As far as deck changes go, before the tournament I was finally able to get the second copy of Vanity's Fiend that I've been needing for SO long, and ironically from my Round 4 opponent lol. As expected, I also learned another important detail about this deck between this tournament and the last one - returning a monster to the hand for Swap Frog is a cost, so it can still be activated even if he's hit with Effect Veiler. Needless to say, this is a HUGE deal. I might start to write an article on all of the different things I've learned or important details you should know about Frog Monarchs sometime soon, because it's really fascinating how much a "linear" deck can teach you. Anyways, on to the tournament:
Round 1 vs ???
Sorry to do the question marks to you guys again, but it turned out I would be dueling a guy who had never played in a tournament before. As such, the match is not really exciting to write about (no distinct deck type, only thought there was one game in a round, etc.), although I will say that by coincidence I got the most amazing hand going first in Game 1 - something like Swap, Caius, Fader, LADD, E-Con and something else.
1-0
Round 2 vs Wind-Ups
I played this guy before in Round 2 on 12/14/12, and that wasn't very much fun.
G1: I opened really shitty, and he put out Maestroke + Tiras to make things even worse. You would think those cards would be easy salt for a Monarch deck to handle, but not when you open with crap! I tried to Dark Hole out of desperation, but he flipped Starlight fucking Road so I scooped. That card is such a fucking thorn in my side.
G2: I was under Dimensional Fissure, but I summoned Jinzo and slugged him to death. Gotta love it when theories come to life!
G3: He had Fissure again, and I had no answers. To be completely honest with you guys, I really didn't even feel like playing this round anymore. I did some combo with Swap Frog and Enemy Controller that let me get Jinzo on the board quickly, but I lost nearly my entire hand doing it and basically lost when he went into Leviathan. I just didn't care anymore.
1-1
Round 3 vs Infernity
G1: I'm not sure what happened, but I know I lost and that it took quite a while.
G2: I pulled this one out against the odds from my opponent's godly topdecks, but by this time we only had six minutes left. My opponent told me that he definitely wanted to keep playing, so I had to.
G3: This time, luck was on MY side as he opened with crap while I opened amazingly. The Monarchs beat him down quickly and badly; he never even got to start a loop. His gamble didn't pay off!
2-1
Round 4 vs Black Garden Plants
This was the same guy I played during the last tournament who used Karakuri.
G1: This game was noticeably brutal; I felt a bit bad for having such a smooth flow of power plays against one of the very few people I actually talk to at locals.
G2: This one took a long time, but my key mistake was (among other things) not Maxx "C"ing his Debris play - TWICE. (And to be honest, I'm not surprised that I made a mistake like that considering how new I am to using Maxx "C", relatively speaking. When a card is so expensive for so long, oftentimes I just ignore its existence because I have no chance of playing with it in real life, and therefore it isn't as important to me. Anyways, back to the game.)
I still found a use for my Maxx "C"s later on by chaining them to Black Garden's effect, and they helped me draw into some amazing cards that put the game extremely in my favor. But I still lost when, on the second to last turn of time and my life at 200 while my opponent had 100, my opponent destroyed Black Garden to bring back his Black Rose Dragon from the grave and swing at my (Garden-halved, Gachi-boosted) Jinzo for game. SIGH... Gotta do better next time. At least it won't take a YCS top finish to avoid something like this happening in the future. I was also excited to find out who I'd be playing now that my total points would be 7 instead of 9 - who knew, maybe it'd be easy and I could end up getting a 3-1-1 for the top?
2-1-1
Round 5 vs Evols
A wild little kid appears!
G1: He used Najasho + Evo Force to get out Dolkka and Elias first turn, but had no backrow to protect them so I just Soul Exchange + Raiza'd him for the "first turn win". After that, a constant stream of Monarch effects kept him from really doing anything.
G2: For some reason he kept going when I Maxx "C"d his Westlo, letting me draw something like four or five cards. Then he swung right into a Tragoedia, and with 4800 DEF he had to pass. I drew to nine in hand and tried to smack his attack position Westlo for a hilarious 4600 damage while he had 8000 life, but he revealed Scrap-Iron Scarecrow so I just sacked for Dark Dust and blew up his four-man board. Even though I had to discard something like two or three cards in the end phase (lol), multiple Raizas killed his chances of putting together any combos and I won.
3-1-1
Since I've topped with this record before, I felt confident that I would do it again. I was ready to try and coerce whoever I'd be playing to split, or roll the dice if they really didn't want to. (This time, I wouldn't let myself become the scapegoat for some "pro" player's road to the top.) But when our TO called out the Top 8 names, she didn't say mine... What the hell? I was really disappointed, because my burning desire to top had been left unsatisfied AGAIN.
No comments:
Post a Comment