Well … maybe not the worst regional ever. The Charlotte event this weekend started on
time, moved along quickly, and gave us a 30 minute dinner break. There were plenty of judges and no delays
between rounds.
Still, my performance was dismal.
My first-round loss to Constellars should have been avoided. However, I
misread an Honest and left Pleiades on the field with no materials. He simply overlayed with Ptolemy M7 and took
the game.
The second round went something like:
·
Game 1: Garunix loop
·
Game 2: Insightful, creative, unexpected Geargia
play for the win.
·
Game 3: Garunix loop
My third loss was the same as the second round only substitute Grapha
for Garunix.
Since there were only 8 rounds, I decided not to fight futility and drop
from the event. I was, in fact,
conflicted about playing Geargias. Most
of the play testing in the past several weeks focused on Harpie Rulers. Perhaps, my poor Geargia vibe was a
punishment for abandoning the Harpies. But,
not to worry, there were several Win-A-Mat flights to be played. Perhaps I could redeem my day with Harpie
Rulers?
For those of you not in relationships – here’s a tip: Don’t date two
women at the same time.
It may be good Yugioh advice too. My
Harpie Rulers treated me with the same disdain as my Geargias. I felt like I was watching two
ex-girlfriends laugh at me from behind their lockers.
I spent $36 and several hours buying mats for other people. I lost to Madolches, Dragunity Dragons, and
Fire Fists. I had the good fortune to
play nearly every meta deck … and then lose to all of them.
I considered not posting this result.
Who wants to admit the grand scale of their own futility? Now, thanks to Google+, I can broadcast this
ineptitude to a wider audience.
Still, I would like to think that there are some who will read this and
benefit. At the very least, it is
certainly possible for any of us to have a bad day. I have seen some great
players scrub out by round four. It
happens … move on to the better days to come.
So what did I learn?
- Be careful not to adjust your deck too much for dragons. The biggest flaw in my Geargia deck was probably too much dragon hate. I played six cards to help me in the dragon matchup (Swift Scarecrow x 2, Maxx C x 2, and Imperial Iron Wall x 2). These cards did little to help me in my non-dragon matchups. Let the deck do what the deck needs to do.
- Dragons are even better now. The improvement in this deck comes from increased reliance on Dragunities and Dragon’s Ravine. The Mythics help but they are certainly not needed. The fact is this deck can easily play around Imperial Iron Wall, a card that used to devastate the deck.
- Be prepared for more diversity. There are a lot of decks jockeying for position. Players seem to be using these tournaments to test new decks. Everyone is waiting for the heralded death of the dragons. The result is a very diverse field.
- Harpie Rulers were not enough of either. Though this deck has the potential to do very well, I often found myself without either enough Harpies or enough Dragons. I tried both my decklist from my previous post and one that uses Tidal instead of Redox. Neither did particularly well. Though better players will have much better results, I do think there are solid statistical reasons why this deck doesn’t work. I will share those answers in a future post.
The good news is that I gave rides to someone who finished in the top
32 and another who finished in the top 8.
At the very least, my driving was productive … too bad my Accelerators weren’t.
