10/11/13 Locals Report: Feathers in Full Force!

I haven't been able to attend a local tournament since 09/20/13, and in that time I decided on another deck to help pull myself out of the Monarch Period. The deck, as you can see below, is none other than Blackwings! Although I used to play Blackwings for a while up until about two years ago, I recently developed a burning hatred for the deck due to the immense numbers of fanboys jumping on its dick after the September 2013 banlist was revealed. But as much as I didn't want to play the deck at first, I had to acknowledge the fact that it 1) has some actual credentials behind it, and 2) is exceedingly affordable for me to build with my current collection. So without further ado, here's the inaugural deck list!

One of the first things I learned when I began researching Blackwings two weeks ago or so was that it is truly a deck that you cannot copy. Because of the wide range of different choices the theme offers, the cards that one player picks will almost never work out quite as well for another. Because of this, I had to do a lot of theory-oh in order to come up with this build. Here's some of the less-than-common choices that might need to be explained.

1. I honestly don't know of a single person that uses Mistral besides me, but he was a rockstar back in 2011 and he's still a great card now. He kind of substitutes for Vayu in the "go-to card that you'll summon with Shura" slot, except he makes your field very robust and defensive instead of simply nabbing a Level 5 Synchro. He also happens to actually be useful on his own, unlike Vayu, and saved me from getting OTK'd once during the tournament.

2. When I was originally hashing out the main deck, I realized I had a couple of slots left open and didn't want to fill them with Spells or Traps for fear of those dreaded no-monster hands. So after a quick run-through of my file of Dark standalone monsters, I thought that Doomcaliber Knight might be a decent fit since I didn't feel like Veiler and other hand traps would be very good in Blackwings.

3. I never like to play Yugioh without Mystical Space Typhoon, so it makes an appearance here as just a one-of. Even in a deck like Blackwings, you can't deny that there's a gigantic number of potential problem cards that need to be hit by it in a wide range of Game 1s.

4. I know a lot of Blackwing players don't run things like Dark Hole and Torrential Tribute, but I felt like they were worth running and needed to see their interactions with my own eyes. None of my testing leading up to Friday had shown me any evidence that they were unworthy of play, so I kept them in for the event.

5. The only reason I'm not running a second Emptiness, second Debunk or Diamond Dire Wolf is because I just don't have those cards and would rather not spend money on them. Utopia takes the place of Dire Wolf in the Extra, and Gachi is just there for now to make my Extra a full 15 until I find something better.

Before this week's tournament started, it was announced that my local would no longer be doing draws, and instead matches would be decided through sudden death. This worries me, because my last three tops in a row at this store have all been due to an x-1-1 record. But nevertheless, here is this week's report.

Round 1 vs Dragunity

G1: My opponent just kept setting cards until he lost.

G2: This game he was able to summon Gae Dearg (I'm guessing he doesn't have Vajrayanas), but when he attacked I used Mirror Force. It was super effective!

1-0

Round 2 vs Laval Rulers
A wild little kid appears! I hoped this would be easy, but I found out differently as soon as I realized his deck type.

G1: It turns out that repeatedly summoning and attacking with Blaster is pretty OP, and so is mother fucking Rekindling. Ugh.

G2: I'm lucky I had Warning for his Starlight, or else I would have instantly lost lol. For most of this game my opponent had nothing and just took attack after attack, but when he was down to 100 he started to make a comeback. I stupidly brought back a Blizzard with another Blizzard and went into Gachi, totally forgetting that Blizzard CANNOT be Special Summoned. Oddly, none of the other people who occasionally glanced over at our game noticed either. He left a Trooper out in the process of setting up another Blaster attack, which allowed Gachi to run it over next turn for game.

G3: I don't exactly remember this game, but I know that I won (somehow). Whew...

2-0

Round 3 vs Dragon Rulers

G1: Don't remember this game, but I lost.

G2: Sirocco+Whirlwind into Crimson Blader is too OP. And so is Kalut.

G3: I felt good about this one after my opponent summoned Crimson Blader instead of Scrap Dragon for some reason, but even after making a strong play with Bora and Gale to clear both his Blader and Trooper, I still died to a ridiculous onslaught from Blaster and two other huge monsters, one of which he summoned with DDR.

2-1

Round 4 vs Fire Kings

G1: I was sure I was going to lose this game after not using Torrential when I should have and eating a ton of damage as a result, but I killed his Cowboy with Icarus at the last minute and clawed my way back, eventually beating him with my own Cowboy lol.

G2: This one was a lot less scary. Soul Drain for his Nephthys and Emptiness for his Onslaught left him with no monsters to defend against my Shura constantly hitting him.

3-1

Round 5 vs Mermails

G1: I played too passively in this game. I should have used Warning on his initial Megalo summon, and he never summoned more than one monster so I never felt comfortable using Torrential until it was effectively too late.

G2: For the first time since starting to play this deck, I opened with double Whirlwind. However, my opponent literally dropped three Infantries to summon Abyssleed. :( I lost my Zephyros and two Whirlwinds, but I had Bottomless for Leed and my opponent never really regained his footing. I won when he surrendered after summoning Bahamut, not activating its effect, and attacking right into Zephyros boosted by Kalut.

G3: This went into time after a little bit. My opponent decided that rather than trying to kill me through my lone Psyhemuth, he would use the Bahamut + Trite wall, in addition to already controlling Zenmaines and Linde. I drew Blizzard on the last turn of time, with two Kaluts in hand. Surprisingly for me, I worked out a combo that would give me the win: By using Blizzard to summon Armed Wing and attack Linde, I could drop both Kaluts and have 900 more life than my opponent after the piercing. However, my opponent used Effect Veiler. GOD DAMN IT.

3-2: DROP

There were going to be six rounds on that night, but I decided to just drop since I already had two losses. It really sucks to lose on the bubble to a single card, but even if I had won, there's no guarantee I would've fared any better in Round 6. So all in all, not a bad showing for my new feathery deck! I look forward to giving it another shot next week (or whenever I can attend locals again) after I make some changes.

Unfortunately I can't find a picture of the cards I got on that night, but I do know that it includes 3 secret Tidals, 1 Aerosguin, 1 Totem Bird, 1 Sword Breaker, 1 Herald of Pure Light, and Falling Down, Deck Lockdown and that Archfiend monster card from my Astral Pack. Thanks for reading!