After playing dozens of duels against the best
online players (thank you Duelistgroundz), I now
have a solid handle on this format and what makes it
tick. Future articles will detail deck-building
decisions and my rationale for what governs the
format's proper card choices.
I want to spend some time discussing my experiences
at SJC San Francisco.
An Impressive Crowd Assembles Only to be Robbed
and Delayed
Yu-Gi-Oh! is clearly alive and ticking. 614 players
showed up for this event, far and away dwarfing any
attendance figures in any previous Northern
California event. Duelists in attendance included
Ryan Hayakawa and Hugo Adame from Odyssey, numerous
national champions including Austin Kulman, Chris
Bowling, Adam Corn, Alejandro Suarez, and Michel
Gruner (along with team Germany). SJC winners
included Cesar Gonzalez, Shane Scurry, Paul Levitin,
Steven Adair, John Umali, Jerry Wang, Andrew
Fredella, and others. Other big names, such as Kirk
and Lance Leonhardt, Mike Powers, Chris Moosman were
all there. Every big name duelist was there, other
than those from Team Canada.
Unfortunately, a few despicable low life thieves
saw dollar signs. Professional thieving teams,
assembled by unscrupulous booth vendors, were sent
to the event to dismantle the dreams of many a
young, naïve duelist. Two Gold Sarcophagus
SJC promotional cards were stolen, one from Chris
Bowling and another from Claudio Kirchmar. Numerous
players were apprehended by the police. One mother
put forth a heartfelt plea for the return of her
son's deck. Cell phones were stolen.
I found a disturbing lack of effort on the part of
the tournament organizers. Rather than focusing on
protecting the players from thievery, they seemed
more focused on contributing to the highway robbery
by charing ten dollars per flight of side events.
Eight players would pay ten dollars (making 80
dollars into the pool), for prizes of six packs for
first, four packs for second, and one pack for third
and fourth. Yes, that's eighty dollars for 12 packs
of the newest set. Yes, that is the most ridiculous
abuse of side event structure I have ever seen. Yes,
every other reputable tournament organizer runs
win-a-box events for a ten dollar entry fee (24
packs minimum). Proving such reckless greed never
prevails, the 600 players at the event probably
assembled for 7 or 8 flights of side events (far
less that then usual number).
If my math is correct, 600 entrants at 20 dollars a
pop equals 12,000 dollars in revenue. The regional
probably had 200 players minimum, at 15 dollars a
pop, so even deducting the cost of renting the
convention center (which wasn't downtown as it had
been prior, but was in South San Francisco), one
would hope that a small fraction of the thousands of
dollars in profit would be devoted to hiring more
staff and security to manage the thievery.
John Williams and the excellent judge staff made an
incredible effort to run things smoothly.
Unfortunately, only one copy of each pairing
for 600 players was posted on each wall, leading to
incredibly traffic jams that further emboldened the
thieves. Rounds would frequently take an hour and
thirty minutes to manage, and the tournament ended
at 11 p.m (this is a ridiculous close time,
especially for those on East Coast or Midwest sleep
patterns). Contrast this with the event organizer
for SJC Minneapolois, who ran the pairings on a
giant projector screen, had win a box and win a pack
flights for ten dollars and five dollars
respectively, and ended the tournament at 7 p.m.
In terms of management, this was the worst SJC event
I have ever seen. Literally dozens of decks were
stolen with no support whatsoever provided. It's
almost like the venue was designed to fleece the
most amount of players possible. Needless to say, it
was incredibly disappointing. Upper Deck needs to
realize that each deck stolen is a customer who is
likely gone forever. By exerting more pressure on
tournament organizers to provide security and
staffing to combat this sort of thievery (which is
perpetrated by a consistent group of criminals),
this type of heart-breaking catastrophe could be
averted. Yes, literally forty decks and binders (or
more) were stolen this weekend.
The Actual Event Itself
I exhaustively playtested the build you can see on
Metagame.com. Unlike in SJC Detroit and events
prior, I actually had a solid grasp on the format
and went through every round without making a
misplay (other than my gruesome one against Chris
Moosman in the feature match). I felt Royal
Oppression in the main deck was far too good in the
mirror match, and I am fairly happy with the build.
No real need to explain the card choices, I hope.
The deck's choices were built around my concepts of
how to take best advantage of this format (I will
get into this in a future article; it should be
instructive and informative to most players). I
would like to discuss my match with Chris, my top
sixteen loss to Dustin Johnson, and general analysis
of the Metagame.
The match with Chris was relatively well played,
despite the one misplay he committed and the
gruesome error committed by me in game two. Game one
was relatively standard. He attacked my face-down
Sangan without pushing breakthrough damage (this is
not something I would recommend, but we'll get into
that later). The resulting Destiny Draw led to a
loss.
In game two, Chris revealed his Mirror Force from
Crush Card Virus but I did not catch it. He showed
it briefly from Allure, mentioned it, and I simply
caught a flash of a holofoil Trap that I misread as
Torrential Tribute. I had many of the pieces for an
eventual game win in my hand, including a set Divine
Wrath and Brain Control in hand (the board was my
Stratos and Colossal Fighter versus his Colossal
Fighter and Stardust Dragon with two set traps).
Chris later told me he had activated Mind Crush with
zero cards in hand as well, something neither of us
caught. I attacked into the Mirror Force, but
managed to pull out game three due to Chris
forgetting his Trunade.
I feel a lot of the people who are posting on the
message board are being foolish in their assessment
of both our match and of Metagame's coverage of the
event. I'm not quite certain when the populace
transformed from humble players eager to learn and
improve to clueless fellows who reek of ignorance,
but I found many comments on message forums quite
hilarious and ironic. Many armchair quarterbacks
have never really experienced the pressure of
sitting next to Jason Meyer, knowing every move is
being published to the crowd.
I saw all sorts of threads. One critiqued a day two
competitor's build of Gladiator Beasts. Quite a few
posts made ridiculously unfair demands of Metagame
staff in terms of updating faster or including more
detail in feature matches (which are written on the
spot). Jason simply does not have the luxury of
saying “HEY GUYZ, CAN YOU SLOW DOWN SO I CAN WRITE
DOWN WHAT HAPPENED BETTER!”
Players fault Chris for playing MST from hand
against a deck that he saw running multiple Solemn's
and Royal Oppressions? What's he going to hit?
Reckless Greed or Threatening Roar? Then another
forum hero ignorantly labeled a sensible play as a
“misplay”. I was holding Brain Control, Emergency
Teleport, and Malicious with no way of getting rid
of Chris's Thunder King (he had one backfield set).
I Brained, attacked for 1900, then chose to use main
phase 2 to teleport and synchro for Goyo Guardian.
Quite a few posters consider this a misplay, since I
can teleport in battle phase to attack with Krebons,
then sync in main phase two. Unfortunately, I don't
think you really understand that while Chris would
not Mirror Force or Dimensional Prison his own
Thunder King, he would leap at the chance to do so
if the Krebons also reveals itself. Do I want Goyo
on the field, or do I want Thunder King and Krebons
in the graveyard? Think about it.
The arrogance of people both writing articles and
making posts is actually starting to disgust me.
Every community is filled with critics who have
never accomplished anything of note in the game, yet
have the gall to deride the entire field of day two
competitors, harshly critique certain builds such as
the Gladiator Beast deck or the Oppression Monarch
deck without even having a proper basis of
understanding their card choices, and call out
misplays without even knowing what the correct play
is.
I was actually rather impressed with a few decks in
the top sixteen of this event. While almost every
deck had at least a few card choices I did not agree
with, I definitely have noticed that the quality of
the average SJC competitor has markedly improved.
The zombie build pioneered by John Burkhead (which
he amazingly created in his head without even
testing it at a regionals or locals) will likely set
the standard for the best, most explosive form of
Tele-dad. Chris Bowling and the winner, Alejandro
Suarez, used very unorthodox cards to achieve
success. The Gladiator Beast deck showed Test Tiger
is still viable, while Jonny Nagel sided into full
Gravekeepers for the mirror match. There are many
deck-building gems to be gleaned from the lists; I
scoured the lists from SJC Detroit, specifically
team Canada and Steven Harris's to better understand
the format. I would recommend to do the same for
this latest jump.
My Top Sixteen Match
Unfortunately, my day two came to an abrupt end
during my top sixteen match. I played my good friend
Dustin, who I played with from the very beginning in
Southern California, from years ago. I took game one
with relative ease.
Game 2, he opened with Stratos for Diamond Dude and
Destiny Draw for Malicious. After a few early
exchanges, I summoned Gorz with an 1800 token. My
hand was Teleport, Teleport, Krebons, Krebons, and
Stratos. Yes, a delicious hand. He had three backrow
set, Stratos and Diamond Dude on the field (which
revealed CCV for its effect). I read two of them as
Mirror Force and Solemn Judgement based on his
mannerisms.
I drew, summoned Stratos for Malicious, attacked
into Diamond Dude (with Gorz and the 1800 token in
defense). This gave Dustin three darks. I set a
Teleport, which was destroyed by an end phase MST.
He drew to two cards in hand with two backrow set.
He summoned Breaker, swung over my Stratos for 100,
and set a third backfield. Then, he inexplicably
summoned his second Malicious in defense position
trying to bluff a Crush Card Virus (which he
revealed last turn from Diamond Dude). He shuffled
his deck and I made the fateful cut.
I drew a Plaguespreader. My hand was Plague,
Teleport, Krebons, Krebons, Malicious (a hideous,
disgusting hand). I summoned Krebons and swung into
Malicious, trying to stop free synchros and trying
to bait Mirror Force. He let it go, topdecked Dark
Armed Dragon, and won.
After lots of shuffling, I opened game three with
Royal Oppression, Krebons, Plaguespreader Zombie,
Malicious, Breaker, and Dark Armed Dragon. I summon
Krebons and set Oppression.
He draws, summons Stratos for Malicious. He has six
cards in hand. He sets three backfield. I know I
have lost. I draw Sangan. I summon Breaker, he
immediately Wing Blasts discarding Malicious and has
two cards in hand. I am redrawing Breaker with a sad
face.
Dustin draws to three cards in hand. He plays Mind
Control on Krebons, syncs for Goyo, I Oppression,
and he Solemns. His other two cards are Monster
Reborn and Emergency Teleport for his Malicious. I
am redrawing Breaker (although I won't survive this
turn).
While I feel I had a legitimate shot at winning the
entire tournament, luck just wasn't with me on
Sunday. I look forward to returning to day two
again, and performing a bit better.
I will be posting my thoughts on this format in the
articles to come. Thanks for reading. E-mail me at
jaelove@gmail.com. |