat.  Apparently, he hates our team (Team Snogal) because we always assume that we're going to win.  I told him that if he wants us to stop thinking like that, then he should play better.  He made terrible misplays, like calling Grade 2 or 3's to the back row and leaving them there just so that Tron would give his Blond Ezel the extra 4k, which didn't matter since Sephirot was at 11k.  He also cheered when I didn't get triggers and cursed when he didn't get triggers.  He was just immature in general.  But, I won, so whatever.

I got paired against Ray in the second round and we just played Kaijudo for fun.  He gave me the win because he had better tie-breakers.  In the third round, I played against one the the little kids whom I always beat.  He was playing Narukami; he had Vermillion and The Blood, but I don't know how many of each he had.  He still had garbage like Vasuki and Gyras in his deck, so yeah.  Anyways, he tried to break through my two-to-pass when he pulled a Critical Trigger after he used his Ultimate Break while I was at 4 damage.  I didn't have enough to guard if he had put it on a rear-guard like a sensible person, but he failed and I lived because of it.  I was able to win on the following turn.  He even misplayed on that turn, too, guarding until he ran out of cards, even though we both knew that he didn't have enough to guard everything.

So yeah, I went undefeated and won additional booster packs.  Ray and I got EB01 in an attempt to pull Machining Stag Beetle (I only have three), but we failed.  I got a Machining Armor Beetle from the other player there who wasn't bad ("There were five other players, four of whom were bad."), so that was cool.  I just need three more, not that I'd play Megacolony in tournaments anyways...

After that, we also decided to play in the evening Vanguard tournament.  I wasn't going to, but they started giving out promo packs, and I wanted more Armor Beetles, so I entered.  Neither Ray nor I pulled an Armor Beetle, though, so that was sad.  There was a total of 12 players there.

Round 1: vs Bermuda Triangle

She was playing a really random Bermuda Triangle build.  It had the Riviere ride chain, but also Vert and that Grade 3 that gains 10k when you ride a Grade 3 while it's a rear-guard, which is silly.  She was a really nice person, though.  Anyway, I won the first game easily, then lost the second game because I only pulled one trigger all game, and she got a bunch.  I got gradestuck on Grade 0 in the third game, so I lost.

OXX

Round 2: vs Oracle Think Tank (Soulless)

His deck was incomplete, and he didn't even ride Scarlet Witch, Coco, so I won easily.  He also attacked my rear-guards unnecessarily, otherwise he may have been able to win.

OO

Round 3: Aqua Force (Maelstrom)

He was playing a crummy Aqua Dork deck, so I didn't really worry too much.  I won the first game because his Basil and Seagull (he called a Stand Trigger just to get four attacks in) couldn't hit anything, and he didn't even get me to 4 damage.  I lost the second game because I kept drawing triggers and didn't have anything to put down as rear-guards.  I won the third game because he got gradestuck on Grade 0.

OXO

With that, they cut to Top 4.  I didn't make it, but Ray did.  He had to play against my Round 1 opponent, but he ended up losing due to getting trigger-sacked in the second game and gradestuck on Grade 1 in the third.

And that's why we play Kaijudo.  We went to the usual card shop this morning for the Kaijudo tournament.  Aki was also able to make it, since he wanted to test his new deck before the KMC.  He was using WDF Dragon Rush, now featuring Var-rakka and Squillace Scourge.  Ray was using a WDN Mid-range deck that used Borran and various Scaradorables.  I was using a LWF Aggro deck; I almost wasn't able to use it, because the fourth Snogal, who hasn't showed up in two weeks, still has my General Finbarrs and hasn't returned them, but I was able to borrow some from Fwazalaza, so that was cool.

There were a total of 10 players there.

Round 1: vs LWDF Dragons

I was playing against Stephen L.

-Duel 1: I had a good start with Cyber Scamp, and he had no early plays, so I basically just killed him before he could play anything.
-Duel 2: I had a good progression of Cyber Scamp and Aqua Seneschal, and his early plays were Piercing Judgment (to bounce the Seneschal and give me another Cyber Scamp) and Bottle of Wishes (to hit nothing of significance), so I won.

OO

Round 2: vs LWDF Dragons

This was my Round 1 opponent from this Kaijudo tournament.

-Duel 1: I rushed in at him with Cyber Scamp, Aqua Seneschal, and Gilaflame the Assaulter.  He had a Bottle of Wishes in the shields, which gave him Infernus the Awakened.  That killed everything I had except Gilaflame, which won me the game.  He started complaining that he didn't have a Shield Blast to deal with Gilaflame, so I told him that since he hit the Awakened off of Bottle, he lost the right to complain about not having enough Shield Blasts.
-Duel 2: He opened up with Nix and Herald of Infernus, which is difficult for me to deal with.  I opened with Seneschal, then Blade Barrier on the Herald so that I could safely attack.  I killed the Herald with Tornado Flame, but his Nix gave him too many free cards and too much momentum, so I lost.
-Duel 3: He opened up with Lux, Nix, then Lyra, so he was able to drop all of his Dragons too early.  I didn't have any cards that let me gain advantage, so I lost once he dropped two Andromedas.  I could deal with one, but not two.

OXX

Round 3: vs 5-Civ Dragons

-Duel 1: I rushed in at his shields with Cyber Scamp and hit a Bottle, which hit a Stormspark Blast.  That let me take the two Scamps in my deck and put them on the field for free.  He couldn't deal with that, so I won.
-Duel 2: I had a slow start (which will only happen 12% of the time for this deck), but so did he, so I was able to drop a Plasma Pincer and Cyber Scamp on turn 5 and win with those.

OO

That ended up being the last round, so I went 2-1 and got 3rd place.  Aki went 1-2, and Ray went 0-2, drop.  How sad.  Anyways, we got a total of 5 packs, and the only noteworthy cards we pulled were Serpens, Calamity Bell, and Cyber Scamp.  I was able to trade the Cyber Scamp to Fwazalaza since he only needed one more (which is ironic, since he traded me my third on one Friday) for a Razorkinder Puppet, so that was cool.

That's about it for this weekend.  The KMC is on Saturday, so that will be exciting.  I think that my new deck did well enough for me to consider using it at the KMC, but I still have other options.  We'll see what happens, I guess.

Random Stuff #54

It has been quite a while since I've done one of these posts, huh?  Well, it's my last day of summer break, so I figured that I might as well post on my recent thoughts on stuff.

The most important thing would be Kaijudo, but I kind of want to keep my strategy for the KMC a secret.  I can say that I've decided not to make a Queen Kalima deck, though.  I might just keep the playset of Queen Kalimas that I have, or I could try to sell and/or trade them.  I guess it just depends on what opportunities I can find.  I would probably be able to trade them at the KMC or something.  We'll see.

As for why I don't want to make a Queen Kalima deck at the moment, the deck is a little fragile.  It kind of loses to Keeper of Laws because of all of the ramp spells.  There's also the fact that the destruction effect Kalima has is based on which cards you mill.  Even if 60% of your deck is Darkness cards, you only have about a 44% chance of milling two Darkness cards and a 20% chance of milling three.  Those aren't promising numbers, in my opinion.  But, I guess it depends on the meta; if everyone plays Eternal Haven decks and they just ramp up to Eternal Haven and drop one Blocker with its effect, then you have a 64% chance of killing the Haven and the accompanying creature with Queen Kalima's effect.  That's not bad at all, but it assumes that those are the only two creatures on the board.  Like I said, it just depends on the meta.

Anyway, I've also been thinking about getting Pokemon X when it comes out.  I actually haven't discussed it for over two years, but I quit playing Pokemon White when I got to the Elite Four.  All of my Pokemon were around Level 40, and the Elite Four and N have all Level 48-52 Pokemon, meaning that I would get stomped.  I didn't want to waste my time grinding experience for that, so I quit.  Regardless, seeing as how I need a completed Generation V game to transfer Pokemon to Pokemon X, I've decided to finish Pokemon White.  I spent like three hours earlier today leveling up my Sigilyph and Lilligant to Level 50, and there's still a bunch more to do.  I guess I'll have two weeks before Pokemon X and Y are released, so I have time.

And, to be honest, Generation V pretty much ruined Pokemon for me.  I mean, there were some really unimaginative and ridiculous things in Black and White, which is a large part of why I quit playing White two years ago.  But, Pokemon X and Y look alright, and it seems as though older Pokemon (like from Generation IV and before) are a much larger focus of the game.  Instead of running into garbage bags and ice cream cones, it seems as though there are more well thought-out Pokemon than before.  I also like the fact that you basically start with three Pokemon (the Generation VI starter, the Generation I starter, and the promotional Torchic).

So, there are a lot of interesting features that make Pokemon X worth buying for me.  Even though Mega Evolutions are ridiculously gimmicky, I guess they can be kind of interesting.  Unfortunately, it doesn't take up a turn to Mega Evolve a Pokemon; you just Mega Evolve them before making your move for the turn.

And, I've missed playing Pokemon in general.  It was fun to battle against friends and such, and that will be easier with the options that Pokemon X and Y provide.  Being able to EV train Pokemon without tedious battling is quite convenient, so hopefully, it won't take entire days just to prepare one Pokemon.  There's still not that much information on Pokemon X and Y overall, though, so we'll just have to wait and see.

There's not much else to talk about, I guess.  There is Vanguard, but nothing interesting will be happening until Set 11 is released, so yeah.  And with school starting tomorrow, I will have very little time to make videos and blog posts.  Basically, I'll be concentrating on Kaijudo until the KMC on October 5, then I'll be working on finishing Pokemon White so that I can transfer up all of my Pokemon from Platinum and SoulSilver, then I'll be playing Pokemon X once it is released on October 12, or maybe a day or two after that.  From there, Team Snogal will just be waiting to get a case of Set 11 on October 26.  But yeah, that's about it.

Tournament Report 9/21/13 & 9/22/13

I went to locals as usual.  Aki and I went to the usual card shop on Saturday and met up with Ray.  We decided against playing in the morning Vanguard tournament, though apparently the new promo packs, the ones with Red Pulse Dracokid and Machining Armor Beetle, are out.  So, starting next weekend, I will start participating in the morning Vanguard tournaments to get promo packs.

Either way, we went to the evening Vanguard tournament at the other card shop.  Aki was playing WeiB Schwarz with one of his friends, and Ray wanted to play in the Vanguard tournament.  I didn't want to just sit there, so I decided to enter as well.  I was using my Arboros Dragon Neo Nectar deck, and he was using my Beast Deity Nova Grappler deck.  There were a total of 14 players there.

In the first round, I played against my Round 3 opponent from this evening Vanguard tournament.  He was playing Arboros Dragon Neo Nectar as well, got the ride chain all three games, and kept getting triggers on all of his drive checks, so I lost.

I proceeded to play against two little kids in the following two rounds and beat them both because they didn't even know how their own decks worked.  I had to play against Ray in the final round and ended up giving him the win because he had better tie-breakers than me.  He ended up getting into the Top 4, but got gradestuck on Grade 0, then got trigger-sacked in the following game to lose.

That was rather unsuccessful, so yeah.  On the following day (today), Ray and I went to the Kaijudo tournament at the usual card shop.  He was using his usual WDFN Dragon Rush deck, now with Deep Mind Probe, and I was using a LDN Mid-range deck.  It was kind of focused around Gigahorn Charger and Enforcers.  It's really difficult to describe...

Round 1: vs WFN Aggro

I was playing against Eman of TCGWise.

-Duel 1: He opened up with a really good progression of Weaponized Razorcat, Aqua Seneschal, then Bronze-Arm Sabertooth.  I couldn't do anything against such an early Double Breaker, so I lost pretty quickly.
-Duel 2: He opened up with the same progression as last time, except that I was able to deal with it this time.  Unfortunately, he had a Gilaflame the Assaulter, which I was unable to deal with.  I didn't draw any of my discard in time, and I didn't get any Shield Blasts, so I lost.

XX

I got a bye in the second round, so I recorded the match between Fwazalaza and Stephen L.  That was a mistake, since it took them an hour to finish because it was a Control mirror match...

Round 3: vs LWDN Control

Fwazalaza ended up losing against Stephen in the previous round, so I was paired against him.

-Duel 1: Gregoria's Fortress threatened his Eternal Haven and Death Liger, the Justicar, but I wasn't able to destroy them before he was able to destroy the Fortress.
-Duel 2: I just rushed him with stuff like Sword Horned, then ripped apart his hand with Skull Shatter to take control.  I was able to win using Noble Rumbling Terrasaur.
-Duel 3: I don't really remember what happened in this duel.  He basically just dropped Eternal Haven after using Root Trap on my Gregoria's Fortress, and I lost.

XOX

So both Ray and I ended up going 0-2, basically.  That was sad, but oh well.  I was just testing out this deck, since I'm kind of bored of playing Megabugs.  I'm just surprised that there were no Dragon decks today aside from Ray's.

Either way, because there was only five people in the tournament, everyone got a Necrose, Nightmare Bloom.  Since I paid for Ray's entry fee, I got his Necrose and entry pack.  He ended up pulling a Queen Kalima for me, so now I have three of those and four Necroses.

I was able to trade with Fwazalaza to get some cards for both Aki and I.  I traded an Eternal Haven and Twilight Archon for a Var-rakka, Khordia, Kivu, Ra-Vu the Indomitable, Waterspout Gargoyle, Sparkblade Protector, and a Duel Day Magris.  Now I have three each of the latter two, so I could make Mono-Light Rush if I wanted to.  It's a thing, especially with Blinder Beetle Prime, so I like having the option.

I did want to keep the Eternal Haven, but I figured that it would be really difficult to get any more of them, so I might as well just trade it for cards that I will use instead of letting it sit in my binder.  Fwazalaza also wanted a Queen Kalima, but since I have three now, I decided to make a deck around it.  I don't have high hopes, but at least it counters Eternal Haven decks (non-targetting removal is like the only way to kill Eternal Haven) and decks that try to dump a bunch of Dragons on the board in the late game (mass removal just deals with that).  I will build the deck later this week.

I do feel uneasy about having to try out new decks right now, though, because there is an upcoming Kaijudo Master Challenge at the usual card shop on October 5.  That means that I won't really have much time to test my deck.  I guess that didn't stop me from topping at the KMC in Las Vegas with LFN Megabugs, but still.

Lastly, my classes start on Thursday, so I won't be able to go to locals on Sundays starting in October.  I don't really care about October, since the Duel Day promo is bad, but I do want to be able to go in November.  I've pestered the shopkeeper about it, and he may move the Kaijudo tournaments to Saturdays, so there is still hope.  We'll see, I guess.

Tournament Report 9/15/13

My weekend actually started on Friday, but I didn't go to a tournament until today, so yeah...

On Friday, I went to the usual card shop to get two boxes of Shattered Alliances.  Out of those boxes, I pulled eight Super Rares and nine Very Rares, so that was pretty good.  The relevant cards that I pulled were two Queen Kalima, one Eternal Haven, one Twilight Archon, one Blitzer-Mech Falkora, and one Kivu, Ingenious Shaman.  Unfortunately, I didn't pull any of the Super Rare Dragons, so that was sad.  On the bright side, I pulled a total of zero Calamity Bells and Serpens, so there weren't any wasted Rares or Very Rares.  I might not even buy any of the Solar Eclipse decks because I don't need any of the cards from there.  We'll see...

The fourth Snogal also showed up, and we decided to get the Magic Deck Builder's Toolkits.  We got a total of three (one for him, one for Aki, and one for myself), and we spent the rest of our time making decks to play for fun.  The fourth Snogal also bought a Kaijudo deck I made for him (LWN Aggro), so he'll hopefully be able to start playing in tournaments.

Yesterday, Aki and I met up with Ray.  We mainly played Kaijudo, and Ray decided to enter the evening Vanguard tournament at the other card shop for some reason.  He used Aki's Vermillion Narukami deck and lost in the Top 4 to Aqua Dorks.  That's about it.

As for today, I went to the Kaijudo Set Premiere at the usual card shop.  Ray and the fourth Snogal were able to make it as well.  Just like last time, everyone got five packs of the new set to make a deck from using a minimum of 30 cards.  There would be three rounds, and each player would get a promo card for each round they win.

My sealed pool was decent.  I had to use all five Civilizations, which I kind of wanted to avoid.  I ended up running a 34-card deck that included 16 Multi-civilization cards, so that wasn't very good.  However, from what everyone else was saying, a huge chunk of their decks were Multi-civilization cards, so I guess mine wasn't too bad.  I even used a few Mono-civilization vanillas so that I wouldn't get mana-screwed as easily.  The holos I pulled were Doomblast Scaradorable and Finbarr's Dreadnought; they aren't that great overall, but they're really good in sealed.

In the first round, I played against my Round 2 opponent from this Kaijudo tournament.  I rushed him with Phase Scout and Plasma Pincer, and he couldn't deal with them since his Blockers had Guard.  Once he finally killed my Phase Scout, I ended up bouncing his last Blocker with Crystallize to win.  Don't be mistaken, Crystallize is still a horrible card, it's just that your options are very limited in sealed... I ended up winning the second game using Doomblast Scaradorable to kill his King Alboran and beat him down.

For the second round, I was up against Ray.  Apparently, he had to play against the fourth Snogal in the first round and won.  Anyways, he got a very good sealed pool, including stuff like two Repulse, four Blade Barrier, a bunch of nice Light Blockers, and Borran, the Reality Shaper.  Luckily for me, I was prepared for such shenanigans.  I was able to use Magma Ram to banish his Sentrus, and Doomblast Scaradorable was able to deal with the rest.  He wasn't able to do much, since I also had Aqua-Reflector Nomulos to gain card advantage and keep me safe.

In the third round, I played against my Round 3 opponent from this Kaijudo tournament.  Apparently, he had gotten a bye in the first round, then won against Eman of TCGWise in the second round.  Anyways, he tried rushing me in the first game.  I was able to stabilize with Stingwing and Nomulos.  I used Crystallize on his Prototype Gunship so that it wouldn't kill my Phase Scout, and I also got a Repulse as the third shield he broke, meaning that I got to halt his last attack of the turn while also getting a free shield.  I was able to get around his Sentrus using Phase Scout, which let my Plasma Pincer kill his Onslaught Trooper without getting blocked.  Afterwards, I dropped Finbarr's Dreadnought to ensure my victory, since he had almost no cards left, while I had a full hand and a field full of creatures.  In the second game, he didn't open up nearly as aggressively, so I rushed him instead.  My Ghost Bites kept killing his creatures, and I was able to finish him off with Doomblast Scaradorable.  He was able to drop Skycrusher's Volcano-Ship, but it was too late.  I had four attacking creatures out, including Doomblast Scaradorable, and he only had three shields, one of which was a Flamewing Phoenix that I used a Ghost Bite on earlier.

With that, I had gone undefeated and earned three promo cards.  I got to choose them from a randomized pile of promos, and I ended up pulling three copies of Ba'kaar Frostwing...  I was audibly upset, since I didn't go 6-0 in games just to win three of the worse of the two promos.

Fortunately, Ray won two of his matches (he won Round 3 against Fwazalaza) and pulled one of each promo.  The fourth Snogal ended up getting a bye after losing his first two matches, and he pulled a Veil Stalker.  Because Ray doesn't use Light and the fourth Snogal doesn't use Darkness, I was able to trade them each a Frostwing for their Veil Stalkers.  The fourth Snogal ended up giving the Frostwing I traded him to Ray, since he wasn't planning on using it.  How sad.  But, I guess it worked out for me, since I was able to get two Veil Stalkers for myself and one Frostwing for Aki.  I ended up giving Ray two Deep Mind Probes and the fourth Snogal two Lore-Striders for their decks to repay them for helping me get Veil Stalkers.  And also because those are the only non-holo cards they wanted from the set, so I was saving them the trouble of buying packs to pull them.

And, the fourth Snogal ended up pulling a Falkora, which Aki wanted a second copy of.  So, we're going to trade the Kivu to the fourth Snogal for his Falkora, since he wanted Kivu for his LWN Aggro deck.

I guess that's about it.  I did test my new Megabug variant quite a bit this weekend, but I don't want to talk too much about it since I want it to be a surprise at next weekend's Kaijudo tournament.  I'm still trying to win more copies of Necrose, so yeah.  But, I'm not that confident in my Megabug deck anymore.  All everyone plays at my locals is Dragons and Control.  This new variant is supposed to do pretty well against Dragons, but in testing against Aki's LWF Dragon deck, I only won about half of the games we played.  And, I fear that this new variant has a worse Control match-up than before, but I can't really test that because no one on Team Snogal plays Control.

I may end up going with a completely different deck, but I just don't have any ideas.  The fact that I pulled two Queen Kalimas kind of makes me want to run a deck around it, but I'm not sure.  I could certainly try, though I would rather use Eternal Haven over Queen Kalima.  I was really hoping that I could get a second Eternal Haven so that I could just use two of each in the same deck, but that didn't happen.  I'll see what I can do, but I can't really think of anything at the moment.

Tournament Report 9/7/13 & 9/8/13

I went to the morning Vanguard tournament at the usual card shop with Aki on Saturday.  My friend who plays Vanguard, who has finally picked a nickname (Ray), was there as well.  The three of us entered the tournament, and the other participants were five little kids.

I won the first two rounds against little kids, then played against Ray in the finals.  He gave me the win because he had better tiebreakers.  We got 1st and 2nd and got a total of 10 packs of the Misaki Set.  We pulled nothing good.

That's about how boring Vanguard is now.  Anyways, during the tournament, the fourth Snogal showed up.  The four of us went to the other card shop for the evening Vanguard tournament.  There were only 10 other players there, and Aki didn't really want to play in the tournament, so we decided not to enter.  It also doesn't help that the shopkeeper hates our team for always winning the tournament.  Whenever we enter, he gives out crummy prizes, but since we decided not to enter, he gave a box of the Misaki Set to the winner.

Instead of playing Vanguard, we participated in that free Magic: The Gathering event that was going on.  They gave out free cards and such, so why not?  I got a Green half-deck, Aki got a Black half-deck, Ray got a Blue half-deck, and the fourth Snogal got a White half-deck.  We all traded cards with each other, since we only needed our respective colors, so we all made mono-color decks.  I had to teach Ray and the fourth Snogal how to play, and it was pretty fun.

On the following day (yesterday), Ray and I went to the usual card shop for their Kaijudo tournament.  I was using my LFN Megabug deck, since I had no motivation to change the deck at all because Shattered Alliances is coming out in four days.  Ray was using his WDFN Dragon Rush deck.  There were five other players there.

Round 1: vs LWDF Control

I was playing against Eman of TCGWise.

-Duel 1: This game took most of the time in the match.  He was too hesitant to break shields, so we just sat there while I tried to whittle away at his advantage over time.  He kept top-decking Armored Dragons to kill my bugs, though, and when he finally broke through my shields, three of them were small Megabugs and the other two weren't Shield Blasts.
-Duel 2: I just straight out rushed him.  I don't even remember if he got to play a card or not.
-Duel 3: I was able to get aggressive early with The Hive Queen, and he couldn't deal with it, so I won.

XOO

Round 2: vs LWDN Control

I was playing against Fwazalza, whom had gotten a bye in the previous round.

-Duel 1: I got him down to zero cards, which is an accomplishment against a Control deck.  Unfortunately, the first card he top-decked after that was Andromeda, and he had enough mana to play it.  I had sent two Root Traps to the bottom of my deck with Mana Tick, so I knew that I couldn't deal with it.  I was able to shuffle my deck with Gigahorn Charger, and I held out long enough to draw one of those Root Traps, but it was far too late.  He had already taken control of the game by that point.
-Duel 2: I rushed him with bugs.  He couldn't deal with it, so I won.
-Duel 3: I started rushing him, but then he played two Aqua Striders when he had one shield left.  Apparently, they were in his shields.  He followed it up with two Andromedas, but I was able to Root Trap one of them.  We waited for a long while, long enough so that there were about six cards left in my deck.  But, because of Tsukuyomi Mana Tick and The Hive Queen, I knew the order of those last few cards.  I was able to capitalize on that to make a final push before he could go for game.  Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to win, so I lost.  At least I got to use the knowledge of the cards I stacked at the bottom of the deck effectively, so that was cool.

XOX

Round 3: vs LWDF Dragons

This was my Round 1 opponent from last weekend's Kaijudo tournament.

-Duel 1: He opened with the perfect progression of Nix, Herald of Infernus, then Lyra, and I didn't draw any of my outs to Herald, so I lost.
-Duel 2: He opened with the same progression as last time, and I lost in the same manner.  Agh, it's these types of matches that make me not want to play Megabugs anymore.

XX

Well, I may switch decks, depending on what I pull from the two boxes of Shattered Alliances that Aki and I are splitting.  Since I'm finished with summer classes and school doesn't start for another two weeks, I'll be able to go to the card shop this Friday to get the boxes.

Anyways, my friend won another Necrose in the raffle, and since I paid for his entry, he gave it to me, so now I have two.  We pulled a Gilaflame the Assaulter and a Lord Skycrusher out of our entry packs of The Dojo Edition... Those were the last packs that the shopkeeper had.  Well, at least they were good pulls.

After the Kaijudo tournament, Ray and Fwazalaza asked the shopkeeper if he had any extra Magic half-decks from the previous day, and he gave each of us one.  Ray got another Blue one, and I got a Blue one.  We fixed our decks so that they'd be actual 60-card decks and played for fun.

In fact, we're considering getting some of those Deck Builder's Toolkits so that we can make decks that are actually decent.  Ray, the fourth Snogal, and I are going to discuss it later to figure it out.  I doubt we'd enter any Magic tournaments, but it's a fun game to play with friends.  We'll see what happens, though.

Tournament Report 8/31/13 & 9/1/13

Aki and I were able to go to locals yesterday.  We didn't care about the Kamui and Misaki pack Sneak Preview, so we skipped it.  We ended up going to the evening Vanguard tournament with my friend who plays Vanguard, Riku, and the fourth Snogal.

There were only nine other people there for the Vanguard tournament, and Aki didn't feel like playing.  So, the fourth Snogal used Aki's Vermillion Narukami deck, Riku used his Arboros Dragon Neo Nectar deck, my friend used my Pale Moon deck, and I used my Rumble Gun/Dungaree Narukami deck.  We knew we would win, and the only crossride deck there was Aki's Narukami deck, so I decided to use my fun deck.

Round 1: vs Spike Brothers

This kid didn't really know what he was doing (he was using Especial Intercepts and Devil Summoner, but I guess Spike Brothers don't have much else...), and he had to ride Juggernaut Maximum both games, so I was able to win.

OO

So what happened in the first round was that the four players on our team won their matches, and the fifth undefeated player was my Round 3 opponent from this evening Vanguard tournament.  In the following round, he was paired against Riku, my friend was paired against a little kid with a bad Great Nature deck, and I had to play against the fourth Snogal.  We decided to play it out because it didn't matter.

Round 2: vs Narukami (Vermillion)

He was able to crossride in the first game, but he didn't have any rear-guards for most of the game.  I was able to retire the few that he did play so that I could win, despite not having very good columns.  I even drew five Grade 3's, so that I had to take his Vermillion Catastrophe at 3 damage.  He didn't pull any triggers, so I was able to live.  In the second game, he was able to crossride again and actually had rear-guard that time, so I lost.  He missed the crossride in the third game, so I was able to beat him up with the usual 16k columns.  Rumble Gun Dragon retired his only booster, and Dungaree kept killing his attackers (I drew into two Dungarees after drive checking one with Rumble Gun Dragon, so I kept riding Dungaree over Dungaree to use the Limit Break and keep the 11k defense).  I was able to win because of that.

OXO

Riku ended up losing to the Megacolony player, who got paired down against the fourth Snogal in the following round.

Round 3: vs Pale Moon

That, of course, meant that I was paired against my friend.  He wanted to play it out, since it didn't matter.  I lost the first game because whenever I rode Dungaree, I bound two triggers with its effect, which was sad.  In the second game, half of my Critical Triggers were lost into the Damage Zone, so I couldn't apply any pressure.  Not to mention that I hadn't seen Dragonic Deathscythe all day...

XX

The fourth Snogal was able to beat the Megacolony player, and they tournament organizer cut to Top 2.  That happened to be my friend and I, so we got all of the prizes.  We got 12 packs of the new Misaki set.  We pulled two Sakuyas and no other holos, so that was garbage.  At least my friend got a Battle Sister Fromage mat.

So that's about it for yesterday.  Today, my friend and I went to the morning Kaijudo tournament.  I was using my LFN Megabug deck, and he was using his WDFN Dragon Rush deck.  There were a total of 11 players there.

Round 1: vs LWDF Dragons

This was my Round 1 opponent from last weekend's Kaijudo tournament.

-Duel 1: I opened with a couple of bugs, but he had Herald of Infernus and Lyra, so I lost, since I didn't draw Tornado Flame until turn 8...
-Duel 2: Again, Herald and Lyra.  Agh, Herald is too strong against aggressive decks...

XX

Round 2: vs LWDN Control

I was playing against Fwazalaza

-Duel 1: I drew a bunch of bugs, and he had to charge his Aqua Strider, so I was able to just keep poking him with my bugs.  He used Mesmerize on The Hive Queen, but I was able to follow it up with Steamtank Kryon and Humonculon the Blaster to tap his Fullmetal Lemon, break the rest of his shields, and win.
-Duel 2: He used Mesmerize on The Hive Queen, again, but Steamtank Kryon allowed me to keep pushing through his shields.  He was left with two shields and an Aqua Strider against my Steamtank Kryon and Keeper of Laws.  He summoned Lyra to lock Kryon, then decided to crash his Strider into it so that my Lyra, which he saw with Mesmerize, wouldn't gain Fast Attack.  Regardless, I played the Lyra to lock his Lyra, and with Keeper of Laws, I was able to win on the following turn.

OO

Round 3: vs WDFN Dragon Rush

I was paired against my friend, who had won his first match, but lost his second.  He had better tie-breakers than me, so I gave him the win.

That ended up being the last round.  I think that my Round 1 opponent won, but I'm not sure.  My friend ended up winning a Necrose, Nightmare Bloom in the raffle, but since I paid his entry fee, he gave it to me.  My goal is to get at least four, so I need three more.  The idea is that I wouldn't use three in the same deck, but if Aki and I both want to use it, then we could each use two if we had four.

Well, I kind of want to make a new Kaijudo deck, but the new set, Shattered Alliances, will be released in less than two weeks, so I don't really feel like making one.  On the other hand, I need more Necroses, and topping at Kaijudo tournaments is the only way to get them for sure.  Since there are only three more weeks where Necrose will be given out, I would need to get one each week to fulfill my goal.  So, I might consider making a new Kaijudo deck solely for next week so that I could get a second Necrose.  We'll see what happens, I suppose.

Tournament Report 8/24/13 & 8/25/13

As usual, I went to locals this past weekend.  I was busy Saturday morning, so I just went to the evening Vanguard tournament with Aki.  However, I did have enough time to make a Yu-Gi-Oh deck for the new format.  Everyone on Team Snogal was excited for the new format, since we expected it to be a lot better than this one.  But, whether or not that'll actually be the case has yet to be seen.

Anyways, there were about 28 players there for the evening Vanguard tournament.  I was running my Arboros Dragon Neo Nectar deck, Aki was running his Vermillion Narukami deck, my friend who plays Vanguard was running my Dark Irregulars deck, and the fourth Snogal was running my Pale Moon deck.

In the first round, I was paired against my friend.  So, we just played Yu-Gi-Oh.  We only had enough time to play one game, since we both had to sleeve our new decks.  I was running a Nordic Beast deck that also uses X-Sabers.  I figured that XX-Saber Hyunlei would be pretty good in a format with no Heavy Storm.  My friend was using Blackwings, so that was boring.  I was able to win the first game, and that's all we had time for.  We decided that I'd get the win because my deck had a better chance of winning.

Round 2: vs Dark Irregulars

I played against a new player with a somewhat random Dark Irregulars deck.  I lost the first game because he healed four times, but I was able to win the other two games fairly easily.

XOO

Round 3: vs Kagero (The End)

This was my Round 3 opponent from this evening Vanguard tournament.  He was just as bad as ever.  I won the first game because I got the ride chain, I lost the second game because he got double Critical Triggers, and I lost the third game because he got twice as many triggers as me.

OXX

With that, they cut to Top 8.  Aki and I made it, but my friend and the fourth Snogal did not.

Top 8: vs Narukami (Vermillion)

This was my Round 1 opponent from this evening Vanguard tournament.  He was very upset to have to play against me.  I completely missed the ride chain in the first game, but I put Ratoon in the front to bully him.  He didn't want to get beaten up by Ratoon again, so he used Vermillion's Limit Break to kill it.  He was also able to crossride afterwards, but I made 18k columns and kept pulling triggers to win.  He got gradestuck on Grade 0 on the second game, so when I had to ride a perfect guard, I could move Ratoon out and it could hit his Vanguard Spark Kid Dragoon.  It should be pretty obvious that I won that game.

OO

Aki won his Top 8 match, and we were in the same bracket, so he just gave me the win and we played Duel Masters.  My Round 3 opponent ended up losing in to Top 4, so I decided to just split with the other finalist.  We each got half a box of Set 2, so that was alright.  I pulled a Spirit Exceed, a Ruin Shade, a Kirara, and a Young Pegasus Knight.  The fourth Snogal kept the former two, and my friend kept the latter two.

That's it for Saturday.  I went back to locals yesterday for the Kaijudo tournament.  There were 10 players there in total.  I was using my LFN Megabug deck, and my friend was using his WDFN Dragon Rush deck.

Round 1: vs Mono-Light Rush

This was my Round 2 opponent from last weekend's Kaijudo tournament.

-Duel 1: I had two Heat Seekers and an Ambush Scorpion to wreck his progression.  I was able to drop Andromeda, and he scooped.
-Duel 2: He had a good progression, and I had no early plays, so I lost.
-Duel 3: He had a good progression, I only had a Manapod Beetle to play on turn 2.  I was able to live longer than I probably should've because I had two Stormspark Blasts in shields, but I didn't have anything relevant in my hand.

OXX

I was paired against my friend in the second round, and he gave me the win.

Round 3: vs WD Mid-Range

I was paired up against Stephen L.

-Duel 1: I got him down to zero shields and I would've been able to win if two of my Gilaflames weren't in my shields.  I tried to search it with Gigahorn Charger after my first one died, and it wasn't in my deck, so he had the opportunity to drop Squillace Scourge and win.
-Duel 2: I rushed him with two Manapod Beetles to win.
-Duel 3: He opened with three Grudge Weavers, so I basically couldn't attack him.  So, I lost.

Round 4: vs LWDF Dragons

-Duel 1: He opened up with a Lux and two Nix, and I didn't have any removal, so I lost.
-Duel 2: I was able to rush him with Manapod Beetle, Ambush Scorpion, and Mana Tick to win before he could do anything.
-Duel 3: I was able to go in and break shields with The Hive Queen, Lyra, and Keeper of Laws.  I got Steamtank Kryon off of The Hive Queen, so I was able to attack with Keeper of Laws to break his last shield even though he had a Herald of Infernus on the field.  He used its effect to drop Infernus the Awakened, but he had no shields or Blockers, so it didn't matter.

XOO

That was the last round, so I ended up going 2-2, which isn't that great.  I've been wanting to make a new deck, but with a new set coming out in three weeks, I feel as though there's no point.  I know that I would want to use Darkness, though...

After that, I was able to play a match against a new format Prophecy deck using my Nordic Saber deck.  It was very discouraging because I just sat there while he got numerous free cards and destroyed my field, so I'll probably continue to stay away from competitive Yu-Gi-Oh for now...  But yeah, that's about it.

Tournament Report 8/17/13 & 8/18/13

So, I went to locals as usual.  Yesterday morning was the Vanguard Welcome Campaign thing, so I got a free deck box and there was no tournament.  Aki, my friend who plays Vanguard, and the fourth Snogal all showed up as well, so they got free deck boxes, too.

After that, Aki bought my friend's Shadow Paladin deck, so my friend had the money to make a new Kaijudo deck.  Unfortunately, he forgot his Kaijudo cards, so he just bought the cards he needed and we had to make the deck later.  So, the four of us just had a few Vanguard tag fights.  The fourth Snogal and I won because Platina Ezel's Ultimate Break is really good when you can use it at least two times per game.

So then after that, we went and got my friend's Kaijudo cards so that he could make his deck.  I had to lend him 20 cards, literally half the deck, but he was able to make a WDFN Dragon Rush deck using Hammer Dragon, Foulbyrn and a bunch of ramp spells.  It seems pretty good, and it has been something he has wanted to make.

Then came the evening Vanguard tournament.  There was a total of 18 players.  I was using Arboros Dragon Neo Nectar, Aki was using Vermillion Narukami, my friend was using my Pale Moon deck, and the fourth Snogal was using his Ezel Gold Paladin deck.

Round 1: vs Shadow Paladin

I played against a bad Shadow Paladin player who opened with her Blaster Javelin both games.  She kept guarding either one-to-pass or no-pass (almost never two-to-pass), so it was easy to see that she didn't know what she was doing.  I opened really badly in the first game, but I got triggers and she didn't, so I was able to win after a long while.  I won the second game because I got my ride chain.  She was really upset because of the first game for some reason, so she dropped and left after I won.

OO

Round 2: vs Pale Moon

I got paired against my friend.  He just got paired up against the fourth Snogal in the previous round, so that was bad.  I decided to give him the win so that he could drag us both up, even though I 2-0'd him because Pale Moon doesn't have any good 11k Grade 3's yet.

Round 3: vs Megacolony (Machining)

This was my Round 2 opponent from this evening Vanguard tournament.  He got gradestuck on Grade 2 both games, so I won.

OO

Round 4: vs Gold Paladin (Ezel)

I don't know why there was a Round 4.  Apparently they wanted to do four rounds then Top 4, instead of three rounds then Top 8.  Anyways, I was paired down against my Round 3 opponent from this evening Vanguard tournament.  He was able to crossride both games, but I kept killing his attackers so he couldn't make good columns, so his Ultimate Break was ineffective.  I won the first game after withstanding his lackluster Ultimate Break, then I won the second game with like 12 cards in hand because I got the ride chain and he didn't have a full field.

OO

So they cut to Top 4.  My friend and Aki made it to the Top 4, and they were paired against each other.  So, they decided to let my friend go on to the finals to play against a bad Narukami player.  But, he ended up getting trigger-sacked, so we only got 2nd and 3rd place.

Either way, the fourth Snogal was able to get a Demon World Marquis, Amon so that he'll have it when Set 12 comes out, so that was good.  Other than that, we didn't really get much.

So, on the following day (today), my friend and I went to the morning Kaijudo tournament.  There was a total of 10 players there.  I was playing Aki's LWF Dragon Aggro deck, and my friend was playing the WDFN Dragon Rush deck he made yesterday.

Round 1: vs LWDF Dragons

This was my Round 4 opponent from this Kaijudo tournament.

-Duel 1: He opened with Nix and had a good progression, while I opened with two Bottle of Wishes and no plays until turn 6, so I lost.
-Duel 2: I was able to resolve Herald of Infernus' effect to drop an Infernus the Awakened to win.
-Duel 3: We both worked to simplify the gamestate, and I was in a better position by the end of it.  But, he kept top-decking Dragons, and I kept top-decking Piercing Judgments, Hyperspeed Dragons, and Tatsurion, so I lost.

XOX

Round 2: vs Mono-Light Rush

This was my Round 1 opponent from this Kaijudo tournament.  He decided to run Mono-Light Rush for some reason.

-Duel 1: He got a good progression and was able to rush me, and I didn't draw any Blockers, so I lost.
-Duel 2: I got a few Shield Blasts and was able to withstand his initial rush so that I could win.
-Duel 3: I was able to get a Bottle of Wishes (variance!) in the shields to get a Nix when he attacked me on turn 4.  That let me play Hyperspeed Dragon on turn 4.  He broke another shield, which gave me Piercing Judgment to stop the rest of his attacks.  I drew a Herald of Infernus and summoned it after charging.  That killed his Rodi Gale, letting me drop another Herald.  That Herald killed his Shaw K'Naw and let me drop Infernus the Awakened to kill his last creature, Keeper of Laws.  The Awakened won the game because he's playing Mono-Light Rush.

XOO

Round 3: vs LWdF Dragons

This was my Round 3 opponent from this Kaijudo tournament.  The small "d" means that he splashed Terror Pits.  Anyways, I don't really remember the first two games, but I know that I won the third game because I dropped Infernus the Awakened using Herald of Infernus on turn 6.

XOO

So I ended up going 2-1 and got 4th place.  My friend went 2-1 after losing to my Round 3 opponent in the first round and got 5th place.  Neither of us won any packs, but I got a Magris the Magnetizer in the raffle and pulled a Steamtank Kryon.

So that's about it.  They actually ran out of Clash of the Duel Masters packs after the tournament was over, so I'll have to decide which packs to get next weekend, if I can make it, that is.  I'll definitely miss the morning Vanguard tournament next weekend, but I don't know about the evening Vanguard tournament or the Kaijudo tournament.  We'll see what happens, I suppose.