Well, I went to the Greensboro Regionals, Dec. 11th

J

Jason_C

Banned
...and had a blast. Who else was there?

For those of you who have not been informed of this event </poking fun at Digital Jedi> it was at the Holiday Inn Airport on Burnt Poplar Road in Greensboro, NC last Sunday. There were approximately 200 players with some VERY interesting decks.

Before going further into deck types, I'd like to point out that everyone who thought Don Zaloog was gonna leave play due to the Dark World monsters, you are WRONG! :p 3 out of the 7 matches I played involved my opponent slapping me with at least one, usually two Don Zaloogs.

And speaking of Dark World, that isn't nearly as popular as one might think. Nobody that I dueled in tournament or casual play used Dark World. In fact, I spent quite a lot of time roaming from table to table looking at other people's decks, and the whole time I saw only one Dark World deck in play.

So what WAS the dominant deck? Cookie-cutter Cyber Dragon aggro with a hybrid of warrior chaos and control. This seemed to be what almost everyone was playing. Oddly, duels were rarely short, despite the aggressive nature of the decks. Lifepoint flow was very strange in all of my duels. Generally, my opponent and I would come out swinging hard at the beginning, overextending our resources and dealing upwards of 5,000 damage within the first 5 turns on each side. But after that, the topdecking began. Field presence became crucial. It was my Jinzo, Ha Des, or Necrofear against their Mobius, Airknight, or Chaos Sorcerer.

Individual cards made a huge difference in this tournament. When the war of topdecking field presence began, Bottomless Trap Hole and Sakuretsu Armor reigned supreme. I'm thinking most of the people I dueled had two bottomless and three sakuretsu. This was torture to my Necrofears.

Spirit Reaper saw LOTS of play. I wasn't too bothered by the stall, but the discard effect was annoying. People would SS Cyber Dragon and then NS Spirit Reaper, first taking out my Slate Warrior and then draining my hand. This sent me topdecking before them, which is not a good thing. In 5 out of the 7 matches I played, I dropped Winged Minion for my side-decked Possessed Dark Soul.

Nanobreaker and Drillroid never left the sidedeck, oddly enough.

Mobius was killer. EVERYONE used it. It put me in a topdecking bind so fast I just cringed whenever it came out. And it ALWAYS came out, becuase I lack the sakurestus and bottomlesses necessary to limit my opponent's field presence.

In addition to this cookie cutter, I also played a strange, but very effective hybrid of rabbit burn, clown control, and chaos control. Wierd...

-pssvr
 
I was there, I figured you'd see me and walk up to me, I wasn't hard to find (since I paced the floor a lot looking for people I knew). I ended up making the finals in the sealed PCQ and we decided to split. I'm such a better sealed player now then constructed, I've gotta find something that everyone isn't running but can still beat the other decks out there... I've got like 5 or 6 different top tier decks to choose from... but I want to make a 7th top tier deck, lol.

Anyways, you probably saw me, didn't know it was me, which is cool. I was wearing my letter jacket like I said I would and even wore my Atlanta Braves hate. I'm sure I was hard to miss. Let me know if you saw me at all.

As far as who I saw at the event from here. blade146 was there, so yeah, Don and I hung out again for awhile. I even ran into old densetsu_x himself, Andrew Roth while I was there and we talked it up (yes Digital, I told him you said goodbye like you asked if I saw him again, lol). He's doing well, and even placed well yesterday, I'm not sure what place he came in, but out of 200 players, he placed in at least the top 15%. Anyways, the place was packed, I didn't see John (chaosruler) there, that was a surprised, I was sure I'd see him. Oh well, maybe in January I'll see some of you guys.
 
Hehehe, thanks, Mike :D

Strange how I live so close to these events where you guys are and yet I never get to attend any of them. I'll have to PM you and see if you played against any of my friends (who didn't invite me by the way :mad_jedi: ) at the PCQ. They are sort of a team with no name.
 
Nice writeup there pssvr. I always love to hear what decks are being run. More often than not while I'm judging, I'm roving the floor too much to get a peek at what people are running.
 
Thanks. I should probably add one more odd deck I faced. It was a warrior deck, probably the strangest I've ever seen. It was basically a janky modified version of the Warrior Structure deck, built and played by some little 6 year old kid...









...and it pwned me. I lost 0-2 in that match with the first finishing at 2000 - 10100 and the second at 0 - 5000. Yeah, I decked out the first time and got murdered the second. He played a brilliant deck. I've never seen a 6 year old duel like this, very few adults can do this stuff. He used Solemn Wishes and Spell Absorption to boost his life. Marauding catpain x3, Command Knight x3, and Reinforcement of the Army x2 made locking me a simple task for him. He confiscated me Heavy Storm. After I Lightning Vortex-ed his captains, he played Pot of Avarice, and managed to draw two of them with it, so I was back to locked.

He would play Spell Absorption, then Pot of Avarice, then draw two spells with it and play them to gain 1500 life. Pot kept him from decking out, and he would just wait until the right moment to swarm for the kill. If that moment never came, he just let me deck out.

I'm telling you, this guy was a genius. No matter what stunts I pulled, he always recovered from it. He knew just how to abuse Pot of Avarice to keep cycling his combos. His deck was so resilient, I just couldn't get at his life no matter what I did. It was scary.

-pssvr
 
pssvr said:
After I Lightning Vortex-ed his captains, he played Pot of Avarice, and managed to draw two of them with it, so I was back to locked.
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I think that was your problem, your hand went down the drain with his, except he had avarices to refill and you don't. If you just keep up handwise and break even field wise, you are pretty much set. I dont know about your sidedeck but a MoP would have done wonders it sounds.
 
If you just keep up handwise and break even field wise, you are pretty much set.
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True. But then that is pretty much true of ALL duels. If you have advantage... well, you have advantage. The problem was I DIDN'T, and didn't know how to GET it... And MoP would've only hurt me, since the whole problem was that he was stalling me out...

-pssvr
 
pssvr said:
I've never seen a 6 year old duel like this, very few adults can do this stuff.
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That sounds like a great player, and an extremely fun deck to play against. I would have liked to have seen the duel. Actually I'm impressed by the amount of self control the player had- as you say, most adults wouldnt be able to play like that.
I'm all for non-standard decks, and this sounds like a good one.
 
pssvr said:
True. But then that is pretty much true of ALL duels. If you have advantage... well, you have advantage. The problem was I DIDN'T, and didn't know how to GET it... And MoP would've only hurt me, since the whole problem was that he was stalling me out...

-pssvr
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Not always, there are decks that purposely trade hand for field which is always risky imo such as darkworld, or if the cards you are holding doesn't do much, like nocs and tribs whens aggroing or Jinzo when you are trapping. Plus ftks, otks and other combo decks could care less about whatever advantage you might have. Some old Horus Chain Energy locks dont really care either if you are holding 5 to their 2 and have loads of mons on field compared to just their lvl 8.
Some players like to drag hand sizes down to play a low hand game for both players. Hand advantage helps, it just gives you more chances at outs.

MoP would have bought you sometime if decides to go from def to aggro, but it sounds like he was just plain stalling. Did you get panicky or something, it sounds like you just collapsed game 2?
 
No. He just plain killed me. He managed to summon 2 or more monsters every turn for 3 turns straight. I just didn't have anything to stop that kind of aggression. And MoP was on the field when he beat me... both times...

-pssvr
 
pssvr said:
No. He just plain killed me. He managed to summon 2 or more monsters every turn for 3 turns straight. I just didn't have anything to stop that kind of aggression. And MoP was on the field when he beat me... both times...

-pssvr
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What was he using to beat you with then? I can see the knight/captain locks, but what was he using to harm you?
 
Captains, Wasteland Warriors, Exiled, etc. Anything he could get. He was just a brilliant duelist with a resilient deck and an answer to every situation. What more can I say? I got pwned...

-pssvr
 
pssvr said:
Captains, Wasteland Warriors, Exiled, etc. Anything he could get. He was just a brilliant duelist with a resilient deck and an answer to every situation. What more can I say? I got pwned...

-pssvr
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See thats what I mean, I dont see how he harms you when MoP the field and hes running aggro with a side lock for defense.
 
...and I don't see how a virus harms you when it is so small. But it gets inside you, is adaptable, knows when to strike and when to hide, and can ultimately kill you...

He just swarmed with strong warriors and beat the heck out of me, despite my efforts to stop him. I honestly don't see what I have failed to explain. I'm not magic. When my opponent has me outmatched with monsters and all my attempts to destroy his monsters just result in avarice followed by captains swarming, I eventually lose. He just kept coming.

-pssvr
 
pssvr said:
...and I don't see how a virus harms you when it is so small. But it gets inside you, is adaptable, knows when to strike and when to hide, and can ultimately kill you...

He just swarmed with strong warriors and beat the heck out of me, despite my efforts to stop him. I honestly don't see what I have failed to explain. I'm not magic. When my opponent has me outmatched with monsters and all my attempts to destroy his monsters just result in avarice followed by captains swarming, I eventually lose. He just kept coming.

-pssvr
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Sorry to push you on this one pssvr, but yeah I think I figured out what went wrong.
 
<nodding in relation to what I saw in the Des Moines regionals in comparrison>

Very sim. to what I saw in Iowa this last weekend (referring to pssvr's orginal post)

I saw a great deal of Trap Hole being side decked as well agaist Mystic Tomatos, Don Zaloogs, Giant Rat, etc. That seemed to be the card I'd seen little use of locally that I saw at the regional.

I also saw a few Gear Golem the Moving Fortress. I'd wondered when I'd start to see those come out. I've been trying to talk my son into including them in his deck but he brushed me off. I witnessed a couple of matches won because of his combination of def. and ability to attack directly (for game in two instances that I saw personally)
 
I was at the GB Regionals (along with Akabane, who whined unendingly afterwards) and saw a whole slew of Cyber Dragons. There was only one match I didn't face down some at one point or another. I'm am about sick of seeing them...

I saw about 3 more IFL's than I would have liked to see, and about 19 more Don's than I would have liked to see. Almost every game I sided in a Sillva and a Goldd over the Megacybers (maindecked to attepmt to counter the oh-so-popular Cyber Dragon+normal summon first turn play people seemed so apt to make), and almost every game they hit them with some sort of discard effect.

And now for a few observations I learned at GB...

1) Sakuretsu>Bottomless in 90% of situations
2) Sidedecked Dark Worlds win games.
3) RftDD is about the most overhyped deck type out there. Yeah it's good...but not just anybody can pick it up and play it. And some people (coughcoughJoshHorncough) need to learn this.
4) People don't like to hear the word "sex" in reference to game plays.
5) Jarod's IFL is somehow better than everyone else's IFL.
6) Megacyber is NOT a viable counter to Cyber Dragons.
7) Meane is great removal negation (Smashing...I dare you; I've got another)
8) Strike Ninja is great removal negation (Smashing? F**K that!! I'm outta here!)
9) Strike+Meane does not mean you are extra prepared for removal. It means you are dumb for putting two cards in the same deck that don't work towards the same goal.
10) Burn and OTK aren't that big of a threat as long as your side-deck doesn't suck.
11) Should you beat someone with Scapegoat and their own Cybernetic Magician, you have the right to yell "ZEE GOATS!!!" for the rest of the event.
12) Reaper is evil on so many levels.

Overall, I learned a lot and did fairly well with an experimental deck we made the night before. It was a pretty good feeling. I think that's what Regionals is all about in the end. Learning about your deck, learning about your play style, and possibly winning something nice. And inside jokes between you and total strangers. Those are always nice.
 
Seriously... if there are this many North Carolinians on the forum here, we need to have a get together or something, or at least let each other know if we're going to be at an event and meet up... The only people I saw was Don and Andrew... I had no idea anyone else was coming (well except pssvr, but he was supposed to find me).

Anyways... just an idea for when January comes around.
 
I TRIED to find you! </kidding> 8)

Tell me about where we're going in January. If there is some place in particular, maybe a bench in a lobby or something like that, we could meet somewhere...

-pssvr
 
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