Yu-Gi-Oh! Regionals Fredericton
The Fredericton Inn was the venue for the Yu-Gi-Oh! Regional tournament in Fredericton over the past weekend. There were 53 participants, each hoping to come away with the prizes of a state-of-the-art deck-box and a limited edition play mat. They were also playing for the bragging rights as the “King of Games” for Fredericton.
This is the first regional tournament that is taking place since the Covid-19 pandemic. Due to the close-contact nature of the game and the events, there were no tournaments held in the Fredericton area over the past two years. This event is following the Moncton Regionals, which took place two weeks ago.
Carter Bird, a Fredericton local, made the trip to Moncton and came away with the top prize. Bird will play against many of his friends at the Fredericton tournament as the Fredericton Yu-Gi-Oh! community is a close-knit one. He is hoping to continue his run of wins and capture the title of the best duelist in Fredericton. He is also glad to be back playing in these local tournaments, post pandemic, since he enjoys using his deck to strategically win all of his games.
“So far it’s been fine. In round one my deck excelled and I played against D/D/D and it hits a lot of the graveyard reborns that the deck has and the effects. I kind of used my Bystial monsters to hit them out of the grave and got an advantage and OTK’d (One Turn Kill) him both times for the game and won 2-0 in the game,” Bird said.
Yu-Gi-Oh! production company, Konami, releases new sets of cards every few months in order to keep the game fresh and encourage new strategies and deck archetypes to be played .Bird is hopeful that his current deck will be enough to take him to the first prize. His deck consists of very powerful cards that are used by many other players, as well as new cards that have recently been released into the game’s card pool.
He has been learning his deck inside-out, studying the different combinations of cards that he can play in order to win. He hopes that these new cards will give him an advantage over the competition since they are new to all players and have very powerful effects that many players are yet to find counters for.
“I’ve been very prepared and been practicing with this deck. The Bystial-Dragon Link deck has a different strategy is different from traditional Dragon Link and you need to play it differently to be effective with it because you need to be effective with your cards. So, because of all the practice I’ve been putting in and because the cards are still very new to the players I think I have an edge in that sense,” he explained.
The games are played by rounds and each round consists of a best-of-three format with each player aiming to win two games. If there is no winner after the third game due to time running out, then players receive points and move forward with these points totals. Once a player reaches a certain number of points they will move on to the next round of matches. At the end of six rounds, the player with the most points is declared the winner. The second and third-placed duelists also receive prizes for their success.
The next event taking place in the Maritimes is in Halifax, Nova Scotia at the end of November. Many of the players here will be participating in that event as well and hope that they can claim the best duelist title for themselves along with whatever accessories they have as a prizes on the day.
