Saturday, April 7, 2012

Locals Report 4-7-12; Uncle's Games (Downtown)

Well my plan for today's tourney was to use Heroes just so I could compare my performance with it against my performance with Inzektors. Danny and I agree to meet at his place after he got off work at 12:30 so we could go down together. He pulls in around 12:45 and we're off to Uncle's. Get there right around 1 I think and miraculously there are a few parking spots right out front. The meter unfortunately has an hour and a half limit so I'm pretty much gonna have to feed it after each round. Get there, and it's pretty much Ian, Shiggs, and a few other people I've never seen before. Make a few trades, shift over my Dualities and Warnings from my Inzektors to Heroes and tweak the Side and Extra a bit, then Danny and I test a game of his Inzektors vs my Heroes. He OTKs like second turn and I just watch because I've come to realize I don't actually know "the" OTK with the deck, at least the one that can do 10000+ damage. Shiggs bought a box of PHSW from the store and only pulled 2 Supers, an Ultra, and an Ulti. At first I thought he bought a sealed box and thought that was pretty strange, but turns out it was re-packed by the store. One can easily see what happened in that scenario - simple rule, don't buy unsealed boxes.

Anyways Ian comes over to us and makes some quip about how we "started the tournament already" since we're paired against each other first round. We make our remarks back like "ohh what is this, Lightning Comics (where the best always get paired against each other first round) ?" Then I say to Ian like "so who're you playing, the worst person here?" and we just laugh. I've always thought done-by-hand pairings were sketchy as fuck. Attendance is 8, pretty standard for downtown Uncle's. I'm fine with this since all I wanted was to play with Heroes outside of DN.

Round 1 vs Danny (Dino-Rabbit)
I always wanted to see how Heroes did against Rabbit so I was looking forward to the match. Also my first time playing Heroes in real life even though I've wanted to for years now lol.
Game 1 - He makes a Laggia which I get rid of via D-Prison + Skill Drain. From there on I poke with Alius for a few turns then add a Barbaros into the mix and eventually take game.
Game 2 - I sided in Super Polys and Smashing Grounds and whatnot but I never draw Super Poly. Don't remember how this game goes but I pretty much retain control for the majority of it I think. A Shining and Alius take it.
OO
Record: 1-0

Danny says he should just drop at this point I'm like might as well play for the practice/testing aspect of it, even though the only other good person to play was Shiggs with his usual Sams.

Throughout the tourney this kid (who Danny has nicknamed "Dashboard") asks me if I'd trade him stuff, I'm like sure, but he doesn't have any cards or cash. The first trade we did I got 60 new sleeves from him, which I'll use for regs next weekend. After that, I'm just like "what am I supposed to do if you don't have any cards or cash?" He wants me to build him a Ninja deck for $50 (since he'll get money for his birthday next week), and "try it out" before he actually buys it. In my mind I'm just thinking like "even if you had a tier 1 deck you'd still do bad, so what's the point of me spending time to build a $50 Ninja deck (which is obviously going to do poorly by default), have you do bad with it, and then not buy it cuz it "won't be good enough"?" And he said no Dinos in it, which is the only variant of Ninjas I know of :/ I guess I'll try and come up with something cuz $50 is $50. He looks through my binder again later in the day and is like "can you build me Machina?" I'm like sure, I can pretty much make anything, it just completely depends on how much you're wanting to spend. Difficult people are difficult.

Round 2 vs Jordan (Anti-Meta Chaos?)
Never seen this guy before but he seemed cool. I had no clue what he was playing but figured there's nothin I can do about that, just shuffle up and play.
Game 1 - I open Stratos, which he Veilers. I'm like crap. He T-sets, I attack, and it's a Fossil Dyna of all things. I'm like "...oh, k?" Figured it was going to be a Sangan or Snowman or something lol. From there on I Gemini Spark twice for pluses and toward the end it's like his 3 cards to my 10 or so. He Solemns my Miracle Fusion but I just play another one and swing for game.
Game 2 - Open pretty poopy where Snowman is my only monster for most of the game and lose from his BLS.
Game 3 - Opened like double Alius and Rota with some other stuff, thought I'd lose this game because of it but all we did was one-for-one our summons and whatnot with Torrentials, Mirror Force, suicides, etc. I win cuz I stop his crucial plays later on.
OXO
Record: 2-0

Round 3 vs Shiggs (Samurai)
As usual, afraid to go into this, but especially with Heroes because I think it's a bad match-up.
Game 1 - I win the di roll but don't have a good opening, he does his usual setup for Shi En, Grandmaster plus some dude and I can't do much after that.
Game 2 - He doesn't open nutty and I maintain control. Don't remember this game beyond that lol. I really need to write more notes so I can talk a little bit more about the games I suppose.
Game 3 - Bad hand, and a combination of misplays, him starting with United and double Dojo, and not fully realizing how Shi En works cost me this one. The deck also inherent Special Summons way too much to correctly get the most use out of Maxx C's - to the point that I don't even like it in this match-up anymore. That and Shiggs has gotten much better with the deck all-around. Stick with a deck and that tends to happen :)
XOX
Record: 2-1

So Shiggs is the only undefeated and they never do top cutoff here. They don't even have ORCS so we get PHSW and GENF packs, which we all pull jack shit out of. Danny pulls a Piercing Moray and gives it to Dashboard. Oh ya, he got this nickname because Danny stomped him in round 2 and he dropped from the tourney right there lol. He ran X-Sabers and Danny just negated everything with Dolkka. Dashboard asks me how much it's worth, and there are 2 pennies lying in front of Shiggs on the table, I point to them, and say "about that much" and Jordan laughs. Earlier Dashboard asked me how much X-Saber Wayne was worth, I'm like "uhh, a quarter?" He gives me this confused/demoralized look and I say that it's just bad and Danny outwardly agrees with me just to get it through the kid's head. I never try to be a douche about these kinds of things but I can't just say like "oh ya, it's pretty decent." No use blowing smoke up peoples' asses especially if they're trying to get better at the game. At this point in my dueling "career" I don't mind helping those that are looking for help and will genuinely listen to advice. Tourney was short and sweet, which I'm thankful for cuz the parking meter was eating all my quarters like a little kid does Halloween candy.

Decklist:
Joe Giorlando's, -1 Dark Bribe for an Honest. Only difference in main.
I think Honest helped me in 2 pivotal spots in my games. Never played Bribe, Road, or Super Poly in any games. Hero Blast was good but was dead in one game where I couldn't dig into Alius. Only card from the Extra I went into was Shining.

My original theories about the deck seemed correct, in that it's pretty good against the popular meta but not so much against a deck that can go nutty like DW or Sams. It's real hard for Heroes to break up an established Shi-En+Grandmaster+another Sam+backrow set up, not only because of Shi-En's effect, but just cuz of the natural 1900 cap the deck has. Likewise a recursible 2700/3000 beater is gonna be tough. Inzektors on the other hand can pretty easily play out of the Sam field with a Dragonfly+Hornet, but the cards people have in their side for that deck hurt a lot more than what someone may have for a deck like Heroes. It feels like that's where the format is at right now, a huge "rock-paper-scissors" scenario and how well you do is dependent on how many "papers" you play if you're playing "scissors" and just hope that you don't get matched up against "rock". I think DW has good match-ups across the board right now, unfortunately their worst match-up is themselves, in that if they open just absolute shit or don't draw into their "turbo-ness", the deck can't do anything and loses. Many of the pros have said if DW just goes off there's not much that can be done, however the unreliability of always being able to go off is the deck's biggest hindrance at the moment I believe.

As for regionals, still pretty torn about which deck to play. I can totally imagine the first 2 or 3 rounds being random stuff like Chaos Dragons, or decks that can churn out recursible 2500+ monsters in general while I have a hand of 1900's and lose because of it. At the same time everyone's gonna have Shadow-Mirrors and those trap-based sideboard cards for Inzektors, and I don't want my games dependent on if I draw Decree or not, or just get blown up by a resolved Deck Dev. Deciding which cards should be in the main and side is pretty difficult as well since who knows what the hell will be played in Portland. A lot to think about and time is running out :( I think I pretty much need to make a decision after Monday's tourney and just play the hell out of whatever I choose between then and regionals, and commit side for my bad match-ups. That's about all you can do I suppose.

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