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Well here it is guys, sorry its not as detailed as im sure jesus's will be but heres what i remember/wrote down -


Friday

Left Grimsby at 8.30 to pick Jason up for louth, got back to Andy's for 9 to pick him up - He looked shattered as he had been up the previous night working. Grabbed a maccies breakfast, and then left for Birmingham -

Arrived at 12.30, Checked in and then since the room wasnt ready headed to the bar/lounge area to find all the scottish guys had arrived allready and were play testing for their WoW. Had some WoW cards with me from my epic quest to pull loots and managed to sell a few off then got playtestin some huntik's while waiting for Mike Hooten (Head Judge) to arrive. Once he arrived, we were all hungry so headed off in search off food and found my favourite, subway at the train station. After that we headed back again (good thing about this was only a 3 min walk) and then i had to go back again to meet Aaron from the train station.

By that point Jesus + crew (sorry for lack of names) arrived, and said hello and then the rest of us playtested for the rest of the evening. Had Food that night with the judges, playtested some more, said hello to the "Comic Culture team" then got a early night.

Saturday

Got up at 7.00, Andy grabbed some breakfast and then we went to the venue - got there later then expected since the sat nav sent us in the completely wrong direction, but after jason spotted a sign in the middle of no where, we were pack on track. Was a important day for Andy, as since it was his 1st biggish huntik tournament ( He had onl played in 1 huntik tournament before this, A store championship in Ripley) and needed to qualify.) He went off while me and jason waited for side events, and once we recieved our coins/deck boxes / liches everything kicked off)

After going 0-2, then just not turning up to the last round, my "Road to the nationals" wasnt off to a great start. The opposite could be said for Andy though, as he went undeafeted in the qualifer, thus making it too day 2.

At that point we all just chilled out and lunch time arrived. We didnt really like the look off the venue's cafe, so i made a dash to subway with myke and simon.....after getting a order list from 8 of the judge team. Wasnt a fun experience, we arrived at subway with no one in there - started to order and slowely the queue grew, and with just 1 person working there on a saturday afternoon (lol?), by the time he had a nervous breakdown, the queue was 8 - headed back, sorted food out and stuff, watched some moree huntik games, and did a couple more side events (still loosing badly), we left around 8ish to the hotel for some more practice ( at that stage i needed it.) Ordered a few pizzas for 9.95 each! (3.49 at tesco, its true ask Andy) then called it a night.

Sunday

Got up at 7, no breakfast made it to the venue ok this time and i had to deciede between the good deck i had built or the net deck expandable help. Filled out the decklist, all the players were seated, (53, then 3 more entered after the 1st round/during 1st round?)


Round One

Dean Fisher (Good Deck)

His 1st play was summoning venadek (sas) had me worried. I started the match thinking it would be a easy win, since he didnt look a threat, and he got his qualification place via a pass down at a regional. Having a hand off heroes with good effects if used against me, i was wetting myself and played over cautiously, thinking he would pull out a switchsoul on me - which never happened, I won on Round 6.

1-0

Round Two

Nathan Pang

Most of saturday nights play testing was done with the MFM guys (Props to vini/Ryan/Nathan) so we knew each other's decks qutie well, and sat down for a quite light hearted game. I wasnt sure if he had a bad hand and muliganed into worse, or just made a misplay, but knowing his deck was expandable help / sandsnakes , i managed to beat him quite easily by round 3? (He never activated expandable help)

2-0

Round Three

Vini Gardner

Again, Another MFM player. Was a bit more serious then the last round though as we both wanted the win, and full credit to Vini he didnt make it easy at all. He managed to Switchsoul his caliban with my LGS Zhalia moon and pulled off searching for his copy of Shadowpoint twice. Near the end i thought i had lost it, but 3 Sabriel plays kept me in the game, and won 7-0 point wise.

3-0

Round Four

Tom Marsh

I know Tom from the Ukay Pro championship, since at fanboy we had a few games of huntik on the friday night, and the sheffield regional (which i beat him in swiss), and mansfield which he beat me in swiss. I knew he was a very skilled player and he took care with each of his moves, but we both made mistakes. I cant remember what he did/thought he did, but i knew he was playing evil so tried to play like i was playing a pure expandable help deck - which it wasnt so being over cautious round 1 didnt help me at all. He used 2 Promo Braehes, and 2 shauna and winds against me, (which i touchram'd twice), which eliminating his minors kept the amound of cards we had equal, and i just nipped the final point to win by 1 point, and having the closest game of the day i was beginning to get nervous about my upcoming rounds.

4-0

At this point it was lunch time so ate the subway i had bought on the way to the venue that morning (Sorry judges, not today), and finished it just in time for round 5 pairing's being put up.


Round 5

Andrew Thompson.

Again, we had playtested together on the friday, but i wasnt sure which deck he decieded on to use, which turned out to be a good deck. There was alot of laughs, as in the top4 of swiss it was him, his 2 team mates and me and the 1st round we all had lok lambarts out and scolopens out. He took the game quite easy i felt, making the most of playing his 3 King basilisk's (LGS)

4-1

Round 6

Reece Halt

Even though i had lost the last round, i was still quite confident going into this round, so found my opponent sat down and started. He was using a good deck, and after abusing sabriel usng 2 everfights, i took the game quite easily. Recieved my 1st warning off UDE tournaments in 4 years, for making a mistake after a combat and thinking it was my turn, so tried to play my everfight, which he very quickly tried to call a judge on me for.

Took it on the chin, as i admitted it was a mistake, so it was repaired, and play continued, till the point of complete ownage. (lol)

5-1

Round 7

Jesus

I was a bit stressed out by that point, wether it was the business in the last round or the nerves off being 5-1, or both but it didnt help when i checked the pairings to find i was paired against the person i dreaded playing the most. He was using a good deck, and his tech (i think he was the only one i saw using it, major lok lambart) to completely destroy me. By the time our game had finished, we had several people, including judges watching us, as Jesus finished me off with 2 major loks and 3 minors in my zone 1.

5-2

Round 8

Ryan Pang

At this point i was beginning to get worried. Jesus was on 7-0, so was now going to be in the top8 what ever, so he had a load of pressure taken off him, and i still needed to win a couple more, as i thought my loosing streak had started.

We sat down, and after some joking around about how he was going to revenge his brother, and win i was worried. I knew he was running expandable help, and he was very succesful with it in practice against me the previous night. I kept my cool as much as a good, and after opening scolopen and research into a breakspell, and drawing a second, i comfortably took the game.

PANG-PANG

6-2

At this point i was very nervous. I needed to win to make sure i was in the top8, and if i lost i was hoping on tie breakers. Pairing's were put up, and i was playing the 3rd and final member of "sins of scotland"...

Stephen Brockie

I didnt make any notes on thsi game as i was focusing on the game and after some close plays, i just got the win. Oh and he was running good.



So, after finishing swiss on 7-3, i had made the top 8. Andy finished on 5-4, and Jason 6-3. Overall some good results.

Top 8 was announced as followed -

Gareth Shaw
Jesus
Nathan Pang
Ryan Pang
Reece Halt
Andrew Thompson
Dan Snape
Dan Bentley

After we all sat down together....we had our decks collected and deck checked. There was a issue with one of the deck's after the checking, but i wont go into it.

Top 8

Nathan Pang

So, we faced each other again. Win

Top4

Andrew Thompson

Again, i didnt do notes, we played in the swiss and he beat me, and now it was my turn. I remember a touchram and a shadowpoint helped. The toughest game of the day, and i really enjoyed it even though it was very tense - im sure the video of this will be put up

Final -

Me v Jesus

After the opening hand and muligan i got one major hero - LGS zhalia which i tried to bait his caliban out with, but he never fell for it. Over all he had the perfect plays, discarding a caliban for his caliban and stuff, but general made no mistakes at all and just out playd me with the cards we had.

a very well played game, and a much deserved win for him.


Overall a good weekend, best major tournament finish. Till next year!

Props -

Andy/Jason
UDE Judge team - Mike/Aaron/Dan and the other UDE's judges on the wow event - great seeing everyone again
17.50 a night in the hotel
Coming Second
The Scottish
The MFM players
3 min walk to subway
Dan Nelson's pro tip of Megapunching my own cherit

Slops -

No other cheap choices of food
Not winning

Sorry if i missed anyone out/things out - you are all amazing!

Decklist:

3 Sabriel
3 Zhalia Moon (LGS)
3 Fenris (LGS)

3 Scolopen
3 Freelancer (LGS)
2 Baselaird (LGS)
3 Dierdre
2 Cherit
3 Lok (SAS)

3 Research
3 Everfight
3 Breakspell
2 Touchram
3 Boltflare
1 Shadowpoint



Gareth Shaw

So it seems that Good/Shadowpoint was pretty popular. How many expendable help decks did you see?

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Dan Scheidegger
R&D Manager, Game Designer
The Upper Deck Company

Were the shadowpoint decks a meta-game choice (expecting lots of expendablehelp.dek)?

I haven't bumped into that one yet myself. Definitely looks like everyone is gravatating to less and less major heroes though.

Cheers!

Why? Shadowpoint isn't even that good lol.

I don't even want to run it when I run 3 Zhalia 6/3, but I feel obligated for the +1. Shadowpoint is hardly a +1 off zhalia, as it's not even a 1-1 in my opinion despite temporary advantage.

On top of this if anything, you'd run more minor heroes because of shadowpoint. Bit of a paradox I guess, but I mean just don't drop all your minors for no reason and you're fine?

Especially on lich mission.

to answer various questions. First, expendable help was used by many people, the two people top 8 with evil decks both run the expendable deck out deck.. although Nathan rarely pulled it off (don't think he did at all), he just beat u via the free trade u get off expendable.. which is what my deck was (expendable beat down). The best one was ran by Jason, which did it many times, the only problem was it took so long that he risk losing on time (and did for 2/3 loses, one of them to me, and I swear i wasn't even stalling excessively.. i mean, taking 5 sec per move is hardly slow play is it?).
As for why good decks were so good, with break spell and touchram / bolt flare, expendable can barely touch them, with a shadow point on top, that's pretty much it. Against most other decks, with shauna or caliban, a touch ram = doomed, and shawdow point, really, if you play it at the right time, u can nearly guarantee a free passage to zone 5 (as any major can be taken down easily with the lich's help). Once you are there, u get two extra counters, which is much harder to knock off than u think. You either have to stop advancing totally to kill the lich off, or risk them out scoring you. they also have an abundance of 3/3 minor, with the lich on top, they can kill just about anyone. The lack of major is no big deal considering most ran research in 3s, and bolt flare etc give them extra draw. Jesus build uses Log BE + tao.. which was one of my original ideas, wish I tested it out more now. The lich can take down a Shauna itself, it is that good. Shadow point is a -1 card in terms of card, but it can gives you so much board presence that u can not ignore it.. this is not a game when u win by killing things off afterall.

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Jack
Lv2 Yu-Gi-Oh Judge knowledge
Lv1 Tournament organiser
Lv1 Huntik Judge knowledge
Lv1 player managerment
I run stuff at roundabout toys, Ashton, UK
visit http://www.yugioh-guide.com and http://www.huntik-guide.com

When you say that expendable help was played, do you mean that it was played in evil decks, or that there were Expendable Help Combo decks in attendance?

It definitely looks like the good decks were built to deal with this deck, but I don't really see how Shadowpoint is that useful for the matchup, given that you don't need to play all your minors before the expendable help - you can just play them one at a time.

I'll have to try that version of good anyway.

5 seconds per move is hardly stalling. In fact it's perfectly understandable why someone would like to take some time at a national event and make sure they don't make a mistake. 1 mistake is the difference between winning a PS3, and winning an Ipod Nano after all. However if there is literally no good move that you can take; and you are taking far too much time than would be deemed okay, then that's stalling (not like you did this with 5 sec per move). It may also be considered stalling if you're under expendable loop and you wait 10 secs per move as well,(as this adds up after a while, after all) but it seems perfectly fair in your circumstance.

As for these people running Expendable, did they have access to Darkstudies? Also, although Good has numerous outs against Combo, Evil does it better in almost every way imo. And although nobody seems to realise this,  Dante Vale is also an out against Evil Combo. They drop their minors, you hyperstride and take 2 of their guys down. Watch them combo you with 3 cards in hand, oh wait. You can probably start to take control from there with considerably less threat of losing (Loss of 2 minors means less heroes for exhausting, less heroes that can suicide). I don't think anyone thinks about Dante Vale as an out against Expendable Combo in this way, but they should.

Shadowpoint is severely over-rated though. How do you even get free passage to zone 5 anyway. That means you had your heroes in zone 3 already, and lest I remind you, you're probably winning if you're dominating zone 3. Secondly, where is the opponent's lich during all of this? The card can also serve to defend as well as attack. If you don't win that round or make incredible trades/board position (which is difficult as everything just flips, and you can't make 'incredible' trades when you play shadowpoint as the minors all become immune to destruction.) They also come back the next round, so they will block you regardless of if you go first/second. On top of this majors generally maintain board presence quite well and it's typical the opponent will not drop all their minors just to get wrecked by a Shadowpoint. Let's assume you have an ideal position where you have a heap of guys in zone 4. Why was the opponent not trying to simplify the game position at all there when their heroes are presumably in zone 2? Why would they let themselves lose to shadowpoint there?

It's a decent tech that can stop Expendable dead in its tracks, but it's not much more than that in my opinion. It can be debated either way though.

I also tested Lok BE + Tao for a while. I'm interested to see his deck list, but I did not feel the deck concept was necessarily that great after testing. Giving the opponent a +1 with Tao's summon condition is a hard road to immediately recover from. Tao eventually makes it back, but it seems somewhat tacky (and takes a while). Using Lok BE in R1 to nullify the cost means that a Sabriel will probably eat you up and damage your field as you don't have the Sabriel to negate. It also has potential problems with certain evil decks (overwhelming/flashbulb and such. Maybe even Darkwave in some other decks for an easy +1 over your Tao.).

I personally found Evil the better way to go with Tao control although both are viable options. I also realised Strikemode does what Tao does except it doesn't take up your Major for the turn -- Just something to consider. Despite the disability to have a constant +6 atk every turn, +4 is just as good in almost every situation. There's the obvious comparison between one being a major (con, can be flashbulbed, switched etc etc), -1 (con at first, but makes it back pro) and can kill even Shauna with the effect (pro). However they can see the action coming, meaning that can play around it (con). Strikemode being combat action (pro, you can't see realistically see it coming and since it is a combat action it cannot be cancelled), but being unable to kill Shauna (con - although flashbulb aids considerably), and 1-1 or more (pro). As opposed to Tao, you can still play a major, giving you potential 'major advantage'. The inverted commas are there as the term is somewhat warped in this particular circumstance.

Then there's more factors like the ability for Tao in Good being able to run sabriels, and Evil being able to run cards like Flashbulb. There's the trade-off you have to consider in the end. Seeing Jesus' decklist would be a good point of insight and discussion though. It seems interesting to say the least, as I had always liked the Tao + Lich concept.

let me just clarify the free passage to zone5 thing.. first, move lich to zone 3. If anyone comes in, bunch a scolopan in there to kill them, major comes in, bunch a minor in there to kill them etc.
Anyone else goes to zone 2. they will probably be scared into putting their guys in zone 2 too.
Next round, if any of their guys are in zone 4, either shadow point them all, or run guys in from zone 2 to kill them, then move lich into zone 5.. gain 2 counters.. they have to use all their guys to kill lich when u happily march the rest or your guys down.. or you can start loading the lich with counters if it looks like they can't take it down fast enough. any majors, run someone in and touchram it.. see, that's how it works, and they did it quite often. once you are under pressure like that, you either have to keep your lich in zone 1 to help out, or march it down, but face the disadvantage of fighting other guys with thier lich on top.
Yes, you can use the lich to go aggro and kill everyone, but you kinda have to march it down too to score point, if you solo it in a zone, it will get killed fast, or just get blocked. If you keep someother guys with it, they die instead. say you have a lich in zone 3 and a couple of stike mode, they run their lich in, no combat.. they run a minor in to fight, you can stirke mode it, you both lose a card, no realy gain. if you run a guy in, they kill your guy, no need for strike mode.. if you start a fight with lich, you will never get it pass zone 3... so unless they hold back for some reasons and you can keep moving your lich forward and fights, that idea doesn't work (I tried it, and failed miserably with it, so i took out the strike mode in the end).

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Jack
Lv2 Yu-Gi-Oh Judge knowledge
Lv1 Tournament organiser
Lv1 Huntik Judge knowledge
Lv1 player managerment
I run stuff at roundabout toys, Ashton, UK
visit http://www.yugioh-guide.com and http://www.huntik-guide.com

Isn't that incredibly dependant on whether you are leading or defending? Also yes, it is a given that you can move your scolopens into zone 3 or whatever. Can't they do the same thing against you? Who's in zone 2 specifically? Do they have Sabriel (Then they don't give a damn about where she goes)? When do you use it; specifically speaking, using it at the start of the round means they have another major to play, and as many minors as they have in their hand. What major does the Shadowpoint player have specifically? Does that major necessarily threaten the build up of heroes in zone 2?

That's a damn lot of things you have to consider when you run Shadowpoint. You can't quite say your situation will work out so fluidly every single time right?

About strikemode, theoretically, nobody ever wants to ever build up a board in zone 3. That means your lich will move to zone 4 without being blocked. Now if they want to remove counters off that guy, they're gonna need 2 minors or a major to do it (or lich + minor, but that means your lich is in offence and theirs are in defence). Suddenly Strikemode wins games. Of course not only will Strikemode be in 3s, so will Ferocity. This means that if you go ferocity -> a minor with lich, you're getting a +1 right there. This sets up a semi-potent mind game. As for the situation you described, I would probably never strikemode one minor specifically. What are they gonna do? Let's say the typical game. Opp moves lich in, I move my lich in. He moves minor in to attack (If I have ferocity +1. Darkvoid 1-1. Skin-Grip 1-1, see their hand for info and crippling effect, Strikemode, I save it despite 1-1 as it is a power card)? At this point what else can he do (If I don't ferocity)? He won't send in another minor, will he? If he does, strikemode now +1'd me, and that's a lot if he attacks me. If he just moves it in there (lol), I can send in my minor to make a 2-1 trade anyway. In fact, what's to stop me from trading my minors in zone 3 anyway (with the exception of Scolopen)? If he moves his lich to zone 3, I move mine to zone 3 and he doesn't move his minors forward fearing the scenario where I outsimplify the board (as evil has the superior 1-1s outside of Sabriel), then we may just end up with heroes in zone 2/4 respectively. Now this is where shadowpoint may come in like you said, but once again it depends on who starts first. How many heroes do you put to zone 4 though? Do you have the scolopen to block in zone 3 perhaps? If not, putting more than 1 hero in zone 4 runs the risk of getting demolished by strikemode. You play shadowpoint, the lich is unaffected. Maybe I move my major to zone 2, then what? Maybe he was already there. Then what's your first move (once again depends on Sabriel)?

There's so much that can be considered/asked in that situation but Strikemode is the key card that provides such a difficult situation imo. If the opponent doesn't consider it, you win. Then there's the other fact; Evil runs flashbulb and such. It lets Evil take control easier in the early game, and consequently allows Lich an easier time to travel the board. The idea does work though, but it needs to be far more dedicated. You need to run cards similar to Lich in that the KO of the card doesn't damage you in the long run (eg Omeed for instance, who is like a mini-lich to a degree), and other combat actions. Running cards like Heirospecter seem to help as well (+1s etc). Cards like that maximise your ability to have more cards than the opponent and then win. The deck probably needs dark study to succeed, which is perhaps why you did not find the deck as fluid as I did.

what i stated was a scenrio.. and more often than not, people don't run many majors in this mission, if you play shadow point to stun whatever they have on the field, they need one turn to play a hero, you can use that turn to move the Lich to Zone 5 and gain 2 counters.. since half thier guys are stunned, they can't usually do much to your lich, so you can happily score the next round.. the rate of that being successful is quite high. Of course that doesn't happens all the times, so some of the scenrio you stated will happen too.. but the play above is an amazing play for this mission. If say you have about 3 minors, two of which used an exhuast action the round before, one went forward and got killed, your major is in zone 2. I move my guys form my zone two to kill your major, you do whatever with your minor, i shadow point them both, then i move lich in etc... see, fairly easy.
As of the strike mode, as i stated earlier, all they have to do is not start a combat when is one on one vs lich. The lich doesn't block, so other guys can just walk pass him to fight else where. And unless you want to start combat with the lich (which mean u can't move it that round), you have to walk other guys in, then you have no reason to play strikemode.. in your zone3 scenrio, they can just move a minor in without starting a fight.. then u can put your minor in to fight, but nothing gained. If you ended up haveing 3 combat actions card in hand and no guys, then you have to waste a round to use your lich to fight and not go forward... not great if you want to score points.You can put as many guys as you want in zone 2 providing opponent is not unblockable and u have someone in zone 3...  as said, I tested strikemode, it didn't do much for me. I chose to run evil and realised it got a bit outclassed by all the stunning stuff, despite i too think the +1 from ferocity etc would be really good.
I can see our points are kind of repeating, so I will just say that's my 5 cents and if it works for you, good for you ^_^

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Jack
Lv2 Yu-Gi-Oh Judge knowledge
Lv1 Tournament organiser
Lv1 Huntik Judge knowledge
Lv1 player managerment
I run stuff at roundabout toys, Ashton, UK
visit http://www.yugioh-guide.com and http://www.huntik-guide.com

Surely people run enough majors to be able to drop at least 1 major per round for the first two rounds? If someone doesn't have a major round 1, I think there's a slight problem there, don't you? Like I said, you didn't really address what happens if the opponent moved their major + minor to zone 2. Then what? Then you have a problem with that play. Your major in zone 2 goes to zone 4 and crashes major? My turn; now I have the ability to drop my major and make your shadowpoint siginificantly less useful. Your lich can't get to zone 5 immediately as I have the minor in zone 4 blocking, and by the time you manage to get rid of it, I already have the major ready to block the lich. Then next turn, I'm +1 over you because you used the Shadowpoint.

What if the opponent starts first in second round? Then shadowpoint is even easier to play around isn't it? Also, if you're trading all of your guys in zone 2 with my zone 4, then doesn't that mean my lich can go to zone 5 as well? Then we both have liches in zone 5, except one of us had to pay a card for that privelige, whilst the other one got there free.

As I assume you should know in this game, having a +1 in this game is a large advantage (assuming equal major count for instance). Shadowpoint doesn't necessarily achieve that.

Now let's continue with your scenario. You will see 7 cards in that scenario right? Shadowpoint is one card, your major is another and your other 2 minors add up to 4 cards. That means your lich goes to zone 5 with 5 counters with you having 3 cards in hand. Now you will have to pitch most of your hand in order to get a 'guaranteed' game scenario there.  Your opponent on the other hand maybe loses 2 minors to shadowpoint, and the major prob traded with some minors. They're 3 cards down, but they have 4 cards (incl 1 major) to repel your lich. It's unlikely you can go for 'game' and you're -1 despite being above in point advantage (slight board adv) which doesn't really matter if your opponent can retake control later on. In this situation I suppose you could deem shadowpoint worth it with certain concepts in mind.

But keep in mind this is what you would classify as 'optimal'. As I have tried to express, there are many situations where Shadowpoint falls short of that.


As of the strike mode, as i stated earlier, all they have to do is not start a combat when is one on one vs lich. The lich doesn't block, so other guys can just walk pass him to fight else where. And unless you want to start combat with the lich (which mean u can't move it that round), you have to walk other guys in, then you have no reason to play strikemode.. in your zone3 scenrio, they can just move a minor in without starting a fight.. then u can put your minor in to fight, but nothing gained. If you ended up haveing 3 combat actions card in hand and no guys, then you have to waste a round to use your lich to fight and not go forward... not great if you want to score points.You can put as many guys as you want in zone 2 providing opponent is not unblockable and u have someone in zone 3...  as said, I tested strikemode, it didn't do much for me. I chose to run evil and realised it got a bit outclassed by all the stunning stuff, despite i too think the +1 from ferocity etc would be really good.

I don't see why anyone would ever start a one on one with lich unless they had 4 atk or greater anyway. In any case the whole point is you create the position where they have to fear attacking your lich with everything. That by itself is great since the lich is a win condition and you make them fear stopping it.

If you have multiple combat actions then lich becomes an agressive powerhouse. You can set-up with putting certain minors/majors to clear paths for lich. As soon as the opponent lets the lich into zone 4, they're in -such- a vulnerable position because Evil just has so many combat actions which protects the lich or earns some form of advantage (generally board).

in your zone3 scenrio, they can just move a minor in without starting a fight..

No they can't. In the zone 3 scenerio their minor and lich is in zone 3. If they don't start a fight, I move my minor in and keep him there, threatening the 2-1 if I have ferocity. If they don't do anything, they will never advance. What is their hero distribution going to look like there? In their Zone 2 or 1. How many? The moment that decide to crash their minor, they risk getting strikemoded by a 6atk lich to their zone 4. If they have 2 or more heroes there that is. If they don't, then that means the evil player can being taking control and moving their guys to zone 4 to support lich for instance.

I can see where you are coming from, and I believe it is a legitimate point of view to see the game from. I suppose you can call it a preference choice (I think I said this earlier in the discussion) , but I maintain that Shadowpoint is only 'decent at best.' I'm sure you've seen this deck before, but I ask that you net this and play it for a while. You will probably see what I mean.

Majors 6

3 Omeed
3 Rassimov lgs

Actions 21

3 Darkwave
3 Flashbulb
3 DarkStudy
3 Ferocity
3 Darkvoid
3 Skingrip
3 Strikemode

Minors 13

3 Ferric Warbringer
3 Heirospectre
3 Bales
3 Thornment
1 Dark Pharoah

I could write more on Shadowpoint/Strikemode etc if you are interested in continuing. It is an interesting discussion I think.

well, i don't know about u, but i usually play my major really late in the round especially if i have two in my hand, or one in my hand with the chance of drawing more (say via boltflare or ferocity).. if they have one major from round 1, if they put it in zone3, it's probably dead, if they put it in zone 2, you can jump your major over to kill it.. (it does require you leading, and i always choose to lead on this mission). Now, they may play another minor, they may move one of theirs to kill some of your guys (as said, most people hold out on majors), but most people just move in and start a fight against my lich (so they get a boost from their lich). after that, if they have two or more minors, just shadow points them (in this scenrio, every enemy hero got stunned as they havn't played major yet).. they do whatever, short of a fenris, you can move your lich to zone 5.. hopefully with at least a guy in zone 2 to stop their lich from moving further. then they are stuck with trying to kill your lich off fast.. with boltflare and touch ram, you can stun most, and get your 5 then 4 points for the win. If you got a shadow point from Zhalia, all the better.. I won't recommend running more than 1 unless you run Zhalia though. Extra round for a good deck also mean bigger chance of getting everfight / sabriel, dante / hyperstride etc. I am not saying it is perfect, but it does work.

as of the they can't start a fight scenrio on strikemode.. so i have a guy and a lich, you have a guy and a lich in zone 3.. everyone else sits in zone 1 or 2. Next round, i wait for you to start a fight with the spare guy in zone 3.. you won't play strikemode cause you have enough to kill my guy anyway, and I have enough to kill your guy. so the minor got exchanged. I then move another guy into zone 3 and not start a fight.. this can go on until one of us run out of guys, and you still won't want to play strike mode, with the one strike mode in your hand not doing much atm, chances are i have more guys than you, then u are forced to start a fight with your lich to get some use out of it.. then i have a free lich to move into zone 5... (that keep happening to me when i used it).. from testing just strikemode as a card (not any dedicated  build), i find myself wanting it roungly 1/3 of the time, and loathing it about 2/3 of the times.

also, the reluctant to start a fight sometimes cause a major build up of minors sitting around, as no one want to start a fight.. but they need board presence once they start trading people off (you kinda need one guy standing to block the lich).. so shadow point have stunned about 3 /4 minors quite often, then they can just kill off your major, and still have loads of guys dotted around to block the lich. also happened a lot.

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Jack
Lv2 Yu-Gi-Oh Judge knowledge
Lv1 Tournament organiser
Lv1 Huntik Judge knowledge
Lv1 player managerment
I run stuff at roundabout toys, Ashton, UK
visit http://www.yugioh-guide.com and http://www.huntik-guide.com

I play my major late in round 1, early in round 2 in most situations. There's generally little to lose in doing so and I know some people play like I do. In my opinion what you're stuck with in Shadowpoint is a card that only works in the optimal situation. It requires you to lead, it requires your opponent to play in a specific way and to some degree even depends on you drawing the optimal hand to take advantage of it? I don't know man, seems too situational for me. I've always thought of Shadowpoint as a card I don't like, but isn't bad, by all accounts.

I believe that maybe your argument is okay for Strikemode is okay. Your experience comes from just random teching of strikemode, and maybe that is a lot different. Try the deck I posted, and tell me what you think of Strikemode afterwards. If you still have problems, we can continue the discussion then. I don't often come up with unfavourable situations with that deck because I tend to play around any problems I have to put up with (as in I try to keep a position which doesn't make me vulnerable).

guess i'll give it a go at some point. (although with the nats actually over, don't think i'll ever play this mission again.. but heck, may worth it just to check out this idea of yours). This was the best discussion I ever had about huntik though. I have a fansite for huntik set up, feel free to join in the forum and put some input there! huntik-guide.com

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Jack
Lv2 Yu-Gi-Oh Judge knowledge
Lv1 Tournament organiser
Lv1 Huntik Judge knowledge
Lv1 player managerment
I run stuff at roundabout toys, Ashton, UK
visit http://www.yugioh-guide.com and http://www.huntik-guide.com