Locals Report - 04/26/13: Continuing on the Amphibian Path

Hey guys, welcome to this week's local tournament report! Here's the build I used this week:

The only change since last week was taking out my third Enemy Controller to fit in a Foolish Burial. Even though I had both this efficient new change and new knowledge of some tricks you can do with Swap Frog, for some reason all day Friday I just had a bad feeling. I felt even worse when I noticed a LOT of other people playing the same deck as me - a mirror match is never really good, but in the case of Monarchs... well, I don't know what to say. It is literally one of the worst mirror matches this game has ever produced, at least in the vein of commonly played decks in a given format. I can't say I'm surprised people are playing it though: it's cheap, and it tops. I can't wait until I get a Treacherous, a second Vanity's Fiend, and Constellar Ptolemy so I don't have to feel like my deck is shit anymore.

 

To the right are my pulls from five packs of Hidden Arsenal 7, bought before the tournament - not super good pulls, but at least all of my Secrets are relevant. I still couldn't shake that bad feeling, though... Let's go ahead and review the tournament.






Round 1 vs Herald Agents
Yep, it's back... Although this time in the hands of a small child that I've played twice before.
G1: After a while, he got out Herald and Kristya so I scooped
G2: He literally opened with all five Normals in his deck; meanwhile I got out LADD so it was basically sealed.
G3: I made the right play to avoid Honest by attacking Gachi with Vanity's Fiend instead of Venus, but next turn he tributed them both for Kristya. SALT.

0-1
I just realized that ARA is semi-limited now, which probably explains why so many people are playing this deck. Ugh.

Round 2 vs Lightsworn

G1: He literally had to read every single card I played, so this took a very long time. I was going to give up at one point (because nobody wants to have two Judgment Dragons dropped on them), but kept going until I eventually won. This game basically guarantees to me that I should keep running two Slacker Magician, lol.
G2: This took a long time too, but he attacked into my Gorz with Leviathan even after seeing me add it to my hand with Duality, then forgot to attack the token with his Daedalus. Then, a late game Creature Swap to trade my Treeborn for his Judgment Dragon sealed it.

1-1

Round 3 vs Frog Monarchs
Sigh... I guess it had to happen.
G1: I was in a good position to win, but he ECon'd my Raiza and summoned LADD to hit for game.
G2: He opened Crow + Veiler, but I spammed Raiza and then eventually summoned Vanity to lock him out.
G3: This time, it was me who got to open Crow + Veiler but I had no follow up. I stayed in it for a long time, then topped Soul Exchange to go with my Caius two turns in a row to make a comeback against cards like Vanity and Anubis. But he dropped Dark Dust on me when I only had 1200 left, god damn it.

1-2
This was really quite depressing. My headache was awful now as well.

Round 4 vs Karakuri
This was my first time playing against a friendly guy that I've traded with a lot before.

G1: Raiza + LADD
G2: This took a LONG time as I had to fight through both Macro AND Rivalry. System Down helped me stay in it for a long time and he actually took a lot of damage, but I still eventually died to a Bureido.
G3: Time was called right after we finished Game 2, and I guessed that we couldn't start Game 3 - a judge came by and confirmed this.

1-2-1

Since all four of my rounds were especially long and taxing (causing one of the worst headaches I've had in months) and I couldn't top anyways, I decided to just call it quits for the night. The store spent money on buying boxes of HA07 instead of more Astral Pack 2 this week, so I was treated to an Astral Pack 1 interestingly enough. Not a very good holo, but the other stuff I got that night was pretty freaking awesome. Originally I got a slightly damaged Tiger King from the same person that traded me all of the things on the right, but then gave it up for that Pyrorex which I actually can use. It's gonna suck when Pyrorex gets reprinted, lol.