YCS Ft. Worth: Pro-Talk With Manav Dawar
Manav Dawar from Seattle, Washington won the 200th YCS in Columbus, Ohio last year, took second place at YCS Secaucus last year, took third place in the 3 vs. 3 YCS in Atlanta (with some help from his teammates) this year, and took 4th place at the 2019 North America WCQ in Pittsburgh. He’s a 2019 World Championship competitor, and returned from the competition in Berlin, Germany two months ago. Dawar has been playing the Yu-Gi-Oh! TRADING CARD GAME since 2012, but has enjoyed almost all of his success recently, with lots of YCS top cut finishes in the past year. I asked Manav Dawar the secret to his dramatic improvement in tournament-level performance.
Dawar attributes much of his success to his increased commitment to the game.
“I think it’s just practicing and theorizing everything. I’m at a point where I don’t need to test as much – I just visualize it. Knowing how to play every single Deck and knowing how to counter every single one of them can improve any player’s game.”
Over the past year and a half, Dawar began mastering these skills.
Unlike many top Duelists who constantly change their Deck choice in order to adapt to an ever-changing metagame, Dawar has, for the most part, been using Sky Strikers since their initial release. I asked him why he sticks with Sky Strikers, even as new cards are released.
“It has brought me the most success, and I know the Deck inside and out. I know how to adapt to every format.” Although Dawar has been sticking with the Sky Striker theme in most tournaments that he enters, he adjusts his card choices so that he’s ready for anything he’s likely to encounter.
“The more you play the Deck. The more you know it. Your matchups are the hardest thing to figure out. Right now the format is so diverse and there are so many different Decks, it’s hard to Side Deck for every Deck. You have to Main Deck some cards for certain matchups, and you have to accept when to take your loss if you get paired in a bad matchup.”
Dawar advises that new players try not to take the easy road. “You have to work hard to get there. A lot of people want to win so badly, but it’s not that easy. You have to grind to get there.”
Manav Dawar has been a rising star in the Yu-Gi-Oh! TRADING CARD GAME community, and he just made it into the Top 32 cut right here at YCS Ft. Worth. Follow the coverage to track his journey through the rest of the tournament!