Rolling With The Top Dogs, 3

Previously we had two popular TCG players featured, this week I’m going to go back to my roots and include a pretty well-known player in both OCG and TCG. Coming all the way from Japan, Satoshi Kato. He is quite a character. Enjoy the interview!

Satoshi Kato

Notable Achievements:

Winner of Japanese Nationals 2009

Winner of SJC Nashville 2010

(Satoshi Kato also has numerous titles from OCG events that boasts 100-300 participants. He has titles on TCG tournaments as well. Too many to list down. lol.)

How is the meta in your country performing at the moment?

Tier 1:

Laval, Inzektors, Rabbits

Tier 2:

Hieroglyphs (Hieratics), Heroes

Do you think TCG exclusives provides positive changes in OCG's meta?

Yes a lot! Especially Tour Guide, she changes the game a lot! Rabbits will be better with TGU and means Hieratic will be bad because of Rabbits.

Being someone who has played many foreign events, especially the YCS, how is it different from tournaments in Japan or Asia?

3 points:

Number 1 is how big is the event. In Japan, Konami has 3 official events.

Daily local tourney, Konami tournament (win local→win area bigger than local→go finals) and then Nationals (go local 2month,then calculate percentage of wining and the number of matches. Finals have only 150 players).YCS events usually has over 1000 players. Very big compared to any Japanese events!

Number 2 is the cost. We don’t pay cost for Japanese Konami events. But YCS costs 20 dollars for entrance.

Number 3 the prizes. At big tourney we get very minor prizes like mats and only players who topped gets them. At daily local events, prizes are usually tournament pack.(contains very bad cards, almost useless). But YCS have big, big prizes!!! (It is good for motivation!) I think YCS is best event in Yugioh!

How do you prepare yourself upon entering a major tournament?

1. Building my deck with some advice from my friends.  I don’t choose Tier 1 deck it is my ISM (Satoshism). lol

2.Testing my deck on Duel Online (It is DN for OCG).

For YCS:

1. Checking TCG Meta from coverages and analyze their deck-lists.

2. Asking TCG players what are the good decks and cards at the moment.

3. Building my deck after analyzing.

4. Testing on DN with good duelists.

To tell the truth, testing for YCS is very hard for me because I am living in an OCG-based region.

What is the best or fastest way to improve yourself as a player, in your opinion?

Get into the community that have good players.Then,steal (study) their techniques! You can do it on Youtube by watching good games and study from videos.

If there you were given the right to ban a card, which card would it be? Why?

Monster Reborn. Broken card!

If Konami would allow you to unbanned a card, which card would it be? Why?

Trishula, Glow-Up Bulb, and Spore. Synchro is very weak right now and XYZ are getting more advanced! Synchros are a good system but Synchro decks are not as consistent as XYZ decks. So, I wanna have Synchros back to into the Meta.