Afterthought

Hi,

As promised I will talk about a couple of pointers that I learned from this years Nationals and Oceanics.

• Play testing is very important if you want to succeed. Obviously the luck factor comes into play during a tournament but knowing the meta and what cards to side in game 2 and 3 can sometimes give you an edge in a match-up. As I said previously, I should have made more effort play testing because I only found out during the tournament that Dragons pretty much swings the match-up against prophecy game 2 and 3 in their favour because of the cards they side in.

• In this format, going first matters a lot. In the 9 rounds I played over the weekend, I only won 1 die roll and in all my losses, I started second in every single time. Looking back, I reckon I would have won 3 of those games if I went first because of what I drew, but instead I had to start against Dracossack + double Super Rejuvenation, which makes it hard for me to established a board if they drew a hand trap

• Watch out for cheats and people stacking your deck. Apparently it happened quite a lot over the 3 days. I think Konami needs to do something about the way people shuffle their decks and how they cut your opponents deck

• Dragon is definitely the best deck this format. I always thought that Dragons and Prophecy are about even before the tournament, but after seeing and playing while taking into account the mechanics of the deck and post board. Dragons is by far a superior deck. Super Rejuvenation has to be banned, end of story.

• Evilswarm is not as bad as I thought they were, but you need to go first in order to set up your field. 2 out of 3 games I said I probably would have won was using Evilswarm. I could have turn 1 Ophion backed with Safe Zone against Dragons and turn 1 Ophion set Eradicator against Chain Beat. Props to Kenny and Tim for not giving up on the deck lol

• When the new cards came out, I thought the format is very skilful. I still think the same except its only for the Dragon Mirror. All other match-up is very reliant on who gets to go first

• With the amount of Douches in the game, I realised that the only reason I'm playing is because of the people I hang out with, so thumbs up again to Kenny, Sean, Jimmy, Yaowei, Moore, Xuan, Giang, Troy, Kate, Ting, Andy, Marcus, Short , Robin, Justin, Sharp and other people that I haven't mention from NSW that I talk to. That's not to say that I meet and caught up with a couple of cool people from interstate as well.

Thanks for reading. I'll try to creating something else before the end of the month


PS: Congrats to Marcus Wheeler for winning Nationals and Chris Mattiske (sorry if I spelt that wrong) for winning Oceanics. I didn't get to talk to you but I heard you're a really nice guy so good luck at worlds

Nationals + Oceanics

Hi Guys,

Sorry for the lack of update. I've just been very busy with work lately. But today I'll be talking about the weeks leading up to Nationals / Oceanics and my experiences that I got from the 2 events

To begin with, I have pretty much decided that I will play Prophecy about 2 weeks prior to the event because I know that I won't any time to playtest and I was pretty comfortable with the deck.

I was also confident in the mirror, Dragon match-ups and other random rouge decks including Evilswarm from my time playing at the regional. But now looking back at it. I probably should have made more effort to playtest because I would have probably ran Dragons instead.


Saturday

I pretty much scrubbed out of both events, I went 3-3 at Nationals and 1-2 at Oceanics. I ran a Cresentless build for nationals and my 3 loses were against 2 Dragons and 1 Mermail.

Apart for being a retard and trying to bottomless Dracossack when there are tokens on the field. I really couldn't do much both game 1 and 3 against a turn one Dracossack followed by a Super Rejuvenation or 2, which got them a couple of veilers

The game 1 I lost to Mermail was because of turn one Double Dragoon, Megalo, Teus followed by Moulinglacia and game 3 because I drew unplayable. The guy was pretty cool and said sorry to me afterwards so I was less annoyed.

So I pretty much dropped and was hating the game. I had a bit of a laugh when I found out Pend Pender did worst than me and we pretty much just chilled out with a couple of people at the bar downstairs,

When we got back to the event. Pretty much all my friends top 64 apart for a couple of us. I was really happy for my friend Christian who topped running Dragons after only 2 games of play testing via DN.

After the top 64 was announced we pretty much all went home. A lot of them were staying at Penrith and they walked to Outback Steakhouse, but a couple of us that drove went to get Kebabs and just enjoyed Dinner. This and the bar were probably the highlight of my day, I like to thank Kate, Troy, James, Pender and especially Tingy for such a fun time at these 2 places which made my day bearable.


Sunday

On Sunday, Christian and Tim picked me up in the morning which was really nice of them. We got to the event and within 5 minutes my "dongsaeng" Kenny sat next to me because he drew poor game 2 using Evilswarm against Dragons. We then found out that Christian won his game and got the Dracossack mat, which he kindly gave to me :) for letting him borrow the deck.

Sunday was pretty boring, all I did was go to Westfield for lunch with Christian and traded with people. Georgio Giana bought my Prophecy and some guy traded his Evilswarm and cash for my Mermails. Tim pretty much spent the whole day convincing me to play Yolo-Swarm for Oceanics, which is what I ended up doing. I was going to play Dragons but since Christian gave me the mat. I kinda felt obliged to lend him the cards again

I tried to convince Pend Pender to run Evilswarm with me but he pretty much told me to shut up.

By the end of the day, I was so sick of Yugioh, and after getting most of the evilswarm cards and the decklist. Tim and Christian wanted to go home so I tagged along with them. That night I was supposed make the deck but I didn't even want to look at my cards. I pretty much played PS3 until 2:00am before I went to bed.


Monday

I got a call from Christian that he was 15 minutes away from my home. To be honest I didn't even want to go, but because I was going to receive a free mat I pulled myself out and got dressed.

We got to the event and I pretty much had to get all the missing cards. I got cards of Chris Sharp and James Xuan so thanks both of you. (I ended up forgetting Diamond Dire Wolf in my Extra Deck but whatever) I was pretty much being an ass all morning but all my friends were laughing so I guess they find my mental state at that time amusing. After pairings went up I played against Counter Fairy. I loss game 1 and won game 2 and 3 via Eradicator. He made a misplay game 3 and he was kinda annoyed but he seems like a cool dude.

I played the same Dragon guy that I did a misplay against. He won the roll and made a Dracossack with a double or triple rejuvenation. I tried to bahamut which is my only play and he veilered so I lost that one. Game 2 I couldn't get Ophion on the board and he stormed, Dracossack and Rejuvenation me a couple of turns later. At this point in time I was about to drop by Yaowei Didn't allow me, he literally scribbled out my tick

My 3rd round I versed Chain Beat. He won game 1, I won game 2 via Eradicator again and game 3 he opened Fossil Dyna set 3 and I tried to attack and he played mirror force and I chained pandemic and he chained some card that negates quick-play spells and a turn later he summoned Thunder King and used Black Garden. so I ended up losing that one and dropping because I couldn't top.

I ended up spending the rest of my day with Kenny, Eddie (who also only turned up for the mat) and Tay. James Moore also joined us and we pretty much hung out and laughed when Tay yelled out "FISH!" (you have to be there to see it)

We grabbed some Pizzas and did a bit of trading. After a while top 16 started and I was to busy playing Pender and James Moore with old format decks. I found out Tim lost on the bubble to an Asian Samurai sack player which annoyed Tim so much that he stayed to watch him lose.

After the Asian kid loses, Tim and Christian wanted Charcoal Chicken so we went all the way near Ashfield where we had a garlic chicken that was better than El Jannah. I think it was called Anar. I then got dropped off at the station and took the best train service in the world home, Cityrail



Pros:

• A lot people I know top 64 Nationals
• Yaowei and Justin top 16 Oceanics
• Pender doing as bad as me at Nationals :)
• Kenny, Tim, Christian, Sean, Jimmy, Xuan, Moore, Troy, Kate, Ting, Yaowei, Giang, Eddie and Tay for being cool friends and making the event bearable for me

Cons:

• Scrubbing out in both Nationals and Oceanics
• Pender doing as bad as me at Nationals :(
• Douchebags and tools at the event
• Draws
• Dracossack + Super Rejuvenation
• Wasting my long weekend
• The format apart from Dragon mirror

Thanks for reading. I will talk what I learned from this tournament in my next article

Until then, take care