Off the Top of my Head...

::Ibuki::

4 Knight Breaker

3 Midnight Launcher

3 Reverse Flayer

4 Ichi No Tachi

1 Defender

3 Seal of Cessation

2 Lynette's Shop

2 Olcadan's Mentoring

3 Rejection

4 The Anti K'

4 Chester's Backing

4 Lord of the Makai

4 Forethought

3 Billiard Player

2 The Gorgeous Team

2 Kabuki Artist

2 Revenant's Calling

1 Charismatic

4 Blood Runs True

3 Controller of Souls

1 Cutting Edge

4 The Red Lotus of the Sun

2 Oral Dead

SIDEBOARD

1 Rejection

4 Soul Wave .

2 Bitter Rivals

1 Seal of Cessation

This is roughly what I ran for the singles event. The deck is actually quite different from the previous build that placed 4th at the GCC, going back to the roots of EVIL for the main kill condition. Lots of card advantage in the deck with Lord of the Makai, Kabuki Artist, Blood Runs True, and The Gorgeous Team. With Billiard Player in the deck, I can afford to cut down to just the one Defender, sice I could get it back whenever I want with Billiard.

As much as I hate to say it, Knight Breaker is as good as it gets in todays meta. I can't tell you how many games where all I drew was an Ichi and two Breakers and that was more than enough. Ichi ->Breaker -> Breaker Combo enhance is a hard cripple to deal with and can usually put the opponent in panic mode.

One game I Defender Looped Ichi no Tachis with Reverse Flayers. One game I Defender Looped 2 Launchers. Another game I left the opponent with 2 foundations after a bunch of Breaker Death enhances (Seals).

One of the biggest play mistakes that I see everygame is Olcadan's Mentoring forms. The opponent would give me 2 or 3 Ant K' from my discard. You know what that means? Next turn your going to fail your blocks! 2 of my wins came down to Anti K' forcing the damage through with the -4 or -3 CCHax thanks to the opponent.

Soul Wave is definitely an auto include SIDE from now on. I think that there will definitely be enough discard in the new meta to warrant this in most sideboards. Bitter Rivals was SB to deal with Hanzokick.

Any Questions?

I count 69 cards and 18 3-or-less CCs, with a bunch of high-difficulty foundations and very few 1-drops. Did you ever have a problem getting cards on the table? I suppose those 3diffs definitely fuel your Anti K's, and Ibuki's R can let you drop a Chester's as your 2nd form of the game and guarantee the check, or a Billiard Player or whatever as your 3rd... or both lol.

Not what I was expecting, but I find no surprise in you getting creative with the magical cheating ninja.

theres 66 cards MD.

If you know what you can play first turn then yuou should never have a problem with any deck. Opening turn I can actually play out my hand without worry of checking a 1 or a 2 as long as I keep an eye on my progressive difficulty. Sure there is quite a few high diff foundations and plenty of 3 checks, but I definitely know what I can and can't get away with in the early game. 3 or 4 foundations is definitely perfect as long as I have a forethought down. If I think I should play more anti-control pieces down then thats what I will try to get on the table.

HDC - Yeah I really didn't wanna jump on the waggon with the attack line up but it is so effective... I know you can't blame me...

The biggest problem I have with the deck is the lack of originallity for me. This just really seems more in the direction that I do NOT want to go with my 2009 career but whatever brings the bread home in the end is what I gotta do. As Scott would say, "B****, I'm tryin to get on CARDBOARD!"

Ruthless... but I love it...

Hence my shock. I certainly think no less of you, but of what limited knowledge I have of your decks, I know you like to be creative-much like Goo.

No offense to Goo... but don't compare me to him lol.

We have both yet to not DRAW against each other lol. Everytime I play him we just Draw.

Yeah, it's really different from the one you played in Lousiana. No 61 damage Midnight Pleasures =(

Do you like the way the deck functions more or less now?

Also, I almost died laughing when Scuba mentioned offhand that night about the Launcher looping.

Ed: And I'm glad that someone else is also only running 3 Launcher.

The deck is totally just a different machine. It still has the core parts as far as the control goes. It is a bit different as the overall consistency has changed. It isn't better or worse, its just a different type of deck. I figured that since the meta has taken a turn towards early game aggro and more efficient early control, then I should too. Trust me in saying that I am probably not going to stick with Ibuki this season, but until I find "that" deck she may be my official "Go to" character.

To tell you the truth, I built this deck on the road, though I really had it in my head tossing around certain builds before SCC. I built in in the car about an hour before the tourney, and tweaked it before deck submission. It does have the pieces I want in any deck for todays meta, and can kill as fast as any aggro character out there. Not my play style. I don't think anyone saw it coming but I guess it worked out to my advantage.

I would much rather play something with Good or Chaos/Order. It is really hard to find a decent tri-symbol character these days with everyone trying to end games so quick...

Launcher Looping is epic... crazy...

I think billiard player was one of the best cards in the deck. It forced so much control pieces to go off. The opponent couldn't safely run Lynette's. They had to use Chester's to negate the ability. They had to waste an Olcadon's form on it. Such a easy way to bait out the problem cards. If the opponent had a BRT out, they usually used it on Billiard Player, but the the Chester's went through. Easy baiter.

Launcher will usually be a 3 of for me.

Yeah, it looks like a lot of the basic parts of it are the same - just no goal-specific stuff like N-Type, KoF, etc.

Billiard Player is, as Scott would say, "****" (or whatever word he's decided to use as an adjective synonomous with awesome, ha). It wasn't until I'd seen you play it at GCC, and then fiddled with it myself in Zi Mei that I became a believer. O Jesus. Billiard is definitely one of the best utility foundations around, and great bait, since they either fail it or you just get the other stuff they worked so hard to mess with.

I chuckled again. I'm going to start working on Nagase - just haven't figured out the symbol spread yet.

MegaGeese said:

Get to ****in' work, I wanna compare notes . I guess that's kind of a misnomer, because I don't have any notes to compare, but...

I def. know where you're coming from tho, I'm pulled to play Good, because she hits the momentum for Torn Hero no problem, and for the reduce-to-printed cards to nerf nukes {Spike, <Powerful attack>, Tiger Fury/Beach Special}, but I want to play Order/Chaos for Lord of the Frog to completely wreck any multiple-attacks strat and the +2HS from Bigger They Are... plus Forethought.