Tournament 8

So, today I was acting very emo. David had scheduled a Genin Tournament, but it seemed like nobody was going to show up. At the least, I wanted to make sure one of the new kids showing up would have someone to play with even if it wasn't a tournament. To our surprise, he brought a friend and Dan showed up. So, it looked like it was on!

I ran a Fire/Earth Deck that Used Caged Bird, The Third Hokage [Addressing Past Wrongs], The Ones Who Inherit, Disguise Jutsu, and Chidori. I felt that my main competition was going to be Dan and I wasn't too worried about what else I was going to run in to.

Match 1 Fire/Earth Vs. Mono-Water/Fire Splash.

Both games, Caged Bird proved to be invaluable. Pretty much was the slow down card that I thought it would be. Worked really well. Also, Inherit was amazing. I was afraid because I wouldn't be running Temari [Analytical Mind] just so I could use Inhert, but this fear got kicked to the curb quickly.

Match 2 Fire/Earth Vs. Fire/Earth/Wind

I was a bit afrid of Dan, not gonna lie. He totally whomped on me last week and killed my poor Fire/Wind deck. This time, Caged Bird, Tide, and Inherit did an amazing job.

Match 3 Fire/Earth Vs. Wind/Lightning?

This was a last 30 seconds deck idea that was made so that the kid with the deck could play with us. I don't think it was fair, but I won this one too.

Dave is now a Genin. Now, to prepare for the Chuunin. I'm sooooo not ready.

Wins: 3
Losses: 0
Draws: 0

Total Wins: 20
Total Losses: 8
Total Draws: 0

Tournament 7

So, some random changes I had made to my deck made me realize something. Many different One-Off's aren't dependable. That, or my deck failed against Jutsu that deal 1 damage to my ninjas. I was surprised that it happened so often, but lo and behold, it did. Even adding some changes from R&R didn't make much of a difference.

The good news is that we got a new player at our place and we're hoping to give him cards and get him started. Yay!

David didn't show up because of homework. Boo!

Wins: 2
Losses: 1
Draws: 0

Total Wins: 17
Total Losses: 8
Total Draws: 0

Tournament 5 & 6 notes

Tournament 5 (R&R Release Event)

So, the release event for R&R was a great way to play for a day. I must say, that draft type tournaments are a lot of fun! I recommend for groups of players get together, buy boxes and draft it amongst themselves for fun.

That tournament wasn't too bad. I believe in that one I was 2/2 with what I had made. I had gone with a Wind/Earth theme that quasi worked. I didn't pull a Second Hokage (boo!). It was fun to make smaller sized decks and see what lady luck dealt us.

So, if I'm right,

Wins: 2
Losses: 2
Draws: 0

Total Wins: 13
Total Losses: 7
Total Draws: 0

Tournament 6 (Ninja Academy Level)

So, this was a very very interesting day. I hate to admit it, but I'm too competitive for some of my poor friends. Like anyone else, I want prizes, I won't lie. I also want a Genin Pin. Won't lie about that one either.

Odd little side note, I started playing a fun game with my Lightning/Wind deck that gave me a handicap. Once I was aware that we were actually playing, I was allowed to switch over to the deck I prefer to play competitively. Everyone was ok with it, I had asked before hand. On to the matches. I will also dub this deck to be Mental Tide because it's shorter to type.

Me Vs. Andy (Mental Tide Vs. Mental Earth/Wind)

The first Game was with my Lightning/Wind which failed miserably. 0-1

Once aware of actually playing, I brought out the Tide. Second Game went my way. Part of the thing that I like about this deck is stalling with Suzume, Hisame, and Sakura. It slows a people down a lot. 1-1

The third game also went in my favor. Andy was trying to get the flavor of a mental deck and what to do and not to do and seeing how my deck works. In all fairness, it wasn't a fair match up for him. However, I apologized for being a jerk and gave him some cards and promised to help him out with other cards as a peace offering. 2-1

However, I learned something amazing in these matches. One of my opening hands I had 2 Sakura's and a Temari. At first I was angry as all get out, but then I looked at Sakura [Kunoichi Pride] and just amazed myself with her ability mixed with her chakra/draw engine. Once that sunk in, I found a new piece of synergy with this deck that I was not aware of because I just net-decked it and played it through and through and changed things to what I like to do. Also, further synergy presented itself. Using Sakura's Decision and then injuring Sakura/Hisame also works really well with Tide. Simply Amazing.

Me Vs. David (Mental Tide Vs. Mental Hybrid Earth/Wind)

So, David and I always have to face each other off for Spot 1 and 2 at tournaments. It gets a little annoying and fun to face each other over and over again. It's funny, because our moves are so streamlined. We look at each others chakra piles, and know the cards that the other has and we just sit back and wait to see what will happen. I had made one major mistake and didn't pay attention to his support ninja's when I made a crucial attack and I thought that would've cost me the game. However, a second Tide saved my hide. I almost decked myself out, but I lucked out. Also, we had run out of time, and David offered to give in for second place, so I can at least win my first ever Ninja Academy Event. Thanks David, I guess you can have the rest now =P.

So, if I do a little bit of math...

Wins: 2
Losses: 0
Draws: 0

Total Wins: 15
Total Losses: 7
Total Draws: 0

This does not match up with what I have in Gamers Round Table. I gave up on believing what that thing says. Something happened were our earlier records got mixed up because David and I both have David as a first name. Oh well.

Step 1: Become Meijin - Completed

I'm very happy/excited. The main intent for this blogger and our progress was to become Meijin, get people in the Central Illinois area together and hopefully gather more people to play and help facilitate things for people in our shoes that can't travel as often like we do to go to Venues.

David already started posting/hosting tournaments. Now I can follow suit and help out. I'm incredibly excited. Both of us have a wealth of knowledge and it would be great to get other people started. Seeing as how we're both not experienced in hosting tournaments, there will be a learning curve. However, we've already got some insights and ideas from what we've already seen.

Anyways, I encourage people in the Central Illinois area to come find us and help us create a more enjoyable experience for those that are too far from a venue!

Rejected :-(

Well, it happened. The People at Rockford are scared of Dave and I. Why else would no one but one kid show up? :-( So, today, we three played together in an unsanctioned round robin event for a booster pack. Woo...hoo...*tear*

Step 2: Become Genin - COMPLETE

Ninja Academy Level Tournament: 3
I believe there were only 6 people at this tournament, so we used the round robin style. In other words, everyone played everyone once. To save on time instead of doing best of 3, it was only one game matches. :-( I hate doing those, because 1) someone might get lucky and beat my deck because of my bad start and 2) I might get lucky and beat someone else because of their bad start. I don't think it's a fair representation of someone's deck / playing if it's only one game per match. Anyway, I can't remember much about the specific matches, but it wasn't that bad.

End Result: 1st place
Wins: 5
Losses: 0
Draws: 0
Total Wins: 13
Total Losses: 1
Total Draws: 0
*~*~*~*2/3 wins towards getting my first genin pin! *~*~*~*

Ninja Academy Level Tournament: 4
There were quite a few people at this tournament, just like last saturday. There were probably at least 15 people there, so we played swiss rules (random match ups until the final round). I really can't remember much from this day either, even though it was just a few days ago. I will start bringing a notepad and writing things down to make writing about it later easier. I was happy that Dave got the BYE at first, cuz I was thinking "sweet, that's like a insta-win, right?"...but alas. As you may have already read, Dave - like myself - was undefeated at this tournament. But unfortunately, because he had a BYE and not a win, he did not place as high as those that had one more win than him when it was time for the final round. LAME. Oh well, I guess that kind of how I felt last week.

This night was AMAZING for me though. Every match was quick and easy to win. As a prize, I got some sweet saske card covers and a booster pack from Curse of the Sand. I usually think "A booster pack? psh...what a lame prize." Tonight though, my faith in booster pack prizes was renewed, because when I opened my pack I discovered that I'd actually won a Fourth Hokage! For those of you who don't know, the Fourth is one of the highest (if not single highest) selling Naruto card. Later, a player asked if I'd trade my End of the Demon for another Fourth, so I jumped on that deal. All in all that night I walked away with: my third win (GENIN PIN IN THE MAIL!), 2 Fourth Hokage cards, and saske card sleeves. :-D

End Result: 1st place
Wins: 5
Losses: 0
Draws: 0
Total Wins: 18
Total Losses: 1
Total Draws: 0
*~*~*~*3/3 wins towards getting my first genin pin! *~*~*~*
DING DING DING DING DING *cues the balloons to start falling* *dances around with balloons falling all around him* YAY!

Deck Analysis and Strategy: Mental Breakdown

My deck was doing pretty well, both vs. Dave, as well as at last week's tournaments. However, I still lost 1 game to Dave last week costing me the 1st place victory on that Saturday. As a result, I felt it important to analyze my deck and figure out what I can do to make it even better, faster, stronger, etc etc.

Upon writing out everything in my deck, I discovered a baffling discovery. All of this time I have only been playing with 39 cards in my deck! Where did the last card go? Did I ever have 40 cards or lose one? I have no idea. As it turned out, I was only using about 22 ninja cards when I could have been using 25. In addition, I only had 5 (I think?) 0 drops.

All in all, in addition to adding a 40th card (another Baki :-p) I also made a few other substitutions like switching out cards for ebisu and misame to boost my mental advantage while giving me decent support / attack when I needed it. Since Disguise Jutsu and Wind Scythe saved my butt more than a few times, I made sure to have 3 of each. Having so many counter-jutsu cards allowed me to 1) have cards in my hand to use with Shikamaru: Smarty Pants, and 2) have cards in my hand to use for missions, charge for chakra, but most importantly pay the hand cost of Baki.

After analyzing my deck and playstyle further, I realized that I often used a mental defense to protect myself until I could get Baki out to gain ninja advantage and eventually the win. Before when I only had one Baki in my deck, this took sometimes an hour and a half or more just for me to get Baki out wear my opponent down enough to win. It didn't take that long because I was using a lot of time - it happened because of my cards. My mental defense kept anything from attacking me. This aggravated my opponents and caused them to sit there for minutes trying to think how to get past me before finally passing and lett me go. Now that I have two Baki, my games usually last 30 min or less. It's amazing how much difference a single card can make.

Step 1: Become Meijin - COMPLETE

Yay, I found out late last week that I was accepted to become a Meijin and judge / run my own tourneys locally. Seeing as how this blog was based partially around Dave and I becoming Meijin, this step was kind of important. Now we don't have to drive 2 hrs one way to Rockford to have our tournaments.

I posted a new tournament late last week to be held on that sunday, but we had very poor turn out (only one other person that's tournament-legal besides Dave and I)...and he's a friend of ours. :-p Oh well - it's my fault for not posting on the forums and letting more people know. We did have a little boy show up that loved the anime and wanted to learn how to play, but as he was not 13 or older, I was not able to collect any information on him and log him as an official player. Since we only had 3 official people, the event had to be canceled. :-(

We need to attract the masses to our events. Dave and I hung up a poster at Just For Fun (the local game/card shop) and I made a post yesterday letting everyone know we exist. Within hours we hear back from someone in Bloomington saying he and his friends had been looking for a place for awhile without any success - (and the best part) - that they would like to start coming to our events. Awesome! I set up an event for this Sunday (Jan 21st at 2:00), so hopefully we'll have at least enough people to count this as an official tournament.

Tournament 3 & 4 Notes

For this deck I used the Tide of Blossoms original, and slightly modified. I point to the link because I also have notes in there as well.

Tournament 3 (1/12/2006)

Even though this was just on Friday, I sadly don't remember much of anything at the moment.

Wins: 3
Losses: 2
Draws: 0

Notes that I do remember:
- Mission-less metagame.
- Based on jutsu-pump and removal
- Opponents had a lot of chakra
- I had not enough negation

And, I'll quote what I posted at another website.

After playing for the first time with your original build, I realized a few things about how I play, and how people played around me.

First, I hardly ever had a small hand count due to Sakura's Decision and conservative play. Then, in the middle game, I realized that I attack less and wait for a few more turns before mounting further attacks. I think you intended to wait a while doing some blocking to draw into tide, then use The Third, or Baki and make a big sweep late game.

Lots of pump jutsus and some jutsu negation were used, but like I mentioned before, hardly any missions were played so on the first day I found that Lone Avenger was a dead card.

Also, one of the other people I play with is my buddy David (yeah, both have the same first name, pour tournament organizer gets us confused all the time XD). He runs a mental hybrid and I didn't feel too confident with the original build to defend against him. Against most people, I did well and understood it better after playing different types of decks. The first day also showed me that I let people get away with too many jutsus. I felt that the best way to attack this was to use Exhaustion and Sharingan Eye as well as Wind Scythe.

So, the changes I made were the inclusion of
- Suzume [Kunoichi Education]
- Exhaustion of Stamina
- Shikamaru Nara [Smarty Pants]

From here on, I will dub it "Exhaustive Tide". That's the best name I can come up with, not as cool as the original name.

Tournament 4 (1/13/2006)

This TournamentI remember better. I forgot to take notes on my notepad yet again. Oh well, eventually I will remember.

Match 1: a Bye, which made me cry and I'll get to that in a bit.

Match 2: Exhaustive Tide vs. Mono-water-esque

My earlier assumptions were correct. I had not played against this player before, but I felt confident with what I had and was eager to test it out. The main note I have is that I recognized Mono-water and recall what the cards are and how much chakra is needed for them and capitalized with Exhaustion and mounted a large counter offensive. This sealed the match in my favor.

Match 2: Exhaustive Tide vs. Wind/Splash?

There are a few hands this deck has that are just amazing. The hand with Sasuke and Temari are just too good. And with that I was able to set the pace for the rest of the match. A later use of Tide and then a Baki cinched the match in my favor as well.

Match 3: Exhaustive Tide vs. Lightning-Naruto+Harem+Sexy Jutsus

I had lost before to this deck. It was the reason why I made sure to include negation this time around. Also, this opponent also had a large abundance of chakra when he plays which led me to use Exhaustion. This paid off as well. At a key point, I used Exhaustion and was able to mount a large offensive and take the match.

So, at this point, I have not lost. However, I have 3 wins and one Bye, this is lower than the 2 players with 4 wins no loss. This made me default to third place it seems. On a positive note, David won his third Academy Level Tournament and this has led to his first Genin pin. He uses a Mental Hybrid that usually wins everything he comes up against and I always fall second place. Congrats to David though!

The other important things to note for this Tournament are as follows.

How did this fair for me? Very well actually. Today, I ran into a different variety of decks. This build helped me stop a Mono-Water deck, a Sand/Wind based deck, and a Naruto/Harem/Sexy deck. The earlier notes I made before hand about how people play helped me a lot to better make changes. I was pretty happy with stopping mono-water. I think after seeing the second place finisher for GenCon SoCal, I was very nervous in that match up. However, I later found they didn't run it exactly like it or as close to it.

Finally, Suzume was useful for me to keep people from making attacks. They weren't too happy with a mental defense with her, especially when stacking in Shikamaru, or Sakura, or Hisame, heck, even Kabuto or Hayate! I found that the goal would be to grow her to her 3 support if the situation happens and then I swap her in with the group that has the attacking Baki. At best, higher attacking ninja's don't even have 1 mental except for the Super Rare Third Hokage and Fourth Hokage (I think?). However, none of those scenarios occurred. Mainly, Suzume and Sakura were good enough to stop/prevent most to all attacks, which is what I wanted. Shikamaru was put in just in case I ran into a mental attacking deck and didn't feel comfortable or safe with just Suzume + Sakura + Hisame.

The post where the quotes come from are here. Hosted by Narucards

Wins: 3
Losses: 0
Draws: 0

Total Wins: 11
Total Losses: 5
Total Draws: 0

Review: Tide of the Blossoms

This will be the common trend I think for all decks that I make/copy/edit and play with.

So, this deck comes from Joshua Lu (JDragon) and there are a few articles involved that are good for reading and getting a better understanding for it.

Tide of Blossoms
Tide of Genin Pins

Both articles have a deck list as well as a discussion of how it works/runs.

So, I played with it on my 3rd and 4th tournaments and the results varied. I didn't make enough notes as to what happened on my first 2 tournaments and I blindly netdecked without thinking and tried to run the deck with its original build. Based on that, it did fairly well. I was able to walk away with 3 wins and 2 losses.

Why did I lose? I did not pay enough attention to the metagame that was being played. After looking at enough Top 8 decks, looking at Competitive Decks, and seeing other reviews I made a few assumptions: that people play 7/8 or 8/7 jutsu/mission ratios, and that this would be the favored way to obtain chakra. So, how does this make me lose? Well, not many people were running missions, would charge up a lot of chakra, and I didn't have enough negation to account for it. Also, my play style is more conservative. I dislike charging chakra from my hand and not using a mission.

However, the important part of all of this is to make note and understand a few things.

What was done wrong?
What was done right?
What can be improved to fix the bad parts and keep the consistency of the good parts?

In the second article, JDragon explains with a few matches how his improved deck works and how it played. He mentioned that the mid-game didn't work out too well and this required a different play style to compensate for it, and I also recall having this issue. After reviewing the deck, and facing David, I realized that a Mental Defense could solve that problem for me based on what people are currently playing. To this end, I opted to swap in 2 copies of Suzume and the sideboard copies of Shikamaru [SP]. The deck then looked like this:

Ninjas (25)

(3) Sasuke Uchiha [Analysis of Competence]
(2) Shikamaru Nara [Smarty Pants]
(1) Sakura Haruno [A Sympathy Visit]
(1) Naruto Uzumaki [Nine-Tailed Chakra]
(3) Temari [Violent Temper]
(1) Sakura Haruno [Determination]
(1) Sakura Haruno [Kunoichi Pride]
(1) Hisame [Smartest Ninja in the Hidden Rain Village]
(2) Suzume [Kunoichi Education]
(2) Kabuto Yakushi [Withdrawal]
(1) Hayate Gekko [Judgment]
(1) Ebisu [Repeated Defeat]
(2) Baki [Cleaning Up]
(2) Kakashi Hatake [Early Settlement]
(2) The Third Hokage [Village Governor]

Jutsus (7):

(1) 8 Trigram Divination Seal Spell Formula
(2) Wind Style: Great Breakthrough
(2) Wind Scythe Jutsu
(2) Sharingan Eye [PTH]

Missions (8):
(3) Sakura’s Decision
(3) Tide of the Deadly Combat
(2) Exhaustion of Stamina

Sideboard (10):
(2) Kurenai Yuhi
(1) Hayate Gekko [Detecting a Plan]
(1) Hisame [Smartest Ninja in the Hidden Rain Village]
(1) Sharigan Eye
(1) Exhaustion of Stamina
(2) 8 Trigram Seal Spell Formula
(2) Fire Style: Fire Ball Jutsu

So, the changes reflect what I was running into and helped me stop what other decks of the area were doing: using a large number of jutsus. Since the meta was mission-less, I opted to remove Lone Avenger, this worked very well as I used Exhaustion of Stamina which was the killer for most people. This time, I went 3 Wins 0 Losses.

Review: Pretend Tempo

So, just to gather my thoughts and ideas about this deck and how it played and how it's supposed to work.

Ideas for this deck come from

Tempo
Sasori's Helpful Tourny Tips

So, I dubbed the deck Pretend Tempo because at the time I was missing cards to make a build I felt comfortable with. I opted to make do with what I have and run with it and see how it works.

So, things that I liked about the deck: The Mix of Earth/Fire/Wind seems to work. Cards that I find that work for me are Ninja Academy and Tide of the Deadly Combat. However, Once you see this, this promotes a bad hand. I tried to circumvent this with One Morning (because I'm lacking Sakura's Decision).

I do like the effect of using Tide of the Deadly Combat and then dropping a Third Hokage.

I find that I hardly get a chance to use Pass Permit, so often times I sideboard it out.

I like the concept behind Earth Style: Headhunter Jutsu.

From playing around with this deck, I was shocked that I still ran into a time where I had no 0 drops. It was so weird. Bad shuffling I guess.

From playing with this deck, I wonder if I should keep it just Earth/Fire or Fire/Wind.

These are just my thoughts and observations for future reference.

Pretend Tempo

Ninjas

(3) Uchiha Sasuke [Analysis of Competence]
(2) Kiba Inuzuka [Ninja Art of Beast Mimicry]
(1) Shino Aburame
(2) Sakura Haruno [A Sympathy Visit]
(2) Shikamaru Nara [Formation]
(2) Naruto Uzumaki [Nine Tails Chakra]

(2) Temari [Violent Temper]

(2) Gaara [Sand Barrier]

(3) Ebisu

(2) Asuma Sarutobi [Barbecue]
(2) Kakashi Hatake

(2) Baki [Cleaning Up]

(2) The Third Hokage [Village Governor]

Missions

(3) Ninja Academy

(2) Pass Permit
(2) One Morning

Jutsus

(2) Sharingan Eye (Path Version)
(2) Disguise Jutsu
(2) Fire Style: Fire Ball Jutsu
(1) Earth Style: Headhunter Jutsu

---Sideboard---

Ninjas

(2) Hisame [Smartest Ninja in the Hidden Rain Village]
(3) Ibiki Morino [First Proctor]
(3) Hayate Gekko [Judgement]

Missions

(2) Tide of the Deadly Combat
(1) After the Battle

Jutsus

(1) Sharingan Eye (Path Version)

Used: Tournament 1 and 2.

Tournament 1 & 2 Notes

So far, alongside David, I've gone to two tournaments. I tried running a Tempo-esque deck. I was lacking on some of the key cards (or rather, cards that I feel are key) but I wanted to test it out against decks that weren't David's and see how well it played. I dubbed it "Pretend Tempo" because it wasn't complete.

Tournament 1 (1/05/2006)

Match 1: Pretend Tempo vs. Rushed Mental

I played against a kid that made a deck on the spot with mental cards. I was kind of peeved at hearing this, seeing as how David's is a mental hybrid and I hate breaking my deck down to counter it. Thank goodness for sideboards. I was able to hold off a good number of his attacks. Having to depend on Ibiki to make an attack makes the mental deck particularly weak against a 10 mental group. This saved me. I won this match.

Match 2: Pretend Tempo vs. Mono-wind-Sand

This match caught me completely off guard. This guy played a deck based on the sand ninja and Lord of the Land of Wind. However, this growth mechanic allowed him to always have a lot of chakra and abuse me with Gaara's cards. However, he was succeptible to bad starts. The first game, he pounced on me. The second game, Tide of the Deadly Combat and the Third [Village Governor] saved me. For the last time, he had to go, so we rolled a die to see who won the third game. I got really lucky.

Match 3: Pretend Tempo vs. Mono-water/Steam?

This match went very well in my favor. I was able to hit my best Turn 0,1 and 2 Ninjas. This was of great help. At this point, it was requested that matches only be 1 game to move things along. I was able to get my first game in quickly. Having Baki helped me out a lot.

Match 4: Pretend Tempo vs. Mental Hybrid

*Sigh* I had to play David. I dislike David's deck. I mulligan'd to 4 cards in hand and then I scooped simply because I dislike playing mental matches, oh well.

Wins: 3
Losses: 1
Draws: 0

Tournament 2 (1/06/2006)

Match 1: Pretend Tempo vs. Mental Hybrid

I got the joy of playing David again. He pounced on me first game, I pounced on him second game, then were asked to move things along, so we flipped a coin for it and I got lucky.

Match 2: Pretend Tempo vs. don't remember

Very hazy about what was in this deck. I won though.

Match 3: Pretend Tempo vs. don't remember again.

I forgot what the basis for this deck was, but I got trounced.

Match 4: Pretend Tempo vs. Lighting/Sexy Jutsu

I was a bit, surprised that someone was running this type of deck. However, this was the point of David and I going to tournaments just to see and get a feel for what people run. I got trounced in the late game and lost.

Wins: 2
Losses: 2
Draws: 0

Total Wins: 5
Total Losses: 3
Total Draws: 0

Hello World

Hey everyone, I'm David. As Dave has already said, I'm a geek just like him and besides playing in semi-local (Rockford = 2 hrs away) tournaments, I feel the need to run my own tournaments locally in Peoria. Sure, I can afford to waste gas money and time driving 2 hrs to play this silly card game, but can the average person / kid playing Naruto? Def. not. Anyway, on to the tournaments...

Ninja Academy Level Tournament: 1
I did pretty well in my first tournament in Rockford on Friday (Jan. 5th, 2007). I played 4 games in all (the last of which was vs. Dave himself) and I was able to leave undefeated in 1st place. There was a pretty good Naruto player there named Michael who beat Dave (correction: he beat Dave in the first out of 3 games. Dave, however, beat him once (out of pure luck) and then won a die roll to break the tie). [You'll soon find out that Dave has uncanny luck]. I was supposed to play Michael, but unfortunately he had to leave early so he forfeited to me. :-( He had an impressive sand / Gaara deck, but I imagine Dave will give you more detail on that when he talks about his experience at the tournament. I used the mental hybrid deck I've coined "Mental Breakdown" (deck list coming soon!) I left feeling pretty happy about my deck because with all honesty I did not expect my "lousy mental deck" to do well.
Eat that Bandai forum writers!

End Result: 1st place
Points Awarded: 12 + 4 = 16
Total Wins: 4
Total Losses: 0
Total Draws: 0
Total Points: 1516
*~*~*~*1/3 wins towards getting my first genin pin! *~*~*~*


Ninja Academy Level Tournament: 2 (premier? o_O )
The next day (Sat. Jan 6th, 2007), Dave any I arrived at this tournament a few minutes late. They started without us and in order for us to catch up, the Meijin asked Dave and I to play each other. In our first game, I won (and without using any mental cards!) In our second game, Dave won (I didn't draw anything that useful until it was too late). By that time, the Meijin came up to us and informed us because of the number of people at the tourney and time constraints, we are only playing best of 1 instead of best of 3. To break the tie we had, we agreed to just flip a coin. My luck ran out, so Dave won that match. I felt pretty down about this, but there wasn't much I could do about it. I figured the only way I could make myself feel better about it would be to not lose any more games. Thankfully, I was able to keep my resolution and end in second place. The first place winner was undefeated that day and as a result I was unable to play him. He used an interesting-looking Naruto lightning/mix deck taking advantage of sexy / harem jutsu. He beat Dave pretty badly earlier that night, so I just had to see how I could do against him. I challenged him to a game and he accepted. I beat him, but I don't think it was a fair judge of my deck vs his because he didn't seem to have drawn any of the cards that he needed. Oh well, maybe I'll get to play him in a tourney next time!

End Result: 2nd Place
Points Awarded: 12? (It hasn't been officially listed as of today)
Total Wins: 8
Total Losses: 1
Total Draws: 0
Total Points: 1528?

How to answer it yourself...

So, often times, either in play, or while looking at other decks and/or card discussions, I come up with my own question(s) about how cards interact. Tonight is a good example of what happened to me.

I started out checking out the wonderful Bandai Forums and looking around at the Advanced Dojo like I usually do at 2am in the morning. While glossing around, I found a wonderful deck called Divide+Control!. While reading the deck list and reading the other comments I was looking at some of the missions. The one that caught my eye was Ninja Poem Titled "Ninja Opportunity" [M-077], which has the following text:

Counter
Effect: Your opponent cannot include Ninjas with different symbols in the same Team during this turn.

I started to ask myself quite a few questions, and zoned in on just one: are you able to play counter missions on your own turn?

I started to think about it, and I could argue for either direction. I couldn't fathom being able to play it on your own turn because you're not countering anything, it has already happened. I could also see this particular card being different. So, I decided to go duck hunting.

The closest thing I could find about counter missions were the following threads: Counter Mission (1) and Counter Mission (2).

They both agree on using the card during your opponents turn, but nothing about your own. So far, there was nothing concrete. I also looked at the Rulebook (Page 17) and saw nothing that answered my question.

I started to type out a very long and detailed post about how one could come to a conclusion. Then it dawned on me that I did not check out the actual Naruto Master FAQ. Then I skimmed through to the Missions Section (Page 4) and found the following,

> Can I play “Counter” Mission cards on my turn?

No, you cannot.

Plain and simple. Wow, I want the last 20 minutes of my life back!

So...

My buddy David (the other David obviously) convinced me to start playing Naruto the TCG. I was hesitant at first, but then I started playing it. I am an avid fan of the anime and the manga, so I thought I'd give it a try. I started playing it more and more and enjoyed it more so. A few booster boxes later, and many many forum readings afterwards, we both decided to try our hand at tournaments. Well, that didn't work out too well.

Currently, we both reside in Peoria, IL. This is a problem. A quick search showed us this list of venues. However, none of these venues have tournaments. So, we opted to start our own local tournaments seeing as how there's nothing near us.

We did opt to take a road trip. We picked Rockford, and went to Robin's Nest and this wonderful person had 2 tournaments in a row that we attended and played. Talked with the owner, and got even more inspired and set in doing our own tournaments.

With that in mind, I opted to make this blog. To have a journal of what happens along the way of setting this up. At this point in time, David (I'm Dave) is trying to get Meijin status and I'm soon to follow.

Join us for the ride?