Calm Before the Storm: Lookout! (Pt.1)

Hello everybody, this is Homura here, bringing you an analysis for the upcoming World Championship Qualifiers. In this article, we'll be discussing the decks that will most probably being fielded by most players, and how would they fare in the current environment.

As we all know, the WCQ for Vanguard English is starting in September 2012, which means in another 2 weeks, we'll start fighting hard for a spot in the Regionals. However, by participating in such a big tournament, we all should know about the environment more or less, what decks are going to be played, and how to play around those decks. Hence, in today's article, I'll mostly discuss about the metagame decks at the moment, and provide a bit of insight on how they work, so you guys can have a bit of knowledge on these deck so that you can fight better against them.

Kagero
Let's start with Kagero. At the moment, Kagero bears the title of having one of the most dangerous deck in the current environment - Goku-Blade. That aside, other Kagero deck types including Dragonic Lawkeeper and Blazing Flare Dragon are also contenders of the metagame deck spots alongside Goku. But in my opinion, most Kagero players will either play Goku or Lawkeeper as they gives the most stability among all the other Kagero decks out there.

Firstly, Goku-Blade provides Kagero players with a big dosage of what they're supposed to do - Retiring Units. Goku makes all your G3s into 'Bomb Triggers', enabling you to retire a G1 or lower Rear Guard whenever a G3 shows up during your Drive Check. Your opponent can't actually stop you from triggering a G3, so the only thing that they can do is either helplessly watch their precious boosters got retired, or stop playing anymore boosters to preserve hand size.

Either way, this is very advantageous for you as the less boosted attacks they launch, the easier for you to guard. What about the extra G3s you have triggered? No problem, you can either use them as attackers, feed them to your Barris, or either ditch them away with Aermo or Dragon Monk Gojo to replace them with something that has a shield value. All and all, Goku-Blade is one of the decks to beat.

Secondly, Dragonic Lawkeeper might be another choice if you decide not to bring Goku for some reason. Lawkeeper is actually a more straightforward beatdown deck, utilizing Lawkeeper's Limit Break to control your opponent's Rear Guards' numbers in order for you to create 20k++ power lines together with Dual Axe Archdragon. Retiring here has to be used sparingly as Lawkeeper hungers for CB a lot whenever you want to use the LB. Without Bellycosity Dragon available to help you keep the CB open, timing becomes a very important factor here. Make sure each time you perform a LB, it better make an impact towards your opponent.

Royal Paladin
The sad part about the current RP arsenal is there's only 1 possible deck to bring into the tournament scene. But the good news is that particular deck is also the best deck available for them as well! The deck that I'm mentioning about is none other than Barome-Saviour.

Barome-Saviour is also another beatdown deck that requires you to slightly swarm the field a bit more to unlock all your unit's full potential. Barome-Saviour can easily make all three columns into 20k++ ones to constantly force your opponent to discard a lot of cards just to guard your attacks. With Baromedes running around like nobody's business, your Vanguard should be slightly safer as most people will aim to get rid of your Baromedes first.

To put some more icing on the cake, RP has unparalleled tutoring abilities compares with other clans. Basically, what you need, they can just search for it. With Pongal, King of Knights, Alfred, as well as High-Dog Breeder, Akane at your disposal, you can definitely search for any missing part of your perfect setup.

Oracle Think Tank
OTT has dropped in favor in the JP environment thanks to it lacking any sort of Limit Breaker or Persona Blaster, but has recently topped a few tourneys thanks to the arrival of supports for Coco builds. However, in the EN metagame, Tsukuyomi has just made her debut, and the deck is bound to have a lot of appearances in the tournament scene.

With the legal 'stacking' of triggers via Tsukuyomi's ride chain skills, you can basically determine the flow of the game during mid-late game if your memory is good. Besides, the drawing power of Tsukuyomi-Amaterasu decks are also very strong, enabling the player to have ample defense during their opponent's turn. The only downside of this deck is their lack of resilience against early-mid game rush decks like Spike Brothers or Nova Grapplers.

The other choice that we'll most likely see in WCQ will be the Coco build. With BT-07 accessible for EN players, OTT players will have alternatives on whether they want to play the Soul build or the Soulless build. Compared to the former, Coco is more geared towards beatdown, with quite a lot of support cards that can do the most potential while you're Soulless. Depending on your preference, actually both decks are also quite viable for tournament play. For me, I would prefer Tsukuyomi-Amaterasu thanks to Tsukuyomi's 11k power and the Trigger anticipating elements of both the G3s.

Okay, so far we've covered 3 clans which I personally think will appear quite frequent in tournaments. In the next installement, I'll be covering Gold Paladins, Great Nature and Narukami. Until then, see you later!