Blogger Interviews: Day Final

Hello Ladies, Gentlemen, and Rabid Fans, and welcome to the final installation in our continuation of a series of interviews with bloggers around the world.

Since there are some people who want to know a bit about myself, Ive decided to undertake the interview myself.

Thus, today we will be interviewing Rauzes, from the Gaijin Duelist. You can find his blog right in front of your eyes.


Rauzes:
Hi!

Rauzes:
Yo.

Rauzes:
Can you give a brief introduction to yourself, including some Yugioh background, such as how long you've been playing?

Rauzes:
Sure.
I'm Rauzes, known on the Yugioh forums of Pojo(some subforums more than others) and Duelistgroundz, and own the popular Yugioh blog The Gaijin Duelist. I am currently 17.
I've been playing Yugioh for about two years now. I started shortly after Phantom Darkness was released in Japan, November 2007. The first deck I owned was the Curse of Darkness structure deck, starting me in the game with Crush Card Virus, Spirit Reaper, Dark Armed Dragons and Dark Creators.
Contrary to most people's beliefs, I do not watch and have not watched any of the Anime fully. I just know the few episodes I happened to watch on TV. I have read, however, the Yugioh R and Yugioh GX manga(Promo Cards)

Rauzes:
Cool.
Is this your first interview?

Rauzes:
Nope.
On the receiving end of Yugioh related interviews, this is my second. The first interview I was in was about the Organized play here in Japan, on JaeLove's blog.
On the interviewing side, however, this is my eighth.

Rauzes:
Okey.
What, in your opinion, makes a deck a tier one deck, as opposed to just another combo deck/theme deck out there.

Rauzes:
Well, In my opinion, the most deciding factor is Speed.
While Anti-meta decks try to slow down the game, bringing the opponent to a speed they can manage, most decks tend to try to get out their OTK/Lock/Win Condition as soon as possible.
GBs do both sides of this, which is why they were successful, back when Beastiari was at 3. Limiting Beastiari has hammered the decks speed, by forcing their Into-Gyza plays to be much more conservative.
Of course, there are those decks out there(SDRider), which have unmatched speed. The reason those decks are still not topping is that they dont have a win condition.

Rauzes:
How often do you play, in hours, per week?
Inclusive of the DS/PSP games.

Rauzes:
In actual cards, I play about 1.5 hours per weekday of the week, on average, meaning that some days I play 3 hours and others I dont play at all.
On weekends, most of the time I get to play around 8 hours per day, going only about once per week.
On DS/PSP games, I only test new ideas. However, I do use Duel Online(Browser based emulators), to test. Around 1 hour a day.

Rauzes:
I see.
For you, what inspires blog posts?

Rauzes:
When I started blogging, there were a few other blogs I read regularly. Of them, one blog would update daily, without fail(that being said most of the time the posts werent so good). When I started blogging I wanted to update as often, with as good a quality posts as my other influences.
And recently, Ive been able to somewhat uphold that ideal. For me, I try to update daily, so daily I spend around 15 minutes to an hour looking around the wiki or other places to find something interesting to blog.
Other influences are new deck concepts I've come up with. I try to post the deck post as soon as I've finished developing the concept to wholeness, and the decklist working.

Rauzes:
Awesome.
Most other bloggers spend time developing new deck concepts and ideas. How much time do you spend developing new decks and deck concepts?

Rauzes:
Well, it definately depends. Sometimes, I can crank out around ten unique deck concepts with decklists that work in a week, while other times I dont bother with new cards for months.
Also, if I can find someone who is actually making the deck in real, the amount of testing and development definately sees an increase.
Before posting, however, I spend around half an hour developing the preliminary decklist, followed by around two hours of actual testing on the games and online. After hammering the decklist yet again after this, I post it to the blog and Pojo, and, if its sufficiently significant in my eyes, to DGz.
Only a few of my concepts I actually build in real.

Rauzes:
How many decks do you currently own, and what are they?

Rauzes:
To be honest, I've recently demolished quite a few decks of mine. The ones that a currently remaining are:
Junk and Debris (Lightsworn version), Skill Drain Zero, Guilty Monarchs, and a newly built Destiny Hero Turbo X The Shining deck.
I'm currently gathering cards to build another Junk and Debris variant, but havent made it yet.

Rauzes:
I see.
Were nearing the end of the interview soon.

Rauzes:
I know

Rauzes:
Anyhows, for you, what is the number one reason you still play Yugioh?

Rauzes:
To be honest, I've been considering quitting lately, but some of my fans reminded me that I maintain this blog, and that the ideas I post here are helping people and influencing builds across the world, so I guess you could say that this blog is the single number one reason I still play Yugioh.

Rauzes:
Awesome.
since you know that these interviews are a series, when do you want to be posted?

Rauzes:
Since Im doing this interview right now, after everyone elses is posted, I dont have much choice do I?

Rauzes:
True.
Final question: What is your all time favorite card of all time, and why?

Rauzes:
Archfiend of Gilfer. It was one of the first cards I put into my starting deck, and simply put, it opens far too many doors in a Dark based deck than other cards do for one slot.
And that I find that its the one card in my deck that others would shrug off but brought me to victory many times; that its a card that very few people have known the power of.

Rauzes:
Okey. That wraps it up for the interview.
Any closing comments?

Rauzes:
Well, first off thanks to everyone whoes reading this interview right now, and to all the other interviewees for taking part in the interview. It has really be quite interesting for people to take a look into other peoples backgrounds. Do follow other peoples blogs as well, they prove to be equally as interesting.

Rauzes:
Okey well thanks for the interview today.
Ladies and gentlemen, just remember, if you want to ask him anything, just call our operator, and he'll patch us through
Well, that wraps it up for our blogger interviews this week. I hope you have enjoyed them.
This is 77.7288, RAU.FM,
and until next time,
RIDING DUEL! ACCELERATION!

You say it too

Rauzes:
RIDING DUEL!! ACCELERATION!!!



Well, Thats it for our blogger interviews. I hope you have enjoyed them.
Tomorrow, we will return to our regularly scheduled program.