Insert Téa-style Friendship Speech Here

Well, maybe not quite that drastic and one track minded as one of Téa's speeches, but I am gonna have a little talk about today's teams event for Yu-Gi-Oh! I used a Zexal image because I wasn't game to google search images of Yugi and Kaiba. Fangirls... fangirls everywhere.


I, for one, really enjoy playing in teams events. First and foremost, it seems to have a much more relaxed atmosphere than a standard event. Admittedly I don't spend hours tweaking my decks until they're perfectly optimised to crush everyone's dreams of winning, instead being happy as long as it functions more or less the way it's supposed to. While it's certainly no issue bringing your super competitive deck to the event, it can be balanced out by being randomly paired up with someone who isn't quite at your speed. In that way the event is somewhat balanced, though with random teams can always throw a spanner in the works.

Every time I've participated in a team event, I've had the fortune to be paired with a notably good player.Today was no different, and I found that Fabio and his Scrap deck would be standing alongside my Photon deck (I wanted to use it in the previous team event too, but Evilswarms and Photon don't play nice so I played Harpies instead - let that be a lesson to take as many decks as you can when participating!).

Having only just returned to the game at the end of 2011/beginning of 2012 after an almost three year break I hadn't seen a Scrap deck in action before. It was quite an interesting experience to play alongside them (and get bailed out on more than one occasion). Did the two decks compliment each other well? I wouldn't say that they did as such, but they didn't take away from one another so I would consider the partnership a more or less successful one. More so seeing as I heard tales about Zombie World screwing up another team's overall tactics, and yet another good reason why one should try to at least bring a team friendly deck when looking to join in. There is such a thing as the good sports award, you know!

For the most part, the games went quite smoothly. There were a few times where I thought things were going to go pear shaped, but having someone else to back you up certainly helps. You also need to remember the turn order, for example destroying a defence position monster the next opponent has instead of just going for a direct attack so that the mystery monster doesn't contribute to a comeback. This is just one thing to think about when playing teams, rather than just focussing on one field there are two to consider.

Another thing is blindly using mass destruction cards. What happens if your team mate is trying to set up a big monster and you use Dark Hole? This is one of those things where you really need to talk with your team mate beforehand about the policy. Fabio and I agreed before the first round that if the situation called for Needle Ceiling to be used, don't hesitate on it. I was willing to sacrifice my Galaxy-Eyes if the situation called for it, as a good team mate should. Not to toot my own horn or anything (Fabio's monsters were busy tooting the Horn of the Phantom Beast anyway, and that's enough horn tooting for the day).

Do I have any regrets for today? Just one. Every time I summoned Starliege Lord Galaxion, he wasn't able to activate his effect for one reason or another. That's the only petty regret I have, as the rest of the time was a blast win or lose. I hope to be able to attend more team events in the future, and would urge everyone else to have a go as well.