Winning Games and Taking Names

Hey guys, how was your long weekend? Mine was pretty good. On Monday it started pouring in the morning and i honestly did not want to spend the day out in the cold so when my friend Jason told me that Parramatta would be holding an extra tournament for the long weekend I was like hell yeah. I showed up a bit early and did a bit of trading and pre tournament practicing. Finally everybody showed up and to my relief Wayne did not. Which meant that I had a legitimate attempt at first place today. I prepared myself mentally just like every other tournament I participate in. Then decided to go with Inzektors for the deck of my choice.
Match 1: Dino Rabbit
I was rather excited about this round as I had never versed Dino rabbits in real life before. Sadly the guy ran a really sub-par build and this is how it went.
Round 1:
He drew no monsters for the first few rounds so I beat him down with inzektor monsters while gaining card advantage. By the time he drew a monster I solemn warning-ed it for game.
Round 2:
This one wasn't too hard either, he summoned Cardcar D and drew two cards off it's effect and then from there i just beat him down with inzektors until he drew rescue rabbit which I solemn warning-ed
Match 2: Chaos dragons
The kid was talking about how he beat me yesterday (I joined a tournament on Sunday too) and how this is my chance to get revenge which I honestly did not care about lol.
Anyways onto business.
Round 1:
He hit me pretty hard early in the game with a REDMD and lightpulsar but I conserved my cards and began to combo off for the One Turn Kill. Sadly I misplayed and left him on 100lps. He did manage to recover a little but a simple swing with my Leviathan dragon next turn easily clinched the game.
Round 2:
After some intense thinking about what to side in and out, we started round 2. I managed to open up with some nice side deck cards such as Dimensional prison and my threatening roar (I main deck 2 though 3 is just for Chaos dragons which rely heavily on blasting out over 5000 point worth of damage in one go). A nice lock down with dimensional prison combined with multiple copies of threatening roar made round 2 rather simple for me.

The good thing about Chaos dragons is that they don't main deck traps so you'll be safe in that area and most builds won't run mystical space typhoon so feel free to set 2 traps or more if you're daring. In game 1 I like to trigger cards like threatening roar and compulsory evacuation device so that my opponent gets the impression that my traps are chainable. That way in round 2 I can side in continuous spells/traps such as dimensional prison or rivalry of the warlords. By the time they realise they need their MST's I would have already combo-ed off for game or assembled enough cards to play smoothly.

Match 3: Chaos dragons (again)
Round 1:
He over powered me with dragons and his in-hand effect veiler and D.D crow was too much for me to push through. He eventually just beat me down to 0Lps
Round 2:
This duel went on FOREVER. I drew some nice side deck cards such as fossil dyna, and my other copy of threatening roar, my dimensional fissure. Eventually he had a set monster, Lightpulsar, REDMD, Photon Strike Bounzer on the field staring me down. I managed to fend off two potential deaths with threatening roars and flipped Fossil Dyna to destroy all his monsters and swing for game.
Round 3:
This one was interesting for me because time ran out. Which meant that we had 5 turns before the winner was decided. Whoever had the least life points by 5 turns lost. I was freaked out because Chaos Dragons are notorious for dropping heaps of damage without notice. Thankfully for me dimensional prison kept him at bay and he drew no good cards. I attacked with centipede which he responded to with a Gorz drop. I used Dark hole and from there he forfeited due to bad draws. Close call !

Match 4: Lightsworn/Lightrays (Finals)
I had beaten this kid before so I didn't get too worked up about this match up
Round 1:
The guy summone Lyla on turn 1 and I set sangan with no s/t as I didn't want to lose any to Lyla. Little did I know that was  HUGE mistake as he took advantage of that next turn and killed me.
Round 2:
Some serious siding in went down on my part but he chose not to. I started an easy lock down with Dimensional Prison and Fossil Dyna which caused him to have nothing to do since he couldn't special summon or mill cards. His deck was in perfect lock down from where I sat. When the pieces were assembled I combo-ed off and killed him quickly.
Round 3:
He milled really fast, like over 1/3 of his deck was gone by his second turn. Luckily for me he decided to hold out on any big plays so I took advantage of that and combo-ed off for game.

So there you have it, I piloted Inzektors to first place and claimed my $20 prize money. I'm happy to win of course as I profited some money but I didn't beat Wayne which probably won't happen for a while. All in all it was a good day, I brought some cards at very reasonable prices and even received a few goodies off my friends.

Tournament Report - 10th June 2012

Alex and I went to Good Games in the city to participate in a tournament, with a $15 buy in. He was running Inzektors, and I was running a Chaos Dragons build incorporating Lightsworns and Judgment Dragon that we built on the train. Both of us ended up 2-2, pretty disappointing results overall for the both of us. Even for my first live event, I feel like I underperformed considering I did make a few misplays which I was able to pick out.

The tournament was in Swiss format, with the best 4 out of 10 participants moving onto the finals.

Match 1 - vs Nathan (Dino Rabbit)
Game 1: I don't remember if I won the diceroll or not, but he opened with Rabbit and Lance and I had no real mill outlets in my hand so his Laggia controlled the board pretty hard. I managed to mount a small comeback with a well timed Red Eyes, sweeping his monsters by baiting Laggia's negation with a Monster Reborn I didn't care about anyway, but he topdecked a Tour Guide into Leviair into Rabbit, and then the game was over.

Game 2: Once again I opened poorly (despite siding in three Mystical Space Typhoons, two Spirit Reapers and two Soul Takers), but going first allowed me to stall a little with Ryko. At one point I was ready to push for game with Red Eyes and Lightpulsar after baiting Laggia negations and reading his backrows correctly. However, when I went for game, I started out with Heavy Storm on his two backrows, straight into a Starlight Road. I lost Red Eyes on the next turn and the game was over quickly. I never saw any of my side decked cards.

Match 2 - vs Connor (Chaos Dragons)
Game 1: I lost the diceroll and he opened with Tour Guide into Zenmaines. I played Ehren, but he Veilered it and I lost Ehren on the next turn. I managed to push through Zenmaines by making it use its effect on itself, and had established presence with Lightpulsar, but he took it out while I had no Red Eyes in the yard and rolled me with his Red Eyes.

Game 2: I went first, and we went blow for blow. He had sided in three Electric Viruses and two Victorias, two of the Viruses were milled by he still hit me pretty hard with the Victorias. Eventually, a timely Chaos Sorcerer drop finally banished his Lightpulsar and I pushed for game.

Game 3: At one point I had an Eclipse Wyvern on the field with Honest in hand and Lance set. He had Lightpulsar, Zenmaines and Red Eyes on the field, and attacked my Wyvern. I made a misplay here - I should have used Honest, but instead I let it fall and every time I tried to come back, his Electric Viruses and Victorias shut me down.

Match 3 - vs Lucas (Blackwings)
Game 1: This guy was a kid and probably not very good at the game, but I decided I wouldn't take him easy. He had a pumped up Sirocco on the field at one point, and even managed to Dark Hole my field of Lightpulsar and Wyvern with no Darkflare or Red Eyes in the yard. I was dangerously low on Life Points at one point, but I dropped BLS and swung for game.

Game 2: He had stalled me for at least 5 turns with a Marshmallon. Instead of waiting for a good topdeck, however, he Tributed the Marshmallon for Sirocco to end the game by swinging at my field. However, I had Honest in hand and won.

Match 4 - vs Roman (Citadel Spellcasters)
Game 1: I won the diceroll and opened strongly, milling Wyvern on the first turn (and Gorz too...). He managed to use Arcane Barrier (or whatever the card is) to draw 4 cards, and nearly gamed me with a souped-up Arcanite Magician, but I just banished it with Chaos Sorcerer and he couldn't come back.

Game 2: I dispatched of his Citadel and Defender pretty early, and I constantly applied pressure with Lightpulsar. I had about 3000 points left from going blow for blow with him. A few turns in, he said "time to try something new..." and he ended up stacking about 4 Spell Counters in one turn on his Arcanite Magician and swinging for 3400 at my points. I was dumbstruck as I reached for my Side Deck.

Game 3: He had little outs to an early Jain, which managed to get some good enough mills that I was able to play beatstick after beatstick whenever he got rid of them and I eventually pushed for game and ended the day 2-2.

I was aware of my misplays in the four matches and I'm working towards rectifying them. I think live practice is very important - there's stuff you can't pick up on in Dueling Network (the wince on the other player's face when he gets poor mills, or the subtle encouragement of attacking into a Mirror Force - 'do you still want to attack?') that you can pick up on in real life. Overall it was a pretty good day and I did manage to get some more experience with Chaos Dragons, though I won't be using the Lightsworn build again probably.

A new addition to the blog - League of Legends and guides to improving

Hello, due to the request of some of my friends I have decided to expand this blog into a more of an overall gaming blog. There are countless of these on the Internet, but this just gives me the opportunity to keep my thoughts written down for reference. League of Legends, for those who don't know, is basically a DotA clone with a large emphasis on teamwork and decision making rather than mechanical ability. It's one of the most popular games in the world, and currently the most popular game in Korea (bigger than Starcraft). I won't go too much into it, because the best way to find out is to just play it yourself.

The following series of posts assumes that you understand how the game works, what all the champions do as well as the current metagame. It also assumes that you have a reasonable level of mechanical skill (and why wouldn't you, the game is easy) and are just looking to improve on aspects of play outside of your mechanical skill.

The first thing I wanted to talk about was analysing the game state. This is easier than it sounds because most players will already make decisions based on the state of the game without realising. Some of the core factors to consider when you analyse the game state follow:

• Cooldowns (regular and summoner spells)
• Timers (buffs, camps, wards)
• Positioning (both in lane and overall)
• MIAs (estimated location, ganking style, ganking ability)
• Lane advantage (items, health, tower)
• Vision (yours and the other team's)

There are more, but those are the basics. An example I taught Michael (NotJim) was a technique I like to call the MIA gambit. It works especially well when you're playing a mid laner with high dueling potential, such as Ahri, Cassiopeia and Ryze, but it works well with anyone who can kill a champion quickly. This play is executed when you have an advantage in lane and you know that you can 1v1 the opposing laner.

The play follows:

• Ward any places that you are likely to be ganked from.
• Push your wave to the enemy tower.
• Go MIA, ensuring the enemy laner can see where you have disappeared into the fog from.
• Find a brush and wait.

 At this point, the enemy laner has three decisions he can make:

• Follow you into the fog to prevent a gank.
• Stay in lane and use the reprieve to get some CS.
• Recall to buy items or heal.

And, your reaction to these actions follows:

• Ambush them in the fog and pick up an easy kill.
• Run behind them in lane as they push forward and kill or force them out of lane.
• Gank a lane, or take dragon.

As you can see, all three paths lead to a victory. This kind of play works exceptionally well against players who don't really understand lane mechanics too well, but it even works on higher level players. League of Legends, at its core, is a game about decision making and snowballing. An advantage turns into a bigger advantage unless you throw it away. How do you throw an advantage? The easiest and most common way is to die. Say you knew that the brush was warded and you camped it anyway. Say the enemy jungler is significantly stronger than yours. Say you weren't winning lane anyway. Any of these happen, and you're going to come out behind. The importance of analysing the game state when making a decision cannot be stressed more.

So, next time you have an advantage, take a moment to think about the game state. How can you turn an advantage into a snowball? If you're behind, how can you take advantage of the opponent's desire to snowball? If I saw that this MIA gambit was being used against me, (through a ward) I would tell my jungler to position himself near the roaming mid laner to sandwich him in a 2v1. I could also waste his time by appearing indecisive as to whether I should farm or roam. In the end though, every player is different. Some will outthink you. This is inevitable - it's only through practice that you can learn to win the game of wits that underlies League of Legends.

However, if your mechanics aren't up to par - say you lose lane every game and your CS sucks, you should just try to improve them. You need to learn how to run laps before you can run a marathon, or run in the Olympics. You need to understand and play Yu-Gi-Oh! at a comprehensive level before you attend a YCS. Mechanical skill is utterly important and will carry you further than metagaming or thinking will.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you look forward to more articles. I'm manisier on the NA server, and I'll be updating this as I give lessons to some players.

A guide to winning with subpar decks

So today I went to Paramatta with my girlfriend and we participated in the Sealed pack play that I talked about in my previous post. We both paid our $40 entry fee and received our 9 booster packs. I was rather disappointed with each pack I opened as I didn't get any extremely broken cards like Raigeki or Haripe's Feather Duster. But nevertheless I did pull good cards like Gorz, the Emissary of Darkness and Pot of Duality. My girlfriend (Jenny) pulled some pretty amazing cards such as Utopia, Raigeki, Soul exchange, Beast King Barboras, Forbidden lance, Fiendish chain. When I saw her cards I actually did lost a bit of hope of winning the tournament and felt like giving up but I built my deck in the end and even built hers for her.

This is the deck I ended up using in my tournament for sealed pack play.

If you recognise my cards you'll also realise it's not the best deck considering how many other cards were in the pack that I could've gotten. But like I said, this is a guide to winning. I cannot stress how important it is to maintain your composure and stay positive even while using a bad deck. Sadly this was not the case for me and I went into the tournament thinking, just ease up you'll never win with these kind of cards.

In my first round I actually lost my fist game then won 2 games straight by beating my opponent down with my level 4 monsters. My Caius the Shadow monarch actually managed to win the game for me.

After winning round 1, I was exhilarated and shocked. The guy had so many good cards and had a few chances to win the duel, but I guess I managed to time key cards like dark bribe at the right time.

Second round was a shocker. Despite winning I was paired with a person who lost their first round, even more surprising, it was Jenny. Nothing really special about this match it was a quick 2-0 win for me. But there was one rather good play on behalf where I was going to blast sphere her Mobius equipped with a united we stand for 4000 damage. But she used Darkworld shackles to lower her monster to 100 attack points and save herself for a while.

Going into round 3 I was definitely worried, the guy had amazingly broken cards like Pot of Greed and Gorz and Lance. After copping a quick beating in round 1, I was convinced my hopes of winning were crushed. But after some really intense clutch plays, I managed to win the duel. One crucial misplay on my opponents part cost him the match. This is an important part to the game, being able to see your opponents misplays and capitalise on them.

This was it, final round, the bubble. I was secretly mentally preparing myself for the finals but a part of me just couldn't help but feel like the first 3 rounds were all luck and luck can only get you so far. My friend Wayne showed up and we talked a bit about my deck and he thought I had a fighting chance considering the sort of players in the area. The finals began and Wayne was judging. My opponent managed to win a very intense game 1 with a well resolved Raigeki. Despite several misplays on both our behalves (which Wayne was only too happy to point out each time) we managed to get to a 1-1 state where the third game would decide it all. After many swings in momentum the game eventually settled down to me having a 2400 attack monster and the opponent having 2 monsters weaker than it. Unfortunately he drew an Offerings to the doom spell card and sealed the game with that.

So there you have it, my road to second place with an incredibly subpar deck. I don't regret too much because I'm simply so grateful that I managed to utilise my experience in Yu-Gi-Oh to carry a deck so far.  This could have just been a test to see how well I can duel under such circumstances. Jenny went 2-2 if you were curious, she lost 2 then won 2.  I won $15 prize money and used it to buy 2 packs of sleeves for my cards. This post wasn't intended to boast about myself but to inspire those who have bad luck with pulls at sneak peeks and sealed plays, I know I have really bad luck at these sort of events so today was rather special for me.

Battle pack: Epic Dawn

To be honest, when I first read about this 'Battle Pack: Epic Dawn" I was like it sounds crap. Then I heard that Tour Guide from the Underworld was going to be re-printed in it, I was like okay change of heart. (See what I did there?) Anyways, for those who are wondering what's so amazing about this pack, it's a pure reprint pack. A reprint is basically a card from a previous pack which has been printed again to make it easier to get. For the full list of cards in Battle Pack: Epic Dawn click on the link below

http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_Pack:_Epic_Dawn

If you look through most of these cards you'll notice some familiar names and perhaps some you've never heard of. As a Yu-Gi-Oh veteran I didn't even recognise every card I saw. Obvious highlights of this pack would be stuff like Tour Guide from the Underworld, Gorz the Emissary of darkness, Fiendish chain, forbidden chalice and forbidden lance and a whole bunch of other goodies you might see fit for your current deck. This pack also brings with it a new interesting twist of its own. A whole new way to play called sealed pack play. What is this you might ask. Basically, the most simplest way to do this is buy an entire box of Battle Pack: Epic Dawn and split the packs amongst 2 other friends. What happens is each player opens a pack and selects a card then passes on the rest of the cards for the opponent to choose one. This happens until you have opened all the packs and everybody has their pool of cards. You can either choose to play with 40 cards per deck or 20. Sealed draft play is a new concept in Yu-Gi-Oh so I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on it since I have as much experience as any other person out there: 0. All I know is that it brings about a whole new exciting and fun way to play Yu-Gi-Oh.

There is also a new type of rarity in this set called the 'Starfoil rare'. This new rarity is inspired by Japan because they have their own version of this called 'Duel Terminal rare'. I took the liberty of buying a few of these packs myself the other day to share with you guys what the starfoil rare looks like. So here it is:

Big things coming!

I don't want to have to apologise for our recent delay in getting posts up, but the workload of the HSC is starting to get to me. However, Alex and myself are currently putting together two decks - a Lightray/Lightsworn hybrid, and a Chaos Dragons deck. We expect to be able to use these decks at a competitive level eventually, attending local tournaments and such.

I'll briefly talk about the merits of both decks: the first is, obviously, based around the Lightray archetype. The Lightray monsters, for those who are unaware, can be Special Summoned when enough Light monsters are banished. They have powerful effects and are strong beaters too. Their ease of use definitely reminds me of Chaos monsters in a way.

What's also cool is that all the cards are essentially corrupted, Light versions of other cards. We have Gearfried, Chaos Sorcerer, and even our old friend Daedalus with Lightray counterparts. Sort of like the Verz monsters, but more awesome.

The Lightsworn engine is used primarily to get Light monsters banished through use of Macro Cosmos and milling. I'm sure more alternatives will open up to us, but at the moment Lightrays look like a very promising casual deck, maybe even with some competitive potential.

Chaos Dragons, on the other hand, are also an inexpensive build, however they have had massive success at recent YCS tournaments. TCGPlayer and Alter Reality Games have some articles on this deck, so I won't go too much in detail. The key points to note about this deck are basically that it's the cheapest competitive deck available right now, and it wins by applying pressure through sustained use of beatsticks. Everyone loves a beatstick.

Decklists will be posted later when we finish the decks. Until then, take care!

Expanding your horizons

If there's one thing I've learnt in the past year or so where I've been playing yugioh at a competitive level, it is that you should always expand your horizons. Normally I hate different, I hate new and I'm afraid of the unfamiliar (no I do not have Cenophobia- I think) but in the case of Yugioh, you just have to embrace new ideas and concepts. Even if you don't want to embrace it at least familiarise yourself with them because you're bound to face them sooner or later and you don't want to pick up those 5 cards not knowing how to handle the situation. I'll give you an example. Chain burn. If you have ever faced this deck, you'll know how frustrating it is and how helpless it is to be in your position. I hated this deck with a burning passion (see what I did there?). My friend first used it against me sometime last year and to me the idea of using burn to win was cheap and a disgrace to the game. I cursed the player to innovated chain burn and said he ruined Yu-Gi-Oh for those who played it. But after weeks of hating on chain burn I decided to use it, not because I wanted cheap wins but because I decided that the only way to know the strengths and weaknesses of a deck is to pilot it yourself. Think about it: if you were piloting inzektors what would you fear? You'd be afraid of effect veiler, D.D crow and other effect negating cards. Now put yourself in the shoes of someone facing inzektors. You know exactly what your opponent is afraid of. You know which cards in their deck play the vital role and which ones are just support mechanisms.

My point is, in Yu-Gi-Oh those with perspectives have an advantage over those who focus on that one deck they like. By using decks you like and dislike, you will find out the strengths and weaknesses of each deck and how to adapt your strategy to best counter that deck. So next time a deck annoys you or you just dislike the way it functions. Do some research on it, see the playstyle is has and find out the weak points you can abuse. I shall capitalise on this post by discussing the top decks right now both tier 1 and tier 1.5 and how you should adapt your strategy to take them down! Until then, keep this quote in mind

"Good players play the format, great players define the format"