Random topics - product updates, DN reflection, ARG article contest

So I'm kind of late to the party openly talking about this, even though I noticed the announcements pretty much when they came out for ORCS SE, the 2012 Premium Collection tin, and Ra Yellow pack. I'm not too concerned about Ra Yellow in terms of reprints, but it's anyone's guess what the promos for ORCS SE could be, and what all is gonna be in the 2012 tin. They are both slated for a March release, which just conveniently happens to be when our next ban list will be out. I don't think Konami would go overboard and release Tour Guide in either of these products. If the reprint happens this year at all, I'm really thinking it'll be Gold 5 or the 2012 tins we'd get later on in the year (like the Duality and Warning tins of this year). There hasn't been an announcement of the next Turbo Pack (at least I don't think) yet either so that's something to consider when it comes to the reprint game. I think the hot cards from STBL and STOR have a much higher chance of getting reprinted earlier in the year than Guide since those are both older sets and have their expensive/sought-after cards as well, namely Bulb and Maxx C. Troll&Toad is currently buying 1st ed Maxx C's at $50 and Bulb at $35. I think Maxx C is too good not to run right now so I won't be selling mine off quite yet, but like I mentioned way back I sold my Bulb already.

So Alter Reality Games is doing an Article/Writing contest and giving out some pretty good prizes for the top 8 articles. First place gets a 360 or $250 in store credit. I'm thinking about writing an article for it, and the gears in my brain are turning, trying to come up with an interesting topic that I could write a decent amount about, but also something that people would "want to" read. Obviously a whole article about how Konami sucks and YuGiOh is doomed isn't gonna win any votes from the casual population, so you gotta cater toward the audience if you know what I mean. If you'd like to check the details of the contest, here's the link: http://articles.alterealitygames.com/?p=7134

Yesterday I watched a very good Youtube video from Evan "Sandtrap" Vargas, Mr. Soul Control himself. He uses a very funny (albeit kind of drawn out) story to get his point across, talking about a rich man with his massive sword collection (including dildo swords), and raging violent hobos. His final point was to get people to critically look at and be able to realize where exactly in a game they messed up at, which caused their loss. He talks about how people tend to blame things like top-deck'd BLS's on their losses, and I admit that I do that as well, but he reminds us to think back on the whole game, and think about that critical move that we could've perhaps done differently to lead to a different outcome. Like I said his story seems to go on and on, and you'll most likely be tempted to close the thing out (I was at one point), but I'd really recommend watching the video which can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheSandTrap#p/a/u/0/AT228eHXqAE

So Zach won Monday's BGN tourney with Karakuri. I was surprised to hear the news since he'd been playing TG Agent all this time, and it was his first time running the deck at all. I guess Danny and him built it up and Danny showed him some of the moves of the deck. This was music to my ears since I had been pushing Karakuri, saying it was the best non-Tour Guide deck for about a month now. Even when Zach and I spoke about what he should play back for the PHSW Sneak, I was like "dude you should try Karakuri." I've been a pretty open fanboy about it locally so it's cool that someone else decided to try it out and see that they could win out with it. I still haven't had a chance to play it in locals but it's pretty much all I run on DN. The deck's actually gotten kind of auto-pilot for me, almost to the point that I'd say I've gotten kind of bored with it, but there's always that thrill of playing it in real life for the first time. I'll run it this weekend. Currently I'm stuck on a few aspects of the deck in terms of build: 2 or 3 Cyber Dragon mained, 2 or 3 Duality, how many Smashing to run main if any, main T-King or not, 2 or 3 Genex Neutron, 2 or 3 MST mained, 2 or 3 Kuick, trap line-up in general.

Speaking of DN, I had a good match against a Karakuri Machina player last night that I had the opportunity to beat for several turns, but due to my own laziness scooped it up after he double Machina Fortress'd after he Mind Control'd my T-King. This wasn't even game either, but I got too hasty and forgot that he couldn't attack with my T-King, so I wouldn't have lost that turn and next turn I would've beat him with my in-hand Cyber Dragon and going for Chimera. The key flaw of this game was that I had failed to notice that Chimeratech's boost only affects his ATK, and not his DEF as well. My opponent had a 3000 Chimera and I had Komachi and a 4-star Karakuri in hand (along with other cards), but I was like "well I can't run it over with Burei, and if I Black Rose I'd be losing out in advantage by a lot" so I just kinda stalled out with a Zenmaines. Had I bothered to read the card in its entirety, I would've simply gone into Burei + Kuick, and swung for plus's. I also didn't know that Chimeratech says that it can't be used as a Fusion material. I think our locals have been playing it wrong ever since the card was released, because everyone always uses their Cyber Dragon to fuse their opponent's Chimera away for their own. At the very least I've learned these things now, and I say it's better to realize these kinds of things on DN than in a real tournament, and use it to my advantage when my opponent thinks they can Chimera my Chimera with their Cyber Dragon.

I glossed over Nicky Lacaille's 2nd place Montreal regional report he posted on Pojo, and to my surprise he also has dropped Kristyas from his Agent deck. He even went to the extent of calling her a "lazy ass bitch" in his "slops" portion of his report. He's also running the conventional traps now, rather than the lone Trap Dustshoot which he made famous at whatever YCS he got 2nd at. A lot of players adopted that style of low trap-count Agent deck, but not even the innovator of it runs it any more. Not to say that whatever Nicky does with Agents is what everyone else should do, but just some food for thought.

Today's post was kinda all over the place, but I didn't really have any one specific thing to talk about at the moment, but had a lot of those smaller things. I'll be working on my article for ARG's contest, I'm afraid I'm gonna turn it into an essay rather than just an article though..lol. I need to ask them if there's a maximum word count.