So my wife wakes me up earlier than I wanted to but I'm glad I did since it gave me more time to tweak my deck and whatnot. My plan is to leave much earlier than normal since it is the sneak peek after all. I've decided to sell off my Karakuri stuff but forgot that I had let Alan borrow a Neutron, so we met up at the Jack in the Box by where he lives so that I could grab it from him. I grab some food while I'm there and make the drive out to Lightning on my own. I actually got used to having like Zach in the car with me driving out to tourneys, so the drive alone was rather boring.
I get there and there are only about a half a dozen people there but they all bought into the 5 packs thing and everyone pulled a Secret. I was like "wow did they change the pull ratio to be 1 in 5 now?" lol. I buy in and pull nothin' but rares. FML. What a waste of $20. I knew that crap was gonna happen too. Everyone felt bad for me but this guy Chad also buys in to pull nothin but rares. He ends up buying $60 worth of product and pulls really poorly. I was like "you know for $60 you coulda bought a whole box and guarantee better pulls (at least in quantity)". I do a few trades here and there, help Epler build TGs from my random commons binder, and tourney starts at 1. I think attendance is like 18 but didn't have an exact count this time for what ever reason.
I get paired up against Nate, I'm like of course I play a team mate round 1 when there are only 3 of us in the first place. Fuckin' stacked pairings I swear ~_~
Round 1 vs Nate (Machina Gadget)
I figured Nate was playing the TG/Stun deck from last week, but pretty sure he summoned a Gadget first turn and it was obvious he's back with his signature deck.
Game 1 Fairly back and forth the whole match but his field is like Gadget and Fortress with backrow, I MST and Dark Hole and topdeck'd BLS wins the game. Pulled that one out my butt :P
Game 2 Penguin Soldier to clear my 2 set monsters (Reaper and Snowman I believe) and 2x Fortress and something else hit me for like 6000+.
Game 3 Drawing into triple Shine Ball = wowihatethisdeck
OXX
The last game pretty much set the tone for the rest of the day, not so much the triple Ball aspect, but just my overall thoughts about the deck.
Record: 0-1
Round 2 vs Chad (GBs)
Game 1 I start with Venus and Gachi, he Dark Holes and Enemy Controller's the Gachi to turn it to attack. He summons Hoplomus and attacks Gachi, I'm like OK, Hoplomus dies? Big misplay on that one and he pretty much scoops it up.
Game 2 Goes a little bit better but TKings are annoying for that deck to deal with, and my trap-based removal easily deals with whatever kind of plays he tries to make. A timely MST on his set War Chariot seals the deal.
OO
Record: 1-1
Round 3 vs Ross (Watts)
This is the same kid that was playing Gishki when it wasn't legal, I had no idea what he was playing but figured it'd be an easy win.
Game 1 He actually plus's a lot with Wattcobra and stops me from attacking with things like Waboku, Roar, and there's some Watt that makes it so you skip your next battle phase. Eventually his deck runs out of steam and I out advantage him.
Game 2 Fairly similar to game 1 but I hit him a lot with Spirit Reapers, Giga-Brilliant, Zenmaines, and late game Hyperion cleans up.
OO
Record: 2-1
After this round I go over to see Kim and Epler playing. Kim ends up winning but he has to leave so he gives Epler the win. I buy Kim's collection minus his Six Sam deck for $90. There's not a lot of high-end stuff besides a Brionac, Black Rose, and Barkion, but a lot of random little stuff I can sell off and he had like 3 decks. Good for tweaking and making up decks to sell on eBay I suppose.
Round 4 vs Zachary (Inzektor)
I was pretty sure that Sneak cards aren't legal for tournament play until the official release, but I wasn't gonna cause a fuss about it since he's just a kid. I had no idea how he was 2-1 considering the deck he was running wasn't anything like the established Inzektor lists that the OCG is running. Every Inzektor related card you could think of was in there lol. Even the Zektahawk thing. There's not really anything too notable here besides knowing I got in a few Reaper hits, and Venus, Gachi, TKing, and standard removal deal with "random crap" fairly well.
OO
Record: 3-1
After the game I trade with Eric (Zachary's dad) and get his Ultra Gorz and Super Chain Disappearance for like 2 Ultra Leviathan and a Machina Fortress. Good trade is good :)
We had figured that this was the end of the tourney since Epler was the only undefeated, but Mike said "Konami threw another round at us." OK? Never heard that one before but it wasn't too late, so I didn't mind that much since I was good on my 7pm wife-set curfew.
Round 5 vs Jeff (Darkworld)
So pretty much whoever won here would make top 4. I was pretty confident going into this match since I had talked about how his deck was bad with Goldd, Celery, and stuff.
Game 1 He goes absolutely nuts with Card Destruction, Gates, Celery+Sillva plays, Dragged Downs, and everything. By the end of his turn his card count was like 9 to my 3 of like Hyperion, Bottomless, and something else. I scoop.
Not having much for Darkworld in my side, I knew I was gonna have to simply try and hope that he doesn't draw Card Destruction and outplay him.
Game 2 An early Gorz and token+Honest trick pretty much put me in a good spot early game, Zenmaines and a Crow on his Grapha kept me alive mid game, and late game Chaos Sorcerer won it for me I believe.
Game 3 So it all came down to this. He starts with a Sillva+Celery play and I'm like well fuck, but notice that Jeff likes to pick 2 cards in the middle of my hand so I put the cards I'd like to keep at the ends. I'm able to stabilise with a Zenmaines and a DEF position Sangan. We're both around the 3500 mark on LP, and I figure if I don't act quick he'll just attack over the Zenmaines and won't get its effect off. I take a big risk and tribute summon for Hyperion, he has no response so I'm like whew. He tries to DWLightning my set MST, and he gets confused when I just MST the Lightning itself. I explain that technically its on the field so I can simply target it. I pretty much clear his board next turn with Hyperion and I'm able to take it.
It'd probably be wise for me to put some more anti-DW stuff in my side, lol.
XOO
Record: 4-1
Top 4 ends up being in order, Nate, Epler, Me, Donut. We do this 1-3 2-4 pairing again so I play Nate. Epler has to leave so he drops and Donuts gets the win. Awesome.
Top 4 vs Nate
First 2 games were fairly back and forth I believe. I take the first he takes the second.
Game 3 I start with TKing and Bottomless, and I BTH his Cyber Dragon. He Dark Holes and summons Gearframe to search. I play another TKing to run it over. Reborn on my TKing for them to suicide and it was kinda downhill for me after that.
At least I get 3rd and can chill a bit before I have to leave to be back home. I give Danny a Black Horn of Heaven he needs. I comment how I thought Danny reminded me of Rocky since he was wearing a gray sweatshirt and gray sweatpants. There's also this guy that kept talking to Nate's GF about god knows what, eventually Danny's just like "dude can you please stop talking and go away?" the guy says OK, is silent for a split second, and then starts talking again but Danny cuts him off and is just like "no, seriously, can you go away" and so he turns around and wanders off. Some guy sitting across from us just stares at Danny in amazement or disgust, I dunno, lol. Either way it was funny and to be honest the guy just didn't have a clue.
All in all I wasn't happy with the tweaks that I made to the deck. Drawing into 2 Shine Balls in quite a few of my games is very depressing, and having 3 against Nate was absolutely brutal. That is the one aspect that I don't like about this deck; if you open with 2 of these things it's gonna be an uphill battle. 3 and you probably straight-up lose. The same could probably be said about Tengu, but at least it has some kind of body.
I did enjoy trading though and I know I was able to plus in most of my trades. The trade I did for the M-X-Saber Invoker was probably kinda meh, but at least I didn't have to trade a bunch of high-end cards for it. Basically a Laggia and some random Worm crap. I need Laggia for Rabbit and all, but at least they really aren't that expensive on eBay any more. It seemed like everyone was after Horn of the Phantom Beast today, I ended up trading the 4 I had in my binder away, and they had been sitting there for quite a while before :/ .
On the ride home I think about what I would play if I didn't run Agent, obviously the Ball thing has really gotten to me. Maybe some kind of Chaos? They're very similar in principle besides the Agent stuff. Sell Tour Guides to play something like TG? Inzektors? I really don't know.
Decklist: 40
Monsters: 25
2 Hyperion
3 Venus
2 Earth
3 Shineball
3 Tour Guide
1 Sangan
1 Night Assailant
2 TKing
1 Honest
1 Maxx C
2 Reaper
1 BLS
1 Sorcerer
1 Gorz
1 Snowman
Spells: 8
1 Hole
1 Reborn
1 Heavy
3 MST
1 Mind
1 Smashing
Traps:7
1 Dustshoot
1 Torrential
2 Warning
2 D-Prison
1 Bottomless
Extra
Same as usual
Side
2 Cydra
1 TKing
1 Dust
1 Crow
1 Snowman
1 Smash
1 Bottomless
1 Mirror Force
1 System Down
2 Black Horn
2 Maxx C
1 Leeching
Monsters
Originally I was gonna try out the 2x Agent/Hyperion line-up but decided to include the 3rd Venus to increase my probability of opening with it. In hindsight, I didn't like it. There were too many instances where I either had no Agent to go with Hyperion, or wouldn't draw Hyperion when I needed it. I dropped down to just 1 Maxx C due to the happenings of last weekend, and with the match-ups I had today, I was happy with the change. Having triple probably only would've been good against Donut's Karakuri. I'm probably going to end up cutting the gimmicky stuff like Snowman and maybe Sorcerer. 2 Reapers are handy and with 3 MST I was able to get in a lot of direct hits.
Spells
I opted for 3 MST since I think I sided the 3rd in every game last weekend. A lot of people are playing backrow decks w/ Starlight now so I'm glad I ran 3 MST. Mind Control has been sub-par for me lately but that's probably a combination of more anti-meta with 4-stars guys (and me not running Utopia), and only running 3 Earth (2 today). I do get the occasional Trish summon because of it, so I'll probably keep it in. Random Smash was OK but nothing phenomenal.
Traps
I've been running this line-up for a while but thinking I should move away from Bottomless towards Fiendish Chain. I think Bottomless may be better at Lightning while Chain would be better at Northtown.
Pat Hoban posted a list on DGz he's been playing around with; it's basically a clean, standard line-up which I may try out for Monday. He has a tech Compulse, which I was thinking of having in my side anyway for the Scrap match-up I'll inevitably have to play. I probably also need to cut the gimmicky stuff and play conventional things like Book of Moon and Solemn Judgment again. However I'm most likely going to try going to Uncle's with Alan tomorrow, and who the hell knows what their meta is like. I'm guessing mostly tier 2 decks, so a lot like Lightning's meta.
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