2021 - The End of an Era

As much as my silence has indicated, I have more or less effectively quit Cardfight!! Vanguard.

That doesn't mean that I won't come back at some point, but the reboot from V series ended my desire to play.  Yes, it is now twice that my decision to fully SP out Blaus was followed shortly with a reboot announcement.  Oof.  Coupling this with my decision to stop playing Vanguard Zero, and I'm effectively just not playing Vanguard and haven't in months.  I decided to take a look at the reboot, but it took all of two sets for genuine problems to be found showing that Bushiroad simply hasn't learned its lesson in printing creep to outdo the previous sets and they will probably never stop.

This isn't to say I'll never come back, though.  I do enjoy what Vanguard was.  It's not all that different now.  But, as things stand, the absolute worst thing I could do is invest myself into something I'm not currently enjoying.  All of my Vanguard friends and I still have regular board-game nights and want to start up our Dungeons and Dragons campaigns, and I find great enjoyment in those.  I'm not "out" of the community either.  I'll still shitpost on Vanguardians from time to time.

That being said, I'm currently just backlogged on games I do enjoy and I've recently been pushing out things I was playing out of obligation instead of fun, and I feel much better for it.  I haven't decided what the future of my YouTube channel will be, but time will tell.

Much Tourmanet, Such Win, Very Wow

I've been having a blast going to two local tournaments and spending my weekends playing card games.  It's been pretty great.  I've been getting sacked, gradelocked, and what have you, so I decided this weekend that I felt like winning.  Naturally, I play the deck I feel is the most competitive in the current meta to choose for this task: Ripple Rush.

Ripple Rush has a list on here, but for those unfamiliar with how it works, it uses the Ripple Ride chain for Pavroth's on-hit effect (if you land the chain), Sotirio's top 7 search for a grade 2/3 when you ride it on the starter, Sotirio's top 7 search for Pavroth if you ride the wrong grade 2 over him, Turtle's top card check for a grade 1 or 2 to superior call (which can be used as VG over Sotirio for a plus 1 and still hitting the chain), and passing crits to Tidal Assault for a multi-crit restanding rear guard.  That's the gist of it.

I played on Saturday with Ripple Rush.  I won two games on the first turn attacking.  One game I went Tidal -> Same Tidal -> VG attack (nulled) crit -> Tidal w/ Crit -> Tidal w/ Crit.  It was dirty.  If my VG had hit, my other Tidal would have stood at 7k power, though, and swung again.  I ended the night 6-1, and opted to get 5 packs of Gatecrash with my prizes.  Didn't pull anything spectacular, but it felt good to get some prize support.  I feel like Ripple Rush is cheesy and try-hardy, so I avoid using it.  But winning cards feels nice, so I might stop having all of these reservations about playing it.

Sunday's tournament I played Ripple Rush again.  I was determined to win since I haven't won at Midwest (lost in the final round the week before this one, somehow went from undefeated to like 7th place and got no packs).  I end up going 8-2 for the day, winning every round, and netting 6 packs of prize support or 18 bucks.  I opt to use that money for the wife and I to enter the Weiss Schwartz tournament, having never played it before.  I beat the two veterans in the 8 man tourney, and lose to the other trial deck.  Lawl.  I get 5 packs and pull one RR out of it.  So meh.  Decided on a whim to get two more packs, and I pull a 100~ dollar SP Cait Sith Silica and another copy of that RR.  I won card game forever, I guess.

Then I also traded my 4 extra Binoculus and Monoculas Tigers for a Naruto deck.  I decided that now that it's dead I'm going to get in on it.  Got an Earth/Wind Hyuga/Mind Power/Lawl1stHogakeFTW deck.  Got to play it once before my wife was beating me up to head back home since the in-laws were watching the kids.  I had a lot of fun playing the Naruto game and want to play it some more.  Looking forward to a few games of WS and Naruto in the near future.

Planning on going in on Kill la Kill for Nudist Beach.dek with purple nipples everywhere.  Hell yeah!