Chicago Regional Tournament Report

Vanguard:

Game 1 - Have Glendios, Colony Maker, 3 triggers. Put back three triggers, get Magnet Hollow, Trigger, Trigger. Think, "Well, ****. I have 20 outs left in my deck that either are grade 1 or fish for grade 1. Maybe I'll be okay." Top deck into a Reverse. Pitch, check top 5, no grade 1's. Ride up the following turn. Time passes, I no guard at 3, get double crit, 5th damage heal, saving myself from losing. I catch back up, and reach a situation where I'm at a solid spot to win. I have a front row locked, and the other row has nothing in it. He calls a Dragruler as a RG and attacks with it. I drop 5k to guard it. He attacks with Raging Form. I'm anticipating that he doesn't having Raging Form in hand because he didn't check one and had two in damage. I no pass it instead of two-to-passing it, thinking that he doesn't run stands because he's bad at Dragruler, and he doesn't have Raging Form. Turns out Raging Form was in his hand the whole time, so he superior rides and hits me to 6 for game.

My opponent was playing crit dragruler, so I died from cancer before I lost the actual cardfight.

Game 2 -

I open 1, 2, 1, 2, reverse. I think to myself that I can fish Glendios. Boy was I wrong.

1st World Line, nothing. Grab a 12k beater.
1st Damage, Glendios.
2nd World Line, nothing. Grab a second Magnet Hollow (5th grade 2 at this point.)
Hit with Magnet Hollow A, thin deck of non-Glendios. Keep fishing.
Second Damage check, Glendios.
3rd World Line, nothing. Grab a Ruin Magician.
Opponent has now taken 5 damage. They're at 4. I've only taken 2 damage. **** this game. They heal on this drive check bringing them to 3.
4th World Line, nothing. Cry.
Attack with VG, crit, get another Reverse unit. Score is now 7 to 3. Still no Glendios.
They breakride, swing with everything, I guard, they activate Peace before calling their second unit to the field, so the judge is like, "It's optional, so we'll play it as you only calling one."
They swing with Vanguard, I have enough to stop the second VG swing and the RG. I need them to not double crit me. I get double crit anyway. No healsack.

Final score 6-7, but that means they win since they had more points, right?

After scrub-a-dub-dubbing out, I can't honestly say I was disappointed.  There's no possible way a round 1 loss would permit me to make the top 8 cut unless I got paired up and won much later, so losing the second round essentially just finalized my results.

I go have fun for a while, and come back to the semi-finals.  Very first thing I see is a Pale Moon player hitting a stand trigger with a 12k attacker and a 7k Zelma frontrow that is at rest.  He stands Zelma and gives the power to the 12k when his opponent has out an 11k and a 9k front row.  This wasted a card he could have forced from his opponent by attacking into both rear guards by giving Zelma power, but instead he went for the crossridden Vanguard when his opponent had an interceptor.

Vanguard is a game that's all about skill, right?

And yet again we have more consistent top 8's from previous years, which once again proves that because I refuse to cheat (it is general consensus that topping a 400 man Vanguard tournament cannot be done consistently, right?  This is my best guess on how they're doing it.), I will never top a large-scale Vanguard tournament.  I am probably done with competitive Vanguard, and will switch to judging all of the Vanguard events I attend.




Buddyfight:

Round 1 (Vs. Katana World)  W

Game 1:  I enter a point where I push him down to 3 life.  If I draw a creature, I can push, but I just drew all defensive spells.  He said, "This is just a trial deck."  So I cast a spell while he has Lethal Formation and 3 gauge, and he Star Crushers me.  I call him a dirty liar, and he explains it's the only non-trial deck card he has.  After evil glares, we both laugh it off and play game 2.

Game 2:  I got my set-up and won 11-0.

Game 3:  I had to fight a little bit for this one, but had Sakurafubuki in hand and attacked with my full field of 5 crit for game, countering his Oborogenbu (What a liar!).  Lol.

Round 2 (Vs. Dungeon World)  L

Game 1:  I essentially got shit stomped.  Didn't see anything good.  Couldn't make the plays.

Game 2:  I fought like hell with absolutely nothing.  I got one Hades Fall out, but got neither Yamigitsune or Return to the Underworld.  He plays an Addrick with a Brave Drum out, trying to bait my Hades Fall.  I just said, "I'll allow it." and let him keep his 1 crit on the board.  He kept going after my field (which is how you beat Katana World if they don't draw into Return) and i was playing with 2-3 cards at most for the whole game.  I had a painful choice where I Star Crushered his Pillar of Flame on my Tempest, Garo-oh.  He had called Tetsuya, which I had Hades Falled at this point.  He continued to get Tetsuya and a Fate Skeleton back, but he had a Glory Seeker equipped with that Fate Skeleton in the middle.  I used Tempest the following turn to kill off his Drum and Tetsuya, leaving him with just his Fate Skeleton in the middle, keeping me safer.  I was able to hold out for another turn or two, but I just fizzled.  Top 4 cards of my deck when I lost were Return, Kimensai, Return, Return.  Oh well.  Both of us played really well with what we had.  I used the mindgames and blackmailing to prolong the game and turtle, and my opponent said he was very impressed with my depth of strategy.  This guy went on to get 2nd place, and was a really cool guy.  No regrets or salt for losing to him.

Round 3 (Vs. Danger World) W

Game 1:  Opened Item Blast.  Blew up his weapons mid attack, he couldn't get around my defenses very easily.  I was able to win quickly and efficiently.

Game 2:  I godhanded, which always feels nice.  Too bad it was against a Danger World trial deck.  Although, considering I've been losing to Mike's Danger World trial deck all weekend for literally no reason, I'm not sure what to say on it. 

The guy asks me for some advice on deckbuilding, since he just started playing.  I help him out by building a Dungeon World deck for him.  I showed him my deck and its combos and he was like, "This shit's dumb.  I want a more balanced deck.  Wait, Rock Paper Scissors?  WE'RE DOING THIS."  He pulls a foil Mimic with a Prize to add to the awesome.

Round 4 (Vs. Faggot Bran-Bran) L

Game 1: I fuck up and for whatever reason use Hades fall on a Tasuku.  Why I did this, I don't know.  Bran was distracting me, okay?!  After that misplay (which I realized as I did it) I tried to play a bit better.  I dead drew too many times, though.  He ends up winning the game by swinging into my creatures, which is how you beat Skulls when they have no Return. Sadface.jpg.

Game 2:  I get Hades Fall and Return in my opening hand.  11-0.  Bran was intentionally misplaying and using sub-optimal strategies on purpose.  I'm starting to get annoyed with him.

Game 3:  He is borderline trying to lose on purpose at this point.  He is doing everything in his power to just have three Gummi Slime on the board with no other plans.  This, ladies and gentlemen, is our champion.  I hit absolutely none of my strategy.  I end up drawing into 3 Lethal Formations in a row (Shut up, Elliot), and I had so many points where him playing incorrectly would have led to me winning the game if I'd just draw into something.  No Yami, no Kimensai, no Setsujishi, no Hades, no Return.  My deck just wanted to lose.  After running out of ways to not beat me, Bran ends up killing me right at time.  I have a salty catfight with him trying to get him a warning for not declaring battle phase.  He counter-tries to get me a warning for not declaring that I'm paying life for abilities, even though I totally always do it.  Elliot agreed with me.  Will said I wasn't.  The world may never know.  The judge was just like, "Ladies, please.  Stop fighting."  Well, that didn't actually happen, but that would have appropriate.

I end up going 2-2.  On one hand I could say I lost to 1st and 2nd place, which is understandable.

On the other hand, I could say that I only beat trial decks.  Or at least I think they're trial decks?

Bran trying to lose and still beating me because my deck refused to function made me quite a bit salty, too.  Especially since his big idea for playing the game is,"Screw tactics, win with Gummi Slime."

I think what I've learned is that card games just aren't for me.  And that I totally should have said, "Fuck all of you, I'm playing Dungeon World".  But meh, I didn't want to be that guy.  But you know what, that guy was all top 4 spots.

There was a top 8 cut, and my friend Will didn't make it, despite being 4-1.  This was because a guy who already has the full-trip secured decided he still wanted to play in the top 8.  Will was pissed off, especially because fucking Brandon made it in, literally with the worst earlier tie-breakers, and only because he was the lucky one who got paired up and somehow managed to win in round 5.

Will and I grew increasingly salty.

Brandon gets an auto-game loss for having an improperly filled out decklist.  Naturally, he fights the Ancient World player.  Who doesn't draw into Seiger on game one, and gets Rolling Stoned turn 2 in game 2, so Bran moves on anyway.

Saltiness gains one level.

Top 4, we're like, "Fucking Brandon.  He's NOT EVEN TRYING and he's already qualified.  Well, at least if he does win this round, we're staying in his hotel room."

Brandon wins again, for literally no reason.

We're just like, "Fuck it.  This is bullshit.  But at least we have a place to crash.  Okay, fucker.  Lose already."

He wins the finals against the first guy who beat me, declaring an attack against, "Big Awesome Dog." (Maybe I still love Bran-Bran a little bit.)

Nope.jpg

Apparently, even in a game like Buddyfight, I can still get gradelocked, and Brandon can literally go full-retard and win it all.  I was pretty salty.

Maybe after my intense and burning anguish dies down, I'll actually congratulate the little bitch.  Maybe.