RRQ Report - Top 10 EU - kwrowe Published on June 11, 2019 by kwrowe

Introduction

Hi, I’m kwrowe and this is my Regional Representative Qualifier or “RRQ” write up. I finished the event on 77056 points putting me 6th place in the European region, with the top 3 qualifying for the world championship in Germany this August. The event started at my local time of 6am on the 7th of June and ended 72 hours later, In terms of my experience, I’ve had past success in community held Duel Links tournaments, making it onto the Top Player Council on two occasions. However, my experience for this type of event was much more limited, having never before finished within the top 50 of my region. I played this event under the names “Moonraker”, “TheEgg69” and “Kwrowe”.

Preparation

Preparing for the RRQ was a process that started several weeks before the event began. I probably played around 200 duels just in the two weeks before the event started. This was mostly done with my clan The Renegades so a big shout out and thanks to them. Overall, I would say this testing proved successful as 3 members of the group finished in the top 10 of EU ( Whybona , Koizumi, and myself) . I also practised ladder climbs by myself by attempting quick King of Games and Stage 25 RRQ runs. This let me play against lots of different top players and gave a snapshot of what the meta could be like.

The Event

Day 1



My testing and preparation had made decide to start the climb with Subterrors. This was because they had solid matchups against the majority of a meta. I want to thank Cubiyo and Kaito for helping find a blueprint build for the deck and giving me confidence in the build as they both performed well with the deck in the most recent MCS. I found the early part of the event the easiest of the entire weekend quickly climbing to 26389 points which put in the Top 10 of the EU region. The easy part of the event ended here. After reaching 30000 points I found myself stuck. I was finding my build wasn’t very strong in the Subterror mirror match so I opted to switch to Koa’ki Neos, another deck that I had tested. This proved unsuccessful and I found myself lower than when I started at 25000 after several hours. At this point I’d been playing from 7am until 1am with only two short food breaks so I was quite disillusioned. I decided I would get back to 30000 and call it a day and that I would return to Subterrors to do this. After 3 painful hours I made it back to 30000 and finally went to sleep after being awake for 19 hours.

Day 2



Splitting the days up feels somewhat weird because in my head they all merged into one. Still, I did manage about four or five hours sleep, so this is where I will start Day 2. I decided that I wanted to find a new deck to climb with having struggled at the same position for a long period of time. When looking in the DLM Discord I stumbled upon a Blue-Eyes deck Vini had piloted to the Top 10 of his region Latin America. I had tested Blue Eyes a tiny bit so thought I would give it a shot. This proved a good decision as I climbed 20000 points in 81 games, which after being stuck at the same point for over 100 games beforehand, felt like a minor miracle. Unfortunately, history repeated itself as I found myself stuck in the same position again for 100 games, albeit slightly higher up the ladder. In part, I blame for this. The infamous card missing 9 times in a row causing me to lose 4 games in a row (the odds of this happening is much lower than 1%). Some people asked why I didn’t switch to which at the cost of discarding guarantees destruction. However, this only works on special summoned monsters and I didn’t want to trade the versatility that being able to target any card had. Moreover, some of my games were won because Snipe Hunter forced backrow even when it missed. On reflection maybe using Snipe was wrong but I do not believe it is as clear cut as people sometimes suggest. Regardless, after climbing back up to 50000 with Blue-Eyes for what felt like the twentieth time I decided to call it a day and try getting some sleep.

Day 3



After another 4 hours sleep I woke up with the Top 3 over 27000 points ahead of me and saw my chances of making it as slim to none. Still, after all the effort I had put in I decided I would try one final push. I decided to go back to Subterrors as they were the deck I was overall most comfortable with. I made a couple of key changes which helped my build hugely in the mirror match which I had been struggling with. These were to add two copies of both and . I quickly began climbing again at a consistent pace back into the top 10 of the EU with about 75000 points. This put me only 12000 off the worlds places with around 8 hours to go. I did progress from there but unfortunately only by a further 2000 points after an ill-timed play mistake caused me to have a mini tilt. When the event finish I had 77056 points leaving me 6th place and 7000 points off of 3rd Place. This may sound like a lot but to put it into context having converted 4 of my losses to wins in over 650 games would have increased my score by approximately 8000 points, putting me in the worlds position.

Reflections

Despite finishing in a good position I would be lying to say I was not disappointed at missing out on a chance to go to Germany for the World Championships. The margin for error was so small and though I got painstakingly close I ultimately fell the wrong side of it. Still, I am happy to have finished in the Top 10 of my region. This a feat I’m sure few expected of me, even myself at times. It would also be wrong not to mention and congratulate the 3 who did make it in my region Suhnrisanti, Belban and RaW . They all proved themselves as top players who really deserve the chance to go to worlds.

On the Event Structure

I really hope Konami change the way this event works. Currently with no limit to the number of games you can play it is promoted to deprive yourself of sleep. I take no pride in having played over 650 games as I did it at the cost of my weekend and my health. I was in the privileged position where I could make those sacrifices and not everybody can do that or necessarily should even want to. A limit to the number of games a person can play per day or the scrapping of the ladder system entirely in favour of something different would be welcome. Over 24 hours after the event has finished I have still nowhere near recovered.

Conclusion

Despite all my issue with the event structure and my sadness at missing out I did still enjoy my weekend overall. It is great fun to test yourself against the very best players in the game when the opportunity arises. I just want to finish by thanking everybody that helped me throughout the weekend and say good luck to everyone in Germany. Hopefully this is the year someone from Europe can take the crown!

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