Saturday 11 December 2021

[V-PREMIUM] BRO 2021 AO Region - Shadow Paladin Luard

Now the edgy Shadow Paladin player will give his report for BRO 2021 V-Premium AO Region tournament.

First, the deck list used. It's the same list as the one posted in my previous post (Weakness Is A Sin: [V-PREMIUM] Luard Deck Profile and Strategy (weakness-is-a-sin.blogspot.com)), but just with heal guardians.

For more details on the strategies that I applied for this tournament with the deck, check out the link above for the comprehensive blog post. I followed all the tactics in that article (since I wrote it myself, heh).

Now, let's have a breakdown of the games.

Round 1: vs Gold Paladin (SDD) - win
Before this tournament, I was deciding what deck to use, between Luard or SDD. It turned out that my Luard deck was twice as consistent as my SDD deck (out of 20 simulated games), so I chose the more consistent deck to use. Turns out that this becomes exemplified right in round 1, where my SDD opponent misgraded grade 3 for 1 turn (either didn't have grade 3s, or had grade 3s other than SDD). Since SDD relies so heavily on riding SDD on top of grade 2 vortimer to get the advantage engine started, I can totally imagine why a SDD player would refuse to ride and wait for SDD instead. In any case, I was on the way to victory since I damage controlled him to 3 damage (prevent his triple drive after restand), and I had 2 kanzen guards in hand to guard for his next turn. However, the game ended abruptly as he had to handle his wife and child(?) quarrelling loudly in the background, so he surrendered the game during one of my turns. OOPS 😂

Round 2: vs Royal Paladin (SGD-JK) - win
I went first, G-assisted for grade 3 Luard, and proceeded to activate Luard's field control protocols. Thus, he was unable to obtain 3 grade 1 rear guards for his first SGD turn, and could not even activate SGD's restand effect. My victory was assured after that.

Round 3: vs Link Joker (Messiah) - win
I got a shock when I saw his clan, as I would have been in serious trouble if I were to face off against Chaos Breaker Dragon. Fortunately, it was a Messiah deck which does not lock my field and prevent the Morfessa tactics, so after some trouble (he drive checked 3 heals), I still managed to win. LOL

Round 4: vs Genesis (Himiko-Yggdrasil) - win
He GG-assisted grade 1, and I went first some more. Nuff said, he lost when his vanguard was still at grade 2. 😂😂😂 So weak? Well, welcome to Vanguard HAHAHA

Round 5: vs Bermuda Triangle (Prism) - lose
Time for some real opponents. Quite impossible to outlast the crazy Cutire combos (might be featured in our future blog post). I went second, activated damage control protocols and kept him at 0 damage, but he circumvented that by riding Lupina first to build Force I gifts on his field.

Round 6: vs Bermuda Triangle (Prism) - lose
This opponent was even more ridiculous. He showed me the power of Cutire-Aqua-Elly loops, keeping his hand size at 14-16 every turn even after my Luard offensive turns. Doesn't deck out also due to Elly's return to deck skill and a few other return to deck effects. Depressed already at this stage 😔

Round 7: vs Gear Chronicle (Chronojet) - win
My longest game of the day. In fact I'm quite sure that my table was the last to finish for this round oops. My opponent kanzen me 4 times, but I eventually outlasted him when he drive checked 2 grade 3s and I had 4 cards left in deck, all of which were triggers. Tiring though.

Round 8: vs Bermuda Triangle (Prism) - win
This Prism deck didn't have Cutire. Maybe that's why I could win. Or maybe it's because I went first LOL

Overall results: WWWWLLWW (#19 place)

So in the end, I was 11 places away from top 8, but still, no ragrets as I only lost against crazy BMT Prism meta decks. I'm sure I wouldn't have done better if I had used SDD instead, and indeed the top 8 results of this tournament reflected this theory, with 2 Luards topping and 0 SDDs. Let's now look at the decklists for the 2 Luards which topped.


Interestingly, both decklists did not feature any 5th-attack generator (i.e. Abyss Router or Apocalypse Bat). This leads me to think that an extremely defensive strategy was being employed by these 2 players. This is further corroborated by the presence of 3-4 copies of Abyssal Owls in their decklists, whereas my decklist only featured 2 copies. In addition, one of them did not even run heal guardians, so I'm not entirely sure where this is going. I guess we'll have to see their performance in the Top 8 playoffs tomorrow.

So that's it from me today, and I think it was a pretty good tournament run for me, with lots to learn. Now, back to my fun V Clan Collection decks... 😝

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