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.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Post-ORCS Pre-Ban List
This week has been very hectic for me since winter quarter just started up. Usually the first week of school is chill, right? Well for me it's been anything but. One of my professors, who's notorious for large amounts of homework, put up an assignment about a week before the quarter even started, and officially gave it out on the first day of class. Christ, the first day is supposed to be "here's the syllabus, see you tomorrow" kind of thing! His homeworks are hard and time-consuming as well, I've already put in about 12 hours on his first one which I'm still not finished with (due tomorrow) and on Wednesday he put up another larger assignment that's due next Wednesday. Holy hell, so not fair to give us a new one before we're even done with the first one! *sigh*
So luckily I'm gonna be able to sell my 2 Ultra Veilers to Troll for $20 a piece. I'd highly recommend moving them via Troll before they catch on to the reprint announcement, as ARG have already lowered their price dramatically and they're getting hard to move on eBay. It may suck having to wait for the SE release to own any, but money is money and I rather not lose it by holding on to stuff I know is getting reprinted.
I have to applaud Konami for not rarity-bumping the crap out of Inzektors, so I've put in my pre-order for 3 boxes. I don't see it being quite a money set so we're not going to do a joint case like we did for PHSW, but at least there are good cards spread out between the holo rarities. Recent complaints about the sets have been that the only good cards were a couple Ultras and the Secrets, so at least now we have good Supers in the form of Wind-Up Shark and the Inzektor guy, forget which one. There may be more good Supers, I dunno.
As for Wind-Ups, Shark, and the loop, my guess is that the format will be similar to Frog OTK, but now we have Maxx c, so basically open with Veiler/Maxx or lose. From what I can tell the loop deck seems even more consistent now with Shark, so from a business standpoint I think it was smart that they're reprinting Veiler in easy-to-get form, even though we'll get it after the ban list. We may get a crazy month-and-a-half format until the ban list takes care of stuff. I'm not sure if they'll hit Inzektors, but at least they're not too rare so you wouldn't take a hit that badly. Konami has a pretty decent track record of keeping FTK/massive discard type decks in check via ban lists, so if it gets too crazy I'm sure they'll hit it. But, at the same time, they could give justification in not doing anything by saying "what, we gave you easy Veilers. Deal with it. Buy more product."
Either way I'm selling my Wind-Up stuff, namely Hunter, and actually selling off a lot of random extra crap that I don't need. It's about that time of the format to let go of bulk and have funds to get a jump-start for the next list. I just got about $250 from Troll yesterday, and going to be sending them another $270 or more worth of stuff hopefully tomorrow. If Rabbit survives the list that's probably what I'll be picking up when the list is leaked. Until then, I'll probably just ride it out with Agents.
So the Sneak Peek is this weekend, I'll most likely go to Lightning but not sure if I'll be playing in the tourney since my wife is making me be home by 7. I may just go to trade, buy, sell, and playtest. I'd like to have my deck set for Monday's tourney. Speaking of Monday tourney, Danny texted me about the possibility of going back to Uncle's since Link is allowed to play there again and it seems like Andrew has been trying to change his ways. I'll probably see how the Northtown tourney's attendance is; if it's low that's a good indicator that people have gone back to Uncle's.
So luckily I'm gonna be able to sell my 2 Ultra Veilers to Troll for $20 a piece. I'd highly recommend moving them via Troll before they catch on to the reprint announcement, as ARG have already lowered their price dramatically and they're getting hard to move on eBay. It may suck having to wait for the SE release to own any, but money is money and I rather not lose it by holding on to stuff I know is getting reprinted.
I have to applaud Konami for not rarity-bumping the crap out of Inzektors, so I've put in my pre-order for 3 boxes. I don't see it being quite a money set so we're not going to do a joint case like we did for PHSW, but at least there are good cards spread out between the holo rarities. Recent complaints about the sets have been that the only good cards were a couple Ultras and the Secrets, so at least now we have good Supers in the form of Wind-Up Shark and the Inzektor guy, forget which one. There may be more good Supers, I dunno.
As for Wind-Ups, Shark, and the loop, my guess is that the format will be similar to Frog OTK, but now we have Maxx c, so basically open with Veiler/Maxx or lose. From what I can tell the loop deck seems even more consistent now with Shark, so from a business standpoint I think it was smart that they're reprinting Veiler in easy-to-get form, even though we'll get it after the ban list. We may get a crazy month-and-a-half format until the ban list takes care of stuff. I'm not sure if they'll hit Inzektors, but at least they're not too rare so you wouldn't take a hit that badly. Konami has a pretty decent track record of keeping FTK/massive discard type decks in check via ban lists, so if it gets too crazy I'm sure they'll hit it. But, at the same time, they could give justification in not doing anything by saying "what, we gave you easy Veilers. Deal with it. Buy more product."
Either way I'm selling my Wind-Up stuff, namely Hunter, and actually selling off a lot of random extra crap that I don't need. It's about that time of the format to let go of bulk and have funds to get a jump-start for the next list. I just got about $250 from Troll yesterday, and going to be sending them another $270 or more worth of stuff hopefully tomorrow. If Rabbit survives the list that's probably what I'll be picking up when the list is leaked. Until then, I'll probably just ride it out with Agents.
So the Sneak Peek is this weekend, I'll most likely go to Lightning but not sure if I'll be playing in the tourney since my wife is making me be home by 7. I may just go to trade, buy, sell, and playtest. I'd like to have my deck set for Monday's tourney. Speaking of Monday tourney, Danny texted me about the possibility of going back to Uncle's since Link is allowed to play there again and it seems like Andrew has been trying to change his ways. I'll probably see how the Northtown tourney's attendance is; if it's low that's a good indicator that people have gone back to Uncle's.
ORCS SE Promos Revealed!
So I check the product page this morning as usual, and they finally got the ORCS SE product page up! The promos are: Effect Veiler and The Winged Dragon of Ra.
For the "where's your proof?" peeps:
http://www.yugioh-card.com/en/products/se-orcs.html
(Clicking on the site link from the product page sends you to the Samurai Assault page since they have their link wrong. Above is the correct link.)
Sooo relieved that Tour Guide and Maxx C weren't in this lol, as I was seriously contemplating selling both off just because of this SE. These promos still aren't matching people's expectations/desires in things like Scrap Dragon and Fabled Raven, but hey I can appreciate the Veiler reprint as that card will most likely become very important in the upcoming meta. I'm glad I sold off my playset of rares, unfortunately I didn't get rid of my 2 Ultras but perhaps there's still time on eBay before their value plummets. Just a quick post since I literally just saw the news, still planning on writing an "actual" blog entry later today.
For the "where's your proof?" peeps:
http://www.yugioh-card.com/en/products/se-orcs.html
(Clicking on the site link from the product page sends you to the Samurai Assault page since they have their link wrong. Above is the correct link.)
Sooo relieved that Tour Guide and Maxx C weren't in this lol, as I was seriously contemplating selling both off just because of this SE. These promos still aren't matching people's expectations/desires in things like Scrap Dragon and Fabled Raven, but hey I can appreciate the Veiler reprint as that card will most likely become very important in the upcoming meta. I'm glad I sold off my playset of rares, unfortunately I didn't get rid of my 2 Ultras but perhaps there's still time on eBay before their value plummets. Just a quick post since I literally just saw the news, still planning on writing an "actual" blog entry later today.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Locals Report 1-9-12; Northtown Comic Book Shop
Pre-Tourney
So the plan yesterday was for me to pick up Zach (either at his place or Rob's) and most likely pick up Alan. Alan texted me and told me he'd be at my place around 3, at first I was like nah I'll pick you up but then figured it'd be OK if he parked a little bit away from my house. I figured my wife would get paranoid if there was a random van parked in front of our house lol. It's about 2:50 and I get a call from the mortgage company who I had been trying to contact, so as the lady is talking to me I text Alan and tell him to just come in once he gets here since I'm on the phone. My phone call gets over at like 3:20 and Alan still hasn't shown up yet. I text him again asking him where he was and no response. 3:30 rolls around, nothing, I'm like well what do I do, I wanted to be at the tourney around 4:15 and I gotta pick up Zach. I tell Alan I'd be leaving in 5.
He still doesn't show so I pack up and take off, and I get about 2 blocks out and he calls me and we agree that we'd just meet at Rob's. I get to Rob's, and there's only like 6 parking spots at his apartment complex and they were all full so I just park in the middle of the lot in the middle of all the cars. Zach comes out and gets in my car and I tell him Alan would meet us here in 5. As we're waiting this guy gets into his car so I move so that he can get out, and he's mean-mugging me the whole time as he's leaving the parking lot. I'm just like what, I'm not gonna take your spot for too long. Alan shows up and I tell him that I probably wouldn't take this guy's parking spot as I couldn't guarantee the safety of his vehicle so he drives up the street and parks.
Traffic sucks at this time of day but we surprisingly get there exactly at 4:15. Show up and see a lot of people that I haven't seen for a while, like Brandon who was a short kid last time I saw him now he's like as tall as me. Alan has to pay his rent or something and asks me if I could drive him to the nearby Safeway to meet his landlord. I'm like "...alright" and as we step out I run into Butters, last time I saw him was at my wedding reception like 2 years ago we're both like holy shit!! I tell him I'd be back after taking Alan to Safeway.
I didn't know where the Safeway was, so we end up taking a wrong turn from the get-go so we take the longest way there possible. Imagine a square; instead of traveling on just one side, we go on the other 3 to get to where we needed to go. At least the ride back is short and we're back at the shop by 4:55. This is the last time I play "taxi service" I swear to god. Tourney attendance is 12, a pretty big drop from the 16 they apparently had last week, and considering we accounted for 3 ourselves.
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Tourney
Round 1 vs Sheldon (Dragunity)
Zach makes an obligatory Big Bang Theory joke lol. Never met this kid before in my life so had no idea what he was playing, until he started to pile shuffle his deck face up. I'm like O_o but was like alright, if he wants me to see his deck I can't complain? lol. I see Dragunity dudes, Ravines, and a Zephyros.
Game 1 is pretty fairly back and forth but I'm usually a turn or two ahead and my monsters are bigger and easier to bring out. After D-Prison'ing his Stardust it was pretty much over.
Game 2 I don't draw any S/T removal or Maxx Cs so he combos for dudes each round. I don't bother reading the Gay Bulge he has out and he tells me that it gets the attack boost if he removes a guy from play, so I assume he meant from the field, so I go for Leviathan and attack and he banishes from grave the 1500 guy. I'm like :/ really, he's just like oh sorry if you misunderstood me. I re-stabilize but he pops my stuff with his Dragunity effects each turn so I lose that one.
Game 3 I open with MST and of course he went turn 1 Ravine so I MST at the opportune time. He's like "don't I still get the effect?" I'm like "no, needs to be on the field at resolution just like Whirlwind." After that and a Trish it was pretty much mine.
OXO
Record: 1-0
Round 2 vs Corey (Scraps)
So I finally get the match I was looking for, since this guy had been talking trash and feeling himself the past few months since he started winning tourneys.
Not much to say for each game since they were both very similar. Basically Fiendish Chain wrecked me, his deck gets pluses turn after turn, and Scrap Dragon is a bitch to get rid of. Fiendish Chain my dude, then go into Scrap Dragon pop Chain to pop something. I hate how Scrap Dragon still gets to revive a monster even if the summon is negated. Normally you'd just say "well Bottomless or D-Prison it" but his sideboard plan had always been to side in Imperial Iron Walls. So, I went with siding in my S/T removal and also taking out stuff like Sorcerer and banish-based removal. It may have gotten to the point where he knows that people know what he sides in, so he may have dropped that gimmick altogether. I don't think I saw Wall in any of the games that he was playing in. He also has 3x Spy and a Descendant as tech which may sound janky, but in a meta where TKing attack into facedown is a common play, it's very good since the deck also has the 4-star tuners. I'll have to adjust my side to deal with this deck better.
XX
Record: 1-1
Round 3 vs Roy (Dino but only owns 1 Rabbit)
So I get down-paired as Roy is 0-2. I'm like wow my tie-breakers are that shitty, there probably won't be a next swiss round, and cutoff is top 4 so I'm probably done after this match.
He doesn't get much going in either match, at most he has a Sabersaurus or a TKing out. D-Fissure kinda hurts me but he doesn't know that XYZ materials go to the grave so eventually I'm able to fuel Hyperion and BLS.
OO
Record: 2-1
I don't make top 4 as expected and top 4 is Corey (Scraps), Link (Karakuri), Zach (Dino Rabbit), Alan (Karakuri). Even though I didn't make it I'm glad Alan did since that dude never gets to play cuz of his wife. I know had I played him I would've beat him but whatevs that's the nature of the pairing and tie-breaker system. I beat the guy that ended up getting 3rd at the last Seattle Shonen 2-0, wasn't even hard, but he made top and I didn't. As far as I'm concerned that SJC Doomcal should've been mine lol. Zach is able to make Guide-less Rabbit work but admits the deck would be much more bomb with them lol.
So it's Corey vs Alan and Link vs Zach and I watch Link and Zach's match. Link wins game 1 and game 2 I thought they were gonna get decked out as they had very few cards left. What a lonngggg game lol. There were some ruling issues and "don't know how this works" which may have contributed. I thought Zach was going to win game 2 but Link squeaks it through. For future reference, Spirit Reaper doesn't get destroyed when it's Compulsory'd. This probably would've impacted the game a lot in Zach's favor lol. Oh well.
Link vs Corey in the finals, and Corey wins 2-1. I'm just like wtf, how can this Scrap deck go through the whole team and win? Alan gets third and spends it on janky Hidden Arsenal 5, as the store's selection is pretty bad. They don't have any regular booster sets besides ANPR lol. Besides losing to Corey and him beating all the team members that were present it was a decent little tourney. I'm glad to have seen some people I hadn't seen in a very long time. Afterwards I call Danny and tell him the bad news and ask if he knows what tech is good against Corey's deck. He's like there isn't much, the best tech is you just have to beat him. I'm starting to think Compulsory is lookin' pretty good as bounce is about the only type of removal that's good against a combination of Scrap Dragon and Imperial Iron Wall. I know my side needs to be different than the one for Lightning as no one ran Anti-Meta as far as I could tell.
Usually my siding strategies have made me resort to switching to the 2x line-up of Agent monsters and Hyperion, similar to what Nicky Lacaille did with his main at his recent regional. This allows me to have a little more versatility and be slightly less susceptible to Leeching. With 3x of Earth, Venus, Hyperion, Ball, that already takes 12 spots of the deck and siding is rather difficult with that line-up. It's very "clumpy" if you will. As many others have mentioned, once you go into your first Venus and Gachi play, subsequent copies of Venus and Earth are rather meh. Dropping to 2 lowers the consistency of going into an early Venus+Gachi though, so there is that drawback. I'm also considering something like Frazier Smith's Agent build he posted on ARG, but I'd still want to run the Tour Guide engine. I'd probably just try to incorporate Fiendish Chains somehow since that card is all the rage right now. I probably wouldn't run it at Lightning but may try it for Northtown.
So the plan yesterday was for me to pick up Zach (either at his place or Rob's) and most likely pick up Alan. Alan texted me and told me he'd be at my place around 3, at first I was like nah I'll pick you up but then figured it'd be OK if he parked a little bit away from my house. I figured my wife would get paranoid if there was a random van parked in front of our house lol. It's about 2:50 and I get a call from the mortgage company who I had been trying to contact, so as the lady is talking to me I text Alan and tell him to just come in once he gets here since I'm on the phone. My phone call gets over at like 3:20 and Alan still hasn't shown up yet. I text him again asking him where he was and no response. 3:30 rolls around, nothing, I'm like well what do I do, I wanted to be at the tourney around 4:15 and I gotta pick up Zach. I tell Alan I'd be leaving in 5.
He still doesn't show so I pack up and take off, and I get about 2 blocks out and he calls me and we agree that we'd just meet at Rob's. I get to Rob's, and there's only like 6 parking spots at his apartment complex and they were all full so I just park in the middle of the lot in the middle of all the cars. Zach comes out and gets in my car and I tell him Alan would meet us here in 5. As we're waiting this guy gets into his car so I move so that he can get out, and he's mean-mugging me the whole time as he's leaving the parking lot. I'm just like what, I'm not gonna take your spot for too long. Alan shows up and I tell him that I probably wouldn't take this guy's parking spot as I couldn't guarantee the safety of his vehicle so he drives up the street and parks.
Traffic sucks at this time of day but we surprisingly get there exactly at 4:15. Show up and see a lot of people that I haven't seen for a while, like Brandon who was a short kid last time I saw him now he's like as tall as me. Alan has to pay his rent or something and asks me if I could drive him to the nearby Safeway to meet his landlord. I'm like "...alright" and as we step out I run into Butters, last time I saw him was at my wedding reception like 2 years ago we're both like holy shit!! I tell him I'd be back after taking Alan to Safeway.
I didn't know where the Safeway was, so we end up taking a wrong turn from the get-go so we take the longest way there possible. Imagine a square; instead of traveling on just one side, we go on the other 3 to get to where we needed to go. At least the ride back is short and we're back at the shop by 4:55. This is the last time I play "taxi service" I swear to god. Tourney attendance is 12, a pretty big drop from the 16 they apparently had last week, and considering we accounted for 3 ourselves.
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Tourney
Round 1 vs Sheldon (Dragunity)
Zach makes an obligatory Big Bang Theory joke lol. Never met this kid before in my life so had no idea what he was playing, until he started to pile shuffle his deck face up. I'm like O_o but was like alright, if he wants me to see his deck I can't complain? lol. I see Dragunity dudes, Ravines, and a Zephyros.
Game 1 is pretty fairly back and forth but I'm usually a turn or two ahead and my monsters are bigger and easier to bring out. After D-Prison'ing his Stardust it was pretty much over.
Game 2 I don't draw any S/T removal or Maxx Cs so he combos for dudes each round. I don't bother reading the Gay Bulge he has out and he tells me that it gets the attack boost if he removes a guy from play, so I assume he meant from the field, so I go for Leviathan and attack and he banishes from grave the 1500 guy. I'm like :/ really, he's just like oh sorry if you misunderstood me. I re-stabilize but he pops my stuff with his Dragunity effects each turn so I lose that one.
Game 3 I open with MST and of course he went turn 1 Ravine so I MST at the opportune time. He's like "don't I still get the effect?" I'm like "no, needs to be on the field at resolution just like Whirlwind." After that and a Trish it was pretty much mine.
OXO
Record: 1-0
Round 2 vs Corey (Scraps)
So I finally get the match I was looking for, since this guy had been talking trash and feeling himself the past few months since he started winning tourneys.
Not much to say for each game since they were both very similar. Basically Fiendish Chain wrecked me, his deck gets pluses turn after turn, and Scrap Dragon is a bitch to get rid of. Fiendish Chain my dude, then go into Scrap Dragon pop Chain to pop something. I hate how Scrap Dragon still gets to revive a monster even if the summon is negated. Normally you'd just say "well Bottomless or D-Prison it" but his sideboard plan had always been to side in Imperial Iron Walls. So, I went with siding in my S/T removal and also taking out stuff like Sorcerer and banish-based removal. It may have gotten to the point where he knows that people know what he sides in, so he may have dropped that gimmick altogether. I don't think I saw Wall in any of the games that he was playing in. He also has 3x Spy and a Descendant as tech which may sound janky, but in a meta where TKing attack into facedown is a common play, it's very good since the deck also has the 4-star tuners. I'll have to adjust my side to deal with this deck better.
XX
Record: 1-1
Round 3 vs Roy (Dino but only owns 1 Rabbit)
So I get down-paired as Roy is 0-2. I'm like wow my tie-breakers are that shitty, there probably won't be a next swiss round, and cutoff is top 4 so I'm probably done after this match.
He doesn't get much going in either match, at most he has a Sabersaurus or a TKing out. D-Fissure kinda hurts me but he doesn't know that XYZ materials go to the grave so eventually I'm able to fuel Hyperion and BLS.
OO
Record: 2-1
I don't make top 4 as expected and top 4 is Corey (Scraps), Link (Karakuri), Zach (Dino Rabbit), Alan (Karakuri). Even though I didn't make it I'm glad Alan did since that dude never gets to play cuz of his wife. I know had I played him I would've beat him but whatevs that's the nature of the pairing and tie-breaker system. I beat the guy that ended up getting 3rd at the last Seattle Shonen 2-0, wasn't even hard, but he made top and I didn't. As far as I'm concerned that SJC Doomcal should've been mine lol. Zach is able to make Guide-less Rabbit work but admits the deck would be much more bomb with them lol.
So it's Corey vs Alan and Link vs Zach and I watch Link and Zach's match. Link wins game 1 and game 2 I thought they were gonna get decked out as they had very few cards left. What a lonngggg game lol. There were some ruling issues and "don't know how this works" which may have contributed. I thought Zach was going to win game 2 but Link squeaks it through. For future reference, Spirit Reaper doesn't get destroyed when it's Compulsory'd. This probably would've impacted the game a lot in Zach's favor lol. Oh well.
Link vs Corey in the finals, and Corey wins 2-1. I'm just like wtf, how can this Scrap deck go through the whole team and win? Alan gets third and spends it on janky Hidden Arsenal 5, as the store's selection is pretty bad. They don't have any regular booster sets besides ANPR lol. Besides losing to Corey and him beating all the team members that were present it was a decent little tourney. I'm glad to have seen some people I hadn't seen in a very long time. Afterwards I call Danny and tell him the bad news and ask if he knows what tech is good against Corey's deck. He's like there isn't much, the best tech is you just have to beat him. I'm starting to think Compulsory is lookin' pretty good as bounce is about the only type of removal that's good against a combination of Scrap Dragon and Imperial Iron Wall. I know my side needs to be different than the one for Lightning as no one ran Anti-Meta as far as I could tell.
Usually my siding strategies have made me resort to switching to the 2x line-up of Agent monsters and Hyperion, similar to what Nicky Lacaille did with his main at his recent regional. This allows me to have a little more versatility and be slightly less susceptible to Leeching. With 3x of Earth, Venus, Hyperion, Ball, that already takes 12 spots of the deck and siding is rather difficult with that line-up. It's very "clumpy" if you will. As many others have mentioned, once you go into your first Venus and Gachi play, subsequent copies of Venus and Earth are rather meh. Dropping to 2 lowers the consistency of going into an early Venus+Gachi though, so there is that drawback. I'm also considering something like Frazier Smith's Agent build he posted on ARG, but I'd still want to run the Tour Guide engine. I'd probably just try to incorporate Fiendish Chains somehow since that card is all the rage right now. I probably wouldn't run it at Lightning but may try it for Northtown.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Locals Report 1-7-12; Lightning Comics
I apologize for the lack of posts this past week; there hasn't really been any news to note and all I've really done is practice my siding but decided it wasn't worth specifically posting about, so I figured I'd just include it in the tournament report.
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Well I've been waiting about 3 weeks for this tourney so I was very excited to say the least. Yesterday Alan came over to my place and we tested for a little bit but his wife is like mine and yanked his leash for him to come back after just like 2 hours lol. I lend him my Naturia Beast since he was planning on coming to today's tournament. Last night Danny asked if he could ride out with me so I said sure and also planned on picking up Zach. I texted Alan and asked if he'd be OK with driving himself out, because if I was in a situation where my wife demanded that I come back, I didn't want to force my teammates in a situation where they had to choose between dropping from the tournament and going back with me, or having to find a ride back to the Valley on their own somehow. I always worry about this when I drive people out, because I think it's rather wasteful to pay into a tournament and have to drop if you're doing well. He says that's fine so I'm relieved.
I do the normal getting-ready things and head out around 11:30 and tell Danny that I'd pick him up then Zach. Danny has to get his kids ready to drop off at the babysitter so we decide that I'd ride with him there, come back to Danny's, get in my car, then go pick up Zach. Once we get to Danny's Nate calls and tells us that Big Mike decided to start the tourney earlier, we're like "well that's cool, glad we got the memo." Danny calls Zach and tells him they're starting earlier so we have to go as soon as we can pretty much. We get to his place, but turns out Zach left his stuff at Danny's so we drive back to Danny's, then realize that it was in the van that his wife drove to work. At the same time Alan texts me and asks if I could come pick him up and I'm like ffffff. I tell him they're starting the tourney earlier, we're getting a late start as it was, so I couldn't back-track to go and get him. I thought we had established that he was driving out so I didn't know what was going on. I don't mind driving people but come on, I ain't no god damn taxi service lol. Don't tell me you're good to drive out and then ask me 10 minutes later if I can come pick you up. All this also meant we had no time to stop by and get some food; what a rocky morning lol. So Danny calls Epler to see if he'd order pizza for us, he said yes so we're like hell yea. We also figured Mike wouldn't turn away 4 people's worth of attendance so we weren't too worried about it. Danny and Zach notice Steve's car in the parking lot and joke that we should just go home now lol.
We go in and I tell Mike "well we came as fast as we could" and I pay my entry as Nate and Kim come to greet me. I say a few quick hellos but my priority was to help Zach get his deck ready (mine, since he didn't have his stuff) since we basically had no time. Oh, first I got the last $40 from Donut for the Pokemon stuff I sold him, only took like 4 months to pay it off lol. The only decks I had were my Karakuris minus Maxx Cs and Claudio Dark Worlds minus Tour Guide so Zach picks Karakuri and adds/tweaks some stuff. I do a quick small trade with Nate, I wanted his Wind-Up Hunters but he wanted to make the loop deck. I probably won't play the deck since it's pretty easily stopped by Veiler and Maxx. I talk a little bit with people, and round 1 pairings are up quickly.
Tourney attendance is 16, a very respectable number for our area, and also taking into account that Alan didn't end up making it. I ask him why he didn't come out and he says he had to take care of his wife or something. Damn, she keeps that leash short!
Round 1 vs Donut (Anti-Meta/Hero Beat)
So right off the bat I get paired against one of the better people at the tourney, awesome. Donut used to be on Team O. Some things went down between Danny and him in the past so he quit/got kicked out but I still <3 Donut. He's a good guy.
At this point I don't really remember the games but I win games 1 and 3. Game 2 I start with a pretty bad hand but stall out for a very long time between Reaper, Honest, and Snowman Eaters. His Fossil Dyna also pretty much stops either of us from doing anything. Eventually our boards become cleared out and he kills me with something. I remember Zenmaines putting in a lot of work and my sideboard was good to help handle his deck.
OXO
Record: 1-0
After Zach's match he comes up and complains that I didn't have a full Extra deck for the Karakuris, I don't have the cards to have full Extras for all my spare decks and I usually just keep all my random Synchros together for various decks all together, so that explains why there was a Wonder Magician with that pile of Synchros/Extra deck. I said it wasn't really my responsibility to make sure he had all the stuff since he easily could've looked thru to see what all was in there and what he needed. I honestly had forgotten it wasn't complete, and to boot there was no Naturia Beast since Alan was borrowing it. The pizzas that Epler ordered got there so I paid $10 for it (half) and had some pizza. Danny and I got full after like 3 pieces or so and we were also planning on going to the China Buffet so we just gave the slices to whoever wanted one pretty much.
Round 2 vs Eric (Anti-Meta/Stun)
Eric's daughter came today, she had on more makeup than usual and was lookin' pretty dec. She didn't play in the tourney though so she just sat and watched our match.
Game 1 The first 4 turns I don't draw relevant monsters (opened like 2 Maxx C) but have removal for his turn 1 Doomcal, turn 2 TKing, and turn 3 King Tiger. Turn 4 he plays TKing and I take the hit. Next turn I draw Venus and bait out TKing with Gachi. I think he runs it over with something next turn. I stall out a bit with Reaper but he gets rid of it and I draw bad for the rest of the game.
Game 2 I draw decent and so my deck actually does what it's supposed to and I think I get in like 3 hits in with Reaper. Hyperion puts in work, and Jinzo says "you're free to do whatever the f you want" lol. Why do people play Jinzo these days?
Game 3 Pretty much the same as game 2 but fewer hits with Reaper. Again my side was good for this kind of match-up.
XOO
Record: 2-0
I think it was in between these rounds that I watch Epler play his Infernity deck against this guy running GBs. The guy has a Herk out and 1 card in hand. Epler topdecks Archfiend like a boss and searches for Necromancer. Necromancer effect for Beetle, and Mist Wurm for game lol. The guy stands up and slams his cards on the table, gets mad salty and calls Epler a lucky bitch lol.
Round 3 vs Nate (Anti-Meta/TG w Photon Sabre Tigers)
I joke around with Nate that my first 2 matches were against Anti-Meta (albeit different variants) and he was like "well looks you get to play another one" lol. I say "anti-meta's the new poor man's deck" and it pretty much is, with Dyna, TKing, Duality, and Warning reprints.
For some reason I really don't remember our match but I lose the first game and win the next two. After losing game 1 I went to my side and was like "wait, what the hell did I lose to?" and stared at the lifepoint sheet while I was trying to recall exactly what he was playing. I had no clue - I only saw TG Striker, TKing, Tengu, and the Photon Sabre Tigers I think. Striker should've been a big indicator but it wasn't for me for some reason at that time. I guess I figured it was just a tech tuner that can special summon. I went with stuff like Cyber Dragon but took out TKings for some reason, after realizing it was TG after he summoned Rush Rhino and Duality'd for Horn, I was like crap those TKings would've been useful but I win that game anyway. So game 3 I side TKings back in and win a very good match.
XOO
Record: 3-0
Danny and I are the only undefeateds left and we go over who we all played, basically I played against much harder opponents. We looked around to who Danny's opponents were playing and I was like "uhh, ya, lol" so I gave Danny the win since we simply wanted to secure an all Team O top 4. The plan was to do that and have all of us split so we could chill at the China Buffet. We just talk for a bit then we get bored so he gets out his Plant deck so we can test. Plants do what they do best and have outs to like everything lol. He's trying out the Tour Guide Night Assailant thing as well and I think he likes it too.
Round 4 vs Danny (Dino Rabbit)
Scoop to make sure Danny and I both top.
XX
Record: 3-1
I think it was at this point that I buy some of Kim's stuff since he's hurtin for cash due to car/insurance issues. I pick up a BLS, a bunch of holo staples, and like a set of PWWBs for $32. All in all I'm satisfied with the purchase so I'm sure I'll be able to profit a bit. I'll have to price it out later. So this round gets done and I guess Mike decides that we're doing a Top 8. We're like awesommmmme gotta play even more now lol. Top 8 (not in order) was Danny (Rabbit), Ty (TG), me (TGU Agent), Donut (Anti/Hero), Nate (Anti/TG), Zach (I think he made it- Karakuri), Eric (Anti/Stun), and Jeff (DW). Mike also does some BS pairings like 1st vs 3rd, 2v4, 5v7, and 6v8. I've never seen this kind of pairing before, we all thought it was supposed to be like 1v8, 2v7, etc. We figured he just wanted Team O to eliminate each other and try to put the lower-placed players into top 4. I dunno maybe it's just conspiracy thinking but I don't think he likes Team O as a whole that much. He's usually cool with me but then again I'm fairly mellow and easy to get along with. I don't think there's anyone that doesn't get along with me actually, even though there are people that annoy the hell out of me so I try not to hang around them too much.
Top 8/Round 5 vs Donut
So we get paired against each other again. Don't remember specifics but at one point I have Zenmaines, Venus, and Gachi on the field and he uses a bunch of cards to get rid of the Zenmaines. Game 2 I go with 2nd Reaper, Smashings, and Snowmans and stuff which are again good.
OO
Record: 4-1
Danny wins his match as well and get paired against each other but we just watch Jeff play against Nate in their top 4 match, and say that if Jeff wins I'll just play him but if Nate wins then we can do the Team O top 3 split. Danny asks if I'm sure I could win the match and I was like I think so, and explained that if DW Card Destructions for the nuts I couldn't really do much and I didn't know his build. I know it's not Claudio's and he runs "the crap" like Goldd, Sillva, and Celery. I figured the deck would probably just lose to itself but as the next 10 minutes went by I'm starting to second-guess my match against Dark World more and Danny has a lot more in his side for the match-up. I think all I got's a Crow, 2nd Bottomless, and some S/T removal. He talks about Shadow-Mirror being really good, and I was confused because I was sure that Mirror didn't stop one of the aspects of Grapha. Just looked it up, and it stops discard effects but Grapha can still special from the grave. I guess it still stops the majority of the deck so it's pretty good :) Jeff wins the first game and we're both like "ah crap" lol. Neither of us wanted to sit through another 45 minutes so we were pulling for Nate to win. I didn't watch their match too much but it seemed pretty back and forth. Nate ends up winning the match though so we get to split and GTFO. I think Nate spends his credit on something, don't remember, and Danny buys Metal Gear Solid 4 and gives me the rest of his credit (like a dollar and some change). I decide to save it since the Sneak is next week.
When we were in the videogame section, the manager comes up to us and is like "I know your moms aren't here, but I know my mom would tell me to not leave garbage lying around" and tells us the pizza boxes were still there as well as some sleeves and random cards and stuff. We're like well the garbage is beyond full so we didn't know where to put it. I walk over and pick up the cards and sleeves, Zach gets the pizza boxes, and he's like "so, put them aside...where to?" and the manager just tells him to leave them by the overflowing garbage can. Zach points out a McDonald's bag that's under one of the tables and some other garbage lying around, trying to emphasize that it wasn't just our garbage lying around. We tend to get blamed for shit like this even though we're never really messy per se; even if the pizza boxes were legitimately not ours, he still probably would've come to us first. :/ Whatevs.
So we finally leave and go to Top of China. We get the same waiter from last time, oh boy, lol. The football game is on but I don't pay attention to it and ask Nate about the meta at Northtown. When I was done eating, the waiter comes up to me and is like "su o fo", I'm just like god damnit, I have no idea what he's saying. I reply "Superbowl??" cuz that's what I thought he was saying, but I took like a split second to try and rationalize why he'd be saying "Superbowl" to me. My only guess was that I had to have a plate of food in order to watch the Superbowl or something, but today's... not the Superbowl?, lol, I dunno. Turns out he was asking if I wanted to keep my spoon and fork, but I was like "nah, I'm done done".
My wife was expecting me to be home by 7:30 and the tracking for the box of PHSW I ordered said it was supposed to arrive today (had it sent to Danny's) so I wanted to open that up before I went home so we left, said goodbyes to everyone, and dropped Zach off. We go to Danny's and don't see the box, so I'm like hm it'll probably show up on Monday. Take a quick bathroom break and leave, and that's a day. After getting back home, I check the tracking and it says it arrived there at 1:30pm so I was hoping it wasn't a case of someone stealing the box off his front porch. Danny just texted and said they left a slip that said it was at the post office for pick-up. Whew!
Decklist:
Total: 40
Monsters: 27
3 Hyperion
3 Venus
3 Earth
3 Ball
3 Guide
1 Sangan
1 Night Assailant
1 BLS
1 Sorcerer
1 Gorz
2 Thunder King
1 Honest
3 Maxx C
1 Reaper
Spells: 6
1 Hole
1 Reborn
1 Mind
1 Heavy
2 MST
Traps: 7
1 Dustshoot
1 Torrential
2 Warning
2 D-Prison
1 Bottomless
Extra
2 Gachi
1 Leviair
1 Leviathan
1 Giga-Brilliant
1 Zenmaines
1 Armory
1 Librarian
1 Catastor
1 Brionac
1 Orient
1 Black Rose
1 Stardust
1 Scrap
1 Trish
Side
1 Chimera
2 Cydra
1 TKing
2 Snowman
2 Smashing
1 Reaper
1 MST
1 Dust
1 DD Crow
1 Bottomless
1 Mirror Force
1 Black Horn of Heaven
I really liked the Night Assailant all day, and I think I drew into it only once but never ended up setting it. All my first Tour Guide plays besides the one were for Night Assailant and people were like "wtf??" lol. I explained my rationale that I had posted before, basically Guide->Guide = bad, and Guide->Sangan = sad (for me, cuz I <3 Sangan). In hindsight Sangan searches helped me a lot throughout the day, so I'm glad I had the option of going into Night Assailant and wasn't always using up Sangan for XYZ purposes. I didn't miss Trag at all, and Reaper is awesome. I wish I could fit in the 2nd one in the main but I'm honestly very comfortable with my build now. I know Agents isn't the best deck this format but I'm a firm believer in playing with what you're comfortable with and I am with this deck. I also like running a deck where if I do misplay, I know I can at least fall back on one of my many boss monsters to re-establish control. This is why I don't play something like Claudio's DW, seems like with that deck if you mess up once you're pretty much done, much like decks like GBs are. I ended up siding out all of the Maxx Cs for every match today, as all I played against were Anti-Meta type decks. Perhaps I need to cut down on the maindeck count of them for at least Lightning. I'll probably stick with them for the Northtown tournament on Monday though, and just tweak accordingly.
For the past week I've been practicing siding, and Evan Vargas' Youtube videos have helped me a lot. Realistically they aren't anything ground-breaking but they simply attempt to force you to sit there with your deck, pen & paper/something to write out exactly what you're siding in and out for the top match-ups you'd expect to play, and sit there and make your side. I thought it was silly at first but I was like screw it and did everything that he recommended, and I'm glad I did. After thinking about it, in my 8 or so years of playing this game, I have never really taken actual time to sit and exactly figure out my siding strategies for my match-ups. Like most people, I've only just thought about the match-ups I could face, throw some cards in that deal with them, and say "ah I'll figure it out while I'm playing." It's always been a struggle though, since I was always like "hmm, what should I take out??" during a match. I made up an Excel spreadsheet and listed all the match-ups that I would most likely face, and wrote out exactly what I was siding in and out for each. I theorized, tweaked, put stuff in, took stuff out, tweaked some more, and put in about an hour and a half or two of just practicing siding in and out and trying to memorize my siding strategies. I'm very glad I did these things because I felt much more comfortable knowing what my game plan was going to be for game 2 (and possibly 3) while I was playing game 1, rather than try to make one up on the fly during siding. I basically went into this tournament anticipating playing against Anti-Meta, Karakuri, and Dino Rabbit (ie Danny). I sided in every card in my side except Chimera, Crow, and Black Horn. Had I played any Machine variant, DW/Plant, or Danny, I would've utilized those cards though. If you think you have any problems with siding in general, I'd highly recommend watching his 2 videos and practicing your siding. Put in just a little bit of time now and then for it; it helps a lot!
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Well I've been waiting about 3 weeks for this tourney so I was very excited to say the least. Yesterday Alan came over to my place and we tested for a little bit but his wife is like mine and yanked his leash for him to come back after just like 2 hours lol. I lend him my Naturia Beast since he was planning on coming to today's tournament. Last night Danny asked if he could ride out with me so I said sure and also planned on picking up Zach. I texted Alan and asked if he'd be OK with driving himself out, because if I was in a situation where my wife demanded that I come back, I didn't want to force my teammates in a situation where they had to choose between dropping from the tournament and going back with me, or having to find a ride back to the Valley on their own somehow. I always worry about this when I drive people out, because I think it's rather wasteful to pay into a tournament and have to drop if you're doing well. He says that's fine so I'm relieved.
I do the normal getting-ready things and head out around 11:30 and tell Danny that I'd pick him up then Zach. Danny has to get his kids ready to drop off at the babysitter so we decide that I'd ride with him there, come back to Danny's, get in my car, then go pick up Zach. Once we get to Danny's Nate calls and tells us that Big Mike decided to start the tourney earlier, we're like "well that's cool, glad we got the memo." Danny calls Zach and tells him they're starting earlier so we have to go as soon as we can pretty much. We get to his place, but turns out Zach left his stuff at Danny's so we drive back to Danny's, then realize that it was in the van that his wife drove to work. At the same time Alan texts me and asks if I could come pick him up and I'm like ffffff. I tell him they're starting the tourney earlier, we're getting a late start as it was, so I couldn't back-track to go and get him. I thought we had established that he was driving out so I didn't know what was going on. I don't mind driving people but come on, I ain't no god damn taxi service lol. Don't tell me you're good to drive out and then ask me 10 minutes later if I can come pick you up. All this also meant we had no time to stop by and get some food; what a rocky morning lol. So Danny calls Epler to see if he'd order pizza for us, he said yes so we're like hell yea. We also figured Mike wouldn't turn away 4 people's worth of attendance so we weren't too worried about it. Danny and Zach notice Steve's car in the parking lot and joke that we should just go home now lol.
We go in and I tell Mike "well we came as fast as we could" and I pay my entry as Nate and Kim come to greet me. I say a few quick hellos but my priority was to help Zach get his deck ready (mine, since he didn't have his stuff) since we basically had no time. Oh, first I got the last $40 from Donut for the Pokemon stuff I sold him, only took like 4 months to pay it off lol. The only decks I had were my Karakuris minus Maxx Cs and Claudio Dark Worlds minus Tour Guide so Zach picks Karakuri and adds/tweaks some stuff. I do a quick small trade with Nate, I wanted his Wind-Up Hunters but he wanted to make the loop deck. I probably won't play the deck since it's pretty easily stopped by Veiler and Maxx. I talk a little bit with people, and round 1 pairings are up quickly.
Tourney attendance is 16, a very respectable number for our area, and also taking into account that Alan didn't end up making it. I ask him why he didn't come out and he says he had to take care of his wife or something. Damn, she keeps that leash short!
Round 1 vs Donut (Anti-Meta/Hero Beat)
So right off the bat I get paired against one of the better people at the tourney, awesome. Donut used to be on Team O. Some things went down between Danny and him in the past so he quit/got kicked out but I still <3 Donut. He's a good guy.
At this point I don't really remember the games but I win games 1 and 3. Game 2 I start with a pretty bad hand but stall out for a very long time between Reaper, Honest, and Snowman Eaters. His Fossil Dyna also pretty much stops either of us from doing anything. Eventually our boards become cleared out and he kills me with something. I remember Zenmaines putting in a lot of work and my sideboard was good to help handle his deck.
OXO
Record: 1-0
After Zach's match he comes up and complains that I didn't have a full Extra deck for the Karakuris, I don't have the cards to have full Extras for all my spare decks and I usually just keep all my random Synchros together for various decks all together, so that explains why there was a Wonder Magician with that pile of Synchros/Extra deck. I said it wasn't really my responsibility to make sure he had all the stuff since he easily could've looked thru to see what all was in there and what he needed. I honestly had forgotten it wasn't complete, and to boot there was no Naturia Beast since Alan was borrowing it. The pizzas that Epler ordered got there so I paid $10 for it (half) and had some pizza. Danny and I got full after like 3 pieces or so and we were also planning on going to the China Buffet so we just gave the slices to whoever wanted one pretty much.
Round 2 vs Eric (Anti-Meta/Stun)
Eric's daughter came today, she had on more makeup than usual and was lookin' pretty dec. She didn't play in the tourney though so she just sat and watched our match.
Game 1 The first 4 turns I don't draw relevant monsters (opened like 2 Maxx C) but have removal for his turn 1 Doomcal, turn 2 TKing, and turn 3 King Tiger. Turn 4 he plays TKing and I take the hit. Next turn I draw Venus and bait out TKing with Gachi. I think he runs it over with something next turn. I stall out a bit with Reaper but he gets rid of it and I draw bad for the rest of the game.
Game 2 I draw decent and so my deck actually does what it's supposed to and I think I get in like 3 hits in with Reaper. Hyperion puts in work, and Jinzo says "you're free to do whatever the f you want" lol. Why do people play Jinzo these days?
Game 3 Pretty much the same as game 2 but fewer hits with Reaper. Again my side was good for this kind of match-up.
XOO
Record: 2-0
I think it was in between these rounds that I watch Epler play his Infernity deck against this guy running GBs. The guy has a Herk out and 1 card in hand. Epler topdecks Archfiend like a boss and searches for Necromancer. Necromancer effect for Beetle, and Mist Wurm for game lol. The guy stands up and slams his cards on the table, gets mad salty and calls Epler a lucky bitch lol.
Round 3 vs Nate (Anti-Meta/TG w Photon Sabre Tigers)
I joke around with Nate that my first 2 matches were against Anti-Meta (albeit different variants) and he was like "well looks you get to play another one" lol. I say "anti-meta's the new poor man's deck" and it pretty much is, with Dyna, TKing, Duality, and Warning reprints.
For some reason I really don't remember our match but I lose the first game and win the next two. After losing game 1 I went to my side and was like "wait, what the hell did I lose to?" and stared at the lifepoint sheet while I was trying to recall exactly what he was playing. I had no clue - I only saw TG Striker, TKing, Tengu, and the Photon Sabre Tigers I think. Striker should've been a big indicator but it wasn't for me for some reason at that time. I guess I figured it was just a tech tuner that can special summon. I went with stuff like Cyber Dragon but took out TKings for some reason, after realizing it was TG after he summoned Rush Rhino and Duality'd for Horn, I was like crap those TKings would've been useful but I win that game anyway. So game 3 I side TKings back in and win a very good match.
XOO
Record: 3-0
Danny and I are the only undefeateds left and we go over who we all played, basically I played against much harder opponents. We looked around to who Danny's opponents were playing and I was like "uhh, ya, lol" so I gave Danny the win since we simply wanted to secure an all Team O top 4. The plan was to do that and have all of us split so we could chill at the China Buffet. We just talk for a bit then we get bored so he gets out his Plant deck so we can test. Plants do what they do best and have outs to like everything lol. He's trying out the Tour Guide Night Assailant thing as well and I think he likes it too.
Round 4 vs Danny (Dino Rabbit)
Scoop to make sure Danny and I both top.
XX
Record: 3-1
I think it was at this point that I buy some of Kim's stuff since he's hurtin for cash due to car/insurance issues. I pick up a BLS, a bunch of holo staples, and like a set of PWWBs for $32. All in all I'm satisfied with the purchase so I'm sure I'll be able to profit a bit. I'll have to price it out later. So this round gets done and I guess Mike decides that we're doing a Top 8. We're like awesommmmme gotta play even more now lol. Top 8 (not in order) was Danny (Rabbit), Ty (TG), me (TGU Agent), Donut (Anti/Hero), Nate (Anti/TG), Zach (I think he made it- Karakuri), Eric (Anti/Stun), and Jeff (DW). Mike also does some BS pairings like 1st vs 3rd, 2v4, 5v7, and 6v8. I've never seen this kind of pairing before, we all thought it was supposed to be like 1v8, 2v7, etc. We figured he just wanted Team O to eliminate each other and try to put the lower-placed players into top 4. I dunno maybe it's just conspiracy thinking but I don't think he likes Team O as a whole that much. He's usually cool with me but then again I'm fairly mellow and easy to get along with. I don't think there's anyone that doesn't get along with me actually, even though there are people that annoy the hell out of me so I try not to hang around them too much.
Top 8/Round 5 vs Donut
So we get paired against each other again. Don't remember specifics but at one point I have Zenmaines, Venus, and Gachi on the field and he uses a bunch of cards to get rid of the Zenmaines. Game 2 I go with 2nd Reaper, Smashings, and Snowmans and stuff which are again good.
OO
Record: 4-1
Danny wins his match as well and get paired against each other but we just watch Jeff play against Nate in their top 4 match, and say that if Jeff wins I'll just play him but if Nate wins then we can do the Team O top 3 split. Danny asks if I'm sure I could win the match and I was like I think so, and explained that if DW Card Destructions for the nuts I couldn't really do much and I didn't know his build. I know it's not Claudio's and he runs "the crap" like Goldd, Sillva, and Celery. I figured the deck would probably just lose to itself but as the next 10 minutes went by I'm starting to second-guess my match against Dark World more and Danny has a lot more in his side for the match-up. I think all I got's a Crow, 2nd Bottomless, and some S/T removal. He talks about Shadow-Mirror being really good, and I was confused because I was sure that Mirror didn't stop one of the aspects of Grapha. Just looked it up, and it stops discard effects but Grapha can still special from the grave. I guess it still stops the majority of the deck so it's pretty good :) Jeff wins the first game and we're both like "ah crap" lol. Neither of us wanted to sit through another 45 minutes so we were pulling for Nate to win. I didn't watch their match too much but it seemed pretty back and forth. Nate ends up winning the match though so we get to split and GTFO. I think Nate spends his credit on something, don't remember, and Danny buys Metal Gear Solid 4 and gives me the rest of his credit (like a dollar and some change). I decide to save it since the Sneak is next week.
When we were in the videogame section, the manager comes up to us and is like "I know your moms aren't here, but I know my mom would tell me to not leave garbage lying around" and tells us the pizza boxes were still there as well as some sleeves and random cards and stuff. We're like well the garbage is beyond full so we didn't know where to put it. I walk over and pick up the cards and sleeves, Zach gets the pizza boxes, and he's like "so, put them aside...where to?" and the manager just tells him to leave them by the overflowing garbage can. Zach points out a McDonald's bag that's under one of the tables and some other garbage lying around, trying to emphasize that it wasn't just our garbage lying around. We tend to get blamed for shit like this even though we're never really messy per se; even if the pizza boxes were legitimately not ours, he still probably would've come to us first. :/ Whatevs.
So we finally leave and go to Top of China. We get the same waiter from last time, oh boy, lol. The football game is on but I don't pay attention to it and ask Nate about the meta at Northtown. When I was done eating, the waiter comes up to me and is like "su o fo", I'm just like god damnit, I have no idea what he's saying. I reply "Superbowl??" cuz that's what I thought he was saying, but I took like a split second to try and rationalize why he'd be saying "Superbowl" to me. My only guess was that I had to have a plate of food in order to watch the Superbowl or something, but today's... not the Superbowl?, lol, I dunno. Turns out he was asking if I wanted to keep my spoon and fork, but I was like "nah, I'm done done".
My wife was expecting me to be home by 7:30 and the tracking for the box of PHSW I ordered said it was supposed to arrive today (had it sent to Danny's) so I wanted to open that up before I went home so we left, said goodbyes to everyone, and dropped Zach off. We go to Danny's and don't see the box, so I'm like hm it'll probably show up on Monday. Take a quick bathroom break and leave, and that's a day. After getting back home, I check the tracking and it says it arrived there at 1:30pm so I was hoping it wasn't a case of someone stealing the box off his front porch. Danny just texted and said they left a slip that said it was at the post office for pick-up. Whew!
Decklist:
Total: 40
Monsters: 27
3 Hyperion
3 Venus
3 Earth
3 Ball
3 Guide
1 Sangan
1 Night Assailant
1 BLS
1 Sorcerer
1 Gorz
2 Thunder King
1 Honest
3 Maxx C
1 Reaper
Spells: 6
1 Hole
1 Reborn
1 Mind
1 Heavy
2 MST
Traps: 7
1 Dustshoot
1 Torrential
2 Warning
2 D-Prison
1 Bottomless
Extra
2 Gachi
1 Leviair
1 Leviathan
1 Giga-Brilliant
1 Zenmaines
1 Armory
1 Librarian
1 Catastor
1 Brionac
1 Orient
1 Black Rose
1 Stardust
1 Scrap
1 Trish
Side
1 Chimera
2 Cydra
1 TKing
2 Snowman
2 Smashing
1 Reaper
1 MST
1 Dust
1 DD Crow
1 Bottomless
1 Mirror Force
1 Black Horn of Heaven
I really liked the Night Assailant all day, and I think I drew into it only once but never ended up setting it. All my first Tour Guide plays besides the one were for Night Assailant and people were like "wtf??" lol. I explained my rationale that I had posted before, basically Guide->Guide = bad, and Guide->Sangan = sad (for me, cuz I <3 Sangan). In hindsight Sangan searches helped me a lot throughout the day, so I'm glad I had the option of going into Night Assailant and wasn't always using up Sangan for XYZ purposes. I didn't miss Trag at all, and Reaper is awesome. I wish I could fit in the 2nd one in the main but I'm honestly very comfortable with my build now. I know Agents isn't the best deck this format but I'm a firm believer in playing with what you're comfortable with and I am with this deck. I also like running a deck where if I do misplay, I know I can at least fall back on one of my many boss monsters to re-establish control. This is why I don't play something like Claudio's DW, seems like with that deck if you mess up once you're pretty much done, much like decks like GBs are. I ended up siding out all of the Maxx Cs for every match today, as all I played against were Anti-Meta type decks. Perhaps I need to cut down on the maindeck count of them for at least Lightning. I'll probably stick with them for the Northtown tournament on Monday though, and just tweak accordingly.
For the past week I've been practicing siding, and Evan Vargas' Youtube videos have helped me a lot. Realistically they aren't anything ground-breaking but they simply attempt to force you to sit there with your deck, pen & paper/something to write out exactly what you're siding in and out for the top match-ups you'd expect to play, and sit there and make your side. I thought it was silly at first but I was like screw it and did everything that he recommended, and I'm glad I did. After thinking about it, in my 8 or so years of playing this game, I have never really taken actual time to sit and exactly figure out my siding strategies for my match-ups. Like most people, I've only just thought about the match-ups I could face, throw some cards in that deal with them, and say "ah I'll figure it out while I'm playing." It's always been a struggle though, since I was always like "hmm, what should I take out??" during a match. I made up an Excel spreadsheet and listed all the match-ups that I would most likely face, and wrote out exactly what I was siding in and out for each. I theorized, tweaked, put stuff in, took stuff out, tweaked some more, and put in about an hour and a half or two of just practicing siding in and out and trying to memorize my siding strategies. I'm very glad I did these things because I felt much more comfortable knowing what my game plan was going to be for game 2 (and possibly 3) while I was playing game 1, rather than try to make one up on the fly during siding. I basically went into this tournament anticipating playing against Anti-Meta, Karakuri, and Dino Rabbit (ie Danny). I sided in every card in my side except Chimera, Crow, and Black Horn. Had I played any Machine variant, DW/Plant, or Danny, I would've utilized those cards though. If you think you have any problems with siding in general, I'd highly recommend watching his 2 videos and practicing your siding. Put in just a little bit of time now and then for it; it helps a lot!
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
So, How 'Bout them Turbo Packz?
As I had expected, stores finally got in their Turbo Pack 7 shipments in and the full spoiler has been revealed. Unfortunately the product page still doesn't have the ORCS SE info that I had hoped for, but hey we can't get all the juicy news at once right? I was at Danny's and Link texted me with the info that Catastor was the Ulti, and about the Super Horn of the Phantom Beast and Pashuul. We were all like "uh, ok I guess?" lol. Here's the full list below (as if you haven't seen it already):
Ultimate
AOJ Catastor
Ultra
Book of Moon
Super
X-Saber Pashuul
Horn of the Phantom Beast
Yellow Gadget
Ninja Grandmaster Sasuke
Rare
Dark Horus
Lightning Warrior
Tailswipe
Geartown
Big Evolution Pill
Primal Seed
Common
Seiyaryu
Serpent Knight Dragon
Gokipon
Kotodama
Herald of Orange Light
Blackwing - Sirocco the Dawn
Goe Goe the Gallant Ninja
Ninjitsu Art of Transformation
Ninjitsu Art of Decoy
Serpent Knight Dragon
Gokipon
Kotodama
Herald of Orange Light
Blackwing - Sirocco the Dawn
Goe Goe the Gallant Ninja
Ninjitsu Art of Transformation
Ninjitsu Art of Decoy
I can admit that I wouldn't mind having the Ultra Book and a set of super Horns, and the common Orange is nice, but holy sweat, do they seriously try to make these Turbo Packs bad? I'm curious what the thought process was when they decided on this final list of cards. I'm not the type that was expecting to see Tour Guide or anything like that in this, but couldn't we have had something like rare Black Rose Dragon? Stardust was in the last one, BRD is fairly old now, so seriously, wtf? I thought Turbo Packs were supposed to be geared slightly more toward the competitive players? My guess is that they don't make as much money on these packs as selling regular product like SEs and tins and whatnot and putting in the desired reprints in them, so they've really been skimping on what they've been putting in Turbos pretty much since the very first one. I for one know that I'm not going to be spending any money on this, even if it's a measly $2 (our stores usually give the option of $3 entry for no Turbo, and $5 with). I haven't pulled a holo out of a Turbo Pack since like TU02 anyway, so I'm just gonna say screw it and pass on this one altogether. So much for that!
We had a good time testing at Danny's today. Shiggs ended up showing up so we had 4 people like I had wanted, but we just had one match going on anyway. I started against Shiggs with his Blackwings; he never really got much going or I just had answers to most of his plays. Then Zach used Shiggs' Dark World deck, and that can actually be a hard match-up. His deck didn't run any DW Dealings though, and I think that's seriously one of the best cards in the deck in the first place. Every time I was able to Tour Guide into Night Assailant I did, sometimes I drew into it and simply used its effect, all in all I really liked it and will try it out at this Saturday's tourney. Shiggs left early and the three of us (Danny, Zach, and me) talked about random topics like reprints, ban list, the value in the game, and Zach decided he was going to invest in 3 Tour Guides and gave me his binder so I can sell some stuff off. Then we took Zach home and went back to Danny's.
Andrew (Uncle's TO) texted Danny and was like "if we increased the prize support would you guys come back?" and Danny and I just looked at each other and were like "uh, probably not". He explained to him that it's not just about the prizes and that kinda stuff, it's about being able to go somewhere where you can ignore all the BS in life for just a few hours, and have fun doing something with people you enjoy being around. When Andrew says stuff like "well if you don't like it, you can just go play somewhere else" it's like a slap in the face when to some, the tournament and Uncle's is like a "home away from home" kinda thing. It's also annoying as hell when you publicly get called out for letting out a curse word from time to time. I understand it's a family game store and it's something most parents don't want their kids being around, but it's not like something like that can't happen at any other business or location. I remember being like 9 years old and my mom and I went to McDonald's this one time, there were these 2 guys at the table next to us and every other word this one guy said was "fuck" or "fuckin'". It's not like someone that works there is going to tell him to stop cursing. Some of us are grown men and we simply don't need to be told to not curse like we were children or something, especially in the manner that he has done in the past. I think Andrew is starting to realize these things now; either that or he's just telling Danny what he thinks he wants to hear so all of us would come back to Uncle's. Either way, looks like he's hurting for attendance so he's reaching out to the team. I think most of the local players are actually gonna stick with Northtown, I'll try and go out there on Monday to see how it is.
So after that, Danny and I tested, with him running Rabbit. I admit that I underestimated that match very much, Laggia and Dolkka are just sick lol. We both agree that if they made a 1950 or 2000 normal dino, the deck would be insane lol (screw you Kaba). I really haven't play against it all that much on DN. Like I've said in the past though, Danny's the only one that has the whole deck so it's not like every other match I play around here is gonna be against Rabbit. Either way I'll have my side prepared for the match-up, <3 u bro :)
Between now and Saturday's tourney, I need to finalize my side-decking strategy a bit more; it's always something I've been weak in and Evan Vargas' video about siding seems very helpful, looking forward to part 2 of it.
ORCS/Ban List Conspiracy?, and Card Choices
Well I hope everyone enjoyed their New Year's celebrations and didn't do anything they'd regret (too badly) :)
The past few days I've impatiently been waiting for Turbo 7 and ORCS SE promo news. What started out as "oh we'll get the Turbo 7 news on Thursday" has turned into a "wait 5+ more days" kinda thing. I'm gonna go ahead and presume that the stores will finally have them in tomorrow, since they apparently shipped it out on Thursday and today was a day-off. I'm also being optimistic in hoping that the Konami product or article page will be updated tomorrow since the last post on the article page was the Tour Bus one, and that was over a week ago. ORCS is right around the corner so we should theoretically get the SE info soon.
A few days ago I watched underworld6667's video talking about the ban list and the significance of the upped release date for ORCS. He basically said it's most likely so they can ban-hammer Inzektors but also give the TCG time to play with (and buy into) the archetype. It wouldn't make sense to buy up the set for Inzektors if they nerfed them before the set was released to us. It seems pretty logical and who knows it may be spot on, but I'm also taking into consideration that Inzektor's dominance/prevalence happened much after the knowledge of the upped release date. What I mean is, if I remember correctly, at the point in time that we got the info for the upped release date, TG Agent was "the deck" in the OCG. So to say that it is because of Inzektors, well that doesn't seem to make sense since every top list I saw was mostly TG Agent at the time. Of course my info for all this is limited to Shriek's OCG site, and I'm going off of my not-so-great memory. Regardless, underworld6667's analysis is enough for me to not buy into the Inzektor hype. Maybe once the March list comes out, and if they don't get nerfed, establish themselves as tier 1 over here.
Lately I have been having issues with what my 40th card should be in my TGU Agent deck. It all started after I saw Evan Vargas' video where he talked about switching his 2x Tragoedia with 2x Spirit Reaper in his XYZ Chaos deck. He explained that there were many instances where he had a dead Trag in hand, no play for the turn, and just sat behind his Snowman Eater with nothing to do. He also explained that since Reaper was level 3 dark, it still stuck with his Rank-3/Chaos theme of the deck. I've always played 1 Trago in my Agent deck so this wasn't an issue at the time, but I decided I wanted to play Reaper. I think I ended up cutting 1 TKing (to go back to 2) for it. Reaper, when I drew it, put in a lot of work with the testing I've done on DN. I think one game I successfully hit 3 times with it, awesome pluses.
Back when the effect of Tour Bus was revealed, I saw a DGz post that went something like "I'd rather run Night Assailant than this garbage." I didn't think about it for quite some time, until I happened to randomly once again go over the top 16 lists for Brighton. In it I noticed Adrian Madaj play 1 copy of it in the main and also 1 copy of Possessed Dark Soul in the side. I had no clue what Possessed Dark Soul was so I wiki'd it and saw that it was basically just another Tour Guide target with a somewhat decent effect. I thought about Night Assailant (NA for short) more and more. With NA, your first Tour Guide drop can be: another Tour Guide, Sangan, or NA. Going for Sangan and immediately XYZ'ing with it has become the increasingly popular play these days, with the philosophy being: you don't want to top-deck Sangan late in the game but you also want the odds in your favor to draw into another Guide. The thing I didn't like and still don't like about this, is that I hate knowing I'll most likely never get a Sangan search off regardless of what stage in the game it is. There have been many instances where I've used it to synch with Earth, enjoy the pluses, and search for Maxx C. If you go for Tour Guide, then you only have 1 left in the deck, and the odds of drawing into that last copy and using its effect becomes much lower. Tour Guide for Tour Guide is probably the least ideal play. So, going Guide -> NA leaves me with 2 Guides left in the deck and also a Sangan. This is good for the increased probability of drawing into another Guide and also gives me the potential to Sangan search in the future. Even if you open with NA or top-deck it, it still has a relevant effect, is level 3, and Chaos food.
So my issue became "do I drop Trag to play NA?" Trag has saved me a lot of times against reckless aggressive pushes from some opponents in the past. At the same time, I agree with Evan's observation that sometimes it was just kinda useless in my hand. I also had to take into consideration playing a 2nd Reaper, as it is just so good right now. I decided I had to make a pro/con list (I like them lol) for each card. Nothing profound here, just outlining my thought process:
Tragoedia
Pros:
- A potential beater
- "Change of Heart" effect
- Level-change effect for XYZ or Synchro shenanigans
- Like Gorz, can save you from getting OTK'd
Cons:
- Can be dead in the hand
- Terrible to draw if you have no or very few cards in hand
- Forces you in a situation of choosing to set defense or not
Spirit Reaper
Pros:
- Great offensive pressure, basically forces your opponent to react to it or deal with the consequence
- Great as a defensive wall
- Level 3
- Very decent in top-decking situation
- Some decks these days only have a few outs to it
Cons:
- Destruction by being targetted
Night Assailant
Pros:
- Tour Guide target, allowing me to keep 2 Guides in the deck and potential Sangan plays open
- Level 3
- Very decent in top-decking situation
- Destruction ability
Cons:
- Once its attacked, will more than likely be dead
- Insignificant ATK
All of them are dark so that's really a non-factor.
So, for the time being, I've decided to cut the Trag for NA and still play 1 Reaper. I tested the new build on DN a little bit, and I love being able to Guide for NA and keep my more-relevant cards in the deck. I'm also playing 1 Bottomless at the moment, and I've had a similar mental dilemma about choosing to run it, or cutting it for Trag, Reaper, or Mirror Force. I won't be going back to 41 in the main either. I can't remember the last time I've Mirror Force'd for more than 1 Monster against a good player though, so it may be something I keep in the side against rogue match-ups. I've always liked Bottomless since it deals with things like Scrap Dragon, Brionac, and Hyperion better than Mirror Force.
Tomorrow I finally get another day of wife-free freedom so I'll be testing at Danny's with Zach and maybe Alan. It'd be nice if Alan could come so we could get 2 matches going at the same time rather than having 1 person just sit around. I'll try and test these deck nuances and see what I like.
The past few days I've impatiently been waiting for Turbo 7 and ORCS SE promo news. What started out as "oh we'll get the Turbo 7 news on Thursday" has turned into a "wait 5+ more days" kinda thing. I'm gonna go ahead and presume that the stores will finally have them in tomorrow, since they apparently shipped it out on Thursday and today was a day-off. I'm also being optimistic in hoping that the Konami product or article page will be updated tomorrow since the last post on the article page was the Tour Bus one, and that was over a week ago. ORCS is right around the corner so we should theoretically get the SE info soon.
A few days ago I watched underworld6667's video talking about the ban list and the significance of the upped release date for ORCS. He basically said it's most likely so they can ban-hammer Inzektors but also give the TCG time to play with (and buy into) the archetype. It wouldn't make sense to buy up the set for Inzektors if they nerfed them before the set was released to us. It seems pretty logical and who knows it may be spot on, but I'm also taking into consideration that Inzektor's dominance/prevalence happened much after the knowledge of the upped release date. What I mean is, if I remember correctly, at the point in time that we got the info for the upped release date, TG Agent was "the deck" in the OCG. So to say that it is because of Inzektors, well that doesn't seem to make sense since every top list I saw was mostly TG Agent at the time. Of course my info for all this is limited to Shriek's OCG site, and I'm going off of my not-so-great memory. Regardless, underworld6667's analysis is enough for me to not buy into the Inzektor hype. Maybe once the March list comes out, and if they don't get nerfed, establish themselves as tier 1 over here.
Lately I have been having issues with what my 40th card should be in my TGU Agent deck. It all started after I saw Evan Vargas' video where he talked about switching his 2x Tragoedia with 2x Spirit Reaper in his XYZ Chaos deck. He explained that there were many instances where he had a dead Trag in hand, no play for the turn, and just sat behind his Snowman Eater with nothing to do. He also explained that since Reaper was level 3 dark, it still stuck with his Rank-3/Chaos theme of the deck. I've always played 1 Trago in my Agent deck so this wasn't an issue at the time, but I decided I wanted to play Reaper. I think I ended up cutting 1 TKing (to go back to 2) for it. Reaper, when I drew it, put in a lot of work with the testing I've done on DN. I think one game I successfully hit 3 times with it, awesome pluses.
Back when the effect of Tour Bus was revealed, I saw a DGz post that went something like "I'd rather run Night Assailant than this garbage." I didn't think about it for quite some time, until I happened to randomly once again go over the top 16 lists for Brighton. In it I noticed Adrian Madaj play 1 copy of it in the main and also 1 copy of Possessed Dark Soul in the side. I had no clue what Possessed Dark Soul was so I wiki'd it and saw that it was basically just another Tour Guide target with a somewhat decent effect. I thought about Night Assailant (NA for short) more and more. With NA, your first Tour Guide drop can be: another Tour Guide, Sangan, or NA. Going for Sangan and immediately XYZ'ing with it has become the increasingly popular play these days, with the philosophy being: you don't want to top-deck Sangan late in the game but you also want the odds in your favor to draw into another Guide. The thing I didn't like and still don't like about this, is that I hate knowing I'll most likely never get a Sangan search off regardless of what stage in the game it is. There have been many instances where I've used it to synch with Earth, enjoy the pluses, and search for Maxx C. If you go for Tour Guide, then you only have 1 left in the deck, and the odds of drawing into that last copy and using its effect becomes much lower. Tour Guide for Tour Guide is probably the least ideal play. So, going Guide -> NA leaves me with 2 Guides left in the deck and also a Sangan. This is good for the increased probability of drawing into another Guide and also gives me the potential to Sangan search in the future. Even if you open with NA or top-deck it, it still has a relevant effect, is level 3, and Chaos food.
So my issue became "do I drop Trag to play NA?" Trag has saved me a lot of times against reckless aggressive pushes from some opponents in the past. At the same time, I agree with Evan's observation that sometimes it was just kinda useless in my hand. I also had to take into consideration playing a 2nd Reaper, as it is just so good right now. I decided I had to make a pro/con list (I like them lol) for each card. Nothing profound here, just outlining my thought process:
Tragoedia
Pros:
- A potential beater
- "Change of Heart" effect
- Level-change effect for XYZ or Synchro shenanigans
- Like Gorz, can save you from getting OTK'd
Cons:
- Can be dead in the hand
- Terrible to draw if you have no or very few cards in hand
- Forces you in a situation of choosing to set defense or not
Spirit Reaper
Pros:
- Great offensive pressure, basically forces your opponent to react to it or deal with the consequence
- Great as a defensive wall
- Level 3
- Very decent in top-decking situation
- Some decks these days only have a few outs to it
Cons:
- Destruction by being targetted
Night Assailant
Pros:
- Tour Guide target, allowing me to keep 2 Guides in the deck and potential Sangan plays open
- Level 3
- Very decent in top-decking situation
- Destruction ability
Cons:
- Once its attacked, will more than likely be dead
- Insignificant ATK
All of them are dark so that's really a non-factor.
So, for the time being, I've decided to cut the Trag for NA and still play 1 Reaper. I tested the new build on DN a little bit, and I love being able to Guide for NA and keep my more-relevant cards in the deck. I'm also playing 1 Bottomless at the moment, and I've had a similar mental dilemma about choosing to run it, or cutting it for Trag, Reaper, or Mirror Force. I won't be going back to 41 in the main either. I can't remember the last time I've Mirror Force'd for more than 1 Monster against a good player though, so it may be something I keep in the side against rogue match-ups. I've always liked Bottomless since it deals with things like Scrap Dragon, Brionac, and Hyperion better than Mirror Force.
Tomorrow I finally get another day of wife-free freedom so I'll be testing at Danny's with Zach and maybe Alan. It'd be nice if Alan could come so we could get 2 matches going at the same time rather than having 1 person just sit around. I'll try and test these deck nuances and see what I like.
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