Today we have a Cardfighter Spotlight! I’ll be having the opportunity to interview the Granblue player that accomplished Top 8 in the Bushiroad Rumble Online (BRO) 2021 NA for the Premium format! His name is Notoriousette and is from UK! Let’s get right into the interview!
Formatted By: Cipher
DECKLIST
Deck Code [3CT0] deck | Deck Log (bushiroad.com)
INTERVIEW
Jaime: First off, congratulations to Notoriousette for getting Top 8 in the Bushiroad Rumble Online (BRO) 2021 NA! When I saw the results and you were playing our beloved clan Granblue, I was happy to see Granblue being represented. Today I wanted to do an interview with you about your overall experience and even get to know you a little bit for the readers. Sounds good amigo?
Notoriousette: Thank you Granblue has been one of my favourite clans and I am happy that this event allowed me and the other Granblue players to express how creative you can get with this clan.
Jaime: Tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from? Are you from any specific Vanguard teams/communities? Any other events that you and/or team have done well? Etc.
Notoriousette: I am 20 years old and live in the UK, my main playgroup is in Milton Keynes however that is a long journey for me, so the development of online communities has been great for myself. I am relatively new to the competitive scene in that my first top in an official event was last year at premium BSFO where I played DI. While I’m not in any teams, I am active in most community servers such as Different Fights server, MKWA, WCC community, and my own premium server where we hold tournaments every so often.
Jaime: How did you start playing Cardfight Vanguard?
Notoriousette: I first started watching the anime around the end of the legion era. Beginning of G era, I had 2 trial decks that I had brought online however, as I didn’t know about any shops in my area that sold the product I didn’t really start playing until GBT03. I brought the Gear Chronicle trial deck as well as a few boosters and made started giving players free wins shortly after I moved to Dark irregulars and have stuck with that clan ever since.
Jaime: During your preparation, what are some things that you mainly focused on?
Notoriousette: Certain matchups, deck builds, strategies, etc. I broke down the expected format into 2 categories, Decks that can guard Violence Flanger and decks that cannot after that and more testing. I came up with a build that can play the most like your regular Granblue deck, for the times that I need to this was most important for the mirror, the Nightmare Dolls, Ezel, and some rogue picks like GC. Finally, I just played against everything tweaking my list along the way in order to either get to my winning image as consistently as possible or to play around the situations where the winning image isn’t possible or not viable.
Violence Flanger is a key piece in his build and is one of Granblue’s ways to create unguardable attacks that can easily catch players off guard once it’s set up
Jaime: What made you decide on Granblue to play with? Why a more Beatrice focused variant?
Notoriousette: I enjoy building and playing Granblue. And between the decks that I enjoy in this format, I believe Granblue to have been the most competitively viable. Besides that, I feel Granblue is a deck that can react very well to most situations so, in the scenario that I misjudged this format, I felt if any deck can react on the spot to a new matchup it would be Granblue.
Jaime: Awesome, let’s dive into your deck list. I see that you’re playing 1 copy of Nightrose and 1 Flanger. Were those cards key for specific scenarios? How did it work out for you?
Notoriousette: Flanger was my main win condition for swiss as I expected it to be filled with, OTT, Regalia, Luard, etc. Plus, being able to restrict the amount of damage I give them and attack for 5 crits that is realistically unguardable. So it seemed like a solid idea at the time, Nightrose was for the later sections of swiss and the top cut if I made it where I was expecting Granblue and Nightmare Dolls as they can stop the Flanger win condition. This played out as expected as in every round of swiss apart from the 2 Granblue mirrors I played Flanger won me the game. Nightrose while useful only served as a backup or as an early push if I want to ride up but don’t need the defense that Beatrice gives.
Jaime: I also see that you’ve included CC engine, with cards such as King Serpent, Cutlass, and Tear. Usually, only 1-2 different types of cards are used to CC. What were some key things that made you feel to add more CC options? In the tournament, can you give an example?
Notoriousette: My win condition is a combo where all the skills I need to activate are in the main phase because of this I want to maximize the chances of being able to play all the time. This means the CC engine that Grenache provides is too awkward for this build. As I am now down 1 exceptionally strong CC engine in Grenache, I felt that I needed a replacement and that was why I chose Tear, GBs G Zone didn’t feel too restricted, so I felt the drawback of playing some Cray Elemental G units that wouldn’t hurt the deck at all.
Though, my deck now had a slight soul issue with the likes of Tear and Beatrice eating soul, so King Serpent was just what the deck needed to round slots out.
Cutlass wasn’t entirely needed but being a CC that didn’t cost any resources to use and was re-usable thanks to Belle, felt like a good safety net should issues arise as the tournament progressed, I really appreciated what Cutlass gave my deck.
In my matchup with Granblue being able to call out a free body without wasting hand and getting counterblast back meant that I could play extremely greedily and rush while grade stalling without any worry about being damage starved. ( damage denied )
Jaime: I see you’re playing Urjula, Belle, Navigator, Quincy, Honoly, Nectar (Order), and Cody. Interesting 1 of’s, can you elaborate why you came to those choices/ratios? Any other card choices you’d like to point out?
Notoriousette: Urjula was my out to clans with frontrow disruption mainly Kagero, it basically was there to reduce the number of decks that can stop the winning image, aside from that being able to protect Nightstorm felt important.
Belle was for the Narukami matchup as it makes the deck much easier to play around however being able to recycle my Dancing Cutlass meant I should never run out of resources as well.
Navigator was there to guarantee my winning image was set up by the second stride at the latest it also sets up your drop zone. So you have a wider selection of Greed Shade targets if you open it early it also meant that if I wanted to ride up I could use the Navigator to make Skull Dragons hit for large numbers and potentially end the game on a Nightrose turn.
Quincy was a main part of the Winning image being able to return your overtrigger to your deck by effectively stacking it. Meaning the later the game goes the higher chance you can just check into it. Furthermore, it is one more card that helps keep the deck compressed which could lead to just ending the game through crits
Honoly was mainly to out Nightmare Dolls or to force them to stride into Beatrix. Aside from that clans like Tachikaze or Gold Paladin that struggle to play around a Honoly called turn 1 or turn 2.
Nectar was to give Flanger the additional critical in the combo to be able to do 5 damage if played correctly. However, it did force out some G Guards in matchups where I couldn’t Flanger for whatever reason
Cody was a card used for defense but also offense as seen in the EU top cut Cody and Nightrose work really well together allowing me to extend my plays to close the game.
Jaime: Awesome thanks for explaining those card choices. With this build, what was your winning image for most of your games? Like did you have a setup, game state, or strategy that you focused on?
Notoriousette: For most games, I wanted to win with Flanger the end goal is to use Quincy to stack the deck so I drive check a Crit, Crit, and an Overtrigger giving Flanger an additional crit as well as 100 million power this can be done by milling until 1 card and using Quincy multiple times.
Obadiah makes this stupidly easy as it calls everything as well as it selects the last non-criticals in your deck to remove.
Quincy is an older card that allows you to send any G0 from the rearguard to the bottom of the deck, which includes over triggers.
Everything I did before that was dependent on the situation if I felt Flanger wasn’t killing, I wouldn’t use my first stride to set that combo up.
If I misrode, I could use a Bad Bounty to ride the correct grade 3 while keeping the pressure up. As the board state is easy to achieve, I hardly had to worry about the final turn so I could spend more time and resources playing around with what my opponent was doing.
Jaime: During your games, which decks/clans did you face?
- Round 1- Shadow Paladin – Luard
- Round 2 – Granblue – Beatrice
- Round 3 – Dimension Police – Dailiner
- Round 4 – Dimension Police – Dailiner
- Round 5 – Pale moon – Nightmare Dolls
- Round 6 – Genesis – Regalia
- Round 7 – Gold paladin – Ezel
- Round 8 – Granblue – Nightrose
- Top 8 – Shadow Paladin – Luard
Jaime: Was there a game you would like to highlight? Like your toughest matchup, best game, break or deal moments, etc.
Notoriousette: The Granblue mirrors were interesting as they were both completely different. Against Solemn we played the grade 2 turn for ages until I rode Nightrose to push as I saw a Grenache in the damage zone a turn before. I knew he would not recover his CB as well which meant he could not set up to be as tanky as he would want it to be.
The other Granblue mirror had me play the resource game by giving up the first stride early while completely starving them of resources meaning they had to stride into the rare Obadiah which means they do not push too far ahead and it went on from there.
Jaime: During your games, what is something that you appreciated about your deck from the preparation you’ve done? The strategy of it, consistency, power, plays, etc
Notoriousette: I really appreciated how easy Flanger just ends games if the deck did not have an answer to the combo they were in a really bad spot past that Quincy made it so even if Flanger wasn’t being used I could send crits back so my final turns would be much more threatening due to the increased trigger count.
Jaime: How many rounds were in the tournament? How was your record throughout?
Notoriousette: Overall, there were 8 rounds in swiss I finished at 7 – 1 losing to Nightmare Dolls when they went into Dust to stop G guards and Honoly. I believe I overextended and gave them to much damage to work with and should have left my opponent at 3 damage.
In the top cut, I lost the first round to Luard where my opponent hit the last of his heals to survive the Flanger turn I did misplay after reflecting in that I could have made Flanger hit for an additional damage which would have meant he would have lost however I didn’t not see the play at the time.
Jaime: How was your last game?
Notoriousette: It was during the top cut against Luard my general strategy is to keep them at low damage then to kill them with Flanger I made a slight misplay which forced my to discard an additional card which ended up being the order had I played that correctly there was a lower chance for him to hit all the heal.
Jaime : After the tournament, did you take some time to reflect? Anything that you learned from your experience?
Notoriousette: While the Flanger play is fun it certainly isn’t the best Granblue build that was taken this day. I prefer builds like the other builds in the NA top cut. Quincy while it had its uses outside of the combo I don’t think it will have a spot in the decklist now that the format has been established however I do encourage people to try the Flanger deck out combo.
Jaime : Awesome! Would you like to do any shout outs to people that you know and/or have helped you along your journey?
Notoriousette: I’d like to shout out the players at Topdeck Inn for being letting me test this deck against them Aswell as Core for picking up the boxes of clan collection even if I could not use them in my deck for the tournament finally the players in my discord who put up with me testing every once in a while.
Jaime: That’s all great stuff! I’m sure your friends are happy and excited for your accomplishment! Just one more question and we’ll be done amigo.
While preparing with Granblue, did you use/see any social media to help you solidify your build? Such as blogs, YouTube videos/channels, Facebook, Reddit, etc.
Notoriousette: I’ve seen people posting their decklists on twitter using #VGTopDecks however I mainly spoke to various groups about what they were testing with.
Jaime: Awesome! Thank you for sharing that as well, very much appreciated. Thanks again for joining me in this interview! I wish you the best and hope to see more from you in the metagame! Till next time amigos!
Takeaways
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this interview! I just wanted to highlight some takeaways that can help players out!
Using A Win Con That Isn’t Currently Common
Notoriousette mentioned, “Certain matchups, deck builds, strategies, etc. I broke down the expected format into 2 categories, Decks that can guard Violence Flanger and decks that cannot after that and more testing.“
Notoriousette decided to use a Win Con strategy that hasn’t been as common recently in Granblue. He expected the format to be an opportunity to use the Flanger combo.
It served him well and I’m sure it caught some of his opponent’s off guard with it. Sometimes it’s smart to have a surprise element and even some more spicyness to it such as Quincy returning an Over trigger.
Reflecting Your Win Con
Notoriousette mentioned, “While the Flanger play is fun it certainly isn’t the best Granblue build that was taken this day.“
Notoriousette did well in this event but realized that the Flanger combo may not be best moving forward. It’s a rare instance, at least in Vanguard, where players decide to change up their strategy completely moving forward.
Nothing wrong with it, but ultimately future success will depend on the current metagame. Be able to adapt and learn from your experiences.
Final Thoughts
Thanks again for reading this Cardfighter Spotlight article! It’s great to see an awesome Cardfighter like Notoriousette achieving Top 8! Thanks again to Notoriousette for joining us today as well! Till next time amigos!
For more Granblue/Stoicheia content, check out Rogue of the Seven Seas blog!
Notoriousette’s Social Media: Notoriousette#1770
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