My Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship (YCS) Toronto Experience

So, since this was my first YCS top (this was my 3rd YCS overall), I thought I'd write about some of the things I've noticed and the why I chose to play the deck I did.

It basically came down to 3 options: Scraps, Blackwings and Karakuris. Although I have a full Wind-Up and Dino Rabbit deck at my disposal, I decided not to play them. I wasn't too familiar with all the Wind-Up combos and I just don't like the Dino Rabbit deck in general (oh the nightmare of going 0-3 drop at WCQ with it... lol) And I really don't like playing the "meta" deck and wanted play a deck that can still deal with the meta decks, but something that's different.

Scraps looked solid to me and I'm very comfortable with it, but it just seemed a bit too slow and it often cripples when Chimera doesn't go off. Blackwings seemed alright, but I had my doubts about playing that at such high level tournament. Although I haven't touched Karakuris for a little bit, I'm quite familiar with the deck as I'v used it since last year. And the idea of Emergency Teleport getting unlimited on the day of the tournament sparked an idea... How about it in Karakuris? It'd give the deck more explosive power and a I'd be able to go into Burei/Bureido more often. And by using Psychic Commander, I can still synchro into all-awesome Naturia Beast and Psychic Commander can even crash into Rai-Oh, which I expected to be popular in the tournament (as Inzektors are pretty much goners with the new F&L list).

Fortunately I have 3 Teleports so yay! Using 3 Teleport and 3 Psychic Commander takes up 6 slots in the deck so I had a little hard time fitting them in, while keeping the core of the deck intact. I finally came up with the decklist and did draw testings and it seemed to work fine. It was already 2am so I really had to go to bed (as I need to wake up around 6:30am) so I quickly came up with a side deck, purely basing on my recent dueling experiences and expections, then went to bed.

This was the deck that I came up with:


YCS Toronto Top 32 - Telekuri (Karakuri Psychic)

Oh, I did a deck interview on YouTube, you can see it here: CLICK

So I took a bus in the morning and arrived at the convention centre. I registered after waiting in the line for a while and I playtested against Daniel's Geargia deck that I wasn't too familiar with, so this was a good chance to see how that deck worked. I quickly realized how broken Geargiarmor is! We probably played around 7~8 games or so and we were about even record wise. Then the tournament started and we were notified that around 800 players are in the tournament!

I faced quite a few different decks, including non-meta decks in the earlier rounds, including Stun, Dragon Ninja and Atum Dragunity. That Dragunity deck was really tough actually, because I never drew MST early enough and he always had his Dragon Ravine up! In game 3, he makes a mistake of ignoring my Maxx "C" and trying to go for game, but I drew Veiler from Maxx "C"'s effect to stop Atum's effect and then drop Gorz to make a comeback.

I eventually ended Day 1 with 7-1 record and I was stunned myself, I honestly did not expect to do this well! I didn't have too many broken first turn hands, I don't think I've ever had the 2 Bureido + Strategist opening turn. However, I was often able to get my pieces together (setting Nisamu first turn was probably the most common play), then just go off when I thought it was safe to do so. My only loss came to a local player, Bo Tang and his Dino Rabbits, who eventually made it to top 16. I realized that people are playing A LOT of traps and really regretted not putting in Barkion in my extra deck. I actually won a couple games by activating Teleport during Battle Phase when opponent was low on life and finishing him off with Psychic Commander, brought out by E-Teleport.

So on day 2, I took a bus (which I had to wait for 30 min...) down to Finch station then tried to take TTC subway to the convention centre, but it was closed! WTF!!! I asked a girl near the station and she told me that it doesn't open until 9am and I had to be at the convention centre by 9am. It was around 8:20 so I didn't have much time. She told me that I can take a bus to downtown, but I knew that I definitley won't make it in time if I took the bus. So, left with no choice, I caught a taxi to downtown and it eventually costed me around $40 (thank goodness I had $45 in my wallet)...

I told the driver that I needed to get to the convention centre by latest 9am, and so he did his best to get me there in time and I arrived around 8:45~8:50 ish, which was perfect. Whew!

I faced Dino Rabbits for my first match of day 2 and I win 2-0. The first game, I literally had 10 card advantage by keep abusing Bureido. lol The second game, I lock him down with Rivalry of Warlords. I was really happy as that pretty much guaranteed top 32. The 10th game was pretty much for formality and I faced Peter Tran (eventual top 4 finisher of the YCS). We weren't really concerned about the result as we knew we'd get into top 32 for sure. Anyways, I ended up beating him 2-0 in that match. I ranked 8th overall with 27 points, after 10 rounds of swiss.

So in top 32, I faced the Geargia player that I beat 2-0 in the Swiss. But this match, I really couldn't get things going with not so great hand. First game, he had 5 backrows including Judgment and Warning and kept gaining card advantage with Cardcar D. I tried to stop his attack with Book of Moon, but he Solemns for game. Next game, I also couldn't get things going quick enough and after stalling for a few turns and almost making a comeback, he Limiter Removals for game. Although disappointed that my awesome 8 game win streak came to an end at the important moment, I wished him good luck (he was a good guy).

So to summarize, I went 9-1 in swiss, then dropped my elimination match.

I was the only Karakuri player in top 32, which mostly consisted of Dino Rabbits, HEROes, Wind-Up, Dark World and Geargia varients (no, I don't consider Geargia with like 3 Karakuri tuners as a Karakuri deck!).

After looking back at the meta and my experience at the YCS, here's the modified version. Side deck is still a little iffy, I need more testing.

Modified build

For now, I decided to put in Sazank in place of one of Nisamus for Snowman Eater-ish type of effect (which comes in handy) and easier access to Naturia Barkion (which is now in the extra deck). However, I did like using 3 Nisamus and I may go back to that after some more testing, so we shall see. I also put in Soul of Silvermountain, replacing Leviathan Dragon. I totally forgot about that card and how broken it is! With D-Prison running around everwhere, it can shut it down with its effect then attack over something to revive Naturia Beast/Burei/Bureido! Wow! I also swapped Lance with Trap Stun, which is a safer choice when going off. Now, Cyber Dragon (and even System Down) will be even more of a popular side deck choice so we really need to be careful, if you're a Karakuri (or machine in general) player yourself, or thinking of trying this deck out.

This deck is kind of like Wind-Up, in a sense that you can do some neat combos to explode when possible, but still play conservatively until you get all the pieces to go off. The deck is not as easy to play correctly, as some of the other decks. Realize that Karakuris (except Burei and Bureido) MUST attack if able. This makes things tricky at times because you maybe stopped by Maxx "C" or opponent has a big monster on the field and you can't do anything else after summoning that Merchant in Main Phase 1. Little things like that could add up and cost you games. I made a couple mistakes like this myself in the earlier rounds (showing a little rust).

Anyways, thanks for reading and hope you like the deck! I really hope this format doesn't turn out to be like the last format and stay as an enjoyable one!