Thursday 25 November 2010

Online Play Testing #1

As you can tell from the post title, I hope to be able to bring a few reports on how a deck actually performs in the heat of battle if I ever do post a deck here. I will only be reporting the games I play against at least marginally competitive decks but I will make sure to post up any losses I have with the deck, as those are always the most telling.

For this I was using the deck "Arcanite Blast" that I have already featured.


1-0 against "Gut." with "Anti-Meta Serpents"

Really pleasant guy who said he has just come back to Yugiohnetwork after a long hiatus. He was fun to play and he used an interesting type of Deep Sea Diva + Gravekeepers Spy deck.

Started out really strong with a Breaker + Trust Guardian combo to destroy 3 of his cards, however one was a Card Trooper and when he brought it back with Monster Reborn next turn and tributed for Caius removing my arcanite I suddenly felt very low on attacking options. However he had ideas about summoning Red Nova dragon and as such ignored my set Scrap Goblin the next turn which was a fatal mistake, as I tuned it to Sangan next turn making Brionac despite his Solemn Judgment which I negated with Seven Tools of the Bandit. From there I was just too far ahead for him to compete, though the deck is somewhat slow paced so it took a while to win. There was a nice finish to the game, when I had used all 3 Arcanites in my extra deck, I finally topped Miracle Synchro fusion to take his remaining life points.

1-0 ish against "McRaww" with "take down"

I think this guy was a pretty decent player, he was using Plant Synchro.

I was set up for Miracle Synchro fusion on the second turn after my Arcanite was Book of Mooned, I was just waiting to rip it off the top. He tried summoning Tytannial but it fell into BTH. After that I got an Arsenal Summoners effect off and used it to summon Scrap Dragon with Scrap Beast. That beat down for a while, until I got into an interesting situation. He had just searched Dandylion with Sangan and his field was 1 set monster and 1 S/T, I reasoned that if he had kept back dandylion and his monster was a Ryko, that would be bad, wheras I could think of very few S/ts that could hurt my scrap dragon. So I destroyed his Monster which was of course Dandylion and exclaimed "Now the face down is going to be D-Prison!" Low and behold it was indeed D-Prison and my Scrap Dragon was removed. After that we traded blows for a while and we were both looking heavily to our topdecks. At this point we got disconnected, but I checked my next draw and it was the Miracle Synchro Fusion I had been waiting for for 10 of my turns. With his cards and field, I really doubt he would have been able to get over S.A.M. so I tentatively call this a 1-0 ish victory for me.

1-2 against someone (forgot who) with "New BW"

It was getting a bit late and I got into this super long, though very fun encounter with a well played Blackwing deck.

First game I started with an early spy into arcanite combo, getting 2 arcanite effects through which was nice, but one hit an MST so no real advantage was gained. I followed it up with a Miracle Synchro Fusion and he Book of Mooned my Magician, I solemned which in retrospect was a mistake. Still, I hit for 3400 and got a draw so I was feeling pretty good. Next turn he summoned Gale and ran over my Arcanite - Woops. I summoned Scrap Dragon next turn but he had Icarus Attack to destroy it, so all I could do was hit for 1600 with beast. Next turn he had monster reborn to bring back my Scrap Dragon, and that beat me down.

Second game, I had a hand full of S/Ts and so did he from the looks of it. We just sat there gaining resources until I could finally make an Arcanite push with Arsenal summoner, but he of course had Icarus Attack to stop that. But instead I Monster Reborned his Spirit Reaper and kept poking at him with it for the next few turns causing him to waste valuable defensive cards. Eventually I summoned a Brionac and used it to push for game over a few turns.

Third game was quite the irritating one. He opened with Black whirlwind and Bora but elected not to activate Whirlwind for some reason. I set Arsenal Summoner and 3 backrows and he Icarus'd my Miracle Synchro Fusion netting me a draw. He was constantly complaining of not drawing monsters and I kept bottomlessing or solemning any monsters he did get trying to keep him down. However I tried to summon all 3 Arcanite Magicians and all 3 got either Book of Mooned or Solemn Warninged which really slowed down my attacks tempo. I couldnt draw another Miracle Synchro fusion until my very last turn when I got it with Pot of Duality, where at the time I thought it would be enough, because I had a big wall of monsters to protect my quite meagre life points and he was out of defenses, but he topped Monster Reborn, stole a tuner from my grave, tuned it to Spirit Reaper then dropped Dark Armed Dragon for game.

2-1 against "Soo_Different" with "infernity"

Infernitys are my arch nemesis, I absolutely hate playing them.

In the first game I made a second turn Arcanite into Supreme Arcanite and he lost very shortly after.

Second game I had a hand full of tuners and Mirror force. In the end that couldnt do anything against Infernity Shenanigans.

The third game was much more exciting. I started with a first turn Breaker and decided to ignore his first set card assuming it to be Inferno or just something useless. He also set 1 Monster so I decided to try and push sme damage with Breaker and a Skilled Dark Magician but it was a necromancer. However he still couldnt do anything and just set a few backrows next turn. That was all the invitation I needed to blow them all up with Breaker then Arcanite then Supreme arcanite, Keeping it at 3400 by use of Skilled Darks Counters. Next turn he made some odd plays, he tried to make a Brionac with Armageddon knight and plaguespreader zombie by putting Archfiend on top of his deck. Then he made a one for one Mirage play and I paniced and used Torrential Tribute, but this was really a mistake, as I think I could have easily dealt with the worst he could have done. So I had very few attacking options. He managed to top an Archfiend despite the one  being put on top of his deck by Plague being shuffled in, but I bottomlessed it and he had to search another one with its effect. This left many tense turns where he could have topped Mirage for basically game but eventually I summoned a Brionac and just bounced my way to victory. It was much harder than it should have been though.

1-0 against "Presidential" with "Egyptian Temple"

With YCS Atlanta's result Gravekeepers are an interesting match up. The site was lagging ridiculously thouh, I dont know how we had the patience to finish the one longgg game we did.

He started very strongly with Necrovalley and Royal Tribute on the first turn hitting 2 of my monsters and he saw that my hand had both Solemn Judgment and Solemn Warning in it. So he correctly piled all the pressure on for early damage. On turn 3 I had to solemn when he tried to Bottomless my Breaker so I could kill his necrovalley and keep me in the game, unfortunately I hadnt had a chance to activate warning so it was now dead. My next 2 topdecks were both Seven Tools of the Bandit, and before I even had a chance to activate one, I was under a thousand. Luckily though i got a Trust Guardian'd Arcanite out which could protect me. I made a ood decision to not use one of its counters even though it was in defense, when I reasoned that he was happy to let me blow up his backrow and would be holding on to Necrovalley in hand. This kept me just barely alive with 650 life when he used Commandant and Assailant to put Necrovalley on the field and attack over my 1400 Arcanite twice. I somehow managed to summon another Arcanite using my  own Spys and used its effect to keep his Spy's from activating. This bought me enough time to get out Scrap Dragon and then top deck Miracle Synchro Fusion once that had died for an awesome comeback victory. I just wish I could have enjoyed it without all the lags.


Conclusions:

6-3 in games, 4-1 in victories, I think the deck performed very well. I realise that Blackwings are probably going to be one of the toughest match up's for this deck with Icarus Attack amongst other problems. Book of Moon when used correctly is also very annoying. The deck works at a slow and solid pace unless it has Miracle Synchro Fusion but its still solid and very fun to play. I even got a few complements on the deck from a few of my opponents, which is always nice.

0 comments:

Post a Comment