It's been a while

What's up guys, its been a while since i made my last post. Yugioh blogging has been dead for quite a while. I've decided to come back to posting a little bit for the fun of it. It will serve like a personal diary, to record what i've come across/ seen/ think of cards/ comboes/ decks/ formats etc.

So, I think i should let you all know what's been up for the last few months in my yugioh life.

First of all, I haven't been playing much Yugioh, besides attending a regionals and nationals, which i will go into detail later in the post. I have played 1 local for the fun of it just so that me and my friends could go to pool after.

So, here goes:

Regional:

I played dragon ruler at this regional. It was just a few days after Alex Juneja nearly topped some american regional with dragon ruler. The list was really hyped, and I was fortunate to be in contact with Chris Welch and Josh Graham as they built the deck. Similar to a list i was tested at the beginning of the format (i ran silver's cry back then in mine), I thought it was interesting to bring it to a regional and see how I could pilot the deck. I came 5-2, losing 1 game to hieretics, which OTK-ed me in game 1, and in game 3 i bricked with 2 blue eyes in hand. This was before Dragons of Legends, so the deck wasn't as good (Its still horrible now), and losing the second match to bujin where i just bricked and game 3 my opponent topdecked Honest for the win. I came 9th, narrowly missing out on the top, as my tiebreaks were pretty good (I beat 1 or 2 people in the top 8, and my other loss was also in the top 8)

Nationals:

Fast forward to nationals, as i have been testing the deck for ages. I was back and forth on alot of cards, especially with the bandit vs trooper issue. Chris convinced me to play Trooper, which sounded great as 2 nights before, I played Trooper vs the mirror and completely savaged my opponents during playtesting. I was completely sold on troopers, and since it was just a week after Hoban won an ARG with dragons, I was pretty sure my nationals meta would be full dragons as the deck wasnt expensive and relatively easy to pick up.

The night before in Brisbane, I playtested, and was extremely satisfied with my list, except i wanted to find 2 metaions to sidedeck, which i eventually found the next morning.

So, here's a short recap of my games:

R 1) Firefist- win. It was a fast win. i saw dragon shrine game 1 and had a playable hand, and game 2 i sided in hands and skill drain to win.

R 2) Zombie Soul charge.dek- He summoned dark grepher and sent mezuki and I was so glad and was like yes a bye, I sent trooper into it, and set a wing blast. In my turn he completely savaged me as he wombo-combo zombie master and friends and made a field of Infernity doom dragon, Beelze and something else, and I used PWWB on the beelze as he was setting his backrow to prevent doom from negating. I was sure I would survive and be able to mount a comeback next turn but he dropped Dark Arm and crushed me.

Game 2 I managed to win, but it took me a long time as dragons were grindy. I managed to attack for game as time was called. It was unfortunate but i was 1-0-1 at this point.

Reminescing here, I made a mistake at one point. I let him take back a play in G1 which might have caused him to win. However, he was the nicest guy I have ever met in a YGO tournament, and we had a very very good chat, and I thought he was a nigga (i've a soft spot for niggas they dope as hell and really cool people to talk to, although Bodan told me he was actually maori after LOL). The whole day, if we met, and even on the next day, he would greet me and chat, and was just a nice person all around. I felt bad, and let him take back the play.

R 3) Mermaids- I drew playable but abit slow, but he completely otk me next turn with tidal, megalo and lots of other shit. I win the next game, and in game 3 i bricked so hard I could build a house. So, I took my first loss for the day, and was 1-1-1

R4) Geargia- My opponent was some weird ginger kid who was horrible at the game. G1 he comboed and my only trap i drew to stop him he had wiretap for it. I lost in 2 turns as my hand was slow and he had geargiagear, armour, wiretap, and accel in hand. Nice hand.

Game 2 he started his plays and I had PWWB to deal with his GGX but i wasnt sure if I should PWWB it as he had a lvl 3 in grave (the one that specials another lvl 4 by tributing itself). I scanned the guy overall and decided he probably didnt know GGX had another eff to revive and just went for it. Lo, and behold, he didnt know ! I drew my combo pieces eventually and it was a long hard grind and I managed to win. However, at one point he read GGX and asked if he could special summon off it (I destroyed it in battle but had proceeded to my MP2). I said hell no LOL you passed priority long ago. As I was attacking for game, the game went to a draw as time was called. We wanted to play game 3 in time with 5 rounds but just my luck, as a judge walked by behind us, looked at the game and (with people watching it), we could not lie and just signed the slip.  I was 1-2-1 and had almost given up hope at this point.

R5- Constella - I savaged him game 1, and game 2 I savaged him too. He had soul charge and electric virus my star eater (???) and swung for game. I reminded him about soul charge and he scooped. 2-2-1

R6- Mermaids- I win pretty fast as I saw dragon shrine etc. 3-2-1

R7- Hands deck- It was interesting vs-ing a hands deck before HAT became popular. I win g1 with ease with stardust, and game 2 i sided in my hands and destroyed him in the mirror LOL. 4-2-1

R8- At this point I had climbed back up pretty high, and if i won the last round I had a chance of topping (we found out later that this was not true , as my opponent ended up only in 22nd place). I was seated next to Jono Ritzau and we chatted and I watched him get savaged in the Infenrity mirror while he kept showing me his hands. I was vsing mermail, and my opponent was a bit of a douche, and it was funny how he kept trying to talk to Jono but kept getting ignored (SMH fanboy). Game 1 he combo-ed off and had the warning for my play (I opened really bad and could not get anything going till about turn 3).

Here's the interesting part as Game 2 approached and I get random deckchecked. They came back telling me I had a game loss because I used the duelist kingdom cards as a token. This was literally just unreal as you guys should know that the duelist kingdom cards are the tokens included in the Japanese pegasus starter deck. I ended up in a long debate at the event as several people watched. I told them ,:

1)  on a balance of probabalities, it was reasonable to infer that my intention was to clearly use those cards as tokens, and they could not be included in my deck so obviously I had 0 ways to cheat with it.

2) People like Hoban and americans use it all the time, and it was fine.

3) I had asked a judge before the event and showed him my token list (included my Malaysian IC and driving license and several other membership cards) and he said it was fine.

It was beyond absurd and I was so pissed off that I had gotten the game loss. Their reason was that below, on the left hand corner, there was a japanese clause stating this card cant be used in a duel. Well, no shit sherlock, its a fucking token not a card to be played in the maindeck. I smoked up, and went to dinner with friends.

So i ended up 4-2-2 losing 1 to judge OTK, 1 to bricking, and drew 2 games. It was clear my deck choice for the event was wrong as dragons clearly sucked and I had completely forgot about the time factor. I also made a wrong meta call thinking everyone would be running dragons and cut bandit and skill drain out of my maindeck.

I will not be attending Oceanics this year because I am not spending 900$ on return flights to play in a terrible format where lightlord is probably the best deck. Quoting one of my friends, this format is just picking the deck you hate the least. Most of my Aussie friends (progressive team) arent even using the same decks, mainly because there is no clear cut best deck and everyone is just using what they're most comfy with.
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So, overall, i decided to take a break from Yugioh TCG as it was pretty bad experience during nationals. The metagame right now is mostly sylvians/ lightlord and geargia, and basically anything has a chance to win. The game is very very linear, as the comboes and plays are mostly fairly obvious and there are no lines of thoughts/ and is impossible to plan multiple turns ahead.

Recently I had started to look at the OCG again when Heroes got released, and started testing and playing. I tested a little bit of tella knight and shadolls but stopped, and decided to go full throttle after heroes became available on DNET. The last time I played a proper game of OCG was with dragon rulers around. Naturally, after a few games with some friends, I started getting savaged badly because my thinking had become too linear playing TCG. I soon got used to it again, and am now getting better and more used to OCG. I am learning to play Hero like i used to, and playing control / tempo based decks again, and not just dragon ruler/ combo decks.

The OCG overall is much better. There are times you still get outdrawn but its a card game for God's sake these things happen, but you are in a much better position to control your fate. There are times where your opponent can still outdraw you but lose if they waste their cards and play unoptimally, while you draw your combo cards later in the game.

The game over in Asia is much more complicated and more skilled due to the abundance of options. Hoban once mentioned that a game with a high power creep isnt neccessarily bad, as dragon format was skillful because of the availability of resources and how you had to manage them in different ways.

I will have a post up in the next few days about Heroes in the OCG in general, and how competitive it can be and whether it can survive in the metagame.

Also if you have not known, I have set up a multi FB account for YGO (ting tong which you can freely add as I shall accept every YGO player friend request) . Take heed that its an account for me to go spazzy and at this point, its probably the 2nd most annoying FB acc, after Cordero Vexacus Spencer.