From Temple of Ra / HOUDINI Magazine (July 2024) – a conversation with the duelist who took first at GGP Seattle.
HOUDINI: Congratulations on winning GGP Seattle! For those who couldn't attend, can you describe the vibes of the event?
Sevilla:
The event's vibes were very good! I had a great time meeting everyone and playing, all of my opponents were super nice and it was nice that the environment was a lot more relaxed than an official Konami event, we would chat and have a good time and make jokes every time I sat down to play my opponent.
My only complaint was that we were put into the part of the venue with no air conditioning so at the beginning there was a ton of body heat, I was re-applying deodorant between every 2 rounds since I didn't want to end up a statistic haha.
HOUDINI: With a big win like this under your belt, how do you prepare for Worlds? What's your secret to a successful practice session?
Sevilla:
I think I'm going to approach worlds the same way I approached the GGP; my locals held goat this month as our time wizard event and instead of focusing on my own deck, every local I could make I would play one of the other tier 1 decks in the meta to see their strengths and weaknesses since I knew I was always set on playing Warriors into the event.
I would really only practice each of those Wednesdays since too much practice can have diminishing returns and keeping my mentality healthy and not getting stressed out for the event helped me in my swiss rounds a lot, and day of the event I made sure I:
As someone who comes from other games like SSBM, mentality has always been the thing that has been my priority since without a good mentality you can't really focus on learning in any aspect.
Final Destination — Smash Bros. Melee
HOUDINI: What are your thoughts on the World Championship being held online, given the mixed opinions among players?
Sevilla:
I'm a little biased since I'm one of the tournament organizers for the online RBET events held by e3yugioh and his team and it is nice that more people are able to make it online when there's so many of us in the world who love playing retro yugi.
HOUDINI: At Temple of Ra, we recognize the top 4 duelists as highly skilled. Is there anyone in the top 4 you're eager to duel again?
Sevilla:
Definitely sykotic and c_spare, both of them had this aura about them with how strong of players they were and you could feel it in the room, honestly I don't think I was the best player in the room that day and both of them were far better than me and I got incredibly lucky that the sequencing and variance worked out in my favor.
HOUDINI: What keeps you coming back to Goat Format? Where do you see the game in 5, 10, or even 100 years?
La Jinn the Mystical Genie of the Lamp
A genie of the lamp that is at the beck and call of its master.
Sevilla:
I've been playing yugi since Yugi Kaiba format is my favorite but Goat is the era where I started to take the game seriously when I was taking other card games I play seriously, so it's always nice to come back to the format where my competitive roots started.
I'll put it down every once in a while to play other formats like Edison, Meadowlands, Vegas etc. but those formats also help me have a new understanding of how to approach Goat and how I could have approached the format differently. As long as we have a community I'll always be playing the formats I love :).