What's your cardfighting history?

[Hurricaneria]

Hello all! I wanted to share some of my cardfighting experiences and read about others who also may have some stories to tell! If you have something to share, please post below! I'll start things off with a full transcript of my cardfighting history but beware, it's very long!

During my senior year in high school, I learned how to play yugioh with a friend of mine I've been talking to since my freshman year. Later, he would tell me about a new card game being translated in america, and that he already pre-ordered his cards. He showed me some clips of the anime, but at the time I wasn't really interested in getting into another trading card game since I was still only learning my first one. When his cards came in, he pulled me aside during study hall and let me play with his royal paladin trial deck and he played with his kagero trial deck while also teaching me the game. I didn't like it at first because it was just too simple. I wanted to go back to playing yugioh after only three short games of vanguard each day. Later, he got cards from the newly released booster box and fixed the decks up with some interesting twists, and that's when it started getting fun. He and I would play every day until graduation, and during the summer the two of us and his two younger brothers would meet monthly at a card shop to practice at tournaments. At the time, we were still very new to the game and hadn't grasped our "winning images" quite yet. I wanted to have my own kagero deck, but I had no job and was too lazy to look for work; all I did was play xbox at home and get yelled at by my parents for being a freeloader, in short, I was miserable and depression set in.

Months went by, and winter was approaching. My friend told me about a new shop that opened at the mall, a ten minute walk from my house. We visited and he told me that he was teaching the clerk there how to play the game; at the time the clerk was running magic tournaments and was looking for people to do a D&D campaign with him. I agreed to learn D&D under him along with three other people who came to see the shop. It was a short lived campaign though because he found a job that took over our play date, however, we now had six people, including myself, who were common among the people in the shop. Through other people who started coming into the shop, I managed to scrounge up a kagero-nubatama build and started playing that at tournaments there, however it didn't do very well. I then built a royal paladin deck around Exculpate the Blaster, and I immediately starting seeing better results. Soon, there were quite a few familiar faces coming in week by week, and I was in need of some new cards for the meta. My mom forced me into a job fair where I finally landed a job, and better yet, one that would look excellent on my resume - I was accepted to train as a home health aide. Soon, I would make enough money to buy my own cards and pull myself out of the depressed social rut I was in post graduation. Before I started work, though, I managed to trade for a metatron deck and that became my main until the break ride era; it was during that time I started to consider the familiar faces at the shop my friends, especially the clerk there that even quit hosting magic to host vanguard for us.

However, I was still quite a novice at the game, and never placed high enough in tournaments to stand out.

Work finally started for me in november that year, but it was a split shift with two train rides away from home and a walk in what was the worst winter we had in years. Between shifts I would spend time at the library a thirty minute walk from my work site, waiting for my next shift to start. Plus, I only had sunday off, so I had to miss the tournament days. It was the longest two months of my life. Before christmas, there was an emergency and the case had to be canceled, so I got to use my hard earned cash to buy a box of the new break ride box that came out that month and spend time catching up and trading for a fortuna genesis deck. It was during that time my vanguard skills started to pick up and I was noticing things I never would have saw before. Four months in the new year, I was doing fill-in shifts for my job and planning my reverse angel feather deck which would later get me into the top five in tournaments. I also built another genesis deck around minerva and traded for a reverse daiyusha deck, and after that I was placing top player for what felt like the longest time. Suddenly, I finally landed a full time shift monday through friday, so money was coming in like a water fall and possibilities for acquiring decks became child's play. I started hanging with everyone at the shop more often, doing random stuff like learning to LARP, trying new restaurants, and playing the newest video game titles on the 3DS. Later, three of our friends got an apartment and that became our place for after partying when the cardfight tournament finally ended - there would be a dozen of us crammed into a small living room eating fast food and cracking jokes all night.

The break ride era finally ended after I acquired the newest megacolony deck and I continued my high placements in games. At this point, my personality also started changing for the better. I was learning how to be "cool," and I even started getting into various sub-genres of EDM when we found out that the clerk that hung out with us was also a DJ and an aspiring electronic musician. He even started mixing songs over the shop's loudspeakers when the manager wasn't around. Suddenly, the legion campaign started, and all of us scrambled for the cards we needed. I made a genesis yggdrasil deck that was the envy of everyone, I traded megacolony for a metalborg deck and fixed it up with commander laurel that was even better than my genesis deck, and I fixed up my angel feather deck to have the legion promo which also performed well after some time tinkering with it.

It seemed that these good times could not get any better, but to my pleasant surprise, they did. The clerk, who has now become our de facto ringleader, proposed to us that we attend a festival in maryland dedicated to music and gaming, MAGFest. It took place a month after christmas, and it was a four day event with nothing but great electronic music, classic gaming, and other wild and fun events. We agreed to go, and boy was it worth it. All around us were people just playing games and partying like college kids, it was simply amazing. At the time I was still only a few months shy of 21, so I didn't do any drinking, but I was sure ready for the next time I would come.

Times were great, but for me, it wouldn't last very long. I caught a crush on one of the girls in our group and started asking for advice on how to win her over; it was the worst mistake of my life. I was told to "be manly, show her you don't take any crap," and that's exactly what I did. Seeing her retreat further away, I became more and more frustrated, but I was told to continue this front. Then, the generation era began, and I built a Neo Nectar deck almost immediately. We went to regionals in new york and I managed to team up with my crush, albeit we were not getting along for weeks at the time. Luckily, we got along the whole day and the trip was absolutely worth it. We met so many vanguard players and dedicated ourselves to a full day of just playing vanguard, what got us all together in the first place. My team even placed, if I remember correctly, 59th on the listing, which got us pumped for next year. My 21st birthday came up a month later, and I got plastered at the apartment playing a drinking version of vanguard with everyone. I threw up twice the next morning, and I haven't been able to pick up alcohol the same way since, though that was only just relatively a few months ago.

Unfortunately, my crush with the previous girl developed, and I was getting more and more upset that she was avoiding me and I couldn't understand why. Then, one day, she deleted me off of facebook, and I freaked out. After some investigation I found out the advice I was given was horribly wrong, and since then I've had a burning anger against the couple who gave it to me. I apologized for my behavior to the girl, and we ended up cool again after that, but I still haven't felt the same since. On top of that, everyone, including myself, started getting financial troubles and for the past few weeks I've had to stay at home paying my mother back for car repairs and car insurance. A couple weeks ago, I came to the shop after my sister told me I should try to get out and try to beat this oncoming depression, and one of my friends presented to me a completed generation era angel feather deck that I have been wanting since it was announced. I was ecstatic to finally have it, and for practically free, so I let him keep the yggdrasil deck I was letting him borrow. Right now, I'm hoping to pay my mom back soon so I can save up for my second trip to MAGFest with everyone and perhaps start talking to my crush more and see if things develop, although the panic attacks I now get daily are not helping me keep my hopes up.

And that's my cardfighting history up to now! I know it got a little depressing at the end, but it was something I'd thought I'd share, because as corny as this sounds, this game did change my life, and I'm grateful for it allowing me to come out of my shell and start making friends. I hope sharing this story will help those who are either trying to become better at playing the game, or for those who want to find a way to make friends. As said before, if you have something you want to share, anything, short or long, good or bad, anything in between, then please share here! I'll be looking forward to seeing other experiences people have with the game!