Jerome’s Scrap Deck and Bounty Tournament Report
Saturday’s final event of the day was a unique experience, to be sure. 7 KDE employees, including myself, entered the fray as Bounty Duelists to give Duelists a chance to win the Yu-Gi-Oh! Extravaganza Game Mat and some Booster Packs. It’s a fun event to play because literally anything can happen. Most of the time when you’re at a tournament, someone will be on the microphone to tell you when your round will start, etc. Here, he’s on the microphone to spice up your Duels with a series of ever changing rules!
Here’s how a Bounty Tournament works:
- The tournament will be 3 rounds no matter how many people enter.
- At the end of the 3 rounds, any Duelist who has won all 3 of their matches wins the Game Mat.
- If you’re paired up against one of the Bounty Duelists, you get some Booster Packs just for playing. If you win, you get all the Booster Packs they have on hand and their Extravaganza Game Mat.
- One Bounty Duelist each round is designated as a Global Bounty. If that person is defeated, everyone in the tournament wins packs!
- The catch is that there’s a really tall guy on the microphone changing the rules every few minutes to shake things up. At any point, all Duelists could be instructed to stop playing and do something, ranging from extremely beneficial to absolutely crippling.
Since the rules were being modified all over the place anyways, and since there was a lot on the line for the Bounty Duelists, some of us decided to up our odds of victory and show off some cards from Storm of Ragnarok while we were at it. One of my compatriots came with the full Nordic Deck, another showed up with Legendary Six Samurai, and I built a new Scrap Deck for the occasion. Here’s what I used:
3 Scrap Goblin
3 Scrap Beast
3 Scrap Chimera
3 Scrap Golem
2 Scrap Breaker
2 Effect Veiler
1 Level Eater
1 Scrap Searcher
1 Sangan
3 Pot of Duality
3 Scrapstorm
3 Book of Moon
2 Scrapyard
2 Forbidden Lance
1 Foolish Burial
1 Monster Reborn
1 Dark Hole
1 Cold Wave
1 Giant Trunade
3 Royal Decree
That’s the same Scrap Breaker that we previewed over on the Strategy Site. I also used a pair of Maxx “C” in my Side Deck which you can read about here. The last card you probably haven’t heard of yet is Forbidden Lance. Everyone using a Storm of Ragnarok powered Deck played a pair of Forbidden Lances, and it was one of the most formidable advantages available. You’ll be able to read more about it on the Strategy Site tomorrow, but the quick rundown is that it’s a Quick-Play Spell that reduces a monster ATK by 800, but makes it immune to Spells and Traps for the rest of the turn.
Chain it to Book of Moon, Bottomless Trap Hole, Dimensional Prison, Mirror Force, Torrential Tribute… basically, if you get your monster to the field Forbidden Lance ensures that it stays there and lets you do what you need to do to win. One of the Scrap Deck’s greatest enemies is Book of Moon because it can disrupt your Synchro Summons, but with a pair of Lances and 3 Pot of Duality to help me find my Decrees and Lances, I basically got to do whatever I wanted with my Tuners as long as I could sneak them past my opponent’s Solemn Warnings.
Scrap Breaker was a huge boon throughout the day. Any turn that you start with a Tuner monster on the field is a turn when you can explode into action thanks to Scrap Breaker. Flip the Tuner face-up if it’s not already, and Special Summon Scrap Breaker if your opponent has a monster too. This works best if your opponent just attacked a Set Scrap Goblin, which happens quite frequently. I’m actually considering a 3rd Scrapyard just to make it happen more often. Anyways, you flip up your Tuner if you haven’t already and Special Summon Scrap Breaker. Your opponent needs to stop that Summon there and then, or else you’re going to destroy your Tuner and retrieve a Scrap Chimera or whatever you want from your Graveyard.
Successfully using Scrap Breaker sets you up to add a lot of Attack Points to your side of the field, but if they do negate the Summon you can follow up by Tributing your Tuner for Scrap Golem instead and starting up your Scrap Synchro cycle. Here’s how I fared in the tournament.
Round 1 VS Gladiator Beasts
Wacky Rules Implemented:
(Check back later for the full list!)
I did not have a particularly good start to the event. The first rule was implemented as soon as the Duel started, revealing both players hands and allowing my opponent to see that I had drawn all 3 Scrap Golems and was open to attack. It was not cool. Especially because my opponent had 3 Test Tigers and the ability to bring out Gladiator Beast Heraklinos in short order. That said, I managed to stabilize my field nicely reducing him to only the Heraklinos while I had just Set Scrap Goblin to defend myself with an Effect Veiler in my hand just in case he drew something that would let him bring out Gladiator Beast Gyzarus.
And then the hammer dropped. A new rule made us shuffle hands into their Decks and draw 5 cards. I went from 2 cards in hand to 5, losing my Effect Veiler, and he went from 0 to 5 cards in hand… including an Ancient Forest to turn my Goblin to Attack Position so he could attack straight through its 0 ATK to win.
For the second Duel, my opponent sided in Dimensional Fissures to try to stop my Scrap combos. I Chained to the initial activation of it with Scrapstorm to destroy my Scrap Beast and let me get something going, but as soon as I brought out my Scrap Dragon we were instructed to destroy all Level 5 or higher monsters we controlled. It felt like I was on a one-way train to Frown Town, but my opponent was light on monsters that game and I managed to take care of each one he drew before flipping Royal Decree to negate my opponent’s numerous Set Traps and burning through the rest of my monsters to play another Scrap Dragon which eventually brought me the win.
In game 3, my opponent started with Elemental Hero Prisma sending Gladiator Beast Bestiari to the Graveyard and 3 Spell or Trap Cards. One of them was Call of the Haunted which he immediately used during my Draw Phase to bring back Bestiari. This meant two things: 1. My opponent did have at least one Gladiator Beast War Chariot Set, and 2. He wanted to end the Duel as quickly as possible before a rule could be implemented that could foil him. I was having none of it though and used Giant Trunade to clear his Traps. I played a Scrap Beast and Set Scrapstorm and a pair of Book of Moons. I weathered the next turn of attacks, successfully resolved my Scrapstorm, set up all my combos, and unleashed a mighty Cold Wave followed by a lot of Scrap monsters, including Scrap Breaker and a Scrap Dragon. Victory came swiftly after.
1-0
Round 2 VS X-Sabers
Wacky Rules Implemented:
(Check back later for the full list)
This one started off with the greatest rule ever. We had to scream YU-GI-OH!!!!! like in the classic series in order to go to the Battle Phase. Thanks to Royal Decree and Effect Veiler along with the impenetrable Scrap Goblin, victory was academic for me in the first Duel. While we were using our Side Decks, a rule that made all Bounty Duelists lose 2000 Life Points hit. I was saved from the damage since there was no Duel in progress for me to lose Life Points in. I sided in my Maxx “C”s and Battle Faders, anticipating my opponent to start off extremely fast, and he did not disappoint.
After taking 2000 damage from a rule causing the opponent’s of all Bounty Duelists to lose 2000 Life Points (a counterpoint to the rule I dodged!), he unloaded everything he had on his second turn, Special Summoning 8 monsters in one turn under the protection of Cold Wave… only to be foiled by a Battle Fader! I Tributed it for Scrap Golem next turn and Special Summoned the Scrap Searcher he had destroyed last turn to his side of the field, wiping out all of his monsters, and I won in short order afterwards.
2-0
Round 3 VS Machina Gadgets
(Check back later for the full list)
So far, the rules had been particularly unkind to me. I dodged the 2000 point hit last round and my opponent was subjected to it, but it didn’t really impact anything in the long run because I didn’t take any damage anyways. And after all the screaming I did before being allowed to go to Battle Phase in the last round, I didn’t have much of a voice left. So of course, the overarching rule of the round was that everyone had to sing their Battle Phase. Lovely.
I was designated as the Global Bounty for this round, so there was a lot of pressure on both sides of the Match. My opponent was also very shy about singing his Battle Phase and really had to struggle to belt out his attacks. Partway through the first Duel, I had a Scrap Twin Dragon in play and nothing else, and was instructed to destroy all my cards because I had a Storm of Ragnarok card in my Deck. Thankfully, the instructions continued and I got to Summon a Synchro Monster for free. So I replaced my Scrap Twin Dragon with a… Scrap Twin Dragon. Net effect of this rule: nothing. I continued on to win the Duel.
Then things got ugly. I Summoned a Scrap Dragon early in the second Duel and was forced to destroy it by a rule. Since the emcee wasn’t actually my opponent, though I argued at length with a judge that he was, given how he was actively attempting to defeat me, I didn’t get to Summon my Scrap Golem back. I had Royal Decree shutting down my opponent’s Traps, along with a second one to back it up in case of Mystical Space Typhoon, but then the new rule came down from above: Destroy all Spell and Trap Cards. Awful for me, great for the guy who was stuck under Decree. We then had to discard our hands and draw new ones, forcing me to discard my Dark Hole, at which point I was swarmed to death by Machina Fortress and friends.
So everything came down to one last Duel, and it started with everyone being told to destroy all monsters on the field. Thankfully I had just drawn my 6th card and had not played any monsters yet. I figured, “OK, it can’t get any worse.” This is always a mistake to think, let alone say, because it got worse. “All monsters become Normal Monsters and lose their effects. Everywhere.” Desire to plant my face in the table: Maximum.
Fortunately, Scrap Beast is bigger than any of the Gadgets, and a Book of Moon helped me beat my opponent’s Machina Gearframe. I Chained Royal Decree to my opponent’s Bottomless Trap Hole when I Summoned my second Scrap Beast to the field, and when my opponent attempted to Chain another Bottomless Trap Hole to ensure my Beast made an exit, I used Forbidden Lance to protect it.
My opponent Set a monster to protect himself, and as I started my last turn, the Normal Monster rule finally wore off, being replaced with “No one can play Traps.” Which wasn’t particularly useful since I already had Royal Decree face-up. That said, it was the best thing that ever happened to me, rules wise because the previous one making all my monsters useless was rescinded. As soon as it happened, I unleashed the maximum fury of Scrap Breaker, destroying one of my Scrap Beasts which let me retrieve a Scrap Chimera that I had tossed in the Graveyard with Foolish Burial early on. I Normal Summoned it, brought back my Scrap Beast, and unleashed a wave of attacks that finished off my opponent as time was called in the round.
All in all, I finished a perfect 3-0 on the evening, did a lot of cool stuff with my new Storm of Ragnarok cards, and had a good time coming up with new and exciting ways to overcome the hurdles of the ever-changing tournament rules.