Trio of Power

Most of the Asia Qualifiers ended and it's almost a month before the big event in Thailand.

Let's talk about the winning decks from each country a bit.

Hong Kong - Prophecy

Spellbook Judgment Day is a bad card design that is really meant to be abused. Drawing it with Junon/s and a good mix of spells equates to 2-3 turns of massive advantage. Lucky if u live through it all and they depleted their Spellbook stock. Easy to side against them though as Droll & Lock manages to stall them by a turn while EEV spells doom all over. Too bad Rose Archer needs a plant field to be used.

Singapore - Incarnate Dragons

Incarnate Dragons has been the talk of the blogs and forums for a while now and is very much considered to be THE deck to beat for the current meta as DragoSack and LaDD is a bitch. Almost has no bad starting hands asides from perhaps having same colored dragons in hand and GY but a single Sarco solves this problem.

Malaysia - Verz

A meta deck that could be called anti-meta as Ophion alone stops the other decks above. Most argues that Ophion can be killed easily by card effects but here's what i say...

Saw this around facebook so much that i wanted to edit it. Original picture only had two panels and I added the Xyz Reborn part. The above pic sums up basically why Verz is still on top plus its ability to main deck EEV too.

I dont claim that Verz is invincible but it does have an advantage over Incarnates. Prophecy perhaps can win over Verz easier than Incarnates as Hygro Spellbook on Toon Gemini Elf, Justice, or Shining Elf is an easy out to Ophion. Let's not forget about Injection Fairy also. Xyz Reborn is a pain but let's hope Decree stops it.

How about the ProphecyxIncarnate matchup? Advantage-wise both decks do it massively as Prophecy can plan and collect the necessary Spellbooks to get through Drago-Sack and OTK while the Incarnate can just hide behind double Drago-Sack or LaDD. Jowgen will be the winning card behind Prophecy if he can protect him. Perhaps also why Wabokus are used in multiples inside Prophecy now aside from LP safety.

This three is what i consider as the big three this format. Of course, 3axis FF and Mermails are still lurking but i feel they wont stand through a test of several rounds with so much Incarnates around. Fairly speaking, 3axis can rush the otk through Rekindlings and Mermails can push OTK too or rush into Abyssgaios with Veiler ready in hand so still cannot underestimate them.

So I said last time that I'll post my Mermail deck but I guess it really doesn't matter anymore so let's scratch it. Thanks for that and also for reading!

Back again. PH Asia Qualifier results

Been awol for how many months now but I'm back again to live up to my blog's description that you can see above, lol.

I think explanations are needed to be given as to why I've been out blogger for a long while.
1.  Career forced to live on the provinces where Yugioh is nonexistent.
2.  Internet connection there is unstable so wasn't even able to play decent games online.
3.  Stuck on Machina Gadget deck for a long while so nothing new to share too.

Luckily, I was able to move my career to a place much closer to home and the city so for the past few weeks I came back to the local shop regularly, got a new deck, and played more games so here's a few things I want to share. There's a lot I want to write about so I'll make this into a series of posts...

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Lemme start with the concluded Philippines ACQ. We played before the new banlist was applied so Windups are still top tier and you can still encounter the shit turtle-ing under the protection of 2x Warning and a Judgment, but still, 104 players arrived and played for the chance to win the Thailand trip.

Not as many as other Asia countries but still impressive for this year.

For now I'll just put the results.

104 players
7 rounds of swiss + Top 16 cut

Top 16 comprised of
3 Fire Fist (2x 4star, 1x 3/4star)
2 Mermail
2 Machina Gadget
2 Agents
1 Windup, Verz, BF, Six Samurai, Prophecy, Wind-Incarnate Chaos Dragon, Sacred

Top8
Irwin Arogo (Fire Fist 3/4-star) vs. Louren Vidad (Agents) = Agents win
Alvin Lim (Fire Fist 4-star) vs. Karlo Evangelista (Mermail) = Mermail win
Jeffrey Maglilong (Sacred) vs. John Kevin Alcantara (Fire Fist 4-star) = Sacred win
Me (Mermail) vs. Yuki Karikomi (Wind-Up) = Mermail win

*shockingly, all the Fire Fist decks were eliminated this round

Top4
Louren (Agents) vs. Jeffrey (Sacred) = Agents win
Me (Mermail) vs. Karlo (Mermail) = I win

Finals
Lost to Agents but he can't go as he says he is busy with study and is minor so I go instead. Lucky. lol
He should have said so right at the beginning lol.

Here's a rundown of what I encountered during swiss (in order):
Green = won, Red = lost
Agents >> Samurai >> Arrive Hero >> Agents >> Verz >> Agents >> Prophecy

As you can see, I can confidently say that Agents was the most represented deck in the tournament. Actually I expected more of Gadgets and Fire Fists decks w/o the promos and those were the ones that I made my side deck around. I also expected after the top 8 cut that all the Fire Fist decks would have advanced to Top 4 since they were complete with the promos and is the most dreaded deck in the tournament but it didnt happen. So unexpected.

Verz, another deck considered as top tier, were represented by few ppl. Plus, the inherent bad matchup of the deck against Fire Fist is hard to fix here in the Philippines as only a handful of ppl have sets of Forbidden Holy Lance and most of these ppl are running Fire Fists too. lol

Prophecies were only represented by 3-4 people, I think. Lots of ppl are unprepared for this matchup as some dont even know how absurd Divine Judgment's effect is. However, perhaps the odds were still against them as only 3-4 Prophecies are facing off against 101 other ppl. There's a big risk of them being eliminated even though I consider the deck as the most powerful currently. This is proven as 1 Prophecy deck reaches Top 16. I heard he lost because he drew badly while pitted against Raioh. lol

That's it for our Asia Qualifiers. There's still 2 mos. till the Asia Championships in Thailand so there's still a lot of time for the meta to change (if it does at all) and for me to decide which deck to use. I enjoy playing Mermail and adding Tidal (Water Incarnate Dragon) gives a whole lot of help (Ill talk about it in my next post). But im still iffy if it'd be the deck I'll use forThailand. So there.

Well, I hope you enjoyed my comeback post and see you next time.