To sum these changes up quickly:
1. Dropping from 3 Skill Drain to 2
This card didn't work as well as I thought it would in testing, but I know that it's a real blowout against a lot of decks so I pretty much have to keep playing it. However, I don't like three anymore. It feels excessive, even with the blowout potential. I just feel like I need room for other cards.
2. Dropping from 3 Mind Crush to 2
Again, this didn't work out as well as I thought it would. It's still a powerful card, but I wanted more space. Also, there aren't many decks against which you really NEED three of them.
3. Adding Nobleman of Crossout
I felt like I had enough side options for Dragon Rulers, so I liked the fact that this card would help combat rogue decks for a change. Though Blackwings tend to have a good rogue matchup, there's nothing wrong with adding more tools to make it easier. This of course ironically happened mere days before Sam Pedigo won YCS Turin with Geargia.
4. Adding a second Black Horn of Heaven
This card has always been a favorite of mine. I absolutely LOVE watching people invest into an Extra Deck summon only to have it blown away by a single card with no cost, not to mention the other things it can stop. Blackwings can have trouble with boss monsters, so flat-out negating them is fun.
5. Exchanging Black Rose Dragon with Master Key Beetle
I realized that BRD was dead weight for me so far. Blackwings invest heavily into their field presence, so dropping it hurts you pretty badly most of the time. In addition, I haven't made it a single time since I started playing this deck. Key Beetle on the other hand occasionally helps create unfair wins against unfair decks (*cough* Dragon Rulers), and I felt like I needed that chance to make me more competitive at locals. I just reached this conclusion earlier in the day, so I bought Key Beetle right before the tournament and added it to my deck in a hurry, having never used it before.
6. Exchanging Utopia with Diamond Dire Wolf
This is a pretty basic change, but it only just now happened because our store's vendor found a promo copy to sell me right before the tournament, costing me only $2. Yay for reprints! Doesn't my deck look so much better with these new, powerful options?
One note: The Blackship of Corn in the Extra was actually a Photon Papilloperative at the time.
With all of that done, let's talk about the tournament.
Round 1 vs Random
This was a young child who didn't know the difference between banished and Graveyard. I won't spend time talking about this and bore you guys; it was a 2-0.
1-0
Round 2 vs Dragunity Rulers
This is the same guy I've been unfortunately matched up with the past two tournaments in a row, now three. At least now I don't have to be afraid of him anymore. I beat him once, so I feel like it can happen again. Plus this was only Round 2, so I was a lot more relaxed and we had a pretty chill match.
G1: Sick of getting sacked by Return.
G2: Another one of those game 2 or 3s where I open up unbalanced, this time with no Traps. I made a rather above-average play here considering my personal problems with combos. My opponent had Spark and Ptolemy out, but didn't want to attack, fearing Kalut. So I had two level 4s out, and summoned Blizzard to bring back Kalut and go into Catastor, trying to bait any protection. There wasn't any yet, so I overlaid my other two monsters for Zerofyne, one of the best outs to Spark. However, when my opponent finished reading the effect he used Divine Wrath. I continued making some plays afterward thanks to Zephyros, but in hindsight I really think that was the end of the game.
1-1
Man, don't you just hate it when your opponent has the answer? When you really need them NOT to? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I can't be a better player. But Return and Divine Wrath really ruined these games for me.
Round 3 vs Geargia
G1: This game started out a little murky, but eventually I put together the resources needed to take the lead.
G2: Although I topdecked Crossout on the first turn, I didn't draw any monsters until it was basically too late. But man did Emptiness put in work. Chaining that thing to a Geargiarsenal is the bees' knees.
G3: This game didn't even seem too good for me until he flipped two Armors to search two Geargiarsenals, then I flipped Mind Crush and he not only lost those two but a third one in his hand! This is the first and probably last time I will ever Mind Crush somebody for three cards. It's one of the best cards out there, I swear.
I made a crucial mistake here that cost me the game. When deciding how to go about getting around his two Armors, I decided to flip one of my Reapers into attack, then summon Key Beetle, thinking that if Key Beetle were to get killed, I'd just send the Reaper and keep a 2500 beater out. It wouldn't be a big deal to lose one Reaper since I had the other copy also set (what are the odds). My mistake here was twofold: thinking that Key Beetle could only protect face-up cards was false, but even if that were true it would've been better to flip both Reapers and go into Zenmaines instead of just leaving one out there in attack position with no protection. Either way, Key Beetle got hit with a timely Fiendish Chain.
My opponent somehow did the GGX loop (that thing really shouldn't be able to pull from the Graveyard) and attacked my Reaper a bunch of times, dropping me all the way from 8000 to 1100. My memory gets murky from here in terms of the order in which things happened, but I think I have it mostly right. I used Blizzard to make Psyhemuth and stomp one of the GGXs, but of course we went into time. He crashed his Utopia into Psyhemuth for some reason, losing it. Then his Fortress attacked into Key Beetle, killing them both and Fortress' effect killed my Reaper. However, he ran right into the second Reaper and had no way past it. I resolved a gigantic Torrential that cleared his five-man board and left only my Maestroke standing, and he forgot to resolve the effects of his GGXs. He tried going into Cowboy at some point, but I Black Horned the shit out of it. Even though I knew I couldn't make up the difference in life, I decided to play it out just to let everybody know that I likely would've had that game if it weren't for time. Maestroke made a direct hit, then he drew into Arsenal and pulled Armor. On the last turn of time I drew Sirocco. I activated Whirlwind, tributed Reaper for Sirocco and searched Bora, Special Summoning it. Sirocco ran over his Armor, and Maestroke and Bora attacked through his lone backrow, knocking him down to 3700... which was nowhere near my 600.
1-2
Moral of the story: Read your cards carefully, especially if you just added them to your deck mere minutes before a tournament began.
I'm not sure if I've said this before, but one of the worst things about locals is that you almost certainly CAN NOT TOP if you have more than a single loss. So I decided to just drop here and spend the rest of my Friday night relaxing. Below is a picture of everything I got that night plus the Astral Pack from the week before (the one with Purple Thorns). Thanks for reading!
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