Name: Tige Saltz
Date: September 30, 2002
Deck: Unnamed
Location: Cardhaus Games, Seattle WA
Participants: 20+
Entry Fee: $6

DECK:

MONSTERS
3 Mystical Elf (stops most of the four star monsters cold)
3 Man-Eater Bug (flip = kills a monster)
2 Wall of Illusions (again, stops most of the four star monsters, and bounces the rest)
1 Mask of Darkness (to get my counters back from the discard pile)
3 Magician of Faith (gets my magic back from the graveyard)
1 Dark Elf (a decent four star monster)
1 La Jinn the Mystical Genie of the Lamp (probably the best four star monster with no drawbacks)
3 7 Colored Fish (see above)
3 Summoned Skull (he's in here for one purpose, to stop Jurai Gumos, if I get him out fast enough)
MAGIC
1 Monster Reborn (gets Skulls back from the grave)
1 Pot of Greed (card drawing is good)
1 Change of Heart (for opponents flip monsters, or to use them to fuel a Skull summmon)
1 Raigeki (one-sided Wrath of God)
1 Dark Hole (Wrath of God)
1 Heavy Storm (gets rid of Mirror Forces and Trap Holes, the major stumbling blocks, as well as Swords of Revealing Light)
2 Tribute to the Doomed (kills one monster, and the discard can put a Skull in position to be reborned)
1 Fissue (removal)
1 Swords of Revealing Light (stalls if I'm against a wall)
TRAPS
3 Waboku (keeps me safe from damage, or saves a monster if I really need to sac him for a Skull)
3 Trap Hole (removal, especially for when they try to Tribute summon)
1 Mirror Force (Waboku, plus it blows things up)
1 7 Tools of the Bandit (lets me power through those Mirror Forces or Trap Holes)
2 Magic Jammer (stops all the really power magic cards in the enviroment)

A simple enough deck idea, just try to get either a big monster on the board, and let control keep it safe.  Usually, I just outlast people, or slip damage through with my counters.  Before the tournament, I traded for 2 Magic Jammers that immediatly went into my deck.  The previous week, my deck was picked up by someone and carried off, so I had to rather
frantically put it back together.  The 2 Magic Jammers came as a gift from God, I probably would't have won without them.
A note.  I have a horrible memory for names, when I get them.  Most people will be just a description, I honestly don't remember the names of the three people I played.  My apologies to them.

Duel #1
Tige vs a little kid
I did not get this individual's name, but it was a kid probably 3-5th grade, his sister was there watching.  The duel did not take too long, his deck was a mismatch of alot of different stuff, and not very focused.  Both games I got a Summoned Skull on the table and managed to whittle his life down.

Duel #2
Tige vs Matt
Matt is one of the two people I ride to the tournament with.  He's pretty good, easily as good as me, and so, we didn't want to have to play each other.  He had been playing around with a Fusion deck on Saturday, but he scrapped it and went with a deck similar to mine instead.  I won both games, but it was close all the way.  Basically, the defining factor, and the thing that got him eliminated from the tournament, was that he put Battle Ox in his deck, instead of Jurai Gumo.  After the tournament was over, he looked through his deck and noticed this.  In both games, I had enough protection magic (Waboku, Mirror Force), and enough monster removal to where I could whittle his life down with my weenies (Mystical Elf, Wall of Illusions, etc), so as to not take the chance of him trap holing my bigger guys.  That is more or less how I won.

Duel #3
Tige vs Berton
The other guy who I ride to the tournaments with.  He's probably a little better than Matt, and someone I really don't want to have to fight unless it's the finals.  Game one, my weenies managed to whittle him down.  At one point, he had a Summoned Skull of mine he had Reborned, a 7 Colored Fish, and then Change of Hearted my 7 Colored Fish. Thankfully, I had a Waboku, and next turn I killed his monsters.  That attack would have won the first round, had it gone through.  After that, I managed to take the first round from him, though narrowly.  Second round, his deck just went to town on me.  His Jurai Gumos just
kept whacking my monsters, so I basically was throwing out chumps in defense, hoping for a game breaking Magic card that never came.  He won the second round easily.  For the third round, he drew, I believe, one monster in his hand, and a bunch of magic.  As he was more or less creature screwed, I managed to beat him in the third round, even though his deck, by all accounts, should beat mine. Stupid Jurai Gumos.

Duel #4
Tige vs. Asian guy, he was wearing a shirt with a firey ellipse on it
Again, my bad memory with names shows up.  The two matches were more or less standard for me, open up with Bugs and Elves to clear the way for a fish or a genie to start the damage, and knock away at him from there, and let my counter magic keep them safe, while my removal knocks dead anything he plays.  Still, it wasn't one-sided by any means, he gave me a good fight.

Duel #5
Tige vs. father who had brought his kids
Now, a little backstory here.  In the middle of the first round, it was announced by someone who claimed he was a judge that Japanese cards weren't legal in your decks, unless you had an English copy you could pull out of your deck, or elsewhere to show the person dueling you, should you request it.  In the few times I had been attending CardHaus tournaments, it was the rule that Japanese cards were legal, so long as they were released by Upper Deck in English (ie, LOB, MRD, and MRL were legal).  As my deck was stolen last week, I had borrowed Japanese Raigeki, Pot of Greed, Swords of Revealing Light, and Mirror Force from someone at Digipen.  So right after my match with Matt, he (who also had Japanese cards in his deck) ran down the street to a Kinkos and made printouts for everyone at the store who was using Japanese cards.  A right nice thing for him to do, and probably saved me some grief against this individual.  I showed him the printout, and explained the four cards that I had in there were Japanese, and he immediatly started complaining about how that wasn't fair, how it was stupid, how he wasn't coming back here, blah blah blah. 
So we start playing, and the first match is rather simple, he doesn't draw any of his good magic cards, and my monsters overwhelm his blockers, mainly some Magicians of Faith and Man Eater Bugs.  I win game one easy.  The second game, is back and forth.  He manages to get both his Swords of Revealing Light and play them.  I outlast the first one, and 2 clicks into the second one, I get mine out, and drop them.  Right now, he's got a Summoned Skull and something else on the field, I've got all of nothing, and I'm at the point where his two monsters would kill me, but the Swords, and a face-down Waboku have me unworried.  So he plays Heavy Storm, and I activate Waboku in response, both to keep it from being wasted, and to keep myself alive.  Now he IMMEDIATLY starts yelling how I can't do that.  Now, in the instruction manual, Normal Magic Cards are listed as Speed 1, and Normal Trap Cards are listed as Speed 2, with the note that they can be used against Speed 1 or 2 cards.  I try explaining this to him, but he simply refuses to listen, saying I can't do that, as my card was immediatly destroyed.  Eventually the 'judge' gets called over (and I have trouble thinking of this person as a judge, as he for most of the day, barely seemed to know the rules, several times I had to solve a dispute between himself and the person he was playing), and the situation is explained.  Immediatly, he says that the parent is right, and just about everyone in
the store (they had gathered around me and my opponent) says 'you're wrong'.  Slowly, I explain the logic behind it, assisted occasionally by whoever feels like putting their two cents in, and he comes around (he's not a bad guy, just a little shaky on the rules), and makes a ruling, and explains it to my opponent, who still keeps refusing to accept that either a)
he's wrong, or b) the play won't go down the way he wants it to.  Eventually, he lets it go, and we continue the game.  As I have nothing on the field, and both swords are gone, I play some blocker monsters, and get rid of his Skull, and eventually have two fish on the field.  I do, by my calculations, enough damage to kill him, but he says I'm cheating, and am not keeping the life totals right.  At this point, I don't care, and let him have the total he thinks he's at, because any of my monsters can kill him.  I Heavy Storm and Dark Hole, so we're both playing off the top of our decks, save I have a Trap Hole and Waboku on the field after I Heavy Storm.  Eventually, I get a Dark Elf, and kill him, winning the tournament.  Honestly, for all the trouble it was worth, I think I'd rather have stayed home.

So I get 3 Magic Ruler packs and a tourney pack, nothing great out of them, but I won, and that's the important thing.

Thanks to: Berton and Matt for taking me, the guy who traded me 2 Magic Jammers, and everyone else who helped me get my
deck back together after it was stolen

Nothing to: the person who stole my deck, and my last opponent.  You set a really good example for your children the way you carried on.  It's just a game, in the end, not worth what you and I made it out to be.

"We will crush your unholy bones, and salt the Earth with your dust.  Amen" Paladin Alexander Anderson - Hellsing, Psalm of the Darkness