Regionals and Stuff

Hello everyone! Been a couple days since the Washington Regionals and I figured rather than give the whole spiel on the podcast I could give a quick report here as well as some other interesting things I learned at the event. By the way, this article’s pretty long, so prepare!

First off, I went 6-3 placing 25th. Which is better than I had hoped with my deck, but after the first six rounds I had some unfortunate disqualifications that cost me 2 rounds so I could have been 8-1, I’ll talk about that later though.

I went using my Bubble Hero deck, I had meticulously scoured over my side deck for the preceding few days, more than I ever have before, and it ended up being incredibly helpful towards my success since I never lost game 2 or 3 except in my final round. I ended up being very surprised with the deck and learned that it has possibly the best match-up ever versus Dino Rabbit, a deck which I consistently smashed to pieces even when they opened with the nuts. So with that I’ll try to go quickly through my matches so I can talk about some other stuff intermittently.

Round 1. Me vs. Conrad(Infernity)
I honestly laughed to myself when he turn one sent some Infernity monsters to the graveyard because Justen had stated how awful Infernity decks where this meta the night before on the podcast. Safe to say, I 2-0 him without taking any damage. I use Blade Armor Ninja both games on around turn 3 or 4.
(1-0)

Just to repeat what Justen said on the podcast: when preparing a deck for an event, make sure to take into account what people might be inadvertently siding against you. In the case of Infernitys, everyone and their mother was maining Maxx “C” and Effect Veiler, two of Infernity’s worst nightmare cards, as well as most decks where siding Dimensional Fissures and Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror, which wreck the deck. At this point almost any deck that uses a majority of Dark monsters is at a huge disadvantage since everyone is siding Shadow Mirrors for Inzectors.

Round 2. Me vs. Ryan(Tour Guide Agents)
I got a little scared when I saw how much money he had in his deck at first, but the deck ended up falling on its face.
GAME1: I’m running way to much removal for him to get around I slowly beat him down. I win.
GAME2: I side in even more removal + T-King, he can’t deal with it. I win.
(2-0)

Round 3. Me vs. Charles (Wind-Up)
GAME1: He loops me pretty early and I have no answers for two turns. I lose.
GAME2: I got first and open with a not so great hand, it’s back and forth for a while and I barely pull out the win.
GAME3: I’m in control most of the duel, I take complete control when I Super-Poly his Leviair in Great Tornado. He accidentally leaves a Zenmaity in attack mode and I attack it for game. I win.
(3-0)

Round 4. Me vs. Zach(Dino Rabbit)
This guy ends up going 8-1. His only loss was me, go figure.
GAME1: He opens Trap Dustshoot hits my only monster(I’m only running 7). He gets a Sabersaurus and a Guaiba on the field but doesn’t overlay and decides to attack first and I D-Prison, I don’t allow him to XYZ summon the rest of the game. I win.
GAME2: I get Elemental HERO The Shining, flip Skill Drain. He scrounges for an out, flip Rivalry of Warlords. He has no outs. I win.
(4-0)

One thing I learned from this duel is that Dino Rabbit is not as heinous as people think.  While it is a very strong deck it not an overwhelmingly powerful deck. (at least not like I’ve seen in the past) The deck is very beatable, this mainly lies in its massive weaknesses. Monsters with over 2500 ATK are generally “un-kill-able”  by this deck especially when backed with some kind of effect negation. The deck also seems to fail to 1 for 1 removal en mas since when the deck is whittled down to its core it’s actually incredibly weak due to the Normal Monster base. With a consistent 1900 beater like Neos Alius, the best answers the deck has to it are cards like Forbidden Lance or smashing Sabersaurus into it (which is awful on there part). I also learned in this round that Rivalry of Warlords (similarly Gozen Match) is VERY good this format. If you can run it, then you should be siding 2 to 3 copies. They shut down Rabbit, Plants and Wind-Ups if they don’t have MST, and with a majority of players opting for either 2 or 0, it’s very likely they don’t.

Round 5. Me vs. Matthew(Dino Rabbit)
This is a guy from my locals, so I knew what to expect. Unfortunately, I almost missed game one ’cause I was having some dry heaves in the bathroom. I come back barely in time feeling awful.
GAME1: I’m still out of it and just over extend for no reason and he has Dark Hole, he wins.
GAME2: My head clears this round. I go first and have answers to all of his plays, the only damage I take is 2000 from warning. I win.
GAME3: Similar to game 2. I get Rivalry this game and he has no MST, that pretty much means game for Dino Rabbit. I win.
(5-0)

Compulsory Evacuation Device was a real champion card choice for me this weekend. Me and Justen did a long bought of testing 2 days before and we where starting to find cards like Bottomless Trap Hole and Dimensional Prison very weak and the meta was making it increasingly more important to disrupt the opponent’s plays rather than let them go through and deal with them after the fact (this isn’t the case as much against Wind-Ups, but I’ll talk about that later). I ran 2 Compulsory in my build and it’s pretty much the most amazing thing ever. It works double time against Rabbit since it works against nearly every possible play the deck has and it forces the use of Forbidden Lance a lot of the time. If they use Rabbit it can return one of their Dinos and disrupt the play. If they already have Laggia it can force negate. If they’ve already used Laggia’s material is easily removes it from the field. The decks only boss monsters are all XYZs monsters so it goes 1 for 1 with each of them. People are always really sad when with there last ditch effort they go into a Utopia and then in the End Phase you Compulsory it.

Round6. Me vs. Brandon(Pure Wind-Up Loop)
As a preface, this guys deck’s only purpose was to do the loop and to do it quick. He’s running T.G.s and Marauding Captain.
GAME1: He loops me first turn and leaves me with two garbo cards. I lose.
GAME2: I go first, set everything, he doesn’t stand a chance. I take no damage. I win.
GAME3: He loops me first turn and hits some good cards in my hand but also leaves some good cards. I start my turn with T-King, Miracle Fusion and Compulsory. He has Leviath Dragon and 2 set cards. I summon T-King he warnings. I miracle into The Shining (he discarded my Stratos) set compulsory he can’t come back. I win.

One thing that stood out to me this round is how bad the pure loops decks are. In order to ensure they loop, they sacrifice a lot of things that makes they deck lose staying power. If the deck in particular has any good 1 for 1 cards (like I was running a whole slew of) the duel can easily be turned in the non-Wind-Up players favor with a couple of cards. This is because the amount of investment it takes to pull off the loop generally leaves you with a weak field. The guy I was playing would usually end the loop with a Rank 3 and two back row, which is easily taken down with cards like Heavy Storm, Dark Hole, Mirror Force, Dimensional Prison, Compulsory Evacuation Device and even Smashing Ground. I had a more difficult time playing against the Wind-Up decks that didn’t loop and I’m confident that they are a far better deck when run that way.

Round7. Me vs. Victor(Dino Rabbit Plants)
I see this guy at our Regionals every time, he’s really good and usually gets top 8. He’s running some weird brew of Dino Rabbit and Plants with Ultimate Offering. He ends up going undefeated.
GAME1: I pretty much just smash him to pieces. He opens “the nuts” Rabbit, Lance, Tour Guides and Avarice, but it’s not enough.
After game one he asks to see my deck, and he says he thinks some of sleeves are bigger, which ends up being true, I accidentally had some of the old Ultra Pro sleeves in my deck. I don’t mind the infraction as much as the way it made me look like a cheater. They also notice I forgot to put back some cards from my side. I tell the judges to give me match loss, but they give some weird ruling that everyone around me disagrees with. They tell me to switch the sleeves on the cards that are wrong and that my win game 1 is now a loss.
GAME2: Because I feel I deserve the loss I pretty much give the game to him. I asked him if he wanted me to forfeit earlier but he said he didn’t want to look like the kind of person who’d ask for that, so we play it out and he wins.
(6-1)

In between rounds I was listening to a Six Sam player (he usually is playing Six Sams at our Regionals and I respect him for being very good with the deck, he usually tops)talking about where Six Samurai’s where in the current meta and he explained some very good concepts. One of the best cards for the deck right now was Legendary Six Samurai – Enishi, of which he was running 2. The concept of the card is very simple to my idea with Compulsory. Enishi can remove from play 2 Six Sams in the grave to return 1 monster on the field to hand during either players turn. He was combo-ing this seamlessly with Kageki and Asceticism, since both Kageki and Enishi have 1700 attack they work together nicely. An ideal play would be summon Kageki, Special Kagemusha. Asceticism on Kageki to bring out Enishi, then Synchro for ShiEn. Now you have a ShiEn on board as well as 2 Sams in the graveyard for Enishi. He was also using Kageki’s to summon themselves to backwards toolbox the removed from play Six Samurai’s with Leviair to further increase combo capacity. Overall I was very impressed with his ideas and I would like to see other players practice them to see how they do.

Round8. Me vs. Rob(Empty Jar)
I actually drove to the event with Rob so I knew what he was running and I was a little wary, I mean Empty Jar, no one wants to play that. But, before we even start we get the random deck check. 15 minutes later the judges come back and says because I didn’t change to a whole different set of sleeves on the last infraction I get a match loss. I also received another minor infraction because the translucent side of one of my sleeves was coming off just a bit in the corner and it was classified as marking my cards. Tough cookies I guess…
(6-2)

Round9. Me vs. Freddy(Wind-Up)
I bought a new set of sleeves, I really hate when new sleeves slide all over the place, but that’s besides the point. They’re a very nice light blue color, because that’s the only sleeves they had left. This duel was really weird; the build my opponent was running kept escaping me. From the two duels I’m pretty sure he wasn’t running Factory, Kitten or Soldier but his deck was still moving forward at an incredible pace. He had a ton of back row support.
GAME1: My hand has almost no defense and I read that he doesn’t have much either. I end up pushing really hard to try to pull it out early, but I can’t make it. I poorly mis-judge a situation and preemptively compulsory a Magician and I get OTK’d. I lose.
GAME2: I’m so tired I play E-Call while I have a T-King on board, I decide to just send it to the grave and he agrees. It ends with us both top decking with nothing on board initially (because I Dark Hole when neither of us has back row) for three turns until he’s the first to draw a monster and we both have sub 500 life points. That E-Call sure would’ve helped ;P. I lose.
(6-3)

And that was that. As I said, I ended 25th. My friend Rob (who was the one running Empty Jar) went 7-2 so that was cool as well.

Couple random things I learned in the Wind-Up match: Mirror Force is a really good card against Wind-Ups. Keep it in your hand until they summon a bunch of Zenmaity, which they almost inevitably will, then set it and they’ll in all likely hood attack right into it if played in such a way. Similarly, Dimensional Prison works almost as well. This is due to it being almost impossible to stop Wind-Up players from making some sort of play. The first thing you need to get through you head against a Wind-Up deck is that you’re not going to stop them from making plays; so that means you’re going to need to stop them from making only the threatening plays, which are far less prevalent. The only really threatening plays in the deck involve Rank 5 monsters which in most cases take the deck 2 turns of setup but in general win the game for them. A good Wind-Up player is likely going to try to play the “protect the Zenmaity” game since if he remains on the field extra turns the amount of plays and play versatility increases immensely. One of the best ways to counter this is with Cyber Dragons in the side deck. Since all the Wind-Up XYZ monsters are machines it’s easy to absorb them for Chimeratech Fortress Dragon.

So, last lessons learned: Anyone who wants to go to a Yugioh event, it would be a good idea to have new sleeves for the event or sleeves that where very recently bought.  Another player got called for marking cards earlier because he had a small crease on the back of one of his cards, so look out for any minor sleeve “malfunctions”. Try to keep some spare sleeves with you as well, to switch out.

Hope you enjoyed my Regionals recap. I’ll end with my decklist and a couple of my thoughts on it afterwards.

Monsters (7):
Elemental Hero Stratos (1)
Elemental Hero Neos Alius (3)
Elemental Hero Bubbleman (2)
Photon Thrasher (1)

Spells (19):
E – Emergency Call (3)
Reinforcements of the Army (1)
Miracle Fusion (3)
Gemini Spark (2)
Mystical Space Typhoon (3)
Pot of Duality (2)
Forbidden Chalice (1)
Dark Hole (1)
Monster Reborn (1)
Heavy Storm (1)
Book of Moon (1)

Traps (14):
Hero Blast (1)
Bottomless Trap Hole (2)
Dimensional Prison (2)
Compulsory Evacuation Device (2)
Solemn Warning (2)
Solemn Judgment (1)
Torrential Tribute (1)
Mirror Force (1)
Skill Drain (1)
Starlight Road (1)

Extra (15):
Ally of Justice Catastor (1)
Stardust Dragon (2)
Blade Armor Ninja (2)
Number 39: Utopia (1)
Twin Photon Lizard (1)
Dragon Knight Draco-Equiste (1)
Elemental Hero Gaia (1)
Elemental HERO Nova Master (1)
Elemental HERO Great Tornado (1)
Elemental HERO Absolute Zero (2)
Elemental HERO The Shining (2)

Side (15):
Thunder King Rai-Oh (2)
D.D. Warrior Lady (2)
Super Polymerization (2)
Forbidden Chalice (1)
Rivalry of Warlords (1)
Black Horn of Heaven (1)
Dust Tornado (1)
Chain Disappearance (2)
Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror (3)

Just a few things, first, I should’ve mained the T-Kings, I sided them in every game. I’d probably take out the Thrasher and 1 E-Call for them. Chalice was because I didn’t have Fiendish Chain, I have 1 now so I’ll probably switch the one in the main for Chain. Dust Tornado was because I couldn’t find a 2nd Rivalry. Black Horn of Heaven and Bottomless sucked pretty much all day. I’ll probably be taking them out for Smashing Ground. The 3rd Shadow Mirror was a little unnecessary since I was maining one Skill Drain, I will probably take one out to free up some space for 2 Cyber Dragons and a Chimeratech which will probably replace the Photon Lizard. (he was just kind of there for fun) Thrasher didn’t really pull his weight in the deck, I think he we be better replaced by Smashing Grounds for killing T-Kings or other spot removal like D-Prison.

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