Yapping - Card game shenanigans

 Hello lads and lasses,

Another Friday, another yapping update until i actually make time to draw something.
The last few weeks have been hectic between my other work, my friend group and this overbearing heat.
Which is why i haven't been posting regularly... at least that's my excuse for today !

Summer has come in full swing once again, and my deep seated hatred of it has once again been proven right.
It's way too hot everywhere, night time doesn't even get colder and there is mosquitos spawning spontaneously.
Adding to it the fact that shorts are prohibited at my new work means that i have to tank the heat in pants that keep my legs warm.
I long for the time of vacation.

Anyhow, apart from my desire to fight the sun, i have been playing some quality card games lately.
There is a shop near where i live that organize Yu-gi-oh events where you can duel and trade cards in a traditional format.
And honestly this time have been perhaps the greatest so far - we were fewer which meant we had time to play with everyone.

I have played in the span of an afternoon 10 games back to back with the last one lasting an hour and 15 minutes of incredible comebacks.
My first opponent was the one organizing the events at the store and we had promised to try our decks against one another.
The funny thing is that he is also a Elemental Hero player which eased our connections.

We played together 7 games with different decks : 
- The first Two games were him using an Utopy deck and i was using my trusty Hero deck that had been reviewed recently.
- The next two game were against his own Hero deck - a Hero to Hero fight.
- The next Three games were between his pendulum Qliphoth deck and my pendulum Dracoslayer/Magikey Deck.

First off, that battle against his utopic deck was VERY HARD.
One of his card was the banned XYZ Monster known as "Number S0 : Utopic ZEXAL" which when summoned completely stopped the opponent from activating cards and effects.
Things had looked grim when he summoned it, however, I could count on the raw power of my Elemental Heroes fusion and some lucky draws.
I managed to win the two games thanks to my comeback potential - Even using "Vision Hero : Trinity" 's triple attack to my advantage against his Utopic cards which can negate attacks.

The Second matchup was very different - Hero Vs Hero.
And this time i had the overwhelming advantage - even though his deck had a pot of greed he was lacking some monsters that i have been using for some time now.
"Elemental Hero : Shinning Neos Wingman", "Elemental Hero : Flame Wingman Burning fury" and "Neos Fusion" have allowed me to defeat him.
He did manage to play a "Elemental Hero - Wildheart" which in this day and age lacks in power - heck he even had a "Pot of greed" in his deck !

The third matchup was against his qliphoth pendulum.
The funny thing is - we had the same strategy : No more effect and tons of pendulum monsters on the field.
However my Dracoslayer deck didn't managed to start properly and it ended with my loss in the first round - with a brick on the opponent side the next one.
The third battle was a win for him i think - it had became a blur after so many games back to back.

I played 2 Games against another player who had two decks : a Monarch Deck and a Flame Accelerator deck.
Against my hero deck it didn't last very long, which i was kinda sad about - I'm not a fan of this type of duel.
"To fight without struggle is to win without glory." - Idk who said that but they explain it the best.

Finally came time for the final battle of the event - a fight against the floowandereze deck of my friend.
This beast of a deck had already defeated most of my other friends and had allowed him to reach Diamond status on Master Duel.
Although i had won last time using my heroes and a lucky card - this time was different.

To explain what was at stake i'll go back on the defeat of one of my friend and it's impact :
Basically i made a friend at work who i have given a deck to so they might begin their own journey in Yugioh : The Cyber Dragon deck.
For those who don't know, the Cyber dragon is a pretty strong fusion deck that focus on summoning terrifying high attack monsters that can decimate you in a single turn.

He had played against my friend's floowandereeze deck and had been obliterated a number of time by it.
This losing streak had changed his views and he had began obsessing and looking only at the strongest God tier deck instead of progressing his own.
While i could understand why he became obsessed, i'd still think that is the wrong path to trully enjoy the game.

And so to show my friend that the path of the meta-slave wasn't the only one i challenged the Floowandereeze with an Amazoness deck.
To give a bit more explanation on these two decks : 
- The Flowandereeze deck is a migratory bird deck that specialize in normal summoning lots of birds from the banishement and playing during the opponent turn.
- The Amazoness deck is a wierd deck where you summon various amazoness to fuse and create the amazoness boss monster which protect your other cards and can lock out an opponent from attacking.

In a regular matchup i was using a rogue deck against a god tier deck - not even rogue since at the time where we duel Amazoness wasn't even considered in the tier list.
To say the odds were against me was an understatement, especially in the fact that my deck contained no negates or handtraps whereas my friend's deck had plenty of them.
Yet mistakes from him and me capitalizing on it, i was able to struggle for an hour and fifteen minutes and finally through many shenanigans was able to defeat my friend.

To be fair in regular condition my friend would have obliterated me, but the heat and the constant duels must have gotten the better of him.
But a win is a win and so this victory adds to the list of impossible duel i have somehow won against an opponent who led the game during the entire game.
This is also interesting as the Amazoness deck had been defeated many times by my friend's Cyber Dragon deck - so he was quite shocked to see me hold ground and win.

I'd love to say that my feelings went through and my friend saw the path of beliving in his own archetype - but that's not quite the truth.
He was surprised and he got better with his cyber dragon deck, but more through experience than thanks to my duel.
So there's that - a bit frustrating but honestly i had so much fun dueling that it was still worth it.

Honestly this kind of event proves to me why i love playing Yugioh - the shenanigans and mind-games when playing are of another level.
In truth, i feel that when playing your own archetype against another, it feels like an anime duel where nobody know who will win until the last card is drawn.
Although I'd say that Master Duel dampen my love of this card game due to the sheer number of guide following players.

Anyhow that's all for today, i hope i'll be able to draw something or at least finish what i started in the next couple of days.

See you all next friday,