Are Galahad and Tsuk VP Farming ACTUALLY Good?

No.

Oh?  I have to explain why?  Sure.

Let's set some criteria for "Automated VP Farming Statistics".

Overall
Game Length (vs. non-VP Farmers)
Game Length (vs. VP Farmers)
Game Length (vs. non-attacking VP Farmers)
Winrate

The idea that Tsuk and Galahad farmers intended to instantiate was to trade Game Length vs. non-VP Farmers for Winrate.  Did that work out?  I mean, sort of.  But the payouts were marginal at best and the tradeoffs were huge.  It also had the unintended consequence of increasing the Game Length vs. VP Farmers by an even wider margin.  Some may have considered Tsuk/Galahad making it to grade 3 and having Twin-Drive!! or an 11k butt that the opponent can't hit, but this is improbable.  On average, it will take you as many turns to make it to grade 3 as the game lasts, so you won't be gaining these benefits, typically. 

 Let's put some stats down for VP Farming decks and explain how they got there.

3k Farmer (no attack)

Overall - S (Due to smaller amount of non-attack VP Farmers)
Game Length (vs. non-VP Farmers) - S+++
Game Length (vs. VP Farmers) - S
Game Length (vs. non-attacking VP Farmers) - F (longest possible games, actually)
Winrate - F (can't win unless opponent concedes)

3k Farmer (attack)

Overall - A
Game Length (vs. non-VP Farmers) - S++
Game Length (vs. VP Farmers) - A
Game Length (vs. non-attacking VP Farmers) - D (many no-attack farmers use larger bodies)
Winrate - D

4k Farmer (no attack)

Overall - S (Due to smaller amount of non-attack VP Farmers)
Game Length (vs. non-VP Farmers) - S+++
Game Length (vs. VP Farmers) - S
Game Length (vs. non-attacking VP Farmers) - F (longest possible games, actually)
Winrate - F (can't win unless opponent concedes)

4k Farmer (attack)

Overall - A
Game Length (vs. non-VP Farmers) - S++
Game Length (vs. VP Farmers) - A
Game Length (vs. non-attacking VP Farmers) - B
Winrate -D+

5k Farmer (no attack)

Overall - C- (No real reason to run 5k no-attack farming when all clans have 4k starters)
Game Length (vs. non-VP Farmers) - S++
Game Length (vs. VP Farmers) - B (More VP farmers have to trigger to hit you)
Game Length (vs. non-attacking VP Farmers) - F (longest possible games, actually)
Winrate - F (can't win unless opponent concedes)

5k Farmer (attack)

Overall - S+
Game Length (vs. non-VP Farmers) - S++
Game Length (vs. VP Farmers) - S
Game Length (vs. non-attacking VP Farmers) - A+ (only weakness is 6k non-attackers)
Winrate - D+

6k Farmer (no attack)

Overall - F (Yet this is extremely popular for some reason?!)
Game Length (vs. non-VP Farmers) - A (Harder for opponent to make rows to hit over triggers)
Game Length (vs. VP Farmers) - D (Only two decks can hit you, barring hitting a ride chain/trigger)
Game Length (vs. non-attacking VP Farmers) - F (longest possible games, actually)
Winrate - F (can't win unless opponent concedes)

6k Farmer (attack)

Overall - S
Game Length (vs. non-VP Farmers) - S++
Game Length (vs. VP Farmers) - B+ (Slow matchups against Tsuk/Galahad, which is already slow)
Game Length (vs. non-attacking VP Farmers) - S
Winrate - C-

Tsukuyomi/Galahad Chain Farmer (attack)

Overall - C
Game Length (vs. non-VP Farmers) - C+ ((Lower rating due to ride chain animations)
Game Length (vs. VP Farmers) -B- ((Lower rating due to ride chain animations and 6ks)
Game Length (vs. non-attacking VP Farmers) - B+ (Lower rating due to ride chain animations)
Winrate - C-


Tsukuyomi/Galahad Chain Farmer + Heals/PGs (attack)

Overall - D-
Game Length (vs. non-VP Farmers) - F (Lower rating due to ride chain/PG/Heal animations/game extensions)
Game Length (vs. VP Farmers) - C- ((Lower rating due to ride chain animations/PGs/Heals, and 6ks)
Game Length (vs. non-attacking VP Farmers) - B+ (Lower rating due to ride chain animations)
Winrate - C+


Tsukuyomi/Galahad Chain Farmer + Heals/PGs (non-attack)

Overall - F---
Game Length (vs. non-VP Farmers) - F---
Game Length (vs. VP Farmers) - F---
Game Length (vs. non-attacking VP Farmers) - F---
Winrate - F---
Troll Rating - S+++


So, let's take a look at the good and the bad here and explain the current trinity of VP Farming:

The three decks that seem to be the best at face value are:

5k attacking
6k attacking
Tsuk/Galahad ride chain

However, 6k and Tsuk/Galahad ride chain have a massive issue with their match-up:  Namely, The odds of riding up in Tsukuyomi off of the ride chain being less than hitting a coin flip each turn increases the duration of the games in this match-up due to the decks "taking turns" being able to hit each other without triggers.

We take for granted how amazing the Tsukuyomi ride chain is because you can ride from hand or top 5 of the deck.  However, with no selective mulligan and no hand-riding, your odds of riding up to grade 1 with Tsukuyomi/Galahad are: 43.616%.  The odds of riding grade 1 Tsuk/Galahad in two turns is 68.209%.  The odds in three turns are 82.075%.  Inverted, this gives us the odds of missing them.

Your odds of being a 5k against a 6k while running the ride chain:

Turn 1 - 56.384%
Turn 2 - 31.791%
Turn 3 - 17.925%

This means that for the first few turns, you have very likely odds as a 6k to be hitting the Tsuk/Galahad and them missing you barring triggers because they missed their ride.  Then, you flip that around when the ride does eventually happen and now you're just spending extra time having the person who was winning start to lose.  And to make matters even less consistent, triggers will throw the defensive walls being utilized into utter disarray, which could invalidate the temporary advantage that either side may have had.  Neither deck truly edges out over the other in winrate by a significant margin.  Thus, in theory, there's no reason to run the Galahad/Tsukuyomi ridechain over and against a 6k butt because that's the only match-up that both wouldn't just have an advantage in by default.

Unfortunately, because both exist and because both counteract each other (and Tsuk/Galahad also counteracts its own mirror), it means that you have a "bad matchup" for game speed on the VP Farming ladder for both decks.  This is why the 5k farmer who can hit Tsuk when Tsuk misses the chain, but will never failed to be hit by Tsuk or the 6k butt is the objectively best VP farming deck for pushing the ladder (not that VP farm decks are particularly great for this) and for speed, because it will never have a slow game.  No slow games means more chances to string VP farming opponents.  More VP farming opponents in a row means more potential to gain ranks.  Since ranks can't be lost, it's about match quantity over marginal increases to winrate that will help you climb.

Heals and PGs will improve the winrate for any of the VP farming decks (albeit by an incredibly marginal amount) AND because they prolong games, it can help you to hit your ride chain as Tsuk/Galahad, but that makes matters even worse because it's match count, not winrate, that will get you rank ups through automated farming.  The 6k deck with heals and PGs is actually just as "strong" as the Tsuk/Galahad deck and substantially faster, so it's also superior in this case.

The final tier list results are:

Best VP Farming decks - 5k Attacking (S+), 6k Attacking (S), 3k non-attacking (S), 4k non-attacking (S).

Note:  Non-attacking decks are only S tier right now because so few people are doing it.  If it gets popular and you start running into mirrors, it will drop to C tier.

Disclaimer - I am not advocating that you should or should not use an auto-clicker to VP farm.  What I am advocating for is if you're going to do it, make your experience and your opponent's experience better and do it properly.

Vanguard Reboot - First Thoughts

Hey all,

I decided to give some initial thoughts on the new format and what I think of each individual mechanic, as well as the removal of other things.  Let's start with my initial tier list for set 1.

SS+++ tier

Going First

S tier

Oracle Think Tank, Kagero, Nova Grapplers with a good hand

B tier

Royal Paladin

C tier

Nova Grapplers having a mediocre hand or worse.



You may notice that I skipped a full tier between Royal Paladin and every other deck.  That's because Royals have no incentive to multi-ride grade 3s, don't have a "high-roll" that proves to be devastating like Novas (restanding a 32k attacker with the potential for triggers is crazy strong), and have little end-game utility outside of Soul Saver, which can only be used once and fights for resources with Blaster Blade.  Outside of Royals, I think the format is pretty well balanced.  Novas have an advantage over OTT generally speaking.  OTT can outlast Kagero, although Kagero can get in a win with Waterfall in ideal situations.  Kagero pretty much auto-wins the Nova match-up.  It's not so bad that all of the match-ups are the equivalent of playing rock, papers, scissors, but no singular deck has an insurmountable advantage that we can't see a diversity of tops, either.

My initial opinion is that the format is well-balanced in card design.  But that doesn't make the format itself well-designed.  Let's look into the Imaginary Gifts.

FORCE
Force gives a circle of your choice 10000 power during your turn.  It's pretty close to adding a legion mate to that circle.  Consequently, this is a power-level we've seen and are used to.  Currently, the advantages of Force are that it makes power-requirement clans like Dimension Police achieve those requirements far more easily.  It also makes multi-attacker decks that call mid-battlephase have extra advantages when this is done, which will likely be a facet we see for Royal Paladin and Gold Paladin at a later date (assuming Gold Paladin is in this reboot).  I think Force has solid utility and potential.  The only major abuse I can see for force clans would be sentinel restriction.  Wouldn't you know it, that happened set 1 with a bonus crit and it's the best singular card in the set.  I think that force is the most tame of the the imaginary gifts in power level and the one that's the hardest to abuse.

ACCEL
Accel gives you an extra front row RG circle with a bonus 10000 power on it during your turn.  It's pretty nuts.  Nova Grappler started with very few cards in the first set and nothing to reliably get a solid field set-up.  Currently, when they get their optimal set-up, they are the strongest overall deck.  But, high rolling is still high rolling.  You will keep seeing Novas top here and there so long as the deck can destroy anything when it gets that setup.  I think this is the strongest of the gifts because it has the most potential for abuse when joined with a clan that has access to mid-battlephase calls or a large amount of restanding.  Not only do you get all of the swings associated with having the extra RG slots, but you also get that extra static power boost at all times.  Getting in 7-8 attacks at ascended power levels can be quite potent, to say the least.  So far, no accel clans have had a mid-battlephase call announced, so I think Bushiroad is being mindful of this.   That being said, I could see Accel clans being stupid in premium, which is why I'm glad I won't be playing it.

PROTECT
Protect gives you a null guard every time you ride to grade 3.  It's pretty nuts.  It's currently the strongest mechanic in the current format because Bushiroad has been mindful in restricting the other two from becoming too cancerous, at least in the first set.  This mechanic is strong independent of the deck being used, but OTT gets extra bonuses for riding more grade 3s with Imperial Daughter and Deer, so it's shown itself to be the strongest deck in the current format for exactly this reason.  I can see protect in a control clan (like Megacolony) being strong, but I think protect in a clan like Granblue is going to really show us the limits on how much it can do as a mechanic.  I think protect clans are always going to be in the upper tiers simply for the mechanic at this point, as the mechanic is independently strong and requires no additional mechanism to function properly.



I think that the Imaginary Gifts have the potential to be really unbalanced depending on what support is created, and it will make entire clans limited in design in that facet.  I wanted to discuss what I'm really upset about with the new format:  Going first.  I wrote an article about how going first was objectively overpowered until Legion became a mechanic.  Well, here we are, back with the same old problems, only we also have to deal with Imaginary Gifts benefiting the first player as well and all previous mechanics that benefited the second-turn player are now gone.  I have done some playtesting with friends, and short of playing a deck that wins a match-up convincingly, the person who goes first wins at a very disproportionate amount.  I did mirrors with my buddy (Novas vs. Novas) where there is even more variance in potential power-output from the decks, and the first-turn player won the first 12 games.  ~_~  Unless there is a large disparity in deck strength, the deck going second has an unfavorable match-up, or the player going first plays suboptimally, going first is a daunting facet to the game that currently is the hardest thing in a fight to overcome.  I hope Bushiroad addresses this in some way to make it more "fair" for people going second.  Especially now that the loser decides who goes first in games 2 and 3.  Every single 3 game match my buddies and I played was won by the person who won the dice roll when doing mirrors.  Let that sink in.


In conclusion, I think that there's some room to work with.  I see caution from Bushiroad on Accel that I think is merited.  I also see caution on Royal Paladin, as that was the busted clan last time around, and this over-caution left them pretty lackluster, but these cautions can both be fixed later.  I think that the individual mechanics are slightly imbalanced, Accel for potential and Protect for practical usage, leaving Force somewhat underpowered, but I think that they aren't so varied in power-level that it's damning to the game's potential for fun or future content.  I do think this about going first, though.  I hope Bushiroad will implement something to make going second less detrimental that doesn't lead to the stupidity of something similar to R I P P U L.

Are you still Madew, Bro? Cray Erminantor Camtater Climb Ladder Dooklast

As I asked for 18 ANGERY emotes on Facebook to confirm my place as Clam Liter, and ended up getting 96 ANGERY emotes, I have decided to release my updated Clore Elmimantle dacklost.

Starter - Shining Knight, Millius

8x 5k Royal Paladin Crits
4x Thunder Elemental, Goloro (Critical)
4x Royal Paladin Heal Triggers

4x Light Elemental, Sunny
4x Air Elemental, Fwarlun
3x Light Elemental, Peaker
3x Laurel Knight, Siciilus

4x Knight of Twin Sword
4x Transmigration Knight, Brede
2x Escort Eagle
1x Earth Elemental, Pokkur

4x Knight of Mastery, Glenus
4x Gigantech Charger

GZone

4x Rain Element, Madew
3x Blazing Sword, Fides
2x Aerial Divine Knight, Altmile
1x Divine Knight of Flashing Flame, Samuel
1x Air Element, Sebreeze
1x Snow Element, Blizza
2x Dark Element, Dizmel
1x Light Element, Agleam
1x Metal Element, Scryew

The first observation you will probably make is, "Oh hey, this looks pretty much the same other than filling out the GZo-  WHERE DID STARDRIVE GO?!  YOU TRAITOR!"

Hear me out, bro.  Fides can only search for grade 2's and those grade 2's need the "Brave" keyword.  Fides draws a card, retires a unit, gets a grade 2 out of my deck, AND gives me 10k power to distribute to my board.  It's an INSANE card and the only reason it isn't played at 4 of in a bunch of decks is because those decks can't afford to run "Brave" units.  The unit that has replaced Stardrive Dragon is Knight of Mastery, Glenus.  Glenus, being a 10k power Royal Paladin unit means that it, of course, does everything Stardrive did in the deck, including being able to proc Madew.  Additionally, Glenus' skill is, "Brave: Cont: This unit gets grade -1 while in the deck."  This means we can grab him directly out of the deck with Fides (who can only grab grade 2's), and the check for his Brave keyword is done after the discard for Fides and after the cost for stride has been paid.  So, if your hand was 5 or less cards at the start of your turn, Fides into Glenus can definitely be a good move.

Now, you may be thinking, "Tim, how necessary even is that?  You're running Escort Eagles in your deck already."  Brede is mandatory at 4 of (switchable and interchangeable with Knight of Fragment who is 11k when attacking vanguards and rear guards vs. 12k vs. Vanguards only.  I'm running 2/2 at the moment, but I think Brede is better, which I'll cover shortly).  Knight of Twin Sword is our only multi-attack enabling unit in our deck (and he can grab Glenus too, if done before my Vanguard attacks or if I have 0 cards in hand at the start of the battle phase), so he's a 4-of.  We only have 3 spaces, and Pokkur is just amazing in a deck with 10 Cray strides and with the ability to grab 2's on-demand.  So Escort Eagle is down to being a 2-of.  If I draw EITHER of them pre-Fides plays, I can't proc the draw for Fides.  This is why we play Glenus.  That and he makes 21k with any non-sentinel grade 1 booster in my deck, which is icing on the cake.

Now that that's out of the way, let's discuss updates.  We added in the Cray Elemental critical trigger, Goloro.  Goloro's guard restriction ability (you can only call this card as a Guardian if you have another Guardian on the circle) is actually pretty bad, but it can be pitched with Fides, Agleam, Scryew, or used for its useful ability, to count as a grade 2 when pitched for stride.  In this deck, we can easily convert our strides into hard advantage generation.  Even just ditching Goloro and another card to stride into Madew will take our previously +2 turn and convert it into a +1 turn.  Whether or not this is mandatory isn't super important to me, I am playing it for the Cray Craze.  The vast majority of the time, you will not be impacted by its negative or positive effects.  It does have a 4k body, however, and that is why we made the next change.

Knight of Fragment and Transmigration Knight, Brede are our Brede and butter cards to call off of Knight of Twin Sword.  (NYEH HEH HEH)  With Goloro being a potential call from Gigantech Charger, Brede makes numbers with EVERYTHING where Knight of Fragment has this weakness with only being 15k with Goloro (and requiring another 2 out, which cards like Heteroround, Denial Griffin, having a locked front row, and getting Fragment called off of Charger can make difficult).  While you can easily build around this in most cases, I've found that the only advantage that Fragment gives over Brede is the ability to hit 10k+ rear guards unboosted, since the counter-charge is typically useless and the soul charge is almost detrimental.

Escort Eagle made its way into the list due to being a Brave and a Resist unit that is grade 2.  It gets Fides synergy, and helps handle a big weakness the deck has in its Link Joker match-up.  The extra shield is just icing on the cake.

Now, for the GZone, we have 8 new spots to fill.  Of course, Cray Elemental GGuardians are entering four of these spots.  Reason 1, they are all relatively powerful Guardians due to having some nice secondary effects.  Reason 2, pretty much all of the Royal Paladin GGuards have been roasted garbage on a stick.  Reason 3, they give Fwarlun power and enable Pokkur plays without having to stride into Madew and waiting a turn.  For our remaining spots, we have made the following changes.

-1 Atmos
-1 Gablade
+2 Aerial Divine Knight Altmile
+3 Fides
+1 Sebreeze

Atmos was in the deck as the designated flip target for Blizza.  We no longer need that, since Sebreeze took its place.  Gablade was never really good, but it didn't require a flip and I had one space open previously.  I actually did switch both Atmos and Gablade out for Aerial Altmile before the 16 card GZone happened, but not much else has been changed from the base list.  We added in Sebreeze because it is a Cray Elemental (procs Fwarlun and Pokkur) and the deck is very Generation Break heavy.  We also have a large amount of counterblasts available to expend where a Samuel or Sebreeze doesn't kill our resources all that badly anyway.  I feel like Fides was already covered, but I'll just recap.  You can flip Sebreeze with it for more effects with your Cray Elementals, and it's discard a card to make big numbers, draw a card, retire a unit, and call a unit.  Like, it does so much for such a tiny cost.

That covers the major changes.  I hope you don't rage on me too hard for dropping Stardrive.  On that note, the original reason I played Stardrive was due to their being NO suitable 10k Royal Paladin unit that made a meaningful difference.  Palamedes was the best one initially.  I'm not counterblasting 2 to call a grade 1.  I didn't have enough spots in my GZone to play Regalie, so I couldn't risk having a dead, vanilla stride when I missed my Sanc Guard.  There was no room to put in Jewel Knight archetype support, and Swordmy would be useless without JK grade 1's, even if I could use him with Charger.  I could have run the 10k Vanilla legion, but I don't think the 10k grade 2 was worth running at the time.  The long and short was that there wasn't much that was really useful to run, and anything that may have been useful would compromise my GZone.

That's it for now.  Clyde Ornamental Cornpattytav Clumb Looper, signing out.

2015 Chicago Regional Tournament Report

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

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

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


You Madew Bro?

Starter - Shining Knight, Millius

12 Critical Triggers
4 Heal Triggers

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

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

4 Gigantech Charger
4 Stardrive Dragon

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


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


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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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


Round 6 - W vs. Kagero (DOtX Stride)

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


Round 7 - W vs. Shadow Paladin (Diablo)

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


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

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



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

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

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


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

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


Magic Burn

Flag - Magic World
Buddy - Magical Artist, Andy

Size 1

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

Size 2

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

Size 3

2 Champion Wrestler Asmodai

Spells

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

Items

3 Gunrod, Del Gesu
4 Gunrod, Bechstein


Sideboard

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


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


Round 1 - W vs. Hero World (Gaigrander)

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


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

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


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

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


Round 4 - W vs. Hero World (Kaizerion)

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


Round 5 - L vs. Hero World (Kaizerion)

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


Round 6 - W vs. Hero World (Gaigrander)

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


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

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


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

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

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

Tim's History of Card Gaming with Royal Paladin Decks

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

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

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

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


Tim's First Deck - Paladins of Soul

Barcgal

4 Epona
3 Llew
1 Flogal
4 Margal
4 Elaine

4 Marron
4 Isuelt
3 Pongal
3 Young Pegasus Knight

4 Gallatin
4 Barron
3 Blaster Blade

4 Lohengrin
2 Gigantech Charger
2 Soul Saver Dragon


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

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


After Barcgal ban - Tim gets fucked, the deck.

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

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

4 Marron
4 Isuelt
3 Pongal
3 Young Pegasus Knight

4 Gallatin
4 Barron
3 Blaster Blade

4 Lohengrin
2 Gigantech Charger
2 Soul Saver Dragon


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


Kageroyals Alpha

Stardust Trumpeter
Lizard Soldier, Undeaux

4 Epona
4 Tahr
4 Alabaster Owl
4 Dracokid

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

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

4x Stardrive Dragon
4x Crested Dragon



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

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


Kageroyals

Lizard Soldier, Conroe

4 Epona
4 Tahr
4 Alabaster Owl
4 Dracokid

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

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

4x Dragonic Waterfall
4x Knight of Conviction, Bors


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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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


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

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


Royal Novas

Lionet Heat

4 Red Lightning
4 Shining Lady
4 Epona
4 Alabaster Owl

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


17 Grade 3 Deck

Barcgal

15 critical triggers (3 Llew)
1 Flogal

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

2 Blaster Blade

Core 10 grade 3's

4 Gornemant
4 Pendragon
2 Exculpate

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


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

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

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

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


Ashlei "R", Timmy Style

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

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

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

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



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

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


Monoclan Kageroyals - Brutus Style

Lucius

16 Critical Triggers, 8 Seeker

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

4 Valrod
4 Cerdic
3 Locrinus

4 Brutus
4 Egbert


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

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

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


Regalia Paladins

3 Pray Angel

16 Royal Paladin Critical Triggers

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

4 Barron
4 Izaya
2 Blaster Blade Seeker

4 Thing Saver
3 Wingal Brave


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

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

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


Seeker Rush

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

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


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

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


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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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


You Madu Bro?

Millius

12 Critical Triggers
4 Heal Triggers

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

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

4 Gigantech Charger
4 Stardrive Dragon

4 Madu
2 Samuil
1 Gablade
1 Jirron


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

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


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

Ashlei "R", Timmy Style

I don't often post meta or hyped decks because this game isn't hard and they tend to build themselves.  Except that grade 1 line up for Minerva, that's all over the place.



That aside, I feel like Ashlei "R" is something that can be optimized outside of the normal way to run it.  It's not as starkly opposed to the way the meta functions as Dragruler is, so these are only minor changes.

Grade 0 (17):
1x Desire Jewel Knight, Heloise (Starting Vanguard)
4x Blazing Jewel Knight, Rachelle (Critical)
2-4x Jewel Knight, Noble Stinger (Critical)
4x Jewel Knight, Opt Harpist (Stand)
0-2x Jewel Knight, Glitmy (Stand)
4x Jewel Knight, Hilmy (Heal)

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

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

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

So, my first comment is that this deck is numbers. The magical kind of numbers that are numerous and numbery. You have 16/19 of your grade 2+ units that swing for 11k or more as RG. That's kind of really great. Additionally, if you get excess grade 3's in your drop zone, you have Alwain to give your rear guard Ashlei 5k power per usage.

Now, let us pause for a moment and consider, why is Ordain Owl so overpowered? Is it because it's a bird? Maybe. Is it because the target of the power boost is a restander? Yes. Using this concept with stand triggers and rear guard Ashleis, we can come up with a reasonable assumption that stand triggers on a RG that can restand and swing for 21k unboosted is probably pretty sweet. As an avid Tri-Stinger Overlord enthusiast, I can assure you that it's extremely powerful.

So, that's cool and all Tim, but why are we running a split of quintet walls and null guards? There are many good reasons for this. Jewel Knights are an extremely low counterblast deck. Tilda can only trigger on grade 3 ride (and she has a tendency to die quickly) and Ashley "R" can only counterblast once per turn. This means that speaking from a resource standpoint, Quintet Walls are simply too good not to use. They also give us an added facet of loading up our drop zone with some potential grade 3's which we can use to abuse with our RG Ashlei (since our Vanguard Ashlei always has the threat of triggers and criticals). We can also fill up that Drop Zone with our remaining Prizmys and null guards. With only incremental amounts of card advantage and cycling that can't even really be used if you have a full field, and the ability to shove those grade 3's back on the bottom of our deck, decking out isn't a major scare. I can't find a single good reason not to run quintet walls in this deck, until Legion might reach the point where it's no longer safe to guard with quints.

All in all, I feel like this version performs better than the standard 8 crit/4 draw/4 heal version that doesn't run quints.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Galahad Rush (Conjurer Mithril)

Grade 0's Drangal
4x Alabaster Owl (Crit)
4x Bringer of Good Luck, Epona (Crit)
4x Margal (Draw)
4x Yggdrasil Maiden, Elaine (Heal)

Grade 1's
4x Knight of Tribulation, Galahad
4x Little Sage, Marron
4x Lake Maiden, Lien
4x Flash Shield, Isuelt

Grade 2's
4x Conjurer Mithril
4x Knight of Tribulations, Galahad
3x Knight of Determination, Lamorak
2x Blaster Blade

Grade 3's
4x Knight of Godly Speeds, Galahad

This deck focuses on a heavy field presence early game with a potential 11k Vanguard late game.  This deck can potentially thin you of non-triggers fairly quickly between Galahads searching for more Galahads and Conjurer Mithril calling a grade 1 or 2 off the top of the deck.  It has Margal to help build soul for Galahad.  This list is by no means set in stone.  Borgal would make an excellent addition to the deck to make Mithril swing for 16k.  Since almost 60% of your deck can be called by Conjurer Mithril, you are very likely to be able to get a large field presence and maintain some hand presence.  The consistency of successfully making it to grade 3 also gives it a 1-up on other rush decks.  It does have the weakness of not having as much raw power as the clan is capable of, but hopefully you can generate enough early pressure with the rush to compensate.