Cardfight Centric

I had picked up a blaster trial deck simply because if our head judge wanted to run a standard tourney I could actually play something. But since I pulled some stuff for it and wanted to use my newly acquired playset of new marron, I threw something together with soulsavers and a few new cards and a trial deck. I tried playing a few games with a friends similarly janky kagero deck. Honestly while it felt nice to slow the game down a little bit, it also felt just...almost too slow and vanilla with what i’m used to playing. I understand its very early so i can’t really pass any judgements about how the deck plays yet, of if this is what the rest of standard format decks will be like. But it did feel extremely slow and honestly kind of boring. I’m sure it will be significantly more exciting for me playing aqua force, granblue and eventually golds. But for now I will continue to just kinda sit back and wait for those since honestly i’ve never been a fan of playing blasters XD

For the tourney i played the royal deck I fell in love with: brave. I had yet to use it in a real tourney, and i had made some adjustments to my original list so I was itching to try it out. What makes it a premium deck? I put in the new triggers lol. I figured since my list had very few “brave” triggers anyway, trying the 10ks would not be a bad idea, since I’m playing mega aggression 12 crit brave anyway. Balls to the wall deck, in other words. And i’m actually surprised at how well it went, considering the matchups I had.

Round 1: Novas vs Brave

This is my friend who usually beats me in the final rounds, our meeting just happened to be in the first round today. Honestly i think this matchup is very 50/50. If i can outrush a nove player early i can win, but if he’s drawing fire he wins just as easily. The first game I lost by the second stride, the second game I won by the second stride. Since I hadn’t played brave in a while before this, had I not messed up my guarding on the third game, I would have been able to win. I went first, so he could stride first. I g guarded once. And I HAD THE IDEA IN MY BIG BRAIN to guard the second, meager attack with maskgal, since then I would be able to hit 1st stride GB4 with fides and basically take the game. Did I guard with maskgal? NO. So I went into my turn, pushed him to 5 damage with two cards in hand, and then got crit to death. I’m not entirely upset about loosing that way since I know a lot more about how to win the matchup and its honestly not overly difficult if you know how to work with brave resources. It was more of a lack of foresight on my part since I haven’t been playing a lot the last few weeks. And if I have, I’ve been almost obsessively playing Gurguit since I miss him <3

Score 0/1

Round 2: Kagero vs Brave

You know like I don’t even care about this matchup honestly. It’s like go ahead, retire my cards. So long as i’m able to keep a majority of them in my deck the matchup is actually very easy. Because while they have big scary purge turns and easy access to retire, kagero lacks the hand size to really be able to put up with brave and function well. Like yea your gonna purge me, but that's the only attack your going to get this turn, because you had to drop all your rgs to guard me last turn. Both games i was able to sweep with a 2nd stride turn fides. The important part here is really just to make sure their hand is small before sweeping in for a fides turn. Since not a lot of kagero players play heavy draw support it’s much easier to just run them off the field, especially since their key mechanic of retire does very little to stop you from doing what you need to do. If you set up all your Felaxs in the back row they can’t denial you either, so your safe to just steamroll.

Score: 1/1

Round 3: X Gallop Vs Brave

This was actually a very funny set of games. The player that was using X Gallop is horribly annoying, so playing with him is usually a chore within itself. I also despite playing against X Gallop since they draw so much, my rush decks just usually can’t keep up. But brave is the king of rush decks for me, so i  worried. First game I managed to sweep since he didn’t realize what fides does ( i talk about the card all the time so i was like really?) and therefore didn’t plan to guard very well. 2nd game was probably the most horribly unlucky game of brave in my life. I drew or damage checked all 8 of my calling grade 2’s (Sulliman and Liverot) so my plays were pretty stunted. Its unfortunately a weakness of the deck, but its something thats kind of difficult to fix due to the way that vanguard just works and the fact that brave royals don’t really have a way to renew resources. If they did, then it wouldn’t be so much of a problem. But I got clapped. The third game was probably one of the most hilarious games i’ve ever played. So this player I was playing against is infamous for being outrageously cocky, so this is kind of karma coming back around. The game started off pretty bad for me. He drew all 4 of his reika's ( i think that's how you spell it) and with a commander laural was able to draw something like 14 cards. Since I choose not to drop a perfect since he had one of the guard break triggers active, and would have sacked it. But i’m a dumbass and I let it hit. So i’m going into my turn with like 20 cards in his hand. He’s at 3 damage, so he’s kind of safe. I stride into fides and i’m trying to figure out how to make this work while not blowing all my own resources. Since I couldn’t get fides call skill, due to not being at Gb4 I decided to attack with him first, and come swinging with the rear guards later. He no guards, which is super cocky in my opinion with that hand size. Then fides decided to bless me and land me a triple crit off my drive check ( to be fair I had thinned a fair amount, and hadn’t seen any triggers in my early turns, so i knew they were in there). I won that game, which usually ends with his cocky ass luck sacking me every time. It was good karma and the look on his face was priceless. I love Fides.

Score: 2/1

Round 4: ChouChou vs Brave

I was...not optimistic about this matchup. While I out pressure, i don't really have big hands to protect myself with on his big turns. With that being said however, I think it's very similar to novas after playing the matchup. Your both going to put out pressure and it comes out to who has better hands to guard with, since mt guard restrict and his restand stride are both very easy to reach. We did get to a game 3 after i just overwhelmed him using my grade 2’s to take him from 2 to 6 damage in one turn, with no triggers might i add. The third game if i had just had ONE MORE card to guard with in my hand of ANY value, I would have lived and then just swamped him next turn. I didn’t actually feel too bad about this loss either, as i felt like i played it very well. Its just a simple fact that the chouchou deck has fr more synergy with itself then brave does, and with the cards I was dealt ( literally) I felt like the games went pretty well.

Record: 2/2

So I felt like it was a pretty good day, i found some adjustments i’m going to make to fides and I very much enjoyed playing the deck. While I know it's not a balanced playing field with the new triggers now, i feel like the bigger triggers really helped brave with its already low hand size and massive power. I really liked playing them and will probably do it again next time i play fides, since its like eh, why not.