Tournament Report 8/3/13 & 8/4/13

I went to locals as usual this weekend.

My friend who plays Vanguard, the fourth Snogal, and I showed up at the usual card shop for their morning Vanguard tournament.  There were about 9 other players, all of whom were bad.  My friend was using his Shadow Paladin deck, the fourth Snogal was using his Ezel Gold Paladin deck, and I was using my Arboros Dragon Neo Nectar deck.

In the first round, I played against a The End Kagero player, and he had no idea of what he was doing at all.  Like, he attacked my rear-guard Glass Beads Dragon with his Vanguard The End, checked a Critical Trigger and a Draw Trigger, and gave the Critical to The End and all of the power to his rear-guard.  I put my Glass Beads Dragon in the drop zone, and he just sat there waiting for me to take two damage.  He didn't even have another copy of The End to use the Persona Blast.  But yeah, he was really bad, so I just beat him up with 21k columns once he finally decided to attack my Vanguard.  It's not that he was afraid of the Limit Break, since he didn't even know what Sephirot did; he just liked attacking my rear-guards with his Vanguard for some reason.

In the second round, I was paired against the fourth Snogal, and I gave him the win because he had better tie-breakers than me.  After that round, there ended up being three undefeated players left: the fourth Snogal, my friend, and a little kid.  I got paired up against the little kid, who was using Royal Paladins.  He rode Majesty Lord Blaster and called Star-call Trumpeter, but didn't use its effect.  He didn't have the Blasters to put into the soul, so I just beat him up with 20k columns to win.

My friend had worse tie-breakers than the fourth Snogal, so the fourth Snogal gave my friend the win.  The fourth Snogal ended up getting 2nd place, and I got 3rd, so since my friend got 1st, we got all of the spots in the Top 3 and all of the prizes, which were 12 packs, excluding entry packs.  We pulled a Battle Sister, Cookie and a Chrome Jailer Dragon, but that's about it.

Between tournaments, we mainly played a fun format of Vanguard that my friend and I made up: the Snogal Format.  In that format, all cards are treated as being from the same clan, so all clan-based effects work the way they're supposed to.  However, you can only play one of each card, meaning that a deck would be composed of 50 different cards.  There's also a limit of 4 Grade 1 8k vanillas and perfect guards are banned.

It makes the game a lot more interesting.  Building a deck is actually difficult, since there are so many different good cards to choose from, and you have to consider interactions between cards of different clans.  For instance, High Dog Breeder, Akane can superior call any High Beast, including stuff like Silver Wolf, Dark Metal Bicorn, Geograph Giant, and Luck Bird.  There also interactions like those between Deadly Spirit and Winged Dragon, Skyptero.  Not to mention all of the different options you have for triggers.  Of course, you would use Lozenge Magus and Sunny Smile Angel, since those are the only Heal Triggers with practical effects (if you decide not to play 16 Critical Triggers, that is), but for the rest of the triggers, you can use any combination that you want.

But yeah, it's a really interesting format.  Ironically, both my friend and I came up with similarly-themed decks.  But, I'm going to try and figure out another possible Snogal Format deck if I have the time.

After all of that interesting Vanguard, we went to the other card shop for the usual boring Vanguard at the evening tournament.  There were actually 20 other players there, all of whom were still bad, but there were a lot more than usual.  I realized that it was because of the Welcome Campaign.  However, that card shop doesn't even give out the free stuff.  They raffled off two of the deck boxes and a few promo packs, then kept the rest, since they're really cheap and greedy and stuff.

Either way, the prize for 1st place would be a box of Set 6, so that was nice.  We used the same decks as before, except for the fourth Snogal, who decided to use my Dark Irregulars deck after seeing at least four other people using Ezel Gold Paladin decks.

Round 1: vs Narukami (Vermillion)

This was my Top 4 opponent from this evening Vanguard tournament.  He assumed that he would lose because he had to play against me again.  I won the first game pretty easily despite missing the ride chain, then I got gradestuck on Grade 2 in the second game.  I missed the ride chain entirely, riding Caramel Popcorn, moving Ratoon to the front and calling another Caramel Popcorn behind it.  I was able to keep getting triggers and killing his rear-guards so that I could stay in the game, and he exhausted a lot of his cards in an attempt to prevent my Vanguard Glass Beads Dragon from hitting his rear-guard Dusty Plasma Dragon, so once I finally got my Sephirot, I was able to win through use of the Limit Break.  He complained constantly that I guarded his Grade 2 Vanguard for no pass when he attacked without a booster and he checked a Critical Trigger.  "If only that Crit made it through..."  He also complained about getting beat up by a Grade 0.  That Ratoon put in a lot of work, though it didn't survive through the entire game.

OO

Round 2: vs Narukami

I was playing against a new player with a modified Trail Deck.  He didn't use Plasmabite Dragon's effect wastefully, though, so that showed that he was at least somewhat competent.  I just made 20k columns with the Limit Break to win.

OO

Round 3: vs Neo Nectar (Arboros Dragon)

This was my Round 2 opponent from this evening Vanguard tournament.  He was using his cousin's Arboros Dragon deck or something.  Anyway, he got the ride chain in the first game, and I got gradestuck, so I lost.  I got my ride chain in the second game and he didn't, so I won.  And he got his ride chain in the third game and I didn't, so I lost.

XOX

With that, they cut to Top 8.  My friend was undefeated and was ranked 2nd place.  The fourth Snogal was 2-1 and got 12th place, unfortunately.  I was 2-1 and got 7th place, meaning that I would have to play against my friend.  He decided to give me the win, since I had a better chance against the rest of the Top 8.

I had to play against the winner of the match between 3rd and 6th, which was an Ezel Gold Paladin player.  He had beaten a Machining Megacolony deck, sadly.

Top 4: vs Gold Paladin (Ezel)

This was my Round 1 opponent from this evening Vanguard tournament.  I got gradestuck for a turn on Grade 1 and missed my ride chain in the first game, but he got gradestuck for three turns, so it didn't matter.  I got my ride chain in the second game, so I won.

OO

The match between the 4th and 5th place players was between Ezel Gold Paladin and a little kid with a modified Aqua Force Trail deck (I don't even know how he got 4th place after Swiss...).  The Gold Paladin player won, of course.  He ended up playing against the 8th place player, who had beaten my Round 3 opponent in his Top 8 match using The End Kagero.  The Gold Paladin player was really bad, so if he were to win, my friends said that I should just play for it and win the box.  However, if the Kagero player were to win, they were okay with accepting a split.  Well, the Kagero player won, so we split the box with him.

So, we got 15 packs of Set 6, pulling a Desert Gunner, Shiden; Battle Cupid, Nociel; Cosmo Healer, Ergodiel; and Pure Keeper, Requiel.  Not bad, I suppose.

On the following day, my friend, Aki, and I were able to make it to the Kaijudo tournament.  There were a total of 5 players there, which was because of the Kaijudo Championship occurring on the same day (today...).  The other two players were Riku and Fwazalaza, so it was a pretty relaxed tournament.

My friend was using his DFN Aggro deck, Aki was using his LWF Dragon Aggro deck, Riku was using a DFN Aggro deck, and I was using my LFN Megabug deck.

Round 1: vs LWDN Control

I was playing against Fwazalaza.

-Duel 1: I attacked with Manapod Beetle on turn 4, hitting Bottle of Wishes, which got him Andromeda of the Citadel.  If I were impatient, I probably would have scooped.  However, I continued playing long enough to see that he had three more Shield Blasts down, which meant that I was doomed from the start.
-Duel 2: He was able to ramp with Reap and Sow to play Andromeda on turn 8.  That, along with another Andromeda and a total of 6 Shield Blasts in his 9 shields meant that I couldn't win.

XX

After that, I ended up getting a bye.  Aki beat Riku in the first round, so Aki and Fwazalaza were paired against each other in the second round.  Riku was paired up against my friend who plays Vanguard and won, meaning that that was the final round.  Aki ended up beating Fwazalaza in the finals to get 1st place.  I recorded the match, so that will go up on my YouTube channel later this week.

So, since there were only 5 people, everyone got a holo Sprout, and Aki got another one because he got 1st place.  That brings our holo Sprout total to 8.  Because Sprout is such a good card, right?  To be honest, it's nice that most of the promo cards aren't that great, so that they wouldn't be very expensive, and it wouldn't even matter if you missed out on getting them.

Anyways, Aki got 3 packs for winning.  Riku and Fwazalaza tied for 2nd place and each got one additional pack.  All Aki pulled was a King Poseidon, which was sad.  We didn't pull any other holos.

So that's about it.  I'll probably be able to attend locals both days next weekend, so yeah.