Hit 'Em Up Style

Top Deck Games Tulsa, Oklahoma March 29, 2003 50 People $3

Winner - 2 booster packs 2nd - 2 booster packs

Wizard's Asylum Tulsa, Oklahoma March 30, 2003 50 People $3

Winner - 5 booster packs 2nd - 3 booster packs 3rd - 2 booster packs

Hey, hey , hey, Pojo people! Glad that you could join me for another tournament report. Sorry that I missed you last week, but I have been busy. In fact, this tournament report will be relatively short compared to my normal reports (mainly because I didn't do so well... I'm using a new deck... but that's another story...)

To all of the people who have sent me e-mails in the past two weeks, I'd like to thank you for all of the feedback. The those that I haven't responded to yet, I apologize. As stated above, I have been EXTREMELY busy this week, and I have barely found time for sleep (no, seriously...) I promise that I will TRY to get back to you soon. If I don't, please don't take it personally... I'm still pretty busy and my e-mail is WAY backed up. I promise that I read your letter... I just haven't had time to respond to it.

Before I get to the deck and the report, I'd like to get my ritual bashing out of the way. Anyone who has read my reports knows how I absolutely detest thieves. Well, it came to my attention last week that someone that I considered a friend and that I was collecting cards for (I won't tell you his name, but I mention him in one of my tournament reports... if you're really clever, you can figure it out) stole some cards from another friend of mine. When I found out, I was halfway tempted to post his e-mail address on this report so that all of you readers could e-mail him and tell him what a worthless slimeball he is. But I decided against it. If the person that I'm referring to reads this report, please know that I think you're a pathetic excuse for a human being. Heck, you'd be a pathetic excuse for rat droppings! And all of you other thieves out there are no better. I got news for you: when you steal some guy's Raigeki, it ain't free... it's going to cost you your conscience, your pride, and any respect or friendship that we honest duelists ever had for you.

Just know this, my EX-friend: you burned a lot of bridges when you stole those cards. If you ever try to cross one of them in the future, you're going to find yourself falling down a major chasm... and those of us that you hurt will simply laugh while you plummet. Happy landings, loser!

Well, with the bashing out of the way, ON TO THE DECK!!!

Hit 'Em Up Style (45 cards total)

Monsters (20)

Cure Mermaid X3

Cyber Jar

Fire Princess X3

Magician of Faith

Man-Eater Bug

Marie the Fallen One X3

Maryokutai X2

Mask of Darkness

Morphing Jar (Japanese)

Mysterious Puppeteer

Sangan X2

Witch of the Black Forest

Magic (12)

Graceful Charity X2

Messenger of Peace X2

Monster Reborn

Mystical Space Typhoon

Painful Choice

Pot of Greed

Premature Burial

Raigeki

Scapegoat

Swords of Revealing Light

Traps (13)

Call of the Haunted

Dust Tornado

Gravity Bind X3

Imperial Order

Light of Intervention X2

Magic Jammer

Seven Tools of the Bandit

Solemn Judgment

Solemn Wishes X2

A couple of notes for anyone confused about the deck concept: the Fire Princess is the central card to this deck. It's effect it that I do 500 damage to my opponent's life points every time I heal my own life points. Cards like Cure Mermaid, Mysterious Puppeteer, and Solemn Wishes help in healing my life points. However, the kicker card is Marie the Fallen One. Marie's effect is that, once it's in the graveyard, I gain 200 life points during every one of my standby phases. I use Graceful Charity, Painful Choice, Magic Jammer, and Morphing Jar to get my Maries in the graveyard. In addition, I can use Cyber Jar to build up the number of cards in my hand so I can discard them. If I can hold out long enough to get all three Maries in the graveyard and get a Fire Princess on the field, then I can do 1500 points of damage to my opponent every turn... and it can't be blocked by Waboku, Swords of Revealing Light, Kuriboh, or any other attack blocker. In my humble opinion, it's the ultimate burn deck - heal yourself while your opponent suffers.

The difficulty with the deck is that I have to get key cards on the field to protect myself. Obviously, I'd need a Gravity Bind or Messenger of Peace to stop those nasty beatdown monsters that seem to pervade my metagame. Unfortunately, I have to protect Gravity Bind and Messenger of Peace from Heavy Storm, Mystical Space Typhoon, etc. That's where the numerous magic blockers come in. Finally, flip effect monsters can do a number on me if not kept in check. So, I have Light of Intervention to deal with them. As an added bonus, Light of Intervention allows me to summon monsters in face-up defense mode. Not good for my flip effect monsters, but great for Mysterious Puppeteer and Fire Princess. Of course, that does make my cards susceptible to Trap Hole and Skull Lair. But that's what 7 Tools and Solemn Judgment are for.

Whew! With that explanation out of the way, let's get to the reporting!

Saturday 2:00 PM - Top Deck Games

I didn't include a report on the Vintage Stock tournament because I was using a standard beatdown deck. I will point out a few interesting notes: I took fourth... thanks to a lousy draw against Lance that gave me almost nothing to use against him. I NEARLY pulled out a victory when I was at 800 life points and Lance was at 4000. He had a facedown monster and I had Jinzo, Wall of Illusion, and Lance's Kycoo (Snatch Steal). One attack from Kycoo and Jinzo would have won it for me, so I attacked with Wall of Illusion to try to clear the field. It was a frigging Witch of the Black Forest. So I took 200 damage. Next turn, Lance Mystical Space Typhooned my Snatch Steal, Change of Hearted my Jinzo, and Skull Laired my Wall of Illusion. And that was the game.

My boy CJ took third (without having to face me... not sure how that worked) with my brother's deck - modified to add Squirrel Power (No! "Attack of the Killer Squirrels" is not gone! It's just in other people's decks!)

Alright! Now for the Top Deck tournament. We had just about all of the top players in Tulsa at this tournament. It was good because it meant that I'd have some tough opponents. But it was also bad because I would be facing them with an untested deck. But that's also good because they could help me fix some of the bugs in the deck.

First round - BigSpooky vs. Ryan (Newbie)

This isn't either of the Ryans that I mentioned in previous reports. This Ryan was still pretty new to the game, so he didn't have some of the cards that he really needed to remove my magic and trap cards. And that didn't bode too well for him...

Duel 1 - Ryan hit me early by attacking my Witch with his Overdrive. But that allowed me to pull my Cyber Jar, which was gracious enough to give me a Gravity Bind, two Maries and a Fire Princess. After discarding to get my Maries in the graveyard, I started pulling a steady stream of cure cards. By the time the duel ended, I had two Fire Princesses on the field and was doing 4000 damage a turn.

Final Score: 12300-0

Duel 2 - Not a whole lot different. I got Cure Mermaid and Gravity Bind on the field early. He managed to get rid of the Cure Mermaid with a Fissure, but it wasn't long before I sent Marie to the graveyard. After a few turns, I got my first Fire Princess on the field. Next turn I got my second. Three turns later, I had another Cure Mermaid on the field. And that pretty much sealed the match

Final Score: 10000-0

Ryan told me that his goal was to win at least one match in the tournament. Well, good luck to you buddy. You're on your way.

Second Round - BigSpooky vs. Jeff (Balanced Beatdown)

Jeff and I have this strange tendency to meet each other in the second rounds of tournaments. I was happy at how well my deck worked thus far, but Jeff was going to be a much tougher opponent. Unfortunately, he was a bit too tough for this deck.

Duel 1 - Jeff slammed me quickly with his Summoned Skull for 2500 direct damage. After another direct attack with his Witch of the Black Forest, I was able to get Gravity Bind on the field. It protected me for a bit while a Cure Mermaid, a fallen Marie, and a Fire Princess simultaneously healed me and hurt Jeff. I had him down to 5500 when Jeff summoned his Jinzo. Unable to stop his attacks or block his magic, Jeff hit me with Raigeki then drained my remaining life points (7400) in one fell swoop.

Final Score: 0-5500

Duel 2 - I stated out well by getting Gravity Bind and Solemn Wishes on the field. Jeff's Cyber Jar put an end to that rather quickly. While I managed to get some great cards in my hand (which could have helped me immensely if I'd been able to play them), Jeff had his shot first, and didn't waste it. Thanks to a reborned Summoned Skull, Jinzo, Raigeki, and United We Stand, Jeff AGAIN hit me for a huge loss in one move.

Final Score: 0-8000

I wasn't too upset about losing. After all, my brand spanking new deck had hung in there (for a while, anyway) against one of the best duelists in the city. Besides, the experience gave me some ideas about changes to make to my deck.

Third Round - BigSpooky vs. David (Beatdown Exodia)

David was about two seconds away from hearing me scream at him in frustration. David was paying almost no attention to what I was doing during the duel (because he was busy helping his friend build a deck for his Gameboy Yu-Gi-Oh!) So, David got visibly upset at him when I beat him both times... mainly because he didn't notice that my Fire Princess was roasting his life points. Gee... I feel so bad...

Duel 1 - The first duel was pretty funny because David wasn't keeping score, wasn't paying attention, and had no idea what Fire Princess's effect was. He noticed that my Cure Mermaid and Mysterious Puppeteer were increasing my life points to epic proportions, but every time I tried to tell him what his life points were, or about Fire Princess's effect, he was off chatting to his buudy about how he needed another Waboku in his Gameboy deck. So, after about 10 turns into the game when I summoned Marie to the field (to get the life point bonus from Mysterious Puppeteer, as well as hit David for 500 damage) and announced that I won the duel, David was incredulous. I THEN explained to him what Fire Princess had been doing to his life points the entire duel. Of course, pandemonium ensued. David claimed that since I had five monsters on the field, I couldn't summon another monster (even though Marie requires a tribute). His friend on the Gameboy claimed that David could use his Trap Hole to negate Marie's summon (Wrongo!) Another one of David's friends said that I could only use Mysterious Puppeteer's effect one time ("It doesn't say on the card that you can use it more than once!")

Needless to say, the judges saw things my way.

Final Score: 16400-0

Duel 2 - David hit me hard early on with his Summoned Skull twice in a row for 5000 damage. But I was able to get ahold of my Cyber Jar and clear out David's monsters. Cyber Jar gave me a lot of love by putting two Fire Princesses and a Maryokutai on the field, and Solemn Wishes. Along with the Gravity Bind that I drew that turn, I was able to completely shut down David's attack. Six turns yielded 6000 damage to David. By activating a second Solemn Wishes on David's turn, I finished the game in high style.

Final Score: 6500-0

So the final tally ended up Spooky - 1; Bratpunks - 0.

I'm sorry. It's not very nice to call David and his chums bratpunks. I'm probably wrong, and they're all really nice kids. But they sure didn't act like it!

So, with my loss to Jeff in the second round, I was officially out of any contention for placing in the tournament. That was OK, though. I managed to improve my deck and get some fun duels in the bargain. Besides, I was having dinner with my parents that night... and I was running late!

Sunday 12:00 PM - Wizard's Asylum

I spent a few hours Saturday evening trying to iron out a few kinks in the deck. I added another Mask of Darkness (which I later took out for the Morphing Jar that I got in a trade with Jesse). I didn't figure that I would get very far in the Wizard's Asylum tournament, with opponents like Jesse and John to worry about. As it turned out, I didn't get to face either one of them. But I had troubles nonetheless.

Side note: I played Jesse in a duel for fun before the tournament. Though he hit me for 7500 life points on the very first turn, I managed to win by decking him out. Weird, huh?

First Round - BigSpooky vs. J.W. (Lord of Dragons)

No disrespect intended to J.W., but either Killer Squirrels or my beatdown deck would've stomped a mudhole in J.W.'s deck. He ran a 70-card Lord of D. deck. Unfortunately, it was full of counter cards (three Magic Drains, three Magic Jammers, and three 7 Tools) which he managed to draw in mass quantities. And, as I found out in this duel, my deck is really weak against counter cards.

Duel 1 - I figured that I had this duel in the bag since I drew two Gravity Binds and a Messenger of Peace on my opening hand. My satisfaction turned to shock when J.W. countered EVERY ONE OF THEM!!! I couldn't get in a single lick as his dragons ravaged my life points. I was still shaking my head when J.W. finished me off.

Final Score: 0-6000

Duel 2 - Since I went first on this turn, I was able to get a Gravity Bind onto the field unfettered. Well, actually, J.W. TRIED to counter it, but I informed him that you couldn't activate a trap on the turn you set it. We ended up getting a ruling from the judge. I was right... but it was pretty funny watching J.W. argue with the judge. Anyhow, it turned out that J.W. had plenty of cards to counter magic and traps, but none to actually remove them. My Cure Mermaid and Fire Princess, protected by my Gravity Bind, took him steadily down 500 points at a time.

Final Score: 17700-0

Duel 3 - I might've had a chance in this duel if I had drawn the same hand that I had in the first hand. But I didn't get an attack blocker until my fifth turn (Swords of Revealing Light). By that time, J.W. had about four counter traps on the field, so I wasn't able to put up much of a fight.

Final Score: 0-6700

I shook J.W.'s hand and shook my head. I figured that I was going to lose, but not like that. Well, I guess every deck has its weaknesses. Anyway, I'm going to make sure that if I ever have to face J.W. in the future, I'll have my beatdown ready.

Let's see you try to activate those traps when I summon my Jinzo! Heh, heh, heh!

Second Round - BigSpooky vs. Chad (Basic Beatdown)

Chad was a friend of J.W.'s that had just gotten into the game. He was running something that was better then a newbie deck, but not quite a balanced beatdown as it lacked some of the necessary cards. Bonus: unlike J.W., he ran almost no counter cards, and only a few magic/trap removers. So, the duels were long (as is every single duel with this deck), but never really much in question.

Duel 1 - I managed to put Gravity Bind on the field my very first turn, so none of Chad's monsters could hurt me. Once I got my Cure Mermaid and Solemn Wishes on the field, my life points started skyrocketing. He did manage to break through my defenses at one point to hi me for 1200 damage, but a Messenger of Peace put an end to that. With three Maries in the graveyard and a Fire Princess on the field, the duel went completely my way.

Final Score: 13200-0

Duel 2 - Chad had me spooked early as I was unable to draw a Messenger of Peace or a Gravity Bind. I managed to pull my Swords of Reveling Light on my third turn, but had to pay half my life points for my Solemn Judgment to protect my Swords from Chad's De-Spell. However, my Cyber Jar helped me out greatly providing me with a Messenger of Peace, two Fire Princesses, a Maryokutai, and a Graceful Charity. By using the Painful Choice that I drew on that turn along with Graceful Charity, I was able to bury all three of my Maries. With the addition of a Cure Mermaid that I summoned, I was able to hit Chad for 4000 each turn. So, it was over two turns later.

Final Score: 3550-0

Technically, I had won the match before the second duel ended on account of time (dang this deck takes forever to play!) I had to go straight from my match with Chad to my third round match.

Third Round - BigSpooky vs. Andy (Lord of Dragons)

This is the same Andy that I had faced two weeks before in the first round.

He had made some major improvements to his Dragon deck in the past two weeks. The question would be whether or not his new deck could handle my little hotties.

Duel 1 - This duel was basically just a gradual progression of my getting curing cards on the field while my Fire Princess put the heat on Andy. It did have one funny note, however, when Andy activated a Gravity Bind. As he managed to build up an army of Dragons and 1800 monsters, I steadily built up my curing army... which Andy couldn't attack thanks to his Gravity Bind! I did take a 6200 point hit late in the duel from my own Solemn Judgment, but that was really the only damage I took.

Final Score: 7500-0

Duel 2 - For the early part of the game, Andy thumped me with his Dragons and beatdown monsters. However, I was finally able to get a Messenger of Peace on the field so I could build up my forces. In a funny little twist, I destroyed five of Andy's monsters and actually attacked for 5000 damage. That brought him down to 500 life points. Unfortunately for Andy, there wasn't a whole lot he could do from there.

Final Score: 5075-0

One quick note: For anyone who doesn't know what the Lord of Dragons' effect does, it protects all Dragons from magic, traps, and effects THAT SPECIFICALLY DESIGNATE A TARGET. I know that there are Lord of D. cards out there that say it protects Dragons from all magic, traps, and effects... I actually have one. But that's not the way the cards is played... go check out the Upper Deck ruling (http://www.upperdeckentertainment.com/yugioh/faq3.asp) if you don't believe me.

When I played Raigeki on Andy, he knew the correct way to play the card. But about five kids who were watching the duel tried to tell me that Raigeki wouldn't destroy the dragons. Listen, kids... if you're going to tell people how to play the game, you need to make absolutely sure that what you're telling them is RIGHT!

With a record of 2-1 (going to three duels in the loss), I figured that I would at least qualify for the elimination rounds. Sadly, it was not to be as I was sadly neglected for the first time ever at the Wizards Asylum tournament. But I did manage to get in a few fun duels that helped me improve my deck (Mark my words, Sammy: I will get this deck running well enough so that you don't crush me almost every time we duel! Besides I don't recall you ever beating me 21000-0! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! :P --> Thppt!!! And quit calling me "Mister Princess"!)

Hopefully, I can continue to improve my deck so that it'll be competitive with other decks out there. Hey! It could happen!

As long as none of my opponents think to stock their deck with counter traps! ;)

Props:

Hit 'Em Up Style - soon... very soon... my deck will be a force to be reckoned with!

Blu Cantrell - for providing a title for my deck

Jeff & J.W. - for beating me (and showing me where my deck was weak)

Ryan, Chad, and Andy - for fun, hard-fought duels and for being good sports

All of my other opponents (at Vintage Stock and those I played for fun) - I love to duel... and I can't do it without opponents

Vintage Stock, Top Deck, and Wizard's Asylum - for hosting the tournaments

Slops:

Me - for whining about David and bashing J.W.'s deck

David and company - Quit being pests and pay attention to the duel, kiddies!

Bad Sports - No explanation necessary

Whiny, little bratpunks - Ditto

Thieves - Yes... I AM referring to you, ex-friend! I'd bash you a little more here, but I've already wasted enough time trashing your sorry butt. Frankly, acknowledging the existence of scum like you is just a waste of my time.

Comments, suggestions, death threats? Send them to BigSpooky1@hotmail.com.

If you have any ideas about how I can improve my new deck, I would LOVE to hear them. However, I ask that you follow these simple guidelines:

- Tell me the card(s) that you think would work well in my deck along with which card(s) in my deck that I should replace. PLEASE DO NOT SEND ME AN E-MAIL SAYING THAT I SHOULD SIMPLY ADD SUCH AND SUCH CARD!!! If I put in all of the cards that I'd like to have in this deck, it would be a 200-card deck.

- Give me a thorough explanation about why you think the suggested replacement would help. As far as I know, I'm the only person to ever run a Fire Princess deck. So I've probably spent a lot more time thinking about the logistics of the deck than you have. It will take some convincing to prove to me that your idea is better than my current setup. I'm not saying that I won't consider it... just that I need some rationale for your thinking.

- Finally, please consider the theme of my deck (Heal/Burn) when sending in suggestions. Some cards simply don't fit into this deck. For example, Jinzo is a GREAT card, but it would probably hurt me more than help me in this deck (although I really could've used it in my duel against J.W.... maybe I'll put it in my side deck).

I'm also available for online duels in Pojo's Yu-Gi-Oh! Duelist League. E-mail me if you would like to duel sometime. Non-ladder duels only please... those ladder duelists are way too uptight.

If you e-mail me in the next few weeks, I may not get back to you for a while. It's not that I don't want to talk with you or duel. I'm in the process of studying for a VERY DIFFICULT certification exam, and these next few weeks will be devoted primarily to studying.