Regionals Again…

Kyle here, another report but for the Seattle Regionals this time.

Once again I took Archfiends. I couldn’t get my hands on all the cards I wanted or any time to test for Lightsworns so I didn’t run that. I learned a couple things, first being I need some kind of answer to all the DARK decks that run tons of traps, because apparently that’s my only bad match-up. Dragon Rulers was pretty fifty-fifty. For now though I’m probably going to put Archfiend’s to rest for a while until I figure out something more interesting for the deck.

Overall, the event was run better than Spokane. Better venue, more people and a lot more organized, but that should really be expected since they’ve been doing Seattle regionals for a while now and that was the first they’ve ever held in Spokane. Seattle’s only a 30 minute drive which is pretty darn easy compared to a 4 and a half hour drive, so I wasn’t really tired going into the event like Spokane or like I usually am at regionals because of that extra sleep and because I’ve been working opening shifts at my work a whole lot more so compared to that I was actually sleeping in. Me, Matt and Justen all went up in the same car and met up with our locals crew in the hall once we got their. People I’ve mentioned before where their like Rob and Devin as well as a lot more locals players than Spokane since Seattle is so close.

Deck-wise I was running Archfiends as I said. I had swapped out 2 Dimensional Prison and 1 Archfiend’s Roar for 3 Call of the Haunted, and that’s really all that was different between previous builds. I had honed my side deck a lot more after Spokane, but as I said I learned that I have a really bad match-up against DARK decks with traps, specifically Evilswarms and Blackwings. Blackwings is pretty even, but I really get slammed by a Blackwing player round 5. My thought was that if I where to run Archfiend’s at a tournament again I’d what to side 3 copies of Vampire Hunter since he has natural synergy with my deck and is a very good against those match-ups, that plus I found that I probably have about 2 to 3 extra slots in my side that they could fit in. Matt ran Fire Fists with the mix 3 and 4 axis, but more focus on 4 axis. Justen ran Prophecy with the World. Rob also ran World Prophecy and Devin ran Traptrix with Fossil Dynas. Matt went 5-4, Rob and Justen ended in 28th and 29th place (out of a top 32) and Devin just barely missed top 32 by losing the final round going 6-3 ending in the higher 30’s I believe.

I’m kind of bouncing around the topic, so I’ll just come out and say I went 5-4, which is bad. I’d like to go at least 6-3, which I think I technically would have had a chance too, but I’ll get into that in the specific game in which it mattered. If you’re at least okay at math, you’d know that it was a 9 round event, which is pretty long but normal for Seattle. Somehow we get out of the event by 8:30 PM, which is amazing time since 9 rounds usually takes us to 10:30 PM. With that let’s begin.

Round 1: Me vs. Kevin (Dragon Rulers)

Game 1: It’s hard to remember exactly what happens all the way back in round 1 of a 9 round event. I believe I go first and get an early setup with traps. I chunk out 3000 very early (which I assume means Cavalry + Kage attack into an open field) which puts in him danger for the rest of the match. Each consecutive turn I kind of have him reeling so that he has to make plays to survive which cuts off his resources. I end up taking him out without much resistance.

Game 2: He makes a first turn Felgrand, which was interesting. I’d never faced it before so I suppose this was the litmus test. It was a questionable move because it used his resources up quickly because he banished a Redox and Tidal from hand to search the Mythic dragons to make it. My deck certainly has trouble killing it, but him banishing his resources early pushed the game into a grind very fast. We both slowed waned in cards until he had 3 in hand and I had 3 on field no in hand, one being a face-up Imperial Iron Wall. He has 800 lifepoints left and no monsters to be summoning so I literally just need to draw a monster on any of my turns and I win. The first thing I draw is of course Kagetokage, which can’t be Normal Summoned and I end. He draw MST and activates it on Iron Wall to which I chain my next Iron Wall. I draw Trap Stun I believe, next and set it. He draws another MST and hits my Iron Wall then summons a Dragon Ruler from grave which I think I mirror Force hoping to draw a monster. I draw Book of Moon and hang on for a little bit and I think after 2 more turns of not drawing monsters I lose.

Game 3: I go first, and since their’s only about 2 minutes until time is called I make a Key Beetle with a hand that I would otherwise use to make a King of Feral Imps to search my deck, because I also have Safe Zone. I end with Beetle and 4 face-downs, Beetle’s effect on Zone. My opponent accidentally drops a Phoenix Wing Wind Blast out of his hand when doing that hand shuffling thing which tips me off and also is bad news for my Beetle lock. He goes attacks into my Beetle for some chump damage. I go and draw Heiress. My plan is to summon Heiress and use my Beetle’s effect on it hoping he doesn’t Phoenix Wing before or between that combo, that way when he uses Phoenix Wing on Safe Zone I can send Heiress to the graveyard to prevent the Beetle from being destroyed and also get Heiress’ effect. I do so, but he chains to Beetle’s effect with Wing Blast and thinks for a bit then says he targets my Heiress. I give him a perplexed look and say “okay…” and put it on top of my deck. Then I switch Beetle to defense and end. On his turn he plays an MST target Safe Zone and I say “okay…” again to which he realizes MST was bad and I also assume he realizes he wasted his Wing Blast. We play another turn but he ends up scooping realizing he can’t win because we go into time. I may have lost if he had made the better Wing Blast play, but it’s hard to say.

1 – 0

Round 2: Me vs. Kritin (Dragon Rulers)

Kritin goes to my locals, and he’s very good. He topped the recent YCS San Mateo. He loses to Christopher Welch in his first match of top 32. That to prove his credentials I suppose. Because of this I go into the match thinking I’m probably going to lose because I assume he’s running Dragon Rulers and he’s good.

Game 1: I go first and open just awful. Double Heiress and Grepher with Roars and some other trap. If you don’t know, double Heiress is probably the worst hand my deck can get. One Heiress is fine, but double is just dumb. I set one and all my traps that have no relevance. He goes plays ravine and sends some dragons and ends. I go and draw a second Grepher… joy, and end doing nothing. (thinking about this as I write, I probably should’ve summoned Grepher discard Heiress to send Zephyros. Flip Heiress and bounce it for Zephyros. Attacked with Zeph and Greph and then made a King of the Feral Imps to search Kage so I could do Kage Grepher next turn or Kage Cavalry after using Roar on Heiress to search it. That way if he did nothing I could have Key Beetle and Imps with a Chameleon in hand and a Cavalry in grave. That revolving door though!) I think he goes and summons Ancient Fairy Dragon with Debris, sends some dragons with Ravine, then gets a second Ravine with Ancient Fairy and sends some more dragons. At this point I’ pretty much dead because he has a loaded graveyard and has only banished maybe 1 Dragon Ruler with a Sword, meaning he has practically infinite resources and I have none. From that point on he basically grinds my resources to dust and then defeats me as I scrounge for life!

At a point in this duel my opponent has a Felgrand on board and I have a Zephyros in grave. I Safe Zone the Felgrand, which he has no response to, which I assumed would happen since who knows what I’m about to do but me? I go to my main phase and activate Zephyros effect returning Safe Zone to hand as a cost and I say his Felgrand is immediately destroyed since Safe Zone’s destruction effect is continuous. (similar to Call of the Haunted) He attempts to chain Felgrand’s effect to which I say he can’t because Felgrand is immediately destroyed as soon as Safe Zone leaves the field, not starting a chain. He doesn’t like that and I say we can ask the judge. A judge comes over and says that after Zephyros’ effect resolves then Safe Zone will activate to destroy the monster in a separate chain, which is bogus so I appeal to the head judge. The head judge says the same but also treats me like a little baby when he explains it which ticks me off. So we continue as if the bad ruling we where given was accurate and Felgrand is not destroyed and I have a random Zephyros on the board. This comes up later somehow…

Game 2:  I open poorly again. Set Heiress set 2 Iron Walls, 1 Safe Zone and a Roar and have an Armageddon Knight in hand. He plays ravine pitch a Dragon Ruler sends Trigon, Normal Summons Debris and makes Black Rose and goes boom to which I clearly have no response. Heiress searches me Cavalry. I think I draw a Chameleon on my next turn (which I doesn’t know I run) I summon Armageddon send Stygian to special Cavalry. Attack with both and makes Imps to search Kage. He goes and after this I don’t remember what happens for a while, but it ends up with me having only Chameleon in hand still and an Iron Wall face-up and him with 3 cards in hand. I have 200 lifepoints left and he just says screw it and summons Flamvell Guard and attacks me for 100. I then summon Chameleon and make Crimson Blader, to which he scoops and says, “I didn’t expect you to be able to Synchro”.

Game 3: I open pretty fantastic, Armageddon Knight, Grepher, Roar, Vanity’s Emptiness, Iron Wall and Bottomless. The problem is a I go second and he summons double Dracossack first turn. I summon Armageddon send Heiress search Emperor. Pitch Emperor to summon Grepher. I attack the two tokens on board, summon Beetle and use its effect on Emptiness. Then I set my whole hand. He goes, during his stand by I flip Iron Wall. He activate 1 Dracossack’s effect to summon tokens and I chain Emptiness. He enters the battle phase, attacks with one over Beetle and I destroy Emptiness instead. Main phase tow he summon tokens with the second Dracossack and uses the one that didn’t attack to pop my Iron Wall. I end up clearing the Dracossack’s using Call of the Haunted with Emperor, but on the turn after I clear them he summons Heliopolis and Big Eye taking my Emperor and I scoop.

1 – 1

Round 3: Me vs. Matthew (Dragon Rulers)

Dragon Rulers for the first three rounds, swag! Matthew is a younger duelist, maybe 15 years old would be my guess. I’ve seen him before, I’m pretty sure he usually tops or does well so I once again go into the game with a more competitive mind set.

Game 1: I setup and early game Beetle Lock, except with 2 Safe Zones. I eventually put the second Safe Zone on an Archfiend Emperor. I can’t attack directly so I very slowly grind him for game. He makes quite the valiant attempt to attack for damage over my Beetle.

Game 2: The game is very back and forth for a long time and we get into a position where all I have are Armageddon Knight in hand, a face-down Safe Zone and an un-used Zephyros in the graveyard. My opponent has a Stardust Dragon and maybe 2 cards in hand and at least enough resources in grave for 1 Blaster summon and 1 face-down. I really really want to activate Safe Zone on Stardust and Zephyros it back to my hand, but according to the ruling given to me when Safe Zones effect supposedly resolves in my hand the opponent could chain Stardust’s effect to negate it and destroy it in my hand, which would leave me with nothing. I don’t want to claim the true ruling and have my opponent argue and have the judge come over and explain to me the opposite again so other than that I have no plays so I end my turn and then he just summons 2 Dragon Rulers and kills me. If I where able to do that play I could’ve destroyed his Stardust summoned Armageddon Knight and searched Cavalry then XYZ summoned Key Beetle and using its effect on the Safe Zone, probably winning me the match. This is why I said I probably could’ve gone 6-3, but winning here would’ve have completely changed my next 6 games anyways so it’s impossible to tell.

Game 3:  The game is back and forth for a few turns and then he has a Blaster, Ravine and 2 face-downs and 1 card in hand, which I know is a Redox because he searched it when he summoned Blaster. I summon Armageddon Knight to which he activates Skill Drain and I cringe. I still have quite a few cards for defense though so I’m not locked out of the game. I’ll just have to get a Emperor out under Drain and the tables will turn because he wont be able to kill it. Unfortunately, he draws for his next turn and says “sorry I sacked you”, and play Sword banishing Redox to search another then pitches the Redox for ravine to send some Dragons Rulers. One of which he summons and searches Corsesca and uses that to Synchro for Stardust. He attacks with both but I Fiendish Chain the Blaster thinking I’ve survived, but he flips Return and finishes out the game.

1 – 2

After this round is lunch, which I don’t normally use at Regionals because I always get stomach issue due to jitters. I use this time to argue with the head judge about Safe Zone, and eventually one of the other judges overhears and agrees with me and I get the head judge to concede. I little too late, but at least I was able to convince him of the correct ruling.

Round 4: Me vs. Justin (Battlin’ Boxers)

Cool dude, cool deck.

Game 1: His deck doesn’t present a whole lot of defense spell and trap wise so I’m able to make plays easily and get to setup Key Beetle, Safe Zone and Scrap Dragon and pretty easily pick off all his resources and win.

Game 2: I key Beetle Safe Zone really early, but have no answers to his field so I just sit on it for a long time and we go into time. I don’t know the procedures, so we just played until one of us won. I end up slowly (and I mean slowly) grinding him down using Scrap Dragon and Emperor, but its really hard to grind down Lead Yolks. Eventually I end up winning. The duel is so long and so many things happen, it’s really difficult for me to remember and recite all of it in a coherent manner.

2 – 2

Round 5: Me vs. Sunny (Blackwings)

Game 1: He goes first, set 1 monster and 4 face-downs. My turn I contemplate what he could be playing, I think through things and assume probably Chain Burn or something with Morphing Jar in it, in both instances I should probably set may whole hand. I only have Heiress for monsters so I set it too.  My face-downs are 2 Safe Zones, 2 Roars and 1 Compulsory. (which is an awful hand) His turn he flips his face-down and it’s Vayu and I realize that I’m now in a horrible position, and then he flips Delta Crow and I’ve pretty much already lost. I compulsory the Vayu back to hand in response because I might as well. The rest of the game doesn’t really matter. I lose.

Game 2: I open pretty bad again, Cavalry, 2 Kage, Chameleon, Call of the Haunted and Mirror Force. I summon Cavalry and activate Kagetokage and he chains Maxx “C” and I stop because I don’t have any XYZ monster I’m in dire need of because I already have my second Kage and Chameleon in hand. He goes and blind MSTs my Mirror Force *cough* and play Whirlwind with Sirocco and sets 3 and attacks my Cavalry. I go and draw Book of Moon I think. I summon Chameleon to get Cavalry and he Maxx “C”s again and I make Imps this time and he draws and then play Solemn Warning/ I say he can’t do that because he already drew and shuffled the card into his hand. If I was a dick I could’ve got him a game loss for an irreparable game state, but I just said don’t draw on your next turn and set my Book and ended my turn. He normals Shura Specials Bora and attacks bringing me down very low. I draw and it’s Emperor I believe so I decide to scoop because all I have is Book of Moon, Kagetokage in hand and on field and a Call of the Haunted face-down.

2 – 3

Between rounds some other guy that was talking with Rob (who is a judge, but was playing during this event) about how the head judge ruled he couldn’t summon Illusory Snatcher if the opponent chains Veiler to a Monarch’s effect because the last thing to happen in the chain wasn’t the summon of a monster. That’s possibly the dumbest ruling ever, because according to that ruling you can never summon Illusory Snatcher upon the summon of the monarch because the first thing in the chain will always be the monarchs effect. Illusory Snatcher has the same activation requirements as Bottomless and you can activate Bottomless Trap Hole as far a long in a chain as you want as long as the last thing that has resolved is a monster’s summon. Illusory Snatcher has a picture of Caius on it for goodness sakes!

Round 6: Me vs. Bryce (Evilswarms)

Bryce was a really young kid. He wasn’t very good, which made this match kind of painful since my deck is really bad against Evilswarms. He would make lots of bad plays and not get punished because I couldn’t really do anything about it. He was nice though.

Game 1: He goes first, summons Ophion and sets 4. Going second in this situation gives me almost no good plays. I could feasibly summon Gem-Knight Pearl or Maestroke and try to kill the Ophion, but he has face-downs making the possibility of that working slim and if it fails it wastes one of my few ways to kill an Ophion. My decks usually way of getting around difficult monsters is with the likes of level 8 monsters, which I can’t summon bar Normal Summoning Emperor, which will die in the end phase and disallow its use after that until Ophion is gone. Generally, my game plan against Evilswarms is to get rid of Ophion and then get up a Scrap Dragon or Thought Ruler while Ophion’s not on the field. So what I do is summon Armageddon and search Emperor then set 4. He goes, summons Kerykeion and gets another Ophion. (why do Evilswarm players always open so good against me?) On my turn I summon Emperor and use its effect, to which he Fiendish Chains, allowing me to stall for a while under its 3000 ATK it now has from being negated. Eventually he kills it with Smashing Ground I think and attacks for game with 3 Ophions.

Game 2:  Make key Beetle Safe Zone turn one and end, assuming he will have absolutely no answer to it in his deck. (which I find he doesn’t) He opens Rabbit into Ophion and I take the 50 damage from the attack. I switch Beetle to defense and the game move along incredibly slowly as I can’t really kill Ophions. Eventually and inevitably I break through and win using the defense mode Key Beetle as my defense.

Game 3: He goes first and summons Ophion again and sets a bunch again. I eventually get the game to a place where he only has an Ophion with a Pandemic face-down and 2 cards in hand and I have Grepher and Armageddon on board with Lance and Book of Moon face-down. I enter my battle phase thinking I’ll be able to attack with Grepher over Ophion with Lance, but realize before I attack that Grepher would be 50 attack points shy. If I had realized I could’ve summon Pearl and just attacked over and used Lance and Book as defense. That ends up not mattering because on his next turn he plays smashing ground to kill my Pearl anyways and draws into Kerykeion and summons 3 monsters along side his Ophion and attacks for game… bleh.

2 – 4

Round 7: Me vs. Anthony (Chaos Dragons?)

I have a question mark next to Chaos Dragons because he was running 3 Tri-Horned Dragon, 3 Blue-Eyes White Dragon and 3 White Stone of Legend with Trade-In and Dragon’s Shrine. It was certainly interesting.

Game 1: I do very little and then eventually summon Crimson Blader and there’s nothing he can do about it. He runs no defensive cards except Tragoedia and Gorz.

Game 2: Practically the same as game 1 except more in my favor because I have Light-Imprisoning Mirror for his Lylas and Rykos and even for his White Stones and Lightpulsars.

3 – 4

Round 8: Me vs. Gerry (Blue-Eyes-ish)

At this point I was kind of playing the people with not so great deck-builds who hadn’t dropped yet. He was playing a Blue-Eyes deck with Maiden and such but he ran a whole bunch of things I’d never run in it like Eclipse Wyvern, Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon, Alexandrite Dragon, that Level 1 Tuner that equips from the hand from the structure deck and Hunter Dragon. All this stuff inevitably lead to bad and clumpy hands.

Game 1:  I go and kind of do nothing and eventually win by continuously attacking. He gets of Maiden’s effect and summon Azure and I chain Compulsory to its effect to protect Dragons and that pretty much seals the deal.

Game 2: Since I don’t have to stop him from attacking, I allow him to attack with an Alexandrite Dragon for a while as I build up resources and eventually beat him with a Key Beetle with Emptiness and Light-Imprisoning Mirror. Once Emptiness is on the board, he literally has no outs because I used Key Beetle on it.

4 – 4

Round 9: Me vs. Ahamad (Chaos Dragons)

This guy was running a pretty much legitimate Chaos Dragon build, no surprises. He played a little to aggressively which allowed me to predict his actions to easily or punish him for things that he shouldn’t have done.

Game 1: He opens like I do in my dreams! Solar Recharge into Charge of the Light Brigade in order to summon 2 Light Pulsars, REDMD and a Darkflare with 3 cards still in hand. I am able to break up his field to an extent, but he simply overpowers me.

Game 2: I open pretty weak, but he opens practically the same again. This time though I’m able to successfully stave off defeat by using Mirror Force and then Fiendish Chaining the REDMD after it’s revived by Lightpulsar. After that he gets me down to 100 lifepoints but I still comeback and win.

Game 3: I get up a Light-Imprisoning Mirror with Key Beetle and draw into Vanity’s Emptiness in a couple turns and lock him out of the game with that.

5 – 4

Overall, kind of lame results. 3 really influential first games against Dragon Rulers kind of decided the entire tournament for me. Rulings could’ve potentially changed two of the games into my favor, so it’s hard to say if I could’ve done better. I felt very comfortable with the deck versus Dragon Rulers but a lot of those games are predicated on whether or not I went first. I have a terri-bad match-up versus Evilswarm that needs to be attended too. I also never sided in MST, so I’ll probably take those out for 3 Vampire Hunter.

QOTW? Question of the Week:

The ban list is only a month around the corner! It’s coming pretty fast. What do you think Konami will do to combat the rampant Dragon Ruler deck using the ban list?

Written by: Kyle