Date Location Percentage of GP Decks Amount in top 8
9/1 Germany unknown 2/8
9/1 Toronto 24.6% 1/8
9/2 Indonesia 50% unknown
9/8 Dallas 20.5% 6/8
9/15 Seattle 29.9% 4/8
9/15 Mexico unknown 4/8
9/22 Chicago 27.8% 5/8
9/22 Australia 21.9% 2/8
9/29 Philippines 26.4% 3/8
10/6 New York 28.0% 4/8
10/6 France 27.8% 5/8
10/6 Malaysia 18.2% 4/8
10/6 Osaka (Japan) unknown 2/8
10/13 Atlanta 25% 4/8
10/13 Tokyo (Japan) 19.7% 1/8
10/20 Great Britain 26.5% 4/8
10/20 Nagoya (Japan) 22% 3/8
11/3 Anaheim 28.6% 5/8
You can find the various pie charts here
https://www.facebook.com/CardfightVanguardUSA?fref=ts
https://www.facebook.com/CardfightVanguard?fref=ts
So on average, Gold Paladins have taken on average 26.5% of the slots in a tournament, roughly 1/4th of the competition in a given tournament setting, as well as taking 3.5/8 slots of the top cut, which consists of nearly half the winning decks! But what exactly caused this deck to be so successful in a game where there isn't a very large power difference between the various clans? Let's take a look and see
1. Gold Paladins have multiple successful builds and are easy to play
For one, Gold Paladins have been given a LOT of support. While other clans have 1, maybe 2 different builds to play with, GP currently has 3 builds one can choose from: Garmore/Ezel, Spectral Duke, and Pellinore, all of which have been very successful on the regional circuit. While these decks have the same clan name, the way they play out are quite different from each other, and they are arguably different decks. What Bushiroad doesn't specify in their clan percentages are the different types of GP decks being played, which when all clumped together, represents an inflated portion of the overall meta. When the average viewer looks at the pie charts, they just see "GP is everywhere", when there are actually 3 different decks running around.
What's also good to note is that almost everyone can agree that every GP build is very easy to pilot. It's just simple board management while plussing off various effects. In any competitive game, having an easy to play deck is a good thing because it makes less scenarios for the player to misplay under. In a large scale tournament consisting of several rounds, its a major bonus to run something that won't make you scratch your head on what play to make.
2. Great Silver Wolf, Garmore is fantastic
In any TCG, consistency is one of the biggest conditions on the list of requirements for a deck to be good. Gold Paladins have no problem with consistency at all, even in the Spectral Duke Dragon build which is a ride chain. One of the biggest reasons Gold Paladin is so consistent is that they have Great Silver Wolf, Garmore, the grade 3 that appears in almost every Gold Paladin decklist. Garmore is a fantastic card, riding him is never a -1 since he replaces himself with any G1 or G2 from the deck, usually Listener of Truth, Dindrane. This makes his ride a +1 in terms of card advantage, which is very good. Unlike Incandescent Lion Blond Ezel, Garmore is 100% consistent since you get exactly what you want instead of relying on luck. All that is needed is 2 unflipped damage which is not a hefty cost by any means (which is why many of the Garmore/Ezel builds have Ezel as an alternate vanguard).
Miss your ride chain with Spectral Duke? Ride Garmore as backup and simply ride the Duke later in the game when you're ready for a final turn play. Gotten your plus off a Pellinore superior ride and want a stronger vanguard without minusing for a ride? Garmore has your back. What's even better is Garmore has uses as a rearguard too, pairing up with Charjgal to reach 21k columns, making him a multi-use card in all aspects. Garmore is a card that other clans, especially those that utilize a ride chain to be effective would be dying to have: a consistent, reliable and effective alternate and even main vanguard.
3. The Spectral Duke ride chain is the most powerful ride chain to date
Everyone is already familiar with the Duke and his ilk, so I don't need to go over what he does. What I will go over is what separates him from other decks that use ride chains. Tsukuyomi Oracle Think Tank is a fairly popular deck that uses a different ride chain. If your ride chain goes off perfectly, you make up for the -1 that riding inherently is by riding units from your deck rather than your hand. However, Tsukuyomi players will tell you that it usually isn't the case. Duke's ride chain in contrast is far easier to pull off and nets you advantage when it goes off successfully. If the Duke ride chain is missed, it's not a big deal as you aren't punished for it, whereas for Tsukuyomi, you are since Full Moon Tsukuyomi will be at 9000 if all the previous cards in the chain aren't in the soul. For Spectral Duke, the +1000 on top of G2 Vortimer is a bonus and isn't severely punished for being missed, still has access to his limit break and as stated earlier, the deck has Garmore as a strong backup. Unlike Godhawk, the G0 Vortimer still retreats to a rear guard circle if the G1 Vortimer isn't ridden, which is used as a sacrificial lamb for Duke's ability later in the game, furthering the synergy and flexibility the deck has even when the chain isn't executed perfectly. When the chain DOES go off however, it's very difficult to keep up with the deck's early game advantage, it puts high pressure on the board early on while essentially giving Duke a free Limit Break with all the free cards obtained. So it's no surprise that this has attracted a lot of players into playing this deck, the flexibility and perks for playing this deck are very high.
4. The bandwagon effect took place
All this said about Gold Paladins, at the end of the day they aren't TRULY much stronger than other clans are. With everyone's deck being roughly alike (16 triggers, 4 perfect shields, 8 and 10k vanillas, 10-11k vanguards) and what have you, the difference in power between the clans isn't necessarily as high as its made out to be. For those of you who are Yu-Gi-Oh! players, facing against Gold Paladins with another clan isn't as much of an uphill battle as say Crystal Beasts would have against Wind-Ups. In other words, other decks are very capable of winning. So in a game with inherent functions like this, what exactly happened for GP to have such a domination over the meta?
We can start by taking a look at history. The GP trial deck and set 6 was launched a few months after set 2, when the game was just barely in its roots. The logic behind Bushiroad's decision was that in the Japanese game, Royal Paladin had a similar domination effect so they decided to release the sets out of order to catch us up to the Japanese game and get the English meta to play with different clans. When Gold Paladin first launched, initially people didn't even find them to be anything special. Royal Paladin still were able to use Barcgal as a starter, the most powerful starter ever printed to date. Combo that with King of Knights, Alfred which is a similar card to Garmore as well as the 100% consistent Soul Saver Dragon and people didn't find any incentive to drop what they were using for Gold Paladin. Royal Paladin simply did the same things better. While Gold Paladin can get a few random lucky plusses off Viviane and Ezel, Royals felt more consistent overall. So Gold Paladin just joined the group of good alternative decks to run, alongside Kagero, Oracle Think Tank, Narukami, and others. However, with the release of Extra Booster 3's Spectral Duke Dragon along with the simultaneous announcement of Barcgal's restriction to be used as a starter, people started to reconsider. Royals lost a lot of their consistency, combine that with a very powerful new build for Gold Paladin, people jumped onto the next best thing that had a similar playstyle to what Royals were. This is a commonplace practice for TCG players to do, which is when something gets hit, jump on to whatever is the closest thing. July was just a couple months before qualifiers, which gave people plenty of time to become used to the deck.
Before the kick-off event and the regional qualifiers, there still wasn't a defined meta. Everyone knew GP was going to be good, but how good was the question. When the first qualifiers in the United States in Dallas showed 6 out of 8 in the top being Gold Paladin decks, everyone's suspicions about GP being THE deck to play were confirmed. People flocked to the deck in drones, and the snowball effect took place. More players, more tops and more netdecking. This isn't anything new, this happens in other TCGs all the time, it's just that Bushiroad is kind enough to show the public their tournament statistics. What's proof of the strength in numbers theory is in Japan's Tokyo qualifier, the only tournament where GP wasn't the #1 most played deck, and there was only one GP deck in the top 8 as a result. Kageros are the top deck in the Japanese meta due to Dragonic Overlord The End, so when an English meta qualifier emerged, it was much easier for most of the players to simply run whatever Kagero cards they were allowed to play as opposed to building a GP deck to run. For that reason, Kageros took a whopping 31.1% of the field. On the other hand, GP still took a large 19.7% of the showing anyway, but only managed to get 1 top. Without as many players running GP, suddenly we didn't see as many tops. This shows us that GP's strengths is primarily in its numbers and the aforementioned snowball effect.
5. The Conclusion
So the best conclusion I can give is that Gold Paladin have a slight edge over other clans for what they can do. Players picked up on this slight advantage, their flexibility, their ease to pilot and their similarities to the old Royal Paladin deck and decided this deck was the way to go. This isn't to say that the other clans should be ignored, powerful decks like Soulless Oracle Think Tank, Narukami's powerful Dragonic Kaiser Vermillion and Lawkeeper Kagero can easily compete with GP and should be winning more then they are, if players would play the decks. The next question is how will GP fair with crossrides approaching just around the corner and how will the English playerbase adapt to the changing times? That my friends, is for a future article.
For now though, always MANGUARD
No comments:
Post a Comment