Regional Qualifiers #2 (Gamerz)

So, there comes a time in every boy's life where he has to man the fuck up and keep his word.  I said I was taking Amon to the regional qualifiers and pussed out at the last moment and switched to Kageroyals.  Even with consistently bad hands and missing triggers all over the place, I still got 5th with Kageroyals.  The deck is strong and it has nothing left to prove.  Silent Tom told me to man the fuck up, keep my word, and go with Hellfire Ritual.  Here are the results.


Game 1 (Go Pdi)

You might be wondering why I made the Gold Paladin name missing several letters.  That's because the deck I was playing against was missing triggers.  They had about 7 in their deck.  They misplayed several times, including not attacking on their turn, and I won.  Not too much to say about it, I gave him some advice and helped him out after match and proceeded on.

Game 2 (Shadow Paladin)

This match was the manliest match ever.  We're both in a tight spot, I have a ton of damage (4), he has no viable rear guards since I keep swinging at them, but only one damage.  He swings at my vanguard, I do a two-to-pass.  He initiated manmode and gets a heal and a draw.  I take a damage.  Next turn, I take out his rear guards again and swing with my Vanguard, he does a two-to-pass, I initiate man mode, get a heal and a draw.  His next turn, I'm in much better shape.  I do a two-to-pass on his vanguard.  He initiates manmode.  Crit, draw.  I lose.  MANLIEST MATCH EVER!

Game 3 (Great Nature)

This guy was a special little snowflake.  He decided to use 8 draws in conjunction with the high base power of Great Nature to have a big hand (of 5k shields).  My Amon deck doesn't give any fucks about 5k shields, unless you've got like 9 of them.  Well, he kind of did.  He hit 5 triggers on his first 5 drive/damage checks.  4 draws and a heal which activated.  I get him down to 7 cards in hand, i know 5 of them. He had a 10k, 4 5k's in hand that I knew of, and a 5k and a null guard that I didn't know about. I push all in with Amon since he's at 5 damage, having my entire backrow being Doreens.  I had two null guards in hand and nothing else, so I charge those and another unit I had on the field.  I have 27k, 30k, 15k for my rows.  I swing 15k, he guards with 10.  He has 6 cards left. I attack with Amon, he null guards, dropping a 5k shield.  I hit no triggers.  He drops 4 5k's, the rest of his hand, to stop the 5th damage.  Just like last week, hitting a single trigger would have won the game for me.  He actually used 2 null guards already, which is why I wasn't convinced one of the two cards I didn't know about was going to be one, but I already factored in that if it was, I just needed a trigger to break through the rest of his guard, which I was right about.  It kind of sucked losing so early, but the games were just so overflooded with triggers I couldn't really do anything about it.

All-in-all, I shouldn't have made luck my dump stat, but at least I manned up and kept my word.  I didn't secure one of the regional qualifiers, but at least I had a blast being a nooblord loser failsauce unwinner.  <3

Bison Overlord

I've been tinkering around with this deck lately. I've had some very pleasing results with it. Normally, I'd say skip the Great Nature side of things and play the Tri-Stinger version of Overlord (since multi-attacks and stand triggers synergize more with Aqua Force) but I just had to try this version out because Soft Tank Sloth is adorable, and unflipping 4 damage is just crazy.

There has to be a certain balance to the deck since you need at least one other Kagero out for Dragonic Overlord to be 11k, but you also need certain Great Nature grade 1's to secure the damage unflip (Soft Tank) and protect yourself (Perfect Guard). Here's the list I eventually settled on.

Starter - Conroe

Triggers 8 Stand, 4 Draw, 4 Crit (all Great Nature)

Grade 1's
4x Soft Tank
4x Bahr
3x Cable Sheep
3x Gojo

Grade 2's
4x Binoculus
2x Lamp Camel
2x Tejas
2x Nehalem
1x Compass Lion (functions similarly to Binoculus for securing the damage unflip, hits 18k with Gojo)

Grade 3's
4x Bison
4x Overlord


This deck doesn't really try to hide that it minuses itself to minus the opponent. Using Overlord's effect is always at least 2 cards that my opponent will lose, so trading a Soft Tank Sloth for that ability every turn is the justification to the deck's playstyle. The trigger line-up has 4 crits to threaten my opponent with some early damage with 8 stands to double-up the threat of Overlord and 4 draws to give a one-turn boost to one Great Nature unit or to sacrifice with Binoculus for Bison's damage unflip.

I'm still tweaking the deck and trying to form as few dependencies on same-type vanguard units as I can (thus, no Hammsuke, since they're useless with an Overlord Vanguard even though I still have to sacrifice a unit for Binoculus and Compass, and they also partially counteract my large-scale damage unflip). Naturally, if a deck has 8 stands and access to a Kirara clone, it's a given to play that unit to put even more pressure on the opponent, especially if you haven't secured an Overlord.

Riding Overlord isn't super great for this deck, but it can still play like a generic beat down deck pretty well with fairly high base power for all of the units in the deck, coupled with Binoculus not needing a Great Nature Vanguard to use his skill. All in all, I found this deck to be incredibly fun to play, and Overlord having his threat on any given turn is terrifying.

Regional Qualifiers #1 (Krypton Comics)

Here's the results from my awesome day at Krypton Comics with CJ Sarber.

Game 1 (MLB)

I made an early misplay by not 10k guarding their 7+5k attack to my 8k vanguard.  They got a crit, which my 10k guard would have shut down completely and saved me two early damage.  That woke me up (I'm still pretty tired) and I stopped misplaying after that.  I still ended up taking a demanding lead and secure the game turn 4.

Game 2 (Gold Paladins)

I ride up perfectly and reach turn 4.  My opponent has mostly 5k shields and has exactly enough guard to block both of my rear-guards, but not my vanguard.  He's at 4 damage.  I'm at 5 damage because he swung 23k turn two with his Ezel/Tron combo due to the superior ride.  So he no guards my vanguard.  I have 14 triggers left in my 37~ card deck.  My odds of hitting one critical and winning are about 72%.  My odds of surviving his next turn if he didn't hit triggers would be guaranteed as long as I didn't drive check two grade 3's.  I have two Bors on the field.  I drive check two Bors, immediately declare my own loss, and chuckle to myself.  This time I'M the Byond Shuffler.

Game 3 (Gold Paladins)

Another Ezelmore deck.  I don't remember much about this game.  I won with 3 rows of 3 Bors/8k's.  Still Byond shuffling like a nooblord.  All I remember was that they had 3 damage and no guarded my Bors and I Kageroyal'd them with a double crit.

Game 4 (Spike Brothers)

I got wailed on hard early game.  She hit trigger after trigger after trigger.  I end up winning by getting a critical at the end, but only because she misplayed a few times.

Game 5 (MLB)

Same player I beat in round one.  I got gradelocked at 1 for a turn.  This game lasted a while, going to turn 6 or 7.  He damage checked a Blaster Dark and I attacked into one of them to retire it.  He drive checked another and got one with Wingal Brave.  I ended up losing to two consecutive +10k's from moving the Blasters to soul.  One of the sad things about not running perfect guards is encountering big-hitting vanguards with bonus crit.  I didn't see any Bediviere and 4 of each Blaster, so he had at least 3 instances where not having a booster caused him to be unable to swing over any of my units.


Result - Kageroyals went 3-2 in the tournament, netting me 5th place.


Side games


Kageroyals - won two more side games and lost one, putting me at 5-3 for the day.  Not as good as usual, but I won't complain.


Royal Paladin/Dark Irregulars - This deck was dysfunctional.  Not because it was built wrong, it just never drew what it needed ever.  I did not have a single game where Lohengrin (running 4) was my vanguard save ONE game where he was ridden AFTER Palamedes.  Palamedes was my Vanguard 6 games.  I only have one of him.  I ended the night 0-8 with this deck because Lohengrin is the entire crux of it working.  I really need to shuffle better because holy crap that was awful.  I still had fun playing it, but it just did NOT function the way it was supposed to.  Again, Byond shuffle fail by me.


Hellfire Ritual - Went 5-2.  I lost one game before the tournament with it, then lost once to CJ.  CJ hit a 6th damage heal and double crit me at 3 damage to seal the deal on me (which I totally called!).  I love comebacks, so I was probably more excited about it than he was.  Sadly, my strongest row was only 30k unboosted.  I guess I need to start lifting again.