Monday, April 30, 2012

Introduction to the world of DEFER and his adventures

Welcome all blog readers to my humble new home. But first, a quick bit of info about myself. My name is Dean and I have played Yu-Gi-Oh! since the first structure decks came out. However, competitively, I have only been playing for about 4 and a half years. In saying that, I have only competed in a few official Konami events (those being primarily local tourneys) because the country I lived in before (Shout-out BRUNEI) receives no love from Konami. So for the 3 years that I played Yu-Gi-Oh! in Brunei, we organised our own player-held tournaments with other players who doubled as suppliers. During this time our regular group gatherings grew from a number not exceeding 30 to now include in excess of 170 members which is growing by 5 or so weekly. We even made our own facebook group to better keep in contact with other members for trades and such. Don't bother trying to look for it though as:
1. You are most likely not living in Brunei and so you won't be accepted into the group
2. The content is private

However, if you are a fellow blogger and reckon you can improve the quality of our community, then I don't see why our admin would not accept you. This is more pointed towards those in Malaysia and such though.

Many times I have felt the loss of passion needed to keep interested in Yu-Gi-Oh!, yet here I remain, 4 years on. In my opinion, Dueling Network was the best invention ever (ironically not by Konami), allowing players to not only have the option to get a game when they are can't find someone to play against irl, but mainly for the reason that one can test deck ideas out to see if they are viable, and then perfect them. I myself, am very hyped for the Geargia and Magical archtypes. Only today I learnt exactly how to spam Geargiganto in the most basic form, and then I figured out the variations on the plays. The TCG should definitely be looking out for this deck because just like Samurai did upon first being released, they have made a solid impact. As for Magicals, Temper has to be my most favourite spellcaster because of his art and his effect. The archtype in general functions on what spellcaster should have always been based around: spell cards. These cards are the various "Book of Spell" spell cards which have a variety of useful effects that you can toolbox off the main searcher card. But I will review these guys with alot more detail in a few days as I have only begun my DN testing. I want a few more results against different types of decks before I give my verdict. However, I will say that I can see that there are many potential builds available depending on what way you want the deck to run.

I originally played OCG because that is what Asia runs by, and we were in Asia so go figure. But another reason was that the OCG was so much more fun and simpler (and less sacky) because it lacked the "priority for ignition effects" ruling. I must admit that Konami releasing this information was music to my ears, allowing me to make the transition from OCG to TCG that much easier. To date, I am only missing the TCG versions of 5 or 6 synchros and exceeds that I plan on actually using. However, the only one that I anticipate being a problem to obtain will be Zenmaines for obvious reasons.


One thing I will miss about the OCG (even as I write now) are cards like CardCar D, Rescue Rabbit, Inzektor Hornet, among many others being commons and rares in the OCG and hence, good decks are relatively cheap.
Currently, I live in Newcastle, living the poor university student's life while trying not to splurge too much on cards. Just this weekend I headed over to Good Games Newcastle for the weekend tourney. The buses screwed me around getting there but I wasn't late so there were no problems. While waiting for it to start, I had a look around at some of the decks being used. I had expected some to encounter some top decks here and there, but nearly everyone had an inzektor deck of differing qualities, while another was running the full-blown Dino-Rabbits without Tourguides (fair enough I say). I ended up taking my new monarch deck as I wanted to test the water, and also, it happens to be one of the decks that I feel very comfortable running. Although, after the tournament, there could be minor improvements in how comfortable it is, mainly residing in the side-deck, and how I side.

Match 1 - James w/ Lightsworns
*Duel 1 - After a couple of turns of setting up the frogs and building a strong hand thanks to duality while holding off a celestia, I was able to successfully summon a vanity's fiend backed by at least 1 veiler to negate the impending ryko, and that was that. Vanity's fiend is beastly like that. Gorz can suck it.
*Duel 2 - He stated off with alot of milling and drawing and by the second turn he'd ryko'd, tributed that for a celestia and had a wulf on the field too. A couple of monarch summons later and he was down to about 3200 lp. Next turn a JD was summoned, naturally sacking the whole field including 2 of my monarchs and he then summoned a Lyla. On the following turn I ripped the monarch I needed (Raiza I believe it was) and comboed that with an enemy controller on his JD. With 5400 damage coming his way, there wasn't much he could do.
OO

While waiting for the next round, I played James' brother, Chris who was running a Tele-Dad-esque deck. Interesting and looked like heaps of fun. Still raped it will vanity's fiend though. Good card is too good. Until...

Match 2 - Frosty w/ Inzektor
*Duel 1- I started off with one of the most useless hand ever consisting of 1 caius, backed by enemy controller, soul exchange, an mst and a heavy storm. A couple of turns later and there was still nothing of any use so I watched to see how well he knew his gigamantis combos and once I decided he was no fool, I scooped it up. All he knew was that I ran caius, and had drawn shit.
*Duel 2 - In short, this is essentially where the heavy and mst from the last game would have come in handy. I opened with swap frog to dump treeborn but on his turn he dualitied into warning, summoned centipede to run over swap frog and then set 2 backrows. With only a vanity's fiend and raiza, I could only hold out for a couple of turns before he pressed with underground arachnid (wtf moment). Then the foolish sent the hornet, and the loop was on again. Vanity's fiend does absolutely nothing against Inzektors which doesn't help at all.
XX

Match 3 - BYE w/ nothing obviously
*I had wanted to play as many people as possible but whatever. While this was on I watched David play his Dino-Rabbits against Shaun's Inzektors, who I would surprisingly face next.
--

Match 4 - Shaun w/ Inzektors
*Duel 1 - After a few turns of back-and-forth beatdown, I thought I had this with a battle fader in hand to save me, but he looped me on the turn after anyway. Side out all vanity's fiends bar 1 copy (should have taken that out too) and DDV (not as useful in general as I'd hoped) for 2 d.d. crows, and an extra LaDD.
*Duel 2 - On turn 3, after fader-ing I get a LaDD down and it just goes downhill for him then.
*Duel 3 - I try to make a strong start as I can tell he has no hornet, but suddenly he dark holes and I'm out of tribute fodder as treeborn is nowhere to be seen. After a couple of turns if surviving with fader (but he popped it when he could) and veilers, my resulting hand was LaDD, Vanity's Fiend, Raiza, Thestalos, Caius, and a freshly drawn Zaborg staring down about 4500 damage coming next turn while I was only on 3000ish. Naturally I scooped it up at that point.
XOX

Well now, at least I know what I'll be up against. Next time I'll take my other deck that is slightly more competitive and less dependent on the opponent's plays. I'll also know how to tech it out as well. The side deck needs a little more love but I never really sided much in Brunei so while the concept of siding isn't new in any way, the mental process and decision-making is somewhat. As for monarchs, next week photon strike bounzer comes out and then I'll get my third veiler that I can make at any time, deals damage while negating, and has a 2700 body - all in one card. And don't forget it's a light too. BLS thanks you for that very much. The only other cards that the deck really needs are pending OCG imports, namely being IllusionSnatch (REDU) which will allow me to easily go into Strike Bounzer as well as Constellar Ptolemys M7, Constellar Pleiades and Tiras. All of these cards allow for more control to slow the duel down to the monarch's pace, while IllusionSnatch enables monarchs to hit a turn faster, while exceeding into either of the above exceeds, forcing the opponent to have a strong out and to immediately use it, making way for the safe summoning of more monarchs afterwards.

Next week is the GAOV sneak peak and I'm pretty hyped for that because I REALLY want Strike Bounzer, Sun Dragon and/or CardCar D. In addition, I have never been to a sneak peak. Also I am in need of a mat. I only have the lame structure deck paper ones. For the duration of the weekend's tourney I even borrowed one off Chris. Yeah, exactly. Thanks to him for that though.

This post has gone on for alot longer than I had anticipated, but I'm not really a fan of posts that lack meat, especially for my first one too. I'm here to make an impression and to educate those in Australia and around the world as well. Come to think about it, the only Aussie blog I know is a guy who writes about traditional format decks, so that's not too much help to many people at all.

What else to expect from this blog in future posts:
*Card Reviews
*Tourney Reports (but I wont go overboard with this)
*Deck Builds
*Combo Explanations
*Ruling Clarifications
*I dunno I'll make it up as I go along
*Anything else you guys want me to include

My name on DN is DEFER if you haven't already guessed. Hit me up if you see me online. I don't go online alot but when I do, I usually crank out marathons of 20 duels or so.

If you have any questions about anything at all, chuck em below and I'll make a point of answering them, though I don't expect many, being only a few hours old. Hopefully I can build my blogosphere network up over time to become the powerhouses that Dueling Days, LFN and YGO, and Light Grunty have worked hard towards. Make sure you have a read of the blogs on the right of my page. They have been my source of Yu-Gi-Oh! info for the past 2 years and can most certainly be yours too. I'll leave you to figure out which ones are of the highest quality, and which ones you can learn the most off.

Till next time, this is DEFER signing out, your friendly neighbourhood Aussie duelist.