CH.546 Deck Master Tournament, preliminaries
CH.546 Deck Master Tournament, preliminaries
My second tournament was getting a ton more attention than my first one. Just over hundred people had signed up already, so I cut off the signups and I began to figure out how I’d be holding preliminaries and all of that. As well as how many people would take part in the elimination style tournament.
And I think the answer for the second question will be 16. I have 16 possible Deck Master monsters, so why not have 16 people in the elimination tournament.
So I divided the competitors into groups of 6 or 7 people for a preliminary round-robin tournament. The winner of each naturally gets to the elimination tournament.
To hold the preliminaries, I moved HomeBase to a few different locations. Because I don’t need to move people to HomeBase, if I can move HomeBase to them.
Sure this puts local people against people they know, but that is the price they’ll have to pay to enter my tournament. Not like entering actually costs anything. I’m hosting this stuff for free because I want to. So no complaints.
The first prelims were a real Sage special. Because out of the seven people in those prelims, six were sages. Ian Cobba, Shisu Tensei, Ted Miller, Ray Way, Robin Grannar and Mariina Gigas. Yes, Mariina changed her last name from Sawyer to Gigas after becoming a sage.
With them, as the seventh, was Wendy Hero.
And to my surprise, they had quite the diverse pool of decks.
Wendy used a Light Fairy deck with Honest as her Deck Master. She also ran Splendid Venus as her main deck boss monster.
Ian and Robin both ran a deck with both of the Dark Magicians. The two deck masters were decently well balanced, because despite that fact that this tournament didn’t allow for the generic draw power that is Pot of Greed and Graceful Charity, with the inclusion of Reinforcement of the Army type spells for each monster type, Dark Magician’s double spell activation had a really good card to double the search power. Double Summon was also used with Dark Magician’s effect for a total of 3 normal summons for the turn.
Ray Way used a Dark deck. Allure Queens as his deck master/masters and King of the Skull Servants as his ace monster. Normally I may not recommend it, but since Painful Choice is allowed in this tournament, he was able to mill his deck decently enough. And the monster stealing effect of his deck master really helped as well.
Shisu Tensei used a Wind deck with Faith Bird. And she was running a full on mill strategy, using things like Morphing Jar, Cyber Jar and Card Destruction.
Ted was just running a Dragon deck with Blue-Eyes.
And finally, Mariina, and the winner of the first qualifier, ran an Ancient Gear deck with Ancient Gear Cannon as her deck master.
Admittedly I may have fucked up with the deck master ability of Ancient Gear Cannon. It kind of allowed a lucky FTK strategy which Mariina abused.
Using Power Bond, she’d summon Ultimate Ancient Gear Golem with 8800 attack. And then you tribute it to active deck master Ancient Gear Cannon’s effect, which burns your opponent equal to the on the field attack of the tributed monster. And if she couldn’t get Power Bond, Limiter Removal worked as well. As long as she could get the Ultimate Golem to the field.
Mariina was way too lucky in getting the four cards she needed for the summon, so she ended plenty of her duels with that effect.
It honestly is a bit sad that the other sages didn’t get to the elimination tournament, because honestly, they could have gotten far there. But it is what it is, and Mariina advanced there.
The next finalist … can I call them finalists? Maybe qualified people? Yeah. The next qualifier winner came from the Smorog qualifiers. She was Maris, the dwarf ore refiner who showed us some of the refining techniques the dwarves use. [CH.528-529]
She uses a Jinzo as her deck master, but her main deck monsters were mainly Dinosaur-type.
From the Wild Pack, Indigo won. She ran a Gladiator Beast deck with Test Tiger as her deck master.
We also had a competitor from the Kitchen Knights qualify. He ran a Dragon deck.
I then had a handful of students from the different magic academies qualify. I didn’t know it when I accepted the sign ups, but apparently the academies had to limit how many people could sign up, or there would have been even more sign ups. Next time, I’ll have to hold regionals or something if this is already getting so popular.
We also got a few competitors from Alewatch. Maiko and Timothy both qualified.
… don’t remember who they are? Well, Maiko is a receptionist at the adventurers’ guild in Alewatch, while Timothy is the son of Bakula, the owner of the Bakula trading company.
Maiko was running the Fortune Lady deck, while Timothy used Firebird as his deck master.
Then we had Bella, the centaur working at Viscount Kramer’s horse ranch.
Cardo, a knight from Sawyer city.
And returning as the champions of the last tournament, both Nevelle and Elias also qualified.
And with that, we had our qualified people, so time for the tournament itself.
The first round of the elimination tournament went decently.
The best duel from it had to be a rematch between Nevelle and Elias. Shame it happened in the first round, but I randomized the matchups, so it happens.
And since it is a match between the last tournament champions, I’ll cover the final duel between the two. Don’t expect me to go over all of the matches and duels. Would take too long. But this one deserves special attention.
After the first two duels of their match, the situation was 1-1, Nevelle winning the first duel with Elias winning the second.
Nevelle came into the duel with King of the Swamp as her deck master. As a reminder, King of the Swamp, as a deck master, allows her to once per turn, reveal a Fusion monster in your extra deck to add a monster listed in its materials to your hand. So basically Fusion Conscription.
Or she can, once per turn, perform a fusion summoning, like she was using Polymerization. But she can only use one of these effects per turn.
And if she summons King of the Swamp, she can add a Polymerization or Fusion card from deck to hand.
Meanwhile Elias ran a Cyber Dragon deck with Cyber Master Dragon as his deck master.
It can, once per turn, turn all monsters on your field into Cyber Dragons. Not literally, just makes their names be treated as a Cyber Dragon, makes their attribute Light and makes them Machine-type.
Also you can, once per turn, tribute a Cyber Dragon to add one Power Bond from your deck or GY to your hand, and if you do, you take no damage from Power Bond this turn.
And yes, you can use both effects on the same turn.
But now to the duel.
Turn 1
The first duel began with Elias going first.
He set a monster, set two face down cards and ended his turn.
Turn 2
On her turn, Nevelle started by using her Deck Master’s ability to search for Black Luster Soldier. She then discarded a main deck version of King of the Swamp to search for a Polymerization. Shen then used one of the custom cards I made for this tournament, Waterspout. It can search for a LV.4 or lower Aqua monster, and Nevelle added another King of the Swamp to her hand.
Before going for the fusion summon, Nevelle activated Branch!, which will allow her to recover one of the fusion materials if a Fusion monster is destroyed.
She then used her Poly to fuse together her Black Luster Soldier and King of the Swamp to fusion summon Dragon Master Knight.
She attacked the face-down monster with it. Elias didn’t use his face-downs, instead just letting the attack go through.
The face-down monster was a Mecha Bunny, so because of its effect, Nevelle took 500 damage, and Elias summoned another Mecha Bunny to take its place.
Nevelle set two cards face down and ended her turn.
Turn 3.
On his turn, Elias began by flipping up his Ultimate Offering.
He then summoned Green Gadget, which searched for Red Gadget. Which he summoned with Ultimate Offering. Red Red Gadget searched Yellow Gadget, which was summoned with Offering, which searched Green Gadget, which again was summoned with Offering, adding Red to Elias’ hand.
Elias then used his Deck Master’s ability to turn all his monsters into Light Machine Cyber Dragons. He then used its second effect to tribute one of his Green Gadgets so he could add Power Bond to his hand.
He used his Power Bond to fuse the three ‘Cyber Dragon’ Gadgets together to summon the Cyber End Dragon. With 8000 attack, because of Power Bond.
He then flipped his face down Mecha Bunny face up, burning Nevelle for 500. Following that, he used Ultimate Offering to summon out a copy of each, Red, Green and Yellow Gadgets.
He then attacked, using Cyber End Dragon to attack Dragon Master Knight.
Nevelle tried to stop him with a Mirror Force, but Elias paid half his life points to negated that with Solemn Judgment.
Nevelle took 3000 damage, and dragon was destroyed, but thanks to Breach!, she was able to summon back King of the Swamp in defense.
Elias used his Yellow Gadget to destroy King of the Swamp, before attacking directly with his three remaining monsters, leaving Nevelle with just 500 life points.
He then set one face down and ended his turn. And thanks to his Deck Master, Elias didn’t have to pay the Power Bond cost.
Turn 4.
Nevelle’s turn, and she drew a card. She then used her face-down Call of the Haunted to summon back the other King of the Swamp from her GY. She then summoned her deck master King of the Swamp to the field, using its effect to search her deck for a Polymerization. Which she used to fuse her three King of the Swamp together into a custom Fusion monster I made for the tournament, Ultimate King of the Swamp. It is a fusion that required three ‘fusion substitute’ monsters as materials. It has 0/0 stats, but can, once per turn, reveal a fusion in your extra deck, or target one in your GY, and Ultimate King of the Swamp takes that monster’s stats, attribute, level, name and effect until the end phase of your opponent’s turn.
And since she used her Deck Master to make the Ultimate King of the Swamp, it became her new deck master.
She used her Ultimate King of the Swamp’s effect to turn it into Rainbow Neos. She then activated Rainbow Neos’ effect, sending Branch! to the graveyard to shuffle all of Elias’ Spell/Traps, to the graveyard.
But Elias responded by activating his set Waboku, so his monsters won’t be destroyed for the turn, and he won’t take any damage.
Nevelle ended her turn.
Turn 5.
On his turn, Elias simply attacked with his boosted Cyber End Dragon and won the first duel, both on running his opponent out of life points, and destroying their deck master.
And so, Elias won their rematch with a 2-1 duel score.