Sunday, June 30, 2013

Tournament Report 6/30/13

Before starting this tournament report, I'd like to take a moment to mourn the loss of the best player in the Cardfight Vanguard anime, Tetsu Shinjou.  Until this most recent episode (129), Tetsu has been undefeated since his first appearance in the show.  But now, because the writers wanted to take the most skillful player out, they had Tetsu lose to Reverse Kai.  If you say that this is a spoiler, then you're wrong, because there has to be a plot for there to be spoilers...

This is not Joker X...
In memoriam of Tetsu's win streak:
Episodes 31 - 128

Alright, so now that we've gotten that out of the way, I can get on with the tournament report.  Aki and I went to locals yesterday and met up with my friend who plays Vanguard.  We skipped the morning Vanguard tournament and instead played The Settlers of Catan.

We then went to the other card shop, where there were nine other Vanguard players, seven of whom were little kids.  So, we decided to skip that Vanguard tournament too.  We spent the time playing Kaijudo and Yu-Gi-Oh.  We also found out that there would be a team tournament for the evening Vanguard tournament.  Aki cannot make it, and I don't know if Riku can make it or not.  We can tolerate a team tournament because it reduces the chance of getting sacked slightly, so if we can, we will probably participate in that one.

That's about it for Saturday.  So, my friend who plays Vanguard and I went to the Kaijudo tournament at the usual card shop this morning.  There were a total of 8 players there.  I was running my LFN Megabug deck from last weekend, having changed three cards.  My friend was running his WFN Aggro deck.

Round 1: vs WDF Dragon Aggro

This was my Round 3 opponent from this Kaijudo tournament.  He is running a 52-card deck.

-Duel 1: He opened with a pretty good progression: Umbra, Hyperspeed Dragon, then Chain-Lash Tatsurion to kill my Mana Tick.  I was able to get rid of his Hyperspeed Dragon, then drop The Hive Queen to go in and break shields.  He killed it by crashing his Chain-Lash into it because Umbra gave his Dragons the Slayer ability.  I dropped a couple Megabugs with the intention of going for game on the following turn.  He had no answer, so he just played Bottle of Wishes to try and sack something.  He got Overcharge, letting his two creatures kill my bugs, leaving me with basically nothing.  I slowly lost from there.
-Duel 2: He opened up with a progression of Umbra, Scaradorable of Gloom Hollow, then Hyperspeed Dragon.  I opened up with Manapod Beetle, then Mana Tick to grab Steamtank Kryon.  I had no turn 4 play, and on turn 5, I played the Steamtank.  He played Bottle of Wishes on his fifth turn, getting Overcharge, again... He attacked my Mana Tick with Scaradorable, which was a terrible misplay because Scaradorable cannot kill Level 4 or lower creatures, then he killed my Steamtank with Hyperspeed.  From there, I couldn't really do much.  I eventually was able to drop another Steamtank, which he killed with Death Smoke, then an Andromeda, which he killed with Terror Pit.  He was top-decking for basically the entire game, but he kept drawing the exact card he needed for the situation, so I don't know what else I could've done.  I drew Heat Seekers immediately after killing his Scaradorable using Humonculon, then I drew Tornado Flame after killing his Hyperspeed with another Humonculon.  He topped General Skycrusher to kill one Humonculon, then Infernus the Awakened to kill the other.  Since I had opened with all three Root Traps and had to charge two of them to ensure my progression, I had no outs and lost.

XX

Round 2: vs WFN Aggro

My friend ended up losing his first round to Bottle-sack (Infernus the Immolator on turn 5 is too good...), and we had to face each other.

-Duel 1: He rushed me and I didn't draw Blockers or removal spells, so I lost.
-Duel 2: I rushed him with Manapod Beetle and Ambush Scorpion before ensuring my win with The Hive Queen, which broke his remaining shields while getting me a Gigahorn Charger to search a Gilaflame.
-Duel 3: I played Keeper of Clouds on time to stop his Seneschal and Gilaflame from ruining me.  From there, I was able to stall out for a while until I could play Andromeda.  He bound it with Root Trap, then I played Gigahorn Charger to search for the other one.  But, it was in my shields, so I grabbed The Hive Queen for later.  He started slowly breaking shields with Gilaflame and gave me my second Andromeda, which he didn't have an answer to.  With that, I was able to win.

XOO

Round 3: vs LWDF Dragon Aggro

-Duel 1: He opened up with a progression of Lux, Logos Scan, then Nix.  I had two Heat Seekers to kill his chickens, and a Mana Tick to grab Steamtank and break a couple shields.  He played Herald of Infernus, and I played the Steamtank.  On the following turn, I evolved my Mana Tick to The Hive Queen.  With that and Steamtank on board, I would be able to break the last three shields and go for the win with whatever creature I could get off of The Hive Queen's effect.  Unfortunately, The Hive Queen showed me two copies of Reap and Sow and a Root Trap, so I couldn't win that turn.  He played Lyra to tap my Steamtank, then ran it over with Herald to drop Andromeda, so I lost.  I can't really complain about the Herald/Lyra combo since I gave him a bunch of cards, but not getting any creatures off of The Hive Queen's effect when about half of the remaining cards in my deck were Level 5 or lower non-Skirmisher creatures was pretty irritating.
-Duel 2: He had the same opening progression as last time, except that I didn't have any removal spells.  After that, he ended up playing three more Fire Birds so that his Dragons would cost almost nothing.  I was able to get him down to two shields using The Hive Queen, and I set myself up to win on the following turn by leaving out an Ambush Scorpion.  He played General Skycrusher to kill it, though, and that let his Moorna, Gatling Dragon, run over The Hive Queen.  I couldn't come back from that, so I lost.

XX

My friend won his third round match, so we both ended up going 1-2, which was sad.  At least we both got promo cards, so I got one each of Saracon and Grybolos.  I now have six copies of Saracon and four copies of Grybolos, because I'll obviously need all of them in the future... I also pulled a Spelljacker out of my entry pack, so that was nice.  I still need a third The Hive Queen, though.

Before I left, I ended up doing a deck profile video for Eman of TCGWise.  It was uploaded while I was typing up this blog post, so that was convenient.  It shows the version of the deck I took to the KMC last weekend as well as the changes I made to the deck for this weekend.

Based on these results, I'm still going to have to fix the deck.  I'm not exactly sure of what to do, though.  I could take out some of the cards that are meant for the Aggro/Rush match-ups in order to made the deck better against Control, but it just feels as though regardless of any changes, I'd still lose to a Herald/Lyra combo, or something similar.

Herald of Infernus is just so strong against Aggro decks.  There is a way around it, but that way involves playing a Control deck or having Death Smoke/Tornado Flame turn 5... Rusalka, Aqua Chaser is alright, but that's such an impermanent solution.  I don't even know if I'm going to run Megabugs next weekend, because I can't seem to think of any ways to fix the deck.  Maybe I'll try to figure out a different Aggro deck.  I suppose we'll see what happens...

12 comments:

  1. Tetsu lost to Kamui too when he wore the mysterious mask. That time, he uses death anchor. So technically, he lost twice.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Don't be silly. Joker X used Death Anchor and lost to Kamui, not Tetsu. I'm sure you would realize this after examining the picture of Tetsu on this post more closely; he's clearly NOT Joker X...

      Delete
    2. Right...I'm sure Kyou can tell you his true identity since X unmasks himself infront of him.

      Anyway, I rather you concentrate on kaijudo instead of playing team tournament again. I got scrubbed badly because my team got grade stuck. This game really piss me off. Nothing like a grade stuck to hit you in a nail during the battle.







      Delete
    3. It's not like the Vanguard team tournament will take any effort. We don't even have to prepare for it; we could just go with whatever decks we have and hope we don't get sacked.

      Delete
    4. "he's clearly NOT Joker X..."

      Is that a sarcasm?

      because it cant be more obvious who Joker X is

      srsly

      Delete
    5. Technically, it could be more obvious, like if he weren't wearing a mask.

      Delete
  2. Wow, Simon He is got cheating in yugioh!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So I've heard. It's honestly not surprising, since Yu-Gi-Oh is no longer a game where you can do well consistently based on skill alone.

      Delete
  3. What do you think of this? LOL!

    http://forum.v-mundi.com/index.php?/topic/92-i-got-punched-by-a-vanguard-player/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It confirms my belief that most Vanguard players are stupid. That is all.

      Delete
  4. So there is no counter against Herald/Lyra combo?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, there are counters against the Herald/Lyra combo, but most of them are inaccessible to non-Control decks.

      There's Death Smoke and Tornado Flame to kill the Herald, though Death Smoke isn't usually played outside of Control decks and Tornado Flame isn't really played at all. As I mentioned, Rusalka is also an impermanent counter to the combo because you can bounce Herald and stall by a turn, but unless you can answer the Herald on the following turn or just outright win the game by then, it doesn't really do much.

      The most common counter to the Herald/Lyra combo is to not play any creatures on the first few turns, unless that creature's name is Sword Horned. Aggro and Rush decks cannot afford to do this, so they have to play one of the aforementioned counters.

      That's why I've been playing Tornado Flame in my Megabugs. But, that's incredibly unreliable, since if the opponent plays Herald by turn 5, even without Lyra, and the Aggro player doesn't draw a counter to it, they basically lose. They usually can't afford to wait until the Herald won't matter by winning in one turn, not to mention that the longer they wait, the more time the opponent has to draw something like Lyra, Stormspark Blast, or Piercing Judgment.

      That's why even though Herald doesn't do much against Control decks, Dragon-based decks still play two or three. It's just so strong against aggressive decks.

      Delete

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