Sooooooo today I went to the Bushiroad Spring Fest 2015 event in Pomona, CA. I had a great time hanging out with a lot of people I don’t get to see very often, and also got myself a top 8 spot in the main event! 😀

Stuff that will be in this post:

My deck

The runthrough of each of my rounds in the tournament

The decklist that got 1st place (I will leave a link to the video once it’s uploaded)

The decklist that got 2nd place

The decklists of three of my friends that also got Top 8

So first I’ll give some of the details of the tournament:

7 Rounds of Swiss

Top 8 cut after 7 rounds

English-only

192 players

And now for the decks that topped:

Project Diva f (Yellow/Blue/Green) Project Diva f (Yellow/Green/Red) Love Live (Yellow/Red/Green) Nisekoi (Blue/Red) “Is This Love Hina?” < a friend from my locals

And the other decks that made Top 8:

Sword Art Online (Red/Yellow) < mine lel

Fairy Tail (Red/Blue) “Trojan Fire and Ice” < another friend from my locals, also kek that name tho

Bakemonogatari (Red/Yellow/Blue)

Nisekoi (Green/Yellow) [ended up getting DQ’d in Deck Check for having 49 cards :C ]

(9th place) Fairy Tail (Yellow/Red)

So without further ado, let’s talk about my experience in today’s tournament.

I ended the 7 rounds of Swiss with a record of 6-1, with the first six rounds being wins, and the last round being a loss. The deck I played was a Red and Yellow SAO deck, which I based around Silica (I basically just made a deck out of English cards that a friend of mine had, cuz I don’t play English myself; 95% of the deck doesn’t belong to me). The build looked like this:

It looks weird, I know. The deck basically centered around using Silica 1/1 to gain board control in the early stages of the game with Pina and climax combo, while also doing a lot of damage with +2 Soul climaxes. Once I hit level 3, Asuna would help me with soul manipulation to get the exact damage numbers I need.

Round 1: vs. Persona 4 TD x2

First round got off to an interesting start, as my opponent was explaining how they were supposed to be playing Bakemonogatari that day, but some stuff happened and they were playing Persona TDs. So I’m playing against a TD, and TDs have +2 Souls, and yea. LOL

I was able to maintain my board using Pinas, while repeatedly using Climax combos to get my Silicas high enough to clear his board turn after turn. Eventually he just ran out of cards and couldn’t deal enough damage. I think on his last turn he only had like 2 characters to attack with, not sure. It’s been a long day, and I played a lot games since then. But yea, I won.

Round 2: vs. Project Diva f (Green Miku waifu deck I think)

There were some questionable plays with climaxes in this game. I remember on like turn 1 or 2 my opp played one character, and then +2 Soul, to an empty column. I take 4 damage, he loses a climax, doesn’t kill my character. Uhh okay then. This game ended pretty quickly, and I was getting more value out of my cards while my opponent just kept losing higher power characters to my Silica 1/1 climax combo. I think I won at like 2/5.

Round 3: vs. Nisekoi (Green/Yellow Tsugumi build)

So I won this game, and this guy ended up going 6/1 with me as his only loss, and he made top 8… only to get DQ for apparently having 49 cards in his deck. All tournament. LOL k

But back to this game. It was a pretty back and forth match in the middle stages, he had a value +2 Soul Tsugumi combo, and I had a value +2 Soul Silica combo. So we spent the middle parts of the game just +2 Souling each other. Eventually he hit me to 3/6 (!!!) and I would’ve lost the game to one trigger, but he conceded when he passed turn to me because he was apparently out all his climaxes.

Round 4: vs. Angel Beats (Red/Yellow standard build)

I think I had seen like 7 of my 8 climaxes by turn 3. But what I didn’t know is, so did my opponent. By some miracle I got all 8 climaxes into my deck before refresh (Silica suiciders omg the godsend) but my opponent was only able to get like 4 back into the deck for refresh. Damage happened. I won. Pretty vanilla game. Nothing too exciting.

Round 5: vs. Love Live (Red/Yellow/Blue)

At this point I looked around me at the top tables and saw a lot of players that I recognized. My opponent in particular was someone I’d known for a few years in the Vanguard scene, but he is also a big fan of Love Live. I also have a history of losing to him in tournament, on more than one occasion. So this time, I was looking to bring it back for a win.

And that’s pretty much what I did. His field of 1/0 Elis and 1/1 Kotoris were no match for my Silica combo, as I was able to kill characters on his board while he wasn’t able to kill mine because of my Pinas. Overall, I was taking less damage over time than he was, because he was leaving open slots after ramming characters, and the game was over.

Oh man, if there was ever a time to be salty, this is it. Sorry Kit I SWEAR IM NOT A CHEATER

Round 6: vs. Sword Art Online (Blue/Yellow/Red – Sinon/Asuna, with some Death Gun)

This round I played against Kit/Kitori of Burn One (and SnKcards). If you guys aren’t familiar with him, you can check out his Youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeKPGsFxRrq8nU3t1mG3jMw .

I had a lot. A LOT. Of my Climaxes out early. I think I had seen 7 by turn 4, whether it was opening hand, clocking into them, triggering them, earliest cancels on the planet, etc. You get the point. Luckily for me, my opponent didn’t have a Climax card to capitalize on my lack of cancels in the deck, so I was taking minimal damage (1/1/1 sort of thing).

As I got ahead by about a level, he used the Sinon 2/1 change into 3/2 with Climax Combo, and hit me for like 10 damage or something like that. I think I went from 1-3 to 2-6. Fast forward to the next turn. My opponent plays Sinon climax combo again, because I wasn’t able to clear the first one off the board, since he had a counter in hand. I cancel all four of his instances of damage (three attacks, and a burn-4) with Topdeck cancels. There were four climaxes on top of deck, one after another. Then on my turn, I don’t clock, throw three characters on the board, ram them. No climaxes in my triggers. I didn’t draw one for turn either. End turn. He attacks me three times. Topdeck cancel. Topdeck cancel. Topdeck cancel. So that’s SEVEN topdeck cancels in a row. At that point, my opponent had 4 cards in deck, and was at 3/3, and all his climaxes are out. Throw three characters at his face. Game.

Again, Kit, sry mang :C

Round 7: vs. Kosaki-koi (Kosaki waifu Nisekoi)

This game showed me how rekt I get by a strong Level 2 game. His Level 3 Kosakis were flying all over the place as soon as he hit Level 2, and he had Level support 1/1 Kosaki and other various buffing backrow characters. I wasn’t able to deal his high power; even Silica Climax Combo couldn’t get over his Kosakis. By keeping all his 2-soul beaters on the field for several turns, he out-DPS’d me for his win.

So now there was the Top 8 cut, where I ended in 3rd place behind my buddy playing Nisekoi (the only person to go 7-0 in Swiss) and the Miku player who ended up winning the whole thing. Fast forward a half-hour or so to my first match at top tables.

Top 8 Quarterfinals: vs. Project Diva f (Yellow/Blue/Green)

Okay so this guy ended up winning the whole thing. Soleil is a dumb combo, I just want to get that out there right now. There’s a reason it was included in the top 2 decks of this tournament. For those unfamiliar with the climax combo, basically think of it this way. You take a 1/0 4500 and turn it into a 1/1 with 11500. Like wut. And then the turn AFTER the turn ends, it stays at 10500 until my turn ends! Like WUT.

There was also the fact that I opened like 3-4 climaxes, woooooo. But yea I ended up just straight losing to the 1/1 climax combo when he got it out, even after missing that he didn’t clock Yellow for a turn at Level 1, so he couldn’t play the combo as early as he wanted to. There’s only so high my Silicas can hit, and they didn’t hit high enough.

So there you have it. My first major Bushiroad event ended with a quarterfinal match in top 8. I don’t really have anything to show for it, but it was fun, and I’m glad I made it as far as I did, especially since a lot of people I knew were at the top with me, especially the two other guys from my locals. 3 of the top 8 from the same shop? Seems pretty legit.

On that note, readers pls come to Desu Nation where all the kewl kids play lmao :^)

Here is the decklist that got 1st place (Mike C.):

side note: fuk this combo it’s 2redonkulous4me

Here is the decklist that got 2nd place (I think the guy’s name was Steven):

My friend’s Fairy Tail deck “Trojan Fire and Ice” which made Top 8 as well (Cesar P.):

My other friend’s deck who got 4th Place, called “Is This Love Hina?” (Pete S.):

Bakemonogatari decklist which made Top 8 (Jonathan C.):

AND THERE YA GO. Man this took hella long time to type out. I honestly don’t know if I’m ever going to play an English tournament again. It was fun to come and play though, and it was thrilling to get win after win to make it to the top 8 cut, especially since my friends were also there with me.

Shoutouts to Pete and Cesar, for bringing the Desu Dream to Top 8.

Shoutouts to Josh P. Terry C. and Cody L. for letting me borrow stuff for this deck. Also Albert C. for picking me up Pinas LOL

And finally, shoutout to Mike C. for winning the whole thing!

Hope you guys enjoyed this VERY VERY lengthy post, and I’ll see you next post! K BAI

thats me with the long-ass hair btw. LOL