Today we have a very special guest , Dave Vecht who has topped multiple events in Premium in the last few months and also V Premium recently for BRO. For this BRO event he made 3 top 8s in Premium and V Premium. Its going to be quite in depth so sit and enjoy!
THE INTERVIEW
Dave Vecht : D
Cipher: C
C: First of all thank you for doing this interview and congrats your multiple BRO tops. 3 Top 8s in 2 weeks is not something everyone just does! Before we get into the details how about you introduce yourself a bit?
D: So thanks for featuring me, for people that don’t know me, my name is Dave Vecht. I am from The Netherlands and my main clan has stayed the same ever since I began playing vanguard which is Gear Chronicle!
Where people can also recognize me from is my YouTube channel called Musrax VG, where I mostly try to go in depth on clans I play, which is mostly Gear Chronicle. But i also play other clans which consist of: Dark Irregulars, Pale Moon, Spike Brothers and Shadow Paladin.
Also for more recent events people can recognize me as the person to bring MFD turbo to the meta in BSF London where I got 1st place as well as getting back to back tops with the deck in AO/EU of BRO2022.
Also my list of tops I’ve accumulated over the years:
- BSF Team League 2018 Belgium G Format – Top 8 – ZTB/Chronojet
- BSF Team League 2019 Belgium Premium Format – Top 8 – Zubat Battler Viktor
- BRO 2021 EU Region Premium Format- 3rd place – Ritual/Luard V
- BRO 2021 AO region Standard Format – 1st place Champion – Final Rush/Bruce
- BSF Team League 2022 Belgium V-Premium Format – Top 4 – Chronojet Dragon
- BSF Team League 2022 Germany Premium Format – 3rd Place – NLK/Baromagnes
- BSF Team League 2022 France V-Premium Format – Top 8 – Nightrose
- BSF Team League 2022 England V-Premium Format – 3rd Place – PRISM
- BSF Team League 2022 England Premium Format – 1st Place Champion – MFD Turbo
- BRO 2022 AO Region Premium Format – Top 8 – MFD Turbo
- BRO 2022 EU Region Premium Format – 3rd Place – MFD Turbo
- BRO 2022 AO Region V-Premium Format – Top 8 – RFD Revengers
C: How long have you been playing ? What’s your favorite clan?
D: That’s a rough one to answer, because I played for a long time just at a friend’s kitchen table, but I would say after the release of G-BT06. That would translate to about 6+ years, which is insane to realize right now.
My favorite clan as previously mentioned is Gear Chronicle, it’s been the clan i’ve started the game with and it never left my interest since then. I really like the idea to influence time to your own desire in a physical card game and since my field of profession is physics/chemistry it matched rather well.
C: Which formats do you mainly play?
D: This is for me an easy question, since it’s by far the premium format. It has been like this ever since the first reboot happened and it’s mainly due to how crazy you can go into card mechanics and that you are almost limitless in terms of deck building.
I’ve because of this reason build some really fun and insane decks, which I could never do in the V-premium/Standard format.
C: How did you prepare for the events and what were your goals going into it?
D: For Premium I prepared by testing against some of the popular meta decks in this format. I wanted to bring the MFD turbo deck again, so I essentially had to perfect my last list for MFD turbo to be fit for this current format.
I got to talk a lot with Jey Kobus about the upcoming meta for the deck after BSF London, where we went a lot into all kinds of different tech cards and potential changes. We used my list at BSF london as the base and then experimented a lot using all different kinds of cards. In the end we came down to almost a perfect list looking at the result and by the amount of players that now copied our deck to top various events.
For V-premium it was a totally different story, since I just wanted to play for fun. I just tried some of my other clans to see what would be fun to play and in this case it was Raging Form Dragon. I play the deck in premium a lot, so I was already familiar with the cards.
For this event I essentially used my teammate list, where we together got 4th place in BSF Antwerp. I just changed one card based on personal preference. Personally I haven’t tested any single game with the deck, but understood the deck fully and agreed with a lot of cards in the list. For context I already discuss a lot of builds/strategy regarding Shadow Paladin/Dark Irregulars since we both play those clans, so it wasn’t that i went totally blind into it, but I just haven’t tested the deck physically for BRO.
In terms of expectations, I went to Premium BRO in the hopes to get one top cut out of it, but managed to get two tops back to back. So I fulfilled my expectations greatly on that one. For V-premium BRO i just went in, with the idea to just have fun and nothing more. Still I managed to get a top cut out of it, which is pretty surprising for myself. But my main goal for the event was just to have a great time playing against many different players and I think I totally fulfilled that one.
BRO V Premium
C: Did you feel comfortable in this particular metagame?
I would say yes, purely because I know what most clans/decks do due to previously testing this meta during the BSF season.
C: What was your personal score, and matchups ? ( W-L)
My personal score going into swiss was 6-2, where my losses in the last 2 rounds were against the Thavas player who got 1st place and the Ange player who got 2nd place. Also my lose in top 8 was against the person who ended up getting 3rd.
Regarding my matchups it was the following:
Round 1 – Gurguit Win
My opponent rode Sagramore as first ride target and then i immediately killed him since i knew it was my final turn anyway.
Round 2 – Yatagarasu Win
Essentially tried to stay at low dmg and farmed force markers while thinning my deck, since i knew i couldn’t finish him off quickly by the amount of defensive cards he had.
Round 3 – Scharhrot/Amon Win
Opponent had to g-assist and showed a lot of g3 and no real soul charger’s so rushed him hard with 3 rinnal on g2 to finish it off immediately on my first g3 turn.
Round 4 – Vanquisher Win
Just constantly cleared my field so he couldn’t take advantage of binding my rear guards. He later denied my 4th damage, but already drew my danger lunge at that point so put all my remaining markers on the rear guard circle and killed him off that way.
Round 5 – Thavas Win
I went against Commander Jaime where we got featured on stream. I went first, but after my Grade 3 turn was over I only saw 1-2 triggers while thinning my deck by quite a bit. So whenever Jaime went into his first g3 turn I began on zero damage so decided to take a lot of damage and got 3 defensive triggers. I still was in the range of losing since I didn’t draw any triggers, but I managed to survive and win the next turn.
Round 6 – Ange Highlander Win
Really strong opponent. Almost lost that one, but managed to end the game before he could farm to many defensive cards.
Round 7 – Thavas Lost
Couldn’t get my correct pieces while having a lot of Ragings in hand, also my opponent rushed quiet a bit so had to take a lot of dmg early on. He later went on and became the AO champion.
Round 8 – Ange Lose
Opponent farmed well and compressed his deck to the point that he ended up with a wall of defensive cards + hitting strong triggers offensively.
Top 8 – Ange Highlander Lost
Same opponent as in round 6. Had to g-assist for g2 and he saw my entire hand was full of Ragings and that’s it, so he denied my Rinnal from resolving every time, so I could not draw/ride any cards to get rear guards on the field on turn 3 and died because of that.
C: What was your toughest round/match up in the event?
Answer: I would say the 6th round which was against Ange Highlander. It was a really close game and even though I won I felt like the win could have gotten to the both of us. We really just tried to force each other in very uncomfortable positions turn after turn, so there was no room to slack off by just the tiniest bit.
About the Deck – V
Deck Log : ABN7
C: With all decks out there , why did you choose to play Revengers? Was it mostly a comfort pick to ease in the high rounds of swiss? Were there any other decks that you were considering ?
D: I mainly picked revengers because it looked fun to play. It feels very how some characters pick their decks in the anime, but in this instance it really was. I was debating on maybe playing a version of Scharhrot/Amon, but I decided to stick to revengers since even if I got denied of resources i could play the game, where with Scharhrot/Amon you really have to be careful not getting denied.
C: With Shadows there’s always a divide between those who favor Luard and Revengers , what do you think sets them apart and which one would be better in this very aggressive format with Gurguit at the Front?
D: There are lots of things that set Luard and Revengers apart for each other, but to keep it short. Luard is a very heavy toolbox deck, who tries to farm force markers while building hand and thinning the deck to reach their wincon.
Revengers on the other hand is far more aggressive since it can kill potentially on the first g3 turn, which luard can’t really do. The thing revengers have going for it, is that it has less counterplay. Luard can be very heavenly counterblast denied when done properly and while raging form really likes his 4 damage, it can still play the game pretty well without reaching that.
For this current format I feel like revengers are better overall, because they can adapt better and faster to the situation they are put in. Also they can just kill someone out of nothing if the opponent decides to give them 4-5 dmg. Especially with Gurguit as the deck to beat, this is the best strategy in my opinion, because Gurguit generally needs just a little bit of time to set up its multple Accels before they generally kill the opponent. In this time window Luard would still set up on their own, while revengers are already potentially looking to go for the kill.
C: I see there’s a Danger Lunge in the deck. Did that ever come up in your Rounds?
D: Danger Lunge definitely came up during the rounds. Even though it isn’t a revenger, because revengers generally go so fast through their deck while thinning it, it allows you to see your non-searchable 1-off in almost every game at some point.
The card itself also really helped me win against some really strong opponents. Sometimes it can just kill out of nowhere if your opponent has too many perfect guards in their hand. The main reason for playing Danger Lunge though is when your opponent doesn’t give you the 4 damage for you to use raging form skill you still have a very strong play to close out the game. This came up multiple times and actually won me games.
C: Any thoughts about the future of your build, do you feel it’s going to remain the best build for Raging form based deck for a while?
D: I feel like Raging focused list will mostly stay the same for now. There aren’t many revengers out in V yet, so you mostly have to stick to these one’s in my opinion. I saw multiple people playing very different 1-offs than me. This comes down to personal preference.
BRO Premium
C: Did you feel comfortable in this particular metagame? For premium especially with Ordercolony gone , theres a lot of decks that have started to resurface.
D: I felt really comfortable in the current meta. I’ve playtested against everything and made the deck so flexible that it can face many different matchups. The only matchup I specifically feel rough in, would be against Narukami and in particular Dungaree. As that is Mystery Flare’s worse match up.
C: What was your personal score, and key matchups ? ( W-L)
D: My personal score in AO began with 7-1, but unfortunately I overslept for the top 8 so couldn’t attend that. In EU i went in with a score of 6-2, losing only the 2 last rounds and ending up 3rd place in top cut.
Since I played in both regions, I have a lot of rounds to talk about, but for this i’ll highlight all the important matches mostly.
In the 3rd round of swiss, I had to play against a friend of mine, who later ended up 1st in swiss and 2nd in total. He played Dark Irregulars and it was my only loss in the swiss rounds due to a very unlucky overtrigger. I essentially attacked him while he was still on grade 2 and called a rear guard to the back row for whenever I checked an offensive critical trigger I could give the extra effects to the rear in the back row to control his damage. Most of the time Giving Dark Irregulars 3 counterblasts means death. Unfortunately, I managed to hit my dark states overtrigger which meant that I was forced to give my vanguard the additional critical, which ended up losing me the game.
The next match I want to highlight is my Top 4 match in EU where I mulligan 3 cards away to only draw into 3 MFD. This means if I draw the last MFD , I would more or less lose the game.
This unfortunately came into reality, because the moment I wanted to ride to g3 I drew into my last MFD, which forced me into just striding up and trying to kill the opponent right there and then. The opponent had a really good defensive hand and that ended up me losing the game.
The last and final game was my 3rd/4th place match against dungaree. I already encountered this person in swiss of EU and lost that game. For people to understand the situation, I’ve never won with MFD against dungaree in a tournament setting. In preparation for this, I’ve to play tested the matchup countless times, but it’s still a really hard matchup. In the end, I managed to win the game, but should one thing go wrong I probably would have lost the match. That’s how close it actually was.
C: What was your toughest round/match up in those events?
This has to be my 3rd/4th place match by far against the dungaree player. So many things you need to watch out for. If you make the slightest mistake it can honestly lose you the match, but even then the chances of MFD winning when a dungaree player goes first is already terribly low. Especially this game since i went first but had to delay my ride up to g3 so the opponent rode dungaree before i could do anything.
C: So with Mystery Flare , I am quite aware this is basically your signature deck. As to my knowledge, the deck only started to appear after your BSF London Top. Could you explain what the deck aims to do as there are a lot of misconceptions about it. Especially with the rulings.
D : So for people that don’t know the interaction of the signature move of the deck, I shall try to explain it. The combo is called the ‘’triple turn combo’’ as the name implies you try to get 3 consecutive turns and kill your opponent during those turns. To achieve that you need to get a MFD in your soul, which you can get by putting MFD into the soul with a card called time Jarret dragon.
Secondly, you need the 19 total grades in the bind zone to activate MFD’s last skill, where at the end of the turn you can discard your entire hand to gain an additional turn.
Now to explain the combo. You need to have specifically Chronojet Dragon as your vanguard which you will use during the main phase to re-ride MFD out of your deck. You then soulblast your Chronojet Dragon out during the main phase/battle phase with the use of cards like Lishma/Smokegear/Re-innovate wing Dragon and you just play your turn out like you normally would do.
Now the resolving of skills that makes it all possible. You have the 1st MFD skill on standby to gain an additional turn + Chronojet that is also on standby to retire your g4 and ride back to a g3 out of your soul. Let’s say we activate MFD first and discard our entire hand, so we have gotten 1 additional turn. Now Chronojet resolves, so we retire the MFD that is on the VC circle and attempt to re-ride a g3 from our soul, but since we already soul blasted the g3 out, it means we are in a position where we are stuck without having a vanguard. The game ruling states whenever you don’t have a vanguard anymore you can ride anything from your soul to your VC circle. This means we can ride the MFD we put into our soul earlier, which then activates his skill and allows us to discard our hand again to gain an additional turn.
Now we have access to 2 additional turns since MFD skills stack upon each other, but that’s not where everything ends. Because your vanguard is G3+ before starting your turn, you can actually stride into those additional turns. This is even possible if your opponent is on grade 2 which makes for some insane pressure!
That is basically everything explained with rulings, but there is also a misunderstanding regarding the deck. Most people think you need to go for the triple turn combo every single game, which is absolutely not true. You tend to use the triple turn combo in around 30% of your matches. In the other 70% of matches you just do 1 additional turn, which is already super lethal to begin with.
The triple turn combo is to guarantee the kill whenever your opponent has a really big defensive hand or to counter defensive over trigger which the opponent can get.
C: I see Pulsar Thruster Bison in the list? Did the lower power come up , or is the extra soul just much more valuable?
D: For people that don’t know what Pulsar Thruster Bison does, it’s an old critical trigger from the G-era which can put itself into the soul to give something 3, which is an ACT skill. On paper it sounds super bad, because the trigger power is only 5000 and only has a 10000 shield.
Its main use is however to help the deck be more stable. While playing the deck there are times you call just triggers of Re-innovate Wing Dragon, which would be normally useless. This critical thus becomes a good call target of it when you don’t have a choice, as it fuels the soul and circle while also giving that little 3000 extra.
The soul is really necessary because we play Kurunta in our g2 lineup, since the deck uses a lot of soul already, we need some way to mitigate that cost, which Pulsar Bison helps with. Also you use soul to extend your multi attacks during the stride turn, by using cards like Shlishma.
The power bonus may seem small, but is actually really good because on the first of your additional turns as your Grade 2s generally hit for 10-15000 power which will hit 13000-18000 which are better numbers, to eat more shield and the true remains even when you power up a G3. Essentially, it allows us to the deck to form more magic numbers.
Lastly and the most overlooked aspect of it is that it actually removes itself from the field. Since you keep on cycling your bind/field due to cards like Re-innovate wing Dragon you sometimes are forced to call over units, so a card like this allows us to get more value from our superior calls.
C: With Gear Chronicle , prior to your tops , it is always a clan that is always seen as a tier below the top. Do you feel that is true? Or do you think its a matter of understanding what you must adapt too?
D: I feel it’s not true at all. Gear Chronicle has lots of great things going for it, but i personally believe it’s not been discovered enough yet. For example, even if MFD turbo gets hit in the future, I already have some other builds in mind that I am still experimenting with.
So I would say Gear Chronicle is at least in the tier 2 range of the current meta and I believe it will stay competitive as long as people keep developing new strategies and deck ideas to combat the meta.
C: With Highbrow Steam, Shlishma , there was been even more variants of Gear Chronicle that has been talked about , Steam Maidens and even Time Leap seeing some experimentation over in Japan. How do you feel about the future of those decks, or is Mystery Flare going to be the best Gears has.
D: I still remember seeing the stride being revealed and everyone instantly started to theorycraft what impact it could have on the current time leap and steam maiden deck.
I started experimenting with those decks as well and from what I see, those decks still lack quite a bit to become competitively viable. For now I believe MFD turbo is the best variant of what gear chronicle has to offer, but there are also other archetypes/decks that show great promise. So it may change in the future depending on how the meta shifts of course.
C: While we are on the same topic , did History Vision Dragon ever fully resolve in your rounds?
D: History Vision never resolved during the entire tournament, but funny enough I also never touched my other g-guards except for Bearlock. But to be specifically talking about History vision, it’s still a G Guard you will play as it is effective in the Dimensional Police matchup which is going to be more and more relevant. It is able to “perfect guard” an attack while not being a sentinel making it immune to the common Guard break effects that the clan in notorious for.
C: I noticed your list has changed from your initial top at BSF London, what was the thought process behind that ?
Answer: So my initial list for BSF London was in assumption that many people would counterblast deny me. My thought process behind it was that in the first few rounds of swiss many people would experience the deck for the 1st time. They would then understand the killing power of the deck and see that it technically is an one turn kill deck, I was in the assumption that many people would whisper in between rounds about the deck and would fear the deck to the point that they want to counterblast deny me, to try and get a chance at killing. This scenario exactly happened to me during BSF London, where most people would give me 0 or 1 dmg to work with.
Since I expected not to have the Luxury for counterblast, I decided to play more cards that can filter and bind without that cost. This is the why I settled on an additional Time Jerret Dragon since it’s not only useful for the triple turn combo, but also a really nice way to filter you hand during the combo turn.
I also played Ribbul which has many uses throughout the game as ability to cycle while also soulblasting makes it very flexible.
For the last card that i played back then, was Lost Break Dragon which was played for similar reasons to Time Jerret while also building the bind zone.
Since then Premium Collection was released and Slishma was probably the most impactful card for the deck. This strides fixed everything about the G-zone we had before in BSF London. The reason for my Teched out G-zone back then, was because I didn’t know what resource I would have had left after I would go into my additional turns. Sometimes I only had a soul left and another time I would only have access to counterblast, so essentially I played a lot of different strides to fill in each scenario. Of course, it’s not needed anymore right now, since Slishma is in general stronger than most strides, requires less setup, and is actually free.
REFLECTING BACK
C: What’s your biggest takeaway from the event and events like Remote Fight ?
D: I think the enjoyment of meeting and playing against different types of people who i couldn’t meet otherwise. Especially when you reach top tables back to back in events, you tend to recognize people which you already met in previous tournaments. This is a great experience to have and I hope more and more people will reach this at some point.
Most people would prefer IRL play above remote fighting, and I also feel the same about it. I still like Bushiroad organizing these types of events, since it is just an extra bonus on top of all the other events we already have.
C: What are your plans going forward with competing?
D: I want to try and qualify for worlds this upcoming BCS season. While I’ve already topped quite a bit, I’ve never qualified for worlds myself. I’ll try hard to make that a reality and would hope to do that together with my favorite clan of course!
C: Any shout outs you would like to do?
D: I will try not to forget anyone, but first off my local friends who always just play casual instead of competitively. It allows me to enjoy the game so much, which helps me to concentrate whenever I want to go into the competitive side of the game. Also there are some friends that are competitive, but also belong to this group of friends, so don’t want to forget them however.
For more personal shout outs, I would like to thank Mohammed which I teamed up with in BSF London. He actually inspired me to bring gear chronicle to BSF London, as well as playtesting quite a bit in preparation for BSF and BRO.
In this same line of friends I would like to thank Noto, Hal and Kaelen for helping me prepare for BRO in general. I had some really good quality talk with them regarding the upcoming format.
Also I would like to thank Jey Kobus and ReverseAce. Jey of course for building the deck with me after BSF London. I really like our in-depth talk about the upcoming format and how we could adapt the MFD turbo deck to fit this current meta. I would like to thank ReverseAce for helping us test the deck and piloting his own variation into the BRO tournament where he even got 12th place in BRO EU.
There sure are many other people that I wanted to shout out, but it’s just too many. So hopefully everyone that i didn’t shout out, knows by themselves that i didn’t forget about them.
And of course a big shout out to all of the people that were rooting for me during the BRO season. I got so many messages lately that I can’t comprehend how happy I am to have all of these friends together with me.
Thanks again for featuring me, it was a pleasure to do this. Hopefully I still get to meet lots of people in the future, so I can’t wait for that. That’s it for me today, so till the next time!
C: Looking forward to see what you have in store! All the best!
Takeaways
I hope you have enjoyed the insight that Dave has shared with us , and have an idea of how to prepare for your own success. Before we go lets do some key takeaways per usual.
- Know the metagame
A huge part of his success in my opinion is his familiarity with each meta game that he is playing into and knowing how to use whatever deck you choose to its fullest. On a similar note , reflect on your wins and don’t be afraid to change up your deck’s approach if you do understand what you have to do even if the build you brought before might have success as it is possible to still improve on it
2. Surround yourself with the right company and always look for improvements
While improving yourself is possible , we can see that having the right company to bounce ideas off is crucial to optimizing your plays and even discovering new knowledge. The Mystery Flare deck had been around for a while , but no one quite brought the deck into larger tournaments before him. Having a good company will make sure testing is not skewed and you will be able to remain objective to see for yourself, if what you are bringing is effective. Having those extra opinions are invaluable to growth as fellow cardfighters
3) Play something you are comfortable with
Both the deck he brought are from decks and clans he really knows about and thus is able to maintain a consistent swiss score which is key for topping events. Having a playstyle you are familiar with often is a key to consistency!
With that, thank you for reading this and till next time!
Cipher