Well the big day finally arrived and I was pretty pumped. I decided I'd play the Hopper-Kaliber version of Inzektor after getting some feedback from Nate and Danny after the testing they did. I don't do too much beforehand besides get ready, I leave and get to Haven around 11:30.
I go upstairs and there's not a whole lot of people yet so I just find a spot to sit next to Nate and Danny who are playing, and I alter my deck after borrowing Danny's 3 Kaliber's. After I get done with that Epler wants to test so we play a few games, he's running AHL Rescue Rabbit Glads for today. I think I win all the games except one where I can't deal with Herk, Chariot, and all the plussing he was able to do. I buy a bunch of random rares and commons off Donut so he can enter the tourney.
Trevor and Corey come in, and I could feel the tension/awkwardness rise in the room. I'm not gonna go into details of the drama since in the end everything was worked out and there's no hard feelings from or to any parties involved. It was probably all a case of "he said, he said" and stuff being taken out of context. I tell Trevor in the end, this is just a game and I love all the guys that belong to Spokane YuGiOh (more on CDA later). Like Danny mentioned later we don't need to start some kind of team war lol.
Joe Lancaster comes a bit later with a few people he brought over from Yakima, like Danny said, he's a cool and genuine guy. He ran the tournament basically flawlessly and it was beyond awesome that he made the drive over for us. He didn't even want compensation or anything like that. I think in the end he received $40 to cover the gas, even though he still didn't want to accept it. I think his Yakima friends made him lol.
Of all people, Antonio randomly showed up, who was in the area because there's a casino nearby (at the Black Pearl restaurant?) and saw the Haven. He buys a few of my burn deck cards and some other minor things. Kim from Idaho also showed up, but his Sams are incomplete since he doesn't have Maxx C or Veiler. I tell him I'd lend him what I had, and gave him the money I owed him for selling his stuff so he can enter the tourney. He ends up registering after the round 1 pairings get made so he got the first-round bye.
We have a quick Team O meeting before the whole players meeting, Danny reminds us to just chill out and we don't want to start a team war, even though I bring up that it'd be awesome to have a 5-on-5 money match where each person puts in X amount and the winning team takes the pot. Link agrees :) I just think it'd be fun and friendly competition. I'm not sure how many people are on their team though, it may have to be like 3-on-3. After that we bring it in and wish each other luck. For the rest of the day, whatever happens, happens.
Joe does a very brief player meeting and tells us that we'd be playing downstairs. Even though the fan did help, it was still rather warm. Everyone was glad that we weren't gonna be upstairs lol. Attendance was 28, which is good in some aspects but bad in others. I was personally hoping for around 40, and I'm not sure why Adrian, Ryan, Dwight, Eric and his kid, Sjan, Ian and Unky Twan, Carl, Colin, and some of the other more-frequent/competitive Idaho players didn't show up. In fact the only Idaho players were the 3 on our team and Kim. I find it too coincidental that absolutely none of the other Idaho players showed up, even after handing out the fliers to them and a lot of them seemingly excited for it. I'm gonna leave my personal conspiracy theories to myself, but as it was said in Hamlet, "something is rotten in the state of Denmark." I will say this though: if you didn't show up on purpose (and you didn't have some other obligation), well, at the end of the day, that's probably all good cuz even if we did end up with a regionals here, all you'd do is scrub the fuck out anyways. Go ahead and stay bad, the team likes winning all y'alls prize support.
Anyways I don't have my life point sheet anymore so match-recaps are purely off memory.
Round 1 vs Shiggs (Sams)
Game 1 - He wins this one after he goes off first turn and I didn't open with Maxx C. I also open with a pretty crappy hand (at least vs Sams with Shi En out). He takes it within the next few turns.
I side out all the Hopper-Kaliber stuff since none of it did anything for me first game. I also had to have something to side out for better anti-Sam stuff.
Game 2 - I win this won pretty well I believe.
Game 3 - Throughout the course of the game he used all his Uniteds and was in a very advantageous state. He walks into a Torrential which brings back the advantage to be even, then makes another non-beneficial play so I end up with advantage and win.
XOO
Record: 1-0
Round 2 vs Epler (AHL Rabbit Glads)
Sucks to play teammates early on but can't help it since we were about 1/3 of the attendance.
Game 1 - He wins this one with Equeste-Chariot control. I misplay by not playing Veiler on the first turn Prisma and over the course of the next few turns is way up on me in advantage.
I was hoping this wasn't another "Alan incident" where I always win in fun games but lose in the critical for-reals match lol.
Game 2 - Again I side out Hopper-Kaliber (did this all day pretty much) for conventional removal, TKings, Snowmans. Does the trick.
Game 3 - Near the end I have a 2500 Leviathan out and he has Utopia w/ 1 material. I summon Dragonfly but don't have Hornet (didn't think I did for majority of the game) intending to just kill the Utopia. I don't pump the Leviathan to 3000, which ends up being good since he had Veiler in hand. Leviathan and Utopia suicide and I poke with Hornet. He sets a monster, and I top Centipede. At this point I'm just hoping to not run into a Hoplomus. He had one in grave but had no idea if he was running 2 or not. I decide to just go for it, Centipede runs over it (don't remember what it was), and Dragonfly for the game.
XOO
Record: 2-0
Round 3 vs Danny (Rabbit)
This was it, Captain vs Co-Captain :)
Game 1 - Very back-and-forth and grindy. We're both down pretty low and I stop his Leviair play. My Leviathan was in the grave, and I was going to XYZ for Rank 3. His field is Sabersaurus and Leviair. I debated between going for Giga or Acid Golem, but I chose Acid Golem. I figured all he'd have to do is top another Dino or Lance which would just run over Giga. I didn't want to go Zenmaines and kill the Leviair that way, since I'd just be taking more damage (potentially lethal) next turn since I didn't have any backrow protection. I also wanted to rush for damage and get 1200 from the Leviair battle. In the end, this screws me though as I don't have the LP to maintain the Golem nor do I have a way to get rid of it. Woulda been mine had I had a 2nd Leviathan in Extra I believe.
Game 2 - Again this was a long game, since we only had about 10 minutes left at the end of this game. At the end we were both around the 1100 mark, I have Ryko set with BLS and Book in hand vs his Sabersaurus and 2 backrow. I flip Ryko, targetting his Sabersaurus, which he Solemn Judgments. This gives me the light I need, and I basically have no other move, not sure what his other backrow was, but I summon and swing for game.
Game 3 - An early Shadow Mirror completely shuts me down with me not drawing MST. I try to go into a Zenmaines with the hopes to pop it later, but he Books my summoned Hornet and he has complete control after that.
Very good match, from now on I'm gonna run 2 Leviathan (until we get even more Rank 3's)!
XOX
Record: 2-1
Round 4 vs Joe (Wind-Up)
I move way down in the tables, and somehow Shiggs is above me by 1 table spot even though we both had the same record. This was also going to be the last swiss round, so it was do or die time. Joe normally runs Lightsworn, which I figured he was running, but within the first turn I see it's not.
Game 1 - Sure enough, every time I play against a Wind-Up (or variant) I never open with Maxx C in game 1. He loops me for 3 but doesn't have much for significant backrows. I have Centipede in hand which with Hornet pops his back, attack over Zenmaity, from there I establish control. He also goes into Acid Golem, which burns him from 6000 to 0.
Game 2 - Not much of an idea what happened this game, I think a lot of Inzektor shenanigans since our match didn't last that long.
OO
Record: 3-1
After this round Alan (Karakuri) was the lone undefeated I think. There are a ton of 3-1's, so it's all up to tie-breakers as to who made it into top 8. One of the Yakima guys who initially was put into top 8 had an error in their match recording, he was marked for a win rather than a loss. So after the re-pair, top 8 ended up being Alan (Karakuri), Link (Rabbit), Nate (Inzektor), Danny (Rabbit), myself (Inzektor), Shiggs (Samurai), Roy (Rabbit?), and one guy from Yakima (Rabbit). 5 out of 8 for Team O, not bad at all considering a lot of us had to play each other. Epler was 3-1 as well with his only loss to me but didn't make it in :( Happens.
Top 8 vs Nate (Inzektor)
Well from one box tourney to the next, we had to face each other in the earliest playoff match.
I really have no idea how our matches went now, other than remembering I won the first one and he won the next two. Lots of Veiler, Fiendish Chain, the usual in an Inzektor mirror match. I sided in Trap Hole, which worked on his flip-summoned Dragonfly, but it was whatever. I only had them for the mirror and Nate was the only mirror I played, so didn't get much use out of them today.
OXX
Record: 3-2
Top 4 ends up being Alan, Nate, Danny, and Link. All Team O top 4, which was our goal, and everyone splits the top 4 prizing evenly and decide to just play for the mats. Top 8 get their SEs, I didn't pull anything out of my SE besides Veiler. 5th through 8th got a GS4 mat as well but I didn't want it so I gave it to our area's "young prodigy" who's like 9 or something. Figured the little kid should get something y'know :) He's very good though, taking out people twice his age and more.
So top 4 is Nate vs Alan, and Link vs Danny. Alan and Link win. Finals is Rabbit vs Karakuri, and Alan wins the whole damn thing. That guy makes Karakuri work lol. Helps that he's been running it for like 2-3 months now lol. Congrats to Alan, he did exceptionally well.
As for me, I didn't give the Hopper-Kaliber stuff much of a chance I suppose since I seemingly sided it out every game 2 and 3. I never got to use Hopper for his ideal effect, but Kaliber was alright. I need to play with it more to get more comfortable with it and learn all the little plays the deck brings with it. I wish GAOV and Lavalval Chain would just come out already lol.
Not sure when we may do another box tourney, but Danny and I both agree that our focus should primarily be on bringing up the local scene. To be honest I'm not going to push myself hard to organize a regional in our area when all I got is pretty much a big "fuck you" from 80% of the Idaho community. There's too much greed, an over-sense of loyalty, jealousy, manipulation, fear, and laziness to deal with and thus becomes a tremendous uphill battle to bring any sense of "one community" to the area. Perhaps I was a bit jaded when I had assumed that we had this all along. I'll work and fight for people that give 2 shits about the game, but I can't and won't waste my time on people that don't. I do sincerely appreciate each and every person that did show up, and once again to Joe Lancaster. Where Spokane YuGiOh goes from here on, it's anyone's guess.
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