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.
Showing posts with label Cool Story. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cool Story. Show all posts
Sunday, February 21, 2016
Monday, May 11, 2015
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.
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.
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
I Fail Luck for Life
Playing Lock on Victory Hard Mode.
Finally unlock set 5.
Try out MLB because why not? Only have 1 of him, though.
Enter game against Sharlene. Get gradelocked at 1 for two turns.
Spam Liens to fish for grade 2's, keep damage checking them. Damaged two Blaster Darks. This is important for later.
My deck is a weird thingy with all of my SP's, because I don't have the MLB's I want for the deck yet, so yolo.
I have two copies of Holy Disaster Dragon, which is discard a Royal Paladin, he gains 5k for the attack. This is also important.
My opponent attacks, I block everything, using up every card but Blaster Blade. They hit a double draw trigger.
My turn. My field:
Blaster Blade|Soul Saver Dragon|Holy Disaster Dragon
Elaine|Wingal Brave|Lien
I drew the heal and called it (lel), because I know I'm not blocking everything again.
They have 6 cards in hand, all 5k shields.
I attack with Blaster Blade, they guard for 5k.
I attack with Soul Saver. They guard with 3 units. At this point, ANY drive check in the game will win the game for me other than a very particular one. Two Blaster Darks. I had two left in my 23 card deck. I check both.
I attack with Holy Disaster Dragon, unable to discard a Royal Paladin for the effect, and they guard it with the remaining two cards in their hand.
Thanks for giving me that sixth damage heal into a guaranteed win for that turn. But my Master Ball just missed.
Odds of this happening with 23 cards in deck, and two Blaster Darks in deck: 0.4% Yay!
Finally unlock set 5.
Try out MLB because why not? Only have 1 of him, though.
Enter game against Sharlene. Get gradelocked at 1 for two turns.
Spam Liens to fish for grade 2's, keep damage checking them. Damaged two Blaster Darks. This is important for later.
My deck is a weird thingy with all of my SP's, because I don't have the MLB's I want for the deck yet, so yolo.
I have two copies of Holy Disaster Dragon, which is discard a Royal Paladin, he gains 5k for the attack. This is also important.
My opponent attacks, I block everything, using up every card but Blaster Blade. They hit a double draw trigger.
My turn. My field:
Blaster Blade|Soul Saver Dragon|Holy Disaster Dragon
Elaine|Wingal Brave|Lien
I drew the heal and called it (lel), because I know I'm not blocking everything again.
They have 6 cards in hand, all 5k shields.
I attack with Blaster Blade, they guard for 5k.
I attack with Soul Saver. They guard with 3 units. At this point, ANY drive check in the game will win the game for me other than a very particular one. Two Blaster Darks. I had two left in my 23 card deck. I check both.
I attack with Holy Disaster Dragon, unable to discard a Royal Paladin for the effect, and they guard it with the remaining two cards in their hand.
Thanks for giving me that sixth damage heal into a guaranteed win for that turn. But my Master Ball just missed.
Odds of this happening with 23 cards in deck, and two Blaster Darks in deck: 0.4% Yay!
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Chicago Regional Tournament Report
So, we'll start with the two big things, my placement and the deck I was using. I decided to go with Tom and Jerry this year, since I felt like it's one of the strongest possible mixed decks in the game right now, with its only major weakness being a straight OTT deck. I'm running the same decklist that I have on this blog:
Starter - Flask Marmoset
4x Ruler Chameleon (Crit)
4x Triangle Cobra (Crit)
4x Psychic Bird (Crit)
4x Oracle Guardian, Nike (Crit)
Grade 1's
4x Silver Wolf
4x Coiling Duckbill
3x Tank Mouse
2x Chocolat
1x Tic-Toc Flamingo
Grade 2's
4x Binoculus Tiger
4x Silent Tom
3x Maiden of Libra
Grade 3's
4x CEO Amaterasu
4x Battle Sister, Cookie
Now, my standings. There were about 360 people there, and I ended up 47th (Pics or it didn't happen?), losing in round 6. There were less than 32 people for round seven it seems, so I could totally just say "top 32 if you don't count tiebreakers". So, because I'm an egomaniac, we'll go with that. Top 32. I felt very fortunate that I got to use almost all of the tricks that the deck has to give, and neither myself nor my opponents were gradelocked in any of my games. Now for the play-by-play.
Round 1: W vs. DOtE
I rushed the guy super hard. I think he said he was a Pojoer (Flying Teapot?) and immediately knew who I was when he saw the mixed decks. He had no idea what to expect when he saw the Psychic Bird boosting my Vanguard on turn 1. I went second and drive checked into the Libra that I needed to ride, since I had no grade 2. I put him to 4 damage turn 3, then he crossrode into DOtE with only one card left in hand. I had a pretty good hunch he had no other DOtE's, and I ended up being correct. He attacks, I no guard at 3 damage, he checks a grade 1 and 2, and I get put to 4. I soul charge and check top-card with CEO seeing a critical and leaving it there. I knew that he checked a grade 1 and 2 last turn with one unknown card in his hand. I anticipated it being a perfect guard (it was actually a 10k). Since he was at 13k defense and my row was Coiling and Tom, I decided to pump up Coiling a bit. I used the effect of a Tank Mouse I already had out on Coiling, then called another one over it, doing the same thing, making Coiling a 15k boost, in case he checked double heals or some other shenanigans. I use my unboosted row to swing at his grade 2, retiring that. Then I attack with CEO, which he ended up one-to-passing from a misplay. Had he guarded that attack, I would have gone in with a 28k 2 crit Tom, which is the first cool thing this deck can do. Make crossrides shit their pants. Dude was a total bro and I'm happy to say he beat his goal of not losing in two rounds. I think he got to round 4.
Round 2: W vs. Pacifica/Vert
Only individual I fought with a bad deck. Only individual I fought with a bad attitude. Maybe the only individual I fought who wasn't aware of who I was or who didn't see someone walk up to me and be like, "Wait, you're that Tim?" I was polite, didn't boast, didn't gloat. I mean, for me, that's definitely my best behavior. She was pissed that I was stomping her. I mean, it sucks to be losing hard in the second round, but it wasn't like I was sacking her. She drew into a great hand. Continued to get great draws. But she had to keep guarding with all of her boosters since I was intentionally leaving Tom at low power so she would do so. She checked two stands with no front-row rear-guards to place them on since she had to guard Tom with all of them. I used Tank mouse to make a Tom row hit an extra stage, to which she responds, "I don't think you can do that." I explain to her that Tank Mouse only needs a Great Nature target and not a Great Nature Vanguard. After this point her attitude switched from irritated to bitchy. I get her to five, and with a break ride draw into Pacifica's skill for another +1, she only had 3 RG's out total that turn. Even with the card draw and bouncing from Pacifica and break riding, I swing with my 21k Amaterasu which she had to no guard. Crit. Crit. She looks absolutely livid (like the criticals actually mattered), refused to check her damage, and began picking up her cards and gathering her other belongings. I extend my hand and say, "Good game." She says, "No it wasn't!" and storms off. Good game, I guess?
Round 3: W vs. Sephirot/Laurel
I got two Toms in my starting hand. I get him to four damage very quickly since I had a double Tom whammy that they couldn't guard with grade 0's. My inability to win dice rolls helped secure all of the rushes. He ended up riding Laurel on his third turn, which pretty much secured the victory for me. Tom trick #134 won the game for me. He had enough grade 0's in hand to guard my Vanguard, and a few 1's and 2's, but not enough if I pumped Tom up. I had no Tank Mouse or Binoculus out, so I wasn't in a good position to pump units up. Then I looked at my Marmoset, and was like, "This is going to be awesome." I used his skill twice on himself, since I was at 4 damage myself. This made my Tom row 5+8+8, which is a nice 21k. I scried a critical, so I took the game that turn.
Round 4: W vs. The Blood
I felt bad. This was the only game that I felt like I turbo sacked. I crit him turn 2 and double crit him turn 3. I mean, 16 crit is there for a reason, but I still felt bad. I apologized profeusly, but my opponent was like, "Nah man. It's cool." We wished each other the best of luck. Then all of my friends left to go do other stuff since they got eliminated, and I was like, "NO! Friendship! I will lose if you don't support me with your friendship! Has Yu-Gi-Oh! taught you nothing!" My predictions ended up being true.
Round 5: L vs. The Blood
I secure an amazing rush early, getting the guy to 5 damage. For the first and third turns after this, hitting a single trigger would have secured game for me... but he ended up winning the game of pressure, getting an ultimate break out, and continuously swinging for good numbers with crossridden defense. I make a pretty cool move by using Marmoset to off himself while calling a Coiling to cycle it into a new card while using him as a pretty legit beater. Each turn after the opening turns would start with me drawing a crit, soul charging a crit, scrying a non-crit, putting it at the bottom, and hitting two non-crits, save turn 4 when he had a perfect guard to handle the bonus crit Tom. I made a big push on the fifth turn, sacking two of my boosters to hit some magic numbers. A single crit could have won the game for me, but I only had 3 left in my 18~ card deck. No cigar. It was a great match all-around that could have gone either way.
Round 6: L vs. DOtE
He hit no less than 4 draws in the first 3 turns. I knew he had his extra DOtE's in hand. Since I got him to 3 damage on my first turn from hitting a crit, I was very surprised that he went straight for my rear guards since I was at no damage for a few turns. He ended up amassing an enormous hand, but stayed at 3 for quite a while. I was in a bad spot, though, since my first damage check was a Tom, and my first soul charge was a Tom. I had a Tom in my opening hand, but he attacked it with his Vanguard Dragonic Overlord, and I didn't have the ability to guard that and his rear-guards from getting Tom. I was able to prevent a bonus critical because of his decision, so I was literally at 0 damage to his 3 when he rode DOtE. Since he used Conroe to fetch a Barri, I'm not sure that it mattered. I kept guarding DOtE since it had a draw trigger booster, and as I said, I knew had that DOtE in his hand. The guy made several misplays throughout the match. He said he had only been playing for 2 weeks, and he was super surprised he got as far as he did. I end up checking Tom with my scry, and with two gone I wasn't sure what to do. I decided to put it at the bottom, but that might not have been the best choice. He had two nulls and I had other units I could call to the front, so I wanted more things to guard with. The game edged on into turn 5 or 6, I had 2 cards left in my hand, and I knew I had no chance to survive the next turn since I couldn't force out much guard over his 13k wall, I had no more Toms, and he had 9 cards in hand. ~_~ But the card I drew into for turn was a Psychic Bird. I moved it to soul and drew a card. I swing with CEO at his Vanguard, and he no guards it since he's going to be able to block everything after that easily. Since he was new, he didn't know about CEO's megablast. Psychic Bird secured the 8th soul for me, so I was able to draw 5 from my deck, which put me back in the game. A little cheesy, but it helped make up for (albeit way too late) all of the cards he drew into earlier. I burn most of the cards to guard all of his attacks. I have enough for a full field, and nothing more. I end up hoping beyond hope that he two-to-passes me the next turn, since I had plenty of crits in my deck, and manmode was my only way out. He's at 4 at this point. He nulls me, I double crit, passing one trigger to each rear-guard. He guards both of those and still has a good 2-3 cards in hand. I didn't have enough to guard all of his units and have no heals, so I one-to-pass DOtE, win the one-to-pass, but lose to a rear guard attack. Not much I could have done to sway the game back into my favor since my deck was at only 5 cards from sitting on CEO for so long. No complaints though, I put up a hell of a fight given the circumstances and I'm very satisfied with the results that Tom and Jerry gave me for the tournament.
Kageroyals piloted by Dustin Henry - Side Special
Poor, poor Dustin. He got sacked so hard. ;__; It's not him, it's me. My luck did this to him.
Game 1 - L vs. Ezel
His opponent went first. Dustin attacks, crits and it's now his opponent's turn. Turn 2 superior ride into Ezel. They use two self-damagers, bringing themself up to 4, limit break with Ezel getting a 9-10k out, and now he can't guard Ezel at all. Double crit. Power got passed to a RG row with a boost which also couldn't be guarded without dropping 3 cards. The Ezel style superior rides are extremely tough for Kageroyals to handle since it's based around guarding Vanguard attacks early with single cards, and both Ezel's 1k for each GP rear guard and Twin-Drive!! get in the way of that. Securing that into a double crit is the ultimate disaster for Kageroyals, because it takes away the cheap, single-card guarding advantage that the deck utilizes. After losing all of the momentum in an instant, he attacks with his grade 2. His opponent swings in again for huge numbers, and he just couldn't hold up. Ezel has always been registered as a counter deck, but this is the absolute worst-case scenario for the match-ups.
Game 2 - L vs. Master Beetle Megacolony
He ended up taking a lead against his opponent and pushing them to 5 damage. He gets knocked to 5 as well. He starts his turn, attacks with Dragonic Waterfall, "persona blasts" for 31k, and his opponent is like, "Wow, 31k! I can't guard that!". Drive check 1, crit. Drive check 2, crit. His opponent says, "Wow. I'm not even going to check my damage. Good game, man." Dustin, being a bro, is like, "Dude, check your damage. You never know." Heal. Heal. Heal. Dustin loses the next turn. Words cannot describe...
Starter - Flask Marmoset
4x Ruler Chameleon (Crit)
4x Triangle Cobra (Crit)
4x Psychic Bird (Crit)
4x Oracle Guardian, Nike (Crit)
Grade 1's
4x Silver Wolf
4x Coiling Duckbill
3x Tank Mouse
2x Chocolat
1x Tic-Toc Flamingo
Grade 2's
4x Binoculus Tiger
4x Silent Tom
3x Maiden of Libra
Grade 3's
4x CEO Amaterasu
4x Battle Sister, Cookie
Now, my standings. There were about 360 people there, and I ended up 47th (Pics or it didn't happen?), losing in round 6. There were less than 32 people for round seven it seems, so I could totally just say "top 32 if you don't count tiebreakers". So, because I'm an egomaniac, we'll go with that. Top 32. I felt very fortunate that I got to use almost all of the tricks that the deck has to give, and neither myself nor my opponents were gradelocked in any of my games. Now for the play-by-play.
Round 1: W vs. DOtE
I rushed the guy super hard. I think he said he was a Pojoer (Flying Teapot?) and immediately knew who I was when he saw the mixed decks. He had no idea what to expect when he saw the Psychic Bird boosting my Vanguard on turn 1. I went second and drive checked into the Libra that I needed to ride, since I had no grade 2. I put him to 4 damage turn 3, then he crossrode into DOtE with only one card left in hand. I had a pretty good hunch he had no other DOtE's, and I ended up being correct. He attacks, I no guard at 3 damage, he checks a grade 1 and 2, and I get put to 4. I soul charge and check top-card with CEO seeing a critical and leaving it there. I knew that he checked a grade 1 and 2 last turn with one unknown card in his hand. I anticipated it being a perfect guard (it was actually a 10k). Since he was at 13k defense and my row was Coiling and Tom, I decided to pump up Coiling a bit. I used the effect of a Tank Mouse I already had out on Coiling, then called another one over it, doing the same thing, making Coiling a 15k boost, in case he checked double heals or some other shenanigans. I use my unboosted row to swing at his grade 2, retiring that. Then I attack with CEO, which he ended up one-to-passing from a misplay. Had he guarded that attack, I would have gone in with a 28k 2 crit Tom, which is the first cool thing this deck can do. Make crossrides shit their pants. Dude was a total bro and I'm happy to say he beat his goal of not losing in two rounds. I think he got to round 4.
Round 2: W vs. Pacifica/Vert
Only individual I fought with a bad deck. Only individual I fought with a bad attitude. Maybe the only individual I fought who wasn't aware of who I was or who didn't see someone walk up to me and be like, "Wait, you're that Tim?" I was polite, didn't boast, didn't gloat. I mean, for me, that's definitely my best behavior. She was pissed that I was stomping her. I mean, it sucks to be losing hard in the second round, but it wasn't like I was sacking her. She drew into a great hand. Continued to get great draws. But she had to keep guarding with all of her boosters since I was intentionally leaving Tom at low power so she would do so. She checked two stands with no front-row rear-guards to place them on since she had to guard Tom with all of them. I used Tank mouse to make a Tom row hit an extra stage, to which she responds, "I don't think you can do that." I explain to her that Tank Mouse only needs a Great Nature target and not a Great Nature Vanguard. After this point her attitude switched from irritated to bitchy. I get her to five, and with a break ride draw into Pacifica's skill for another +1, she only had 3 RG's out total that turn. Even with the card draw and bouncing from Pacifica and break riding, I swing with my 21k Amaterasu which she had to no guard. Crit. Crit. She looks absolutely livid (like the criticals actually mattered), refused to check her damage, and began picking up her cards and gathering her other belongings. I extend my hand and say, "Good game." She says, "No it wasn't!" and storms off. Good game, I guess?
Round 3: W vs. Sephirot/Laurel
I got two Toms in my starting hand. I get him to four damage very quickly since I had a double Tom whammy that they couldn't guard with grade 0's. My inability to win dice rolls helped secure all of the rushes. He ended up riding Laurel on his third turn, which pretty much secured the victory for me. Tom trick #134 won the game for me. He had enough grade 0's in hand to guard my Vanguard, and a few 1's and 2's, but not enough if I pumped Tom up. I had no Tank Mouse or Binoculus out, so I wasn't in a good position to pump units up. Then I looked at my Marmoset, and was like, "This is going to be awesome." I used his skill twice on himself, since I was at 4 damage myself. This made my Tom row 5+8+8, which is a nice 21k. I scried a critical, so I took the game that turn.
Round 4: W vs. The Blood
I felt bad. This was the only game that I felt like I turbo sacked. I crit him turn 2 and double crit him turn 3. I mean, 16 crit is there for a reason, but I still felt bad. I apologized profeusly, but my opponent was like, "Nah man. It's cool." We wished each other the best of luck. Then all of my friends left to go do other stuff since they got eliminated, and I was like, "NO! Friendship! I will lose if you don't support me with your friendship! Has Yu-Gi-Oh! taught you nothing!" My predictions ended up being true.
Round 5: L vs. The Blood
I secure an amazing rush early, getting the guy to 5 damage. For the first and third turns after this, hitting a single trigger would have secured game for me... but he ended up winning the game of pressure, getting an ultimate break out, and continuously swinging for good numbers with crossridden defense. I make a pretty cool move by using Marmoset to off himself while calling a Coiling to cycle it into a new card while using him as a pretty legit beater. Each turn after the opening turns would start with me drawing a crit, soul charging a crit, scrying a non-crit, putting it at the bottom, and hitting two non-crits, save turn 4 when he had a perfect guard to handle the bonus crit Tom. I made a big push on the fifth turn, sacking two of my boosters to hit some magic numbers. A single crit could have won the game for me, but I only had 3 left in my 18~ card deck. No cigar. It was a great match all-around that could have gone either way.
Round 6: L vs. DOtE
He hit no less than 4 draws in the first 3 turns. I knew he had his extra DOtE's in hand. Since I got him to 3 damage on my first turn from hitting a crit, I was very surprised that he went straight for my rear guards since I was at no damage for a few turns. He ended up amassing an enormous hand, but stayed at 3 for quite a while. I was in a bad spot, though, since my first damage check was a Tom, and my first soul charge was a Tom. I had a Tom in my opening hand, but he attacked it with his Vanguard Dragonic Overlord, and I didn't have the ability to guard that and his rear-guards from getting Tom. I was able to prevent a bonus critical because of his decision, so I was literally at 0 damage to his 3 when he rode DOtE. Since he used Conroe to fetch a Barri, I'm not sure that it mattered. I kept guarding DOtE since it had a draw trigger booster, and as I said, I knew had that DOtE in his hand. The guy made several misplays throughout the match. He said he had only been playing for 2 weeks, and he was super surprised he got as far as he did. I end up checking Tom with my scry, and with two gone I wasn't sure what to do. I decided to put it at the bottom, but that might not have been the best choice. He had two nulls and I had other units I could call to the front, so I wanted more things to guard with. The game edged on into turn 5 or 6, I had 2 cards left in my hand, and I knew I had no chance to survive the next turn since I couldn't force out much guard over his 13k wall, I had no more Toms, and he had 9 cards in hand. ~_~ But the card I drew into for turn was a Psychic Bird. I moved it to soul and drew a card. I swing with CEO at his Vanguard, and he no guards it since he's going to be able to block everything after that easily. Since he was new, he didn't know about CEO's megablast. Psychic Bird secured the 8th soul for me, so I was able to draw 5 from my deck, which put me back in the game. A little cheesy, but it helped make up for (albeit way too late) all of the cards he drew into earlier. I burn most of the cards to guard all of his attacks. I have enough for a full field, and nothing more. I end up hoping beyond hope that he two-to-passes me the next turn, since I had plenty of crits in my deck, and manmode was my only way out. He's at 4 at this point. He nulls me, I double crit, passing one trigger to each rear-guard. He guards both of those and still has a good 2-3 cards in hand. I didn't have enough to guard all of his units and have no heals, so I one-to-pass DOtE, win the one-to-pass, but lose to a rear guard attack. Not much I could have done to sway the game back into my favor since my deck was at only 5 cards from sitting on CEO for so long. No complaints though, I put up a hell of a fight given the circumstances and I'm very satisfied with the results that Tom and Jerry gave me for the tournament.
Kageroyals piloted by Dustin Henry - Side Special
Poor, poor Dustin. He got sacked so hard. ;__; It's not him, it's me. My luck did this to him.
Game 1 - L vs. Ezel
His opponent went first. Dustin attacks, crits and it's now his opponent's turn. Turn 2 superior ride into Ezel. They use two self-damagers, bringing themself up to 4, limit break with Ezel getting a 9-10k out, and now he can't guard Ezel at all. Double crit. Power got passed to a RG row with a boost which also couldn't be guarded without dropping 3 cards. The Ezel style superior rides are extremely tough for Kageroyals to handle since it's based around guarding Vanguard attacks early with single cards, and both Ezel's 1k for each GP rear guard and Twin-Drive!! get in the way of that. Securing that into a double crit is the ultimate disaster for Kageroyals, because it takes away the cheap, single-card guarding advantage that the deck utilizes. After losing all of the momentum in an instant, he attacks with his grade 2. His opponent swings in again for huge numbers, and he just couldn't hold up. Ezel has always been registered as a counter deck, but this is the absolute worst-case scenario for the match-ups.
Game 2 - L vs. Master Beetle Megacolony
He ended up taking a lead against his opponent and pushing them to 5 damage. He gets knocked to 5 as well. He starts his turn, attacks with Dragonic Waterfall, "persona blasts" for 31k, and his opponent is like, "Wow, 31k! I can't guard that!". Drive check 1, crit. Drive check 2, crit. His opponent says, "Wow. I'm not even going to check my damage. Good game, man." Dustin, being a bro, is like, "Dude, check your damage. You never know." Heal. Heal. Heal. Dustin loses the next turn. Words cannot describe...
Sunday, June 23, 2013
What's an Standard Deviation?!
I'm perfectly cool with some random things happening now and again, but I expect a normalized spread of things to occur. Within at least the second Standard Deviation. Ever since I started using statistics in this game, I can't help but find that I should average getting a particular grade 3 Vanguard on turn 3 a certain amount of the time. This is like getting your one-of-four Vermillion or Garmore on turn 3. Standard stuff. The odds of getting one would be pretty high, more than half of the time to be exact. But my deck has to be the systemic anomaly.
So, the average amount of times I should be getting that grade 3 on turn 3 would be: 25.5~/40 games. I used some lazy math and got about 64% for the odds of me getting a particular grade 3 in time to ride it on turn 3, not counting missriding as I've left those games out of what I've been recording.
I've playtested this particular deck (Corrupt Paladins of Soul on this blog) extensively, and I have gotten this particular grade 3 (with no searchers/card draw other than 4 draw triggers) 6 times in those 40 playtests. I playtested it 10 games this week, so here's my results.
1st game- Deck trolled me. It was my second damage check. Didn't see another.
2nd game- 3 of them made up the bottom 4 cards of my deck. The other one was 10 from the bottom.
3rd game- Spread them apart in the deck before shuffling, then sufficiently randomized cards. Ride my 1-of Palamedes. Drive check Lohengrin, and because I did, I can't guard and lose the following turn.
4th game- Have someone else shuffle my deck. They shuffled, 2nd damage check was that grade 3. 6th damage check was that grade 3.
5th/6th game- Played online. Rode my 2-of grade 3 each game. Hit one Lohengrin... as a damage check. Yup.
7th game- Aggressive mulligan (5). Had no Lohengrin, threw everything back, hit no Lohengrin. First damage check it went away, rest were near bottom.
8th game- Turn 2, had no grade 3. Shuffled deck to search for Soul Saver with Pongal.
Lohengrin was my top card. ;__; Didn't see it rest of game.
9th game- I played against a new guy at the shop who had a starter deck. I get Lohengrin opening hand. I proceed to stomp him with my 32k Barron rows. ~_~ Well, when I can get him out, the deck works great, at least. >_<
10th game- Simply didn't see him at all. Didn't bother checking my deck for him. Decided it was writin' time.
So this means that I'm hitting my grade 3 19.5 games less than I should be (48.5% off from the mark of 64% that I should be getting). I would have needed to get Lohengrin 4.25 times as much as I did to be hitting him as much as I should. And that's not counting hitting multiples of him in a single game. My brain is severely addled by this, as I use pretty sufficient shuffling methods and even called in other people to shuffle. I even used an online shuffler a few games and got the same results.
So, the odds of me getting this result would be a 0.000000000000000X type of result. Give or take a few 0's since I'm feeling too lazy to work it out. That's how much this deck hates me. My results are close enough to 0 to be counted as 0. Yup.
Mathematical fun time.
So, the average amount of times I should be getting that grade 3 on turn 3 would be: 25.5~/40 games. I used some lazy math and got about 64% for the odds of me getting a particular grade 3 in time to ride it on turn 3, not counting missriding as I've left those games out of what I've been recording.
I've playtested this particular deck (Corrupt Paladins of Soul on this blog) extensively, and I have gotten this particular grade 3 (with no searchers/card draw other than 4 draw triggers) 6 times in those 40 playtests. I playtested it 10 games this week, so here's my results.
1st game- Deck trolled me. It was my second damage check. Didn't see another.
2nd game- 3 of them made up the bottom 4 cards of my deck. The other one was 10 from the bottom.
3rd game- Spread them apart in the deck before shuffling, then sufficiently randomized cards. Ride my 1-of Palamedes. Drive check Lohengrin, and because I did, I can't guard and lose the following turn.
4th game- Have someone else shuffle my deck. They shuffled, 2nd damage check was that grade 3. 6th damage check was that grade 3.
5th/6th game- Played online. Rode my 2-of grade 3 each game. Hit one Lohengrin... as a damage check. Yup.
7th game- Aggressive mulligan (5). Had no Lohengrin, threw everything back, hit no Lohengrin. First damage check it went away, rest were near bottom.
8th game- Turn 2, had no grade 3. Shuffled deck to search for Soul Saver with Pongal.
Lohengrin was my top card. ;__; Didn't see it rest of game.
9th game- I played against a new guy at the shop who had a starter deck. I get Lohengrin opening hand. I proceed to stomp him with my 32k Barron rows. ~_~ Well, when I can get him out, the deck works great, at least. >_<
10th game- Simply didn't see him at all. Didn't bother checking my deck for him. Decided it was writin' time.
So this means that I'm hitting my grade 3 19.5 games less than I should be (48.5% off from the mark of 64% that I should be getting). I would have needed to get Lohengrin 4.25 times as much as I did to be hitting him as much as I should. And that's not counting hitting multiples of him in a single game. My brain is severely addled by this, as I use pretty sufficient shuffling methods and even called in other people to shuffle. I even used an online shuffler a few games and got the same results.
So, the odds of me getting this result would be a 0.000000000000000X type of result. Give or take a few 0's since I'm feeling too lazy to work it out. That's how much this deck hates me. My results are close enough to 0 to be counted as 0. Yup.
Saturday, June 15, 2013
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Regional Qualifiers #2 (Gamerz)
So, there comes a time in every boy's life where he has to man the fuck up and keep his word. I said I was taking Amon to the regional qualifiers and pussed out at the last moment and switched to Kageroyals. Even with consistently bad hands and missing triggers all over the place, I still got 5th with Kageroyals. The deck is strong and it has nothing left to prove. Silent Tom told me to man the fuck up, keep my word, and go with Hellfire Ritual. Here are the results.
Game 1 (Go Pdi)
You might be wondering why I made the Gold Paladin name missing several letters. That's because the deck I was playing against was missing triggers. They had about 7 in their deck. They misplayed several times, including not attacking on their turn, and I won. Not too much to say about it, I gave him some advice and helped him out after match and proceeded on.
Game 2 (Shadow Paladin)
This match was the manliest match ever. We're both in a tight spot, I have a ton of damage (4), he has no viable rear guards since I keep swinging at them, but only one damage. He swings at my vanguard, I do a two-to-pass. He initiated manmode and gets a heal and a draw. I take a damage. Next turn, I take out his rear guards again and swing with my Vanguard, he does a two-to-pass, I initiate man mode, get a heal and a draw. His next turn, I'm in much better shape. I do a two-to-pass on his vanguard. He initiates manmode. Crit, draw. I lose. MANLIEST MATCH EVER!
Game 3 (Great Nature)
This guy was a special little snowflake. He decided to use 8 draws in conjunction with the high base power of Great Nature to have a big hand (of 5k shields). My Amon deck doesn't give any fucks about 5k shields, unless you've got like 9 of them. Well, he kind of did. He hit 5 triggers on his first 5 drive/damage checks. 4 draws and a heal which activated. I get him down to 7 cards in hand, i know 5 of them. He had a 10k, 4 5k's in hand that I knew of, and a 5k and a null guard that I didn't know about. I push all in with Amon since he's at 5 damage, having my entire backrow being Doreens. I had two null guards in hand and nothing else, so I charge those and another unit I had on the field. I have 27k, 30k, 15k for my rows. I swing 15k, he guards with 10. He has 6 cards left. I attack with Amon, he null guards, dropping a 5k shield. I hit no triggers. He drops 4 5k's, the rest of his hand, to stop the 5th damage. Just like last week, hitting a single trigger would have won the game for me. He actually used 2 null guards already, which is why I wasn't convinced one of the two cards I didn't know about was going to be one, but I already factored in that if it was, I just needed a trigger to break through the rest of his guard, which I was right about. It kind of sucked losing so early, but the games were just so overflooded with triggers I couldn't really do anything about it.
All-in-all, I shouldn't have made luck my dump stat, but at least I manned up and kept my word. I didn't secure one of the regional qualifiers, but at least I had a blast being a nooblord loser failsauce unwinner. <3
Game 1 (Go Pdi)
You might be wondering why I made the Gold Paladin name missing several letters. That's because the deck I was playing against was missing triggers. They had about 7 in their deck. They misplayed several times, including not attacking on their turn, and I won. Not too much to say about it, I gave him some advice and helped him out after match and proceeded on.
Game 2 (Shadow Paladin)
This match was the manliest match ever. We're both in a tight spot, I have a ton of damage (4), he has no viable rear guards since I keep swinging at them, but only one damage. He swings at my vanguard, I do a two-to-pass. He initiated manmode and gets a heal and a draw. I take a damage. Next turn, I take out his rear guards again and swing with my Vanguard, he does a two-to-pass, I initiate man mode, get a heal and a draw. His next turn, I'm in much better shape. I do a two-to-pass on his vanguard. He initiates manmode. Crit, draw. I lose. MANLIEST MATCH EVER!
Game 3 (Great Nature)
This guy was a special little snowflake. He decided to use 8 draws in conjunction with the high base power of Great Nature to have a big hand (of 5k shields). My Amon deck doesn't give any fucks about 5k shields, unless you've got like 9 of them. Well, he kind of did. He hit 5 triggers on his first 5 drive/damage checks. 4 draws and a heal which activated. I get him down to 7 cards in hand, i know 5 of them. He had a 10k, 4 5k's in hand that I knew of, and a 5k and a null guard that I didn't know about. I push all in with Amon since he's at 5 damage, having my entire backrow being Doreens. I had two null guards in hand and nothing else, so I charge those and another unit I had on the field. I have 27k, 30k, 15k for my rows. I swing 15k, he guards with 10. He has 6 cards left. I attack with Amon, he null guards, dropping a 5k shield. I hit no triggers. He drops 4 5k's, the rest of his hand, to stop the 5th damage. Just like last week, hitting a single trigger would have won the game for me. He actually used 2 null guards already, which is why I wasn't convinced one of the two cards I didn't know about was going to be one, but I already factored in that if it was, I just needed a trigger to break through the rest of his guard, which I was right about. It kind of sucked losing so early, but the games were just so overflooded with triggers I couldn't really do anything about it.
All-in-all, I shouldn't have made luck my dump stat, but at least I manned up and kept my word. I didn't secure one of the regional qualifiers, but at least I had a blast being a nooblord loser failsauce unwinner. <3
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Regional Qualifiers #1 (Krypton Comics)
Here's the results from my awesome day at Krypton Comics with CJ Sarber.
Game 1 (MLB)
I made an early misplay by not 10k guarding their 7+5k attack to my 8k vanguard. They got a crit, which my 10k guard would have shut down completely and saved me two early damage. That woke me up (I'm still pretty tired) and I stopped misplaying after that. I still ended up taking a demanding lead and secure the game turn 4.
Game 2 (Gold Paladins)
I ride up perfectly and reach turn 4. My opponent has mostly 5k shields and has exactly enough guard to block both of my rear-guards, but not my vanguard. He's at 4 damage. I'm at 5 damage because he swung 23k turn two with his Ezel/Tron combo due to the superior ride. So he no guards my vanguard. I have 14 triggers left in my 37~ card deck. My odds of hitting one critical and winning are about 72%. My odds of surviving his next turn if he didn't hit triggers would be guaranteed as long as I didn't drive check two grade 3's. I have two Bors on the field. I drive check two Bors, immediately declare my own loss, and chuckle to myself. This time I'M the Byond Shuffler.
Game 3 (Gold Paladins)
Another Ezelmore deck. I don't remember much about this game. I won with 3 rows of 3 Bors/8k's. Still Byond shuffling like a nooblord. All I remember was that they had 3 damage and no guarded my Bors and I Kageroyal'd them with a double crit.
Game 4 (Spike Brothers)
I got wailed on hard early game. She hit trigger after trigger after trigger. I end up winning by getting a critical at the end, but only because she misplayed a few times.
Game 5 (MLB)
Same player I beat in round one. I got gradelocked at 1 for a turn. This game lasted a while, going to turn 6 or 7. He damage checked a Blaster Dark and I attacked into one of them to retire it. He drive checked another and got one with Wingal Brave. I ended up losing to two consecutive +10k's from moving the Blasters to soul. One of the sad things about not running perfect guards is encountering big-hitting vanguards with bonus crit. I didn't see any Bediviere and 4 of each Blaster, so he had at least 3 instances where not having a booster caused him to be unable to swing over any of my units.
Result - Kageroyals went 3-2 in the tournament, netting me 5th place.
Side games
Kageroyals - won two more side games and lost one, putting me at 5-3 for the day. Not as good as usual, but I won't complain.
Royal Paladin/Dark Irregulars - This deck was dysfunctional. Not because it was built wrong, it just never drew what it needed ever. I did not have a single game where Lohengrin (running 4) was my vanguard save ONE game where he was ridden AFTER Palamedes. Palamedes was my Vanguard 6 games. I only have one of him. I ended the night 0-8 with this deck because Lohengrin is the entire crux of it working. I really need to shuffle better because holy crap that was awful. I still had fun playing it, but it just did NOT function the way it was supposed to. Again, Byond shuffle fail by me.
Hellfire Ritual - Went 5-2. I lost one game before the tournament with it, then lost once to CJ. CJ hit a 6th damage heal and double crit me at 3 damage to seal the deal on me (which I totally called!). I love comebacks, so I was probably more excited about it than he was. Sadly, my strongest row was only 30k unboosted. I guess I need to start lifting again.
Game 1 (MLB)
I made an early misplay by not 10k guarding their 7+5k attack to my 8k vanguard. They got a crit, which my 10k guard would have shut down completely and saved me two early damage. That woke me up (I'm still pretty tired) and I stopped misplaying after that. I still ended up taking a demanding lead and secure the game turn 4.
Game 2 (Gold Paladins)
I ride up perfectly and reach turn 4. My opponent has mostly 5k shields and has exactly enough guard to block both of my rear-guards, but not my vanguard. He's at 4 damage. I'm at 5 damage because he swung 23k turn two with his Ezel/Tron combo due to the superior ride. So he no guards my vanguard. I have 14 triggers left in my 37~ card deck. My odds of hitting one critical and winning are about 72%. My odds of surviving his next turn if he didn't hit triggers would be guaranteed as long as I didn't drive check two grade 3's. I have two Bors on the field. I drive check two Bors, immediately declare my own loss, and chuckle to myself. This time I'M the Byond Shuffler.
Game 3 (Gold Paladins)
Another Ezelmore deck. I don't remember much about this game. I won with 3 rows of 3 Bors/8k's. Still Byond shuffling like a nooblord. All I remember was that they had 3 damage and no guarded my Bors and I Kageroyal'd them with a double crit.
Game 4 (Spike Brothers)
I got wailed on hard early game. She hit trigger after trigger after trigger. I end up winning by getting a critical at the end, but only because she misplayed a few times.
Game 5 (MLB)
Same player I beat in round one. I got gradelocked at 1 for a turn. This game lasted a while, going to turn 6 or 7. He damage checked a Blaster Dark and I attacked into one of them to retire it. He drive checked another and got one with Wingal Brave. I ended up losing to two consecutive +10k's from moving the Blasters to soul. One of the sad things about not running perfect guards is encountering big-hitting vanguards with bonus crit. I didn't see any Bediviere and 4 of each Blaster, so he had at least 3 instances where not having a booster caused him to be unable to swing over any of my units.
Result - Kageroyals went 3-2 in the tournament, netting me 5th place.
Side games
Kageroyals - won two more side games and lost one, putting me at 5-3 for the day. Not as good as usual, but I won't complain.
Royal Paladin/Dark Irregulars - This deck was dysfunctional. Not because it was built wrong, it just never drew what it needed ever. I did not have a single game where Lohengrin (running 4) was my vanguard save ONE game where he was ridden AFTER Palamedes. Palamedes was my Vanguard 6 games. I only have one of him. I ended the night 0-8 with this deck because Lohengrin is the entire crux of it working. I really need to shuffle better because holy crap that was awful. I still had fun playing it, but it just did NOT function the way it was supposed to. Again, Byond shuffle fail by me.
Hellfire Ritual - Went 5-2. I lost one game before the tournament with it, then lost once to CJ. CJ hit a 6th damage heal and double crit me at 3 damage to seal the deal on me (which I totally called!). I love comebacks, so I was probably more excited about it than he was. Sadly, my strongest row was only 30k unboosted. I guess I need to start lifting again.
Monday, January 21, 2013
I am the Great Morikawa!
The tale of the Great
Morikawa! Today I decided to do that one thing I always said I was going
to do but never actually took the initiative to do: Build a Morikawa
deck. There are a few rules for building and playing such a deck. The
first rule: Your deck must consist of at least two clans. Second rule:
You can only have a vanilla 6k starter, 8 vanilla grade 1's and 8
vanilla grade 2's. That means you will have exactly 17 grade 3's. Third
rule: Any cards that aren't grade 3's that you draw you must put back
into the deck with your mulligan.
With those rules established, I decided to go the route he used in the show. I combined Dragon Monk, Goku and Juggernaut Maximum. Granted, Goku needs Kagero grade 3's and I ran Seifried for the Spike Brothers section. I ended up with 8 Kagero and 9 Spike Brothers grade 3's. My triggers were split in half. 8 crit from Kagero, and 4 heal/4 crit from Spike Brothers.
The ultimate challenge: Victory!
The first match I played with this deck was my only victory. It began with me getting 3 grade 3's and two grade 2's. I placed the weak grade 2's back into my deck. The Great Morikawa only cares about power! I happen to receive a critical trigger and a grade 2 back from my mulligan. Turn one happens and I go first. I miss my ride phase. Next turn my opponent leads off by hitting me for one damage. Next turn happens and I hit my grade 1. The Great Morikawa swings and deals one damage. Next turn my opponent misses his grade 3 ride. That fool, it's the most important one! I take one more damage. It is my turn and Morikawa gets another Bahr! With my 8k boosting my MVP 10k, I deal one more damage! Morikawa is ahead of the game. Next turn my opponent hits his grade 3 and places another down. He also calls a grade one into his front row. He swings twice, but I get a critical trigger and only take two damage.
Here it is, I have 4 damage to my opponent's two damage. I make the call. FINAL TURN!
I ride General Seifried and call two Juggernaut Maximum. Bahr is a puny grade 1 that weakens my avatar, Juggernaut Maximum. I call a Cheer Girl, Maryland over him to reinforce my lineup. I soulblast and strike with my Juggs, dealing two damage and evening up the score. The moment of truth happened, I needed to deal two more damage to my opponent, so I strike with General Seifried! My opponent calls out, "No guard!" First check! I get Tahr! Yes it's a critical trig- Wait! I cannot use it! It is a Kagero trigger. Second Drive check... General Seifried. I activate Seifried's skill, calling Seifried and attack once more! My opponent (who really wanted me to win) says, "No guard!" He reveals no trigger, and the game is mine! The Great Morikawa is victorious!
With those rules established, I decided to go the route he used in the show. I combined Dragon Monk, Goku and Juggernaut Maximum. Granted, Goku needs Kagero grade 3's and I ran Seifried for the Spike Brothers section. I ended up with 8 Kagero and 9 Spike Brothers grade 3's. My triggers were split in half. 8 crit from Kagero, and 4 heal/4 crit from Spike Brothers.
The ultimate challenge: Victory!
The first match I played with this deck was my only victory. It began with me getting 3 grade 3's and two grade 2's. I placed the weak grade 2's back into my deck. The Great Morikawa only cares about power! I happen to receive a critical trigger and a grade 2 back from my mulligan. Turn one happens and I go first. I miss my ride phase. Next turn my opponent leads off by hitting me for one damage. Next turn happens and I hit my grade 1. The Great Morikawa swings and deals one damage. Next turn my opponent misses his grade 3 ride. That fool, it's the most important one! I take one more damage. It is my turn and Morikawa gets another Bahr! With my 8k boosting my MVP 10k, I deal one more damage! Morikawa is ahead of the game. Next turn my opponent hits his grade 3 and places another down. He also calls a grade one into his front row. He swings twice, but I get a critical trigger and only take two damage.
Here it is, I have 4 damage to my opponent's two damage. I make the call. FINAL TURN!
I ride General Seifried and call two Juggernaut Maximum. Bahr is a puny grade 1 that weakens my avatar, Juggernaut Maximum. I call a Cheer Girl, Maryland over him to reinforce my lineup. I soulblast and strike with my Juggs, dealing two damage and evening up the score. The moment of truth happened, I needed to deal two more damage to my opponent, so I strike with General Seifried! My opponent calls out, "No guard!" First check! I get Tahr! Yes it's a critical trig- Wait! I cannot use it! It is a Kagero trigger. Second Drive check... General Seifried. I activate Seifried's skill, calling Seifried and attack once more! My opponent (who really wanted me to win) says, "No guard!" He reveals no trigger, and the game is mine! The Great Morikawa is victorious!
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