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Mofox’s journey from Newbie to the UK National Tournament.
First Sneak Peak Event
March 9, 2007

A long time ago (well Saturday just gone) in a galaxy far away (Fanboy3, Manchester, UK)…

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It was 6:30am on Saturday morning, I dragged my lazy a**e out of bed.  I didn’t go to bed till 1:00am the night before because I was building my deck.  I’d finally decided upon an aggro equip deck with lots of tech.  I can’t remember the whole list but it had your standard “staple” cards plus some facedown tech (Light of Intervention, MSLV2, NOC) to combat Apprentice Magician engines; lots of s/t destruction (Dust Tornado, MST, Heavy, Mobius) and some tech (Soul Release) to sort out those graveyard revival (V.Lords, Phoenix, Treeborn, Premature Burial, Call of the Haunted).  Soul release was also useful as I was running Gilasaurus so I could remove his monsters and special summon Gil without fear of a monarch etc reappearing to the field.  The deck then had some high attack vanilla monsters Sabersaurus, Summoned Skull.  Some aggro monsters Cyber Dragons, Hydrogeddons, Gilasaurus’.  Plus some equip cards, Axe of Despair, Rush Recklessly.  Anyway it doesn’t matter, as you’ll find out because I didn’t end up using it all day.

I dropped the kids off at the various babysitters being used that day and set off into Manchester with the wife.  She was going to be shopping all day so that left the whole day to myself and the Sneak Peak.

We arrived and I proceeded to locate the store.  When I found it, it looked exactly how I thought it would do.  By now the nerves were intense, the adrenaline was pumping and I was seriously wondering if I would be out of place here (I kept wondering if I was too old).

Regardless, the amount of time I had been waiting I was gonna go in.  I decided I will stay till the end and if it wasn’t for me then I just wouldn’t come back.  I arrived and the store was ceiling to floor in all kinds of TCG stuff, board games, Warhammer.  There were people duelling all over, playing Magic, Pokemon etc.  At the back of the store was a little entranceway where there were lots of people gathered.  There was a lot of noise, laughing, people moving in and out of the back of the store.  I went to the counter and spoke to a typical Saturday student shop assistant.

Mofox: “Do you have a sneak peak here today?”

Shop Assistant: “Yeah”

Mofox: “Erm I would like to take part, what do I have to do?”

Shop Assistant: “Giving me £15 would be a good start”

Exchange of cash

Mofox: “is that it?”

Shop Assistant: “Do you have a UDE number?”

Mofox: “Erm no sorry, does that matter?”

Shop Assistant: “Well you need one to take part, here fill this in”

Completion of UDE registration form

Mofox: “Finished”

Hands over complete form and receives official UDE number…looks at it with pride.

I was now a fully-fledged member of the competing YGO community!!!

Shop Assistant: “Just go through to the back it starts at 11”

Mofox: “Thanx”

I walked through to the back clutching me UDE number, my presence screaming NOOB to all those who watched me walking in.  I took an empty seat away from most of the commotion and saw a recognisable face immediately.  Sitting about 10ft away from me was the 2006 UK National Champion Wayne Pinkney.  I wasn’t expecting him to be here but it was great to see him, I had loads of questions to ask him and wanted to walk right up to him and say “hey you’re the national champ, right?” but I thought that my entrance was enough to confirm my newbie status no need to further that reputation with an embarrassing conversation with someone I’d never met before.

I sat for a while absorbing everything in.  The room was hardly glamorous.  There weren’t enough tables so they had put pieces of board between the tables to create more surfaces to play on.  Each table had a number on it and I noted that Wayne had perched himself on Table 1!!  I had been sat down for no longer than a couple of minutes when a young teenager approached me deck box in hand, “wanna duel?” He caught me really off guard so I refused claiming I had no deck with me.  ‘You p***y’ I thought to myself, I bottled it on my first offer to duel.  I dunno whether it was the fact the kid had a proper deck box, sleeves and all the trimmings and my deck had no sleeves and was stored in some random non-Yu-Gi-Oh tin (that I found on my computer desk the night before) that put me off.  Or whether I was just too nervous to want to do anything except watch everyone else.

I noted that most there were aged around 15-20.  One guy looked a similar age to me and there were a handful of really young kids (12 and below).  All in all I think there were about 50+ people there.

The Shop Assistant from before entered the room with a carrier bag full of what turned out to be hundreds of STON booster packs.  He whistled loudly to quiet the room, kicked out anyone not taking part in the sneak peak.  He introduced the judging team, made up of about 4 people including Simon Ho, another UK celebrity YGO name (ranked 1^st in the UK I believe).  Then commenced the dishing out of the packs.  I received my 5 and waited until instructed to open them.  Some were already opening theirs and I noted that some had more packs than me, so I assumed they had purchased some before starting the tournament.  When instructed I opened my packs.  I had read a little about the set before the sneak peak so I knew I wanted to pull a Gene-Warped Warwolf, or a Great Shogun Shien if I was to do well in the tournament.  But low and behold I pulled neither.  I did however pull an Ultimate Skyscraper 2, which looked cool in all its ultimate blingness.  I also got a Super Rare Neos Air Hummingbird.  The rest of my cards were crap, I got a load of 6 Samurai, as did everyone else, load of these 2 tribute monsters that had only 2000 ATK and if destroyed in battle would destroy any monster other than the same attribute as itself.  For example if it was a water monster, then if destroyed in battle then it would destroy all monsters on opponents field except any water monsters.  I got some rituals and 2 Rare Spiral Serpents - Vanilla, 2 trib 2900ATK monsters. 

I flicked through the cards listening to others talking about what they pulled.  Next thing someone shouts, “I got a Grandmaster Secret Rare!!! Yeah!!!”  I didn’t think the UK was going to get this sneak peak promo, but it appears it was included as a secret rare card.  A few other secret rares popped up as well and the judge announced that they were legal for this tournament.

As I was listening, a kid tapped me on the shoulder who was fingering through his cards.  “Did you get any Neos cards? I’m making a Neos deck and want them?” I showed him my super rare Hummingbird and he went wild pulling out his card folder and asking me if I wanted anything in it.  His collection was worse than mine so I felt a bit sorry for him.  I said I would keep it for now but promised he had first option on a trade in a bit.  He then spread out his cards and said “What about anything here?”  My deck was pretty crap so I had a look and noticed 2 normal rare cards: Sage of Stillness and Sage of Silence.  Both has similar effects, if they destroy a monster as a result of battle then your opponent can’t activate either a spell or trap card during the next turn.  They seemed very playable so I swapped the Hummingbird with the kid and took his 2 cards and wished him luck in the tournament.  Needless to say he was very happy.

I went about building my deck.  I got rid of all the useless cards that couldn’t be used even if I wanted to and also the 2000ATK 2 trib monsters.  That left me with exactly 22 cards, 12 Monsters and 10 spell/traps.  I didn’t bother doing anything else and just sat and waited.  We were told to move onto the top 5 table sets and I picked the nearest seat and sat down.  Not realising they had posted up pairings and I was meant to be sat at table 11.  I sat in my seat a bit bemused as people around me shuffled around into their seats.  No one was sat opposite me and I noticed another lad without a partner, a judge asked me my name and when I told him, he informed that I should be sat over there opposite the lad with no opponent.  I stood up and moved while everyone stared at me waiting for the noob to find his seat.  I sat opposite my opponent and introduced myself.  He introduced himself as Stephen Hutchinson.  I was to find out that he was ranked 16^th in the UK.  Nice!!  The match commenced to which I was trounced 2-0.  A first turn hummingbird in the first match made for an unassailable total to claw back from and in the second duel a Gene-Warped Warwolf was impossible to pass.  Coolest thing was that neither Stephen nor I had a pen or paper so Simon Ho was doing our lifepoints for us!!!  The match was over very quickly so we spent some time chatting about YGO, the store, and his tournament experiences.  He told me I should come to the hobby leagues and get practising some more.

I found myself on the last table for the next round and got beat again after drawing hands full of spells and traps for both games.  At the end of the 2^nd round Wayne Pinkney came over to chat to someone and said hello to me.  He told me he had just lost his second match and was dropping to join the 2^nd pod that was starting at 1pm.  Plus he wasn’t going to have to pay to join the next one.  I asked if I could do the same to which he joked that being National Champion enabled him to get some special privileges and that I would still have to pay another £15.  Oh well I still had 3 more rounds to play.  We broke for lunch and I went and ate the biggest baguette ever!!  I returned back to the store a little early just to make sure I didn’t miss the start of the second half.  I noticed Simon Ho having a duel against someone else.  I decided to hover and watch for a little bit.  The play was moving too quickly for me to follow and they were instructing each other of moves by single card names.  For example, Simon would announce “Heavy” place it in his graveyard and the opponent would move all his set s/t into his graveyard.  The opponent would then in return announce, “Last Will, Exiled your FD, Don, attack, lose a card, end”.  It was very very quick.  I also noted how twitchy they both were.  Messing with their in hand cards, flicking them, shuffling them etc.  Not sure why they were doing it, nerves?  I dunno I mean Simon is an experienced player so why be nervous over what looked like a friendly duel.   I noticed it because they were both doing it.  Maybe it’s a technique I need to pick up…

The third round commenced and I had managed to move up 2 tables, however the pod numbers had diminished a lot.  The next kid I played had pulled a Frostosaurus a single tribute 2600ATK vanilla monster (Looks like Summoned Skull is now retired!!).  There was no way past the frosted one so I lost again.  My record now stood and 0-3 and I’d not won a single game.

The fourth round had me on the bottom table again, more duellists had dropped and there was now only 3 duellists with 0 wins and I was one of them.  The kid opposite me was another, either way one of us would walk away with a victory.  The kid was really cool, he had his paper and pen ready to do life, he looked a little nervous and during the duel needed some help with way the cards worked.  He was cool though.  I didn’t get his name but I should’ve because he was a good kid.  Anyway the duel commenced and I got myself into a great position, with 2 six Samurai on the field, one was the direct attacker and the other was the destroy fd spell and traps.  He couldn’t work his way out of the semi lock and when I used puppet plant to steal another of six Samurai (the attack twice one) and I dropped my own 1800 ATK Samurai it was game over.  I’d chalked up my first win.  I was excited but I didn’t show it, as I was feeling a bit sorry for the kid.  He’d got a terrible hand with some rituals he couldn’t summon and some of those bad 2 trib monsters I mentioned earlier.  The next game commenced and the kid was holding his own until I pulled off my best combo of the day.  I used the ritual summon to summon Cú Chulainn the Awakened, discarding Spiral Serpent, I then used Cú’s effect to remove Spiral Serpent and then attack for game.  My first match win!!!  I shook the kids hand and we stayed for a little bit chatting away.

Because of another commitment later that evening I had planned on leaving the event at 3pm.  It was now 2:40pm and the last round was due to start.  The postings went up, more had dropped and the kid I just beat got an auto win for not having an opponent.  I was pleased for him; he stuck it to the end despite having a 0-4 record and was rewarded with a win on his record. 

I found out that if I stayed and finished this duel I would get another STON booster for free, if I dropped I would get nothing.  I figured even if I played and lost then I would still get the booster, so it was worth staying.  I was on the bottom table again but I was too busy worrying about the time.  The kid I faced thumped me 2-0; I wasn’t really taking much notice during the duel to be fair.  Not to take anything away from my opponent, as it was very likely he would’ve beat me anyway.  I think at one point in the match he had 2 direct attack Samurai on the field and was hitting me for 2000 every turn… ouch!

When the duel finished it was 3:05pm and I needed to rush.  I went to the manager and explained that I couldn’t wait for the prize announcements and said I was probably bottom anyway.  He asked for my result and confirmed my bottom of the table position… yay!!  I suppose the only way to go from here is upwards!!  He gave me my extra booster and also for coming bottom he gave me what looked like a Hobby League promo Giant Rat, although to me it looks kinda fake.  It has a weird shiny covering over the card.  If someone could let me know if that is what it looks like then please do.  The card number was HL03-xxx.

I left the store taking a small glance behind me as I briskly walked away.  I’d had lots of fun and by the end of the event I had spoken to lots of people and experienced a lot.  Would I go back…

…Damn right I would!!!

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What a day!

Although I was extremely nervous at the start I managed to settle down and by the end of the event I felt great.  I’d managed to pass a lot of milestones:

• Got a UDE number

• Competed for the first time in a non-online duel

• Competed for the first time in a non-online tournament

• Won my first game in a non-online duel

• Won my first match in a non-online duel

• Made my first ever face-to-face trade (although I probably got ripped)

• Spoke to the 2006 National Champion (nice guy!)

• Spoke to the number 1 ranked duellist in the UK

• Had my first store experience

I would recommend anybody to go to one of these things.  It was nerve-wracking but it was worth it.  If there are any newbies wanting to go to one, PLEASE GO!  You won’t regret it one bit.

The sneak peak as a whole was brilliant, and the set also looks quite good.  The best card of the day for me was puppet plant.  Stealing them Six Samurai cards was game breaking at times, especially for setting up them 2 tribute monsters.  I think others would have picked Warwolf or Shien as the best cards, but I think puppet plant was the most dangerous.  I don’t think it will be used in regular play as it only allows you to steal warriors or spellcasters, but you never know, as it is a reasonably powerful card.

I’m going to be looking out for the next constructed tournament and then compete and see how I can do with a proper deck.  There are some tough competitors at this particular store but you can only become better by duelling the best.

I’ve rambled on now so I will let you go back to your evening.  If anybody has any questions whatsoever then just ask.  I probably have missed some things out from my article so if there is something you would like to know then please email me on the address below.

I’m looking forward to the next step hopefully some of you can come along with me.

My email address is Mofox_@hotmail.co.uk Click Here to email me for any help or advice or even your opinions on my articles.  I would love to hear your opinions and if you have any suggestions to improve them then let me know.  I will reply to all emails that are sent to me.  Remember newbies no question is a stupid question.

Until next time fellow duellists!