The History of Professional Cardfight: May-August 2011

This is a series on the complete history of Cardfight!! Vanguard's pro scene, examining both English and Japanese formats in chronological order.

May 2011
Goku was not what stormed the national championship. The tools were there, and Kimnara even gave the deck additional retire options while Gatling Claw acted as a countercard to move-to-rearguard first vanguards, but Blockade and Aleph were more popular in the one place where Goku could flourish after BT02, the juniors division. There's also the issue of parallel development--while English-speaking cardfighters figured out Goku early, he didn't gain widespread recognition in Japan until he became the secret deck in the 2011 Grand Prix. Instead, Soul Saver Dragon rose to prominence here, creating an enormous lock in the tournament listings where Royal Paladin served as a cutoff point between decks that could make it and decks that could not.

June 2011
This began with the Sendai regional tournament, where Murakami Kazuya's deck first defined the senior format, and following this the pro scene was met with an influx of Royal Paladin decks that cemented their total dominance over the world of pros that would go virtually unchallenged for the next sixteen months. Ironically, his opponent Gotou Hirotaka, once regarded as out of touch with what BT02: Onslaught of Dragon Souls was introducing to the format, would go on to be regarded as ahead of his time when the Alfred deck that he pioneered was perfected early in the 2012 tournament cycle.

By the time of the national finals for the Summer 2011 National Championship, there were two qualified cardfighters from each region participating in the senior nationals, with all but two of them fighting with a Soul Saver Dragon-based Royal Paladin deck. These sixteen were the original leading figures in the pro world, although most of them would not be taking future titles due to the sudden shift in the format. Notably, Takagi Tatsuki did later reappear after converting to the Shadow Paladin deck, as part of the 2012 Team Festival's Hakata team.

1. (Sendai) Murakami Kazuya (村上和也) - Alfred / Soul Saver Dragon, Gotou Hirotaka (後藤裕隆) - Alfred / Bors
2. (Sapporo) Ishiwaka Yuuji (石若佑二) - Alfred / Soul Saver Dragon, Nozaki Koutarou (野崎耕太郎) - General Siefried / Juggernaut Maximum / Sky Diver
3. (Hakata) Takagi Tatsuki (高木龍輝) - Alfred / Soul Saver Dragon, Sakamoto Takuma (坂本卓磨) - Alfred / Soul Saver Dragon
4. (Osaka) Anonymous (匿名) - Alfred / Soul Saver Dragon, Kagota Tatsuya (駕田達哉) - Alfred / Soul Saver Dragon / Alfred Early
5. (Okayama) Shitakawachi Kouta (下河内広太) - Alfred / Soul Saver Dragon, Sakamoto Kan (坂本歓) - Alfred / Soul Saver Dragon
6. (Nagoya) Kagami Takuya (鏡味拓也) - Alfred / Soul Saver Dragon, Kamachi Yutaka (蒲池豊) - Alfred / Soul Saver Dragon / CEO Amaterasu
7. (Tokyo B-Block) Nomiya Youhei (野宮陽平) - Alfred / Soul Saver Dragon / Alfred Early, Kashimura Yuuta (鹿志村祐太) - Dragonic Overlord / Dragonic Executioner
8. (Tokyo A-Block) Kawashima Shoutaka (川島掌太) - Alfred / Soul Saver Dragon / Alfred Early, Shimamoto Yuuichi (島本雄一) - Alfred / Gigantech Charger

(The Osaka regional champion is signed as 匿名 tokumei meaning that he did not wish for his name to be known. This is very rare as most pros prefer the publicity, but to this day his identity remains undiscovered.)

July 2011
Out of all this, Shitakawachi Kouta was crowned national champion, with Murakami taking second and Kagami Takuya third, creating a Royal Paladin Best Three. This makes the difference in skill difficult to differentiate between them, but it's believed that Shitakawachi's deck was superior because of the extra defense from Knight of Truth, Gordon's especial intercept, which helped to curb the impact of a Soul Saver maneuver, as well as his more balanced grade ratios and second copy of Soul Saver, as Murakami was running just one while Kagami was running three. Superior skill at the game was also a factor, but at this level of play each cardfighter was effectively competing on an even field.

While the majority of pros did go toward the established, stable Soul Saver deck, the field was not completely devoid of innovation. The juniors' division of this era was in the midst of one of its most innovative periods, with Kagerou coming out as the most prolific decktype, and as the junior cardfighters caught on to what their seniors were doing, they began to adapt and experiment with the Royal Paladin deck for their own purposes. Unlike with the seniors', many cardfighters from this division are still active today; three national championship titles belong to junior fighters who started playing during this period.

1. (Sendai) Satou Rei (佐藤伶) - Dragonic Overlord / Blockade, Ohara Takeshi (小原雄志) - CEO Amaterasu / Oracle Guardian, Apollon
2. (Sapporo) Otani Yuuhi (大谷友飛) - King of Knights, Alfred / Gigantech Charger / Alfred Early / Solitary Knight, Gancelot, Marunaka Shouta (丸中翔太) - General Siefried / Juggernaut Maximum / Sky Diver
3. (Hakata) Outa Ichiki (太田壱基) - CEO Amaterasu / Oracle Guardian, Apollon, Yadosato Kousei (宿里幸生) - Dragonic Overlord / Blazing Flare Dragon
4. (Osaka) Nishara Tomoya (西原朋弥) - Dragonic Overlord / Sealed Dragon, Blockade / Demonic Dragon Berserker, Yaksha, Nakagawa Asuka (中川明日香) - Asura Kaiser / Mr. Invincible / Lion Heat
5. (Okayama) Kamosaki Mayu (鴨崎真悠) - Embodiment of Victory, Aleph / Sealed Dragon, Blockade / Dragonic Overlord, Horikawa Kanata (堀川奏太) - King of Knights, Alfred / Soul Saver Dragon
6. (Nagoya) Horikawa Eiki (堀川詠生) - Asura Kaiser / Mr. Invincible / Genocide Joker, Eboshida Daito (烏帽子田大翔) - Asura Kaiser / Mr. Invincible / Genocide Joker
7. (Tokyo B-Block) Hirano Yuutaro (平野裕太郎) - King of Knights, Alfred / Demon Slaying Knight, Lohengrin / Alfred Early / Solitary Knight, Gancelot, Saitou Souta (斎藤綜太) - King of Knights, Alfred / Soul Saver Dragon
8. (Tokyo A-Block) Yamamoto Akihiro (山本晃大) - King of Knights, Alfred / Soul Saver Dragon, Miyama Akito (深山暁人) - Dragonic Overlord / Embodiment of Victory, Aleph, Blazing Flare Dragon

Kamosaki Mayu would go on to become the Grand Prix National Champion, and reappear in the Fighter's Road 2012 senior class competitions. Before qualifying at Nagoya, Horikawa Eiki had previously participated as the third place finalist in Osaka using a traditional Royal Paladin deck, then placing in Nagoya with a Royal Paladin-Nova Grappler hybrid, and would go on to become a major player in Fighter's Road 2012 alongside Okayama runner-up Horikawa Kanata, where their team would take the Kanazawa regional Trio Fight cup.

Eboshida Daito was using a close to identical hybrid deck in 2011, and would later become the runner-up for the FR2012 Kanazawa regional championship, using a Gold Paladin deck. In an interesting historical coincidence, Horikawa Eiki and Eboshida Daito first appeared together in the 2011 Nagoya finals; among the finalists was a young Rikino Sakura in third place with her own variation on the hybrid deck, who would become the first consecutive national champion as well as the first female champion during the Grand Prix and FR2012.

In a surprise move, Kamosaki would convert to the Soul Saver deck for his championship matches, taking the title of National Champion while Hirano Yuutarou would become the runner-up, and Otani Yuuhi would round out their own Royal Paladin Best Three. Kamosaki used other means of soulcharging, through Giro and Margal's skills, to make room for Alfred Early in his deck while Otani's take was geared toward versatility, using Mr. Invincible's unflipping to fuel many different skills from single-copy grade 3s, and fueling his megablast with the Barcgal line.

From her debut in KeroKero Ace magazine, Soul Saver Dragon was expected to do well--right from the moment the card was unveiled, it was thought of as the new Royal Paladin in the sense that Blazing Flare was the new Kagerou. The card has never been a source of imbalance, and some fighters at the time even suggested that her soulblast to be too high.

She was not supposed to do this well, however. Attention should be paid to the fact that no one at the time knew why. Up until the very day that Barcgal was restricted, nobody knew what was wrong the deck, and very few people thought that the tournament was being affected by game imbalance. The general consensus was that RoyPala was popular and had a lot of support, and if they didn't take the cup then Kagerou would.

If you consider how the Soul Saver Dragon deck is run today, it's essentially unchanged. Yes, certain key units have been updated--Bors has been changed out for Palamedes, Randolf for Lamorak--but their roles are identical. The deck no longer has access to Barcgal, so Wingal Brave/Drangal and three types of critical trigger with some copies of Margal mixed in to finish setting up the soul are run instead. The deck still has its cohesive strategy and the greatest difference in play is that it can take longer to prepare five soul, but even that's been countered by Sharron, Margal, Dream Painter, Pendragon and other soul-focused cards. Many fighters have tried to explain why it was that Barcgal became the key unit to the deck's pro dominance, but thus far no one answer has been satisfactory.

The explanation that Barcgal allows for an unlimited number of boosting units to be called does not hold weight. Any pro cardfighter can tell you that removing triggers from the deck is less beneficial, not moreso, and you never want 5000 and 4000 power units on the field when you could have Lien or Marron instead. In the old format, Bors was the only way for these units to break 16000, and that touched precious counterblast when Bors could otherwise be forming a 20-21000 line with Marron. Even today, Palamedes wants to hit between 18000 and 21000, no lower.

The view that Barcgal unavoidably sets up Soul Saver Dragon's 5-card soulblast is sound but flawed. For this soulblast to go off, it isn't enough to have the soul and field prepared. The opponent must be in a situation in which they genuinely need to guard all three attacks. And the view that Barcgal allows for grade lock from grade 2 to be circumvented is likewise flawed. In Murakami vs Gotou, both fighters had access to this quality, but Murakami's Soul Saver deck still prevailed while Gotou's Alfred deck did not.

The reason that I'm saying all this is because it needs to be pointed out that Barcgal being "broken" is a new idea. If you were to time travel back to May 2011 and suggest to a group of cardfighters that Barcgal was somehow unfair, you would be laughed out of the room. When the restriction came about, the general reaction was that it made sense and was "probably" for the better. Nobody threw their hands up in the air screaming about how he was broken or that Bushi should have restricted him from the start. The idea of "Broken Barcgal" is a 2012 invention that overhypes a card that was called "okay" in his own time. Like all BT01 FVGs, Barcgal's primary goal is to leave the field, and in a fashion that hurts the fighter's advantage as it was built up to that point.

I am dispelling the Barcgal legend right here because my view on the Soul Saver Dragon deck does not put the blame on him. I do not think that Bushi accurately understood why Soul Saver Dragon was such a good deck, or if they did then they weren't willing to eliminate the real culprit. Recall that while Goku was strong, his dominance primarily came from his trial deck giving easy access to powerful rearguards and four retire skills--simply put, TD02 was overwhelmingly better than the only other deck available at the time, and this gave incentive to the fighters with TD02 to stick to the deck after BT01's release. Usually, powerful competitive decks arise due to factors off the table and outside of the cardfight, be it pricing, availability or other factors. And in Soul Saver's case, the factor was the tournament structure.

Bushiroad has one universal format for regional tournaments. Double elimination, one game per opponent with single elimination top 8. The overtime rule is likewise universal. Unlike in a best-of-three Swiss environment, a format that has long since been established as a standard of play since the days of Magic and Pokémon, and most importantly was the environment in which overseas fighters were testing Barcgal versus other builds, decks in this format need only win once to succeed at all. Since each deck has subtle differences that the opponent can generally only identify and play from after one full fight, this gave Soul Saver cardfighters a distinct advantage. As they could consistently get grade 2 and 3 units across multiple fights using only grade 0 and 1 units, the opponent could not identify their deck's full play style until that strategy has already come together. RoyPala did not need to do well in 2/3; it did well in 1/1.

Another key point that has hampered analysis of Barcgal's success until now is that cardfighters in Europe and the Americas were testing in an entirely different format, a format that is still popularly used in shop tournaments. The results at the local level did not match up with the regional level. The assumption that a deck must do well twice rather than once against every major deck has clouded Western views of the initial tournament results.

Moving away from just the historical context, the deck's contents support this different view. Saver Dragon decks universally opened with Barcgal as their first vanguard, the same FV that the Royal Paladins had been working with since Descent of the King of Knights. A typical setup was to ride Lien, move Barcgal to the rearguard, then rest him to call Flogal and use Lien's skill to change out anything unneeded like excess copies of Alfred(Flogal always preceded Llew regardless of turn order; logic being that critical was more valuable to the deck and Flogal was usually run in lower numbers, so damage checking her on the opponent's turn would guarantee that there were none left in the deck.) On the next turn they would use Lien's card change skill again, then rest Barcgal to superior call Knight of the Future, Llew, and activate Llew's counterblast 1 to soulcharge Barcgal, Flogal and Llewsuperior riding Blaster Blade from the deck.

From here there were a couple ways that the game could play out; generally you would spend your initial grade 3 turn as the King of Knights, Alfred. Alfred gains +2000 power for each Royal Paladin rearguard but can't be boosted, and in those days his skill was invaluable because only the Kagerou, Nova Grappler and Spike Brothers clans had base 11000 grade 3 units. So Alfred could hit major players like CEO Amaterasu, Goku and Mr. Invincible for all the right numbers to outright demand 15000 shield to defend with, climbing up to 25000 if they wanted to guarantee that his attack would not go through. Because all Royal Paladin grade 3s at the time were base 10000, for being able to touch 20000 consistently Alfred was his own best counter. Amaterasu's continuous skill could do something similar while also hitting base 11000 units, but was dependent on having four cards in hand, and that conditional factor gave her a difficult late game because of how much shield she was dropping each turn to stop Alfred. Dragonic Overlord could also break these numbers, but required a counterblast 3 to do so and was only likely to get this skill off once or twice in the game. General Seifried and Soul Saver Dragon were the only other units that could do what Alfred did consistently, and the fact that every Royal Paladin grade 3 in the deck can reach these same numbers gave pressure toward the RoyPala play style over other clans.

The turns spent as Blaster Blade and Alfred would be spent setting up the final turn. Pongal, a base 7000 grade 1, can counterblast 1 to soulcharge himself and add Soul Saver Dragon to the hand, which made him very popular since both grade 2 and 3 could be guaranteed by the Royal Paladin deck of the time. Pongal could also be targeted for a search by both High Dog Breeder, Akane at grade 2 and by Alfred, regardless of whether these units were in the vanguard or rearguard circles. Essentially, no matter how the game progressed Soul Saver Dragon could be guaranteed to the hand with Pongal while the five soul for her soulblast was already prepared by the Barcgal-Flogal-Llew combo. As long as no frontline units were called during the first turn, the opponent would have to attack the vanguard to guarantee themselves a drive check and not fall behind in card advantage, creating a situation where the opponent was forced to activate the superior ride.

That isn't to say that there weren't counters to Barcgal, but they all depended on the Royal Paladin cardfighter taking the second turn rather than the first. In that situation, Kagerou cardfighters could retire Barcgal with Gatling Claw Dragon for a simple counterblast 1, or if the RoyPala opponent had checked a critical trigger, then either Berserk Dragon or (in a mirror match) a vanguard Blaster Blade could do the same. This was unfortunately dependent on a coin flip, die roll or janken. Like Conroe, Battleraizer and Guiding Zombie, Barcgal was never really intended to be stopped. A skilled fighter could overcome the Royal Paladin deck of the time, and in fact many fighters did so--using other Royal Paladin decks. Unfortunately, this set a historical precedent for the future. When one deck emerges with many strengths and no concrete weaknesses, the majority of pros tend toward that deck rather than toward giving themselves a harder time with others.

After the turn as Alfred was over and a proper field was called, the opponent was likely in the range of 4-5 damage already, so what remained was to defend the vanguard and the field for one turn and then ride Soul Saver Dragon, triggering her soulblast 5 for +5000 power to three rearguards. The rearguard setup of the time typically used Blaster Blade for his on-call retire skill, Gallatin for his base 10000 power and Randolf as a substitute for a second Gallatin, which the Royal Paladins did not have access to in those days. The grade 3 Knight of Conviction, Bors was also a very valuable rearguard, since he could counterblast 1 when attacking for +3000 power, breaking the 21000 line with Marron as his booster. A typical assembly of the deck can be seen below, with key cards highlighted in blue.

Grade 0

x1 Barcgal (FV)

x4 Yggdrasil Maiden, Elaine HT

x2 Flogal ST

x4 Knight of the Future, Llew CT

x3 Bringer of Good Luck, Epona CT

x3 Margal DT

Grade 1

 x3 Flash Shield, Iseult

x4 Little Sage, Marron

x4 Lake Maiden, Lien

x4 Pongal

Grade 2

 x4 Blaster Blade

x4 Knight of Silence, Gallatin

x1 Covenant Knight, Randolf

x2 High Dog Breeder, Akane

Grade 3

x4 King of Knights, Alfred

x2 Soul Saver Dragon

x1 Knight of Conviction, Bors 

The September 5th Restriction
One disadvantage to Barcgal being restricted is that it effectively put the developing pro scene on hold for eighteen months. The restriction was first announced on August 3rd, 2011, taking effect on September 5th, and until the outbreak of the Total War in March 2013 every effort to perfect the strategy was put aside. The Barcgal strategy has not stayed static; had it been active, soul-heavy Lohengrin and decks relying on cards like Borgal and Gigantech Dozer would have a greater presence in the pro scene, the modern Majesty Lord Blaster deck would have had deeper competition at the professional level, and the Blaster deck itself would have several more ways to run its plays. Given that the Soul Saver Dragon deck today has aged poorly compared to Alfred and several strategies to come, how the Total War will play out with Barcgal is something that the world of pros will be watching closely.