[Japanese Meta] Analysing Top Decks from the Tokyo District Vanguard Team Fight Festival

     On the Japanese Cardfight!! Vanguard website, Bushiroad has uploaded the deck recipes of the winning teams of the Vanguard Team Fight Festival 2012. Split into 4 districts, Tokyo A, Tokyo B, Osaka and Hakata, one can tell what dominates in Japan, and what does not. Even through analysing the deck lists themselves, one can notice little details that are relevant in the highest tier of play. I won't go into detail on all builds, just a few comments on the more interesting ones.

Tokyo A Winning Team: (Detailed Decklists)

Nova Grapplers (Asura Kaiser)

Majesty Lord Blaster

Kagero (Dragonic Overlord The End)

Tokyo B Winning Team: (Detailed Decklists)

Oracle Think Tank (Tsukuyomi)

Majesty Lord Blaster

Kagero (Dragonic Overlord The End)

Osaka Winning Team: (Detailed Decklists)

Kagero (Dragonic Overlord The End)

Shadow Paladins (Phantom Blaster Overlord)

Majesty Lord Blaster

Hakata Winning Team: (Detailed Decklists)

Kagero (Dragonic Overlord The End)

Majesty Lord Blaster

Shadow Paladins (Phantom Blaster Overlord)

                                                       Dragonic Overlord The End

     As you can see, Majesty Lord Blaster and Kagero dominate the meta. Every team had a Kagero player, all running 4 Dragonic Overlord and 4 Dragonic Overlord The End. Dragonic Overlord being an 11k Vanguard is extremely powerful, along with Dragonic Overlord The End makes it an extremely hard-hitting deck. With Dragonic Overlord The End at 13k after a cross-ride gives the user a much easier time to defend. That coupled with Dragonic Overlord The End's Persona Blast makes it one of the most powerful Vanguards in the game. Majesty Lord Blaster was the second-most popular, but the builds differed a lot more. All ran 3-4 Majesty Lord Blaster, but the other Grade 3's differed by a fair amount. Some ran 2-3 Palamedes, some none at all. Some even ran 1 Gancelot and some ran 2 Alfred. Others ran 2-3 Toypugal, and one even ran 4 Lake Maiden, Lien. It just goes to show that there is no set "perfect" build for Majesty Lord Blaster decks as there is for Kagero and personal preference comes a lot more into play. Majesty Lord Blaster's permanent 2 critical once both Blaster Blade and Blaster Dark are in the soul and 12k Power give the opponent a hard time guarding and attacking it, making it a powerful deck that creates advantage and then doesn't let it go.

     Some of the most interesting deck lists however are the Kagero ones for Tokyo A and Tokyo B. Not only does the Tokyo B Kagero player run Amber Dragon "Dawn", Amber Dragon "Daylight" and Amber Dragon "Dusk", but the Tokyo A Kagero player runs a lot of different triggers. He runs 3 Embodiment of the Spear, Tahr, 1 Demonic Dragon Mage Rahkshasa and 2 Blue-Ray Dracokid. This is in total 6 Critical triggers, but one may ask themselves why not just run 4  Embodiment of the Spear, Tahr and 2 Blue-Ray Dracokid. The simple answer would be that those cards were all he had at the time and used them as triggers. However, details like these in the higher tier of play are there for a reason. In this case, running 3 different Critical Triggers can intimidate your opponent if you reveal them all. Generally when a player sees a trigger they assume you're running 2-4 of them. The Critical Triggers generally used in Kagero are Embodiment of the Spear, Tahr and Blue-Ray Dracokid. If the Kagero player reveals these two and suddenly also reveals Demonic Dragon Mage Rahkshasa, the opponent is driven to think that the Kagero players runs between 8-12 Critical triggers, when in fact he only runs 6. This can lead to them being overcautious, especially at 4 damage and may not risk taking a hit, using up more cards from their hand. It is details like these that the English format needs to adapt in order to develop higher tiers of play.

     Seeing the results and pictures of the tournament just makes me anxious and excited for when the English format tournaments come about. Having a competitive scene similar to the one in Yu-Gi-Oh would be awesome, (minus the overpriced cards, greedy company and exploitability). Seeing what the English format has accomplished so far I have no doubt in my mind that we are not too far off from a huge competitive scene.

-HerO