A guide to winning with subpar decks

So today I went to Paramatta with my girlfriend and we participated in the Sealed pack play that I talked about in my previous post. We both paid our $40 entry fee and received our 9 booster packs. I was rather disappointed with each pack I opened as I didn't get any extremely broken cards like Raigeki or Haripe's Feather Duster. But nevertheless I did pull good cards like Gorz, the Emissary of Darkness and Pot of Duality. My girlfriend (Jenny) pulled some pretty amazing cards such as Utopia, Raigeki, Soul exchange, Beast King Barboras, Forbidden lance, Fiendish chain. When I saw her cards I actually did lost a bit of hope of winning the tournament and felt like giving up but I built my deck in the end and even built hers for her.

This is the deck I ended up using in my tournament for sealed pack play.

If you recognise my cards you'll also realise it's not the best deck considering how many other cards were in the pack that I could've gotten. But like I said, this is a guide to winning. I cannot stress how important it is to maintain your composure and stay positive even while using a bad deck. Sadly this was not the case for me and I went into the tournament thinking, just ease up you'll never win with these kind of cards.

In my first round I actually lost my fist game then won 2 games straight by beating my opponent down with my level 4 monsters. My Caius the Shadow monarch actually managed to win the game for me.

After winning round 1, I was exhilarated and shocked. The guy had so many good cards and had a few chances to win the duel, but I guess I managed to time key cards like dark bribe at the right time.

Second round was a shocker. Despite winning I was paired with a person who lost their first round, even more surprising, it was Jenny. Nothing really special about this match it was a quick 2-0 win for me. But there was one rather good play on behalf where I was going to blast sphere her Mobius equipped with a united we stand for 4000 damage. But she used Darkworld shackles to lower her monster to 100 attack points and save herself for a while.

Going into round 3 I was definitely worried, the guy had amazingly broken cards like Pot of Greed and Gorz and Lance. After copping a quick beating in round 1, I was convinced my hopes of winning were crushed. But after some really intense clutch plays, I managed to win the duel. One crucial misplay on my opponents part cost him the match. This is an important part to the game, being able to see your opponents misplays and capitalise on them.

This was it, final round, the bubble. I was secretly mentally preparing myself for the finals but a part of me just couldn't help but feel like the first 3 rounds were all luck and luck can only get you so far. My friend Wayne showed up and we talked a bit about my deck and he thought I had a fighting chance considering the sort of players in the area. The finals began and Wayne was judging. My opponent managed to win a very intense game 1 with a well resolved Raigeki. Despite several misplays on both our behalves (which Wayne was only too happy to point out each time) we managed to get to a 1-1 state where the third game would decide it all. After many swings in momentum the game eventually settled down to me having a 2400 attack monster and the opponent having 2 monsters weaker than it. Unfortunately he drew an Offerings to the doom spell card and sealed the game with that.

So there you have it, my road to second place with an incredibly subpar deck. I don't regret too much because I'm simply so grateful that I managed to utilise my experience in Yu-Gi-Oh to carry a deck so far.  This could have just been a test to see how well I can duel under such circumstances. Jenny went 2-2 if you were curious, she lost 2 then won 2.  I won $15 prize money and used it to buy 2 packs of sleeves for my cards. This post wasn't intended to boast about myself but to inspire those who have bad luck with pulls at sneak peeks and sealed plays, I know I have really bad luck at these sort of events so today was rather special for me.

Battle pack: Epic Dawn

To be honest, when I first read about this 'Battle Pack: Epic Dawn" I was like it sounds crap. Then I heard that Tour Guide from the Underworld was going to be re-printed in it, I was like okay change of heart. (See what I did there?) Anyways, for those who are wondering what's so amazing about this pack, it's a pure reprint pack. A reprint is basically a card from a previous pack which has been printed again to make it easier to get. For the full list of cards in Battle Pack: Epic Dawn click on the link below

http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_Pack:_Epic_Dawn

If you look through most of these cards you'll notice some familiar names and perhaps some you've never heard of. As a Yu-Gi-Oh veteran I didn't even recognise every card I saw. Obvious highlights of this pack would be stuff like Tour Guide from the Underworld, Gorz the Emissary of darkness, Fiendish chain, forbidden chalice and forbidden lance and a whole bunch of other goodies you might see fit for your current deck. This pack also brings with it a new interesting twist of its own. A whole new way to play called sealed pack play. What is this you might ask. Basically, the most simplest way to do this is buy an entire box of Battle Pack: Epic Dawn and split the packs amongst 2 other friends. What happens is each player opens a pack and selects a card then passes on the rest of the cards for the opponent to choose one. This happens until you have opened all the packs and everybody has their pool of cards. You can either choose to play with 40 cards per deck or 20. Sealed draft play is a new concept in Yu-Gi-Oh so I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on it since I have as much experience as any other person out there: 0. All I know is that it brings about a whole new exciting and fun way to play Yu-Gi-Oh.

There is also a new type of rarity in this set called the 'Starfoil rare'. This new rarity is inspired by Japan because they have their own version of this called 'Duel Terminal rare'. I took the liberty of buying a few of these packs myself the other day to share with you guys what the starfoil rare looks like. So here it is:

Big things coming!

I don't want to have to apologise for our recent delay in getting posts up, but the workload of the HSC is starting to get to me. However, Alex and myself are currently putting together two decks - a Lightray/Lightsworn hybrid, and a Chaos Dragons deck. We expect to be able to use these decks at a competitive level eventually, attending local tournaments and such.

I'll briefly talk about the merits of both decks: the first is, obviously, based around the Lightray archetype. The Lightray monsters, for those who are unaware, can be Special Summoned when enough Light monsters are banished. They have powerful effects and are strong beaters too. Their ease of use definitely reminds me of Chaos monsters in a way.

What's also cool is that all the cards are essentially corrupted, Light versions of other cards. We have Gearfried, Chaos Sorcerer, and even our old friend Daedalus with Lightray counterparts. Sort of like the Verz monsters, but more awesome.

The Lightsworn engine is used primarily to get Light monsters banished through use of Macro Cosmos and milling. I'm sure more alternatives will open up to us, but at the moment Lightrays look like a very promising casual deck, maybe even with some competitive potential.

Chaos Dragons, on the other hand, are also an inexpensive build, however they have had massive success at recent YCS tournaments. TCGPlayer and Alter Reality Games have some articles on this deck, so I won't go too much in detail. The key points to note about this deck are basically that it's the cheapest competitive deck available right now, and it wins by applying pressure through sustained use of beatsticks. Everyone loves a beatstick.

Decklists will be posted later when we finish the decks. Until then, take care!