Stillpoint Report

Before bed I might as well make my report on the 1 dollar tournament at Stillpoint. Surprisingly we got 10-11 people to play, despite it being pretty spontaneous. Before the tournament Chelsea and I kind of sat around not doing much. I dueled 1 person with the Northwemko deck which is still under construction, but is so close to completion that I needed to try it. Game 1 I didnt know I could Gorz before it gets discarded from X-saber battle, and that lost me the duel. After that though I didnt draw into anything and lost promptly lol. But anyways, after that we took out the Koa'kis and did the tournament.

Results 2-2, didn't top...Again.
But hey, this tournament was a lot of fun. I feel like the Koa'ki build is a LOT more consistent now than it was when I first entered tournaments in June. The theme as a whole has a lot of potential, and I'd love to see more cards, but we can save that discussion for later. For now let's try to discuss(remember) what happened today.

Round 1 vs Quickdraw 0-2.
Man oh man do I have trouble with quickdraw decks. What's nice about them is that they are very backrow lite, so I can summon guardians and not have to worry about getting sandman. The main issue I seem to have with the deck is that I feel you have to stop the fluff tokens or else they will synch into goyo and pretty much win the game without triggering Guardian. I need to somehow figure out how to stop the cards played AFTER dandylion is destroyed, rather than trying to stop the dandy play in the first place. First duel went really well. I had something along the lines of cold wave, urknight, core, maximus, and a crusader on the field to his set monster. If i summoned maximus and destroyed his set card, I could have had the OTK and won. Unfortunately, this is called "overextending" nowadays. My field ended up being Urknight, Maximus, Crusader, and Guardian and I end up blowing up a dandylion. So now my OTK goes up in smoke and because I overextended, I lost my hand and lost the match shortly after. Next match wasn't too much different. I didnt overextend and made some very good plays. What I lost to was a topdecked Lonefire->Tytannial with no Guardian on the field. I also only had Tornado n the field for the longest time, which happens more often than I would like. Tornado attacked into a hamster which got Ryko. Topdecked the core....Then he sets dandylion, attacked into that, he gains more monsters and I couldnt topdeck the core again. If he drew ANYTHING to tribute with, he could just do it with Mega Hamster. No point in "Tornadoing" tokens if he still has tribute fodder afterward.

Round 2 vs Xsabers 2-0
Same thing as most saber fights I've had. Only the synchros and Faultroll can swing over a koa'ki so a lot of this (and the next xsaber matchup)is won by set boulders. Xsaber players dont usually set monsters, and often attack into stuff to bait out your S/T cards. I didnt get saber holed today, trunade, cold wave and MST did it's job. There are many outs for the KM deck to deal with sabers. If you think about it, they have, maybe, a 5% chance to draw both Rescue Cat and Cold wave. They have an even higher chance to draw cold wave while they have faultroll in their hand(from darksoul). But we have 2 Oppressions, 3 Compulsories, 3 Urknights, 3(I added 1 today) Boulders which increases out chance to get iron core, so the raw % of me drawing cards to stop their game winning play is just higher. Theres really only so much they can do with such low attack monsters. Stop the synchros before they start and try your hardest to stay in control

Round 3 vs Machina 1-2
Another deck I have serious issues with. Joe showed me his side for Machina, which is System down, Fortress Dragon, Proto Cyber Dragons, and Limiter Removal. Me being a new player, shows that I have 0 of these cards. So my side against Machina is just +1 compulsory... First game I control the match. Urknights, Crusaders, the only monster threat in the deck is Jinzo, Cyber Dragon and Fortress. Until, and this is when match 2 started, the Machina player draws Solidarity. This puts gadgets at 2000-2200, which is VERY painful. Luckily I drew up core overclock, but "hey, let's play a 2nd Solidarity." Thanks game. I lost that match, It was just too difficult to deal with a 2800 monster, all the while knowing your opponent is building towards a 4100 atk monster. Essentially I need to rethink my strategy against Machina. Either put in trap holes for gadgets(they gain a monster while you lose a trap card), put in dust tornadoes for solidarity(machina decks use a very small amount of S/T cards from what I've seen. A lot of them are 1-for-1 removal, so is dust tornado worth it for 3-4 targets?), or put in something unexpected like Core Blast and Core Reinforcements. I'll continue trying to figure this out.

Round 4 vs Sabers again 2-1
This was pretty similar to the above match. I don't believe I was able to starlight road Steve, perhaps I did. I know for sure I did against my first Saber round. Today I actually didn't get to Oppression much of anything. So what won me the game? I would have to say 1st turn(and in round 3 1st AND second turn) boulders won the game. Of course getting things like Trunade and Cold Wave help too, but saber players often attack your set monsters. And when they dont, they set darksoul, in which now you have a chance to gain the field. What's awesome about darksoul is you can search out a game winning combo at the end of the turn. But while you're doing that, I'm already controlling the field. In my opinion, Darksoul puts you either 1 turn ahead of your opponent or 1 turn behind. It really depends on what I'm able to keep on the field. They need 2 monsters to essentially do ANYTHING in that deck. Synchro? 2 monsters. Faultroll? 2 Monsters. This is where I use compulsory like a maniac. I HAVE to stop the play before it happens, or else I can't get field presence back.

All in all, I had fun. Monday I'll play more people with Northwemko if I can help it. I'll try to post the deck too.