Chicago Regional Tournament Report

So, we'll start with the two big things, my placement and the deck I was using.  I decided to go with Tom and Jerry this year, since I felt like it's one of the strongest possible mixed decks in the game right now, with its only major weakness being a straight OTT deck.  I'm running the same decklist that I have on this blog:

Starter - Flask Marmoset

4x Ruler Chameleon (Crit)
4x Triangle Cobra (Crit)
4x Psychic Bird (Crit)
4x Oracle Guardian, Nike (Crit)

Grade 1's

4x Silver Wolf
4x Coiling Duckbill
3x Tank Mouse
2x Chocolat
1x Tic-Toc Flamingo

Grade 2's

4x Binoculus Tiger
4x Silent Tom
3x Maiden of Libra

Grade 3's

4x CEO Amaterasu
4x Battle Sister, Cookie

Now, my standings.  There were about 360 people there, and I ended up 47th (Pics or it didn't happen?), losing in round 6.  There were less than 32 people for round seven it seems, so I could totally just say "top 32 if you don't count tiebreakers".  So, because I'm an egomaniac, we'll go with that.  Top 32.  I felt very fortunate that I got to use almost all of the tricks that the deck has to give, and neither myself nor my opponents were gradelocked in any of my games.   Now for the play-by-play.

Round 1: W vs. DOtE

I rushed the guy super hard.  I think he said he was a Pojoer (Flying Teapot?) and immediately knew who I was when he saw the mixed decks.  He had no idea what to expect when he saw the Psychic Bird boosting my Vanguard on turn 1.  I went second and drive checked into the Libra that I needed to ride, since I had no grade 2.  I put him to 4 damage turn 3, then he crossrode into DOtE with only one card left in hand.  I had a pretty good hunch he had no other DOtE's, and I ended up being correct.  He attacks, I no guard at 3 damage, he checks a grade 1 and 2, and I get put to 4.  I soul charge and check top-card with CEO seeing a critical and leaving it there.  I knew that he checked a grade 1 and 2 last turn with one unknown card in his hand.  I anticipated it being a perfect guard (it was actually a 10k).  Since he was at 13k defense and my row was Coiling and Tom, I decided to pump up Coiling a bit.  I used the effect of a Tank Mouse I already had out on Coiling, then called another one over it, doing the same thing, making Coiling a 15k boost, in case he checked double heals or some other shenanigans.  I use my unboosted row to swing at his grade 2, retiring that.  Then I attack with CEO, which he ended up one-to-passing from a misplay.  Had he guarded that attack, I would have gone in with a 28k 2 crit Tom, which is the first cool thing this deck can do.  Make crossrides shit their pants.  Dude was a total bro and I'm happy to say he beat his goal of not losing in two rounds.  I think he got to round 4.

Round 2: W vs. Pacifica/Vert

Only individual I fought with a bad deck.  Only individual I fought with a bad attitude.  Maybe the only individual I fought who wasn't aware of who I was or who didn't see someone walk up to me and be like, "Wait, you're that Tim?"  I was polite, didn't boast, didn't gloat.  I mean, for me, that's definitely my best behavior.  She was pissed that I was stomping her.  I mean, it sucks to be losing hard in the second round, but it wasn't like I was sacking her.  She drew into a great hand.  Continued to get great draws.  But she had to keep guarding with all of her boosters since I was intentionally leaving Tom at low power so she would do so.  She checked two stands with no front-row rear-guards to place them on since she had to guard Tom with all of them.  I used Tank mouse to make a Tom row hit an extra stage, to which she responds, "I don't think you can do that."  I explain to her that Tank Mouse only needs a Great Nature target and not a Great Nature Vanguard.    After this point her attitude switched from irritated to bitchy.  I get her to five, and with a break ride draw into Pacifica's skill for another +1, she only had 3 RG's out total that turn.  Even with the card draw and bouncing from Pacifica and break riding, I swing with my 21k Amaterasu which she had to no guard.  Crit.  Crit.  She looks absolutely livid (like the criticals actually mattered), refused to check her damage, and began picking up her cards and gathering her other belongings.  I extend my hand and say, "Good game."  She says, "No it wasn't!" and storms off.  Good game, I guess?

Round 3: W vs. Sephirot/Laurel

I got two Toms in my starting hand.  I get him to four damage very quickly since I had a double Tom whammy that they couldn't guard with grade 0's.  My inability to win dice rolls helped secure all of the rushes.  He ended up riding Laurel on his third turn, which pretty much secured the victory for me.  Tom trick #134 won the game for me.  He had enough grade 0's in hand to guard my Vanguard, and a few 1's and 2's, but not enough if I pumped Tom up.  I had no Tank Mouse or Binoculus out, so I wasn't in a good position to pump units up.  Then I looked at my Marmoset, and was like, "This is going to be awesome."  I used his skill twice on himself, since I was at 4 damage myself.  This made my Tom row 5+8+8, which is a nice 21k.  I scried a critical, so I took the game that turn.

Round 4: W vs. The Blood

I felt bad.  This was the only game that I felt like I turbo sacked.  I crit him turn 2 and double crit him turn 3.  I mean, 16 crit is there for a reason, but I still felt bad.  I apologized profeusly, but my opponent was like, "Nah man.  It's cool."  We wished each other the best of luck.  Then all of my friends left to go do other stuff since they got eliminated, and I was like, "NO!  Friendship!  I will lose if you don't support me with your friendship!  Has Yu-Gi-Oh! taught you nothing!"  My predictions ended up being true.

Round 5: L vs. The Blood

I secure an amazing rush early, getting the guy to 5 damage.  For the first and third turns after this, hitting a single trigger would have secured game for me... but he ended up winning the game of pressure, getting an ultimate break out, and continuously swinging for good numbers with crossridden defense.  I make a pretty cool move by using Marmoset to off himself while calling a Coiling to cycle it into a new card while using him as a pretty legit beater.  Each turn after the opening turns would start with me drawing a crit, soul charging a crit, scrying a non-crit, putting it at the bottom, and hitting two non-crits, save turn 4 when he had a perfect guard to handle the bonus crit Tom.  I made a big push on the fifth turn, sacking two of my boosters to hit some magic numbers.  A single crit could have won the game for me, but I only had 3 left in my 18~ card deck.  No cigar.  It was a great match all-around that could have gone either way.

Round 6: L vs. DOtE

He hit no less than 4 draws in the first 3 turns.  I knew he had his extra DOtE's in hand.  Since I got him to 3 damage on my first turn from hitting a crit, I was very surprised that he went straight for my rear guards since I was at no damage for a few turns.  He ended up amassing an enormous hand, but stayed at 3 for quite a while.  I was in a bad spot, though, since my first damage check was a Tom, and my first soul charge was a Tom.  I had a Tom in my opening hand, but he attacked it with his Vanguard Dragonic Overlord, and I didn't have the ability to guard that and his rear-guards from getting Tom.  I was able to prevent a bonus critical because of his decision, so I was literally at 0 damage to his 3 when he rode DOtE.  Since he used Conroe to fetch a Barri, I'm not sure that it mattered.  I kept guarding DOtE since it had a draw trigger booster, and as I said, I knew had that DOtE in his hand.  The guy made several misplays throughout the match.  He said he had only been playing for 2 weeks, and he was super surprised he got as far as he did.  I end up checking Tom with my scry, and with two gone I wasn't sure what to do.  I decided to put it at the bottom, but that might not have been the best choice.  He had two nulls and I had other units I could call to the front, so I wanted more things to guard with.  The game edged on into turn 5 or 6, I had 2 cards left in my hand, and I knew I had no chance to survive the next turn since I couldn't force out much guard over his 13k wall, I had no more Toms, and he had 9 cards in hand.  ~_~  But the card I drew into for turn was a Psychic Bird.  I moved it to soul and drew a card.  I swing with CEO at his Vanguard, and he no guards it since he's going to be able to block everything after that easily.  Since he was new, he didn't know about CEO's megablast.  Psychic Bird secured the 8th soul for me, so I was able to draw 5 from my deck, which put me back in the game.  A little cheesy, but it helped make up for (albeit way too late) all of the cards he drew into earlier.  I burn most of the cards to guard all of his attacks.  I have enough for a full field, and nothing more.  I end up hoping beyond hope that he two-to-passes me the next turn, since I had plenty of crits in my deck, and manmode was my only way out.  He's at 4 at this point.  He nulls me, I double crit, passing one trigger to each rear-guard.  He guards both of those and still has a good 2-3 cards in hand.  I didn't have enough to guard all of his units and have no heals, so I one-to-pass DOtE, win the one-to-pass, but lose to a rear guard attack.  Not much I could have done to sway the game back into my favor since my deck was at only 5 cards from sitting on CEO for so long.  No complaints though, I put up a hell of a fight given the circumstances and I'm very satisfied with the results that Tom and Jerry gave me for the tournament.

Kageroyals piloted by Dustin Henry - Side Special

Poor, poor Dustin.  He got sacked so hard.  ;__;  It's not him, it's me.  My luck did this to him.

Game 1 - L vs. Ezel

His opponent went first.  Dustin attacks, crits and it's now his opponent's turn.  Turn 2 superior ride into Ezel.  They use two self-damagers, bringing themself up to 4, limit break with Ezel getting a 9-10k out, and now he can't guard Ezel at all.    Double crit.  Power got passed to a RG row with a boost which also couldn't be guarded without dropping 3 cards.  The Ezel style superior rides are extremely tough for Kageroyals to handle since it's based around guarding Vanguard attacks early with single cards, and both Ezel's 1k for each GP rear guard and Twin-Drive!! get in the way of that.  Securing that into a double crit is the ultimate disaster for Kageroyals, because it takes away the cheap, single-card guarding advantage that the deck utilizes.  After losing all of the momentum in an instant, he attacks with his grade 2.  His opponent swings in again for huge numbers, and he just couldn't hold up.  Ezel has always been registered as a counter deck, but this is the absolute worst-case scenario for the match-ups.

Game 2 - L vs. Master Beetle Megacolony

He ended up taking a lead against his opponent and pushing them to 5 damage.  He gets knocked to 5 as well.  He starts his turn, attacks with Dragonic Waterfall, "persona blasts" for 31k, and his opponent is like, "Wow, 31k!  I can't guard that!".  Drive check 1, crit.  Drive check 2, crit.  His opponent says, "Wow.  I'm not even going to check my damage.  Good game, man."  Dustin, being a bro, is like, "Dude, check your damage.  You never know."  Heal.  Heal.  Heal.  Dustin loses the next turn.  Words cannot describe...

Tom and Jerry

Decklist:

Starter - Flask Marmoset

4x Ruler Chameleon (Crit) - When it gets retired, you can counterblast 1, search your deck for another one, and add it to your hand. This only works if you have a Great Nature vanguard, so this is a viable tactic for a grade 1/2 rush if you didn't secure Libra as a ride.
4x Triangle Cobra (Crit)
4x Psychic Bird (Crit) - Move to soul, draw.
4x Oracle Guardian, Nike (Crit)

Grade 1's

4x Silver Wolf (Makes tom 20k with one dope)
4x Coiling Duckbill (Draw when a unit is retired, 23k with two dopes and Tom)
3x Tank Mouse (Tap him, give a unit +4k.  You can call over him to play a booster for Binoculus for a push or leave him behind a VG Cookie for 21k.)
2x Chocolate (Perfect Guard.  Sucks if you have to ride it, but still very easy to get late game since you mill through your deck very quickly.)
1x Tic-Toc Flamingo (Unflips a damage since almost everything is CB2.  A single tech because we don't really need it, but it's still better to have around than an excess of Tank Mouse's 6k body.)

Grade 2's

4x Binoculus Tiger (When it attacks a VG, give 4k to the unit boosting Tom.  If you miss Tom, he can dope his own booster, which if it's 8k, can make 21k.  All kinds of combo play here.)
4x Silent Tom (Can't be guarded by grade 0's)
3x Maiden of Libra (CB2, draw on hit)

Grade 3's

4x CEO Amaterasu (Scries top card, makes it a 70% chance to crit.  Thins deck.  Potential megablast.  Makes 21k with the 7k units, and you typically want to call Coiling behind her anyway.)
4x Battle Sister, Cookie (CB2, draw 2, discard 1.  Synergizes greatly with the fast paced draw and mill of the deck to get out all of your Toms.  Swings for 21k with Tank Mouse and 23k with Silver Wolf.)

Tom and Jerry is a Great Nature and Oracle Think Tank mixed deck that focuses on using the power doping of Great Nature to increase the power of a booster behind Silent Tom while having an Oracle Think Tank vanguard, so that he becomes incredibly difficult to guard against, requiring either 3 or more cards, or a perfect guard.  The Vanguards of the deck, Cookie and CEO also swing for over 21k pretty easily, so this makes opponents want to drop multiple nulls per turn, but instead they have to also 2 to pass your Vanguard with grade 0's, which really burns out their resources and can open up 2-to-pass victories in a lot of cases.  The deck also uses its counterblasts on Libra and Cookie to draw, or if the game goes on for a while, CEO to Megablast.  Flask Marmoset is also an option.  Since we have the OTT card draw, deck thinning, and trigger scrying to go with Great Nature's unflipping (Tic-Toc), drawing (Duckbill), and doping (Tank Mouse, Binoculus), the deck lets you burn through itself to consistently get out what you need.  Typically, by time they can kill a Tom, I'll have another one ready to play.  Additionally, with 16 criticals and Amaterasu scrying the top card for them, we get a 70% chance to crit.  That's right, Tom gets even deadlier.

Link to Youtube video of the deck.

School of Hard Locks

This deck was originally theorized to make Schwartzchild suck less. I think that Schwarzchild's effect is very powerful and over-the-top, so I decided to make a deck around maybe getting it off twice. That being said, I'm still fiddling around with the ratios and looking forward to adding in newer support for Great Nature to really get the ball going with this. Here's my current decklist so far.

Starter - Micro Hole Dracokid

Triggers

8 critical triggers for Great Nature (Upping to 12 when we get it on Area)
8 critical triggers for Link Joker (Reducing to 4 when we get the GN support on Area)

Grade 1's

Great Nature:
4x Coiling Duckbill
4x Tic-Toc Flamingo
2x Monoculus (Still playing around with these)
1x Tank Mouse (Still playing around with these)

Link Joker:
4x Gravity Ball Dragon
2x Barrier Star-Vader, Promethium

Grade 2's

Great Nature:
4x Binoculus Tiger
4x Compass Lion

Link Joker:
4x Gravity Collapse Dragon

Grade 3's

Link Joker:
4x Schwartzchild Dragon


This deck functions in a similar fashion to Tom and Jerry, but has a different goal of making some extremely consistent persona blasting with Schwartzchild. This deck has the same base consistencies (ride chain and top 5 search on ride) added in with the Great Nature's Coiling Duckbill to cycle through cards quickly and Tic-Toc Flamingo to unflip the damage expended on these things to get a potential second persona blast. While the deck only has two nulls, you get a lot of defense out of just a single persona blast, and guarding early and wisely in this otherwise low-counterblast deck will help you secure a larger advantage over the course of the game. When pushing for game, you have several outs to empower any Great Nature rear guards you want to, and with the right combinations of cards, you can net cards back or unflip damage during the process. You also have great turn 2 defensive options between landing the ride chain and locking a unit on the opponent's field to having an 11k Compass Lion Vanguard. If Compass Lion is your Vanguard, you can even go without retiring any units if you don't have any Great Nature rear-guards out, which is a nice way to bypass that restriction while sitting on solid defenses.

I'm still looking to future support for both clans and seeing what I can adapt to this as I'm playtesting it. So far, if I get out any reasonable set-up, the deck works amazingly, especially with early Duckbills.

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.