Budgetguard 34: Musical Ch-animals

Hey Cardfighters,

The musical string of great nature are hardly used but with the right set up you can rid your deck of a crazy amount of non-triggers and with triple drive you should be able crit your opponent to death.

Winning Image: Deck thinning equals winning


(Image Courtesy of Cardfight Wikia)
     These three animals are the most important players in the deck. Chicken calls Cat. Cat calls Dog. Dog calls Chicken. If you aren't sure what is going on lets pretend we have 2 of the animals out on the field. Say you have 2 Chickens. If you retire 1 then you can call a Cat on top of the other Chicken. This will place it into the drop zone and let you call out a new Cat on top of the previous on and so on. By doing this you should be able to remove a large amount of cards from you deck in one go. If you didn't explain just watch the matches :)


Deck List:
Starter: Acorn Master
12 Critical
4 Heal

G1s:
4 Contradiction Instructor, Shell Master (4.30)
4 Diligent Assitant, Minibelly (0.30)
4 Recorder Dog
2 Mohican Hyena

G2s:
4 Malicious Sabre
4 Melodica Cat
3 Sleepy Tapir

G3s:
4 Trainee Sage, Minette (0.25)
4 Vocal Chicken

G4s:
4 Immortality Professor, Phoeniciax (0.30)

Final Cost:  $20.60

Deck Comments:
     The base of this deck is simple, you are forced to use Recorder Dog, Melodica Cat, and Vocal Chicken. Minette provides the ability to counter charge when your rearguard is put in the drop zone during your end phase allowing you to combo off right when you hit grade 3. Mohawk Hyena and Malicious Saber should help you hit high numbers after you thin your deck making your crits even more scary. Lastly we have sleepy tapir letting you combo off before being able to stride and Minibelly because after our thinning play we would need to stride but not have many grade 3s left in the deck. Oops, forgot about Acorn Master. His purpose is to help you assemble the combo pieces (Minette and Vocal Chicken) who are both grade 3s.


Match ups:

Overall Performance:
     The deck is pretty amusing. Thinning your deck of most of your non triggers in one go sets you up to crit your opponent really easily. This game wins by being the double crit guy. If that is something you enjoy go for it. As for competitiveness I wouldn't really suggest this deck. It has one gimmick and while crits are extremely strong there will be times when you ride Vocal Chicken and you can't do anything. The inconsistencies of the deck hold it down a lot.

Tips for Mastering:

• The most important and really the only thing you need to figure out is how to call the chain to get the most cards out of your deck.

Tips for adding money:
     Strides can do a lot for this deck. Managarmr will help you apply even more pressure with your crits with guard restriction on your rearguards. The other change I would consider is using the Tester Fox legion replacing Minette and the 3 Sleepy Tapir and 1 Malicious Sabre. This will add a little consistency to the deck as well as even more trigger renewing. The cost of adding Tester fox is a slower deck so you will have to decide which one you want more. (They aren't expensive but since Minette is part of a set it is probably easier to find which is why I used it in this deck.)

Do you have any comments on the deck? Want to request a budget deck from me? Please leave a comment and help me help you.

If you want to be updated on the latest information and be notified about new posts click the link below and like the Vanguard Central Facebook page.

Thanks for reading,

Chris

Budgetguard 21: Bigbelly Great Nature

Hey Cardfighters,

In honor of Budgetguard's 21st week (albeit a little late) and now being of legal drinking age. Just pretend weeks are like birthdays :D This weeks deck is a Great Nature deck based on Famous Profesor BeerBelly... uhm I mean Bigbelly!

Winning Image: Pressure your opponent with on hit draw skills.


(Image Courtesy of Cardfight Wikia)
The new face of Great Nature, Bigbelly! His most important skill will be his Stride bonus skill which lets you choose two units and give them +4k and if a units attack hits in the same column as this unit and its power is 20k or greater you can draw a card. This skill has two important points. 1. You need rearguards when you stride for it to be useful. 2. Most people will put it on either column to make double pressure attacks but if you put the effects on the same column you can get a super pressure column which lets you draw 2 cards. The deck is focused on the 2 in the same column aspect which is why you will see stand triggers for insane pressure and no units that retire to keep a field nice for Bigbelly. He also has a GB2 skill which is when he attacks he can give one of your units +4k and and the end of the turn you retire it and draw a card. This effect is less than ideal and we will try to avoid it.


Deck List:
Starter: Acorn Master
12 Stand
4 Heal

G1s:
4x  Contradiction Instructor Shell Master (4.00)
4x Mohawk Hyena
4x Diligent Assistant Minibelly (0.30)
2x Tick Tock Flamingo

G2s:
4x Capable Assistatn, Guru Wolf (0.30)
4x Set Square Penguin (0.30)
4x Malicious Sabre

G3s:
3x Famous Professsor, Bigbelly (5.50)
4x Contradictory Instructor, Tusk Master

G4s:
4x Omniscience Dragon, Wisdom Teller Dragon (0.50)
3x Immortality Professor, Phoeniciax (0.50)

Final Cost:  $39.6

Deck Comments:
    12 STANDS??? NO CRITS??? if you get enough power the stands should essentially act as crits and if you got the correct set up you might also get to draw 2 cards. There are some other odd choices too I suppose. Mohawk Hyena will let you hit really big numbers to increase the pressure from bigbelly's skill. Guru Wolf enhances big belly's skill by making a draw 3 column and Malicious Saber works well because he only needs 2 boosts to get to 20k and reach bigbelly's power requirement. Unfortunately the Budget doesn't allow for 4x Bigbelly but the grade 3 searcher should help a lot with that.

Match ups:

• VS. Tachikaze (Loss)
• I go second and I try to go for an aggressive start moving Acorn master into a side column and calling mini berry to get big berry and be an attacker. This doens't work out too well for me as he calls 2 attackers, crits me and kills my miniberry. 1-3. I don't have many grade 2s so I go for a rearguard which he guards with his crit. I try to guard as much as I can but his 3 attacks prove too strong. 2-5. Without a field bigberry proves quite useless and while I manage to live the next turn using two perfect guards I don't have much left in my hand. 3-5. I stride but his triple trigger proves to be too much defense and I die quickly the next turn.
• VS. Granblue (Win)
• I got to go first this time, but my opening hand looks grim. A Flamingo, Hyena and all stand triggers. I draw a stand trigger in my first turn and then I on my grade 2 turn I drew yet another stand trigger. I g-assist and use Acorn Master getting Bigbelly. 1-1. He calls an attacker and I use all my shields to save damage early. On my turn I ride bigbelly and call another attacker myself. He rides to grade 3 but doesn't stride. I take the vanguard hit and guard my rearguard to have a field for bigbelly. 2-2. Topdecking a minibelly lets me stride and I go into wisdom teller. I attack with vanguard first because that optimizes my chances for drawing cards and making a come back. He takes wisdom teller which nets me 2 cards from hitting with bigbelly's skill on my vg booster and wisdom teller's skill on guru wolf (which he doesn't let hit). 3-2. This time he goes for a stride and helps get a LBE so he can breakride the next turn. I continue to guard my rearguards to make bigbelly dangerous. 3-3. Wisdom Teller comes out again and I pump a whole column which draws out a pg for its 21k. He no guards wisdom teller and I hit a stand. All power and wisdom teller's effect to guru wolf which pushes it to 22k which draws out more shield. I go for his rearguard to keep him at 4 making a guru wolf hit still a possibility. 4-3. He breakrides and legions I take some hits to save shield. On my turn I go into the third wisdom teller and put both bigbelly triggers on one column. He attacks me back and heals while I go into the last wisdom teller. I pull the guruwolf double bigbelly combo again and he lets it hit which nets me 3 cards and basically seals the game. 5-4. I easily survive his next turn and use my last phoenix stride to make big side columns for game.

Overall Performance:
     The deck performed well in the granblue game and poorly against tachikaze. This told me two things about the deck. Its pressure is huge I almost never got an attack in from the double bigbelly column but it make my opponent guard a lot more than they probably would have liked. And it is slow. The speed of tachikaze completely over powered me and I had to guard early to not lose which left me with no field. and hampered my bigbelly plays. This also makes me thing that the heavy reliance on bigbelly makes the deck extremely weak to field disruption effects (retire, lock, return to deck). I don't think the deck is competitively viable because of these two weaknesses. Some decks will be too fast  for it to setup and other decks won't ever let you set up. It is extremely fun though and when you hit with a guru wolf +big belly empowered column the draws feeel great.
 

Tips for Mastering:

• Figure out the right balance of early aggression on conservative play to have a field for bigbelly.
• Understand that sometimes you don't want to attack with rears first even though the deck has only Stand triggers. 

Tips for adding money:
     Now that we are at the end I'll be completely honest that a 12 stand build focused on using BigBelly on a single column is not the ideal way to use him but is something I really wanted to try out. So to improve the deck The first steps I would suggest are to get the Managarmr strides and the 4th Bigbelly. This will up the power level of the deck and restrict your opponent's guarding causing even more pressure. The second step I would recommend is to add in one of the legions (probably Guru Tiger) since his mate is already in the deck. This will help stop your from decking out, but the effect isn't that useful in the deck. From there you can tweak how you want changing the trigger line up, adding retiring units however you would like. 


Do you have any comments on the deck? Want to request a budget deck from me? Please leave a comment and help me help you.

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Thanks for reading,

Chris

Tournament Report: Great Nature Legion Deck UNDEFEATED!

Hey Cardfighters,

This weeks tournament result is for a best of 1, double elimination style tournament with about 13-14 entrants.

I played my Great Nature Legion+Breakride Deck. There is a deck profile on our YouTube channel
Vanguard Central so please check it out!

Round 1 VS. Thing Saver + Majesty Lord Blaster
     My opponent was grade locked at 1 for a turn or 2 which allowed me to get some early guarding off very easily to save damage for the thing saver stands that were to come. I tried to do a balance of pressure and power to conserve hand to guard Thing Saver. On his restand right after legion I was only at 2 and I came out fairly unscathed at 4 damage (no criticals). I actually would have lost if he had a critical because I had very little to guard with in my hand. The next turn I broke rode Polaris to try to burn down his 8 card hand so he wouldn't have much to push back at me if he lived. He had 2 perfect guards but lived with only 1 card in hand. On his turn he did the restanding attack again and I had to gamble with no guard at 4 damage. Luckily he didn't pull one and I survived the turn to finish him off by re-riding into Tester Fox.

Round 2 (Winners) VS. Blaukugers 
     My opponent wasn't grade locked but he rode into stern blaukuger without the grade 2 so with boost he was only attacking for 15k which was an easy 10k-2pass scenario while I sat on breakride. While he lacked pressure his 20k vanguard also made him vulnerable to my 20k attacks from Chatnoir boosted by duckbill. Eventually he switched into the crossride but it was a little to late to do anything as I broke rode polaris and destroyed his hand. Next turn I re-rode into Tester Fox to close out the game.

Round 3 (Winners) VS. Omega Glendios (World End Version)
     Link Jokers vs. Great nature is interesting because I can keep my board decently clear but if they do get front row locks it hurts you a ton. He was able to get a lot of the cards he wanted using World-line dragon, and then transitioned into the Damstadium Break Ride. I used a strategy focusing around compass lion to keep attacking with an extra column but retiring lion at the end of the turn to prevent locks. He stuck only on break ride with no rearguard columns to provide pressure so I slowly amassed a huge hand. Eventually I got to limit break and use Polaris. He couldn't guard all of my attacks and I won.

Round 4 (Winners) VS. Bluish Flames
      This match up scared me because he was using the koongal starter which could easily pump up Explosion Blue to almost unguardable amounts. I started first which was really good as I was able to ride Compass lion at grade 2. On his turn he went auto pilot and used Regulation Aglovale to call Oath Aglovale but he couldn't attack my 11k compass lion. I went aggresive with binoculus tiger which he promptly attacked a lot. I guarded with my zeroes because even though I was worried about Explosion Blue I was more worried I wouldn't be able to close the game without binoculus tiger. He did a lot of calling plays but didn't use Explosion Blue which really surprised me (I knew he could have). I easily passed the turn going up to 4 damage. I broke rode Polaris and finished him off that turn.

Grand Finals VS. Blaukugers (rematch)
     This match was much more even he started off really aggresively which put me into a bad position early game. Unfortunately he did misplay twice which cost him the game. First when I was at 3 damage and he pulled a critical trigger he put the crit on a rearguard thinking I wouldn't get limit break. Unfortunately I was getting it anyway and he lost a free damage. I broke rode tester fox this game and started my +1 engine every turn in hopes to out grind him. He pushed back with his own Breakride combo for blaukugers which forces me to guard  5 attacks to prevent his vanguard from standing. Luckily his rearguard columns were only 5k guards. He misplayed that turn when I no guarded the vanguard, took damage and he speeded into attacking with his rearguard and forgot to stand up his vanguard. (he realized this just after unfortunately but since its tournament its unfortunate) Without the extra vanguard attack converting into 2 more rearguard attacks I easily guarded for the rest of his turn and won the turn after.

With the Blau player unable to bracket reset me out of Losers I won the tournament undefeated!

Again, the deck profile is on my team's YouTube Channel Vanguard Central so if you want to see the deck list please check it out (A combo video is also coming out shortly)! If you all want a more in-depth profile on the deck please comment below and I'd be happy to do it. (I apologize if the video isn't very good because it is our first.

Thanks for reading,

~Bambi