Does Draft Belong In YuGiOh?

Although many think that the idea of Draft or Limited play in YGO is a relatively new thing and introduced with Battle Pack, it should be noted that sneak peeks used to be built around the idea of making a deck out of the 5 packs you received and playing your opponent with said deck. I remember in our sneak peeks from way long ago where we'd be given a little slip where we were to acquire signatures of 5 people we "played" with our "deck", and if we turned in the slip with the signatures to the judges we would receive an additional pack. This was actually a pretty good deal and I think I played maybe half a game with someone 1 time out of all the sneaks that used to have this system in place. I remember playing against some kid and one of my friends came up to me like “what the hell are you doing?” Indeed most people just walked around or passed around their slip to get the signatures for their extra pack and be done with it. The problem with Limited (Draft or Sealed) YGO was the cards in the set hardly ever worked together unless they were within their own theme. YGO was simply not designed anything to be like Magic in terms of set design or interaction, thus Limited YGO became a simple game of beaters, walls, and hoping to not deck out before your opponent. Regular YGO sets are still pretty much like this, where chances are you would just be picking the beefiest Normal Summonable monster or if you happened to pull a generic removal spell/trap or damage-step trick. Pick the 20-or-so cards that are actually playable and go to town. No wonder no one was interested in actually playing out the full 5 matches and all of our sneaks (then and now) are more focused on Constructed, where players would prefer to win packs of the new set with their Advanced deck rather than do any sort of Sealed or Draft play.

Even though many players felt this way about Limited in YGO, I do believe it is something players wanted, at least to a certain extent, due to the natural comparisons people made with Magic. We wanted our game to be on equal footing with the competition. After all, Magic at the time had Standard, Extended, Legacy, Draft, Sealed, Block Constructed, 2-headed giant, I’m sure there are more, but the point is that Magic had several formats that catered to different “types” of players and was a way to change things up from time to time. Not just having different formats, but being actually supported by Wizards in terms of the tournaments they held. YGO had Advanced, Traditional, and I suppose Pegasus League, even though I have never heard of there being an actual Pegasus League tournament in my area. Traditional has never really been supported on any sort of official level as far as I am aware (I don't care if your local happened to have had a Traditional tourney). Many years later, after Upper Deck was no longer in the picture and Konami took the reigns, we received Battle Pack 1 in 2012.

Battle Pack 1 was a respectable first step in there being viable Limited in Yugz, but anyone that has played a game of BP01 Limited knows it still had its problems. I think that BP01 tried to be too many things in order to get people to actually buy it. What I mean is they wanted some avenue to reprint cards to include updated Problem-Solving Card Text (PSCT), reprint pricey cards that people would actually want (Tour Guide, Lance), while still managing to have a coherent playable format. The price point of $2 a pack was definitely a good thing for those that like cracking packs but not having to burn through a lot of money, but with only 5 cards per pack the format was designed so each participant that wanted to actually play Sealed would have to spend $20 to have enough cards to make a maindeck. In Magic you spent $12 (3 packs) for Draft and $20 for Sealed (5 packs), and while Sealed play for both have the same price, chances are you would pull better out of Magic Sealed than YGO Sealed unless you were fortunate enough to pull a Tour Guide, even though it basically had no application in the actual Sealed format. And at least your Magic Sealed pulls could be relevant to Standard play. With so few cards in a Sealed YGO pool, it was arguably too simplistic in picking out the worst cards from your pool, and voila, that was your deck. There was basically very little skill in deck construction but it can be argued that actual play did take skill.

For the most part, the subsequent Battle Packs were similar in structure until the most recent one with the rule where every monster can be every type. I have played in 1 Draft with the current Battle Pack, and I think it has made great strides toward a playable Limited experience, at least compared to the first Battle Pack. The problem occurs in there being essentially no "money cards" that people would want for their Advanced decks. I think I won that particular Draft event, but damn was I disappointed with my pulls and essentially the pile of garbage I had at the end of the day. There was basically no prize support either since all of the entry went toward buying the Draft packs. Yes there are a few sought-after XYZ's but the pull-rate for those is reportedly absurdly low. The set itself is not a set people would want to just randomly buy, thus hurting its appeal in there being actual Limited play. The experience may be fun, and the format may have good functionality, but if it's not worth buying as a stand-alone product people will still be turned away from it. In this sense Limited YGO is still not "quite there".

I am not exactly sure when Konami started incorporating Draft in the top cut of YCS events (some European events have even been all Limited), but I know this has sparked a lot of controversy. Some believe it is purely a money-making move, while others believe they just want to copy Magic. Others feel that players should be more well-rounded and be good at various formats to become the true "champion" of an event. After all, in a Magic Pro Tour or Worlds, players must be versed in several different formats to become the eventual winner; you can't just be good at 1 format and expect to top. My stance on YGO Draft is somewhere in the middle of all this; I do believe it should be something that is incorporated at the YCS level, but not in the top 16 of the event. I believe the final rounds to be too important for it to be decided by Draft. There is too much emphasis on Constructed in day-to-day YGO tournaments and discussion, and even the entire premise of the show is based on Constructed. I know entry fee will be a factor, but I think changing the way they do entry and prize support could help the game overall- getting 5 packs out of your $20 entry is just too generous. It helps the little guys, yes, but YGO prize support is laughable, to put it gently. I am not saying people should receive nothing, but getting 100% of your entry back through product is a little much. Why not knock it down to 60% (so 3 packs for your entry), and give the players that top respectable prize support? As for the tournament, I think something similar to how Magic does it, like "first 4 rounds Constructed, next 4 rounds Draft, and finish the rest of the event Constructed", or something of that nature, would be the most ideal system of incorporating both Constructed and Draft into an event. Draft and Sealed could be interchangeable or they could incorporate Sealed as well in some way. This way players will respect that Limited is expected of them, but it’s not going to be what we’re reading about in the top 16 until the final match. I for one become totally uninterested in a YCS event once the top 16 starts, whereas for ARG I will gladly watch coverage up until the end of the championship match. I know others have a similar stance as mine. It is a complete buzz-kill following an event, wondering "what deck will win the event?" and realizing that it's just going to be Draft. At that point it becomes "what decks top 32'd and how many of each? Ok- fun YCS."

The problem with Draft, in either game, is it is exceptionally hard to practice. Understanding card picks and knowing the set are one thing, but physically playing out practice drafts and games simply requires product to be purchased, as often as you want to practice. That becomes a potentially expensive endeavor, especially to end up with stuff that has minimal use in Constructed play. I’m sure Konami is sitting in the back like “well exactly, we want people to buy stuff”, and I can respect this as they are a business after all. I just don’t think it should come at the expense of the final critical matches of their flagship tournament series. I do feel that Draft deserves its place in competitive YGO, but just not how it is in its current form and structure.

A [potential] Return to Blogging?

Hi everybody, it has been over a year now since my last blog post and a lot has happened in the game since then. Not so much in my personal life besides being an owner of a new dog and having to work from an office whereas I was able to work from home before. This has caused a decline in my tournament attendance unfortunately to about 1 a week on a good week. I have also picked up Hearthstone which I find to be very entertaining even though my general interest in it has died down from when I first started; hopefully the new expansion set will help pique my interest back up. The blog has been on and off my mind over the past year but I guess the motivation to actually write about something just wasn't strong enough. As I peruse over my blog today, I've noticed the overall decline of blogging activity, which is quite a shame as I have always found great information and insight from reading various blogs. I suppose one can make an argument that the ever-rising popularity of YouTube, video coverage of events, and articles like those found on CoreTCG, TCGPlayer, and ARG may have contributed to the overall decline of blogging. After all, who are we, compared to the likes of Frazier Smith, Robbie Boyajian, or even Jason Grabher-Meyer? In this sense we may develop our own inferiority complex of "well why would anyone want to read anything I had to say? I'm just a random." And while I can completely agree with this sentiment and sometimes even dwell on it myself, it is important to remember that opinions, as long as they come with sound logic and reasoning, all hold value in the grand scheme of learning in general. Learning from several different perspectives (although they may not all be right) helps us become more well-rounded, and even the best in academic research had to have started somewhere (ie we were all noobs at one point or another).

As for my local scene of Spokane Washington, there have been positives and negatives over the past year. Besides Seattle, we are about the only place in the Northwest that holds OTS tournaments and we even host regional events of which I have judged the past two. Having regionals on the east side of the state has always been nothing but a pipe dream but now we are very fortunate in having them. A big thanks to Roy and the Comic Book Shop for all their hard work they have put in towards us having regularly-occurring regionals! The attendance for those have been in the 110-120 range, which is nothing compared to those in Cali or Philly, but then again we are in eastern Washington after all where we have experienced a consistent decline of Yugz participation on the local level. One of the shops is not even supporting Yugz anymore. This is not the shop's fault though, unfortunately our local community is quite decisive as to which tourneys they want to support or not. All this does is hurt our community though, because it leads to fewer sneak peeks which leads to a decreased card pool of new cards as they come out, and less events to practice in. I would be willing to bet that the sum of attendance for all tourneys in a week of YGO is less than the average attendance of just 1 FNM at just 1 shop that runs an FNM tourney; it is quite sad and unfortunately it is something I cannot pin down in terms of what the exact reason may be. Many times I have considered just switching over to Magic once again but the thought of set rotation in Standard always holds me back. Our Saturday tournament is basically a crapshoot of if there'll be enough people or not, so we are down to Sunday and Monday as the only real days where people are comfortable enough to make the trek to a tourney. With my work schedule, Mondays are basically not an option for me anymore, so that leaves Sunday. If the wife wants to go to church or do something on a Sunday, well there goes the whole week for me for an opportunity to play. I know others are in a similar boat as me and the question of "is it worth it?" springs up where the cost of having a competitive deck is far greater than what you could get back in prize support, taking into consideration the once-a-week tourney schedule. When I was hitting 3 tourneys a week and consistently doing well enough to get prize support virtually every tourney, there was no question that my investment in my deck was worth it.

Fortunately for me I have great teammates that will support me in deck choices although I do go hard myself in having my own cards. At the Seattle regional in September (I believe that's when it was), I got my invite with Satellarknights (which I borrowed from Danny) going X-2. I lost to Luka who ran Burning Abyss and topped at that event and at the more recent ARG Seattle, and a fellow local player who ran Constellars. Nothing I could do to early Pleiades+Kaiser plays and a clutch Pulling the Rug in game 3. She (yes, she) ended up getting her invite as well but finished the day X-3. During the event I questioned why the hell I ran Satella and at the end of the day told Danny that he should sell the deck off. I felt that the deck was quite weak/restrictive (so dependent on that normal summon), but played it because I liked the consistency along with the good floodgate options in the side. I have not touched the deck post-NECH and would not recommend it to anyone as I feel that the support it received, and is going to receive, is just much less compared to Shaddoll, Abyss, Qliphort, and the upcoming Necloth/Nekroz. At our OTS, I ran Burning Abyss (again borrowed from Danny) which was actually my first time playing the deck. There were only 30 people for this event and I ended up going 3-2 losing to teammates, but by the grace of tie-breakers actually managed to top 8. In top 8 I played my teammate Link who I had lost to in Swiss running Shaddoll, but ended up beating him to make top 4 and earn another invite. Unfortunately in top 4 I lost to the degeneracy known as Infernity; so glad that deck is dead as a door nail now. Our winner from last year, Alan, ended up winning the event with Burning Abyss, so he is our back-to-back OTS Champion. It is pretty funny considering he wasn't even going to play in the event but snuck away from his wife to play. She ended up showing up at the event during round 1. We were all afraid that she was going to make him drop from the tournament and go home but she was civil about it (as far as I know, at least he got to finish the event). I was planning on attending the ARG in Seattle a few weeks ago but unfortunately my wife came down with the flu and I did not feel comfortable leaving her over the weekend without transportation if there was an emergency situation. The money I had for the event helped one of my teammates go though so my inability to go was not in vain.

During this entire format I actually had the Shaddoll stuff needed to play the deck besides the Artifact engine which I got rid of to my teammate Zach for really cheap earlier on. That was probably my biggest mistake of the format, next to running Satellas in general lol. But nonetheless, I never felt very comfortable with a Shaddoll build; I felt that the hands it sometimes got, regardless of build, were too clunky and I was never a fan of "random mill" incorporating the Lightsworn engine popularized by Pat Hoban. It wasn't only until more recently that I started playing the deck and being somewhat comfortable with it, utilizing the "mini chaos dragons", Eclipse Wyvern, and DAD. DAD contributed to many wins all on its own as it is so easy to set up the graveyard for it with the dragon build and how searchable it is via Wyvern. I have recently sold the deck off though with its apparent decline in performance from ARG Raleigh and Seattle. Although it did very respectably at Anaheim over the weekend, overall I am glad I sold the deck off as I never considered myself to be a "good" Shaddoll player at all. Many have said it's rather hard to play the deck optimally and I do agree with that sentiment; it seems like there are so many plays that one can do and it is easy to not pick the most-optimal decision tree in any given turn. I never felt like I played the deck "right", whether that be due to lack of practice or just not realizing the optimal order of plays or what have you (which can tie back to lack of practice). My intention is to run Burning Abyss or Qliphort for the duration of this format, depending on what I can borrow from Danny of course lol. From there it'll naturally depend on the ban list and the inevitability that is Nekroz.

As for blogging, I realized on my drive to work this morning that work is sometimes dead enough that I should have the time to write something from time to time, granted I had something to write about. It would actually give me something to do in those moments of being absolutely bored! I will not promise any kind of consistent schedule and for now I will just focus on what I may want to address or talk about, rather than what I think you the reader may want to read about. Admittedly this may be a selfish approach to take but I think that I became too engrossed with things like how many views my posts got, number of followers I had, if my content was "good enough" to be read by others, etc. And while I do appreciate all the readers who used to consistently read my stuff week after week, it will not be conducive for me if I ever wanted to consistently write again to have to worry about that kind of stuff. So for now it will just be me writing about whatever! This is not to say I will just post random shit though, as I always strive to write something worth reading about with quality always in mind. I've always taken pride in putting out at least grammatically-correct stuff, which is more than I can say for what is posted on the big-name sites from time to time. I do feel that English grammar is pretty subjective but it is something I am conscientious about. I do have a few topics in mind that I'd like to write about though so I can promise that my next post won't be in a year from now lol.

For this last paragraph I'd like to promote my team captain's YouTube channel, PuertoRicanFace Mendoza, where he has started a segment called Sunday Duels for which I help provide color commentary for in a best 3-out-of-5 match between two members of the community. We technically have 2 done but unfortunately the first one ended up being too large to upload at around 12GB per game due to the screen capturing software he was using. I'm not entirely sure why they came out to be so big but if I can find a work-around I will try getting that up for him. Likewise if anyone can comment what can be done that would be much appreciated. The second match, between Shiggs and Eloy Torres, Blackwings vs Satellarknights, can be found here. Our intention is to just provide a match with entertaining commentary (and not be complete ass like how ARG's is from time to time) and hopefully people can learn from the participants' plays, both good and bad. It also provides some sort of content for his channel, which has been on the decline, similar to this blog. But we all have to pick ourselves up again and start from somewhere, so if you can check it out or even subscribe I'm sure he'd be very appreciative and can provide motivation for him to produce more content.

Dragon Ruler Theory and Infinite Choices

Over the past several weeks, I have been quite busy trying to figure out my ideal build for Dragons for our upcoming regional. We have had a few large events recently such as ARG Columbus, YCS London, and a few regionals like LA to help see meta trends and tech choices, but I still have been racking my brain about what direction I should take my build. While Dragons is still the top deck like it was last format, one huge difference is the variance in builds. What I mean is last format there was basically a standard 35-37 cards that composed the main deck, while the rest boiled down to basically your decision to main Vanity's Emptiness or Eradicator. Other small things like if you mained 2 or 3 Veiler, how many Sarco you ran, etc, but 95% of the deck was pretty much built and established. This format, however, is certainly not the case and it has been something I've been struggling with pretty much all of this format. There has been much discussion of a lot of these topics across the forums, but in this post I'd like to highlight some of these issues, compare/contrast them, and basically bring them out into the light. I do a lot of research but I'd love to hear your guys' opinions on them! Constructive ones, and not just shit like "I hate Dragons they take no skill or thought to play", etc. If anything, this post should show that we actually have a shit load to think about, at least for deck construction, which then inherently affects how we play and deal with our match-ups.

1. Dragunity vs Standard
While the Blue Eyes build was a fun option I played with at a previous Regional, it has basically fallen off the map. In retrospect I wish I had played "Standard" Dragons at that Regional, although I did enjoy the draw power of the Blue Eyes build. It just sucked when you'd have a Consonance+Blue Eyes, or a Trade-In+White Stone. That didn't happen a whole lot and I think I still did well at that event, but I know I could've done better. I still think "maybe I could've done better with Standard", but who knows, maybe I would've done worse. Anyways, with Blue Eyes pretty much out of the picture, focus could be placed on Dragunity variants and Standard variants. Both Pat Hoban and Frazier Smith have posted recent articles on ARG as to why they think each build is better than the other; Hoban's signature deck at this point is Dragunity Rulers, while Frazier opts for Standard. Naturally after picking up the Dragunity Synchros and Phalanxes, I gave the deck a try to see how it compared with Standard Dragons, and it seemed alright to me. I only lost to someone that decided to side in 3 Royal Decree (and drawing into all 3), of all things, then missed out on top 4 cuz of being down-paired basically all day and having bad tie-breakers, finishing in 5th. I only played with it for that one tournament since I pretty much had to make a quick decision since Danny needed to obtain a Gae Dearg in some way if he was going to play it for the regional. I felt that I simply had much more experience with Standard so it was fine if he borrowed my Gae Dearg. I knew I wouldn't have a lot of time to learn a new deck so I just wanted to nip it in the bud and focus on Standard. However, to this day I still think about if Dragunity will be better even though I made my decision to not play it (deja vu with my conflict of playing Standard or BEWD at that previous regional).

2. Card Trooper
Card Trooper, for me, has always been the card I love to hate and hate to love. I've played with it in Lightsworn/Twilight, Chaos Dragon, Plants, Inzektors, and Dragons, and there have always been those times where it's both absolutely brilliant and utterly garbage for me. This format I've played 0, 1, and 2 Trooper builds and as always, usually I mill complete ass with it but in those rare instances when I can mill 2 or even 3 Dragons with it, it's damn amazing. There was one time I knew that Roy was going to summon a JD so I pre-emptively Maxx C'd, got the draw off the summon, he used JD's effect destroying my set Trooper, and I topdecked into a Scarecrow which saved me that turn from his JD+Blaster and I proceeded to win the match. In the online community, the major thing that gets brought up is "Crimson Blader bait". While many argue that the mirror match isn't really about Crimson Blader anymore and it's easier to deal with it due to Dragon decks playing more backrow now, it's still something that you can't simply ignore because backrows are still able to be played around. I do like Trooper vs rogue decks and the free draw is nice, and the Blader aspect can be mitigated if you opt to main 2 Scarecrow, as Merlin Schumacher and a few others have done recently. With my tendency of milling all spell/traps and then drawing into a Dragon though, Trooper is still something I am hesitant on maining even though I comprehend the advantages that Trooper provides. It gets you essentially 4 cards deeper into your deck, is a 1900 body that can apply some pressure, is Redox food, etc. I get it, I just don't know if it's good for me.

3. Cards of Consonance
Early in the format this card was basically a no-brainer in that mostly everyone mained 2 or 3 copies. Still to this day we see a lot of players maining 2 copies. However, both Billy Brake and Robert Boyajian stated after YCS San Mateo that they would cut Consonance completely from their decks in future events, even after dropping to 1 copy mained for that event. The theory behind it is that the benefit of having the tuner available to make a Synchro outweighed randomly drawing 2 extra cards. It was similar to those that simply splashed in Trade-Ins and level 8 Destiny Heroes back in the day. Drawing just to draw and not furthering your game state was not optimal. Do you make a Synchro play and potentially risk having that Consonance be dead in hand for the rest of the game, or forgo the move and play Consonance and hope to draw something equally relevant? There is also the issue that one must ponder if they want to potentially "turn off" a color to simply make Consonance live. What this means is for example should one banish Tempest to search Corsesca because you have Consonance in hand, or pitch Tidal to use Ravine to search Corsesca rather than making another live color? More available colors equals more options next turn, but if they MST it you might not have a way of searching a Consonance target later. These arguments are completely valid, while on the other end of the spectrum people argue that it is better to have it as an option to help draw into non-searchable cards (Return, Sword, Sixth Sense, etc) and side-deck cards instead of just hoping to naturally draw them throughout the match and via Sword. I have played around with 0, 1, 2, and 3 Consonance over the course of the format and all I know is I don't like 3 with 5 targets. I've played 2 for the longest amount of time, and I can see that sometimes it sucks having in hand but other times when I play Consonance, draw into a Sword, which draws into a Ravine or Return, it just feels so boss. Still I try to not let this cloud my judgment, as whether I should main this card or not is still something I think about.

4. MST
Main decked MST, for the most part, was still a no-no in the early part of the format even with Heavy Storm no longer being around. The philosophy was expressed by Pat Hoban when he explained that MST is best when they bring in side cards for games 2 and 3, while for game 1 you should focus on doing Dragon-related things because those should win you game 1's since the things Dragons do naturally is better than things that other decks naturally do. Over time we saw an increase in main deck MST usage since Vanity's Emptiness was still very real and the field spell war became increasingly important. Billy Brake even went to maining 3 copies for San Mateo, with other players like Josh Graham saying, after the event, he should've mained all 3 even though he chose to ran 2 (or maybe this was at Toronto - I apologize but over time it's hard to discern what happens and who tops which events). Recently Trap Stun has been discussed and we saw the winner of YCS London main 2 copies and ran no MST's. This is because Trap Stun does a lot more vs a Return or Sixth Sense whereas with MST you would be hoping to hit it blind at an end phase. Theoretically it's easier to simply Trap Stun a field of 4 backrow and try to go off, rather than stare at your in-hand MST and try to push through that same field. MST is also not a "combo" card, for example if you opened with 2 MST that means you only have your other 4 cards to do combo-related things (like Dragunity wombo or Ravine->AFD-> Draco) and chances are you'll have a defensive card such as Maxx C or a trap in hand, essentially lowering your probability of performing your respective combo even more. Similar to Consonance, I have tried out maining all the different options. I started off at 0, and have tried 3 because I felt that I'd simply rather main cards that I have to always side in (because people go hammy on Dragon-hate around here) which would give me more sidedeck space. I hated losing to decks simply because I didn't have removal for their Soul Drain/Mind Drain/Iron Wall/Gozen/etc. Right now I'm torn between 1 or 2 copies mained. The issue is still very real because you can only run 3 MST, while they can run, you know, 10+ copies of those traps that essentially all say "you can't play Yugioh". People over-side, which should be costing them games, but sometimes they get rewarded and win out because of it. It seems like right after someone beats me at a local, they'll lose to Battlin' Boxer or some other deck piloted by a much less-experienced player. Oh ok. I guess Boxer is the true hotness.

5. Vanity's Emptiness
This card was a break-out star last format and over time catapulted to roughly $15, the most expensive common we've ever seen (until Sense came out). Players could be completely shut down from being able to summon, and then the person controlling the Emptiness could easily turn it off by playing a Sword and proceed to establish a field (unless the opponent had an Emptiness ready to go as well, of course). It became increasingly popular in rogue decks such as Constellars who could lock you down with Pleiades+Emptiness, or dark decks that could go Master Key Beetle+Emptiness. Then, in an instant, the notion that the card sucked became a discussion after Hoban and Graham said they wished they hadn't run it. Other players have also said the same thing in their deck profile videos. The argument was that Emptiness didn't do anything to help break up an already-established board. This is certainly true. It sucked to open both copies, and you had to play sort of awkwardly to both play around your own copy and make sure you wouldn't go minus by playing other cards (like Ravine). On the flip side, you still see people topping running 1 or 2 copies and in only a few days Stardust Spark Dragon will be released, and it, combined with Emptiness, could be even better than Pleiades or Beetle with the card. This is certainly an issue that will have to be acknowledged moving forward.

6. "Real" Traps
When the initial leak of the OCG list occurred, I opted to build a Dragon deck consisting of Cardcar D's, Pot of Dualities, Skill Drains, and real back rows like Solemn Warning and Mirror Force, going into a tournament that would be starting with this list (even though later in the evening that same day was the day the real TCG list was released). My philosophy was that Stardust+Skill Drain backed by backrow would be a good soft-lock, while Sword+Duality+Cardcar would provide me plusses, help me be ahead of my opponent, and most importantly dig for Return. I was criticized for this because it was a stark shift from the Dragon deck of the previous format that basically wanted to churn out pressure as quickly as possible and simply overwhelm the opponent. This criticism was valid, as we saw early in the format with Dragons running very little backrow besides Emptiness and Return. The emergence of usage of Raigeki Break and Phoenix Wing Wind Blast occurred, but this has shifted even more with Pat Hoban running many "real" traps such as Mirror Force, Warning, Compulse, Bottomless, etc in Dragunity. This trend is slowly being adopted into Standard Dragons as well now; Merlin Schumacher ran both Torrential and Mirror Force in his build, as did Frazier Smith, and many players from YCS London ran the lone Torrential. Perhaps I wasn't so far off the mark after all with my personal early-format philosophies ;) The current issue is which, if any, "real" traps do we elect to run? How does Stardust Spark impact this?

7. Raigeki Break vs Phoenix Wing Wind Blast
This is an age-old debate and one that I don't think will ever truly result in a final consensus. Historically the OCG has always preferred Raigeki Break, while the TCG has preferred Wind Blast. I have toyed around with Raigeki Break, as it was a good option to have to permanently deal with back-row threats or Crimson Bladers. Wind Blast has been great to turn off colors, be able to actually deal with a field that consists of a Stardust, and set my opponent behind a turn in spinning a set card. As to which one I prefer, it has actually been Raigeki Break simply because, like previously mentioned, all the hate people side in. Yes, being able to Wind Blast an Iron Wall is cool since theoretically you should be able to establish a field that would just make the Iron Wall dead for them next turn, but you know, Yugioh doesn't always pan out that way and it just so happened to be that their 3 other traps were enough to stymy my attempt of establishing a field and furthermore I have to deal with Iron Wall all over again next turn. If I had Raigeki Break, those other 3 traps still would've stopped my play and all, but at least I know I don't have to deal with that particular Iron Wall again (but chances are they would've just topped another hate trap card anyway so fml lol). However, I believe Spark+Emptiness will change the way we create our trap line-up. Many believe that Raigeki Break simply won't be a viable option once Spark is released; perhaps this is true, maybe it's not, I'm really not sure at the moment.

8. Terraforming
If there was one field spell I had to pick that defined this format, it would certainly be Dragon Ravine, followed by Grand Spellbook Tower. Ravine let you discard "free" Dragons to get even more free Dragons, thin your deck, and increase your odds of drawing power spell and trap cards. It also became a huge bane to Spellbook decks, which rely heavily on Tower to continue their flow of card advantage and loop plays. Once Trigon became more well known, Ravine's playability value increased even more. Terraforming comes into play in that theoretically 4, or 5, copies of Dragon Ravine should be better than just running the 3. After all we ideally would like to open the Trigon AFD combo, and by running more copies we'd increase our percentage of doing so. We have seen it all this format, with players choosing to run 0, 1, 2, and even 3 copies of the field spell searcher. Recently Claudio Kirchmair made an argument that Terraforming is not really needed, since we realistically don't need to "turbo" into an AFD play. The opponent could simply AFD back, get a free search, or simply play theirs over yours and result in your minus. And after you have gone through 2 Ravines via the combo, Terraforming is a fairly dead draw at that point. I have played 0, 1, and 2 this format. At 2, sometimes it plus a Ravine becomes cloggy, especially if you draw into another one later on. At the same time I've gone through games seeing 0 copies of Ravine or Terraforming. At 0, again, it's like "damn I wish I'd get my Ravine already" and you know you don't have a Terraforming to help search it. 1 has been OK, but I still see dabs of both issues from 0 and 2 while playing 1. Determining the right number has been an annoying issue.

9. The Extra Deck
In all honesty, I wish the "rule change" we were supposed to get was an increase in extra deck size. Throughout the course of the format, we've pretty much seen it all as far as extra deck options go. Plant versions (those that ran Dandylion and/or Scapegoat) would have to run Formula Synchron and Mist Bird Clausolas, which are both really great options, but naturally had to skimp on maybe an XYZ. Orient Dragon is a solid option but it's play has been rather sporadic since some believe there is always a better available play than simply banishing a Synchro. Two copies of Crimson Blader have treated me very well over the format, but I still see many decks just running 1 and many people saying "1 is all you should need", which sounds right, I wish I could just run 1, but for me people seem to always play around the first and having the second was what sealed the deal. Sometimes they even play around the 2nd, so it comes out a third time via Redox effect, or back when I ran DDR. Then we have other issues such as 2 vs 3 Dracossack and 1 vs 2 Big Eye. The standard is 2 and 1, but with the emergence of the Trigon + AFD combo, having 3 and 2 doesn't seem too bad. Frazier Smith made a remark after one of the ARG events that he wish he had ran a 2nd Big Eye since it would've made winning a particular match easier. We have other great cards such as Master of Blades which is great against rogue decks, but is basically a non-option since space is so very tight. Thought Ruler is in the same boat - the life gain has single-handedly brought me back into matches all on its own in the past, but is it good enough to keep in? If we still side Eradicator, is Red Dragon an option we'd want to have? Ideally you'd rather trib off an RDA instead of a Colossal, as RDA is a banish target and Colossal isn't. Ancient Fairy Dragon alone has taken away extra deck space, and now we have Stardust Spark to throw in. Does regular Stardust get cut, or is it too optimal to have for those certain situations/match-ups? One trend I noticed was that Angel of Zera has seen virtually little to no play in US events, but was incredibly popular among extra decks in YCS London. Is it's potential beefy attack too good to ignore and we should be running it, or does it just suck cuz it's not a relevant attribute or type? Should we play Darkspear so we can play Trident Dragion, a potential win-condition on its own, like Josh Graham did? There are a multitude of extra deck-related things we as the Standard Dragon player have to face, probably even more than the Rank 4 player has to face, at least until the new Nobleswarm guy comes out. I'm guessing the only other player that has to think about their extra so much right now is those still running Wind-Ups (#BoatToOnePlease).

10. The Future
If all these decisions weren't enough to think about (plus I intentionally skipped discussion on things like Fog King, Tetherwolf, DDR, Enemy Controller, Waboku, Dragon Shrine, Gold Sarc, Upstart Theory, Castle of Dragon Souls), we have cool Rank 8 options through Divine Dragon Knight Felgrand and Number 46 Dragluon. These are supported by the new Mythic dragons, Water and Tree. Simply adding 1 copy of each of these cards into our decks brings a slew of play-related questions we have to address. First, is the potential inconsistency Water and Tree impose worth it? How often should we cut off a color to search these guys and hope that our play sticks so it wasn't a complete waste? What extra and main deck cards get cut now? Do we actually have to play Battle Fader now, instead of Scarecrow, since Star Eater + Felgrand is a thing?

These are a lot of things to think about, and at times it can be rather stressful, but I have loved playing Dragons ever since last format. Unless they do something drastic like put each big dragon to 1 for next format, I do believe that some variant of dragons will be viable for next format. Even standard Dragunity has topped, so that should mean they'd have to hit Ravine as well, which I wouldn't think they would do. Like I mentioned before I'm not going to really speculate on that too hard though, as the whole list issue is pretty much up in the air especially when you take into consideration that the OCG didn't change a single thing in their November list, even though the games are completely different now due to the list differences.

Obligatory Sixth Sense Post

Well the talk in the dueling world today is definitely about Sixth Sense and it's legalization come October 11. I was quite shocked when I read not only was it going to be released to us via Joey's World, but also legal for us to use at 1! Naturally as a Dragon player I am excited about this but as someone that tries to stay unbiased (ie looking at it from the other side of the table), it is just completely busted and doesn't really have much purpose in the game other than it being completely sacky. I mean I play Dragons and can say that Return needs to go lol. Just as we got rid of Gateway, Card Destruction, Avarice, Reborn, etc, we get this forced on us. This card can go into virtually any deck and while not every deck wants to randomly mill up to 4 cards, it is certainly not terrible considering the percentage of the reward of being able to draw 5 or 6 off one card. I think this will bring about di roll cheating even more than it may have already been experienced, which is quite unfortunate. So now we have to worry about di roll cheaters on top of stackers, rule sharkers, and other-method cheaters lol.

Naturally this move was done to help the sales of Joey's World, cuz let's face it no one was buying this $30 product on pre-order based on the given information of the 2 promos, a straight-to-ban card, tokens, and the playing board. I think it'd still be friggin nice to get more info but with only a week until the release I'm guessing there won't be much. Maybe some more reveals throughout the week until Europe gets it early like they usually do and the contents are spoiled anyway. I anticipate this being similar to the CCV travesty where you'd basically get 1 CCV out of a case of Gold Series 1. We all know how much CCV's were at that period. I don't think it'll be quite that bad but with the $30 price tag, the set being 300-some cards, it being desired by both collectors and competitive players, of course it won't be cheap. The lucky people that pull well will probably buy 1 of the boxes and pull one while those like myself could buy 5 of these and pull none, that is why I won't be buying any of these and will just look to order it via singles, unless it is revealed to have a magically high pull-rate as a common or something.

Regionals Re-Cap & Moving Forward

During the Seattle Regionals I had every intention of making a full tourney report, wrote down my opponent's names and deck-types and everything, but as the event was 2 weekends ago and it sort of feels irrelevant at this point, I'll just be re-capping the event and how it went!

Quite a few people from the Spokane and Idaho area showed up for the event which was great to see. It was nice to have that feeling that we were all rooting for each other and wishing each of us luck before our matches; we came together and truly felt like a family which is why I love this game to the extent that I do. The event itself was slightly over 400 people, which is the largest Regional we've had in Seattle. Nine rounds of Swiss. At first I heard mention that registration would be cut off and people simply wouldn't get to play, but they made a few extra set-ups in the side room where the vendors were and the registration was. I think those late people got round 1 losses or something like that.

As for my matches, I played: 1 Scrap, 3 Mermail, 1 Blackwing, 1 Dragon, 1 3-Axis Fire Fist, 1 Spellbook, and something else I can't remember. It may have been another Mermail or Dragon match-up. The night before, I racked my brain if I wanted to play the "Standard Dragon" Rulers or the Blue Eyes build. The Blue Eyes build I did not have much experience with but I fell in love with it after trying it at the Tuesday tournament before the weekend. I knew the pros and cons of each build and it was getting late so I just said screw it and settled for the Blue Eyes build. If I drew bad all day then I knew from that point I'd just play the Standard build for the rest of the format.

I started the day 4-0, beating Scraps, Dragons, Blackwing, and 3-Axis. Then I lost to 2 Mermail match-ups in a row. Now this is not a match-up I consider difficult, but my losses came from either getting Blader'd followed up with an OTK and no Scarecrow in hand, or they opened Imperial Iron Wall and I had no way of getting rid of it in conjunction with a weak hand that needed my in-hand Sacred Sword to get moving. After the 2nd loss I was fairly disappointed since I knew my chances of topping pretty much went out the window. In the last round I was 6-2 and saw I was paired up against Kyle, one of our local Spellbook players. This is the match-up I hate the most because let's face it it's still a nasty deck. He opened up god against me game 1 but game 2 and 3 I could tell he opened pretty poopy so I won the match. I was glad to at least finish 7-2 and finished in 24th place, fairly low among the 7-2's, so of course due to tie-breakers. I saw that the two Mermail players I lost to also finished 7-2, one of them actually finishing in 25th or 26th place. Again I felt frustrated because while I would say they were OK with the deck, the deck itself just seems sub-par outside of the wombo Steus+Spirit+Ocea combo and random OTK ability. Like Mike Bonacini said, draw MST for the sided-in hate cards, or lose. I didn't draw MST so I lost. I think if I hadn't lost against either Mermail player I would've ended up topping, I can't really say for sure since who knows I might've played against all Evilswarm the rest of the day, but I dunno I just had that gut feeling. Everyone else finished 6-3 or lower, I think that Zach (Blackwing) and Corey (Spellbook) could've ended up topping as well but there's always those "rando" situations where you lose not because your opponent is good, but because there's some game-state (whether it be hand/draws, they dropped 3 JD, etc) that prevented you from winning.

Not a lot of ruling issues came up, but it was astonishing that all of the Mermail players I played against didn't know that Abysspike missed timing if I destroyed a Linde with Crimson Blader. Each time a judge was called to confirm. I even had to tell one of the dudes 3 times in our match that it missed timing since he kept summoning it off a Blader'd Linde. The biggest ruling issue I had was in my match against the Blackwing guy I think in round 3, in which I had a set Return and summoned Dracosack. He activated Icarus targeting my Draco and Return. I chained Return paying half my life and summoned 4 Dragons. Then he activated Torrential Tribute and I told him you couldn't do that. Two judges came over and I explained the situation, but all 3 of them (the player and the 2 judges) told me there was an "activation window" so that he could Torrential after the monsters were summoned. "The game-state is open" and some other fluffy-worded bullshit to make it sound like they knew what they were talking about. I explained that was wrong because Icarus had yet to resolve and he couldn't activate something during the resolution of a chain and I also said "then how come back in the day (DAD Return) people played Heavy then chained Return to play around the Torr/Bottomless?" They stuck to their ruling though and I should have appealed it, but just said whatever and still proceeded to win the match. Later on in the day that Blackwing player came up to me and was like "yea you were right about that ruling one of the judges found out and explained it to me." I knew I was right but it was reassuring that they knew I was right lol.

I think one the highlights of my weekend was meeting the infamous Squiddy, who I got my Garunix signed. I flipped through my binder trying to figure out what I should have him sign and remembered that I saw him playing Fire King quite a bit on DN so I chose the Garunix. Kyle and I were visibly excited to meet and talk with him while the other guys were just like "wtf is Squiddy?" Come on everyone that's spent any time on Pojo knows Squiddy lol. Squiddy was playing Blue Eyes Dragons as well and ended up in 4th place I believe. Chris Hentz won the event with Standard Dragons. I think top 8 was something like 7 Dragons and 1 Inzektor. After the event I checked out the ARG Open coverage and saw that Frazier and Billy were also playing the Blue Eyes build so it was reassuring to me that I didn't make a completely terrible deck choice and in retrospect I'm glad I played it. I was playing 3 BEWD and 3 Stone though so if there was anything I would've changed for the event it would be the 2-2 build. I noticed that playing the 3-3 build made it very difficult to side because theoretically (as Pat Hoban would say) you don't want to side out combo cards for non-combo cards.

As for the rest of the format, I am pretty sure we won't be having any Regionals in our area unless the events list gets randomly updated. I won't be going to San Mateo so it already feels like the end of the format for me, which we had a conversation about on the ride back home the next day. Three weeks in and it already felt like end of format lol. I'll be sticking with Dragons because there's honestly no reason for me to pick anything else up at this stage. I'll just keep trying to max-rarity my deck. Whatever I'd pick up would be in anticipation for next format, but with the whole separate lists thing and predictions always being so off it's really hard to tell what to do. So rather than stress out about it, I'm just going to ride out the format with the best deck for me and rake in as much prizing I can. I would assume that come Dec 31/Jan 1 they would nerf Dragons to being unplayable (I'm thinking each Dragon to 2 and maybe Sword to 1?) since all the holiday sales off the Redox and Tempest tin would be over with by that point. TCG-side, Dragons have a very strong presence, too strong in comparison to everything else.

Here was my decklist for the event, for reference:
-23-
3 Blaster
3 Tidal
3 Tempest
3 Redox
3 BEWD
3 White Stone
1 Corsesca
1 Flamvell
2 Maxx C
1 Scarecrow

-12-
3 Sword
3 Consonance
3 Ravine
2 Trade-In
1 DDR

-5-
2 PWWB
1 Raigeki Break
1 Vanity's
1 Return

-15-
2 Draco
1 Big Eye
1 Gaia Dragon (never went into)
1 Master of Blades (never went into)
1 Heliopolis (never went into)
1 Armory (never went into)
1 Black Rose
1 Stardust
1 Scrap
1 Colossal
1 Red Dragon (just for EEV)
1 Azure-Eyes (never went into)
2 Crimson Blader (always went into)

Seattle Regionals Bound

Well this weekend seems like it will be a pretty active one between the debut of the ARG Circuit Series in Texas and many regionals happening as well. It's nice to see that once again many local players will be making the trek from the east side of the state and Idaho over to Seattle for the regionals. Honestly I'll be glad when/if the Official Championship tournaments happen at our local area since that's 5 hours worth of driving we wouldn't have to deal with while still having the opportunity to earn an invite. I've been busy since the start of the format trying to find a build of Dragons I'm comfortable with but it has yet to really happen, mostly because I have seen the pros and cons that each variant has to offer and some of the cons among the decks really bother me. I think each variant is a good deck, but trying to determine the flavor that best suits my tastes has been quite difficult and something I still have to ponder as I make the drive over with some of my teammates and what ever testing we can do tomorrow night. Side-decking is also a strange endeavor as I really have no idea what to expect for the Seattle meta. Every Seattle regional I've been to has been fairly random as to what decks I played against. I remember past tournaments expecting to play a few X decks but not facing any at all throughout the day. This makes precious side-deck spots become wasted but it becomes a "you kinda have to" thing (ie how Evilswarms affects Dragons).

I wish everyone out there playing some competitive Yugz this weekend the best of luck and hopefully we (the east side of the state) can claim a few top 8 mats once again!

Player Entitlement, The Loser Mentality, and Internal Motivation

This post is inspired by a conversation I had with a fellow player at Tuesday's local tournament, which was originally planned as a box tournament but due to the poor turn-out (and the prize structure because of it), we reverted to just doing a standard weekly tournament. I don't remember the remark exactly, but it was something along the lines of "no body shows up because Team O is too good and no one gets any better playing here." I was kind of taken aback by this statement, I guess because I have a very different philosophy on the steps people should take to not only get better at this game, but really anything in general whether it be a sport, a job, etc. I proceeded to tell him that I believed one of the best ways of getting better was to simply "get your ass kicked" against players that were better than you, so long that you can take something away from it. Whether it be for just a playtesting session, a day, a week, months, years, whatever, playing against someone better than you will provide the learning environment to mimic similar advanced plays and strategies of that player. This, combined with an open mind, a genuine eagerness to learn, the ability to listen and incorporate given advice, and doing proper research are the keys to improving, in my opinion.

The classic example I gave to this player to illustrate this, was my friend Mikey from Texas. He went from playing rando Macro-Soul Absorption combo deck and basically only doing sub-par at tournaments, to becoming a regional topper across multiple games. We used to have weekly playtesting sessions, every Friday at my apartment, which basically was 3 or 4 hours of me beating him game after game, until a few weeks in when it all finally clicked in his mind about how to play properly, at least better. What I mean is just attacking if you already have 1 monster on board, as opposed to summoning a second and walking into a Torrential or Mirror Force. Not blind-MST'ing just to get MST'd back and taking the -1. Not setting spell/traps before attacking just to walk into an Icarus Attack/MalCat. There are many other examples of these kinds of things, basic things to advanced players but something that gets passed by to those that are "average" or below. Once he got to that realization point, he became thirsty to acquire more knowledge about the game and started watching relevant Youtube videos, reading articles, event coverage and feature matches, the whole nine yards. By the end of my time in Texas, he was going toe-to-toe with me at locals. While conversing with this player I even pointed to Vamp who walked by, and said how he has progressed so much as a player by learning through Team O and being on the team.

So going back to my conversation, I had to make it clear that players that played or didn't play in certain tournaments solely to avoid Team O were simply doing themselves a disservice. People don't get better by winning in irrelevant tournaments full of scrubby players; what good is it being "king of the losers?" Once he proceeded to say "well I don't like half of Team O anyway", I knew nothing I said from here on was going to get through his mind as he's already displayed a stubborn attitude toward the game and the player base. Naturally I got upset by this statement because I can honestly say we have grown a lot as a team and we are much different than what we were. The roster itself is different, some being the most helpful people in the entire community, and we're much older now so the "douchieness" level I would say is much lower than what it was. Sure there may be bouts of said "douchieness" but that comes with the territory of the game and for the most part isn't made out of ill will - it's good ol' fashioned "ribbing" you could say.

So after thinking more of the statement "people don't get better playing here" (ie playing people that are good at the game), I had to question myself how people actually do or expected to. Do lower-skilled players have some sort of mindset that the better players should be teaching them how to get better, out of some sense of entitlement? Is it my job or anyone else on Team O's to make the community good? Naturally my answer would have to be "no". Now don't get me wrong, like I said previously, many of the team have helped other players outside of the team at least to some certain extent. Whether this is just giving cards away for free to giving deck advice or game-play advice, taking players up directly under our wing to get better, we've done it all. Some people do so more than others, but I don't think it's right to blanket-statement that all of Team O is unhelpful when it may only be a few members, at most. I believe what it boils down to is the players themselves - after all, we all had to start from somewhere, on the bottom, so what's the difference between them and us? [And I'm not trying to put us on "pro" status or anything like that, but most couldn't argue that we aren't among the top players in our area.]

Herein lies the principle problem of average players, I think what keeps them in their state and slowing their progress to becoming good players: the inability or lack of willingness to listen. I thought of this quote as I was driving home from the tournament - "the players that need help the most, are the ones least likely to listen." Little Timmy would rather fight to the death to prove that one day his Chronomoly deck will win him a tournament than listen to anyone's advice telling him otherwise or giving recommendations on card choices. That player will always run Magic Cylinder because "they might attack into it for game" over a suggested Mirror Force which can potentially deal with the problems on board so he can win next turn (or at least not get killed by those monster(s) anyway). They'll play 55 cards and refuse to ever go lower because "every card is useful." This inability to listen and stubbornness is the biggest hindrance in players' ability in performing better at tournaments. Rather than listen to any sort of constructive criticism from someone that's been playing the game for several years, they'd rather do their own thing because in their mind their views and philosophies are always right.

The effect this inability to listen has on a player is further compounded by "the loser mentality", an attitude that these types of players tend to have. This topic was discussed in great detail in Danny's video so I'd recommend watching that to get his take on the issue. From my standpoint, an example of the loser mentality is when you sit down to play someone, they come down to sit, and go "oh god, I have to play you I'm going to get destroyed" in all seriousness. Some guy who I've never even seen before did that when he went to play me last Sunday - part of it is humbling but part of it is frustrating because people are mentally defeated in the match before they've even started shuffling! Another example is when people physically go out of their way to go to a tournament, but don't enter because they first observe who all is playing and deem the tournament to be too difficult and not "worth it" to enter. This leads to people quitting the game to try something else. Like Danny said in his video, the way that parents raise their kids contributes a substantial part to having or not having this mentality. A child that is raised by parent(s) who can instill confidence in them and a "keep fighting, don't give up" attitude will most likely see more success throughout life than one that is given the attitude of "well if it's too hard then it's OK to stop, how about trying something else?" This teaches them that if something in life is too hard, it's OK to just avoid it altogether rather than dealing with it head-on and trying to conquer it. Now I'm not a parent, but my parents never gave me an inkling of a notion that if something was too hard that it's OK to just give up. It's quite sad to see so many players around my area with this attitude.

Ultimately I believe you get out what you put into this game. What I mean is, someone that does a minimal amount of quality playtesting, no research, no collaboration, and only hits up that one weekly tournament with their pet funsy deck isn't going to see a great amount of success when compared to someone that reads up on the metagame, strives to build the top tier decks, reads articles, analyzes decklists, practices side-decking, etc. The best players in the game put in a lot of time to master their craft; it's the same with any job or people that play various sports on any sort of professional level. It's not simply a numbers game though; as my old drill instructor would say, "if you put two stupids together in a room nothing good's going to come of it." This means that just because you put in 100 hours of testing doesn't mean it'll amount to all that much if it's with fellow players that only have similar bad ideas/views of the game. The motivation that comes from oneself with a positive attitude and a willingness to listen are vital in that effort to becoming better, the best that you can possibly be.