New Creeds
with Coin Flip

Shonen Jump Championship
April 2005

04.07.05   Since everyone else will do a report on the Shonen Jump Championship this past weekend, I suppose I will too.

I'm not going to bore you with how I did. I had two hours of sleep the night before, and the moment I knew that this was screwing me up was when I played a Last Turn-based deck in sixth round and activated one of my Book of Moons on his turn (I knew he had a Solemn down) and then, when he negated, I activated the other Book of Moon instead of waiting for my turn.

I went 3-3 and dropped. There are several reasons for this.

First off, Magician of Faith (and the other friendly low-ATK monsters like Serpent and Apprentice Magician). I VASTLY underestimated the power of getting back 1 Pot of Greed in this format. After playing against two people (sHecKii being one of them) who used Graceful, Delinquent, or Pot of Greed on me 5 or 6 times in total (both of them chucked Serpent multiple times too for Vortex or Graceful) this came to mind.

Second off, my aforementioned lack of sleep. Last week was my spring break. I stayed up two hours later than normal one night, two hours more than the last night the next, and so on until I was falling asleep at 4 and needed to wake up at six in the morning for the tourney. Lol, I'm boned.

Third off, horrible draws. I don't care what you say, I'm getting a tribute in my hand every turn while my opponent nabs Graceful and Pot and Delinquent. A Tribute… Or Soldier. Or two of the three conditional monsters I ran. I think I managed to use Snatch once, and Tributed it for something that was probably Enemy Controller – Smashing'ed anyway.

In that specific order, those are what I ended up losing to half the time (and the other half as well)

Wanghu's, although a novel concept, saw all of 1 annoyed Scapegoat that didn't just go up after a Smashing Ground or Torrential. I asked.

So yeah. I sucked the big one. Possibly while on my knees. And I know someone on the Pojo forums is going to quote that, or that some random person from a tournament I go to will quote me on it. And then
I'll bring out my superior record. Pwnt? Not really.

So now, an article on the stuff I saw at Shonen Jump that I should never ever see again for good, good reasons.

SJ issue of complaint #1: The time limit. Jaelove and Sand-Trap/Evan Vargas both got boned by it, and Jae ended up playing a cheater (who, thanks to me, had 0-1) and then losing the next round to an Enraged Battle Ox in deathmatch. Evan lost to a Ceasefire in deathmatch.
Even worse, really, since there's less to stop that. Both were running great decks, and Evan might have gone 9-0 with his deck – it really was that good.

Time limits do nothing for the players besides create a new decktype built on abusing the time limit. They exist. Few goats, Reflect Bounder, Reapers, some Messengers of Peace and a little bit of burn, taking 4-5 minutes per turn (one guy I played took two minutes to discard two cards for Graceful Charity with about 8 cards in his hand, one of which was Sinister. Utterly ridiculous) and the maximum amount of time allowed to respond to something or sidedeck. That decktype has been suggested before, and Lord knows someone's playing it. =\

They need to be abolished or lengthened. If players can't finish matches after 50 minutes, then either the players are very good or something fishy is happening (the aforementioned deck, stalling for time).

SJ issue of complaint #2: Cheating. Jae lost to one, apparently. I played this guy round one, and he was using Matazas and Ben Kei the Armed Samurai. I mean, he wasn't great as a player (you can attack 4 times with a 3800 monster and I have 3 ~1700's? The hell is wrong with you? Attack the damn D.D. Assailant, especially since you have Torrential set and just Trunaded the field. Chances of me Heavy Storming or Mysticaling are less than the chances of me Snatching or
Smashinging) so it would make sense. If you have the lack of common sense to cheat, go do something unpleasant (since Pojo would've edited out what I said originally). Don't take credit for what you didn't earn, ****heads.

SJ issue of complaint #3: Tiebreakers. I just don't get it. Evan plays the guy at table 2, wins, and drops to 9th? It makes no sense.
It boggles the mind. He was the only 8-1 who didn't make top 8.
Really, now, what is wrong with that? Tiebreakers need to be done better. They lack any sort of sense right now.

SJ issue of complant #4: Notes. I take notes on game matches so that, in case I want to write a detailed report later, I can. I got warned for taking notes second round against a member of the largest team there; Comic Odyssey. While I'm sure noone on that team cheats (although any other advantage they can get, they'd probably be smart enough to take), I've heard plenty of cases like this:

Player A is keeping track of life and is fair.
Moron B is an unscrupulous little bastard and cheats. He has a friend (whom we will call Moron C) who comes over and watches the match.
Then Moron B says that he has an outrageous amount more life (or something else like that) than he actually does, Player A disagrees, a judge is called over, and Moron C claims to have been watching and says that Player A is wrong. Player A (who we will now call Victim A) gets boned.

Sure, the reverse could be true and a player could cheat by taking notes, but there are two possible advantages to taking notes on a
match:

Knowing the opponent's deck, which won't help anyway past the second or third round of the match since just saying stuff to your friends will do the same thing as taking notes.

Cheating the opponent on LP, which is far harder to do than having a friend help.

Keeping track of a game makes sense. I don't want to criticize people who are doing a far better job than I am right now (probably because I'm too lazy to try and for no other reason, but regardless) but it does make more sense than giving a player a warning when his note-taking does not detriment the match in any way, and cheating is equally likely to occur either way.

Now, note-taking on what is in the player's hand is unscrupulous and illegal, but if you check the notes while the other player is writing them, you can catch this and call a judge over then. But really now… you make the regular people unhappy just to take a small and insignificant advantage away from a few bastards out there?

SJ issue of complaint #5: More stuff needed to be banned. See the last article I wrote on what I think about Graceful Charity and Delinquent Duo being unbanned. =\

Tips: Have a friend nearby if they finish their match. It helps, since they can catch the opponent if they cheat or catch either one of you if you do something wrong.
Pre-register. It was abnormally hot that day, and also abnormally cloudless, with 3.50 water bottles. People had to wait in line to pay to get in, and god, did I pity them.
Oh, and if you are a judge of any level and start doing sucktacular in the tourney, drop and judge a side event or the main event. You get a box for doing it. There is no reason not to, at that rate.

Ugh, I sucked at that event… The best thing I did there was find Evan Vargas' hat after he left. -.-

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Oh, and here's a little rant on originality: I always love seeing original or unique decks in the top 8 of these things. I've seen an EARTH-based deck, a Creator deck (with all of two cards in it that were Creator-oriented and 3 DARKs with Soldier.. Still don't know how he got away with it…) and now Evan Vargas' <I>Soul Control</I> AND Dawnyoshi's <I>Masks of Tsuku</I>.

Oh, I can't write enough on how much I like Dawnyoshi. Let me summarize the coolness of the man as such. Imagine seeing a tournament full of losers who have nothing better to do with their time but trade and wonder about their own cookie cutter deck and see how well it performs against other cookie cutter decks. Imagine seeing all of these losers, jackasses, cheaters and unoriginal morons who copy a deck exclusively because it works…

And then a beacon of light shines through the area. You see a man walking through the tournament who is absolutely a site to behold. As Mike Rosenberg/Dawn Yoshi walks through the area to the tune of Aerosmith's "Dude Looks Like a Lady", coming from a stereo system which is no doubt hidden inside his gorgeous flowing hair, his leather moccasins making soft patting noises on the hard floor that carry with them a deafening silence that is heard at the end of a god's speech.

As he plays, he makes every move carefully, capturing all of his opponents save for one in a lock with Tsukuyomi, Time Seal/Phoenix Wing Wind Blast/Solemn Judgment, and Mask of Darkness or just using Tsukuyomi with Magician of Faith to draw his deck in a turn. Him, and the man JAELOVE from this very site called an "Adonis", a perfect man with curly hair that could not be tamed by Siegfried and Roy (when they aren't being mauled like dumbasses) named Evan Vargas, owning opponents with a card forgotten since Magic Ruler called Soul Exchange and a Monarch that noone likes named Thestalos.

Okay, maybe I'm polishing their knobs a bit much, but they deserve it.
Running the incredibly unique decks they did AND top 8'ing in a 450 player SJC? w0w. gg.

So even if you don't particularly like them, do give them a hand.
Bringing originality, creativity, or a unique voice into the game deserves nothing less.


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Pie and cake.