I don't even know anymore... (Locals rant about Gamerz)

Back when I first started Vanguard, I was extremely hotheaded with people.  This was largely due to a large chunk of people having no appreciation for any rogue decks I would build, essentially labeling them as unplayable in spite of any arguments, testing, or results I'd show without any consideration or testing of their own.  When I first moved to Indianapolis, I went to the Dugout, a card shop I had seen on Google.  That didn't exactly end well.  I don't have anything against the Dugout or its management, at least not anymore.  I heard that the primary guy that set those things into motion was banned from their store later on, anyway.  So that's all good.  It's too bad they don't have a Vanguard base anymore, but Midwest Gamez has taken on all of the Vanguard players in Indianapolis, especially after the events I'm about to speak to.

After I left the Dugout, I started going to a shop called Gamerz.  I really liked the atmosphere and the location.  They had great networking, a solid display of non-Bushiroad card games, and a spacious location for many people to enjoy playing card games at.  At the start of things, I liked the store and the store owner seemed to like me.  I offered to write articles for the store and use my connections (I had several toppers and even the Vanguard world champion at the time willing to write articles for them).  I didn't care about getting paid.  I just wanted to grow Vanguard because it was still a small game at the start of 2013.

After a few months of going to tournaments and buying boxes at their exorbitant prices (over 85 dollars per box was killing me, but I wanted to support my locals, so I purchased about 6 boxes from them over my time there, and I don't even typically buy boxes, and I also bought a bunch of Magic there), I tried to get them to stock some particular product so I could buy it from them.  I was told on multiple occasions that their "shipment didn't come in" or "it will be in next week".  Almost every time, when I heard this, it didn't happen.  At first, I believed their claims about shipments not coming in.  After going to Midwest Gamez and watching the owner of that store order the product that Gamerz said was out of stock from the same vendor, I realized that I was just being flat out lied to.

1st thing that led to the spiral of Gamerz going out of business - Lying to their customers when lying isn't even necessary.

I would understand if they said, "I don't want to stock this product".  Or, "I can't take your word for it that you will buy this because other people have said they would and then didn't."  I'm an adult (at least most of the time), I'd like to believe that I can understand those types of things.  This led to other issues.  First, I waited a full month and a half after a set came out before I got the hint that they weren't going to be restocking it.  This led me to purchase boxes for that set online for significantly cheaper, and that was the dividing point where I decided I wasn't going to purchase boxes at Gamerz anymore. When I asked about lowering the price, I was angrily told that if I wanted to buy them for cheaper and could find them for cheaper, that I should go somewhere else to buy the product.  I wasn't banned at this point in time, but I was banned from the store before the next time I showed up.

2nd thing that led to the spiral of Gamerz going out of business - Lack of willingness to listen to sound business advice in any way, shape, or form.

Now, not everyone is going to give sound business advice, but when someone wants to buy a box through their locals to support it, and their locals turns them down... I can't speak much to the defense of the locals.  Then, saying you're going to stock that product that your customer wants to buy from you and lying about how said product is coming in soon so that your customers won't buy them anywhere else, even though you aren't going to restock that product is just nonsensical and made me want to stop going to the store.  But I endured, still, for the sake of loyalty, and because I enjoyed the crowd and location.

Another thing to add to the silliness of how they were running Vanguard was, back when the OTT and Nova Grappler extra boosters came out in the tail end of season 2, we said we'd buy several boxes of them from the store because we wanted to support them, even though the prices were still pretty steep.  They said they were going to stock them.  They kept saying they were on their way for roughly 3 months.  We stopped asking after 2.  About 8 months after these sets came out, they decided to stock a carton of both.  Mind you, set 14 was out at about this time.  Even the new OTT extra booster was already out.  The cards in these boxes had become hopelessly obsolete, and no combination of RRR/SP in the box could possibly value as much as the box itself would cost, especially at the escalated price.  Nobody bought them.  And I have a feeling that the owner of the store felt like we were liars for not buying out the cards, even though it had been half a year since we requested them and had long since purchased everything we could possibly want from the boxes online.  I can't even feel bad for them for ordering the boxes without asking their playerbase if they were still wanted or relevant.

A month or two after this, they have their "Vanguard judge" come in to run a sneak peak for set 15.  They weren't a bad person or anything, but they had no business being in charge of a sneak peak when their most recent deck was from set 8, they didn't know that all cards were all clans in that format, and they didn't know what a break ride was in the break ride format.  Long story short, the judge made an incorrect ruling and I took over the tournament, undermining their judge, and we carried on.  The next time I came back to the shop, I was banned.  Ehh, fair enough.  Undermining a judge is a pretty serious offense, no matter how unqualified the individual is.  I definitely overstepped a boundary.  Would a warning have made more sense?  Probably.  I didn't have any previous infractions at the store (but the owner was quick to tell me that he wanted to warn me on several occasions for my prior conduct, which I had received no indication of previously, so what he said was completely meaningless).  I just rolled with it.  I was already feeling pretty at-odds with the store, so I took my business over to Midwest Gamez full-time at this point, convinced that the Vanguard community at the store, of which over 60% was my group of friends, was going to die shortly thereafter.

3rd thing that led to the spiral of Gamerz going out of business - Liberal usage of banning players and groups of players, resulting in a large loss of consumers.

For the year in which I was banned from the store until its closing, I heard horror stories about how many people would get warnings or banned for stupid things like joking about banging their head on the wall, disagreeing with the shop owner, or being too loud or rowdy in the store.  After I was banned, they apparently banned over half of their Yu-Gi-Oh! playerbase, causing them to move on.  The Vanguard community moved on as well.  Other players had received warnings for the most minor of infractions and chose not to come back.  Many players went to newer card shops like Game Paradise.  I have met people who would complain about Gamerz and how rude they were before I even got to put my say into the conversation.  Customer satisfaction seemed to go down the drain to the point where I could swear it was intentional.


4th thing that led to the spiral of Gamerz going out of business - Blatant bullying of customers, up to and including legal threats.

In the conversation I had with the owner as I was banned from the store, I ended up venting a bit to him about how poorly the store was managed and about how I legitimately tried to help make the location the biggest store in the Midwest for Vanguard. 

He responded with another lie.  "We are." 

I ask him, "How are you the biggest store for Vanguard?"

He said, "We have the largest supply of Vanguard cards."

I bring up how Midwest Gamez doesn't just have more supply than him, but individual players like Aaron Netabai have a bigger stock than he does.  And that's just in Indianapolis.  Chicago sellers have way more stock.  I probably even had more stock at the time, honestly.  I donated two large boxes of commons/rares, which I'm fairly sure exceeded his bulk in Vanguard, to Midwest Gamez for the sole purpose of guaranteeing that his claim was a lie after this.

I then go on to speak about how his pricing for boxes was keeping people from buying them from the store, stagnating the growth of the game.

He replied with, "My prices are the same as Troll and Toad, which is the lowest you're going to find boxes."

With him selling his for 80 bucks a box, I said, "I will get out my phone right now and prove you wrong.  Troll and Toad has them for cheaper."

He changes the subject, of course.

He knew about my article on the Dugout.  He knew that I liked to write about things like this.  He knew that I had at least some popularity in the community, being an admin on NACFV and having a relatively popular blog and YouTube channel.  So he literally threatened me with a lawsuit if I attempted to defame Gamerz in any way, shape, or form.  No, I'm not joking.

Additionally, literally a week after I had gotten back from judging a regional tournament for Bushiroad, he said, "I called Bushiroad.  They said that you're not a judge, judges for Vanguard don't even exist, and you are blatantly lying in my shop about being a judge.  And the "judge test" which you supposedly helped write also doesn't exist."



Except I have proof that my questions were used and that I was solicited by Bushiroad for them to use my questions on my unofficial test I created.  And I literally just got done judging an event.  But sure.  Okay.

At this point, I was fuming.  I decided that further conversation wasn't in my best interest and the entire Vanguard community headed home that day, essentially.

Naturally, my kneejerk reaction was to laugh at the audacity of his comments, especially the legal threats.  I chuckled audibly and let him know that I didn't feel threatened whatsoever by them.  I had planned to write out, essentially, what I've written out today.  But I sat down and thought very deeply about the implications of the actions that he took, and made a decision.

The first conclusion I drew was that, after the extra boosters fizzled, there was an extremely good chance that Gamerz didn't want a Vanguard playerbase.

The second conclusion I drew was that, after seeing how I reacted to the Dugout, there was a chance he was intentionally riling me up so that I would defame his store and remove his Vanguard playerbase so he would be able to say, "The game has died", and no longer stock it.

The third conclusion I drew was that if I did go out and make an article about Gamerz, they would be getting attention.  And, because I don't have it in me to write a partial review of the store, I'd have to be honest and say that the location was great and their MtG selection and playerbase was top notch, and that might have given them exactly what they wanted.

I decided to be completely silent for three reasons.

1.  I knew that with or without my action, the Vanguard playerbase was going to die without me.  And it did.
2.  I didn't want to accidentally give them good publicity leading to good business.
3.  I didn't think they would actually go out of business, but now I am able to make this post after they crashed and burned and get the satisfaction of knowing that during my post.

So, I stayed silent on my blog about the store until I believed the time was right.  It's been half a year since they've shut down, and there doesn't seem to be any indication that they are ever opening back up again.  I believe that the time to tell this story is now.

I don't really have too much more negative to say about the store.  I do have a conspiracy theory, though.  I honestly believe that the store owner wanted to go out of business.  That doesn't sound like it makes a single lick of sense, but I can't fathom why he would have taken the actions that he took unless that's what he was going for.

Reasons why I think Gamerz was intentionally trying to go out of business:

1.  Nobody would ban large sections of their consumers unless they weren't making money off of them.  I could see an argument here for their Vanguard playerbase.  I don't think they managed Vanguard wisely enough to profit off of the game, even with those box prices, so I could see them making the business decision to stop supporting the game.  But Yu-Gi-Oh!?  That's their second biggest game.
2.  You don't just casually make legal threats at your consumers who have done absolutely nothing remotely illegal against you, even if you're banning them from the store/don't plan on them being consumers anymore.
3.  You don't make grandiose claims of being the biggest and the best at something without someone calling you out on it.  You don't ban people who call you out on your bullshit when you are, in fact, spouting bullshit.
4.  You don't intentionally piss off your customers and expect to not have repercussions.

I have two different scenarios of what could have happened with the store.

1.  They could be genuinely incompetent at managing a business, especially in the areas of customer satisfaction, card pricing, keeping a well-stocked inventory, and drawing in new customers.
2.  They could be intentionally incompetent at managing a business, especially in the areas of customer satisfaction, card pricing (non-MtG), keeping a well-stocked inventory (non-MtG), and drawing in new customers.

Considering how good the company has proven to be at networking, hosting large events for everything at their shop, getting huge turnouts for MtG pre-releases, and selling mountains of MtG cards, I just can't believe that they could go out of business on accident.  I have no business management experience, and I could have remained in business with that prime inventory and business location by just not being an asshat to my customers.  I can't help but think that maybe the owner decided it was time to hang up his hat and move on to something different.  He stated that he was going to change locations, then ended up never getting a new location.  It wouldn't be the first lie he told.  I can't imagine it would have been hard to get a new location, either, but maybe I'm wrong.  I don't think it matters as much at this point, but I can't help but shake the feeling that after seeing the good business practices instantiated by Gamerz that they could bomb this badly.

Regardless, I am personally glad that the store is out of business, just so that people don't have to deal with the abuse.  Midwest Gamez, my new locals, has gotten the entirety of the Vanguard playerbase in the Indianapolis area, and the game has continued to remain stable for well over a year, so there were benefits to this turn of events as well.

MILLtiades, Deck Thinning is Deck Winning!

Starter - Starting Ripple, Alecs

Triggers
12 critical triggers (4 Ripple)
4 Heal

Grade 1s

4x Ripple Sotirio (Ride Chain/searchable)
4x Ripple Odysseus (Bae)
4x Plato (Sentinel)
2x Nicky/Penguin Soldier/Messenger Gull/8k Vanilla/Seal (All of these test well for me)

Grade 2s

4x Ripple Pavroth (Primary Vanguard)
4x Tidal Assault (Crit stacking with potential power-ups from triggers and Gull Soldier)/Ianis (Wave 3, On-hit draw for free)
3x Ripple Lavisse (12k beats)

Grade 3s

4x Ripple Genovious (For spamming legion with, the persona blast isn't that important)
4x Ripple Miltiades (Ride, mill 3, legion.  Use Odysseus to ride him again from deck.  Mill 3.  Legion.  Rinse, repeat.  Have a deck that's over 60% triggers consistently on turn 4-5, swing for game with crits.)

G Zone (Tentative)

1x Madew (If the stars align against you and you have two Genovious and no Miltiades or Odysseus, or if you've already legioned, this is your go-to stride.)
2x Commander Thavas (Versatile stride that can add to offensive pressure and cause a retire.)
2x Lambros (Good finisher later in the game.)
3x Ripple Podromos (Ran at 3 because it needs to hit to flip.  This gives us two chances.  This deck doesn't want to stride, typically, so it's not a major deal if we hit the first time and don't stride with this again.)
Tactics:

The primary idea behind this deck is to get 1-2 Odysseus on the board, then spam their skills to chain-ride all of your Miltiades. This gives you souped up rear guard grade 3s, thins your deck of units with no shield value, and lets you spam the on-ride skill of Miltiades to MILL top 3 for a Ripple unit to ADD TO HAND. This combination of effects is simply INSANE. Turn 4 I can get down to the teens in cards if I get my setup (which is easy, because both Odysseus and Miltades can fish for each other). The Ripple critical trigger is also INSANE for reaching that point, as it is incredibly easy to get its effect off, and it lets you typically trade a trigger for a non-trigger.

What does this all mean, though?

TIME TO HIT SOME TRIGGERS.

In the games that I've played, here was my WORST CASE when I got my setup. I opened 3 heal triggers and had no grade 1. I G-Assisted with two of those heals, giving up on the chance of healing that game (I also got Sotorio and missed top 7 check making me go minus with the ride chain, then I didn't ride Pavroth AND missed top 7 check AGAIN and didn't have Odysseus to fix it), then milled 2 nulls and my 4th heal on my first Miltiades check. The game ended with me checking two crits when I had 13/21 cards left in my deck as triggers. The deck thin into legioning back Miltiades into spamming multiple Odysseus for multiple legions into grabbing top cards from deck to add to hand into shuffling MORE TRIGGERS BACK is just NUTS.

Now, let's discuss the tech choices.

If you open poorly and don't get any of your pieces, the Nicky version has plenty of outs for striding to draw into those pieces. If you hit with the Ripple stride, you are borderline guaranteed to have gotten an Odysseus by this point.

The Penguin Soldier version of the deck can spam legion on the level of DOtX with an INFINITELY better milling engine. You can thin to 60-70% triggers left in deck by turn 5 reliably with the deck. And that's just... wat?!  It doubles up with Ianis for even more cards, as long as this teams up with Lavisse or a grade 3 when it boosts.  It can't do much with Tidal Assault, however.

Messenger Gull is a trade with Penguin Soldier.  It can be used multiple times if you have stridden that game and lets you soul blast out your 3's to shuffle them back into the deck to legion more.  It gives power where Penguin Soldier gives card advantage.  I recommend either of the soul blasting birds more than the other grade 1 techs.  This plays nicely with Ianis, but has MASSIVE synergy with Tidal Assault.

8k vanillas give you an out to hit 21k when you call a Miltiades from soul with Odysseus' effect.  As you can ONLY call out grade 3's, this is pretty nice.  While Messenger Gull can do this with a bit more versatility for Tidal's abilities, Theo never has to worry about Generation Break or when it was called.  It's probably the least appealing of the tech choices, but it does its job well.

Seal Soldier is another Rocket Hammerman clone.  I promise that I don't just like these cards and play them in all of my builds because I can.  This card has actual merit.  If you're using Tidal Assault, you can place this unit behind him, then rest it to give Tidal Assault 2000 power, making him hit numbers against 11k Vanguards.  The upside to this is that you can have Tidal Assault at full power and pass triggers to him with Miltiades while still getting both the stand effect and the draw effect from Miltiades' legion skill.  The downside is that you can't stand Seal Soldier and still get the draw effect, because Miltiades stands before it draws, like all good Vanguard players should.

For the grade 2's, we have Tidal Assault and Ianis.

Tidal Assault is better for early game offensive plays, but lacks synergy with Miltiades' legion ability.  This can be fixed with Messenger Gull to an extent, or Seal Soldier completely.  Its overwhelming offensive ability when you pass a critical trigger to it is simply devastating.  It makes for insane finishing plays if you stride to triple drive after you've legioned a bunch of triggers back to your deck.

Ianis is a general, all-purpose beast.  The constant pressure of free cards in a deck that already gets a bunch of free cards makes the opponent vexed with how to deal with it.  It doesn't generate any additional power or pressure outside of those free cards, though, so it's limited in usefulness to the early and midgame, as hitting with a unit late game typically ends the game.  Still, an insanely useful card.

The G-Zone is pretty straightforward in my opinion.  You can run Tidal Bore or the CB1 retirer stride, but the focus of the deck isn't typically to stride until the turn after you expected to win, and the extra deck is mostly fluff.

Holy crap this deck is awesome. You'll also notice that I've built my deck to have minimal reliance on stride and legion. Other than the act of legioning itself, this deck can play an out-advantage game to decks trying to stall on grade 2 and punish them SEVERELY with you having access to insane card advantage that pushes them too far behind.

My initial playtesting of this deck was 24W 1L.  I didn't fight many counter decks that day, and my one loss was in a mirror, but still, those are insane numbers in any initial playtesting of a deck.

Ripple Rush 3.0

Starter - Can be anything, I'm sticking with Alecs to have more outs for hitting grade 3. My back-up recommendation would be Brave Shooter for the 8k boost.

Triggers
16 critical triggers (4 Ripple)

Grade 1's

4x Ripple Sotirio (Ride Chain/searchable)
4x Ripple Odysseus (Bae)
4x Blue Storm Icefall Dragon (Quintet Wall)
4x Mission Messenger Gull Soldier (SB1, give a unit +3k when called to RG)

4x Ripple Pavroth (Primary Vanguard)
4x Ripple Lavisse (12k beats)
4x Tidal Assault (Crit stacking with potential power-ups from triggers and Gull Soldier)
3x Tidal Rescue Sea Turtle Soldier (Free Cards with high odds to get them from the skewed ratios)

2x Ripple Genovious (The plan is to not ride him unless we aren't disadvantaged by it or when we want to push. With G-Assist and the ride chain, we have solid chances to secure this when we need it without having to worry about drawing into excess copies)

G-Zone

2x Commander Thavas (Great if the opponent is at 5.  Can also empower our Tidal Assaults.)
3x Ripple Podromos (Likely the only stride you'll ever use, if you use one at all.)
3x Madew (If you don't damage check your other Genovious, striding will be free once you see it.)

Here's some specific information on the update to the deck and why we're doing what we're doing.

The first major change is that we aren't playing the deck like a normal deck that simply has skewed ratios for rushing while using the ride chain to still ride up most of the time. This deck is now fully switching over to the "Keep yourself at 2 to prevent Legion/Stride" tactic. When this deck was first conceived, there was no advantage to not riding to grade 3, so this deck was built around riding to grade 3 more games than not. Again, this is no longer the gameplan.

The second major change is that we now have enough toolboxing to make Pavroth extremely consistent. While the starter for the ride chain is now a preference only pick and can be removed, if we keep it in, it increases our odds to, "Expect yourself to have the 1 and 2 in the soul nearly every game" levels of consistent. This gives us that added layer of defense with an 8/10k grade 1/2 ride most games and can secure many positive things.

The third major change is the lowering of grade 3's in the decklist. With G-Assist being a mechanic, this deck providing an abundance of options to fill the field without needing to call from hand, and being able to "convert" units on the board to grade 2's with bonus power, we have everything we need to remove the non-3's from our deck with Odysseus and Turtle while having ample time to draw into a 3 (or excess cards to G-assist with if we absolutely need the grade 3).

The fourth major change is the addition of quintet walls over perfect guards. This is primarily a change that was made because the game has shifted to everything having massive VG row power at the expense of being locked out of that power if your opponent stays at grade 2. With only 6 cards in the deck that don't have shield value when they hit the guardian circle from deck (one of which has to be used to activate the top 5 search), quintet walls will easily take care of all of our guarding needs for one less card from hand. These cards are also our only out to expend counterblasts unless you somehow manage to persona blast with only two Genovious in your deck.

The final major change is the deck thinning mechanics. We can grab grade 2's straight from our deck with Odysseus and 1's or 2's with Turtle. We can move Turtle to soul, ride Pavroth, grab Turtle, and get another unit from deck. We can rinse and repeat this indefinitely to thin the deck of 5-6 non-triggers on the average game. This can increase our odds to hit game-ending critical triggers by a substantial amount, making a final turn push when we ride Genovious into a scary situation for our opponent.

2015 Chicago Regional Tournament Report

I'd be lying if I said that I had anything short of an absolutely amazing weekend.  Friday night Brandon and Zach picked up Daniel and me, and we all headed over to Will's place in Chicago where we met Will's awesome room mates.  Tommy showed up later.  After a fun night of hanging out, playing Smash/card games, and drinking, we get a couple hours of sleep and head to the venue for some Vanguard.

I was going to play Seeker grade 1 rush, not because I wanted to, but because nobody had any Madews to loan me, other than one from Tommy.  So it's crunch time.  My BFF Daniel has all of the Cray Elementals I need in his binder, other than Madew.  I make a last minute snap decision to buy 3 Madews at Dirk's vending location so I can play Stardrive.dek.  There's only one problem.  I don't actually have the right grade 2's or G-Units.

I have to settle for not having a Samuel or Jirron in my final build, swapping those for Gablades.  Eww.  I also had to run Brede, the 12k GBreak attacker, in place of what could have been a potentially more useful grade 2.  Those limitations aside, I had most of the key units I needed to make the deck function.  I also didn't lose any games that Samuel might have won me other than maybe the final game, so the sub-optimal list didn't hurt too bad.  Here's the list:


You Madew Bro?

Starter - Shining Knight, Millius

12 Critical Triggers
4 Heal Triggers

4 Rainbow Guardian
4 Air Elemental, Fwarlun
3 Light Elemental, Peaker
3 Laurel Knight, Sicilus

4 Knight of Twin-Sword
4 Knight of Fragment
3 Transmigration Knight, Brede

4 Gigantech Charger
4 Stardrive Dragon

4 Rain Element, Madew
2 Shrouded Divine Knight, Gablade
1 Snow Element, Blizza
1 Miracle Element, Atmos


I was barely able to piece everything together before round 1 started.  I set off on a goal to win a match or two, then scrub out and eat pizza with friends.  My goal wasn't a number of wins so much as fighting a competitive player and killing them with Stardrive Dragon to inflict maximum salt.  I had no idea what I was in store for this day...


Round 1 - W vs. Royal Paladin (MLB/Jewel Knight/Thing Saver)

This deck used Wingal Brave with a Blaster grade 2 lineup to get more Blasters or MLB.  It has Jewel Knight grade 1's and triggers for Swordmy.  It had Thing Saver after MLB built up the soul to finish.  Unfortunately for my opponent, they were grade locked at 2 because they didn't shuffle well.  They damage checked 4 grade 3's over the course of the game.  That being said, I followed my own advice completely and didn't let Wingal Brave hit, keeping my opponent gradelocked.  I won by swinging in with my avatar, STARDRIVE DRAGON!  Opponent was a bro.  They weren't salty for losing to me so much as frustrated for not shuffling properly.


Round 2 - W vs. Link Joker (Amnesty Messiah)

This game was super awesome.  My deck can pretty much never be controlled through retirement, but he kept my board locked down for a long time.  I end up striding 6 times that game.  I only have one Gablade face down, and due to not having any more Madews to stride into, I couldn't stride on my final turn.  I swing with nothing more than a Stardrive Dragon at his Vanguard.  He is at 5 damage at this point.  He can't guard, so he lets it through.  Crit.  Crit.  THE WRATH OF THE COSMO DRAGON IS REAL.  We both had less than 7 cards in our decks at the end of this game.  It was beastly!  This guy was also a bro, and having seen the full capabilities of what my deck can do, complimented me for being an "evil genius".


Round 3 - W vs. Royal Paladin (Jewel Knights/Thing Saver)

I went second, calling a grade 1 to boost my starter on a side row.  I swing with my Vanguard to theirs.  They no guard, I crit, and they hit no damage triggers.  I swing with my 17k row to their 7k Vanguard.  They go to three.  The accidental sort-of rush put me too far ahead.  I won the game with a crit the turn I first strode.  Opponent was a bro.  We wished each other luck and went on our ways.


Round 4 - W vs. Royal Paladin (Sanctuary Guard Ragalie)

My opponent opened 3 perfect guards and didn't see a grade 3.  They had to pitch a null to G-Assist, then pitch another one (along with a grade 2) to stride.  They couldn't recover after that point.  Opponent was a bro.  We wished each other the best and went on our ways.


Round 5 - L vs. Link Joker (Amnesty Messiah)

This was another great game.  He omega locked my right side of the field for 4 consecutive turns, keeping himself in the game.  He only ran 4 crits, but he was able to hit 2 of them offensively over the course of the game.  He would alternate between his stride enabler and Blaster Joker to prevent deckout and build soul to draw more cards.  He played the deck very well.  It went all the way down to the wire, with me using every single Madew in my extra deck.  I eventually lost from not being able to output as much offensive pressure due to having my units locked.  My opponent was a bro.  I wished him good luck (partially so that my tiebreakers would be better, mostly because he was a bro) and we moved on.


Round 6 - W vs. Kagero (DOtX Stride)

My opponent was playing a DOtX build.  I was a little excited, because I knew my match-up against the deck was solid.  He nuked 7 of my rear guards with retirement effects.  I don't believe that I ever attacked with less than a full field at any point in the game.  This is a match-up where Gigantech Charger was truly able to shine.  I ended up expending all of my Madews this game, but I overtook him with card quantity and won the game.  My opponent was a bro.  I think he even called me a hero.  We wished each other the best and moved on.


Round 7 - W vs. Shadow Paladin (Diablo)

I went second.  Turn 3 had him hit with Judgebau boosting his Phantom Blaster "Abyss".  He called double Swordbreakers putting him at about a million cards in hand.  I stride into Madew the following turn.  He is at 3 damage.  He asks if Madew has any on-hit skills.  I say, "Nope."  He says no guard.  I double crit in my triple drive.  He doesn't heal.  I apologize for sacking him (in all honesty, he really SHOULD have guarded), but my opponent was a bro.  We wished each other the best and moved on.


Round 8 - L vs. Royal Paladin (Thing Saver/Jewel Knights)

I held on as long as I could, but early crits put me at 5.  I ended the game with all 4 of my heals in my 23~ card deck.  This is the only game where if I ran Samuel I might have won, but there's no guarantees on that.  Honestly, considering that I drew well, fielded well, and rode well every game, I can't complain about getting overwhelmed by early triggers and not seeing my heals.  This was the end of a damn good run.  My opponent was a bro.  We wished each other the best and moved on.



Final standings - After 8 grueling rounds, I ended up in the top 16 with a final record of 6-2.  This is the best I've ever done at any Bushiroad event for Vanguard to-date.  There was a massive hypetrain of individuals going to watch my matches and see me win with Stardrive Dragon.  Many people wanted me to top 8, or even win it all so that my decklist could be posted.  With my deck's name being, "You Madew Bro?!", it would have been even better.  Sadly, I didn't quite make it all the way, failing at the very last step before top 8ing.  Still, top 16 out of 431 players is an extremely solid result, and everyone is still calling it a top, even though it wasn't a final 8 top.  I certainly have no problems calling it a top.

Now, I will say that my finally topping a Vanguard event doesn't change my opinions on it.  I just happened to draw very well all day.  Now, while my deck is a troll deck, it is still solidly built with a ridiculous advantage engine.  My deck is a good, competitive deck.  It's just not the best deck.  It's not what I would consider top tier.  It just had a really good run.

Now, if you ask me if I accomplished my goal for the day, I would say, "No."  My goal was to beat a competitive player with Stardrive Dragon and make them incredibly salty.  that didn't work at all.  Everyone was super awesome, and greatly enjoyed my deck, even when they happened to lose to it.  STOP BEING SO AWESOME VANGUARD COMMUNITY!


Saturday night featured more drinking.  After the Disney sing-along, we reached the point where we decided it was a good idea to beat the crap out of each other with LARP weapons.  I went 10-1-1 in my LARP fights (those nerds don't know how to fight).  My one loss was me standing completely still not realizing we were actually fighting.  My one tie would have left me wounded and them dead.  I rekt them with my masterful sword abilities.  Also, spear is OP and autowin.  Real life, nerf spears.  thx.

Sunday happens.  I wake up, and it's 9:03.  Registration is already going on for Buddyfight and I'm like, "Uhh, guys.  We need to be there yesterday!"  We eventually make it there at 10:03.  We only barely made the registration cutoff.  Then I have to, with a much later start than I would have liked, write my entire decklist out.  But I hadn't adjusted my deck to put in the Champion Wrestler Asmodais that I just got.  Thus, I made a very rushed deck based on what I thought would do the best against Kaizerion.  Here was what I came up with.


Magic Burn

Flag - Magic World
Buddy - Magical Artist, Andy

Size 1

2 Dragowizard, Burning Wand
2 Magician of Glass, Will Glassart
3 Magic Power Researcher, Ren Kogasaki
4 Magic Artist, Andy
4 Dragowizard, Qinus Axia

Size 2

4 Magical Secretary, Genjuro Saki
2 Center of the World, Mary Sue

Size 3

2 Champion Wrestler Asmodai

Spells

1 Oops!
2 Solomon's Shield
2 Abra Cadabra!
2 Kosher
2 Trans-flame
3 Chillax!
4 Magical Goodbye
4 Nice One!

Items

3 Gunrod, Del Gesu
4 Gunrod, Bechstein


Sideboard

2 Champion Wrestler Asmodai
2 Demon Lord Asmodai
2 Gunrod Stradivarius
2 Destruction
1 Trans-flame
1 Dragowizard, Burning Wand


First, let's discuss the decklist.  I made a few mistakes in my hurry.  First, I had no Begones.  This was due to them not being in my Magic World dual-deckbox.  In one side of that box I keep my deck.  In the other side, I have playsets of just about every relevant Magic World card in the game.  I'm missing 4 Eligos, 3 Devil Advantages, one Mary Sue, one Clock, and 4 Zagan.  Apparently, my Begones worked their way back to my common box at the bottom of my bag, and I didn't have time to dig.  I just gave in and settled without them.  After playing around with my list and extras, I decided to focus more on Ren Kogasaki over Will Glassart.  This was due to gauge management being difficult.  Ren Kogasaki also helps close out games with Abra Cadabra.  My second mistake was adding in a second Mary Sue.  If I had Merlin in her place I would have likely done much better.  I couldn't manage the guage cost of Mary Sue without Andy.  Finally, I don't know what the proper balance is between Champmodai, Destruction, and my own hand and gauge management.  This made my main board deck often have the same cards sided out over and over again as I learned what mistakes I made in crafting the main deck in terms of gauge management.  I should have used 3 Kosher, but I always draw all 3 copies when I play 3, and I just couldn't risk that.  This made me have almost no outs for gauge recovery, and I had to rely on Genjuro Saki and Andy for my deck to function at its basic level.  That's not an inherently large problem, but it increased the likelihood of dead draws, and I was cautious of that, too.


Round 1 - W vs. Hero World (Gaigrander)

I fought against Dirk in round 1.  I happened to open with my 1-of Oops! both games.  By removing his Gaigrander01 in battle phase, I neutered his offense and defense, leaving him largely helpless.  This was mostly due to opening with Oops!, but I  was also able to burn effectively.  The first game was a little more tough, due to my opening with 4 cards that cost 2 gauge or more.  My deck doesn't run many of them, but if I draw enough of them, it can be an auto-loss.  Fortunately, I recovered and won that game.  I won game 2 without any issues.


Round 2 - W vs. Dragon World (Crimsons w/ size 3s)

This deck ran Gatling and Inferno Armor for board control and defense (and some burn in Gatling's case).  I believe that he took game 1 due to simply having 8 crit on the board while I didn't draw any defense.  Game 2 was close, but I narrowly survived a turn (Impact would have killed me if he had it) and was able to swing for game the following turn.  The final match was where he misplayed.  He played Inferno Armor Dragon to his center to protect himself and intentionally prolong the game.  That gave me time to slowly ping him down and build up card advantage, being Magic World and all.  I was able to gather plenty of defense to weather his turn after I destroyed Inferno.  Then I pinged for game.


Round 3 - L vs. Hero World (Quartet Five)

Ugh.  He opened pretty awful first game (two size 1s), but not as awful as I did (4 gunrods, 2 chillax).  Every time I played a creature, he swung into it with everything.  His playstyle was nonsensical, especially against Magic World.  Playing for card advantage against a deck that auto-wins grind games is really dumb.  But he got rewarded for it.  I drew nothing all game to cycle out or fix my hand.  I finally got a Nice One! on turn 4.  I cast it and draw two more Nice Ones.  I lose the following turn.  Next game he gets out his 9/3/7 on the first turn.  I sided in Destruction and blew it up.  He continues blindly attacking my sides when my deck is literally a timer.  Only, the Destruction play put me too far down in card advantage, I opened awful again, and I just didn't recover.  We both run out of cards.  I see no Nice Ones, Koshers, Mary Sues, or what have you.  He top decks into his Grimoire clone, then wins by refielding after that.  Bad draws happen.  I'm not really salty that I lost to the guy so much as why was he undefeated at this point?  Oh well.  Can't fix it.


Round 4 - W vs. Hero World (Kaizerion)

My opponent was playing cancer.  I think I took game 1 by burning him effectively.  Game 2 was his due to 4 crit double attack penetrate.  This was the game I used Champion Wrestler Asmodai to completely remove a 2 soul Kaizerion.  I just couldn't recover from the self-inflicted card disadvantage.  He eventually got another one out because they have 8 effective copies, and I lost.  Game 3 was where things got silly.  After three turns a piece, he has me at 3 life with 1 soul in his Kaizerion.  He enters battle phase.  He has penetrate on his Kaizerion, I believe.  He also has a 2 crit unit on the side.  I'm at 0 gauge with Genjuro Saki, Bechstein, and Burning Wand on the board and 2 cards in hand.  He is at 2 life.  He skips his battle phase and goes straight to final phase.  I don't respond.  He casts his impact.  I respond with Chillax, bringing me to 4, then knocking me to 1.  I win by burning him the following turn.


Round 5 - L vs. Hero World (Kaizerion)

This time I played against Jason.  I kept trying various things against Kaizerion to try and get over it.  Game 1 I had lethal on board and I was swinging in with it with a spell negate in hand.  Mach Braver said, "Lolnope".  I didn't have the defense I needed to stop his next turn.  Game 2 he accidentally shuffled his buddy into his deck.  There wasn't really a way to fix that, and it was ruled that he got a game loss.  Game 3, I'm in a solid position to win if I can survive one more turn.  The only problem is that he has a 9/3/7, 4 soul, 4 crit, double attacking Kaizerion (fortunately, without penetrate).  He attacks my center, which I let go.  He attacks again.  I respond with Chillax.  He negates it, bringing me down to 4.  He impacts for 6.  ggnore.  I tried dropping, but I was peer pressured to stay in.  I knew I wasn't likely to top, but I thought, "Meh, I'll give it a try."  Jason is a good friend, so I wasn't upset about losing.  I knew coming into this that I had about a 50/50 matchup to Kaizerion with my deck.


Round 6 - W vs. Hero World (Gaigrander)

My opponent was playing Gaigranders.  Game 1 I was able to simply overwhelm him with offense.  Game 2 I sided in Destruction.  I blew up his 01, and it was all over after that.  He couldn't really hold up due to my opening well and eliminating his offense and defense.


Round 7 - W vs. Hundred Demons (Yamigedo/Lindwurm revival spam)

I was surprised to see a 4-2 Hundred Demons deck.  I hadn't seen many that day.  Unfortunately, Hundred Demons just don't have enough support to be competitive at the moment.  I steamroll him both games without really caring at all about Thunder Mine.  He does get out a Yamigedo game 2, but Champion Wrestler Asmodai put an end to him really fast.


Final results for Buddyfight were 5W 2L.  A solid run.  I had a chance of topping, so I stayed at the venue waiting for the top 8 to be announced.  I glanced at the paper and saw that I was 10th, so I missed the cut by a small margin.  I still had fun, so it was an awesome day.  After that, we all got pizza.  It was good pizza, too.

That wrapped up the tournament.  I got top 16 out of 431 players for Vanguard going 6W 2L.  Then I got 10th place out of 88~ players going 5W 2L in Buddyfight.  I had no expectations of topping either event due to trolling the Vanguard tournament and playing a deck with no new cards printed for it since the Golden Buddy Pack in the other, so my results were extremely pleasing.

We ended the day watching Eragon, which was so bad it was good.  I woke up the next morning singing "I Feel Pretty", to which Will's roommate just pops out of nowhere and picks up where I left off, and that's awesome.

Tim's History of Card Gaming with Royal Paladin Decks

My history with Royal Paladin decks is seeped into my history of card games themselves.  When I was introduced to Vanguard by my buddy Jake, I was trying to get him into Yu-Gi-Oh!.  I was big on X-Sabers, having just bought the new DS game and enjoying their graveyard revival and field flooding mechanics (Oh, so that's why Tim plays Skull Warriors in Buddyfight!).  I also liked their art, too.  Before that, I played a Smoke Grenade/Blast With Chain Warrior deck with Gearfried the Iron Knight as my main unit.

I had played Yugioh when it first came out, took a break after Guardian Sphinx came out, then started up again, playing decks I built out of spares from a friend of mine.  Then I just stopped for about 6 years or so, and only started to get back into the game right before Jake introduced me to Vanguard.

After playing for a while and getting sick of Six Samurai's shit, I eventually fell out of love with Yu-Gi-Oh!, and started to play Vanguard more seriously.

I started with a Gold Paladin trial deck in the sets 1, 2, and 6 era.  By the end of my first day, I had purchased everything I needed for my deck and had the following build.


Tim's First Deck - Paladins of Soul

Barcgal

4 Epona
3 Llew
1 Flogal
4 Margal
4 Elaine

4 Marron
4 Isuelt
3 Pongal
3 Young Pegasus Knight

4 Gallatin
4 Barron
3 Blaster Blade

4 Lohengrin
2 Gigantech Charger
2 Soul Saver Dragon


I knew I was on a time limit.  In just a short while, I would have to switch builds because of the impending date on the Barcgal ban.  I still enjoyed the build greatly and had a good time playing it.  The build was something I netdecked off of another individual who went to my locals at the time (thanks Shaggy!).  I ended up beating him with it several times more than he would beat me with it.  He eventually changed up his build to include Alfred, but I wasn't too keen on Alfred.

Tim Royal Paladin Fact #1 - I have always thought Alfred was a meh card.  My opinion on that has never changed.  I thought he would finally become viable with his revival legion, but his revival legion more or less just sits on the Vanguard circle and ignores the fact that Alfred is even there.


After Barcgal ban - Tim gets fucked, the deck.

Stardust Trumpeter (We have literally no other starters at this point until set 4,
in which case I'd get a 4k vanilla... Thanks Bushiroad.)

4 Epona
3 Llew (Didn't feel like buying another Llew)
4 Margal
1 Gwydion
4 Elaine

4 Marron
4 Isuelt
3 Pongal
3 Young Pegasus Knight

4 Gallatin
4 Barron
3 Blaster Blade

4 Lohengrin
2 Gigantech Charger
2 Soul Saver Dragon


Despite this soul charging build being all I wanted out of a deck, it eventually was hit so hard by that ban that I didn't think there was any way to fix or redeem the decklist.  Soul Saver was almost always a vanilla.  I lost out in card advantage from not having a starter.  I started to get more triggers with Gigantech Charger than non-triggers.  The deck as a whole felt like its cogs just stop turning for me.  I had no real choice but to give it up and move on to Ezelmore.  I start playing Gold Paladin as my new main clan, trying Ezelmore and Spectral Duke.  After set 3, but before set 7, I moved from San Antonio back to Indiana due to my enlistment in the military ending.  Having secured a degree, a new job back home, and not having too much time for card games with my 2 hour commute to and from the office, I had to take a break from card games.  I played every so often on Cardfight Capital, and in the midst of trying out all of the decks I didn't feel like investing money to build in real life because I didn't have a locals, I decided to try messing around.  Consequently, Kageroyals was born.


Kageroyals Alpha

Stardust Trumpeter
Lizard Soldier, Undeaux

4 Epona
4 Tahr
4 Alabaster Owl
4 Dracokid

4 Marron
4 Bahr
1 Gemini
1 Silver Wolf
1 Romario
1 Tough Boy
1 Karenroid Daisy
1 Wonder Boy

3x Gallatin
2x Lamorak
3x Nehalem
2x Garp

4x Stardrive Dragon
4x Crested Dragon



I built a deck with nothing but vanilla units in it and vanilla critical triggers.  I thought to myself, "LOOOL, I can make a deck with nothing but vanillas.  Dis gun b gud."  And by "gud", I meant "bad".  Then I went 10-0 with the deck.  I was like, "Holy fucking shitballs.  What the everloving fuck just happened?!"  At first, I thought it was just the critical triggers, but then I realized that having no counterblasts and no heals meant that I had no incentive to take early damage, I could just guard whenever a single card would prevent damage, and I won through solid rows, critical pressure, and conserving card advantage through guarding properly.  With a metagame of "take damage until 4, then guard", Kageroyals had a massive advantage by choosing when and how it took damage.  I used to play primarily what would be considered strong or meta decks in card games up until this point.  If not, I'd play decks with a single focus around a particular theme or mechanic, and make the decks as consistent as possible.  I don't feel like Kageroyals was a contradiction to that last part, as the deck had a focus and was built for consistency, but it sure as hell wasn't meta.  That being said, after going 26W 3L with it in my first several playtests, I thought I found a gold mine.  Naturally, like a child who just got straight A's on their report card, I went straight to the community (so they could hang it on their fridge) as a completely unheard of individual and started to report my findings, because they were so interesting and so fundamentally different from anything I'd ever seen, I figured people would WANT to hear about it.  Right?  Right...?

Insert my worst-phase of card gaming I was ever in.  The Tim who was trying to prove himsef.  Queue hours and hours of internet shitflinging and arguing with people who would dismiss my findings for no reason other than that the deck was mixed.  I made updates to the Kageroyals decklist to make it more tryhard.  I started with Soul Saver as a free 13k attacker, and Palamedes to hit 21k on RG.  That fizzled when I drew too few Kagero units.  I tried Conroe, and that worked out.  I eventually redid my list and made it into a newer, stronger, and more consistent build for smacking people in the dome.


Kageroyals

Lizard Soldier, Conroe

4 Epona
4 Tahr
4 Alabaster Owl
4 Dracokid

4 Marron
4 Bahr
1 Gemini
1 Silver Wolf
1 Romario
1 Tough Boy
1 Wonder Boy

3x Gallatin
3x Lamorak
3x Nehalem
3x Garp

4x Dragonic Waterfall
4x Knight of Conviction, Bors


Consequently, the backlash and outrage that this deck generated was enormous.  I was just some scrub who nobody had ever heard of trying to push out the concept of a mixed deck doing well.  And not only that, the deck is filled with units that also don't do anything other than be big and exist.  The more I tried to argue with playtesting, reasoning, and screenshots, the more people ridiculed me, challenged me, and explained to me why I was bad.  This process went on for months and months.  People would play the build, no guard until 4 damage to activate the limit break that doesn't exist, and get rekt when they can't guard late game.  People would complain that they never moved Conroe back (this is actually why Workerpod Saturday became the official starter, I made the deck less optimal so that it "felt" better, then would encourage people to "discover" Conroe on their own).  People would change the decklist entirely, adding perfect guards, draws, heals, taking out one of the two clans, and then claim that my mixed deck doesn't function.

I did what little I could to try and create credibility for my decklist.  People continued to bash me.  And I would be challenged on Cardfight Capital several times in a row with people just trying to shut me up or make me stop trying to prove that this deck was a legitimate, powerful deck.  I would fight and beat 6-7 people in a row.  They would say, "You just got lucky."  I would fight that 7th or 8th person, they would heal 3 times, winning because their 1 to pass succeeded so they didn't lose by taking their 9th and 10th damage.  Then after the fight, "Told you so."  Shit like that happened on a consistent, daily basis.  After 4 or so months passed, a post happened to show up on NACFV.  "I played Tim's Kageroyals deck at a 32 man tournament and won it!  It's actually really solid!"  My buddy Jake ended up winning a box from it at San Japan (I think there were 31 people there).  People were topping locals.  More and more people started trying the deck.  Suddenly, my opinions, while still widely disregarded by a majority of the community, had a little bit of hold on North America Cardfight Vanguard.  This was the eventual end of the shitty, constantly arguing on Pojo, fighting tooth and nail over every single little point "Tim who was trying to prove himself" and the start of "Hipster Tim".  The mixed deck, 16 critical, early guarding personality who defied the conventional means of playing Vanguard by choosing to not let his face get pummeled until limit break and then starting to guard all of those 15k to guard swings, and having games end on his 4th turn consistently. No, but for real, the community was really bad at the game, then.  Kageroyals wasn't even some mysterious, overpowered list.  It won so many games strictly because it countered the pisspoor playstyle of the day.  That's the big secret, folks.  The deck wasn't even tier 1 at the time.  People were just bad.

About at this time, I got a raging boner for Dark Irregulars.  They have a playstyle that is identical to how I want to play Royals, only, they have easier soul charging mechanics, and Amon as a boss had more synergy with the deck style than Lohengrin did.  The only thing they were missing was a grade 2 Doreen.  It didn't take me more than a couple of matches to figure out that Blazing Flare Dragon works pretty nicely with Amon, and he became my replacement for Barron.  Before too long, I start developing my mixed deck "Hellfire Ritual" for the set 7 Dark Irregulars meta.  With set 7, we got an amazing starter by the name of Greedy Hand.  One day, when I was using Hellfire Ritual online, I had to ride Blazing Flare Dragon, which was ehh.  Since I didn't have 5 soul and really need to retire a unit, I started looking over my cards to see if any of them could be used with a non-Dark Irregulars Vanguard.  Lo and Behold, Greedy Hand just needs you to grab a Dark Irregulars from your deck and doesn't care if you have a Dark Irregulars Vanguard or not.  This turned on a lightswitch in my head.  What I really wanted was to just play Royal Paladins again, and play them the way I have always played them, as a soul-based build, gaining power for increasing your soul, then soul blasting to push for game.  Greedy Hand was the missing ingrediant for Paladins of Soul.  Queue, Corrupt Paladins of Soul (AKA Sit down Barron, you're drunk!).


Tim Royal Paladin Fact #2 - My usual way for starting a game with this deck back in the day, when playing casually, was to have my Greedy Hand in my opening hand, and have Barron face down.  When we were supposed to stand up the Vanguard, I would flip Barron over, act irritated, and say, "Sit down, Barron.  You're drunk."  Then shuffle him back into the deck and draw a new card.  My friends and I had some good laughs with it.


Grade 0's
3x Greedy Hand
4x Alabaster Owl
4x Bringer of Good Luck, Epona
4x Margal
4x Yggdrasil Maiden, Elaine

Grade 1's
4x Young Pegasus Knight
4x Flash Shield, Isuelt
4x Prisoner Beast
1x Pongal

Grade 2's
4x Great Sage, Barron
4x Knight of Silence, Gallatin
2x Blaster Blade

Grade 3's
4x Demon Slaying Knight, Lohengrin
2x Soul Saver Dragon
1x Swordsman of Explosive Flames, Palamedes
1x Solitary Knight, Gancelot


This list is largely similar to the previous lists, only we've replaced Marron for Prisoner Beast so we have a chance of moving back Greedy Hand.  If we don't, it's no different from running Stardust Trumpeter, so there's no reason to complain about missing the forerunner skill, since this deck's only other option at the time was a 4k vanilla that can't move to soul later.  If we do move back Greedy Hand, then when we have out Barron and Young Pegasus Knight on the field in the same row, all we have to do is move Greedy Hand to soul and we instantly have a 26k row.  That was fucking HUGE in the sets 1-3, 6-7 meta.  Between Margal, Pongal, and Lohengrin, making rows larger was fairly easy.  Palamedes was an out to hit 21k with Prisoner Beast.  Gigantech Charger was removed, as the deck can potentially not plus off of his skill since he can only call Royals.  Since we were running two extra starters, Gancelot was running double-duty as both a grade 2 and a grade 3.  The deck wasn't as solid as it was with Barcgal due to less consistency, but the deck had more potency.  The explosive plays could occur on multiple turns with Soul Saver plays being viable again with more soul from Greedy Hands, and that soul charging powering up lines.  The deck finally "felt" complete again.

Set 9 came along, and I had since started to work on other decks like Tom and Jerry.  It felt like it had been ages since Royal Paladins got a real upgrade.  We get a single dual-clanned card with Blaster Blade Spirit.  I saw the potential of it, and decided to build a troll deck around it that wasn't intended to be good.  Just fun.  The deck focuses on spamming Alfred's effect as a RG to spam call Blaster Blade Spirits from deck, retiring a unit of theirs.  It's essentially a CB4 version of Ashlei Reverse's skill that can only call one particular card from deck to get the retire.  Putting it in an unflip engine deck gave it the chance to generate plusses over the course of the game.


Royal Novas

Lionet Heat

4 Red Lightning
4 Shining Lady
4 Epona
4 Alabaster Owl

Grade 1's
4 Marron
4 Claydoll Mechanic
3 Twin-Blader
3 Lionmane Stallion

Grade 2's
4x Blaster Blade Spirit
4x Hungry Dumpty
3x Gallatin

Grade 3's
4x Alfred
4x Mr. Invincible


Queue set 10.  The announcement was made that Royal Paladins are coming back.  I am STOKED.  They're getting support in the initial set of the new season.  They get first dibs on the power boosts for the new mechanics.  They're going to get sweet abilities that I can integrate with my older cards, and I might be able to make an upgraded version of Paladins of Soul!  Wait, what?  N-no!  Not only are these all a bunch of annoying looking Elf chicks, but literally every single good card IS LOCKED TO THEIR ARCHETYPE!  And all their archetype does is call more things of their archetype and gain bonus crit?  Their boss isn't even 11k base power?  She has to have limit break and a mostly full field of archetype specific units to just get MLB's permanent effect on her turn only?  Wow.  WOW.  This sucks.  The breakride is utter garbage.  Fucking.  Why.

Well, as you can probably guess, set 10 offered fucking nothing for my style of Royal Paladins.  It didn't even offer anything for any other styles.  It's like, "We hated how OP Royal Paladin was for the first 3 sets, so here's a massive fuck you.  Enjoy playing with your awful Elf chicks with little-to-no-room for tech choices because the requirements for activating anything are especial counterblasts and 4 archetypical units on the board.

That was so fucking dumb.  SO DUMB.  I didn't even touch the deck.  I couldn't tolerate its very existence.  Royals didn't look like they were "coming back" so much as being forced into this new deck with no other outs.

We got one gem in set 10, Knight of Explosive Axe, Gornemant.  In Bushiroad's attempts to create shitty, unplayable common size 3's for filler, they ended up accidently creating something usable.  Gornemant clones in every other case were made out to be pretty worthless due to the Pellinore rulings causing his interaction with Muungal to fizzle.  No other clan had multiple grade 3 riding in a single turn that was consistent or worth running.  They were literally one time power-ups if you happened to break ride, which was made less consistent by running non-break ride non-boss grade 3's.  After a certain point, I was just like, "Fuck the Barcgal ban.  I'm going to have fun."  And when I have fun, I tend to take it up to 17... grade 3s.


17 Grade 3 Deck

Barcgal

15 critical triggers (3 Llew)
1 Flogal

4 Young Pegasus Knight
4 Sage of Guidance, Zenon
4 Isuelt
2 Lien, eventually Richard

2 Blaster Blade

Core 10 grade 3's

4 Gornemant
4 Pendragon
2 Exculpate

Optional 7 slots
2 Soul Saver Dragon
1 Gancelot
4 Crimson Butterfly, Brigitte (eventually becoming other cards like Exiv, Sanctuary Guard Dragon, Altomile)
1 Sanctuary Guard Dragon (Can grab Richard from deck for plussing)
1 Alfred Exiv (Legions with Blaster Blade)
2 Altomile (Bad card, but meh.)


Many people have seen the troll video and understand how the deck works.  You call out as many Gornemants as you can.  Ride a Pendragon, they gain 10k.  Limit break, ride another grade 3, they gain 10k.  Call Zenon, reveal the top card of your deck.  If it's a grade 3, superior ride it, and your Gornemants are now 40k a piece.  It requires set-up to make it work optimally, but it's still a really solid decklist.  You get more versatility with stride being a thing, now, since you can essentially guarantee stride fodder.  You always have the option of riding Exculpate, then striding over him to retain defense, as well.  All-in-all, the deck functions well.  It's just glass cannon, and comes with all of the issues that being glass cannon would entail.  That being said, I can't play it in tournaments because Barcgal is still banned.  If extreme format becomes a thing, I'd probably choose to play this over some cancerous Gear Chronicle/Great Nature unblockable deck, because Extreme Fight should be about fun, and not cancer.  But it probably won't be.  And by that, I mean it probably won't ever be an event.

So, several sets pass.  Kageroyals stopped being good by roughly set 11.  They became completely invalidated in set 14 when Ashlei Reverse and Dauntless Dominate Drive Reverse showed how much you are now allowed to plus with a single counterblast, so guarding early no longer gave you as much sustained card advantage as just using your limit break.  Critical attacks were free and every turn and high in power.  Dauntless was a bitch to deal with.  10k archetypical grade 1's more-or-less invalidated tanking with vanillas for any row other than their Vanguard row if they went second.  Tom and Jerry was still competitive for a litle while, but not one of the best decks in the game anymore.  Set 13 hit, and Chaos Breaker created issues for all of these RG dependant decks of mine, Tom and Jerry fell off, and I had to more or less choose.  Try something else, continue to lose, or start playing the meta.  Set 13 introduced Tidal Assault, which I used to make Ripple Rush for Aqua Force.  It playtested far better than my balanced, mixed decks ever did by securing early kills before my opponents could even breakride.  I had already played other rush decks like Cat Butler and Brutal Jack along with Platinum Rush, both of which I made at around the set 8 timeframe.  I had pretty much left the mixed deck scene from a combonation of the Lord mechanic, Royals becoming girly elves and being completely non-inclusive of older support, and clans reaching the point where they can run 16 critical triggers from their monoclan decks. 

To recap, my last several Royal Paladin creations were either mixed decks or used Barcgal.  This has been true since the day of the Barcgal ban.  To me, Royals stopped feeling like Royals altogether.  My set 1-2 build is hopelessly obsolete in the face of card like Chaos Breaker.  Then a generic, Soul Saver Dragon-esque figure appears from the darkness in set 14.  Sanctuary of Light gets revealed.  Generic Royals get their first real support in 10 sets, because I'm not counting Blasters in set 5.  And then after playtesting it... it was hopelessly inconsistent.  Ride Chains have that problem in general, but this was an archetype locked deck that had a limit break locked small power boost to units of the archetype.  Fuck off.  It was just another "Jewel Knights" in my eyes.  Good thing I didn't go with it, because it still hasn't gotten support to flesh it out even though it's a fucking archetpye.

Then, queue all of these people playing broken as fuck Ashlei Reverse, and doing it completely wrong.  They kept running some pointless draw triggers in their deck, when they literally have between 15-16 out of their 19 grade 2 or higher units that swing for 11k or more.  Stands have never wanted to be in a deck that nobody thought to run them in as much as Ashlei Reverse wanted stand triggers.  Even though I didn't build this deck in real life because I hated Jewel Knights, I did end up making a list for them because I thought that everyone was doing it wrong.  You should be running Quintet Walls in this meta where even Break Rides didn't swing for enough to make the Quintets at risk of being passed.  Counterblasts weren't used much.  Quintets loaded up your drop with potential Ashlei's to be returned with Alwain.  Alwain can give power to a RG Ashlei.  That Ashlei will swing for 21k with a boost.  If you hit a stand trigger, it will swing for 21k again without a boost.  It all seemed pretty simple to me, but I just didn't see anyone go for it other than my friend Daniel.


Ashlei "R", Timmy Style

Grade 0 (17):
1 Desire Jewel Knight, Heloise
4 Blazing Jewel Knight, Rachelle
2-4 Jewel Knight, Noble Stinger
4 Jewel Knight, Opt Harpist
0-2 Jewel Knight, Glitmy
4 Jewel Knight, Hilmy

Grade 1 (14):
4 Jewel Knight, Prizmy
3 Stinging Jewel Knight, Shellie
3 Security Jewel Knight, Alwain
2 Flashing Jewel Knight, Iseult (PG)
2 Summoning Jewel Knight, Gloria (QW)

Grade 2 (11):
4 Banding Jewel Knight, Miranda
4 Fellowship Jewel Knight, Tracie
3 Linking Jewel Knight, Tilda

Grade 3 (8):
4 Broken Heart Jewel Knight, Ashlei “Яeverse”
4 Pure Heart Jewel Knight, Ashlei



So, set 15 comes.  Glendios becomes a thing.  We have our first 11k unit with absolutely no negative restrictions on it being your boss unit.  It looks like Bushiroad is going to encourage clan mixing for the first time since set 5.  I was actually not sure how to feel.  A part of me wanted to believe, but I think that deep down I knew better.  Set 15 passes, and the we go to the V-Road.  Kai is confirmed to be playing Royal Paladins, with the new Seeker archetype. 

Blaster Blade is back as a Seeker.  These cards look fucking legit.  THIS IS THE ROYAL PALADIN I FUCKING WANTED!  Not elf chicks and half-assed archetype dragons.  And then it happened.  No Lord.  Anywhere.  I knew already that mixed clans were getting banned soon, just by that.  I started looking at the boss units.  And one of them really appealed to me.  I was in love with Brutus.  He made Kageroyals style of play very easy with his +3k power boost, making my rows hit 21k easily.  Seekers also had an 8k booster starter.  While retirement or locking could hit the deck, I found that it rekindled Kageroyals for me as a new monoclan deck that functions properly.  After messing around with my list, I was able to settle on a build I found suitable.


Monoclan Kageroyals - Brutus Style

Lucius

16 Critical Triggers, 8 Seeker

4 Marron
4 Shiron
4 Cynric (Now 4 Felax)
2 Youthful Mage

4 Valrod
4 Cerdic
3 Locrinus

4 Brutus
4 Egbert


I won my locals with it without too much trouble.  The decklist plays similarly to old Kageroyals.  It's kind of like running Swordmy, in that you have to get Seekers in your damage for your deck to run, but that isn't typically too much trouble with the quantity of them in the deck.  With a busted as fuck G-Zone for Royals now, especially with cards like Samuil, the non-archetype damage can be counterblasted easily as a backup plan, regardless.  That being said, since the Seeker bosses don't actively do anything special, if you're focusing on Generation Break, this deck has no real utility.  So you're pretty much locked into playing Legion style with the deck using your GZone to compensate for what you can't do with Legion alone.

Moving on, after seeing Thing Saver, I told myself I was going to build it.  I liked that it had soul interaction.  I liked that it fed soul to itself.  I liked that it allowed techs by not having especial counterblasts.  It was like, the ultimate dream card.  The only problem with it was that it was TOO good.  Like, cancerously good.  I won't complain when I'm tossed a bone, though.  That being said, I didn't enjoy playing it monoclan that much.  I felt like the build didn't have enough options to make it particularly consistent in getting a third attack off.  I sure as hell didn't want to run Pongal and Margal again.  Soul Saver is laughably awful at this point.  I wanted to incorporate soul building into the deck, running Young Pegasus Knight and Barron, and make the deck function like my old set 2 build.  But it didn't have what it needed on its own.  Then, the Genesis extra booster was released in Japan.  And their starter was just, "If your Vanguard is in legion, Move to soul, soul charge 3, give your Vanguard +5000 power".  ...  HOLY SHIT!  This card alone makes the entire deck better.  With no more lord and no more same-clan Vanguard requirements, the shit released within a month of Lord being gone is already nuts.  Naturally, to make pulling my starter back more consistent, and because Thing Saver doesn't give 2 shits about what cards are in its deck, I ran an entirely Genesis grade 1 line up other than my 4 Young Pegasus Knights.  Pulling back my starter was super consistent, and I ran a couple of back-up copies of it as well in the event it got retired or wasn't pulled back.  Moving that unit to soul gave Izaya (yeah, that was in there too), Barron, and Young Pegasus Knight 12000 power a piece.  That's insane levels of power.  Izaya is 21k unboosted just from that.  Then you also factor in that I haven't used a single counterblast, I now have the soul I need to use Thing Saver twice, and I have 38k+ rows.  With 16 critical triggers... And 6 drive checks.  Yeah, they're kind of fucked if I reach this point.

Tim Royal Paladin Fact #3 - I love soul-based paladins so much, that my inability to let them go created the nastiest mixed deck in the Legion format.


Regalia Paladins

3 Pray Angel

16 Royal Paladin Critical Triggers

4 Shiny Angel
4 Framboise
4 Young Pegasus Knights
2 Preach Angel

4 Barron
4 Izaya
2 Blaster Blade Seeker

4 Thing Saver
3 Wingal Brave


So.  This deck was it.  I finally got back everything I ever dreamed of.  And I knew it couldn't last.  Just like with my impending Barcgal ban, I knew it was going to be ripped straight out of my fingers.  Before too long, the announcement was made, and mixed decks were officially banned in Japan.  I knew it would be happening in English eventually as well, so when we finally got Thing Saver, I decided against building it, and that made me feel all kinds of awful.  It actually took far longer for them to ban mixed decks that I thought, and I would have gotten plenty of usage out of the deck, pissing my locals and everyone else off with the cheese of a consistent push that makes Spike Brothers look like a joke. 

All that aside, I let it go.  And I let Vanguard go.  I started really picking up and playing Buddyfight competitively at this point.  In just three tournaments, I had topped a regionals and am the incumbent GenCon champion.  I feel like I do way better at it, and that the game is more competitive than Vanguard.  With mixed decks gone and rush decks either game destroying or gimped, and every set increasing in power creep, cost, and not increasing in versatility, I felt locked into a spot where there just wasn't any versatility anymore.  The game practically plays itself.  The decks build themselves.  It's been that way for a while, but now all of my options were restricted to single clan decks, and I just wasn't enjoying myself anymore.

At about this timeframe, I lost all interest in Vanguard.  After getting gradelocked twice with Glendios last regionals, I just wasn't feeling it anymore.  Japan took away most of my favorite cards for my rush decks, like Laurel and Cat Butler.  They took away my mixed decks.  Generation Break made games last longer because your rear guards are vanillas until you and your opponent are grade 3.  You might be thinking, "Wouldn't this make Ripple Rush fantastic?"  I mean, sure.  It just hasn't received a single card upgrade since set 13.  Even now, with G-Set 2 out and a trial deck.  None of the Generation Break units can be used reliably in the deck because they're too slow.  I discovered Seeker Rush a while before this, but didn't want to post it because the deck made everything in the game extremely anti-fun.  I haven't used Seeker Rush in any tournaments yet, even though I've playtested it extensively against most of the meta decks, and it's stupid.  I actively refuse to play this at anything other than regional level events and ARG tournaments because it kills the fun so much for both you and your opponents.  That being said, the deck is beatable if you hit enough defensive triggers and retake card advantage from going second or twin driving.  It just wins most of the time and negates most of the fun.


Seeker Rush

4 Composed Seeker, Lucius
8 Seeker Critical Triggers
8 other Royal Paladin Critical Triggers

4 Bravogal Seeker
4 Honest Seeker, Cynric
4 Heaven Arrow Seeker, Lunate
4 Seeker, Sebrumy
4 Seeker of the Right Path, Gangalen
4 Seeker, Plume Wall Angel
4 Seeker, Youthful Mage
2 Any other Seeker 7k grade 1


So, now we're entering the stride era.  Royal Paladins continue to be a main character clan, even if that main character is awful.  We get a new boss unit with Altomile.  One problem.  Altomile fucking sucks.  Every other "when your G-Unit strides over this unit" boss has had at least a decent effect pertaining to card advantage.  Altomile is like, superior garbage.  Ugh.  I bought two trial decks for the promos, and went on to play around with the new sweetness.  And all I was able to discover is that the RG's are amazing, but Altomile is holding them back.  I switched up to trying to incorporate Altomile into my 17 grade 3 deck, and it's meh.  I just couldn't find a use for Royal Paladins in the stride era, in spite of them having some of the best cards.

Tim Royal Paladin Fact #4 - I really, really fucking hate Altomile.  More than I hate Alfred, since I could at least build a funny troll deck around Alfred.


After a bit of ambivalence to the game, they announced new Dark Irregulars support.  Since Dark Irregulars actually allows me to play the game how I wanted to play Royals, I was plenty happy to hear it.  Then a particular stride was announced in the Fighter's Collection.  Madu, a Cray Elemental.  He lets you return a grade 3 from your drop to your hand when you stride if your Vanguard has 10000 or less base power.  Madu gave me a hard on for about a solid week after reading it.  The first thing I wanted to do was try to abuse it with a 10k base power Vanguard that could hit 11k from a ride chain.  I started off with old Phantom Blaster Dragon, trying to spam Dark Mage, Badhabh Caar for free plusses, then eventually going into Diablo for more pressure.  The deck didn't pan out because Shadows don't have the Generation Break support that they need to make that deck work.  I then tried using Giraffa, to have Jaggies as a backup option and spamming Violent Vesper while returning them back to my hand with Madu.  That worked a little better, but Megacolony currently has NO generation break support, so that will likely have to wait a bit before it has a chance of working.  Finally, I tried Royals out.  You can probably tell that my entire deck idea was built around spamming Gigantech Charger clones for free plusses, returning them to my hand, and doing it all over again.  In theory, it was sort of working for the other two builds.  I've been playing the Royal version over the last few days, and I made a few realizations in testing.


Tim Royal Paladin Fact #5 - I think the Swordmy tech is good.  Not game breaking, just good.  That being said, the main reason people are running Swordmy in my opinion isn't so much that Swordmy is amazing as Royals have fucking nothing for grade 1 choices.  I did a little research on all of our Generation Break grade 1's.  We have 10k attacker which is garbage because it's too slow to be useful.  We have 10k booster which is garbage because it's only in the Vanguard row, and the Vanguard is already going to be fucking huge.  And we have Shot Putter.  Counterblast 1, sack himself, give two units +5k.  That's some Altomile tier shit right there, but at least it's more versatile about how and when you use it.  If we had legitimately useful grade 1's, I think Swordmy would phase out of being "max in every Royal Paladin deck, ever".


1.  Swordmy didn't help my deck at all.  I refuse to run only 8 critical just to make Swordmy more consistent.  Knight of Twin Sword and Blaster Blade Spirit were too important to drop for more Jewel Knights.  The Jewel Knight grade 1's are all glorified vanillas.  I damage checked non-Jewel Knights constantly while testing.  Not to say that Swordmy is a bad card, it's actually damn good.  He just didn't splash well here.

2.  It doesn't matter what my Vanguard is as long as it has 10k or less power.  Riding Gigantech Charger, then making it 11k with Pica is hilarious.  It's still swinging for 31k with a 7k boost.  The card advantage is all that matters in the end.

3.  Holy shit, having a stride enabler is so much better.  Shadows and Megacolony didn't have them when I was testing those decks out, and it's so much smoother to have one, even if I'm not running Altomile.

4.  Royal Paladins may be lacking in grade 1 support, but they have the BEST GZone in the game, currently.  Samuil is a beast.

5.  Knight of Twin-Sword is fucking stupid amazing good.  No wonder Altomile has to suck!

Here's my list.  Please read point 2 again and in mind that I am a troll/hipster, and winning with this boss card makes me giggle like a schoolgirl.


You Madu Bro?

Millius

12 Critical Triggers
4 Heal Triggers

4 Perfect Guard of your Choice (RAINBOWS FOR ME!)
4 Sicilus
4 Light Elemental, Pica
2 Knight of Shield Bash

4 Knight of Twin-Sword
4 Knight of Black Mantle
3 Blaster Blade Spirit

4 Gigantech Charger
4 Stardrive Dragon

4 Madu
2 Samuil
1 Gablade
1 Jirron


This deck has gone well in my initial testing (12W 0L).  That's not me trying to hype this deck up or anything.  I fought quite a few bads on Area making up a good chunk of these wins.  I do think that this deck is viable, though.  Not super competitive, but able to keep up enough to plausibly win against the meta decks in a 2 of 3 situation without sacking too hard.  You have card advantage out your ass, free triple drive, your units can easily hit the 11k defense mark with Pica, and you have one of the best damn GZones in the game.  You can grind your opponent down, easily repairing any holes in your field, then if you feel ready to push for game, Samuil is there to make your opponents really sad.  Most of the games I play with this deck take a while to finish because of the constant field and hand flood that goes on.  The disadvantages of going second are completely nullified with this deck (due to striding being free), so it's actually advantageous to go second assuming your opponent doesn't play a ride chain or vanillas and blocks all of your attacks super early.  But, even if they do, you have burn to fix that.  The fact that strides take on the name of what they stride over means that I win most of my games swinging with Stardrive Dragon.  And that's just awesome to me.  Lol.

Give this deck a try if you want to have some fun.  Stardrive is of course, interchangeable with any other Royal Paladin grade 3 that's less than 11k base power.


That's actually all of my decklists for Royal Paladin decks since I've been playing Vanguard.  You can see where all I wanted was to keep playing set 2 Royals, and Bushiroad took that away from me every single time I was able to attain it again.  Either through banning Barcgal, power creep, or banning mixed decks.  I had several unique and interesting mixed decks with Royals that allowed me to have some fun over the years.  The vast majority of the decks I've played cannot be used, currently.  That being said, I still love set 2 Royals.  I would love for them to adopt that playstyle again, but Bushiroad has made it clear that Dark Irregulars are going to be the ones to have it.  Even though they still only have as many Doreen clones as Royal do this many sets later.  To this day, I'm still torn between whether or not Royals or Dark Irregulars are my "true" clan.

Nashville Tournament Report

I was in a weird spot with the start of this tournament.  Until the day I left, I didn't know who was going with me.  Until the week before I left, I wasn't sure if I was already going to be in the state from a family visit, or if I was going to drive down with friends.  Due to the in-laws having a hospitalization, they postponed their family visit that was going to be for this week, so I ended up driving down with my bestie Daniel.

Consequently, I didn't fill out my judge paperwork until Friday morning, because if Daniel wasn't coming and I wasn't there with family, I wasn't going to go.

Again, consequently, when I showed up with my Bushiroad shirt to judge the Vanguard event, they already were overstaffed and didn't need me, and since I had no confirmation from JD because I officially volunteered (even though I had verbally volunteered before) last minute, I ended up not judging.

Cardfight Vanguard

That's no biggie.  I didn't feel like playing Vanguard, because I've been in a bad luck rut with it, but whatever.  I went in with no expectations.  After hearing that someone made it to round 6 or 7 with Ripple Rush in Chicago, I decided to go for that.  It's my strongest and most consistent overall build, in my opinion, so I figured I'd give it a whirl.

Round 1 - Win vs. Dimension Police trial deck with at least one Daishield

This kid had just started playing the game.  All I could think to myself was, "Wow.  I never get easy wins.  I'll take it."  He actually played properly, only making one mistake the entire game.  Granted, that doesn't help you win when you're forced to ride Cosmogreat, because he's your 4-of grade 3.  I never see a Genovious, but I hit the first two pieces of the chain, and spammed my on-hit rear guard restand ability, since he was never in a strong spot to guard my Vanguard swings.

Round 2 - Lose vs. Breakride Galaxy with Draw Triggers

Ugh.  I hate this build so much.  Stern is just so much better.  Crits are just so much better.  I had to lose to crit Dragruler in Chicago and now this... but, I digress.  He heals 3 times, hits two defensive draws (running 4), and offensively crits twice.  I never see a Genovious.  I do hit a clutch crit at the end, forcing him to dump out all of his remaining shield, or he was going to lose.  He breakrides Mond over Mond and finishes me off the following turn.

Playing to 9 damage is kind of why I stopped playing Vanguard.  But whatevs, I wasn't in this one to win it anyway.  It's not them, it's me.  I attract their heal triggers to the top of their deck.

Round 3 - Win vs. Silver Thorns

Holy shit.  I actually won a dice roll and got to go first.  Ride Sotorio, fish out Pavroth.  Already have Pavroth and Genovious in hand.  This is sacking for me, okay.  GIVE ME MY MOMENT!  Drop a 10k to guard his 7k+5k swing with no rear guards out.  He hits a crit, I stay at 0.  HOLY SHIT!  THINGS ARE GOING OKAY!  EVEN THOUGH I STARTED WITH 3 GENOVIOUS IN HAND AND HAD TROUBLE RUSHING.  After neither of us hitting too many triggers after that (both of our decks were trigger floundering like crazy, I was unable to secure a rush), I end up winning solely because I went first (and was able to guard early), and going first is OP.

Round 4 - Lose vs. 8 draw break ride Venus Trap Reverse

Wat.  No.  This didn't happen.  Next!  What, you mean I have to write about this?  Fuck.  I hit the full chain again.  With 3 Genovious in hand again.  Yeah.  No units could be fielded on turn 2 unless I wanted to make a perfect guard/trigger row, which was the only thing I had that I could field because of 3 Genovious.  He hit 4 draws, 2-3 were defensive.  We were neck and neck most of the game.  He had boosted on-hit fetch rows with his maidens out on turn 2.  I had to choose from the easy no-pass of his Vanguard and letting those on-hit rows hit, or risking him not hitting a trigger or me hitting a trigger to guard the on-hit rows.  I chose to let him hit with his on-hit rows to guarantee I reduce my own damage.  If I knew crits weren't a thing in his deck (being at 4), I'm not certain I would have made that decision.  He still manages to crit me when I no guarded at 3 damage, bringing me up to 5.

I force 9 cards from his hand with a big Genvious persona blast push.  He literally has 0 cards in hand and one open spot on his field.  He gets the RG back with Venus Trap, attacks, and gets a draw/heal, bringing him up to 4 cards in hand.  I guard using everything I had.  I swing in next turn with the ability to win if I hit a trigger or he doesn't hit a fifth damage trigger, he does, I don't.  He wins the next turn.  I wasn't really sad or anything.  It's just... eww.  8 draws.  In hindsight, letting Glass Beads hit at any point in time to waste his counterblasts would have benefited me greatly.  It is what it is.

This is just what I've come to expect from this game.  I want to pretty much exclusively judge it at this point, since I am fairly certain that mixed decks will be banned for next year's regionals, and rush decks are just cheese and don't feel that technical or comboish.

Future Card Buddyfight

I was debating between Big Awesome Dog (a deck focusing on using Alerta with soul guard size 3's and size 0's to get free counterattack retires against my opponent, and using Demon Lord's Dungeon for infinite recycling on my size 0's) and Fabulous World (Standard Legend World Hero Build).  I needed some Dominion Rods (I somehow have none after opening 4 boxes) to finish Big Awesome Dog.  I need two Merlins (you know, the one card that makes the deck work) to make Fab World function.  I tried to get what I needed, but many people were looking for Merlin and nobody had him.

I was thinking, "I guess I'll just go back to old faithful, Katana World."  But I remember how Dungeon World wrecks my shit because I don't have card advantage with Skull Warriors unless I happen to draw one of my 4 Return to the Underworld.  I thought about playing Dungeon World mix myself, but I found out that I actually am a hipster, and don't want to play it specifically because of how overpowered it is.  It's also brainless, and auto-pilot.  And forces you to play the game properly by giving you card advantage for removing the opponent's card advantage.

I could bitch about it some more, but I'll leave that for another day.  I eventually settled, after much deliberation, on Magic World Burn.  After going through my box of commons looking for a sideboard, I find Abra Cadabra.  I read the card.  Then I wonder why it wasn't in my deck and why I'm an idiot.  I put it in at two, hoping to get a cheese victory by swinging at an open center with a big link attack and countering their attack negation spell for game.  This never happened, but Abra Cadabra saved my nuts twice, so I'm not complaining.

I didn't have this deck completely done, either, but the cards I'm missing aren't actually mandatory for the deck to function, like Dominion Rod and Merlin are for the other two decks I wanted to run.

Deckname - #Tim's Totally Meta Mega Serious Magic World Burn Deck™

Decklist

Flag - Magic World
Buddy - Dragowizard, Burning Wand (Foil)

Items (7)
4x Gunrod, Bechstein
3x Gunrod, Stradivarius

Spells (21)
4x Magical Goodbye
4x Trans-flame
4x Solomon's Shield (Useful.  You know, except against Dungeon World.)
4x Nice One!
2x Kosher (I needed gauge fixing so bad.  I gave away my Keys of Solomon to my buddy Elliot, thinking I wouldn't need them.  I may up this number later, or switch to the Keys.  I feel like this is more slot efficient, though.)
2x Abra Cadabra!
1x Chillax! (WHY OH WHY DO I ONLY HAVE ONE OF THESE?!)

Size 1's (16)
4x Demon Lord, Asmodai (Staple)
4x Dragowizard, Burning Wand (Tap to deal 1.  If I could use multiple of this effect, this deck would be much stronger, but I'll take what I've got.  Great for a going first turn 1 ping.)
4x Kenjy of the Explosive Fists (Going to become Qinus Axias or Glassarts later I suppose)
3x Magician of Glass, Will Glassart (should be maxed)
1x Dragowizard, Qinus Axia (1 gauge wasn't too big of a deal)

Size 2's (6)
3x Center of the World, Mary Sue (I want to drop this down to 2.  Gauge cost was just too high.)
2x Magical Secretary, Genjuro Saki (I want to up this to 4)
1x Herb Magician, Soichiro Tenjiku (Worse Genjuro that's going to be taken out later)


Round 1 - W vs. Dungeon World (Dungeon/Adventurer Mix)

I was expecting it.  I figured that roughly half of the people there would be playing Dungeon.  There weren't that many from what I could see, though.  Every table I would look at (didn't go poking around too much, though) didn't have Dungeon World on it.

I guess I just get lucky, and get to get the "fun" match-up out of the way.

Game 1 he starts off relatively strong, but I had a perfect hand.  Kosher, Nice One, Genjuro, Will Glassart, Bechstein, Magical Goodbye.  I had gauge and cards secured for the remainder of the game.  He did equip Glory Seeker turn 1, though.  Turn 3 happens, and he's at 5.  Transflame, Bechstein, equip new Bechstein, Burning Wand.  He's at 1, and I have 3 crit on the board.  Swing with Asmodai, expecting him to Shalsana so I can win with my 2 crit swing.  He takes it.  Glory Seeker reveals a spell, and he goes to 3.  Swing for 2, he goes down to 1.  I fend off his next turn.  My turn, ping for game.

Sixth damage hea Glory Seeker Saves: 1

Game 2 I am the ping machine.  He equips Glory Seeker again, but I just have too much ping.  He is down to 1 on the start of my turn.  I ping for 1, popping Glory Seeker.  He hits a spell.  I ping for two more, and swing in with 2 creatures.  He Shalsanas the first one, and loses to the second one.

Sixth damage hea Glory Seeker Saves: 2


Round 2 - W vs. Dungeon World (Dungeon/Adventurer Mix)

Game 1 he isn't able to keep a strong offensive on the board.  He kept not link attacking with Brave, Drum, so my Solomon's Shields kept him on lock-down.  He equips a Glory Seeker.  Turn 3, I ping him down to 0, he reveals a spell.  I have too much momentum.  He used the remainder of his resources just staying alive.  He equips another Glory Seeker, and this time he just keeps swinging at my side units with no Defeat Monsters out, since I have too much life.  My turn rolls around again.  I ping down his Glory Seeker, he gets another spell.  I swing for game.

Sixth damage hea Glory Seeker Saves: 4

Game 2 was much better for him.  He got a massive offensive force out, and I had squat for defensive spells.  I had plenty of burn, though.  He, uhh... equips a Glory Seeker with Brave Drum in the middle.  I can't get around Drum, but I ping him to 0.  He reveals a spell.  I swing into his creatures to soften the blow the next turn.  Tetsuya is called, and I can't stop 7 crit to my face if he wins the Rock/Paper/Scissors.  He does win it, unfortunately, so I lose this game.

Sixth damage hea Glory Seeker Saves: 5

Game 3 he didn't get Glory Seeker, so when I pinged him to 0 he wasn't there anymore.  Woot!


Round 3 - L vs. Dungeon World (Dungeon/Adventurer Mix)

Game 1 was pretty even.  I pinged him down to 0, but, you know, Glory Seeker.  He revealed a spell.  After that, I was in a solid position to win again, even though he got another one out.  I could live if his Drum didn't win Rock Papers Scissors.  He lost the Rock Papers Scissors!  But then impacted me for game.  Lol

Sixth damage hea Glory Seeker Saves: 6

Game 2 he swung in hard early with... Glory Seeker. We had a difference in damage on our sheets.  I had him at 3, he had himself at 4.  We had no clue how to resolve it.  I told him I had exactly 3 damage in hand, but he had Glory Seeker out.  Mason happened to be there and convinced him to take my reasonable offer.  We were going to see if the top card of his deck was a spell.  If it was, then he auto-wins because of Glory Seeker.  If it wasn't a spell, we would roll for game.  He takes my offer, reveals a spell, and we didn't need to roll for it at all, as the outcome was decided with or without our damage disparity.  I felt bad about what happened, because I'm not sure if he missed one of my pings or if he gained a life and I missed it, but fortunately it was in a position that didn't make a difference.

Sixth damage hea Glory Seeker Saves: 7


Round 4 - W vs. Dungeon World (Dungeon/Adventurer Mix)

Game 1 he equipped something that wasn't Glory Seeker.  I was in shock.  My body wasn't certain how to respond.  He played Gagnar turn 1.  He told me his hand was 3 Shalsanas, Dungeon Explosion, and his weapon he equipped (5k/2 trial deck one for one gauge, assuming he didn't finish his deck completely, or thought that it was as good as Glory Seeker for the purpose of killing creatures with Defeat Monsters, and one gauge is cheaper than a card from hand.)  I end up filling my field up and getting ready to swing in.  He casts Dungeon Explosion, losing two life.  Abra Cadabra saved my life, there.  Kosher gave me the second gauge I needed, then I got out Stradivarius to have a big enough Kenjy to take out Gagnar, dealing two lifelink to him.  He couldn't Shalsana because he burned all of his gauge.  I pinged him for game the following turn.

Game 2 was almost a literal repeat of game 1.  He Gagnared, Explosioned, I Abra Cadabra'd, then called Asmodai over Burning Wand after I rested him, discarded, and swung in for 5 damage on top of my Bechstein and Burning Wand, 2 life for Explosion, and 2 life for Gagnar's lifelink.

Woot!  No Glory Seekers!


After this, we cut to top 8.  I was convinced my tiebreakers were terrible, but I miscounted how many undefeateds there were.  We had 2 left, and I thought there would be 4 undefeated players.  So then there were 8 players that were X-1 vying for the top 6 spots.  I ended up making 4th place on the top 8 cut.  The guy who played me in round 3 was 5th, so I end up getting paired against him.  Deck check passed with flying colors.  They got to enjoy my tech Wizard, Merlin.

Quarter Finals - L vs. Dungeon World (Dungeon/Adventurer Mix)

Game 1 I don't know what happened.  I spent a good 5 minutes shuffling.  It seems that when I shuffle too much the same cards clump together for no reason.  But it was really bad... I got all three of my Mary Sues.  He got a Glory/Drum set-up with something else that wasn't an adventurer that he was using to pick off the center.  Probably Fate Skeleton.  He killed my center, then swung for 6, which I Chillaxed.  His offensive pressure outweighed my pinging significantly this game since I hit that hard, early dead draw with 3 Mary Sues.  I end up swinging with my Bechstein and Burning Wand into his monsters.  I had a Mary Sue in hand and one gauge.  I had a Kosher in hand, and no other wizards I could play.  I died a little on the inside right there.  My deck absolutely fizzled.

Games gradeloc Games where I couldn't field units from dead drawing: 1

Game 2 was even worse.  I wasn't even hiding it.  I said audibly, "Why deck, WHY?!"  After shuffling the shit out of my cards and moving each Mary Sue to the opposite ends of my deck... I had a Nice One! in hand, and thought, "I can salvage this." when they slowly started to appear early.  I had one Abra Cadabra in my starting hand, one Mary Sue, one Asmodai, one Will Glassart.  I charge Asmodai, get another Abra Cadabra.  Fuck.  Use Nice One!  Draw two more Nice Ones.  *Facepalm*  Next turn draw Mary Sue #3.  Charge it.  Draw into Qinus Axia.  Here's the situation.

Opponent has Glory Seeker equipped and 7 life.  I have 3 gauge and Abra Cadabra in hand, along with a Bechstein equipped, two Trans-flame, a Mary Sue, and a Qinus Axia.  Of course, I had a Nice One! in hand, too.  I sat there figuring out if there was any possible combination to make this combo finish my opponent off.  I kept getting to 6 guaranteed damage, but no 7th.

If we exclude the Trans-flames and Bechsteins, and remove their damage, I needed to do 4 damage with 3 gauge.  The easiest way to secure damage would be to swing with 4 crit and Abra Cadabra their Shalsana (I didn't know if they had one or not).  Literally, only because I kept dead drawing and getting all of my gauge monsters (literally, all 4 of them, and no vanillas, non-gauge monsters), I had no outs.  If I had a Key of Solomon, first volume, I could have used Mary Sue to get that, use that to refill my gauge, call Qinus Axia to ping them for 1 (3), then swing for game.

With what I had though, because all of my creatures took gauge, I ran out of options.  I decided to try top decking into what I needed.  I used my Nice One! and got Will Glassart and something else.  Decide to call Mary Sue to get a Kosher.  Play Will Glassart to attempt to cast Kosher, but he destroys it with Pillar of Fire (which is honestly a misplay on his part.  He should wait until I declare combat, then take my units out so I can't replace them.  He got pretty lucky that I drew all of my gauge monsters and none of my vanillas, considering how my deck is ratiod.)  I end up losing the following turn.  He casts Shalsana in response to my attack anyway, so I don't think I could have burned enough to win the game without having drawn into some actual creatures earlier.  I was told that the top card of his deck that turn was a spell, so I would have lost anyway.  Lol

Games gradeloc Games where I couldn't field units from dead drawing: 2

All in all, I finally topped at a regional qualifiers for a Bushiroad game.  I didn't think that would ever happen, considering my piss-poor luck.  Still, I do wish I could have fought something other than Dungeon World with my deck.  Match-up is so boring.  Deck is so auto-pilot.  Waaaah.  WAAAAAAH!  Okay, I'm done crying about it.

Obligatory, "You're welcome" to all of the other toppers for being that one guy who took out all of the Dungeon World players for them except the guy who beat me twice.  Everyone else was talking about all of the modified trial decks, DDW decks, Legend World decks, Dragon World decks, etc. that they played against.  I fought nothing but tier 1 metashit all day while luck was taking a chainsaw to my nutsack because I'm Tim, dammit, I'm not allowed to do well at card games.

I do feel oddly inspired to finish out this deck, though.  I will probably be doing that over the next while, while looking at the Magic World trial deck and set 5 stuff to see if we get any new burn support.