Fighter's Spotlight is an ongoing project concerned with tracking real-world professional cardfighters across the globe.
Murakami Ryuu/村上龍
Age: Unknown; Seniors DivisionTitles Won: Hiroshima Regional Champion (Senior Class)
Current Status: Hiroshima Regional Champion (Reigning)
Deck Type: Oracle Think Tank (Scarlet Witch, CoCo)
Murakami Ryuu is the Winter 2012 regional champion for Hiroshima, and the fifth champion to be crowned during the Fighter's Climax 2012 event. Murakami was part of a new wave of pros that based their decks out of Oracle Think Tank, making a comeback for the previously ill-represented clan toward the end of the tournament season. He became an important figure during FC2012 as one of the fighters that emerged in the wake of national champion Rikino Sakura's championing of the CoCo deck, and the most obvious representative of it in the senior championship.
Decks and Play Style
Murakami provided a unique take on the CoCo deck, omitting the then-standard Goddess of Flower Divination, Sakuya to instead make room for CEO Amaterasu and her trigger-predicting skill. While such tactics had been employed before as a substrategy to refill the soul for use with Luck Bird or with a LuLu returned to the hand through Sakuya, Murakami did not include either of these units, making her inclusion somewhat puzzling. Furthermore, his counterblast was severely restrained by Maiden of Libra and Meteobreak Wizard beyond used alongside CoCo, as using each skill once would completely empty his supply of damage with no way of unflipping it. As Sakuya was omitted, Dark Cat followed the same route, leaving little room for the easy 18000 lines that Battle Sister, Glace normally provides.
However, there are some advantageous points to the Murakami deck. Recognizing that LuLu only required an Oracle Think Tank grade 3 for her skills to activate, not a grade 1, Murakami was able to include a fifth base 8000 unit of a different clan, Mermaid Idol, Sedna. The fact that each skill can only be used once could be called a part of his strategy. Once CoCo has been ridden and LuLu's skills applied, the Murakami fighter has no further use for additional cards of this type. Instead, his maxed out copies of Emerald Witch, LaLa use the extra copies of CoCo and Amaterasu as fuel to change out into new cards. Using Cocoa, the top card of the deck can be examined; if it is not a trigger but still useful, it can then be returned to the top and LaLa can be brought out to draw into it, providing a powerful means of selectively adding cards from the deck to the hand. To an extent, this strategy emulated the power of the Goddess of the Sun, Amaterasu crossride before said card was actually available to the public, without the restraints of that skill.
Winter 2012 Regional Tournament, Hiroshima Seniors Division (Japan)
Card Pool: TD01-BT08, PR 0001-0079
Grade 0
x1 Little Witch, LuLu (FVG)
x4 Lozenge Magus HT
x4 Oracle Guardian, Nike CT
x4 Psychic Bird CT
x4 Battle Sister, Ginger CT
Grade 1
x2 Battle Sister, Cocoa
x4 Battle Sister, Chocolat
x4 Oracle Guardian, Gemini
x1 Mermaid Idol, Sedna
x4 Emerald Witch, LaLa
Grade 2
x3 Maiden of Libra
x3 Silent Tom
x4 Battle Sister, Tart
Grade 3
x3 CEO Amaterasu
x4 Scarlet Witch, CoCo
x1 Meteobreak Wizard
