ARG Circuit Series, Nashville Tennessee - Tournament Report

ARG Circuit Series, Nashville Tennessee - Tournament Report

  Wednesday, January 22, 2014    byak

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Hey cardfighters! I just got back from Nashville on Monday and I'm now enjoying a combination of school holidays and even a snow day. I found time to write a little report about my tournament experience over the weekend, so here it is.

I'm unsure if most of you would care, but I primarily flew into Tennessee for the Yugioh portion of the tournament. I entered the tournament with Geargia (decklist here) and finished 29th place with a record of 5-1-2, earning $50 in store credit. This left me open to play in the Vanguard side event the following day, so I was pretty excited to do that.

Me and my friends arrived at the venue around 8:30 on Sunday morning (my friend was in the top 16 of the Yugioh tournament so we had to show up early for that) and I signed up for the Vanguard tournament. I got five promo packs and pulled Knight of Afterglow, Gerard, Turbulence Dragon, Star-vader, Dark Band Dragon, and two Sky Assault Knights. Nothing too special (as applies with basically every promo pack), but it was nice to pull both of the holos. I then sit down to write my deck list, and this is what I decided to play today:

ARG Nashville Eradicators
17 / 14 / 11 / 8

1 Ambush Dragon Eradicator, Linchu
4 Eradicator, Yellow Gem Carbuncle [Critical]
4 Sacred Spear Eradicator, Pollux [Critical]
4 Eradicator, Dragon Mage [Draw]
4 Worm Toxin Eradicator, Seiobo [Heal]

4 Eradicator Wyvern Guard, Guld
4 Ceremonial Bonfire Eradicator, Castor
3 Eradicator, Demolition Dragon
3 Rising Phoenix

4 Supreme Army Eradicator, Zuitan
4 Eradicator, Spark Rain Dragon
3 Fiendish Sword Eradicator, Chou-Ou

3 Eradicator, Dragonic Descendant
3 Eradicator, Gauntlet Buster Dragon
2 Eradicator, Vowing Sword Dragon

This list is very similar to the list I had for my deck check, with a few key differences. I chose Linchu over Spark Kid Dragoon because of how well he synergizes with Zuitan and Chou-Ou. I had never realized this until recently, but opening Zuitan to combo with Linchu is just too good. Your soul gets built up for Rising Phoenix and you get to free the damage used for Linchu. I never really had any problems with getting to my grade 3's in this deck, especially with Castor so it really worked well in the end.

Running three Rising Phoenix was probably a really ballsy move on my part, but I loved the results. You always saw at least one Rising Phoenix per game and they were never dead. My grade 2 lineup did so much to make Rising Phoenix live, which was great. The only problem I had with it was not being able to dedicate enough 11000+ units to the board at times, but the advantage that I got from it carried me to win usually. I cut a Demolition Dragon instead of a Castor for the third Phoenix mainly because I wanted to see Castor early. Seeing Castor early is really important because of the situations you can get out of with it. If you open too many grade 3's, you can pitch one to draw a better card, and if you open no grade 3's, you can use Castor to dig for them.

I didn't have access to a fourth Chou-Ou for the event so I had to go with four Zuitan. I didn't notice much of a difference, and if anything I wanted to see Zuitan early on for Linchu, so I don't think this was a poor choice. Zuitan also creates a lot of pressure when you're sitting on Gauntlet Buster Dragon, due to its damage un-flipping.

(If you want more in depth explanations of cards, refer to our article on Eradicators)

Now that I had my deck list filled out, it was time to wait for the side event to start at 11. I didn't have anyone to play test for Vanguard (which I didn't mind, I was already confident in mechanics), so I just decided to play some Yugioh with a cool Plant Synchro brew I had made the night before until the events started. I watched my friend win his Top 16 match, but ultimately lose his Top 8 match while my other friends were playing in the 1k event that was going on at the same time. Eventually they called for the Vanguard event so I went to go play.

So the Vanguard event was smaller than I predicted. There were 16 players including myself, and I honestly felt like I was the only one who wasn't local. It makes sense when you think about it, because no one would travel for such a small event for Vanguard, though in my case I was traveling for Yugioh as well. I sat down and played my round 1 opponent, and it was a mirror. It was pretty much in his favor for the whole match. I didn't open very well game 1 and he kept blocking my Gauntlet Buster pushes until he killed me with Descendant. I didn't open very well either game 2 and I just kept getting hit by triggers so I lost this match fairly quickly.

After a while I sat down to play vs my round 2 opponent, who was using Kagero. I had watched them the round before and noticed that they were using the original Dragonic Overlord, which was a clear indication that his deck was certainly not optimal. Game 1 was extremely rough for him because he was stuck at grade 0 forever, but the game dragged out up to him having a grade 2. Unfortunately for him, he had been burning up his Sentinels and not even discarding his large amounts of grade 3's for them, so he ended up short and lost. Game 2 was kinda annoying for me. We both had rode fine through the game, but I was stuck on 5000 boosters versus his 13000 Dragonic Overlord the End for the longest time. What made it even worse was that he kept me at three damage so I couldn't Break Ride and make a big push. Eventually I let him resolve two Persona Blasts in a single turn as he struck down both of my rear-guards. The only reason I let him do this is that it caused him to lose a large amount of cards from his deck, putting his deck count below mine. At this point it was easy enough to stall out and win by deck out, so I took the match.

Round 3 was versus a Blond Ezel / Platina Ezel player. At this point I was really confused about the lack of Break Rides in the tournament, but that wasn't really something I needed to worry about. His build wasn't very good from what I saw, and I took game 1 after he miscalculated shield value and took a critical while at four damage. He could've survived easily if he had played his turn out differently, but regardless I was so ahead that it would not have mattered. The same thing happened game 2, but the game lasted a bit longer. I controlled his board with Chou-Ou and Linchu until the point where I just ended him with another critical. I thankfully never saw Platina Ezel either game, but I'm still not sure if it would've mattered or not.

The last round was versus Liberators. He seemed more competent than the last two players and I was able to watch him before the round, unaware that he was going to be my last opponent. His play style was a bit different than mine for Liberators, as he played Wingal Liberator and aimed on riding Blaster Blade Liberator every game. Fortunately enough he ended up riding Liberator of Royalty, Phallon game 1 so his Wingal Liberator was just dead. He eventually puts me to five damage and I retaliate with a perfect Dragonic Descendant turn, swinging with both rear-guards first to put him to five and then swinging twice with Descendant. Fortunately he lives with no cards left and I'm exhausted to the point where I can't guard. However, I check a sixth damage heal and steal the game from there. I kind of felt bad for that but it's Vanguard, so I didn't pay too much mind to it. Game 2 ended kind of quickly. I simply just put out my power attackers turn 2 and rushed him. I eliminate his Blaster Blade Liberator with a 24000 column while he's sitting on Solitary Liberator, Gancelot so he gets a really mediocre Break Ride turn with Liberator of the Round Table, Alfred, being able to only give power to his Wingal Liberator and Future Liberator, Llew. I take his Alfred attack and just run him over with Gauntlet Buster Dragon and critical triggers next turn, winning the match.

After the match I checked with my round 1 opponent for his record, which was 3-1. I was pretty confident in my tiebreakers, so it was time to wait for the standings. All of my other friends were out of their tournaments so we just chilled and played more Yugioh. Eventually the standings were posted and I came in fourth place, earning an additional $75 in store credit. I was satisfied with today, and after a few hours we all went back to the hotel room and prepared to return in the morning.

Overall I was pretty satisfied with my tournament run. I believe that I played as well as I can and was only hindered by a few misplays and just opening poorly. I'd like to thank my friend Jimmy for letting me borrow the Eradicator deck, as the only deck I would have to play otherwise is a really outdated Luquier deck. I really hope that ARG does more Vanguard tournaments, as they're as fun to play in as their main Yugioh tournaments. They also structure the tournaments a lot better than Bushiroad, because matches are best of three and the tournament is swiss. I definitely recommend going to these events if you have the time and are interested in Yugioh as well.

If you have any questions about anything, feel free to leave them below, and thanks for reading.