Subtitle: Serving Myself a Piece of Humble Pie/Reality Bitch-Slap
I apologize for the lack of posts the past week; as expected and talked about before, it's been simply a combination of being busy with schoolwork, work, shopping, holidays, and house stuff. I've been playing a lot more on DN though!
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So my morning starts around 7am since I have to take my car in to put studded snow tires on it. I get there around 8:15 and I finally get done around 9:30. Christ, sure took long enough to put 4 tires on. Between the time I get home and leave for Lightning, I eat some leftover Thanksgiving stuff, watch yesterday's episode of Thundercats (don't hate), and get one game in on DN. Played against a Fortune Lady deck that couldn't get much of anything going lol.
So I leave around 11:15 and get to Lightning at noon. There are a lot of people there, I pay my entry and they give me a raffle ticket. Apparently they're doing a raffle for some reason, giving away random comic books, action figures, and miscellaneous product. I test with Jeff and his wife, my Karakuri versus his Karakuri, and Karakuri vs Gravekeeper, respectively. Against his wife, it was pretty much whoever went first won the game. Or unless I got Royal Tributed for 3+ cards. Games against Jeff were pretty much one-sided (in my favor, obv come on now lol). I explained to both of them that I wasn't running Karakuri today and I was running "something else". Epler is surprisingly there and he's hella skinny so I was like "damn did you lose weight?" He explained he lost about 50 pounds. I need to do the same *sigh*.
Jeff ended up trading his Tour Guide he pulled a few weeks back for Big Mike's 3 Cyber Dragon, a Chimeratech, Decisive Armor, and a few other low-end miscellaneous cards. I was sooo jelly/upset since I didn't have an opportunity to grab my stuff from Danny's cuz I know I easily could've gotten it if I had my stuff. Oh well, I guess that's the price I have to pay for having a wife that controls my every action of every possible moment. Jeff then switched up his Karakuri deck a lot, incorporating Cyber Dragons, Instant Fusion+Cybersaurus, and gradually moving away from all the Karakuri-specific cards. He was like "How many Haipa/Cash Cache/Anatomy do you run?" I'm like "...none" and explained why I didn't like those cards. Throughout the day he commented that his deck felt much faster, maintained advantage a lot better, and was more consistent overall.
So the raffle starts, and everyone is basically eye'ing the Batman Arkham Aslyum figurine, I must admit that's the one thing I wanted. Everything else was just random crap for the most part. I ended up winning a signed Venom comic book, but left it at the store when I left; didn't really give a rat's ass about it to be honest. This little derka kid won the Batman figure.
So finally around 1:45 the tourney starts and there's a decent turnout at 15 people. I get a bye, and am like "well that's cool", but 3 other players' opponents just randomly left, so we all end up getting paired against each other.
Note: I'm not gonna go into too many specifics for games cuz I did about as bad as one can possibly do. I'll explain at the end.
Round 1 vs Colin (Offering Gadget)
I end up taking this to 3 games, at the end of game 3 he was at 2500 and I had a Magic Cylinder and Secret Barrel face down with him having a Lava Golem, a Utopia, and a T-king I believe. I had enough life to take the T-King hit. He attacks with Lava Golem so I Cylinder, and he Solemns it, so I lose.
Fortunately on the pairings I get marked as a win since I technically received the bye at first, so Colin and I get marked as having wins. Cool.
Round 2 vs Sjan (GB)
I get him down to around the 1000 mark game 1 but his Chariots just stop my Faders/Scarecrows and Lava Golem never ends up sticking on the field for more than a turn due to some removal. Game 2 I drew pretty bad and Gyzarus wrecked my Morphing Jar play.
Round 3 vs Epler (Rescue Chaos Dragons)
So Epler's playing this really strange Rabbit/Chaos/Dragon/Normal deck and has 3 copies of Saggi the Dark Clown because he doesn't have Hunter Dragons. He's also running maindeck Royal Decree, which I said was pretty much game over for me (he knew what I was playing from watching and vice versa). Game 1 I get him fairly low (around 2000 I think) but Decree just stops all my best plays. Game 2 I side into Agents but again he's got Decree with fat Dragons out and I can't draw MST, Heavy, or Hyperion to get rid of it.
Round 4 vs Eric (Anti-Meta/Stun?)
He's literally running Jinzo and Dark Bribe. Jinzo is basically just as good as Decree against Chain Burn, except I have the opportunity to tribute it via Lava Golem. Bribe wrecks my combos since it stops my chain shenanigans. I think I resolved Accumulated Fortune once. Game 1 I get him pretty low but his Caius' always end up removing my Magic Cylinder/Dimension Walls which would've been game. Game 2 I literally get him down to 100 LP but end up topping an Ojama Trio (when he had 3 monsters out already) and then a Chain Strike. He's not dumb enough to activate anything and just attacks for the win. My next card was Just Desserts *rage*.
Being 1-3, I drop and test against Kim, my Karakuri vs his Six Sam. He's all like "well Jeff can't beat this deck with his", but I pretty much dominated the 2 or 3 games we played lol. My wife is blowing my phone up so I'm just like "screw this", buy Kim's 2 Ultra Veilers off him, and pack up my stuff and leave. I tell her and repeatedly asked her throughout the day to just text me (so I can get back to her at my leisure), so of course she literally calls my phone 5 times right in a row. When I get a phone call from her, I gotta drop everything that I'm doing at the moment, pack everything up, and stand outside in the cold to go talk to her cuz I can't hear her otherwise. So annoying. Yea, you can say "but what if it's an emergency?" No. It's never a god damn emergency. It's always "I can't find my [insert random girly item here], where is it/where'd you put it?" I don't freakin' know, I don't put your high heels, clothes, cell phone, Macy's gift card, or glasses god damn anywhere - it's cuz you're too damn messy to find your own crap! /end rant
So I came to the realization that playing an "anti-meta" deck like Chain Burn only really works when your local actually runs "the meta". In testing against the "meta" decks like Plants and Agents, the deck's done exceptionally well both on my end and Mikey's. We both think that Chain Burn is "the" anti-meta deck because there are so many cards that the meta decks run that don't affect burn, and the game has gotten to the point where most players don't have any cards to deal with something like burn anyway via sideboard besides the 3rd MST and maybe a Dust that they had for DW/GK/backrow decks in the first place. I don't think random X deck that uses 2-3 Fossil Dyna and 2-3 D-Fissure is enough to truly be called "anti-meta", but I know it is by the majority. I like the deck against today's popular decks, however when all you do is go against rogue-ish decks or "random wtf" cards like maindeck Decree, Jinzo, and Bribe, it's pretty freakin' hard to win with something like Chain Burn. I don't know why I didn't think of this "derp" knowledge earlier, but I guess sometimes you just need to get slapped by reality lol. Or I gave my locals too much credit. It would've been nice to win a decent sized tournament like today, it also feels weird not writing an undefeated tourney report lol.
I believe I will be playing Karakuri for the rest of the format, unless I get frustrated with it and switch back to Agents. I've sold my Tengus and the Bulb so Plants aren't a possibility, but it's also not an option I'd want to pursue because I just have that gut feeling that the Bulb reprint is gonna happen sooner than later. My test games with Karakuri have gone really great as well so I feel pretty confident about sticking with it. Playing the best is very important to me, but so is my money. I'm pretty proud that I can say I've never really/seldom gotten completely screwed by banlists/reprints, compared to some people that either hoard and/or just refuse to sell cards off at the right time. Unfortunately I have to drop Chain Burn simply because my locals is jank. I'm honestly not scared of an extra MST and Heavy Storm, it's just the random crap that cripples the deck so much more. It seems like that's just the way it is sometimes; decks can be built to beat the top decks, but lose to the random crap that you can see at small locals. At least it wasn't expensive or anything!
Come January I believe I will be selling my set of Tour Guides. I really don't want to get screwed by the banlist or any upcoming product releases/reprints. They won't hit Guide but if they decide to ban Sangan, I'd expect it to go down to around $80. If Sangan were banned, in a scenario not involving Broww or Pot of Avarice, you'd only get 1 optimal use out of 3 Tour Guides; Guide for Guide, and the last one does nothing. Kevin Tewart on Pojo also mentioned that we could expect to see some upcoming product info in the next few weeks, which inevitably means reprints. Undoubtedly Gold 5 will come out this summer, and what better headliner card for it other than Tour Guide? That shit would sell like hotcakes if they end up leaving Sangan alone. If the only good card that was in Gold 5 was Tour Guide, it would still sell crazy amounts. EXVC also becomes 1 year old in May, and I think Gold Series always come out around June/July. You know the 1-year rule. Timing just seems too perfect.
Decklist for the main is the same as the version Dale Bellido ran the last regional of last format, but here it is for reference. Side was inspired by the guy who topped Seattle regional with it (sb24stk or something like that?):
13
3 Lava Golem
3 Scarecrow guy
3 Maxx C
2 Battle Fader
1 Morphing Jar
1 Gorz
7
3 Duality
2 Chain Strike
1 Thunder Short
1 Scapegoat
20
2 Cylinder
3 Dimension Wall
2 Ojama Trio
3 Just Desserts
3 Accumulated Fortune
3 Reckless Greed
1 Ceasefire
3 Secret Barrel
Side
2 Hyperion
2 Venus
3 Earth
2 Ball
2 MST
1 Heavy
1 Hole
1 Reborn
1 Mind Control
Extra
Stuff you'd play in a standard Agent list
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