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.
Monday, May 11, 2015
Monday, October 27, 2014
Nashville Tournament Report
I was in a weird spot with the start of this tournament. Until the day I left, I didn't know who was going with me. Until the week before I left, I wasn't sure if I was already going to be in the state from a family visit, or if I was going to drive down with friends. Due to the in-laws having a hospitalization, they postponed their family visit that was going to be for this week, so I ended up driving down with my bestie Daniel.
Consequently, I didn't fill out my judge paperwork until Friday morning, because if Daniel wasn't coming and I wasn't there with family, I wasn't going to go.
Again, consequently, when I showed up with my Bushiroad shirt to judge the Vanguard event, they already were overstaffed and didn't need me, and since I had no confirmation from JD because I officially volunteered (even though I had verbally volunteered before) last minute, I ended up not judging.
Cardfight Vanguard
That's no biggie. I didn't feel like playing Vanguard, because I've been in a bad luck rut with it, but whatever. I went in with no expectations. After hearing that someone made it to round 6 or 7 with Ripple Rush in Chicago, I decided to go for that. It's my strongest and most consistent overall build, in my opinion, so I figured I'd give it a whirl.
Round 1 - Win vs. Dimension Police trial deck with at least one Daishield
This kid had just started playing the game. All I could think to myself was, "Wow. I never get easy wins. I'll take it." He actually played properly, only making one mistake the entire game. Granted, that doesn't help you win when you're forced to ride Cosmogreat, because he's your 4-of grade 3. I never see a Genovious, but I hit the first two pieces of the chain, and spammed my on-hit rear guard restand ability, since he was never in a strong spot to guard my Vanguard swings.
Round 2 - Lose vs. Breakride Galaxy with Draw Triggers
Ugh. I hate this build so much. Stern is just so much better. Crits are just so much better. I had to lose to crit Dragruler in Chicago and now this... but, I digress. He heals 3 times, hits two defensive draws (running 4), and offensively crits twice. I never see a Genovious. I do hit a clutch crit at the end, forcing him to dump out all of his remaining shield, or he was going to lose. He breakrides Mond over Mond and finishes me off the following turn.
Playing to 9 damage is kind of why I stopped playing Vanguard. But whatevs, I wasn't in this one to win it anyway. It's not them, it's me. I attract their heal triggers to the top of their deck.
Round 3 - Win vs. Silver Thorns
Holy shit. I actually won a dice roll and got to go first. Ride Sotorio, fish out Pavroth. Already have Pavroth and Genovious in hand. This is sacking for me, okay. GIVE ME MY MOMENT! Drop a 10k to guard his 7k+5k swing with no rear guards out. He hits a crit, I stay at 0. HOLY SHIT! THINGS ARE GOING OKAY! EVEN THOUGH I STARTED WITH 3 GENOVIOUS IN HAND AND HAD TROUBLE RUSHING. After neither of us hitting too many triggers after that (both of our decks were trigger floundering like crazy, I was unable to secure a rush), I end up winning solely because I went first (and was able to guard early), and going first is OP.
Round 4 - Lose vs. 8 draw break ride Venus Trap Reverse
Wat. No. This didn't happen. Next! What, you mean I have to write about this? Fuck. I hit the full chain again. With 3 Genovious in hand again. Yeah. No units could be fielded on turn 2 unless I wanted to make a perfect guard/trigger row, which was the only thing I had that I could field because of 3 Genovious. He hit 4 draws, 2-3 were defensive. We were neck and neck most of the game. He had boosted on-hit fetch rows with his maidens out on turn 2. I had to choose from the easy no-pass of his Vanguard and letting those on-hit rows hit, or risking him not hitting a trigger or me hitting a trigger to guard the on-hit rows. I chose to let him hit with his on-hit rows to guarantee I reduce my own damage. If I knew crits weren't a thing in his deck (being at 4), I'm not certain I would have made that decision. He still manages to crit me when I no guarded at 3 damage, bringing me up to 5.
I force 9 cards from his hand with a big Genvious persona blast push. He literally has 0 cards in hand and one open spot on his field. He gets the RG back with Venus Trap, attacks, and gets a draw/heal, bringing him up to 4 cards in hand. I guard using everything I had. I swing in next turn with the ability to win if I hit a trigger or he doesn't hit a fifth damage trigger, he does, I don't. He wins the next turn. I wasn't really sad or anything. It's just... eww. 8 draws. In hindsight, letting Glass Beads hit at any point in time to waste his counterblasts would have benefited me greatly. It is what it is.
This is just what I've come to expect from this game. I want to pretty much exclusively judge it at this point, since I am fairly certain that mixed decks will be banned for next year's regionals, and rush decks are just cheese and don't feel that technical or comboish.
Future Card Buddyfight
I was debating between Big Awesome Dog (a deck focusing on using Alerta with soul guard size 3's and size 0's to get free counterattack retires against my opponent, and using Demon Lord's Dungeon for infinite recycling on my size 0's) and Fabulous World (Standard Legend World Hero Build). I needed some Dominion Rods (I somehow have none after opening 4 boxes) to finish Big Awesome Dog. I need two Merlins (you know, the one card that makes the deck work) to make Fab World function. I tried to get what I needed, but many people were looking for Merlin and nobody had him.
I was thinking, "I guess I'll just go back to old faithful, Katana World." But I remember how Dungeon World wrecks my shit because I don't have card advantage with Skull Warriors unless I happen to draw one of my 4 Return to the Underworld. I thought about playing Dungeon World mix myself, but I found out that I actually am a hipster, and don't want to play it specifically because of how overpowered it is. It's also brainless, and auto-pilot. And forces you to play the game properly by giving you card advantage for removing the opponent's card advantage.
I could bitch about it some more, but I'll leave that for another day. I eventually settled, after much deliberation, on Magic World Burn. After going through my box of commons looking for a sideboard, I find Abra Cadabra. I read the card. Then I wonder why it wasn't in my deck and why I'm an idiot. I put it in at two, hoping to get a cheese victory by swinging at an open center with a big link attack and countering their attack negation spell for game. This never happened, but Abra Cadabra saved my nuts twice, so I'm not complaining.
I didn't have this deck completely done, either, but the cards I'm missing aren't actually mandatory for the deck to function, like Dominion Rod and Merlin are for the other two decks I wanted to run.
Deckname - #Tim's Totally Meta Mega Serious Magic World Burn Deck™
Decklist
Flag - Magic World
Buddy - Dragowizard, Burning Wand (Foil)
Items (7)
4x Gunrod, Bechstein
3x Gunrod, Stradivarius
Spells (21)
4x Magical Goodbye
4x Trans-flame
4x Solomon's Shield (Useful. You know, except against Dungeon World.)
4x Nice One!
2x Kosher (I needed gauge fixing so bad. I gave away my Keys of Solomon to my buddy Elliot, thinking I wouldn't need them. I may up this number later, or switch to the Keys. I feel like this is more slot efficient, though.)
2x Abra Cadabra!
1x Chillax! (WHY OH WHY DO I ONLY HAVE ONE OF THESE?!)
Size 1's (16)
4x Demon Lord, Asmodai (Staple)
4x Dragowizard, Burning Wand (Tap to deal 1. If I could use multiple of this effect, this deck would be much stronger, but I'll take what I've got. Great for a going first turn 1 ping.)
4x Kenjy of the Explosive Fists (Going to become Qinus Axias or Glassarts later I suppose)
3x Magician of Glass, Will Glassart (should be maxed)
1x Dragowizard, Qinus Axia (1 gauge wasn't too big of a deal)
Size 2's (6)
3x Center of the World, Mary Sue (I want to drop this down to 2. Gauge cost was just too high.)
2x Magical Secretary, Genjuro Saki (I want to up this to 4)
1x Herb Magician, Soichiro Tenjiku (Worse Genjuro that's going to be taken out later)
Round 1 - W vs. Dungeon World (Dungeon/Adventurer Mix)
I was expecting it. I figured that roughly half of the people there would be playing Dungeon. There weren't that many from what I could see, though. Every table I would look at (didn't go poking around too much, though) didn't have Dungeon World on it.
I guess I just get lucky, and get to get the "fun" match-up out of the way.
Game 1 he starts off relatively strong, but I had a perfect hand. Kosher, Nice One, Genjuro, Will Glassart, Bechstein, Magical Goodbye. I had gauge and cards secured for the remainder of the game. He did equip Glory Seeker turn 1, though. Turn 3 happens, and he's at 5. Transflame, Bechstein, equip new Bechstein, Burning Wand. He's at 1, and I have 3 crit on the board. Swing with Asmodai, expecting him to Shalsana so I can win with my 2 crit swing. He takes it. Glory Seeker reveals a spell, and he goes to 3. Swing for 2, he goes down to 1. I fend off his next turn. My turn, ping for game.
Sixth damage hea Glory Seeker Saves: 1
Game 2 I am the ping machine. He equips Glory Seeker again, but I just have too much ping. He is down to 1 on the start of my turn. I ping for 1, popping Glory Seeker. He hits a spell. I ping for two more, and swing in with 2 creatures. He Shalsanas the first one, and loses to the second one.
Sixth damage hea Glory Seeker Saves: 2
Round 2 - W vs. Dungeon World (Dungeon/Adventurer Mix)
Game 1 he isn't able to keep a strong offensive on the board. He kept not link attacking with Brave, Drum, so my Solomon's Shields kept him on lock-down. He equips a Glory Seeker. Turn 3, I ping him down to 0, he reveals a spell. I have too much momentum. He used the remainder of his resources just staying alive. He equips another Glory Seeker, and this time he just keeps swinging at my side units with no Defeat Monsters out, since I have too much life. My turn rolls around again. I ping down his Glory Seeker, he gets another spell. I swing for game.
Sixth damage hea Glory Seeker Saves: 4
Game 2 was much better for him. He got a massive offensive force out, and I had squat for defensive spells. I had plenty of burn, though. He, uhh... equips a Glory Seeker with Brave Drum in the middle. I can't get around Drum, but I ping him to 0. He reveals a spell. I swing into his creatures to soften the blow the next turn. Tetsuya is called, and I can't stop 7 crit to my face if he wins the Rock/Paper/Scissors. He does win it, unfortunately, so I lose this game.
Sixth damage hea Glory Seeker Saves: 5
Game 3 he didn't get Glory Seeker, so when I pinged him to 0 he wasn't there anymore. Woot!
Round 3 - L vs. Dungeon World (Dungeon/Adventurer Mix)
Game 1 was pretty even. I pinged him down to 0, but, you know, Glory Seeker. He revealed a spell. After that, I was in a solid position to win again, even though he got another one out. I could live if his Drum didn't win Rock Papers Scissors. He lost the Rock Papers Scissors! But then impacted me for game. Lol
Sixth damage hea Glory Seeker Saves: 6
Game 2 he swung in hard early with... Glory Seeker. We had a difference in damage on our sheets. I had him at 3, he had himself at 4. We had no clue how to resolve it. I told him I had exactly 3 damage in hand, but he had Glory Seeker out. Mason happened to be there and convinced him to take my reasonable offer. We were going to see if the top card of his deck was a spell. If it was, then he auto-wins because of Glory Seeker. If it wasn't a spell, we would roll for game. He takes my offer, reveals a spell, and we didn't need to roll for it at all, as the outcome was decided with or without our damage disparity. I felt bad about what happened, because I'm not sure if he missed one of my pings or if he gained a life and I missed it, but fortunately it was in a position that didn't make a difference.
Sixth damage hea Glory Seeker Saves: 7
Round 4 - W vs. Dungeon World (Dungeon/Adventurer Mix)
Game 1 he equipped something that wasn't Glory Seeker. I was in shock. My body wasn't certain how to respond. He played Gagnar turn 1. He told me his hand was 3 Shalsanas, Dungeon Explosion, and his weapon he equipped (5k/2 trial deck one for one gauge, assuming he didn't finish his deck completely, or thought that it was as good as Glory Seeker for the purpose of killing creatures with Defeat Monsters, and one gauge is cheaper than a card from hand.) I end up filling my field up and getting ready to swing in. He casts Dungeon Explosion, losing two life. Abra Cadabra saved my life, there. Kosher gave me the second gauge I needed, then I got out Stradivarius to have a big enough Kenjy to take out Gagnar, dealing two lifelink to him. He couldn't Shalsana because he burned all of his gauge. I pinged him for game the following turn.
Game 2 was almost a literal repeat of game 1. He Gagnared, Explosioned, I Abra Cadabra'd, then called Asmodai over Burning Wand after I rested him, discarded, and swung in for 5 damage on top of my Bechstein and Burning Wand, 2 life for Explosion, and 2 life for Gagnar's lifelink.
Woot! No Glory Seekers!
After this, we cut to top 8. I was convinced my tiebreakers were terrible, but I miscounted how many undefeateds there were. We had 2 left, and I thought there would be 4 undefeated players. So then there were 8 players that were X-1 vying for the top 6 spots. I ended up making 4th place on the top 8 cut. The guy who played me in round 3 was 5th, so I end up getting paired against him. Deck check passed with flying colors. They got to enjoy my tech Wizard, Merlin.
Quarter Finals - L vs. Dungeon World (Dungeon/Adventurer Mix)
Game 1 I don't know what happened. I spent a good 5 minutes shuffling. It seems that when I shuffle too much the same cards clump together for no reason. But it was really bad... I got all three of my Mary Sues. He got a Glory/Drum set-up with something else that wasn't an adventurer that he was using to pick off the center. Probably Fate Skeleton. He killed my center, then swung for 6, which I Chillaxed. His offensive pressure outweighed my pinging significantly this game since I hit that hard, early dead draw with 3 Mary Sues. I end up swinging with my Bechstein and Burning Wand into his monsters. I had a Mary Sue in hand and one gauge. I had a Kosher in hand, and no other wizards I could play. I died a little on the inside right there. My deck absolutely fizzled.
Games gradeloc Games where I couldn't field units from dead drawing: 1
Game 2 was even worse. I wasn't even hiding it. I said audibly, "Why deck, WHY?!" After shuffling the shit out of my cards and moving each Mary Sue to the opposite ends of my deck... I had a Nice One! in hand, and thought, "I can salvage this." when they slowly started to appear early. I had one Abra Cadabra in my starting hand, one Mary Sue, one Asmodai, one Will Glassart. I charge Asmodai, get another Abra Cadabra. Fuck. Use Nice One! Draw two more Nice Ones. *Facepalm* Next turn draw Mary Sue #3. Charge it. Draw into Qinus Axia. Here's the situation.
Opponent has Glory Seeker equipped and 7 life. I have 3 gauge and Abra Cadabra in hand, along with a Bechstein equipped, two Trans-flame, a Mary Sue, and a Qinus Axia. Of course, I had a Nice One! in hand, too. I sat there figuring out if there was any possible combination to make this combo finish my opponent off. I kept getting to 6 guaranteed damage, but no 7th.
If we exclude the Trans-flames and Bechsteins, and remove their damage, I needed to do 4 damage with 3 gauge. The easiest way to secure damage would be to swing with 4 crit and Abra Cadabra their Shalsana (I didn't know if they had one or not). Literally, only because I kept dead drawing and getting all of my gauge monsters (literally, all 4 of them, and no vanillas, non-gauge monsters), I had no outs. If I had a Key of Solomon, first volume, I could have used Mary Sue to get that, use that to refill my gauge, call Qinus Axia to ping them for 1 (3), then swing for game.
With what I had though, because all of my creatures took gauge, I ran out of options. I decided to try top decking into what I needed. I used my Nice One! and got Will Glassart and something else. Decide to call Mary Sue to get a Kosher. Play Will Glassart to attempt to cast Kosher, but he destroys it with Pillar of Fire (which is honestly a misplay on his part. He should wait until I declare combat, then take my units out so I can't replace them. He got pretty lucky that I drew all of my gauge monsters and none of my vanillas, considering how my deck is ratiod.) I end up losing the following turn. He casts Shalsana in response to my attack anyway, so I don't think I could have burned enough to win the game without having drawn into some actual creatures earlier. I was told that the top card of his deck that turn was a spell, so I would have lost anyway. Lol
Games gradeloc Games where I couldn't field units from dead drawing: 2
All in all, I finally topped at a regional qualifiers for a Bushiroad game. I didn't think that would ever happen, considering my piss-poor luck. Still, I do wish I could have fought something other than Dungeon World with my deck. Match-up is so boring. Deck is so auto-pilot. Waaaah. WAAAAAAH! Okay, I'm done crying about it.
Obligatory, "You're welcome" to all of the other toppers for being that one guy who took out all of the Dungeon World players for them except the guy who beat me twice. Everyone else was talking about all of the modified trial decks, DDW decks, Legend World decks, Dragon World decks, etc. that they played against. I fought nothing but tier 1 metashit all day while luck was taking a chainsaw to my nutsack because I'm Tim, dammit, I'm not allowed to do well at card games.
I do feel oddly inspired to finish out this deck, though. I will probably be doing that over the next while, while looking at the Magic World trial deck and set 5 stuff to see if we get any new burn support.
Consequently, I didn't fill out my judge paperwork until Friday morning, because if Daniel wasn't coming and I wasn't there with family, I wasn't going to go.
Again, consequently, when I showed up with my Bushiroad shirt to judge the Vanguard event, they already were overstaffed and didn't need me, and since I had no confirmation from JD because I officially volunteered (even though I had verbally volunteered before) last minute, I ended up not judging.
Cardfight Vanguard
That's no biggie. I didn't feel like playing Vanguard, because I've been in a bad luck rut with it, but whatever. I went in with no expectations. After hearing that someone made it to round 6 or 7 with Ripple Rush in Chicago, I decided to go for that. It's my strongest and most consistent overall build, in my opinion, so I figured I'd give it a whirl.
Round 1 - Win vs. Dimension Police trial deck with at least one Daishield
This kid had just started playing the game. All I could think to myself was, "Wow. I never get easy wins. I'll take it." He actually played properly, only making one mistake the entire game. Granted, that doesn't help you win when you're forced to ride Cosmogreat, because he's your 4-of grade 3. I never see a Genovious, but I hit the first two pieces of the chain, and spammed my on-hit rear guard restand ability, since he was never in a strong spot to guard my Vanguard swings.
Round 2 - Lose vs. Breakride Galaxy with Draw Triggers
Ugh. I hate this build so much. Stern is just so much better. Crits are just so much better. I had to lose to crit Dragruler in Chicago and now this... but, I digress. He heals 3 times, hits two defensive draws (running 4), and offensively crits twice. I never see a Genovious. I do hit a clutch crit at the end, forcing him to dump out all of his remaining shield, or he was going to lose. He breakrides Mond over Mond and finishes me off the following turn.
Playing to 9 damage is kind of why I stopped playing Vanguard. But whatevs, I wasn't in this one to win it anyway. It's not them, it's me. I attract their heal triggers to the top of their deck.
Round 3 - Win vs. Silver Thorns
Holy shit. I actually won a dice roll and got to go first. Ride Sotorio, fish out Pavroth. Already have Pavroth and Genovious in hand. This is sacking for me, okay. GIVE ME MY MOMENT! Drop a 10k to guard his 7k+5k swing with no rear guards out. He hits a crit, I stay at 0. HOLY SHIT! THINGS ARE GOING OKAY! EVEN THOUGH I STARTED WITH 3 GENOVIOUS IN HAND AND HAD TROUBLE RUSHING. After neither of us hitting too many triggers after that (both of our decks were trigger floundering like crazy, I was unable to secure a rush), I end up winning solely because I went first (and was able to guard early), and going first is OP.
Round 4 - Lose vs. 8 draw break ride Venus Trap Reverse
Wat. No. This didn't happen. Next! What, you mean I have to write about this? Fuck. I hit the full chain again. With 3 Genovious in hand again. Yeah. No units could be fielded on turn 2 unless I wanted to make a perfect guard/trigger row, which was the only thing I had that I could field because of 3 Genovious. He hit 4 draws, 2-3 were defensive. We were neck and neck most of the game. He had boosted on-hit fetch rows with his maidens out on turn 2. I had to choose from the easy no-pass of his Vanguard and letting those on-hit rows hit, or risking him not hitting a trigger or me hitting a trigger to guard the on-hit rows. I chose to let him hit with his on-hit rows to guarantee I reduce my own damage. If I knew crits weren't a thing in his deck (being at 4), I'm not certain I would have made that decision. He still manages to crit me when I no guarded at 3 damage, bringing me up to 5.
I force 9 cards from his hand with a big Genvious persona blast push. He literally has 0 cards in hand and one open spot on his field. He gets the RG back with Venus Trap, attacks, and gets a draw/heal, bringing him up to 4 cards in hand. I guard using everything I had. I swing in next turn with the ability to win if I hit a trigger or he doesn't hit a fifth damage trigger, he does, I don't. He wins the next turn. I wasn't really sad or anything. It's just... eww. 8 draws. In hindsight, letting Glass Beads hit at any point in time to waste his counterblasts would have benefited me greatly. It is what it is.
This is just what I've come to expect from this game. I want to pretty much exclusively judge it at this point, since I am fairly certain that mixed decks will be banned for next year's regionals, and rush decks are just cheese and don't feel that technical or comboish.
Future Card Buddyfight
I was debating between Big Awesome Dog (a deck focusing on using Alerta with soul guard size 3's and size 0's to get free counterattack retires against my opponent, and using Demon Lord's Dungeon for infinite recycling on my size 0's) and Fabulous World (Standard Legend World Hero Build). I needed some Dominion Rods (I somehow have none after opening 4 boxes) to finish Big Awesome Dog. I need two Merlins (you know, the one card that makes the deck work) to make Fab World function. I tried to get what I needed, but many people were looking for Merlin and nobody had him.
I was thinking, "I guess I'll just go back to old faithful, Katana World." But I remember how Dungeon World wrecks my shit because I don't have card advantage with Skull Warriors unless I happen to draw one of my 4 Return to the Underworld. I thought about playing Dungeon World mix myself, but I found out that I actually am a hipster, and don't want to play it specifically because of how overpowered it is. It's also brainless, and auto-pilot. And forces you to play the game properly by giving you card advantage for removing the opponent's card advantage.
I could bitch about it some more, but I'll leave that for another day. I eventually settled, after much deliberation, on Magic World Burn. After going through my box of commons looking for a sideboard, I find Abra Cadabra. I read the card. Then I wonder why it wasn't in my deck and why I'm an idiot. I put it in at two, hoping to get a cheese victory by swinging at an open center with a big link attack and countering their attack negation spell for game. This never happened, but Abra Cadabra saved my nuts twice, so I'm not complaining.
I didn't have this deck completely done, either, but the cards I'm missing aren't actually mandatory for the deck to function, like Dominion Rod and Merlin are for the other two decks I wanted to run.
Deckname - #Tim's Totally Meta Mega Serious Magic World Burn Deck™
Decklist
Flag - Magic World
Buddy - Dragowizard, Burning Wand (Foil)
Items (7)
4x Gunrod, Bechstein
3x Gunrod, Stradivarius
Spells (21)
4x Magical Goodbye
4x Trans-flame
4x Solomon's Shield (Useful. You know, except against Dungeon World.)
4x Nice One!
2x Kosher (I needed gauge fixing so bad. I gave away my Keys of Solomon to my buddy Elliot, thinking I wouldn't need them. I may up this number later, or switch to the Keys. I feel like this is more slot efficient, though.)
2x Abra Cadabra!
1x Chillax! (WHY OH WHY DO I ONLY HAVE ONE OF THESE?!)
Size 1's (16)
4x Demon Lord, Asmodai (Staple)
4x Dragowizard, Burning Wand (Tap to deal 1. If I could use multiple of this effect, this deck would be much stronger, but I'll take what I've got. Great for a going first turn 1 ping.)
4x Kenjy of the Explosive Fists (Going to become Qinus Axias or Glassarts later I suppose)
3x Magician of Glass, Will Glassart (should be maxed)
1x Dragowizard, Qinus Axia (1 gauge wasn't too big of a deal)
Size 2's (6)
3x Center of the World, Mary Sue (I want to drop this down to 2. Gauge cost was just too high.)
2x Magical Secretary, Genjuro Saki (I want to up this to 4)
1x Herb Magician, Soichiro Tenjiku (Worse Genjuro that's going to be taken out later)
Round 1 - W vs. Dungeon World (Dungeon/Adventurer Mix)
I was expecting it. I figured that roughly half of the people there would be playing Dungeon. There weren't that many from what I could see, though. Every table I would look at (didn't go poking around too much, though) didn't have Dungeon World on it.
I guess I just get lucky, and get to get the "fun" match-up out of the way.
Game 1 he starts off relatively strong, but I had a perfect hand. Kosher, Nice One, Genjuro, Will Glassart, Bechstein, Magical Goodbye. I had gauge and cards secured for the remainder of the game. He did equip Glory Seeker turn 1, though. Turn 3 happens, and he's at 5. Transflame, Bechstein, equip new Bechstein, Burning Wand. He's at 1, and I have 3 crit on the board. Swing with Asmodai, expecting him to Shalsana so I can win with my 2 crit swing. He takes it. Glory Seeker reveals a spell, and he goes to 3. Swing for 2, he goes down to 1. I fend off his next turn. My turn, ping for game.
Game 2 I am the ping machine. He equips Glory Seeker again, but I just have too much ping. He is down to 1 on the start of my turn. I ping for 1, popping Glory Seeker. He hits a spell. I ping for two more, and swing in with 2 creatures. He Shalsanas the first one, and loses to the second one.
Round 2 - W vs. Dungeon World (Dungeon/Adventurer Mix)
Game 1 he isn't able to keep a strong offensive on the board. He kept not link attacking with Brave, Drum, so my Solomon's Shields kept him on lock-down. He equips a Glory Seeker. Turn 3, I ping him down to 0, he reveals a spell. I have too much momentum. He used the remainder of his resources just staying alive. He equips another Glory Seeker, and this time he just keeps swinging at my side units with no Defeat Monsters out, since I have too much life. My turn rolls around again. I ping down his Glory Seeker, he gets another spell. I swing for game.
Game 2 was much better for him. He got a massive offensive force out, and I had squat for defensive spells. I had plenty of burn, though. He, uhh... equips a Glory Seeker with Brave Drum in the middle. I can't get around Drum, but I ping him to 0. He reveals a spell. I swing into his creatures to soften the blow the next turn. Tetsuya is called, and I can't stop 7 crit to my face if he wins the Rock/Paper/Scissors. He does win it, unfortunately, so I lose this game.
Game 3 he didn't get Glory Seeker, so when I pinged him to 0 he wasn't there anymore. Woot!
Round 3 - L vs. Dungeon World (Dungeon/Adventurer Mix)
Game 1 was pretty even. I pinged him down to 0, but, you know, Glory Seeker. He revealed a spell. After that, I was in a solid position to win again, even though he got another one out. I could live if his Drum didn't win Rock Papers Scissors. He lost the Rock Papers Scissors! But then impacted me for game. Lol
Game 2 he swung in hard early with... Glory Seeker. We had a difference in damage on our sheets. I had him at 3, he had himself at 4. We had no clue how to resolve it. I told him I had exactly 3 damage in hand, but he had Glory Seeker out. Mason happened to be there and convinced him to take my reasonable offer. We were going to see if the top card of his deck was a spell. If it was, then he auto-wins because of Glory Seeker. If it wasn't a spell, we would roll for game. He takes my offer, reveals a spell, and we didn't need to roll for it at all, as the outcome was decided with or without our damage disparity. I felt bad about what happened, because I'm not sure if he missed one of my pings or if he gained a life and I missed it, but fortunately it was in a position that didn't make a difference.
Round 4 - W vs. Dungeon World (Dungeon/Adventurer Mix)
Game 1 he equipped something that wasn't Glory Seeker. I was in shock. My body wasn't certain how to respond. He played Gagnar turn 1. He told me his hand was 3 Shalsanas, Dungeon Explosion, and his weapon he equipped (5k/2 trial deck one for one gauge, assuming he didn't finish his deck completely, or thought that it was as good as Glory Seeker for the purpose of killing creatures with Defeat Monsters, and one gauge is cheaper than a card from hand.) I end up filling my field up and getting ready to swing in. He casts Dungeon Explosion, losing two life. Abra Cadabra saved my life, there. Kosher gave me the second gauge I needed, then I got out Stradivarius to have a big enough Kenjy to take out Gagnar, dealing two lifelink to him. He couldn't Shalsana because he burned all of his gauge. I pinged him for game the following turn.
Game 2 was almost a literal repeat of game 1. He Gagnared, Explosioned, I Abra Cadabra'd, then called Asmodai over Burning Wand after I rested him, discarded, and swung in for 5 damage on top of my Bechstein and Burning Wand, 2 life for Explosion, and 2 life for Gagnar's lifelink.
Woot! No Glory Seekers!
After this, we cut to top 8. I was convinced my tiebreakers were terrible, but I miscounted how many undefeateds there were. We had 2 left, and I thought there would be 4 undefeated players. So then there were 8 players that were X-1 vying for the top 6 spots. I ended up making 4th place on the top 8 cut. The guy who played me in round 3 was 5th, so I end up getting paired against him. Deck check passed with flying colors. They got to enjoy my tech Wizard, Merlin.
Quarter Finals - L vs. Dungeon World (Dungeon/Adventurer Mix)
Game 1 I don't know what happened. I spent a good 5 minutes shuffling. It seems that when I shuffle too much the same cards clump together for no reason. But it was really bad... I got all three of my Mary Sues. He got a Glory/Drum set-up with something else that wasn't an adventurer that he was using to pick off the center. Probably Fate Skeleton. He killed my center, then swung for 6, which I Chillaxed. His offensive pressure outweighed my pinging significantly this game since I hit that hard, early dead draw with 3 Mary Sues. I end up swinging with my Bechstein and Burning Wand into his monsters. I had a Mary Sue in hand and one gauge. I had a Kosher in hand, and no other wizards I could play. I died a little on the inside right there. My deck absolutely fizzled.
Game 2 was even worse. I wasn't even hiding it. I said audibly, "Why deck, WHY?!" After shuffling the shit out of my cards and moving each Mary Sue to the opposite ends of my deck... I had a Nice One! in hand, and thought, "I can salvage this." when they slowly started to appear early. I had one Abra Cadabra in my starting hand, one Mary Sue, one Asmodai, one Will Glassart. I charge Asmodai, get another Abra Cadabra. Fuck. Use Nice One! Draw two more Nice Ones. *Facepalm* Next turn draw Mary Sue #3. Charge it. Draw into Qinus Axia. Here's the situation.
Opponent has Glory Seeker equipped and 7 life. I have 3 gauge and Abra Cadabra in hand, along with a Bechstein equipped, two Trans-flame, a Mary Sue, and a Qinus Axia. Of course, I had a Nice One! in hand, too. I sat there figuring out if there was any possible combination to make this combo finish my opponent off. I kept getting to 6 guaranteed damage, but no 7th.
If we exclude the Trans-flames and Bechsteins, and remove their damage, I needed to do 4 damage with 3 gauge. The easiest way to secure damage would be to swing with 4 crit and Abra Cadabra their Shalsana (I didn't know if they had one or not). Literally, only because I kept dead drawing and getting all of my gauge monsters (literally, all 4 of them, and no vanillas, non-gauge monsters), I had no outs. If I had a Key of Solomon, first volume, I could have used Mary Sue to get that, use that to refill my gauge, call Qinus Axia to ping them for 1 (3), then swing for game.
With what I had though, because all of my creatures took gauge, I ran out of options. I decided to try top decking into what I needed. I used my Nice One! and got Will Glassart and something else. Decide to call Mary Sue to get a Kosher. Play Will Glassart to attempt to cast Kosher, but he destroys it with Pillar of Fire (which is honestly a misplay on his part. He should wait until I declare combat, then take my units out so I can't replace them. He got pretty lucky that I drew all of my gauge monsters and none of my vanillas, considering how my deck is ratiod.) I end up losing the following turn. He casts Shalsana in response to my attack anyway, so I don't think I could have burned enough to win the game without having drawn into some actual creatures earlier. I was told that the top card of his deck that turn was a spell, so I would have lost anyway. Lol
All in all, I finally topped at a regional qualifiers for a Bushiroad game. I didn't think that would ever happen, considering my piss-poor luck. Still, I do wish I could have fought something other than Dungeon World with my deck. Match-up is so boring. Deck is so auto-pilot. Waaaah. WAAAAAAH! Okay, I'm done crying about it.
Obligatory, "You're welcome" to all of the other toppers for being that one guy who took out all of the Dungeon World players for them except the guy who beat me twice. Everyone else was talking about all of the modified trial decks, DDW decks, Legend World decks, Dragon World decks, etc. that they played against. I fought nothing but tier 1 metashit all day while luck was taking a chainsaw to my nutsack because I'm Tim, dammit, I'm not allowed to do well at card games.
I do feel oddly inspired to finish out this deck, though. I will probably be doing that over the next while, while looking at the Magic World trial deck and set 5 stuff to see if we get any new burn support.
Monday, September 22, 2014
Chicago Regional Tournament Report
Vanguard:
Game 1 - Have Glendios, Colony Maker, 3 triggers. Put back three triggers, get Magnet Hollow, Trigger, Trigger. Think, "Well, ****. I have 20 outs left in my deck that either are grade 1 or fish for grade 1. Maybe I'll be okay." Top deck into a Reverse. Pitch, check top 5, no grade 1's. Ride up the following turn. Time passes, I no guard at 3, get double crit, 5th damage heal, saving myself from losing. I catch back up, and reach a situation where I'm at a solid spot to win. I have a front row locked, and the other row has nothing in it. He calls a Dragruler as a RG and attacks with it. I drop 5k to guard it. He attacks with Raging Form. I'm anticipating that he doesn't having Raging Form in hand because he didn't check one and had two in damage. I no pass it instead of two-to-passing it, thinking that he doesn't run stands because he's bad at Dragruler, and he doesn't have Raging Form. Turns out Raging Form was in his hand the whole time, so he superior rides and hits me to 6 for game.
My opponent was playing crit dragruler, so I died from cancer before I lost the actual cardfight.
Game 2 -
I open 1, 2, 1, 2, reverse. I think to myself that I can fish Glendios. Boy was I wrong.
1st World Line, nothing. Grab a 12k beater.
1st Damage, Glendios.
2nd World Line, nothing. Grab a second Magnet Hollow (5th grade 2 at this point.)
Hit with Magnet Hollow A, thin deck of non-Glendios. Keep fishing.
Second Damage check, Glendios.
3rd World Line, nothing. Grab a Ruin Magician.
Opponent has now taken 5 damage. They're at 4. I've only taken 2 damage. **** this game. They heal on this drive check bringing them to 3.
4th World Line, nothing. Cry.
Attack with VG, crit, get another Reverse unit. Score is now 7 to 3. Still no Glendios.
They breakride, swing with everything, I guard, they activate Peace before calling their second unit to the field, so the judge is like, "It's optional, so we'll play it as you only calling one."
They swing with Vanguard, I have enough to stop the second VG swing and the RG. I need them to not double crit me. I get double crit anyway. No healsack.
Final score 6-7, but that means they win since they had more points, right?
After scrub-a-dub-dubbing out, I can't honestly say I was disappointed. There's no possible way a round 1 loss would permit me to make the top 8 cut unless I got paired up and won much later, so losing the second round essentially just finalized my results.
I go have fun for a while, and come back to the semi-finals. Very first thing I see is a Pale Moon player hitting a stand trigger with a 12k attacker and a 7k Zelma frontrow that is at rest. He stands Zelma and gives the power to the 12k when his opponent has out an 11k and a 9k front row. This wasted a card he could have forced from his opponent by attacking into both rear guards by giving Zelma power, but instead he went for the crossridden Vanguard when his opponent had an interceptor.
Vanguard is a game that's all about skill, right?
And yet again we have more consistent top 8's from previous years, which once again proves that because I refuse to cheat (it is general consensus that topping a 400 man Vanguard tournament cannot be done consistently, right? This is my best guess on how they're doing it.), I will never top a large-scale Vanguard tournament. I am probably done with competitive Vanguard, and will switch to judging all of the Vanguard events I attend.
Buddyfight:
Round 1 (Vs. Katana World) W
Game 1: I enter a point where I push him down to 3 life. If I draw a creature, I can push, but I just drew all defensive spells. He said, "This is just a trial deck." So I cast a spell while he has Lethal Formation and 3 gauge, and he Star Crushers me. I call him a dirty liar, and he explains it's the only non-trial deck card he has. After evil glares, we both laugh it off and play game 2.
Game 2: I got my set-up and won 11-0.
Game 3: I had to fight a little bit for this one, but had Sakurafubuki in hand and attacked with my full field of 5 crit for game, countering his Oborogenbu (What a liar!). Lol.
Round 2 (Vs. Dungeon World) L
Game 1: I essentially got shit stomped. Didn't see anything good. Couldn't make the plays.
Game 2: I fought like hell with absolutely nothing. I got one Hades Fall out, but got neither Yamigitsune or Return to the Underworld. He plays an Addrick with a Brave Drum out, trying to bait my Hades Fall. I just said, "I'll allow it." and let him keep his 1 crit on the board. He kept going after my field (which is how you beat Katana World if they don't draw into Return) and i was playing with 2-3 cards at most for the whole game. I had a painful choice where I Star Crushered his Pillar of Flame on my Tempest, Garo-oh. He had called Tetsuya, which I had Hades Falled at this point. He continued to get Tetsuya and a Fate Skeleton back, but he had a Glory Seeker equipped with that Fate Skeleton in the middle. I used Tempest the following turn to kill off his Drum and Tetsuya, leaving him with just his Fate Skeleton in the middle, keeping me safer. I was able to hold out for another turn or two, but I just fizzled. Top 4 cards of my deck when I lost were Return, Kimensai, Return, Return. Oh well. Both of us played really well with what we had. I used the mindgames and blackmailing to prolong the game and turtle, and my opponent said he was very impressed with my depth of strategy. This guy went on to get 2nd place, and was a really cool guy. No regrets or salt for losing to him.
Round 3 (Vs. Danger World) W
Game 1: Opened Item Blast. Blew up his weapons mid attack, he couldn't get around my defenses very easily. I was able to win quickly and efficiently.
Game 2: I godhanded, which always feels nice. Too bad it was against a Danger World trial deck. Although, considering I've been losing to Mike's Danger World trial deck all weekend for literally no reason, I'm not sure what to say on it.
The guy asks me for some advice on deckbuilding, since he just started playing. I help him out by building a Dungeon World deck for him. I showed him my deck and its combos and he was like, "This shit's dumb. I want a more balanced deck. Wait, Rock Paper Scissors? WE'RE DOING THIS." He pulls a foil Mimic with a Prize to add to the awesome.
Round 4 (Vs. Faggot Bran-Bran) L
Game 1: I fuck up and for whatever reason use Hades fall on a Tasuku. Why I did this, I don't know. Bran was distracting me, okay?! After that misplay (which I realized as I did it) I tried to play a bit better. I dead drew too many times, though. He ends up winning the game by swinging into my creatures, which is how you beat Skulls when they have no Return. Sadface.jpg.
Game 2: I get Hades Fall and Return in my opening hand. 11-0. Bran was intentionally misplaying and using sub-optimal strategies on purpose. I'm starting to get annoyed with him.
Game 3: He is borderline trying to lose on purpose at this point. He is doing everything in his power to just have three Gummi Slime on the board with no other plans. This, ladies and gentlemen, is our champion. I hit absolutely none of my strategy. I end up drawing into 3 Lethal Formations in a row (Shut up, Elliot), and I had so many points where him playing incorrectly would have led to me winning the game if I'd just draw into something. No Yami, no Kimensai, no Setsujishi, no Hades, no Return. My deck just wanted to lose. After running out of ways to not beat me, Bran ends up killing me right at time. I have a salty catfight with him trying to get him a warning for not declaring battle phase. He counter-tries to get me a warning for not declaring that I'm paying life for abilities, even though I totally always do it. Elliot agreed with me. Will said I wasn't. The world may never know. The judge was just like, "Ladies, please. Stop fighting." Well, that didn't actually happen, but that would have appropriate.
I end up going 2-2. On one hand I could say I lost to 1st and 2nd place, which is understandable.
On the other hand, I could say that I only beat trial decks. Or at least I think they're trial decks?
Bran trying to lose and still beating me because my deck refused to function made me quite a bit salty, too. Especially since his big idea for playing the game is,"Screw tactics, win with Gummi Slime."
I think what I've learned is that card games just aren't for me. And that I totally should have said, "Fuck all of you, I'm playing Dungeon World". But meh, I didn't want to be that guy. But you know what, that guy was all top 4 spots.
There was a top 8 cut, and my friend Will didn't make it, despite being 4-1. This was because a guy who already has the full-trip secured decided he still wanted to play in the top 8. Will was pissed off, especially because fucking Brandon made it in, literally with the worst earlier tie-breakers, and only because he was the lucky one who got paired up and somehow managed to win in round 5.
Will and I grew increasingly salty.
Brandon gets an auto-game loss for having an improperly filled out decklist. Naturally, he fights the Ancient World player. Who doesn't draw into Seiger on game one, and gets Rolling Stoned turn 2 in game 2, so Bran moves on anyway.
Saltiness gains one level.
Top 4, we're like, "Fucking Brandon. He's NOT EVEN TRYING and he's already qualified. Well, at least if he does win this round, we're staying in his hotel room."
Brandon wins again, for literally no reason.
We're just like, "Fuck it. This is bullshit. But at least we have a place to crash. Okay, fucker. Lose already."
He wins the finals against the first guy who beat me, declaring an attack against, "Big Awesome Dog." (Maybe I still love Bran-Bran a little bit.)
Nope.jpg
Apparently, even in a game like Buddyfight, I can still get gradelocked, and Brandon can literally go full-retard and win it all. I was pretty salty.
Maybe after my intense and burning anguish dies down, I'll actually congratulate the little bitch. Maybe.
Game 1 - Have Glendios, Colony Maker, 3 triggers. Put back three triggers, get Magnet Hollow, Trigger, Trigger. Think, "Well, ****. I have 20 outs left in my deck that either are grade 1 or fish for grade 1. Maybe I'll be okay." Top deck into a Reverse. Pitch, check top 5, no grade 1's. Ride up the following turn. Time passes, I no guard at 3, get double crit, 5th damage heal, saving myself from losing. I catch back up, and reach a situation where I'm at a solid spot to win. I have a front row locked, and the other row has nothing in it. He calls a Dragruler as a RG and attacks with it. I drop 5k to guard it. He attacks with Raging Form. I'm anticipating that he doesn't having Raging Form in hand because he didn't check one and had two in damage. I no pass it instead of two-to-passing it, thinking that he doesn't run stands because he's bad at Dragruler, and he doesn't have Raging Form. Turns out Raging Form was in his hand the whole time, so he superior rides and hits me to 6 for game.
My opponent was playing crit dragruler, so I died from cancer before I lost the actual cardfight.
Game 2 -
I open 1, 2, 1, 2, reverse. I think to myself that I can fish Glendios. Boy was I wrong.
1st World Line, nothing. Grab a 12k beater.
1st Damage, Glendios.
2nd World Line, nothing. Grab a second Magnet Hollow (5th grade 2 at this point.)
Hit with Magnet Hollow A, thin deck of non-Glendios. Keep fishing.
Second Damage check, Glendios.
3rd World Line, nothing. Grab a Ruin Magician.
Opponent has now taken 5 damage. They're at 4. I've only taken 2 damage. **** this game. They heal on this drive check bringing them to 3.
4th World Line, nothing. Cry.
Attack with VG, crit, get another Reverse unit. Score is now 7 to 3. Still no Glendios.
They breakride, swing with everything, I guard, they activate Peace before calling their second unit to the field, so the judge is like, "It's optional, so we'll play it as you only calling one."
They swing with Vanguard, I have enough to stop the second VG swing and the RG. I need them to not double crit me. I get double crit anyway. No healsack.
Final score 6-7, but that means they win since they had more points, right?
After scrub-a-dub-dubbing out, I can't honestly say I was disappointed. There's no possible way a round 1 loss would permit me to make the top 8 cut unless I got paired up and won much later, so losing the second round essentially just finalized my results.
I go have fun for a while, and come back to the semi-finals. Very first thing I see is a Pale Moon player hitting a stand trigger with a 12k attacker and a 7k Zelma frontrow that is at rest. He stands Zelma and gives the power to the 12k when his opponent has out an 11k and a 9k front row. This wasted a card he could have forced from his opponent by attacking into both rear guards by giving Zelma power, but instead he went for the crossridden Vanguard when his opponent had an interceptor.
Vanguard is a game that's all about skill, right?
And yet again we have more consistent top 8's from previous years, which once again proves that because I refuse to cheat (it is general consensus that topping a 400 man Vanguard tournament cannot be done consistently, right? This is my best guess on how they're doing it.), I will never top a large-scale Vanguard tournament. I am probably done with competitive Vanguard, and will switch to judging all of the Vanguard events I attend.
Buddyfight:
Round 1 (Vs. Katana World) W
Game 1: I enter a point where I push him down to 3 life. If I draw a creature, I can push, but I just drew all defensive spells. He said, "This is just a trial deck." So I cast a spell while he has Lethal Formation and 3 gauge, and he Star Crushers me. I call him a dirty liar, and he explains it's the only non-trial deck card he has. After evil glares, we both laugh it off and play game 2.
Game 2: I got my set-up and won 11-0.
Game 3: I had to fight a little bit for this one, but had Sakurafubuki in hand and attacked with my full field of 5 crit for game, countering his Oborogenbu (What a liar!). Lol.
Round 2 (Vs. Dungeon World) L
Game 1: I essentially got shit stomped. Didn't see anything good. Couldn't make the plays.
Game 2: I fought like hell with absolutely nothing. I got one Hades Fall out, but got neither Yamigitsune or Return to the Underworld. He plays an Addrick with a Brave Drum out, trying to bait my Hades Fall. I just said, "I'll allow it." and let him keep his 1 crit on the board. He kept going after my field (which is how you beat Katana World if they don't draw into Return) and i was playing with 2-3 cards at most for the whole game. I had a painful choice where I Star Crushered his Pillar of Flame on my Tempest, Garo-oh. He had called Tetsuya, which I had Hades Falled at this point. He continued to get Tetsuya and a Fate Skeleton back, but he had a Glory Seeker equipped with that Fate Skeleton in the middle. I used Tempest the following turn to kill off his Drum and Tetsuya, leaving him with just his Fate Skeleton in the middle, keeping me safer. I was able to hold out for another turn or two, but I just fizzled. Top 4 cards of my deck when I lost were Return, Kimensai, Return, Return. Oh well. Both of us played really well with what we had. I used the mindgames and blackmailing to prolong the game and turtle, and my opponent said he was very impressed with my depth of strategy. This guy went on to get 2nd place, and was a really cool guy. No regrets or salt for losing to him.
Round 3 (Vs. Danger World) W
Game 1: Opened Item Blast. Blew up his weapons mid attack, he couldn't get around my defenses very easily. I was able to win quickly and efficiently.
Game 2: I godhanded, which always feels nice. Too bad it was against a Danger World trial deck. Although, considering I've been losing to Mike's Danger World trial deck all weekend for literally no reason, I'm not sure what to say on it.
The guy asks me for some advice on deckbuilding, since he just started playing. I help him out by building a Dungeon World deck for him. I showed him my deck and its combos and he was like, "This shit's dumb. I want a more balanced deck. Wait, Rock Paper Scissors? WE'RE DOING THIS." He pulls a foil Mimic with a Prize to add to the awesome.
Round 4 (Vs. Faggot Bran-Bran) L
Game 1: I fuck up and for whatever reason use Hades fall on a Tasuku. Why I did this, I don't know. Bran was distracting me, okay?! After that misplay (which I realized as I did it) I tried to play a bit better. I dead drew too many times, though. He ends up winning the game by swinging into my creatures, which is how you beat Skulls when they have no Return. Sadface.jpg.
Game 2: I get Hades Fall and Return in my opening hand. 11-0. Bran was intentionally misplaying and using sub-optimal strategies on purpose. I'm starting to get annoyed with him.
Game 3: He is borderline trying to lose on purpose at this point. He is doing everything in his power to just have three Gummi Slime on the board with no other plans. This, ladies and gentlemen, is our champion. I hit absolutely none of my strategy. I end up drawing into 3 Lethal Formations in a row (Shut up, Elliot), and I had so many points where him playing incorrectly would have led to me winning the game if I'd just draw into something. No Yami, no Kimensai, no Setsujishi, no Hades, no Return. My deck just wanted to lose. After running out of ways to not beat me, Bran ends up killing me right at time. I have a salty catfight with him trying to get him a warning for not declaring battle phase. He counter-tries to get me a warning for not declaring that I'm paying life for abilities, even though I totally always do it. Elliot agreed with me. Will said I wasn't. The world may never know. The judge was just like, "Ladies, please. Stop fighting." Well, that didn't actually happen, but that would have appropriate.
I end up going 2-2. On one hand I could say I lost to 1st and 2nd place, which is understandable.
On the other hand, I could say that I only beat trial decks. Or at least I think they're trial decks?
Bran trying to lose and still beating me because my deck refused to function made me quite a bit salty, too. Especially since his big idea for playing the game is,"Screw tactics, win with Gummi Slime."
I think what I've learned is that card games just aren't for me. And that I totally should have said, "Fuck all of you, I'm playing Dungeon World". But meh, I didn't want to be that guy. But you know what, that guy was all top 4 spots.
There was a top 8 cut, and my friend Will didn't make it, despite being 4-1. This was because a guy who already has the full-trip secured decided he still wanted to play in the top 8. Will was pissed off, especially because fucking Brandon made it in, literally with the worst earlier tie-breakers, and only because he was the lucky one who got paired up and somehow managed to win in round 5.
Will and I grew increasingly salty.
Brandon gets an auto-game loss for having an improperly filled out decklist. Naturally, he fights the Ancient World player. Who doesn't draw into Seiger on game one, and gets Rolling Stoned turn 2 in game 2, so Bran moves on anyway.
Saltiness gains one level.
Top 4, we're like, "Fucking Brandon. He's NOT EVEN TRYING and he's already qualified. Well, at least if he does win this round, we're staying in his hotel room."
Brandon wins again, for literally no reason.
We're just like, "Fuck it. This is bullshit. But at least we have a place to crash. Okay, fucker. Lose already."
He wins the finals against the first guy who beat me, declaring an attack against, "Big Awesome Dog." (Maybe I still love Bran-Bran a little bit.)
Nope.jpg
Apparently, even in a game like Buddyfight, I can still get gradelocked, and Brandon can literally go full-retard and win it all. I was pretty salty.
Maybe after my intense and burning anguish dies down, I'll actually congratulate the little bitch. Maybe.
Monday, August 18, 2014
GenCon Buddyfight Tournament Report
I decided to play in my first ever Buddyfight
tournament. Now, I play Buddyfight all the time, but it's always my
decks vs. my decks, fighting baddies online (which I stopped, because
TCO can't "hide" the cards I set for Hades Fall and Secret Formation),
and fighting what are at best modified trial decks.
As some of you might know, I've actually judged more Buddyfight events than I've played. ~_~
That being said, after shaking down the Bushiroad booth at GenCon for four copies of Oborogenbu (I don't usually abuse my connections, but making a mandatory-to-play card an exclusive promo is kind of dumb), I decided that I wanted to play Katana World for the day. Katana World is easily my favorite World, despite Dungeon World being significantly stronger.
The tournament showing was pretty weak. Only 39 for Vanguard on Friday and only 13 for Buddyfight on Saturday. After getting the ever-living **** sacked out of me in Vanguard on Friday, I came to the Buddyfight tournament with absolutely no expectations of winning, considering 1: People from out of state who are hardcore Buddyfighters showed up and 2: This was literally my first ever Buddyfight tournament. To my great surprise, there was only one Dungeon World player, and they dropped after they lost in round 3, even though they had a solid chance to get second/third place. The prize support was a deckbox (manga-styled artwork, front is Gao and Drum attacking, back is chibi-Drum eating pudding, Kawaii as ****), mat (set 3 mat), and sleeves (Black/Gold World sleeves for Magic, Danger, and Dragon). Top 6 all got the same prize.
Decklist:
Flag - Katana World
Buddy - Blood Knife, Kimensai
Weapons - 3x Five Heavenly Swords, Onimaru (Switched to from Munechika before the tournament. With a plentiful amount of lifegain in the game, my win condition is no longer swing with 2-3 things with penetrate and counter their attack negate for the win.)
Impacts -
4x Secret Sword, Lethal Formation
2x Secret Sword, Star Crusher (I took out Moon Fang. I left it in my side deck, but the only impacts I ever see anymore are non-counterable, or are used early, like Ancient World's or another Secret Formation. Proved too unreliable for use.)
Spells (Defense) -
4x Demon Way, Oborogenbu (prioritized this over Art of Body Replacement to stop link attacks with an open center.)
3x Ninja Arts, Snake Gaze (Easily the best double-attack counter in the game. Generic enough to be useful against everything. Can stop Dungeon World shenanigans, and shuts down Seiger for an entire turn.)
2x Art of Body Replacement
Spells (Sets)
4x Art of Explosive Hades Fall
4x Return to the Underworld
Spells (Other)
2x Demon Way, Sakurafubuki (I won an entire game with this card on turn 1, since I stopped a Seiger from existing because of it.)
2x Clear Serenity
1x Demon Way, Geppakugiri (I abused this card greatly against Seiger, since I ran an extra copy in my sideboard for that match-up)
Size 1's
4x Blood Knife, Kimensai (I love this card.)
4x Evil in Heart, Yamigitsune (Obvious engine that makes everything work)
3x Steel Wall, Beheading Crab (Steel Wall, lel)
2x Undefeatable Setsujishi (This card won me more games through shenanigans than I thought possible)
Size 2's
4x Tempest, Garo-Oh (Sadly, this guy didn't shine for me that much. He's still strong, and paid for himself with Setsujishi.)
Size 3's
2x Wanderer, the Gold (Never once used this card, since I fought nothing but Dragon World and Ancient World. Well, I did use it against Ancient with Art of Explosive Hades Fall, but more about that down below.)
Sideboard:
3x Aftermath, Gagaku (This is how I chose to fight Seiger)
2x Art of Body Replacement (Swap in against Seiger, since Oboro is strictly worse if the opponent's deck doesn't Link Attack)
1x Five Heavenly Swords, Onimaru (Left this in if I wanted to swap for it to have 4 weapons, didn't end up using it.)
1x Demon Way, Geppakugiri (Teched in against Seiger)
1x Secret Sword, Moon Fang (Didn't end up using this.)
1x Clear Serenity (Setsujishi fixed my gauge incredibly well, I never needed to have a third Serenity)
1x Art of Item Blasting (I fought Dragon World, but one build was Beistand focused, and the other one was Thunder Knights without many equips. Didn't end up using it.)
I never bought any EB1, so I never bothered to get Half-Kills. Too much of a direct hate card, anyway. It feels cheesy putting them in against Seiger between rounds.
Round 1 - Vs. Ancient World (Seiger) - 2W 0L
Game 1 was exhausting. It grinded out until the 6th or 7th turn before I finally got a set-up. Ended up getting Lethal Formation out with 3 gauge. He swings in and puts me to 1. I swing in with Kimensai and another unit in a Link Attack against his center unit which had Lifelink 1 (Seiger died uneventfully without evolving before that). He had 3 life, so this was going to kill him. He countered it with Dragonlution, which I Secret Formationed for game.
Game 2 I teched in my Gagaku's, Arts, and took out a size 3 for it. I ended up drawing two Hades Falls and my now one size 3, and was facepalming. I still used Hades Fall, choosing size 2, and hilariously, he had no seiger. I blew up his size 2, and swung in for game on turn 3. His deck just fizzled really hard. Hades Fall on a lifelink unit hurts quite a bit.
Round 2 vs. Dragon World (Jackknife) 2W 1L
Game 1 drags out terribly. He ends up having a non-opened center and no defensive cards. If I top deck into any creature, I can bring back Kimensai and kill him, since he had 2 life. Draw was an Oborogenbu. Charged it and drew a Sakurafubuki (I had 2 life left). If I had held onto the Oborogenbu, then charged the Sakurafubuki, my top card was a Beheading Crab, so I could have won by waiting a turn, since my opponent had no size 1's. Oh well, I had no way of knowing that.
Game 2. I thought really hard about teching cards in, but decide not to. I start off with a Hades Fall -> Setsujishi -> Buddy call a Kimensai -> Swing with Kimensai for 2, move him to gauge to have enough for Lethal Formation. He cast a spell on his turn, which I countered, bringing him down to 5. I won after another two turns. It was a pretty clean win. Setsujishi into Lethal Formation secured about 3 victories for me over the course of the day, due to me also being able to use Hades Fall on turn 1.
Game 3 I played it the way I love playing Katana World. He had an open center. I link attacked with everything for 5 crit (Setsu, Crab, Yami). He had 5 life. He Green Dragon Shields, but I Sakurafubuki for game.
(Semi-Finals) Round 3 vs. Ancient World (Seiger) 2W 1L
Game 1 he went first. Normally, I like going second, but he chained off Creation, Legend, Rise and Fall, and set Dragonverse all on his first turn, along with playing Seiger. It was unfortunate that I had Serenity and two Lethal Formations. I set them on my first turn, then he never needed to cast a spell ever again. He only used ACT monsters after that. I got him to no soul on second form, but I wasn't able to secure victory.
Game 2, I teched in everything I teched in before. Again, I drew into Hades Fall and my one size 3, since I teched out my second copy again. All of my "meh". I set one and play a Return to the Underworld. He notices that I don't proc it on Seiger's first form and gets a really worried look on his face. He, knowing that I run size 3's, decided to destroy my Hades Fall over my Return to the Underworld. After seeing my Tempest Garo-Oh in soul, he was just like, "wat". Return to the Underworld won me the game, just like it's supposed to. I was still in a good position to win this game, regardless. I drew into another Hades Fall, abusing Setsujishi for free plusses from it later. Snake Gazed the guy two turns in a row, so his Seiger was literally doing nothing for those two turns.
Game 3, I didn't tech in the second grade 3 to hit it. I mean, odds are low that I draw it, right? Right. I don't see it. I set Hades Fall, choosing my 3. He never sees Seiger this entire game. Can't complain, since I end up winning for it.
(Finals) Round 4 vs. Dragon World (Thunder Knights) 2W 0L
Game 1 I should have lost. It went down to the wire at the very end. I had 2 life left, and he had no creatures out. I stopped his weapon attack that was going to win the game for him, but he had Thunder Formation and 4 gauge. I had a Snake Gaze in hand, and could account for one monster attack. He top decks two 2 critical creatures. I was thinking to myself, "Well, I'm ****ed." He swings his first creature into my Yamigitsune. I blink. It registers that he just messed up, and I immediately respond by playing Snake Gaze on his other creature. He asks how much life I have left. I say, "1." He begins facepalming. I swing for game next turn.
Game 2 was a good game for me. I did my Hades Fall -> Kimensai -> Setsujishi -> Lethal Formation Wombo combo, since I went first. I secured too large of an advantage and snowballed the game pretty hard, winning the tournament. My penetrate was nullifying his advantages. He kept misplaying by using cards that specified that you need an open center to use, and not using them before battle phase started/while he was moving his creatures to center.
He was the only one smart enough to cast a defensive spell when I had out a Lethal Formationed when I had 2 gauge during my battlephase (and used Setsujishi to move Kimensai to the gauge after that so he couldn't cast on his turn). I wasn't super worried about him stopping one attack, though.
All-in-all, I noticed a few things.
1. I'm the only person with a common buddy. Everyone else had BR Jackknife, Thunder Drum, or Seiger that I played.
2. Everyone kept misplaying. I didn't really mess anything up, so I was able to secure large advantages over my opponents that way.
3. Seiger seems inconsistent. That pay 2 gauge to get Seiger promo seems like it might be the juice they need to make the deck function. I haven't bothered to build the deck, so this was my first time encountering it. It wasn't that difficult to tackle, even without half-kills.
Not too much else to report, other than, "I had a blast" and that a bunch of people at my locals are playing now, so hopefully I can keep entering more than yearly tournaments.
As some of you might know, I've actually judged more Buddyfight events than I've played. ~_~
That being said, after shaking down the Bushiroad booth at GenCon for four copies of Oborogenbu (I don't usually abuse my connections, but making a mandatory-to-play card an exclusive promo is kind of dumb), I decided that I wanted to play Katana World for the day. Katana World is easily my favorite World, despite Dungeon World being significantly stronger.
The tournament showing was pretty weak. Only 39 for Vanguard on Friday and only 13 for Buddyfight on Saturday. After getting the ever-living **** sacked out of me in Vanguard on Friday, I came to the Buddyfight tournament with absolutely no expectations of winning, considering 1: People from out of state who are hardcore Buddyfighters showed up and 2: This was literally my first ever Buddyfight tournament. To my great surprise, there was only one Dungeon World player, and they dropped after they lost in round 3, even though they had a solid chance to get second/third place. The prize support was a deckbox (manga-styled artwork, front is Gao and Drum attacking, back is chibi-Drum eating pudding, Kawaii as ****), mat (set 3 mat), and sleeves (Black/Gold World sleeves for Magic, Danger, and Dragon). Top 6 all got the same prize.
Decklist:
Flag - Katana World
Buddy - Blood Knife, Kimensai
Weapons - 3x Five Heavenly Swords, Onimaru (Switched to from Munechika before the tournament. With a plentiful amount of lifegain in the game, my win condition is no longer swing with 2-3 things with penetrate and counter their attack negate for the win.)
Impacts -
4x Secret Sword, Lethal Formation
2x Secret Sword, Star Crusher (I took out Moon Fang. I left it in my side deck, but the only impacts I ever see anymore are non-counterable, or are used early, like Ancient World's or another Secret Formation. Proved too unreliable for use.)
Spells (Defense) -
4x Demon Way, Oborogenbu (prioritized this over Art of Body Replacement to stop link attacks with an open center.)
3x Ninja Arts, Snake Gaze (Easily the best double-attack counter in the game. Generic enough to be useful against everything. Can stop Dungeon World shenanigans, and shuts down Seiger for an entire turn.)
2x Art of Body Replacement
Spells (Sets)
4x Art of Explosive Hades Fall
4x Return to the Underworld
Spells (Other)
2x Demon Way, Sakurafubuki (I won an entire game with this card on turn 1, since I stopped a Seiger from existing because of it.)
2x Clear Serenity
1x Demon Way, Geppakugiri (I abused this card greatly against Seiger, since I ran an extra copy in my sideboard for that match-up)
Size 1's
4x Blood Knife, Kimensai (I love this card.)
4x Evil in Heart, Yamigitsune (Obvious engine that makes everything work)
3x Steel Wall, Beheading Crab (Steel Wall, lel)
2x Undefeatable Setsujishi (This card won me more games through shenanigans than I thought possible)
Size 2's
4x Tempest, Garo-Oh (Sadly, this guy didn't shine for me that much. He's still strong, and paid for himself with Setsujishi.)
Size 3's
2x Wanderer, the Gold (Never once used this card, since I fought nothing but Dragon World and Ancient World. Well, I did use it against Ancient with Art of Explosive Hades Fall, but more about that down below.)
Sideboard:
3x Aftermath, Gagaku (This is how I chose to fight Seiger)
2x Art of Body Replacement (Swap in against Seiger, since Oboro is strictly worse if the opponent's deck doesn't Link Attack)
1x Five Heavenly Swords, Onimaru (Left this in if I wanted to swap for it to have 4 weapons, didn't end up using it.)
1x Demon Way, Geppakugiri (Teched in against Seiger)
1x Secret Sword, Moon Fang (Didn't end up using this.)
1x Clear Serenity (Setsujishi fixed my gauge incredibly well, I never needed to have a third Serenity)
1x Art of Item Blasting (I fought Dragon World, but one build was Beistand focused, and the other one was Thunder Knights without many equips. Didn't end up using it.)
I never bought any EB1, so I never bothered to get Half-Kills. Too much of a direct hate card, anyway. It feels cheesy putting them in against Seiger between rounds.
Round 1 - Vs. Ancient World (Seiger) - 2W 0L
Game 1 was exhausting. It grinded out until the 6th or 7th turn before I finally got a set-up. Ended up getting Lethal Formation out with 3 gauge. He swings in and puts me to 1. I swing in with Kimensai and another unit in a Link Attack against his center unit which had Lifelink 1 (Seiger died uneventfully without evolving before that). He had 3 life, so this was going to kill him. He countered it with Dragonlution, which I Secret Formationed for game.
Game 2 I teched in my Gagaku's, Arts, and took out a size 3 for it. I ended up drawing two Hades Falls and my now one size 3, and was facepalming. I still used Hades Fall, choosing size 2, and hilariously, he had no seiger. I blew up his size 2, and swung in for game on turn 3. His deck just fizzled really hard. Hades Fall on a lifelink unit hurts quite a bit.
Round 2 vs. Dragon World (Jackknife) 2W 1L
Game 1 drags out terribly. He ends up having a non-opened center and no defensive cards. If I top deck into any creature, I can bring back Kimensai and kill him, since he had 2 life. Draw was an Oborogenbu. Charged it and drew a Sakurafubuki (I had 2 life left). If I had held onto the Oborogenbu, then charged the Sakurafubuki, my top card was a Beheading Crab, so I could have won by waiting a turn, since my opponent had no size 1's. Oh well, I had no way of knowing that.
Game 2. I thought really hard about teching cards in, but decide not to. I start off with a Hades Fall -> Setsujishi -> Buddy call a Kimensai -> Swing with Kimensai for 2, move him to gauge to have enough for Lethal Formation. He cast a spell on his turn, which I countered, bringing him down to 5. I won after another two turns. It was a pretty clean win. Setsujishi into Lethal Formation secured about 3 victories for me over the course of the day, due to me also being able to use Hades Fall on turn 1.
Game 3 I played it the way I love playing Katana World. He had an open center. I link attacked with everything for 5 crit (Setsu, Crab, Yami). He had 5 life. He Green Dragon Shields, but I Sakurafubuki for game.
(Semi-Finals) Round 3 vs. Ancient World (Seiger) 2W 1L
Game 1 he went first. Normally, I like going second, but he chained off Creation, Legend, Rise and Fall, and set Dragonverse all on his first turn, along with playing Seiger. It was unfortunate that I had Serenity and two Lethal Formations. I set them on my first turn, then he never needed to cast a spell ever again. He only used ACT monsters after that. I got him to no soul on second form, but I wasn't able to secure victory.
Game 2, I teched in everything I teched in before. Again, I drew into Hades Fall and my one size 3, since I teched out my second copy again. All of my "meh". I set one and play a Return to the Underworld. He notices that I don't proc it on Seiger's first form and gets a really worried look on his face. He, knowing that I run size 3's, decided to destroy my Hades Fall over my Return to the Underworld. After seeing my Tempest Garo-Oh in soul, he was just like, "wat". Return to the Underworld won me the game, just like it's supposed to. I was still in a good position to win this game, regardless. I drew into another Hades Fall, abusing Setsujishi for free plusses from it later. Snake Gazed the guy two turns in a row, so his Seiger was literally doing nothing for those two turns.
Game 3, I didn't tech in the second grade 3 to hit it. I mean, odds are low that I draw it, right? Right. I don't see it. I set Hades Fall, choosing my 3. He never sees Seiger this entire game. Can't complain, since I end up winning for it.
(Finals) Round 4 vs. Dragon World (Thunder Knights) 2W 0L
Game 1 I should have lost. It went down to the wire at the very end. I had 2 life left, and he had no creatures out. I stopped his weapon attack that was going to win the game for him, but he had Thunder Formation and 4 gauge. I had a Snake Gaze in hand, and could account for one monster attack. He top decks two 2 critical creatures. I was thinking to myself, "Well, I'm ****ed." He swings his first creature into my Yamigitsune. I blink. It registers that he just messed up, and I immediately respond by playing Snake Gaze on his other creature. He asks how much life I have left. I say, "1." He begins facepalming. I swing for game next turn.
Game 2 was a good game for me. I did my Hades Fall -> Kimensai -> Setsujishi -> Lethal Formation Wombo combo, since I went first. I secured too large of an advantage and snowballed the game pretty hard, winning the tournament. My penetrate was nullifying his advantages. He kept misplaying by using cards that specified that you need an open center to use, and not using them before battle phase started/while he was moving his creatures to center.
He was the only one smart enough to cast a defensive spell when I had out a Lethal Formationed when I had 2 gauge during my battlephase (and used Setsujishi to move Kimensai to the gauge after that so he couldn't cast on his turn). I wasn't super worried about him stopping one attack, though.
All-in-all, I noticed a few things.
1. I'm the only person with a common buddy. Everyone else had BR Jackknife, Thunder Drum, or Seiger that I played.
2. Everyone kept misplaying. I didn't really mess anything up, so I was able to secure large advantages over my opponents that way.
3. Seiger seems inconsistent. That pay 2 gauge to get Seiger promo seems like it might be the juice they need to make the deck function. I haven't bothered to build the deck, so this was my first time encountering it. It wasn't that difficult to tackle, even without half-kills.
Not too much else to report, other than, "I had a blast" and that a bunch of people at my locals are playing now, so hopefully I can keep entering more than yearly tournaments.
Thursday, July 24, 2014
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.
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.
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
I Fail Luck for Life
Playing Lock on Victory Hard Mode.
Finally unlock set 5.
Try out MLB because why not? Only have 1 of him, though.
Enter game against Sharlene. Get gradelocked at 1 for two turns.
Spam Liens to fish for grade 2's, keep damage checking them. Damaged two Blaster Darks. This is important for later.
My deck is a weird thingy with all of my SP's, because I don't have the MLB's I want for the deck yet, so yolo.
I have two copies of Holy Disaster Dragon, which is discard a Royal Paladin, he gains 5k for the attack. This is also important.
My opponent attacks, I block everything, using up every card but Blaster Blade. They hit a double draw trigger.
My turn. My field:
Blaster Blade|Soul Saver Dragon|Holy Disaster Dragon
Elaine|Wingal Brave|Lien
I drew the heal and called it (lel), because I know I'm not blocking everything again.
They have 6 cards in hand, all 5k shields.
I attack with Blaster Blade, they guard for 5k.
I attack with Soul Saver. They guard with 3 units. At this point, ANY drive check in the game will win the game for me other than a very particular one. Two Blaster Darks. I had two left in my 23 card deck. I check both.
I attack with Holy Disaster Dragon, unable to discard a Royal Paladin for the effect, and they guard it with the remaining two cards in their hand.
Thanks for giving me that sixth damage heal into a guaranteed win for that turn. But my Master Ball just missed.
Odds of this happening with 23 cards in deck, and two Blaster Darks in deck: 0.4% Yay!
Finally unlock set 5.
Try out MLB because why not? Only have 1 of him, though.
Enter game against Sharlene. Get gradelocked at 1 for two turns.
Spam Liens to fish for grade 2's, keep damage checking them. Damaged two Blaster Darks. This is important for later.
My deck is a weird thingy with all of my SP's, because I don't have the MLB's I want for the deck yet, so yolo.
I have two copies of Holy Disaster Dragon, which is discard a Royal Paladin, he gains 5k for the attack. This is also important.
My opponent attacks, I block everything, using up every card but Blaster Blade. They hit a double draw trigger.
My turn. My field:
Blaster Blade|Soul Saver Dragon|Holy Disaster Dragon
Elaine|Wingal Brave|Lien
I drew the heal and called it (lel), because I know I'm not blocking everything again.
They have 6 cards in hand, all 5k shields.
I attack with Blaster Blade, they guard for 5k.
I attack with Soul Saver. They guard with 3 units. At this point, ANY drive check in the game will win the game for me other than a very particular one. Two Blaster Darks. I had two left in my 23 card deck. I check both.
I attack with Holy Disaster Dragon, unable to discard a Royal Paladin for the effect, and they guard it with the remaining two cards in their hand.
Thanks for giving me that sixth damage heal into a guaranteed win for that turn. But my Master Ball just missed.
Odds of this happening with 23 cards in deck, and two Blaster Darks in deck: 0.4% Yay!
Sunday, June 8, 2014
Ripple Rush Statitistics
Current tournament standings for Ripple Rush are as follows:
Tournament Game Winrate: 22W - 4L (84.62%)
Match Winrate: 11W - 0L (100%)
Rounds Swept (2W 0L) - 7 out of 11 (63.64%)
Tournament Standings:
1st Place - 3 Times
2nd Place - 0 Times
3rd Place - 0 Times
4th Place - 0 Times
Non-Tops - 0 Times
6-0 Wins: 3 games out of 26 (11.54%)
Turn 2 Wins (One-turn kills): 1 game out of 26 (3.85%)
I've always had a 70% winrate with it online, but I feel like it just does better without the Area shuffler giving me 3 crits in my opening hand post-mulligan. I feel like this might be legitimately the strongest deck in Vanguard, with only a few weaknesses to lesser played decks. I feel that if Eradicators surge in popularity next set and if they opt to forego break riding to nuke my field with Gauntlet Buster, I might be in a bit of trouble. If they wait to break ride, then I have a stupidly high chance of killing them before they get the chance to do anything. Turn 3 control decks (like Dark Band if people would ever use it, lawl) can counteract the deck pretty well, but nobody uses them. This is one of the few rush decks not countered by Stern. So far, I haven't faced anything too far outside the meta to actually pseudo-counter this deck, which is adding to its winrate significantly. I've beaten Chaos Breaker Dragon 6 out of 6 times, because they kept riding Infinite Zero first, then either dying, or having to discard their Chaos Breaker with a null guard to stay alive, and being unable to break ride. All-in-all, my previous testing is coinciding with my current testing. This deck is most likely Tier 0. If more people play it, it might even top a major event. There is a middling amount of technical skill and a few risk vs. rewards decisions this deck can force you to make (like deciding between one Genovious drive check for a win vs. hitting 2 triggers), but for the most part, the deck is easy to play and easy to master.
Tournament Game Winrate: 22W - 4L (84.62%)
Match Winrate: 11W - 0L (100%)
Rounds Swept (2W 0L) - 7 out of 11 (63.64%)
Tournament Standings:
1st Place - 3 Times
2nd Place - 0 Times
3rd Place - 0 Times
4th Place - 0 Times
Non-Tops - 0 Times
6-0 Wins: 3 games out of 26 (11.54%)
Turn 2 Wins (One-turn kills): 1 game out of 26 (3.85%)
I've always had a 70% winrate with it online, but I feel like it just does better without the Area shuffler giving me 3 crits in my opening hand post-mulligan. I feel like this might be legitimately the strongest deck in Vanguard, with only a few weaknesses to lesser played decks. I feel that if Eradicators surge in popularity next set and if they opt to forego break riding to nuke my field with Gauntlet Buster, I might be in a bit of trouble. If they wait to break ride, then I have a stupidly high chance of killing them before they get the chance to do anything. Turn 3 control decks (like Dark Band if people would ever use it, lawl) can counteract the deck pretty well, but nobody uses them. This is one of the few rush decks not countered by Stern. So far, I haven't faced anything too far outside the meta to actually pseudo-counter this deck, which is adding to its winrate significantly. I've beaten Chaos Breaker Dragon 6 out of 6 times, because they kept riding Infinite Zero first, then either dying, or having to discard their Chaos Breaker with a null guard to stay alive, and being unable to break ride. All-in-all, my previous testing is coinciding with my current testing. This deck is most likely Tier 0. If more people play it, it might even top a major event. There is a middling amount of technical skill and a few risk vs. rewards decisions this deck can force you to make (like deciding between one Genovious drive check for a win vs. hitting 2 triggers), but for the most part, the deck is easy to play and easy to master.
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