First off, hello all, sorry I've been away. Rock band 2 has consumed me a bit, among other things.
This has been on my mind for awhile, and when the playoffs for Football rolled around, I got this idea in my mind.
Taking a look back at Nats and Worlds, I'd like to characterize what it seems to me that a deck that wins has. This is where the Football reference comes in. In short-Offense wins games. Defense wins championships.
Before I begin, I am not referring to hybrid decks. Just read the article, and you'll understand.
I'll begin with some analysis of the decks that made top 8/16 that I can recall at some of these events.
At Nats, I'll highlight the first and second place decks of Omar and Yonhair. The winner, Omar, was pilotting his monster Voldo deck, with Yonhair piloting his throw-together-in-5-minutes Cody deck. First, Omar's deck. As we all know, the mill out Voldo is very strong defensively, with (at the time) R negation in Addes, Board protection in Heishing and Red Lotus and Higher Calibur, CC hax in BRT, Life gain in Revitalize, and Recursion in Military Rank, and everyone's best friend, HAPPY LOLIDAYS! It's offensive ability lied within Vast Resources and Contemplation, along with Voldo's Response, which could be used both offensively and defensively. This isn't everything of course, but it's the cream of the crop in certain areas.
Cody, on the other hand, relied on BRT, Addes (1 Addes still counts!), HC, Red Lotus, and other solid board protection for it's defensive prowess, and utilized Moonbeam Slicer as the primary kill condition. Both of Cody's abilities are great both offensively and defensively as well.
So, two well-rounded decks clashed head to head. In the end, the better defense one. Voldo is designed to simply eat up all the damage you throw at him while slowly milling you out. Contemplation happily puts all your opponents attacks into their hand, since his defensive capabilities with all of his resources are just overwhelming. Cody, on the other hand, doesn't have much in the way to answer the offensive power of the Voldo deck. There wasn't anything outside of Oral Dead, which could only stop Contemplation at the most, to stop everything the Voldo deck could do to win. In the end, the better defense was the winner of the tournament, clearing the path so that the offense of the deck could storm it's way through the front lines and into the end zone for the game-winning touchdown.
On to Worlds. From personal experience using Talim, it was clear as the day winded down that straight up aggro/turn 2 or nothing just won't cut it on the grander stages. Maybe on the costal championships with less people, but not at Worlds. Mortal Strike is simply too much of a road block, and in All decks, with all the draw power, it's just not going to happen where it won't come out. Want an example? Vs. Bautista's Sakura and Loki's Xianghua sandbag into Alex, both players got out early Mortal Strikes in all games against me. I was 0-2 in those matches, the only possible times I could have, and 4-0-1 in all my other matches (the tie was this insanely wtf moment against Rick's Demitri deck-in game 3 we both checked away our win conditions so neither of us could generate any form of offense and time ran out). Saying something, don't you think? With 7 rounds, the chances of you running into the 'Death Dealers' of your deck are just too high to risk it.
So let's look at a few of the decks. First up, the tournament winning Ibuki deck by James Hata, or as I call it, the Best Deck played by the Best Player. At that time, Evil's defensive ability, as we know, was strong-an near-untouchable board thanks to Higher Calibur, R Negation, and Rejection/Gorgeous team loops thanks to The Gorgeous Team. Now earlier I did outline how this wasn't good enough to withstand the onslaught of Voldo, but the difference with Ibuki is in her attack base and Infiltrating. When properly built, she can NEVER fail a first turn Infiltrating action side. So you may as well play some throw away foundations if you're worried and can't defend against it. Second, thanks to the jank that is suzaku, Ibuki can feasibly kill you on turn 1. A 5 Check, maybe a 2 and a 3 check, another low check, and bam, Suzaku for 6, pitch a card, and smack them for a ton of damage turn 1.
The runner-up deck, Shoemaker's Ukyo deck, was certainly no slack either. A wealth of attacks with evil's foundation base made for another well-rounded deck, but with the load of bad checks in the deck (22 if I recall), going up against an Ibuki deck that theoretically can't check badly was the difference maker. In the finals, a combo of a sideboard of Chinese Sword Style, Rejection, and Ibuki's superior attack lineup won the day. As we see again, defense won it all. Chinese Sword Style was simply the MVP of the event in the end, and James used it only for one game, and only used it twice I believe. It forced Ben to use his Form with Ukyo before he wanted to, and forced him to rely onto drawing into what he needed off the top. And it was seriously out of nowhere. Honestly, would you expect to get hit with an action that shares no symbols with your opponents character but can still leave you crippled? A great defensive call by James.
Moving down a bit, I'll take a look at some of the runner ups. First, the Cervantes deck. While I beat the deck earlier in the day thanks to two very lucky opening hands (He beat me game 1, he had me Mega Spike/Immortality locked by turn 2), this deck was S E R I O U S. A VERY easy kill condition in Moon Sault Slayer, and an incredibly strong defensive base in Cervantes's Form, Immortality, and Military Rank to pick back up the Immo's. The downfall of the defense of this deck is simple-Don't get any Immo's, Don't think you'll lock your opponent. Against a quick deck like Shoemaker's Ukyo, whom he lost to in top 4, it's either a first turn mega spike to set up an immo lock, or death.
Next is Jeremy Ray's Alex deck. To be honest, I picked him and James to face each other in the finals. All with Alex is simply a powerhouse. With an amazing defensive set-up only rivaled by Evil, and despite the loss of CSS, access to Chain Throw and Tiger Fury, the deck simply looks unstoppable. The deck isn't too strong in the early game, but is very strong in the late game. And I do believe that their first match went on for some time. I'm not really sure how the deck fell, but my only guess is that Higher Calibur's absurdity became too much to deal with in a deck that did run a few responses.
So, /I know it was a little long, but I wanted to stress my point about the defensive natures of each deck I mentioned, and how powerful each one was. With all the bannings, however, things have changed quite a bit. Higher Calibur was the penultimate Offensive/Defensive card of the Game. Both effects were unstoppable essentially.
In order for a deck to win, it has to be very strong defensively, and strong offensively. The point of this article,. though, was to show that offense doesn't just mean attacking. In the case of Omar, it meant decking your opponent out. Right now, if you had to ask me today what deck would win the next major championship, I would tell you Chun-li in a heartbeat. Air is seriously great right now. Tonight I got my bum handed to me by Omar's Chester mill-out deck running the new Remy action that makes both players draw cards at the cost of discarding cards from your momentum. Unless in an All deck, Blood Runs True seriously cannot touch an Air deck if it doesn't come out early. With Inhuman Perception and Chester's Backing, I was only able to BRT one card in both matches.
In the case of Chun-li, that girl has an AMAZING attack that makes it so that you do not have to run Spike (trust me, you do NOT need to run spike in her deck) and she can attack on your opponents turn for the simple cost of them playing 2 forms. Then with her R and the E on her kick, her pool clears out so she can Tag Along back that kick and do it again. In the span of one full rotation of turns, she can throw 30 damage at you. That's the nature of her offensive ability.
In her defense lies the two foundations I mentioned above, along with Chinese Boxing. But wait, that's not all! Shooting Capoera and the Angel of Evening just step it up another level! readying those Chester's Backings to be ready for another go around just screams defense to the max!
I hope you all like what you all read. Comments always appreciated.
