07.21.08
*Stealth Post*
… PC still dead… The Dark Knight was awesome… Heath Ledger is THE Joker… Bounts Previews getting better and better… MUN reprint!… if i get MUN stuff, then i guess i still haven’t quit on VS, hehehe… Squad 3 Regionals this Saturday… commons/uncommons format… still no deck for that… wallet gonna be in pain for the next few weeks… wallet already bleeding badly… curse hobbies for being so much fun, hehehe…
07.13.08
Missing in Action
My PC died! And that is why I haven’t been updating this blog for quite a while now, hehehe. I haven’t found the time to look into what’s wrong with my PC, so it looks like I’m gonna rely on these rare moments when I can find time to surf on a non-working day…
Anyway, just quick updates on Bleach:
1. My Student deck has finally won an HL! ^_^
2. My Human deck didn’t work out as I expected, hehehe. It focuses too much on offensive tricks. I might as well wait for the Bounts set for more Human goodness.
3. Speaking of the Bounts, the previews have been more or less awesome so far. Some of the generic stuff posted so far scream ‘money card’ to me, and the uncommons and commons have been spectacular as well. It’s an exciting time to be a Bleach player, hehehe.
4. New stuff up at the Bleach Redemption Store! The big target prize is Thumbs Up, of course.
But the Soi Fon promo card looks soooooo good!!! I am so tempted to get a set… le sigh…
Soi Fon! Sting me to death with your love! hahaha =P
That’s all I can think of at the moment, hehehe. ^_^
06.29.08
Squad 2 Regionals
The 2nd Regionals concluded with me ending up with a losing record, but it was still a fun event with every participant giving his best shot. Most of my losses were due to not having the initiative, but some were also due to bad matchups. In any case, congratulations are in order to cruboy for winning his 2nd straight Regionals! And congratulations also to Red Viper for snagging the Squad 2 Captain title, due to the rule that a previous Taicho can’t have another Taicho title during the year, hehehe. ^_^
06.28.08
Bleach at Bizu
Last tuesday, we held the 1st ever Makati HL for Bleach at Bizu Patisserie in Greenbelt 2. Now that’s a fancy place to play card games in, but the Bizu guy Red Viper came through for us and graciously hosted the event, so everyone who came had fun and enjoyed the really good food that was served. It was especially a great night for “Davs”, who won the tourney with his impressive Spirits deck. Congratulations Davs! hehehe =P
In other Bleach news, I played my Renji Soul Reapers deck last night at XP, as I hadn’t played it in a while and wanted a fun deck. Sadly it didn’t win a lot of games, partly because of bad matchups and partly because I couldn’t get out Renji’s Bankai early on in the games that I lost. Hihio Zabimaru is so critical to the deck’s success, with everyone packing Balances and Passing Overs all over the place. But the deck performed as well as it could, so I can’t be too hard on my guy Abarai (yeah, I’m a rhyming monster, hehehe).
Tonight will be the 2nd Bleach Regionals, a fight for the honor of being the Squad 2 Captain. That’s Soi Fon’s honor at stake, baby! The competition has improved over the months though, so it will an uphill battle to claim my fame as a Taicho. Wish me luck! ^_^
06.22.08
Chopsuey 2.0
Last weekend, I let my Student deck rest for a while, since it still needed some tweaks. Instead, I decided to bust out one of my “think tank” creations, which I’ve had a decklist written for but never really bothered to put together until last week. I knew it had potential, but I was quite surprised and pleased that it went undefeated in the 2 HLs that I played. It’s a deck with no unifying theme or trait, but instead relies on efficient resource management. Hence, I call it Chopsuey 2.0, after my original chopsuey deck that had everyone wondering what the hell it was supposed to do, hehehe.
One of my favorite characters for this deck is also its Guardian:
I never realized how useful that ability is until I tried it out. It’s resource efficiency at its finest. Makes me wonder how good the upcoming Dual Energy cards are in the Bounto set (coming this July! ack!). Of course, Sosuke becomes better with his trusty and trusting lieutenant:
Momo cry! Momo smash! Of course, it’s not often that I had both Sosuke and Momo out together, but on the games that I was able to, Momo just made the matches end faster than they had any right to.
I have another deck in the “think tank”, but I’m not sure if I’ll have the time to cobble it together for the weekend. It has the potential to be better than both chopsuey decks that I’ve built in terms of consistency, but I think its problem will be a reduction in controlling tempo by speed. I’ll have to build it and find out for myself first, hehehe.
06.15.08
Squad 2 Trial Mission – Part 1
I’ve managed to playtest my latest Bleach creation, the Squad 2 deck, for the past week. The good news is that it has played better than my expectations, as it has managed to put up good fights against other Squad decks. The bad news is that it hasn’t won a lot of its matches, hehehe.
How does the deck compete? Being primarily a stall deck, it drags out the game by discouraging the opposing party from making early attacks. But in order to do so, you need the lynchpin of the deck out in the field as early as possible. And that card is:
Once her power is online (which is your next turn after you recruit her), Soi Fon – Squad 2 Captain stops the biggest character on the other side from attacking, since it would be pointless to do so unless the player has a trick up his sleeve. She’s the best card in the entire deck, but unfortunately her ability also limits the way you can construct your deck. Your field has to have an all Squad 2 line-up for her to do her thing, so we can’t have other Soul Reapers as guest stars. This might not be much of a problem if the squad had many characters, but alas, we only have her, her lieutenant Marechiyo, one version of Yoruichi that belongs to Squad 2, and two versions of Stealth Force Members, which are the non-unique ninjas of the team.
That’s only 5 characters to build a deck around with! We have other versions of Soi Fon to tinker with, but they only serve certain roles in certain situations, unlike the Squad 2 Captain which you always want out in the field. Besides the Squad 2 Lieutenant, Marechiyo is practically useless in his other versions. Even after adding the good and generic Repentance Cell Guards (which is being played in every Squad deck), we are still left with a very restricted line-up.
Well, that’s all I can talk about right now. Part 2 will deal with whatever I can think of to say then, hehehe. ^_^
06.08.08
Struggling Students
The new schoolyear is almost upon us, and it’s a coincidence that my Ichigo Students deck debuted last weekend at the Bleach HLs. Basically, it uses Ichigo as the guardian, and plays out most of the efficiently costed students, most notably the new Students featured in the Bankai set.
Kanisawa and Shuhei both add to the theme for which the Students are most famous for: burn. They also have decent-to-good stats for their cost, so they immediately made the cut. There were other new Student cards from Bankai, but I feel that these two really help the early to midgame of the deck, where it has struggled in the past against the faster decklists.
Unfortunately, the results have been less then ideal. I went 2-1 (2 wins, 1 loss) last Friday for 3rd place, then went 2-2 last Saturday for 5th place, even with some tweaking to the decklist. Admittedly, I made some mistakes in those 2 matches that I lost, once for not defending with every boost I had, and the other for defending when I didn’t really have to. They were simply two sides of the same coin.
But I don’t feel that bad about the Students’ performance, as I still feel that they have what it takes to hang with the top decks, even without complete sets of the staples. I just need to reduce the mistakes I make especially during the last few turns, and of course, I’ll need better luck like everyone else, hehehe.
It may be time to try out something new again this weekend. We’ll see. ^_^
06.01.08
I Am Chojiro, Squad 1 Lieutenant!
The 1st Bleach TCG Squad 1 Regionals concluded last night at XP, and I must congratulate cruboy for winning the event! ^_^
The win gave him the title of Squad 1 Captain for the year, some cool prizes including packs, a tin, and a shirt, and of course the bragging rights associated with being a taicho (captain), hehehe. I lost to him in the finals, which gave me 2nd place and the title of Squad 1 fukutaicho (lieutenant). I also got some packs and a tin, which are always awesome. Everyone seemed to have fun, as the atmosphere was very casual and there were always jokes flying around even during matches.
The event was Sealed, and I opened the Soi Fon-Yamamoto starter set, but by now everybody knew that the strongest starter set was the one with the 6-drop Hanataro that gained you 3 life everytime he depleted. I managed to beat one of these decks during round 1, thanks to some lucky draws that enabled me to make some early damage to offset the life gain. Alas, cruboy’s deck didn’t fail him in the finals, and my worst fears unfolded when Hanataro hit play on turn 3 and started turning back the admittedly miniscule damage my weenies were dealing.
And that is how cruboy became old man Shigekuni Genryusai Yamamoto – 1st Division Captain (squad and division being the same thing, depending on how you translate the Japanese term goteijusantai, hehehe). As Chojiro Sasakibe – 1st Division lieutenant, it is now my duty to pose as another old man serving his captain, and to take his place should anything happen to him (oh wait, that only applies in beauty pageants, hahaha!).
I’ll see you guys in the next Regionals! ^_^
05.31.08
Rise of the Squads?
I joined the Bleach Hobby League (HL) last night with my trusty Byakuya ‘chopsuey’ deck, and ended up with a disappointing 1-2 record for 5th place. This is the 1st time that this particular deck performed below my expectations, since an even 2-2 showing still results in a rise of my ranking points in the unofficial Bleach Ranking System made for the local community. (I may write more about this system later, hehehe.)
Anyway, I lost to a Chad deck with a funky new twist – adding a certain character to facilitate the searching of another character who boosts while letting you draw another card. For those who don’t play Bleach, this simply means he added a cog into the deck’s draw engine, which of course makes it more consistent. It gives a good opening hand a better tempo in the next turns, which is exactly what happened with my game against that deck.
My 2nd loss was to a new deck in the meta, the Squad 7&9 discard&burn machine. The burn is really just extra annoyance, but it’s the discard effects that really fuel the deck’s win condition. It generates effects depending on how few the cards the opponent has, while having little discarding tricks that eventually add up in the later turns. Of course, the key to defeating this deck is to conserve your hand size, particularly by not overflooding your board when it is not necessary. I only figured this out after the match was already over, hehehe.
Anyway, it’s a good sign for Bleach that players are starting to play the new cards from the Bankai set, which is the latest expansion set of the game. Although I don’t like losing in general, this HL at least points to a healthy and balanced meta where new creations can compete with the established decks, particularly the new Squad decks that focus on the Gotei 13 divisions as teams. Hmm, I may have to adjust my Byakuya deck to adapt to the changing meta yet again, or unleash one of my other concoctions that are still “in the tank”, so to speak.
Fortunately, the night ended on a positive note for me. Since I have the no. 1 ranking for the month of May (despite this tiny speed bump of an HL), I won the Toshiro tin can with matching Hi-Tech (HT) Guardian. So, yay me! ^_^
