Saturday Locals Recap; Lightning Comics

I'm straying from the usual naming convention this time since there was no actual tournament today.

My day starts off with me having to run a bunch of errands but after that I fill up with gas and head out to Lightning. I leave a little bit earlier just so I can try and get some trading/testing in. I show up, and the place is absolutely packed with Magic players. I talked to Nate last night about how I thought it'd be a small YGO tourney since that's what happened last time there was a Magic Pre-Release/Release (I never know which one it actually is, so just gonna call them Sneaks from now on). There were apparently 54 people that entered to play the Sneak..that is beyond anything I've seen in the time that I was playing Magic. I asked Big Mike if we'd get to do a tourney or anything and he said he wasn't sure so I traded with a few people and just sat around.

Nate and Donut come in and surprise me, and I buy Nate's Hornet+2x Dragonfly for $20. I've been perusing the Agent thread on DGz and seems like Inzektor-Agents are getting some pretty good hype, so thought I'd try it out as well. I ordered 2 Hornets last night so they should be in for Regionals if I want to go that route. Anyways Donut and I playtest a bit w/ siding. Turns out that because there are so many Magic players, there won't be a Yugz tourney and we'd also have to give up our seats. Again, first time I've ever heard/seen this kinda thing before - it almost made me just want to sign up for it lol, I should still be good enough at Limited/Sealed to do OK.

So the Magic players are finally ready to start their event and we all pack our bags to gtfo. I notice all the YGO players standing around the center island thing the store has, basically a 4-sided display thing of comics. So I stand with them and I jokingly ask Mike "so why can't we just play on this thing and have like a standing tourney?" Then he takes it up a notch and starts talking about doing a Battle Royale, I was like "like Battle City? We can just walk around and play each other." lol. Anyways he describes his idea to everyone and surprisingly enough people are interested in it so everyone gets out their mat and puts it on top of the glass shelf/display. Basically there was room for 10 people to play and it's every man for himself and everyone plays against each other, with everyone starting at 14000 LP. Cards like Dark Hole and Heavy were MVP since those hit all players lol. Oh shenanigans.

Since not everyone could play, Mike decided to do 2 rounds, with top 3 from the first round playing against/with the top 3 from the second. First round players were: Me (TGU Agent), Nate (Inzektor Agent), Donut (Karakuri), Random Gadget/Level3-Normal guy, Zach (not Team O, ls), Eric (Random Macro), Ross (Evolsars), Some guy I never seen before (Dino Rabbit), Melissa (Naturia/Tengu Plant hybrid?), and Jeff (DW).

The first guy that got knocked out was the guy playing Dino Rabbit. I don't remember how it happened, but everyone saw his hand of like Tour Guide and Rabbit and decided to gank on him lol. Was kinda surprised to see someone that's not on Team O with Guides. I can't even describe all the plays in this "battle royale" because it was so incredibly long. I think we hit the 2 hour mark by the end. At first I formed an alliance with Jeff and Melissa, making sure Jeff would have his Grapha to be able to use. For some reason his Grapha was the whore of the match because it seemed like everyone had Reborn'ed it lol. Melissa helped me keep my Hyperions alive against Ross who had this Dino XYZ that destroyed Special summoned monsters and crap. At the end it was Me, Nate, Donut, Gadget guy, and Melissa left. I cleared Gadget guy's Gravity Bind so that Nate could swing on him next turn to knock him out. At this point I had to turn-coat on Melissa since Nate's my teammate after all and I wasn't gonna attack Donut lol. I felt bad since she had helped me through the whole match, what a dick move! This all kinda reminded me of Survivor with alliances and back-stabbing and stuff, it was actually a lot of fun and there wasn't a person that played that wasn't smiling like the whole time.

So afterwards I go call Danny and tell him there wasn't even a tourney, and I was thinking of dropping from the Battle Royale thing cuz the next round was probably gonna take another 2 hours, and then there'd be the final round. I have way too much homework to be wasting my time on this crap, if I'm gonna spend my time might as well do some actual testing. So I go tell Mike that I want to drop and ask him if I could give Melissa my spot in the top 3 since she finished 4th. He says yes so in the end I did the right thing lol.

I get to Danny's and watch him and his team dominate on MW3 then we playtest like 10 games with sides. After seeing Tour Bus in action in Dino Rabbit, that shit's pretty good. It helped a lot in re-using Dinos for Rabbit. We also talked about ARG's article site and how good it was. Doomcal is getting better as the format progresses, check Frazier's article for more info/background.

Everyone's looking forward to Regionals, Danny decided he needs the 3rd Guide after all so he gave me some stuff to sell off so he can buy one. Hopefully if I order one it'll be here by the regional..not sure if it'll happen though :/

Lots of homework so I may not be able to play on Monday :( Sucks driving out all the way to Lightning just to get swarmed out by the Magic players lol.