Goat Format Championship 17 Top 8 Interviews

Today we had the largest Goat Format Championship tournament (and the largest online Goat Format event period) ever! 266 players entered for a chance at over $1,000 in prizes and the following eight came out on top! Read on for some stellar insight from the finalists of the most successful modern tournament our format has seen yet! ​

Sdlkilla

Name:N/ALocation:Chula Vista Occupation:Structural helper ​Age:30

How did you prepare for today's event? Did you practice with a specific person or team?Prepared with team rampage.What deck did you play today and why?Warrior is the best deck in my opinion.What decks or players were you looking forward to playing against?Warrior.What decks or players were you NOT looking forward to playing against?Chaos Turbo.What card had been overperforming for you today?Xing Zhen HuWhat has been your favorite moment of the event so far?Making top eight and hopefully winning it.​

If you could go back, what (if any) changes would you would make to your deck today?​Think deck was solid. ​

How did you prepare for today's event? Did you practice with a specific person or team?I haven't touched this game in six months. Practicing barely matters when it's a legacy format. There was one round where I faced a deck I hadn't seen before (Cat Control), so I Googled what it was. Thankfully, my opponent (Nano) had written an entire article about his deck.What deck did you play today and why?Chaos Turbo. It's the best advantage-generating engine, and it's the deck I can play closest to perfectly. But whoever named it "turbo" has misunderstood the deck. I detest that name. Maybe the Jar of Greed version can be thought of as turbo. The other version is so different and plays with an entirely different objective.What decks or players were you looking forward to playing against?Looked forward to playing anyone bad. Suboptimal card choices, suboptimal deck choice, suboptimal technical play, suboptimal psychology...anything to make the day easier.What decks or players were you NOT looking forward to playing against?

Slashtap

Name:JohnnyLocation:TexasOccupation:Management Consultant​Age:33

Did not look forward to playing anyone good. I don't want a difficult time. I don't want to put my skills to test. I want easy prizes.What card had been overperforming for you today?Same answer as last year: Sinister Serpent.What has been your favorite moment of the event so far?I love this match from round one because it provides so many teaching points about the nature of mastery and how (poor) mentality shapes (the lack of development of) mastery. Read the chat and observe how this player's mind attaches to the ego. In the face of undesired outcomes, the ego immediately leaps in to protect itself with thoughts about losing to luck. This ensures that he will fail to properly evaluate his own good luck, as well as card choices, deck choice, and technical play.Card choices: He has some suboptimal card choices, especially post-siding, that made him more fragile to being disturbed by my good luck.Deck choice: CT gets "lucky" more than most decks because it has more lucky synergies. His deck does not have so many synergies, so if we played 1,000 games, it would appear as if I would win more due to "luck" on the microcosm when really I chose the luckier deck on the macrocosm.Technical play: When the ego attaches to a narrative like "I got luck sacked," it blinds the user to proper evaluating whether they could have improved, regardless of whether it would have affected the individual game. Finally, the broader understanding to consider is that when one chooses to play a game with high variance (as opposed to, say, a fighting game), they enter into a contract in which they agree that they wish for luck to determine certain situations. You can see in the fragility of this player's emotions that he wants the upsides of the contract without its downsides. If you agreed to play YuGiOh, you agreed to accept variance.​Replay: https://www.duelingbook.com/replay?id=6322-38270666If you could go back, what (if any) changes would you would make to your deck today?​​I would not have sided certain cards for matchups I didn't end up facing. But this kind of thinking presupposes that my opponents wouldn't change in response to myself changing the past, which I don't think is a safe assumption when you consider the non-Newtonian layer of reality. You cannot alter the select aspects of the past while keeping everything else the same, and if you can truly internalize this assumption (regardless of whether or not it's true), then you'll live a life without regret. Everything that happens, even the mistakes you make that feel so dumb in hindsight and have traumatic consequences, happens for a reason. See through the illusion of regret and you'll see through the illusion of suffering. Refuse to learn from the pain, and it will come back to teach you again.

Lukaz

Name:Daniel FitzgeraldLocation:FloridaOccupation:High School Teacher​Age:33

How did you prepare for today's event? Did you practice with a specific person or team?I didn't get a lot of practice, but I theory crafted with my teammates at Rampage and the crew at LRG. Shoutout to Moxies for always helping me with my lists.What deck did you play today and why?I played Warrior because I have the best success with it. It has answers to most situations, and I'm able to see the lines that lead to victory with this deck.What decks or players were you looking forward to playing against?I was looking forward to this event in general, because with such a big field I figured there would be a lot of interesting decks popping up. So, I was looking forward to playing against some of them.What decks or players were you NOT looking forward to playing against?Any deck with Reasoning in it.

What card had been overperforming for you today?Mystic Swordsman LV2 has been putting in a lot of work for me today. The second copy in the side has been great.What has been your favorite moment of the event so far?My favorite moment was getting to take full advantage of Golem Sentry after using Snatch Steal on it. It was a very powerful card for me when I did!If you could go back, what (if any) changes would you would make to your deck today?​​Cliff underperformed, but I think he was worth having anyway. I'm satisfied with the deck I brought.

How did you prepare for today's event? Did you practice with a specific person or team?Talked with my teammate SDLKILLA about a hour before the tournament & decided to run this list. (Go Rampage)What deck did you play today and why?Warriors, mainly because of all the "new" players that were entering this tournament. We thought the best way to do good today was to make sure we didn't get too fancy building our decks and instead depend more on having the playable cards.What decks or players were you looking forward to playing against?I was looking forward to playing more Warrior players (anything that wasn't an alt win deck). I beat two Burn decks yesterday.What decks or players were you NOT looking forward to playing against?Rampage members. MAN THAT TEAM IS STACKED WITH TALENT.

LaBounty

Name:Jonathan LaBountyLocation:ConnecticutOccupation:Driver​Age:32

What card had been overperforming for you today?Mobius was MVP in the Burn matches.What has been your favorite moment of the event so far?Definitely having four Rampage members in the top eight.If you could go back, what (if any) changes would you would make to your deck today?​Why change a list that has gotten you to 6-0? I came into this with a game plan & will finish it off today. ;)​Thank you to all the staff on the GF discord & all the players that entered this tournament. Team Rampage is the best :)

Ghostrider15

Name:Marcelo LopezLocation:Los Angeles, CAOccupation:Statistician ​Age:28

How did you prepare for today's event? Did you practice with a specific person or team?I prepared by getting some ideas from my teammates and by testing on the Duelingbook ladder with an Alt account.What deck did you play today and why?Chaos Turbo because that's all I know how to play until Labounty, Sdlkilla, Krebz or Lukaz teach me how to play Warriors lol.What decks or players were you looking forward to playing against?Turbo because mirror matches are fun.What decks or players were you NOT looking forward to playing against?My teammates. We're all very strong so I don't want to see them until the later rounds. What card had been overperforming for you today?Don Zaloog.​

What has been your favorite moment of the event so far?Securing my third world's invite and making top eight at a GFC four times in a row.If you could go back, what (if any) changes would you would make to your deck today?​I'd cut Dustshoot. It's too high-risk-high-reward for me. I prefer consistency. ​

How did you prepare for today's event? Did you practice with a specific person or team?Made a coffee. What deck did you play today and why?Decree Goat Control. I used to play Angel Chaos a while ago, but its Chaos Turbo Matchup is horrible, so I created this deck. I wanted to build something that has a decent chance against that deck (except Warriors) but I still enjoyed playing. So, I basically just modified Angel Chaos and put in Decree since playing against Chaos Turbo your traps are pretty lackluster and theirs are good. Took out the Chaos Sorcerers for tribute monsters in order to be able to take facedowns with TER more reliably (also you're not winning a chaos war anyway). Without the Sorcs you don't need Angel anymore, so I put in Tomatoes in order to have consistent access to Sinister Serpent and built the deck around that. Decree forms a solid reactive core with Tomato, Scapegoat, Creature Swap, and Metamorphosis. The deck list looks very random, but there's a reason behind most of the cards.​What decks or players were you looking forward to playing against?Warriors, my Deck is really good at stopping their aggression.​

left-arm-suffering

Name:Tobias FritzLocation:AustriaOccupation:N/A ​Age:22

What decks or players were you NOT looking forward to playing against?Chaos Turbo, it's an alright matchup but I'm just so sick of high roll Thunder Dragon decks. Anything else is fine.What card had been overperforming for you today?Creature Swap got Judgmented quite a bit. It's basically the third and fourth Nobleman against Chaos, while also being good against Warriors. You obviously take them out against anything with Goats, but since they're rather the exception you can main deck them with good conscience. Also Tomato just does everything for the deck.What has been your favorite moment of the event so far?I'm really proud of the play when I summoned Apprentice Magician into Lukaz' Breaker, giving it another counter and throwing the game in the process. Seriously though, it's probably the moment when TKG told me I was Top eight, which I wasn't aware of before. Getting to World's is quite nice.If you could go back, what (if any) changes would you would make to your deck today?​​Would really like to fit Ring into the main somehow. One might add a Mimic LV3, but I'm not running it since I figured it wasn't worth, since drawing it isn't so great and you'd usually rather go into Sangan and Apprentice Magician with your first and second Tomatoes anyway. Also, the second Zaborg would probably seem better than Parshath, and I was playing that for a while. But the one-of Airknight rounds out the Deck much better, mainly because it synergizes really well with Decree. It also gives the deck more options to deal with Goats, and makes Premature a lot better. Last but not least, it makes the deck a bit more resilient to Tsukuyomi, which is already pretty good against this deck.

juve89

Name:AndreaLocation:ItalyOccupation:Banker​Age:32

How did you prepare for today's event? Did you practice with a specific person or team?Theory and testing with my team GCI - Goat Community Italia, in particular with my friend Mistaman.What deck did you play today and why?Chaos Control because I feel confident with it. Me and Mistaman played the deck two weeks ago at GCI Grand Final - Invite Only in Milan and both of us made top four, so I know that is a good pick for today. Of course I made some changes: only one Royal Decree paired with a small trap package in the main deck for the Turbo and control matchups.What decks or players were you looking forward to playing against?I tuned the list in an aggro way to have an edge against turbo. Warrior is not easy as it could seem but apprentice is great. Control mirror is ok, lots of the time it is a skillful mirror.

​What decks or players were you NOT looking forward to playing against?For this event I cut MST from my fifty-five cards, so I suppose Burn.What card had been overperforming for you today?Spirit Reaper (it's the boss of the deck), DD Warrior Lady, and Divine Wrath.What has been your favorite moment of the event so far?Round five against my teammate Mattuber: I surprisingly brought Old Vindictive Magician on the field with Apprentice, avoiding an OTK. Last round before top cut against JamesArc was also amazing. It was very skill intensive, back and forth all the time, with lots of technical playsIf you could go back, what (if any) changes would you would make to your deck today?​Deck runs very well. Also, the sideboard is good. We have been working on TDCC for four or five months, so it is quite developed.

How did you prepare for today's event? Did you practice with a specific person or team?Yeah, me and my brother Nick. We talked about what would be the best deck going into GFCS17 and we started testing Warriors and different Chaos variants. Ultimately, we thought Goat Control was the most versatile deck.What deck did you play today and why?Y'all call it Thunder Dragon Goat Control, but I call it Golem Control. What decks or players were you looking forward to playing against?I don't really know any of these players, so I wasn't looking to play anybody, just win.What decks or players were you NOT looking forward to playing against?Monster Gate and Panda Burn.What card had been overperforming for you today?Sentry Golem overperformed. It controlled Chaos as I expected and it was fun having people see something fresh and new.

Kevin

Name:Kevin MaloneLocation:Oklahoma city Occupation:Aerial lineman ​Age:35

What has been your favorite moment of the event so far?To be honest? lol. My favorite moment was watching the stream and hearing you guys be confused by some of my plays, but I enjoy being unconventional and seeing the game differently. You've probably never heard of me because this was my first time playing in your premiere event. It's been awesome.If you could go back, what (if any) changes would you would make to your deck today?​​Yes, but I'll tell you after I win World's 😁