09/06/13 Locals Report: The End.

Hey guys! It's been about four weeks since the last time I was able to attend locals (08/09/13, didn't write about it on the blog) due to some family problems, but I was finally able to come back this week. As you can imagine, my deck went through some pretty big changes due to the new format in addition to the time I spent away. Instead of going through it all here, I've decided to put that in a separate post, which you can check out here if you're curious. If not, then let's move on to the tournament!

Round 1 vs Harpies
Oh boy, pro time!

G1: This game was extremely long, partially because my opponent couldn't break my Slacker and I baited him into using Icarus on my Typhoon so that I could use Scapegoat safely, providing even more stall. It basically came down to him bringing out Zerofyne and boosting it to 5000 ATK to swing over my Caius, then using Phantasmal Dragon to attack directly for the win. I had a Scarecrow to stop it, but everybody started saying that Scarecrow targets (which you can't do to Phantasmal Dragon) because of the Book of Moon ruling, which to me seems like an obvious load of shit.

NOWHERE in that card does Scarecrow say that it targets, nor is there any reason to believe so. The reason why Book stops Scarecrow has nothing to do with targeting, it's because Book stops the attacking monster from attacking, which then prevents Scarecrow from resolving its effect. But of course nobody would listen to me over their friend that they know and love and would rather have the win go to. Instead of calling every single judge player in the store (who all likely are friends with my opponent anyways), I decided to let it go anyways, because I realized that if I kept going it would probably become a one-game match, with my opponent being the winner.

Just to be clear, I have absolutely nothing against my opponent. He was a pretty normal guy and a respectable player from what I can tell. I'm just irritated that people were clearly supporting him over me because they knew him.

G2: I dealt some big damage to him with Jinzo and a stolen Lightning Chidori, and since Game 1 was so long this eventually went into time. Since he was unable to break my Slacker Magician, I got the win.

0-0-1

Round 2 vs Plant Rulers

G1: Didn't open well enough to fend off his Dragon attacks, especially after he Typhoon'd my Treacherous.

G2: I dropped Vanity's Fiend and he didn't draw any outs.

G3: I opened with Vanity again (after siding in the second copy prior to this game), but he had Dark Hole for it this time. It also sucked to lose this one because a crowd gathered to watch. The only thing better than having Monarchs win against a prominent meta deck is to win with an audience to witness it, and I failed at doing so. Though to be fair, I guess it's not really my fault that he had Dark Hole. Sigh.

0-1-1

Round 3 vs Mermails

G1: My opponent knows me a little bit from some mutual friends that we have at locals. He was very frustrated because his record was 0-2, virtually guaranteeing that he couldn't top. Shortly after I stole his Catastor and used it to summon LADD then ran over his Abysslinde and negated it, he decided to just give me the match and drop.

1-1-1

Round 4 vs ???
I played against a little kid this round, so I guess this match isn't quite worth writing about. It was funny though because in game two, he attempted to save himself from defeat by activating Zoma the Spirit... the second time in two turns that he had tried to activate a Trap Card while I controlled Jinzo.

2-1-1

Round 5 vs Infernity

G1: Opened with Swap+Duality. Luckily, I chose Veiler from Duality, allowing me to stop his Summoner Monk. This ended quickly after I summoned Jinzo while my opponent was unable to draw anything but traps.

G2: This went on for a pretty long time. He gave me probably 7 or so cards by continuing through Maxx "C" so I was able to gain control of the game. He began to topdeck Necromancers and started slowing me down with Abyss Dweller and Barriers, but a copy of Jinzo showed up late in the game and he decided to scoop, conceding that he "couldn't get over Jinzo."

3-1-1

Anddd... no top. Regardless, I feel good about my record from this week, and I realized shortly after the tournament that now would be a very good time to lay my Monarch deck to rest. I really like the deck and I wish I could continue playing it, but it just can't compete that well. So it'd be good to leave the deck on a relative high note, with its final memory being a good one. We did our best together.

I didn't get much in terms of new cards on this night despite asking many people to trade; just a Crane Crane and $2, then a super Heavy Infantry from my Astral Pack. Til next time.