Introduction
As many of you may know, preparing for large scale events can be difficult, tedious and sometimes confusing. I went ahead and got some top tier advice from two of the biggest members of the duel links community including none other than Timmy and Dkayed. I am hoping with this article that players will be able to better themselves moving into tournament play.
The Interviews
I really went all in when thinking about what to ask these top players about. I pretty much went off what I think would help a player like myself.
- How long before an event do you start test playing?
So this question is the one question where i find will differ for almost all players... when should I start test playing?? For someone like Dkayed, you wont start test playing until your 100% positive that there will be no more major changes in the game. "As soon as balance was nerfed, I HEAVILY tested ninjas.", but if you are a player like Timmy, you'll have a bunch of decks that you want to test slowly, but like Dkayed, won't heavily test until the newest box is released. "Having a lot of TCG experience, I tend to know what arch types and playable cards will be when the set drops."
- How do you test with a new box that releases just before an event?
How are we supposed to know what cards in this new set will be relevant? What if I have 0 TCG experience and am waiting for a youtube deck to drop with these cards that I am not sure about? Both of our top players have TCG experience so it does not take too much time for them to look through the cards and decide what is good, what has potential or what is trash. Although Dkayed goes a bit farther with his box checking. For example, Dkayed carefully analyzed galactic origin and saw that saffira might not have an immediate impact on CA, but eventually might and that cosmic cyclone could have huge potential. Both of these have come to fruition with the skill balancing now allowing cosmic cyclone to activate abilities and CA being nerfed so much that saffira has actually had a huge impact on the deck becoming the main monster of the deck and multiple topping MCS-V let alone winning it all.
- What do you take into consideration when choosing a skill and deck combination?
This can be a little confusing, what skills pair the best with what deck? Would it be my personal favorite weevil glads, or a standard hazy mai? Is there something I'm missing that could have potential like endless trap hell stall? For someone like Dkayed, he will see what is a majority in the event/ladder and do his best to exploit it even if it leaves him weak like ninjas did. Timmy on the other hand will pick what coincides best with his deck choice, restart and balance for consistency, Destiny Draw for combo decks, Ties that bind/Beatdown for big monster decks like REZ.
- How long do you dedicate to grinding events like the KC Cup? Does it interfere with your home life?
This is one of the biggest concerns for people with lives outside of our phones and computers. How much time should i dedicate to something like the KC Cup.... when we hear talk of people dropping 8-900 games just to be in the close top its kind of off setting. Spending all day and night to try to get an invite to the WCQ invitational sounds absurd especially for those of us that have weekend jobs. do we need to take off from work? Should i tell my loved ones to stay away from me for three days lol? For Timmy he finds that its no inconvenience at all. Due to the game being mobile he just takes it everywhere with him and plays when he can. He still goes to church, out to eat lunch and then its back to work on monday. For Dkayed, it was slightly different "Because Gia Joestar plays with me, for the last event we planned together to eat/play/sleep around the whole KC Cup." They made sure that they could play consistently, but at the same time make sure they could still live their lives. As for a player like myself, I manage a restaurant so my weekends are taken up by that. I still, without taking time off, managed to make it to the top 1000 players in NA. Maybe taking 1 day off would have let me do much better. All-in-all don't let the game interfere with your life more than you want it too!!!
- Do you ever second guess yourself and choices you make
Second guessing ourselves is completely natural. trying to overcome that is an extremely difficult thing to do. For Dkayed, he does his best to be in an optimal mindset and to "promise yourself that you will not second guess yourself during this event. There will be stressful situations that you run into that will be stressful and put you in a less than ideal mindset." This is the reason in the past three KC Cups he has picked and stuck with one strategy from start to finish in each event. Timmy on the other hand has had a ton of experience from the TCG that he no longer doubts his decisions and goes into and event strong and confident. Like Dkayed, even though he takes some loses at times, he will not change his strategy and keeps pushing through the event.
- What extra things do you do to prepare for an event?
Is there anything special that these top tier players do before an event? Some sort of good luck mantra that they do? NOPE! These players are just like you and I. Just grinding the ladder getting making all the final touches they feel they need too and making sure they get plenty of rest and nutrition for the upcoming event. There is no special trick up their sleeve, nothing extra they do to prepare just the normal grinding and testing that they've been doing throughout the weeks.
- Do you have any advice for upcoming players?
Directly from the sources;