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The Road to the Top - My Journey to Yugioh Fame


ihop

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Hello. ihop here. With the regional season fast approaching as well as the Brotherhood Open and YCS Rimini (I will be attending neither, but it heralds the start of the competitive season again), I feel it’s time for me to take the next step as a player and hopefully start to become a successful powerhouse. My successes at the moment are confined to a couple of regional tops and tons of local wins, but with my new-found love of and interest for the game, compared with Uni giving me slightly more time and spending power and a lot of my successes being very recent I think now is as good a time as any to start the journey to become truly competitive.

 

Basically, this blog will be me giving (hopefully) weekly updates on what has happened to me and what I have done in the world of yugioh. I will occasionally do locals reports as well as stuff like deckbuilding choices, interesting discussions or games I have with people and even good or relevant trades I have made. This may interest lots of you, some of you or none of you, regardless I would like documentation of my journey and am looking forward to getting this started.

 

Because nothing has happened yet this week the first post will be to do with my journey so far.

 

[spoiler=How I got here]

I never intended to be a Yugioh player. Although I had a structure deck or two when I was very young because I thought the cards looked really cool, I never actually knew how the game worked or what any of the cards did, in fact I hated effect monsters because they didn’t have cool flavour text like vanillas did. My cards ended up going in a cupboard or under my bed or somewhere, and for many years I never really thought about Yugioh except for the odd time Zauls mentioned it to me and I basically laughed him off and said Yugioh was stupid.

 

My decision to actually start playing was a spur of the moment decision based off multiple unlikely factors, so it’s a miracle that I even started, or at least that early. Both my parents were going away for different things for the weekend, so there was nobody but 12-year-old me in the house. We arranged for me to stay at Zauls’ for the weekend, which was originally going to be a couple of days spent mainly on his playstation playing Fifa 06 or whatever the cool game was at that time, but this plan was scuppered when he came out of his karate class he’d had on Friday afternoon with an injured hand which meant he couldn’t handle a controller. Left with a limited number of options, we played chess a couple of times until I eventually said “come on, you better teach me Yugioh then”. As we played on the floor while his brother sat next to us playing some random old Yugioh game on the PS2 I found I was loving it, still interested by how cool the cards look but also interested in the whole playstyle and the mechanic of the game.

 

When I got back home I quickly dug out my old cards which, along with a massive pile of terrible condition cards which Zauls had agreed to sell me for a pound, ended up creating a couple of completely sheet decks. Eventually, as Zauls also brought his cards over to mine I started to work my way up slightly. Zauls had has terrible Crystal Beast deck (with a random ulti Topaz Tiger) and I had managed to construct a “Dragon deck” which was slightly less awful than the 2 decks I had previously. Around this time I had started to go on YCM on my quest to make terrible cards mainly based off Mario characters, and I remember getting a bunch of negative feedback on my Dragons which was on the whole completely justified.

 

As time went on, I started to look more into the game and got obsessed with the idea of Gemini monsters. They had cool names and I liked the “really strong” effects they had that you could unlock by just summoning it again. Just as I was starting to move towards building my Gemini deck Zauls told me about this Yugioh tournament that he and his brothers had been to once and was held monthly in Victoria Hall, a church hall in the city centre. I was excited to go to this because I wanted to meet like-minded players as well as show off my Gemini deck and “win tournaments”, as I thought would happen. As the date approached I was getting more and more excited, readying my Gemini deck and scouring ebay for Chthonian Emperor Dragons and the like, as Zauls was readying his Exodia deck which basically consisted of Heart of the Underdog, Veil of Darkness and a deck full of DARK Vanillas. On the day we were driven to the venue super early by Zauls’ mum, turned the corner expecting a crowd of people and seeing only one older guy with a leather jacket. He asked us if we were here for the Yugioh tournament, introduced himself as Karl and quickly got into the first discussion I was ever to have about Yugioh with someone other than Zauls.

 

Karl was all too ready to talk and talk about Yugioh, especially, as it turns out, to some kids who he can impress. He was playing Toons, which I took one look at and instantly proclaimed to be the best deck out there. He was very impressed by Zauls’ Exodia build and somewhat impressed by my “innovative” Gemini deck which aimed to use equip cards to account for the weaknesses of the monsters and keep them around long enough to be summoned against (Mage Power was the best card in the deck). Slowly the road outside the venue got busier and busier full of people of all shapes and sizes. I was particularly impressed by an old-looking man who walked round with a list of cards he was looking for, and (to me) amazing-looking binders. I did my first trade (and got ripped off) by a kid called Kyne who traded me a Junk Synchron, which I thought looked cool, for a Gale, which was about £5 at the time. I thought it was amazing, I loved the buzz of people discussing Yugioh and all the variety.

 

As we moved down and the tournament was about to start, it became apparent to me that my Gemini deck was not going to cut it. I’d been destroyed in a friendly by Dinosaurs, and was surrounded by people who had clearly been playing for a long time. Victoria Hall had a “duelist” and “pro” event, where the Duelist event had a slightly cheaper entry fee, a worse playerbase and a ban on Judgment Dragon, whereas the Pros had better prizes and actual recognition (and I mean serious recognition - back in the day Victoria Hall was probably the biggest and best regular minor tournament in the country, with over 100 people attending each time including people like Jake Quinsee and Rick Cherry, to name some of the more famous names). I got destroyed in my first round by a guy I’d never see again playing Super Blud, basically the Il Blud equivalent to Gigavise, with Card of Safe Return still legal at the time, and knew that I was clearly nowhere near as good as any of these lot.

 

My next round was even more of an eye-opener. I played a guy who had arrived late and had been given a round one loss, and was playing Blackwings. After he absolutely destroyed me by swarming the field both times, I just knew I had to build that deck. It was pretty clear that it was one of the best decks around (it really was) and it just looked so cool and beat me so effortlessly that I knew if I had that I would be unstoppable. I actually won my next round, against some dude who had an even worse deck than I did, before losing again in a match I don’t remember. I sat down to my round 5 match with a 1-3 record, waiting for my opponent, when Karl started walking towards the seat opposite me! I asked him how this had happened, how such an amazing deck had done as badly as I had, and he told me Toons weren’t as good as most of the stuff out there - more confirmation that these Blackwings were clearly the creme de la creme. After Karl beat me, the tournament was over, but I was hooked. I’d loved every minute, and couldn’t wait for the next tournament which I would take by storm with my Blackwing deck.

 

After another month where I went an uneventful 2-3 with my slightly improved Gemini deck (turns out Equip cards weren’t such a stupid idea after all - if that Equip card is Supervise). The month after that I had finally managed to cobble together something of a Blackwing deck, albeit with Psychic Lifetrancer as my only synchro and a pretty terrible build in general. I think I went 1-4 at first, but knew the reason for that was because the deck was not complete. Gradually I improved the deck, adding more and better synchros and staples, a Vayu and a Dark Armed until eventually I actually had a very workable Blackwing deck. About half a year after my first Victoria Hall I topped my first one, going 3-2 and then losing a close game in top 16 to… reptiles? Reptillianes? idek. It seemed all was going well for me Yugioh-wise, but for one thing - I didn’t really know anyone or speak to anyone regularly except for Zauls and this kid called Jake Mallender who was even worse than we were and would eventually quit for 2 years or so before coming back suddenly really good - he actually got a feature match and an interview at YCS Bochum this year, and attends a whole bunch of major events.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-h-driyrYY

 

All that changed by another coincidence - neither me nor Zauls were there for one Victoria Hall and missed the message that next month’s would not be on. We arrived next month to see an empty street, and knew something was up instantly. Zauls’ mum had already driven off so we were more or less stuck there, and gradually random people who had also missed the message filtered in. Eventually, this kid called Max turned up with his Mum, and she managed to ring the organisers up, who told us to come down to Patriot Games, the shop which organised the events as there would be a tournament there. Us and a handful of other guys traipsed down there, only to find that there was a MTG pre-release that day and there was 0 room in the shop - there would be a tournament the following day instead.

 

We went home, and came back the next day, where I was instantly amazed by the rabbit warren of a shop we were in. Patriot Games, or “PC” as it’s lovingly called, a name dating back from its days of being called Patriot Comics, is a shop in a relatively small space in a rather grotty part of town (this ended up being to our advantage, since takeaways were very very cheap). It has a long room with most of the stock, a long room next door with tables and a long room downstairs with more tables, where the Yugioh players are normally dumped to make way for more important card games. This day, however, we were upstairs, and of the ten or so people who had bothered to turn up this Sunday I was immediately approached by a kid with enormous hair who introduced himself as Harry and said he had seen me around at Victoria Hall and had liked the look of me as a player. Outside of Zauls, Harry was my first proper friend in Yugioh and I’m pleased to say he still is one of my best - although he has more or less quit we’ve done all sorts of non-Yugioh stuff together, and I’m pretty sure I’ve found a friend for life. The tournament itself was of little interest, but I enjoyed it immensely and, upon hearing PC did weekly tournaments, was excited to be able to play Yugioh more regularly that once a month.

 

As the months passed, I got better and better, with a better collection of cards. I could at least top 16 Victoria Hall on a regular basis, I was meeting a whole bunch of other people including Max, who I mentioned earlier, 3 brothers called Ben, Rowan and Sam, where Sam was a little older than all of us and basically won PC almost every time, the aforementioned Kyne, Callum Bilbe who is actually a fairly famous and fairly successful player who had a handful of major event tops under his belt, and a handful of others. The group of us began to branch out more, going to Huddersfield and even Manchester locals once or twice, where there were far better players. I played various decks including Gladiator Beasts (it really was a Gladiator Beast format), Stall Burn and Karakuri Machina Plant, among many others. Zauls somehow managed to get himself banned from all Yugioh by sneaking off to Rowan’s house when his parents had told him not to, although the ban was eventually relaxed to allow him to go to Victoria Hall and, after over a year, lifted.

 

There had been a couple of regionals that I had played in but done very poorly, but I had never really experienced a major event until we as a group decided to make the journey down to nationals in Bristol. I was super excited for this since I had never travelled away without any responsible adults before, nor had I ever been to anywhere near as big an event as this. I was playing Karakuri Machina Plant, which was actually a pretty decent deck back then (although I was still terrible), so I thought I might have had a chance. I was wrong, I ended up going 1-5 drop, but it was far more than the result for me - it was an amazing experience and I had got a taste for major tournaments. The event ended up being won very controversially by Jake Quinsee, who allegedly won his game 3 of the top 4 by attacking directly with a Safe Zoned Scrap Dragon. I think if it were anyone but Jake people wouldn’t have made such a fuss - after all, it was his opponent’s fault for not noticing, but Jake is so unpopular that everyone took the opportunity to jump on his back.

 

Months passed, and I built up my trades and improved my decks, until I finally had the serious breakthrough that would propel my Yugioh career. I had won a couple of locals with T.G., but nothing major, and had top 16’d Victoria Hall a couple of times, but that was all to change after Sheffield regional. The tournament itself went mediocrely, with me scrubbing out playing a deck I don’t even remember (although Harry went 5-2 and ended up getting an invite). It was a week or so after Battle Pack 1 had came out, and the previously £100 Tourguide had been reprinted for the first time, and was still worth ridiculous amount of money in Black Rare. I managed to pull a Tourguide out of the 5 packs of prize support and, valuing it at £30, traded it and £40 for a full Inzektor core. Inzektors as a deck were a couple notches better than anything I had played before, and were my first experience of playing a really top top deck which was perfectly built. I entered Victoria Hall the next month and totally, completely crushed it - I went 5-0 and swiss and went all the way to top 4 dropping only 2 GAMES all day, completely dominant. There’s even some videos of my swift 2-0 in top 8 on youtube, taken by a guy from locals who had a channel (I’m pleased to say I act a lot less nervous and have much less of a barnet these days)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUVCJoJ-6Bw

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIPoXzLOgfY

 

I ended up losing top 4 to some weird rank 3 Chaos deck, but the intent was there - for 7 rounds I had reigned supreme over Victoria Hall. I ended up getting top 8 the next Victoria Hall, and then it was time for nationals again. This time I did substantially better, going 2-0 before going 2-2, 3-2 and then 3-5. Callum ended up getting top 32 playing a Wind-Up deck without Tourguide before choking and then losing to a Future Fusion topdeck in that match. Still, I had felt an awful lot more confident then than I had ever done.

 

After Inzektors were completely obliterated by the banlist I played HERO beat for a while, and had some amazing success at a local level, winning PC, which is after all a relatively competitive local, 3 times in a row, the only time I have ever seen someone do that. I scrubbed out of the one regional I played with the deck, before eventually discarding the deck after opening 5 dead spells and a random trap, and choosing, for some reason, to build TG Stun for YCS Bochum, which me, Harry and Zauls had arranged. I honestly don’t know what possessed me to play TG stun for that event, since the deck is complete shite, but suffice to say I was beaten by every relevant deck I played before eventually dropping on 2-4, while Harry was actually top in standings after round 3 before losing 3 in a row, playing Dino Rabbit. At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, it was an amazing experience, being able to travel abroad and meet some seriously amazing players - over the time I was there I had a McDonalds sat next to Patrick Hoban and tried to reason with a very drunk Jack Bruun, the winner of the previous YCS. It was great fun and very informative, as almost all events have been. Interestingly, the tournament ended up being won by some random German guy called Alpay Engin.

 

Upon getting back I was seriously tempted to throw the T.G. deck in the bin, but I took advantage of the many reprints the deck had got in order to build Dino Rabbit, which is probably still the best deck I have ever played. I went x-1 or better at PC most weeks, but the main success was at the slightly bigger tournaments - the first one was Victoria Hall, where I finally mustered up the courage to enter the Pro event where I zoomed to a 4-0 record before losing first to Jake Quinsee’s Mermail in round 5 of Swiss and a guy playing Fire Fist in the top 8. The next month, however, was even better. Although I lost round 3 or something to someone I don’t remember I ended up 4-1, easily enough to top 8, and swiftly beat both my top 8 and top 4 opponents to find myself in the final of the Victoria Hall pro event! I had never even made the final of the duelists, losing 3 times in top 4, so this was really something. In the end, though, neither me nor a friend of mine called Josh who was my opponent really wanted to lose, so we split something like £40 of store credit as a prize and just played a friendly where he won game 3 by opening Dark Hole, Heavy Storm and Tenki against my field of Laggia set 4. Good thing we split!

 

Shortly after, I went to Nottingham regional, the first time I had been to this regional, on my birthday. While fighting off congratulations texts, a lack of money to buy any better food than a massive pack of biscuits for 50p and losing round 2 to funking Lightraysworn, I won 4 rounds in a row to go 5-1 and secure my invite before even getting to round 7, where I ended up losing to Jack Igo, another pretty famous player who I’d gone to Bochum with and am on pretty good terms with, which meant I ended up 13th, which was much, much, MUCH better than I’d ever done at such an event before.

 

Sadly, such a purple patch had to come to an end eventually, and when it did it came very abruptly with the arrival of the big bad Lord of the Tachyon Galaxy. As Dragon Rulers and Prophecy rendered every other deck obsolete I was somewhat stuck for a deck since I didn’t have the money to get either of those 2. I pottered around for a while playing Gadgets and Frog Monarchs, but my interest in the game was fading fast with the knowledge that I absolutely could not compete without spending huge money - definitely the worst format I have ever experienced, at least for me.

 

As Dragon Rulers gradually petered out I started to ease my way back into the game again. I bought an Evilswarm deck from Ash, Yorkshire’s resident douchebag, for £30 (it must have been stolen), which finally got me a meta deck which I hadn’t had for ages. It was an awfully good time for Zauls who had found a lot of success playing Infernity. I forgot what I was playing before Evilswarm, but I don’t think it was very good. I hated everything about Evilswarm, and after a whole bunch of disappointing results I picked up plus-1 Fire Fist, which was a slightly better deck but I was still performing poorly and really was losing interest in the game. I set about trying to build Mythic Rulers, but just as I had finished them another bombshell hit the game in the form of Duelist Alliance, again rendering any deck before that obsolete. At this point my love for the game had almost gone, and I hardly even bothered trying to get a new top deck, or even reading what the top decks do. Harry had quit a while ago and for a couple of months I didn’t go to PC at all, instead going to Harry’s on a Saturday to watch football or something.

 

Just as I was considering selling all my cards, salvation arrived in the form of Max. We had already got pretty close during the time I was playing +1 Fire, but one day he messaged me on facebook to ask if I might be interested in buying a Shaddoll deck. I said I might be, and actually came back to PC for a day, and found I had missed the place so much - all the individual characters, all my friends, etc. I realised I did want to have another go playing the game, and took Max up on his offer. Unfortunately, Shaddoll were not very good yet, but I set about learning about all the new decks that had come out, specifically Qliphort and Nekroz, which in my time out of the game I had totally missed. I can’t stress how important Max was for me in this - he’s the one who sent me a full list of all the regionals and said he was going to most of them and if I wanted to come as well, he’s the one who sat and playtested with me and showed how the new decks worked, he’s the one who was teasing me when I played like sheet after not having played for a while and trying to get my head round a pretty skillful deck in Shaddoll. We went to a couple of regionals, where I did pretty poorly due to playing a mediocre deck, but we tested a lot and I really learnt the game again and was basically back to my best in terms of playing.

 

The April 2015 banlist changed everything again. Suddenly I had a top deck on my hands in a format full of diversity and skill. I started to really bust a gut to test and get a bunch of good cards (again, Max played a big part in this). When it came to Leeds regional, the last of the season and the first I had played in the new format, I was brimming with confidence, and sure enough I stormed to 3-0 and eventually went 5-2 to qualify and win £40 in store credit, which went mostly on sleeves (there’s a report of this tournament in the Shaddoll guide I wrote). Max, playing Shaddoll as well, but with Seraphs, ended up losing on the bubble and going 4-2-1. Nationals, however, reversed the roles, with me ending up 2-3 after getting floodgated out, and Max actually winning on the bubble to go 7-1-1 and finishing 9th. He ended up losing in top 32, but it’s still an amazing achievement for him. Here’s his deck profile, I promise you I had a say in almost every card choice of his.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwEShh_2E_A

 

And with that, it brings us nicely into the present. I got rid of Shaddoll the week after, just before the hype train crashed, and picked up Qliphort, which was very good and won me PC twice in a row, but I hated it and sold it along with my binder, which was basically an accumulation of junk, for £210. Right now, I don’t have a deck, but I should probably be getting one in the next few weeks - it’ll probably be Nekroz or Burning Abyss. It’s been a long journey, but I’m as happy as I’ve ever been. We have a real crew of great players at locals now, which I’m lucky to be part of. Max and me still play and chill together a lot, I see Harry loads even though he rarely comes down to PC and there are all kinds of other people at PC I’m friends with including some pretty yugioh-famous people.

 

I funking love Yugioh. It’s made me a better person, it’s made me lots of lasting friendships, not just inside of Yugioh but outside the barriers of Yugioh as well, it’s filled a lot of spare hours I had and it’s brought me out of my shell. I’ve had great fun, I’ve had amazing moments and very few actually bad moments, I always look forward to going to PC every saturday, even if I don’t intend to play in the tournament because I can hardly think of a better place to be than down in that smelly basement chatting to and having a laugh with all my friends.

But now, it’s time for the future. I’m playing as well as I ever have. I now have the funds to consistently play a top deck, a super-competitive mentality, amazing contacts and time and opportunity for loads of high-level testing, and a drive to get out there and prove myself. I’ll be going to every regional I can, I’ll be going to YCS Lille and the inevitable YCS London as well as any other YCS that isn’t ridiculously far away and my sights are set high.

 

[spoiler=Preston Regional]

The weekend started with me staying at a friend's Friday night so we could get a bit of last-minute testing done and also because the guy who was driving us there lives near him and it just makes it a little quicker to pick us up. The testing went pretty well, he's playing Shaddoll which is probably my best matchup so I won a whole load more games than I lost. We had to get up at 6:30 because Preston is a two-hour drive away anyway plus we had to drive around Sheffield to pick the other 2 guys up. We had a good chat in the car, mainly talking about the Qliphort build one of us was running which was Towers Turbo that sided into backrow Qliphort and took the Towers out, mainly to screw with people who sided in Cyber Dragons (or, worse still, Cyber Dragon Core), as well as the fact that people will take out cards which go after Scout and side in cards which go after Towers. It seemed a very wise choice to me, I'll probably say a little more about it in the metagame discussion thread. When we eventually got out I was pretty stiff from the ride but hey, it's much cheaper and more relaxing than a train.

The turnout ended up being pretty low because of there being an LLDS in nearby Manchester the same day, so the tournament was only 58 people with 8 Euros invites given out, and only 6 rounds rather than the usual 7. Anyway, straight to the rounds- 

Round 1 (Kozmo)

Turns out I'm playing a friend of mine from locals who was actually in the car with us, so we know exactly what each other is playing an in fact he's the one who sold RB to me. 

Game 1: He goes first and opens Myrmeleo 4 backrow and I really don't have anything good to get past that.

Game 2: I open the Rampengu combo and eventually beat him very clumsily.

Game 3: I brick horribly and one search off Farmgirl is enough to beat me.

 

0-1

 

Round 2 (Clown Shaddoll)

Game 1: He bricks really badly and I can constantly just resolve Cannahawk's effect to add cards from deck to hand, it gets to the point where I'm getting one back every turn and he just has some kind of backrow to stop each one, but eventually I Gold Sarc into D-Fissure and he can't win from there.

Game 2: He bricks again and I make a combo for a good 9k damage involving Lara and Bond, and when he tries to keep himself from losing with Damage Juggler I have Debunk.

 

1-1

 

Round 3 (Burning Abyss)

Game 1: I scoop instantly to turn 1 Skill Drain

Game 2: I Macro him and eventually I can get some kind of combo off after he's down to 2 backrow which I can both MST.

Game 3: This game was excellent, he goes first and sets Iron Wall, Skill Drain and Wing Blast and summons a Graff or something. He flips the Wall straightaway which I MST, he then flips Skill Drain which concerns me greatly. Luckily I can summon Elder, Teleport into another Elder and, when for some reason he uses Wing Blast to discard Dark Hole to target one of my Elders I chain Bond and summon Gaiapelio, while he has only a Skill Drain and a Graff. He can make a Dante and kinda keeps himself in the game but I can ambush and between tagging out my Ulti-Cannahawks to dodge Skill Drain search an Ambush each turn and then ending on one more Ulti-Apelio each turn. Eventually we go to time but between a field of 3 Ulti-Apelio, a Gaiapelio and a Steeds I can push through his wall of floaters and attack for game in turn 3 of time. I'm pretty proud of how I played in this game, I know I essentially won because my opponent misplayed but even after that the work was not done and I was able to keep adding pressure on him.

 

2-1

 

Round 4 (Yosenju)

The guy sits down with a sneak peek mat, a damaged crappy deck box and very very old sleeves, and I know he's either doing some mega mind game or he's playing Yosenju. The guy was actually super nice, probably the nicest opponent I played all day, and I had more fun in this Yosenju matchup than normal for that reason.

 

Game 1: I open the most noxious brick hand of the day which ends up with me losing with 3 Ambush and a Steeds but no RBs.

Game 2: For the first time all day I open the Elder Cannahawk combo going first, and since his only backrow is Mind Crush I can easily OTK him on turn 2.

Game 3: I normal summon a Rampengu and have a Lara in hand, so I feel pretty safe. I set Twister, Mind Crush and Steeds and when he Tenkis I decide to let it through and Mind Crush the Kama 1 he searches so I can see his hand and save the Twister for a floodgate. He reveals his hand of Mind Crush, Tsujik and three Kama 2, so I more or less know I've won. He summons Kama 2 and Tsujik, but foolishly chooses to boost the Kama 2 rather than the Tsujik, so I can pop the Kama 2 and the Tsujik can't get over my Pengu. I make a weird combo and end on Chidori, spinning back his set Mind Crush then putting the Tenki back on top of his deck, and when I Twister it he scoops.

 

3-1

 

Round 5 (Lightsworn)

Remember me raving about my friend from locals with the Minerva? This is him. We had a bit of banter and because we had the exact same spellground we put them on top of eachother (in the end we actually swapped for some reason which is cool because his is softer). 

Game 1: I open Rampengu and set Book and Warning, he summons Goblindbergh and summons Lyla which I Book of Moon, he then specials Hatricker and makes Minerva which I warning, but stupidly I forget that it still mills and pops when it's Warninged, and he mills 2 Wulf, pops my Pengu and Instant Fusions for game.

Game 2: I have a decent combo and enough backrow to stop him making Minerva, he drops JD lategame but I have Lara and so can get back into it.

Game 3: I open the nuts, I have Elder+Ramengu plus D Fissure which is actually better than Cannahawk because it banishes 2 instead of 1, so make the standard Steeds+Ambush play and OTK him the next turn.

 

4-1

 

Round 6 (Infernoid)

Sweet, outside of Shaddoll this is probably my best matchup because they can't play Iron Wall, Maxx "C", Lancea or really many things that disrupt me.

Game 1: I brick noxiously and he just summons Attondel and wins.

Game 2: He opens with Decatron and sends Devyaty, but I have Elder Cannahawk (for the second time all day) and although I have to do it in main phase 2 he still can't win.

Game 3: I go first and open 2 Lancea, Elder, Ambush and Fiendish Chain. He oddly banishes his entire hand to summon Harmadik and Attondel, so I chain the Attondel, at which point I topdeck Rampengu and know I've got my invite. I do the combo and with 2 Lancea (and topping a 3rd) there is zero way in which I can lose that game.

 

5-1

 

Well, I'm pretty damn chuffed to go 5-1 playing a deck I'm not 100% familiar with that I didn't really have much belief in. Due to my poor tiebreaks I finish 5th, 1 place outside top 4 so I miss out on a nice deck box, but I still win the new regionals mat (in fact, because I was the first to collect my prizes I am the first person in the UK to be handed that particular mat) and 3 CROS Special Edition. I don't pull anything better than a Chaofeng, which sucks but hey, the mat covers my entry fee and travel expenses so that's pretty cool. The guy who came with us playing Qliphort went 6-0 and won (we had a lot of fun opening the box of CORE that he won in the car back, and he pulled a Farmgirl so he's definitely happy), and the guy who beat me round 1 with Kozmo went 4-2 and finished 13th. My opponents were all thoroughly pleasant, the guys who I beat rounds 2 and 6 were pretty unhappy to lose but were pleasant during the game and it's not like they were ever downright rude, just a bit down. Weirdly enough I lost 5 out of 6 game 1s, but then every game 2 and all but 1 game 3, which I suppose implies that my side was fairly decent.

 

I know to top an event with RB takes a decent bit of luck, I don't think my opening hands were especially good (come on, I only had Elder Cannahawk going first once all day), but I managed to avoid horrible dead hands as much as possible which definitely helps. I think the luck was more because my opponent's didn't draw many of the cards that beat me. I only got Maxx "C"'d once all day, only saw an Iron Wall once all day and MST'd it straightaway and never saw a Lancea. I also played 2 of my best matchups and managed to avoid Qliphort which might well be my worst matchup. On a related note, it's pretty cool to play a different deck every round, which is kinda a testament to how diverse this meta is considering there's a whole ton of other meta decks I didn't even play. The tournament was amzingly diverse, with the biggest deck being Kozmo at 13 and the second biggest being Nekroz at 8, and pretty much every relevant deck being represented by someone (I was one of 2 RB players, the other guy scrubbed out). I don't exactly know what decks topped, but I know the top 4 tables in the last round, where everyone was 4-1 or better were

Qliphort vs Qliphort

Ritual Beast vs Infernoid

Nekroz vs Clownblade

Shaddoll vs Nekroz

Kozmo still suck a little bit, unfortunately.

Overall, the tournament could really have been much better. I did well, my friends all did fairly well, due to it being 6 rounds only we got back at 8pm which is pretty early for a regional so far away, and overall a great time was had by all. I hope this bodes well for the rest of the regional season. On that note, Chesterfield regional is next Sunday and I'll most likely be going to that, so that'll probably be the next time I make a post here. peace

 

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Okay this was really interesting and I'm glad I read it. I have no idea about the game but I am happy to see someone who enjoys it so much, I've said it before but I am glad you came back to YCM.

Good luck on your journey. :D

 

Also as to font size, not sure of default size but I actually liked that such a long thing had larger than normal font, personally. ^^;

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Okay this was really interesting and I'm glad I read it. I have no idea about the game but I am happy to see someone who enjoys it so much, I've said it before but I am glad you came back to YCM.

Good luck on your journey. :D

 

Also as to font size, not sure of default size but I actually liked that such a long thing had larger than normal font, personally. ^^;

His font is default when writing in Google Docs. It is the same thing when do it, and a jabroni to edit on this forum. He has no real reason to edit it, and he shouldn't when he posts more.

 

 

 

Good luck, mate!

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  • 1 month later...

Well I sure didn't keep this up as I intended to, mainly due to having no deck and not really travelling anywhere or playing that much at all. I apologise, and starting now I hope to be updating this more regularly.

 

Getting a deck's been difficult for me, because I really want to avoid any mega tin deck because of the risk of it getting hit at any point in time, but finally I picked up RB for a pretty small amount of money (was considering Kozmo, but I don't like the idea of paying £50 each for Farmgirls plus Dark Destroyer is a secret so I'd like to see just how good the new Kozmo will be before I decide to spend so much money on it. I'm off to the first regional of the season tomorrow with some pretty poor preparation (like, I still need to buy Teleports when I'm there and I haven't made a side yet), but I do know how the deck works so hopefully I can produce some kind of results. When I get back I'll probably make a proper entry for this with what I've done over the past couple of months, this is just a quick update.

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Sooo Preston regional happened and if you've been paying attention to my statuses you'll have  pretty good idea of how it went. Here's the details-

 

[spoiler=Preston Regional]

The weekend started with me staying at a friend's Friday night so we could get a bit of last-minute testing done and also because the guy who was driving us there lives near him and it just makes it a little quicker to pick us up. The testing went pretty well, he's playing Shaddoll which is probably my best matchup so I won a whole load more games than I lost. We had to get up at 6:30 because Preston is a two-hour drive away anyway plus we had to drive around Sheffield to pick the other 2 guys up. We had a good chat in the car, mainly talking about the Qliphort build one of us was running which was Towers Turbo that sided into backrow Qliphort and took the Towers out, mainly to screw with people who sided in Cyber Dragons (or, worse still, Cyber Dragon Core), as well as the fact that people will take out cards which go after Scout and side in cards which go after Towers. It seemed a very wise choice to me, I'll probably say a little more about it in the metagame discussion thread. When we eventually got out I was pretty stiff from the ride but hey, it's much cheaper and more relaxing than a train.

The turnout ended up being pretty low because of there being an LLDS in nearby Manchester the same day, so the tournament was only 58 people with 8 Euros invites given out, and only 6 rounds rather than the usual 7. Anyway, straight to the rounds- 

Round 1 (Kozmo)

Turns out I'm playing a friend of mine from locals who was actually in the car with us, so we know exactly what each other is playing an in fact he's the one who sold RB to me. 

Game 1: He goes first and opens Myrmeleo 4 backrow and I really don't have anything good to get past that.

Game 2: I open the Rampengu combo and eventually beat him very clumsily.

Game 3: I brick horribly and one search off Farmgirl is enough to beat me.

 

0-1

 

Round 2 (Clown Shaddoll)

Game 1: He bricks really badly and I can constantly just resolve Cannahawk's effect to add cards from deck to hand, it gets to the point where I'm getting one back every turn and he just has some kind of backrow to stop each one, but eventually I Gold Sarc into D-Fissure and he can't win from there.

Game 2: He bricks again and I make a combo for a good 9k damage involving Lara and Bond, and when he tries to keep himself from losing with Damage Juggler I have Debunk.

 

1-1

 

Round 3 (Burning Abyss)

Game 1: I scoop instantly to turn 1 Skill Drain

Game 2: I Macro him and eventually I can get some kind of combo off after he's down to 2 backrow which I can both MST.

Game 3: This game was excellent, he goes first and sets Iron Wall, Skill Drain and Wing Blast and summons a Graff or something. He flips the Wall straightaway which I MST, he then flips Skill Drain which concerns me greatly. Luckily I can summon Elder, Teleport into another Elder and, when for some reason he uses Wing Blast to discard Dark Hole to target one of my Elders I chain Bond and summon Gaiapelio, while he has only a Skill Drain and a Graff. He can make a Dante and kinda keeps himself in the game but I can ambush and between tagging out my Ulti-Cannahawks to dodge Skill Drain search an Ambush each turn and then ending on one more Ulti-Apelio each turn. Eventually we go to time but between a field of 3 Ulti-Apelio, a Gaiapelio and a Steeds I can push through his wall of floaters and attack for game in turn 3 of time. I'm pretty proud of how I played in this game, I know I essentially won because my opponent misplayed but even after that the work was not done and I was able to keep adding pressure on him.

 

2-1

 

Round 4 (Yosenju)

The guy sits down with a sneak peek mat, a damaged crappy deck box and very very old sleeves, and I know he's either doing some mega mind game or he's playing Yosenju. The guy was actually super nice, probably the nicest opponent I played all day, and I had more fun in this Yosenju matchup than normal for that reason.

 

Game 1: I open the most noxious brick hand of the day which ends up with me losing with 3 Ambush and a Steeds but no RBs.

Game 2: For the first time all day I open the Elder Cannahawk combo going first, and since his only backrow is Mind Crush I can easily OTK him on turn 2.

Game 3: I normal summon a Rampengu and have a Lara in hand, so I feel pretty safe. I set Twister, Mind Crush and Steeds and when he Tenkis I decide to let it through and Mind Crush the Kama 1 he searches so I can see his hand and save the Twister for a floodgate. He reveals his hand of Mind Crush, Tsujik and three Kama 2, so I more or less know I've won. He summons Kama 2 and Tsujik, but foolishly chooses to boost the Kama 2 rather than the Tsujik, so I can pop the Kama 2 and the Tsujik can't get over my Pengu. I make a weird combo and end on Chidori, spinning back his set Mind Crush then putting the Tenki back on top of his deck, and when I Twister it he scoops.

 

3-1

 

Round 5 (Lightsworn)

Remember me raving about my friend from locals with the Minerva? This is him. We had a bit of banter and because we had the exact same spellground we put them on top of eachother (in the end we actually swapped for some reason which is cool because his is softer). 

Game 1: I open Rampengu and set Book and Warning, he summons Goblindbergh and summons Lyla which I Book of Moon, he then specials Hatricker and makes Minerva which I warning, but stupidly I forget that it still mills and pops when it's Warninged, and he mills 2 Wulf, pops my Pengu and Instant Fusions for game.

Game 2: I have a decent combo and enough backrow to stop him making Minerva, he drops JD lategame but I have Lara and so can get back into it.

Game 3: I open the nuts, I have Elder+Ramengu plus D Fissure which is actually better than Cannahawk because it banishes 2 instead of 1, so make the standard Steeds+Ambush play and OTK him the next turn.

 

4-1

 

Round 6 (Infernoid)

Sweet, outside of Shaddoll this is probably my best matchup because they can't play Iron Wall, Maxx "C", Lancea or really many things that disrupt me.

Game 1: I brick noxiously and he just summons Attondel and wins.

Game 2: He opens with Decatron and sends Devyaty, but I have Elder Cannahawk (for the second time all day) and although I have to do it in main phase 2 he still can't win.

Game 3: I go first and open 2 Lancea, Elder, Ambush and Fiendish Chain. He oddly banishes his entire hand to summon Harmadik and Attondel, so I chain the Attondel, at which point I topdeck Rampengu and know I've got my invite. I do the combo and with 2 Lancea (and topping a 3rd) there is zero way in which I can lose that game.

 

5-1

 

Well, I'm pretty damn chuffed to go 5-1 playing a deck I'm not 100% familiar with that I didn't really have much belief in. Due to my poor tiebreaks I finish 5th, 1 place outside top 4 so I miss out on a nice deck box, but I still win the new regionals mat (in fact, because I was the first to collect my prizes I am the first person in the UK to be handed that particular mat) and 3 CROS Special Edition. I don't pull anything better than a Chaofeng, which sucks but hey, the mat covers my entry fee and travel expenses so that's pretty cool. The guy who came with us playing Qliphort went 6-0 and won (we had a lot of fun opening the box of CORE that he won in the car back, and he pulled a Farmgirl so he's definitely happy), and the guy who beat me round 1 with Kozmo went 4-2 and finished 13th. My opponents were all thoroughly pleasant, the guys who I beat rounds 2 and 6 were pretty unhappy to lose but were pleasant during the game and it's not like they were ever downright rude, just a bit down. Weirdly enough I lost 5 out of 6 game 1s, but then every game 2 and all but 1 game 3, which I suppose implies that my side was fairly decent.

 

I know to top an event with RB takes a decent bit of luck, I don't think my opening hands were especially good (come on, I only had Elder Cannahawk going first once all day), but I managed to avoid horrible dead hands as much as possible which definitely helps. I think the luck was more because my opponent's didn't draw many of the cards that beat me. I only got Maxx "C"'d once all day, only saw an Iron Wall once all day and MST'd it straightaway and never saw a Lancea. I also played 2 of my best matchups and managed to avoid Qliphort which might well be my worst matchup. On a related note, it's pretty cool to play a different deck every round, which is kinda a testament to how diverse this meta is considering there's a whole ton of other meta decks I didn't even play. The tournament was amzingly diverse, with the biggest deck being Kozmo at 13 and the second biggest being Nekroz at 8, and pretty much every relevant deck being represented by someone (I was one of 2 RB players, the other guy scrubbed out). I don't exactly know what decks topped, but I know the top 4 tables in the last round, where everyone was 4-1 or better were

Qliphort vs Qliphort

Ritual Beast vs Infernoid

Nekroz vs Clownblade

Shaddoll vs Nekroz

Kozmo still suck a little bit, unfortunately.

Overall, the tournament could really have been much better. I did well, my friends all did fairly well, due to it being 6 rounds only we got back at 8pm which is pretty early for a regional so far away, and overall a great time was had by all. I hope this bodes well for the rest of the regional season. On that note, Chesterfield regional is next Sunday and I'll most likely be going to that, so that'll probably be the next time I make a post here. peace

 

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Congrats on the top, what was the attendance/cut for invites? totally missed that in your post lol

 

And like you said, RB is certainly a risky deck choice with the brickiness. I had the option of taking that to regionals, but I felt between the bricks and me just choking with all the combos, I'd fare better with a different, lower-tier deck, which didn't bode me particularly well haha. But yeah kudos to you for playing the deck and succeeding.

 

It's interesting to see what the deck representation though, I'm heading to regionals next Saturday and honestly don't know what to expect.

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To be honest I wasn't optimistic at all when I went because I had so little experience, and I was really expecting to see more hate than I did and was concerned that between brick hands and, well, Iron Wall games I wouldn't be able to get anywhere near enough wins. The deck's actually surprisingly forgiving and if you can just remember the base combos the second stage where you have to OTK kinda works itself out. 

 

I really can't give any tips on what to expect except for that you won't see much of one particular thing so be prepared to side for a variety of matchups. Generic stuff like Walls/Lanceas, Retaliating and Maxx "C"s and... something to beat Kozmo, since there'll likely be a good bit of that are a good pick for the side, but you could play literally anything. I spent the night before preparing for Shaddoll, BA and Nekroz and while I did play 2 of those I never expected to be playing stuff like Yosenju and Lightsworn.

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Hey I'm curious. What's the feel of these YGO tournaments? And the....what's the word...atmosphere? Always wondered about that.

 

It's pretty chill most of the time. People tend to cluster together around trade binders or people playtesting or just around a table to talk about stuff, with people walking around drifting between groups as well. It's difficult to describe but I suppose it's what I imagine a convention to be like.

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Do you feel any of your choices fell flat during the event?

 

Literally nothing. Every card put in a little work, but nothing was spectacular so I guess that's the sign of a decent build. D Fissure was probably the only card that was a cut above the rest because I drew it with Pengu once and that's insane and the card basically won me 2 games on its own. I never summoned Roach, Exciton or Castel but they're really just there for when I need them and I just happened not to need them. Dweller won me two games and was excellent, Chidori won me a game as well and was obviously good, and I think I sided in every side card at least once and every time I drew a side card it put in some kind of work (except the 3rd Lancea for the Infernoid match). It's possible that there were cards that could have been better, but there really weren't any clunkers.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi, I took a bit long to get this done, but better late than never.

 

[spoiler=Locals 24/10/2015]

I haven't actually played in one of these locals for months due to having no deck/being at bigger events, and I must say I'd kinda missed them. There were 20 or so players of wildly varying abilities. I played the same deck as last week but couldn't borrow Teleports so replaced them with a Thunder King and an Instant Fusion.

 

Round 1 (Exodia)

The kid's like 12 and really not very good and I open the stone cold nuts and am able to steeds away his Libraries and then Bond to dodge Scarecrow for an easy win both games.

 

Round 2 (Shaddoll)

I'm playing a friend of mine, he's possibly the biggest threat in the whole room.

Game 1: I open Rampengu, Ambush and Macro which is easily enough to win since he doesn't main MST.

Game 2: He opens with Winda and Iron Wall.

Game 3: I open Macro again. This one was hardly a great advert for Yugioh.

 

Round 3 (Burning Abyss)

Game 1: The dude's just picked up the deck and is not a very good player at the best of times, he opens really well with Cir and Graff but bizarrely summons Cir of Graff even though he already has one under his Dante, so I Raigeki him for a solid plus and my hand was really good too so I can win.

Game 2: His opening hand is even better than last time and he keeps putting pressure on me with Virgil. Eventually he wins because he goes Astral Force (???) into Pleiades which means I can combo myself back into the game with Zeframpilica.

Game 3: I D Fissure him.

 

Round 4 (Infernoid)

Game 1: He goes first and just summons a Raiden, I open Elder Cannahawk and pass on Cannahawk set 5, so he promptly flips decree in End Phase, summons Harmadik and Decatron and Black Roses me. Fortunately I'd also drawn Zeframpilica and the rest of his cards suck so I can still win.

Game 2: All I can remember is that Attondel is really strong :[

Game 3: He wastes the majority of his resources to summon Ononcu and after he, rather bizarrely, sacks it to negate my Upstart I can just Ambush and away I go.

 

We cut to top 4

Top 4 (Igknights)

Game 1: I win the dieroll and flip Macro in response to his Igknight effect and that's game over straightaway.

Game 2: He can't end on much of a play and I just whittle him down. Don't remember this game well.

 

Top 2 (BA guy again)

To be honest, my memory of these two games is a bit dim as well, but I remember he summoned Majesty's Fiend game 1 (yeah, he mained it. odd, huh?) and got Bottomlessed for a clean +1 for me, and summoned it t1 game 2 and I summoned Apelio and used Steeds on it. I categorically destroyed him and got rid of all his resources both games, and I know I didn't win with either Macro/Fissure or any sort of substantial combo.

 

I win 3 packs of CORE and pull an Ulti Flare Metal, which is a pretty good day's work. I have now won 11 straight competitive matches since I lost to Kozmo guy last week.

 

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