Spotlight: Murakami Ryuu/村上龍

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 Division
Titles 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

Scarlet Witch versus Full Moon

By rawritzrichii, seek consent before reposting.

What needs to be understood before we begin today is that all Oracle Think Tank decks are using essentially the same strategy. They differ only in the means by which the strategy comes together. OraThin draws many cards to outlast the opponent with smart defense while using their unique access to every card in their deck to quickly set up a particular offense. So despite their differences in play, all three OraThin decks currently available to the English game, and the four available to the Japanese game, have the same ultimate goal.

However, one of these decks has been a national championship deck and the others have not. Much like The End and Majesty Lord Blaster, Tsukuyomi has been a very popular deck since her introduction, but until the past week none of these decks had ever taken a national title, and the Full Moon strategy still has yet to. There are several ways to examine this, but first consider how many cards each deck actively gains. Under ideal circumstances in which 6 cards enter the soul, Tsukuyomi generally sees two succesful superior rides per game and with one CB2 a net advantage of +3 while sometimes adding a temporary -1 to the opponent for the turn with Euryale. That's a total difference of four cards. CoCo on the other hand, calls LuLu, uses her soulblast and CoCo's counterblast for +1, +1 and +2. Similar to Tsukuyomi, that's a four-card difference.

The divide between them comes in methods. LuLu will never fail as long as the soul is conserved for a grade 3 ride, and CoCo will likewise always go off as long as she has two damage open, while it is very possible for Tsukuyomi to never get off a superior ride or six soul. Unless the six-soul criteria is met, there can be no advantage for the Goddess, so CoCo is more consistent. The next divide is in how cards are handled--Tsukuyomi is constantly soulcharging with Red-Eye, her own skill and Amaterasu. This removes many more cards from the deck than with the Scarlet Witch, and all happens on top of taking more cards out of the deck with superior rides. Under the ideal circumstances previously mentioned, in these ways a Full Moon deck would take out eight cards from the deck, two from rides, two from Red-Eye, two from Goddess of the Half Moon's soulcharge skill and two from Full Moon's draw skill. About eleven other cards would come out by the end of the third turn through normal play (draw, damage and drive check), with six leaving the deck at the start of the game for 25 total--half of the deck. Compare to CoCo's ideal play, which by the same time has 21 out and 29 in. Under these conditions, it would take CoCo about two-to-three turns longer to deck out than Tsukuyomi, and that too is a fundamental difference.

Both decks achieve the same number of extra cards, but CoCo does so without decking out as quickly. And while Tsukuyomi has access to Battle Maiden, Tagitsuhime to form up with Gemini for base 20000 lines, CoCo has an arguably easier time creating the 18000 rearguard lines that are more important to the postcrossride format. While both decks have access to Battle Sister, Mocha, who makes a very easy 18000 line with Dark Cat, only CoCo can use Glace, who forms the same line under the conditions of having zero soul and is thus much easier to trigger than Tagitsuhime. CoCo's access to Sakuya as a backup vanguard is also helpful because it allows for an extra 10000 shield to be grabbed off of LuLu, and both units can break 23000 power with Milk for combating The End, Great Daiyuusha and similar units while Tsukuyomi's power is capped at 21000.

Until the arrival of the restricted list in December 2012, both decks had access to Silent Tom in the Japanese scene, where the two decks have been primarily open for comparison. Since Silent Tom outshines Tagitsuhime so thoroughly by requiring the same number of lost cards from all but crossrides, without the soul restriction, there has been a certain mentality of late that if Tom, Glace and Mocha can all be best used by CoCo while Tagitsuhime does not come with the same consistency, then the Scarlet Witch may as well be run instead of her to begin with due to having greater consistency and rearguard support.

At the WCS2012 Chicago regional tournament, one thing that I continually noticed was that Tsukuyomi decks were not usually losing their fights, but were instead decking out. Memorably, one finalist commented that he would "die on his own sword" rather than lose to Bastianelli's Duke Dragon deck in the top four, and ended up drive checking all of the remaining cards in his deck. Tsukuyomi filled third and fourth place in the regional because of these deck-outs. It's no coincidence--the build can defend virtually forever, but the deck itself lacks the same stamina as its fighters. If Tsukuyomi were to one day receive support cards that could take cards out of the drop zone and inject them back into the deck, then she may see a resurgence in the pro scene, but as the deck is already very well off without additional cards and Bushiroad seems intent on creating new styles of play rather than bolstering old ones, for now it appears that it's CoCo's turn for the spotlight.

In summary, Tsukuyomi's key problems are the toll that her soulcharging takes on her deck, her inability to break 23000 power, her lack of access to low-maintenance rearguards, and Amaterasu not providing equal benefits when compared to Sakuya as an alternative winning image. CoCo's strengths give her a distinct advantage by answering all of these problems, but the new model of Full Moon deck presented by Tanaka Shouta and his contemporaries introduces new factors by giving greater grade security, additional pressure from maximized Tom, Red-Eye counts in addition to Mocha, and not being reliant on Dark Cat to reach the deck's stack. Whether or not this type of Tsukuyomi deck will prove as successful in the English format where CoCo is being established simultaneously rather than after the fact, and how the new restriction-enforced Goddess of the Sun-Full Moon hybrid deck will be able cope with these old challenges in the Japanese format will have to evaluated in the future. For the time being, upcoming event tournaments and Fighter's Road 2013 seem to be our best bet for further analyzing these decks in the days to come.

Oracle Think Tank Extra Study Material: Goddess of the Full Moon, Tsukuyomi

 Photo by rawritzrichii, not to be reposted elsewhere without the original photographer's express permission.

VGE-BT03: Demonic Lord Invasion introduces a new play style for OraThin. Essentially an extension of their divination strategy, this build is characterized by making use of a high amount of soul and the Godhawk-Tsukuyomi line to enhance its ability to predict the future.

Ichibyoshi, seemingly an analogue for the mythic Yatagarasu bird that embodied the will of heaven, is Tsukuyomi's herald; accordingly, his one and only skill is to look at anywhere from 0 to 5 cards from the top of the deck to bring her Crescent Moon form into the field through a superior ride. During the initial release of set 3 this was considered the skill's only utility, but Misaki has taught us better since then. The skill also requires any other cards examined in this way to be sent to the bottom of the deck, in whatever order his cardfighter desires. So if the skill succeeds, then that gives an immediate one-card advantage, while even if it fails it can be combined with subsequent entries in the moon goddess line to stack the deck through careful trigger placement.

Crescent and Half Moon Tsukuyomi each search five cards in an identical fashion. Because all forms of Tsukuyomi are ridden from the deck, this protects the player from having to pay the cost of riding, giving a total three card advantage at its maximum potential. While this doesn't directly add any cards to the hand, preserving it gives the same general effect as that's three cards more to guard with, or three more calls that aren't straining your advantage. Even if none of the superior rides are successful, so long as you normal ride each entry in the series, then on the turn that you reach grade 3 you have a staggering 15 card stack on the bottom of your (usually) 34-35 card deck instead of 12/31 or 12/32. So when the rides are unsuccessful, you still have the same general number of cards to dig through to reach your stack as you would with successful rides.

This method of riding does come with drawbacks. Each form of Tsukuyomi is weaker than standard units of similar grade, and her final form is overall weakened if any of the other Tsukuyomi cards are missing from the soul. And while Amaterasu could consistently reach 20000 power with Milk even if she had just two cards in hand before her drive check, and get as high as 24000 with four in hand, Tsukuyomi with even one piece missing from her soul maxes out at 19000. It's not a primary concern for the English scene at the moment, but Amaterasu's 24000 is also a more serious threat to crossride units, while Tsukuyomi's 21000 is the same as Amaterasu with only two cards.

So just as Tsukuyomi-no-Mikoto in myth shared his place in the heavens with Amaterasu, our Tsukuyomi can be complemented well by including Amaterasu in the deck. In addition to her inherent divination skill allowing the stack to be further built up when ridden as an alternative to Tsuku, by making her the only other grade 3 in the deck, that ensures that so long as Milk is in the back line, you will almost always have a 21000+ power vanguard. And if ridden correctly from Godhawk up to Goddess of the Half Moon, Half Moon's soulcharge 2 will ensure that riding Amaterasu as your grade 3 will leave you with a soul of six once the main phase has passed, just two cards away from being able to threaten with a megablast.

For additional soul support, Oracle Guardian Red-Eye can soulcharge 1 when his attack hits, simultaneously building up for either a megablast or Tsukuyomi's draw skill while also removing another card from the top of the deck to reach your stack. Blue-Eye is less recommendable due to having only 5000 power, which limits his boost to 11000-power Tsukuyomi units, and his skill is only active when you already have six soul, allowing you to send a card to the bottom of your stack while drawing from the deck. This is a great maneuver, as it simultaneously shaves off another card while building those on the stack, effectively letting you get 2 cards closer to your stack instead of just 1, but the price is a 5000 power unit that simply can't form a 16000-power line with anything but the Goddess of the Full Moon.

Twin Swords Awakening introduces a trio of new cards to support six-soul OraThin. Hare of Inaba soulcharges from the hand when called, which puts you at a disadvantage, but the ability to choose which card to soulcharge means that you can add in missing pieces of Tsukuyomi while also adding a sixth card in the event that Red-Eye is being guarded or Amaterasu isn't available. Evil-eye Princess, Euryale is the first card to utilize the bind mechanic, binding a card from the opponent's hand when she's ridden or called and you have six or more soul. While that card returns to the opponent's hand in the end phase, it temporarily puts them at a one card disadvantage in a deck where you most likely already have at least a two card lead. Euryale naturally forms a complementary formation with a Tsukuyomi vanguard and Silent Tom in the opposite column, removing one card from the opponent's hand while demanding seven cards with at least a 6000-power booster behind Euryale, and a Tsukuyomi-Milk and Silent Tom-Gemini lineup.

Battle Maiden, Tagitsuhime meanwhile is a 9000-power grade 2 that gains +3000 power while attacking. Like Euryale, this skill is restricted by six soul rules, and like similar grade 2s for RoyPala, ShadowPala and Kagerou, Tagitsuhime maxes out at 20000 power. Whether she's worth the investment over or in concert with Wiseman and Tom is an issue of personal experience, as that 20000 power is useful against top decks like Gold Paladin, but in the face of 11000 and higher units like those found in Nova Grappler and Dimension Police, Tom becomes more effective on the principle that he demands multiple cards to form a 10000-power shield instead of a single trigger unit to defend with. In crossride formats Tagitsuhime does have an important place for forming easy 18000-power lines, so she is a card that gets better with age.

Since the Tsukuyomi play style is naturally supported by existing divination cards like Cocoa, it's a very organic evolution for any OraThin cardfighter, and is used by a number of professionals in Japan's team tournaments. As some closing notes, these are the general probabilities for a successful superior ride each turn, taking into account how many cards have been removed from the deck through drive and damage checks (supposing 2 damage checks per turn up until G3), draws, Godhawk-Tsuku stacking skills and Tsukuyomi's grade 2 soulcharge. These numbers assume that each superior ride is successful, that the Tsukuyomi cardfighter takes the first turn, and that four of the next card in the line remains in the deck after each ride.

Godhawk, Ichibyoshi - 40.18%

Goddess of the Crescent Moon, Tsukuyomi - 47.66%

Goddess of the Half Moon, Tsukuyomi - 58.31%

Goddess of the Full Moon, Tsukuyomi - 79.20%

Next time I come back to Oracle Think Tank, it will be to discuss their coming empty soul play style from set 7, "Rampage of the Beast King."

Study Guide: Oracle Think Tank

 Photo by rawritzrichii, not to be reposted elsewhere without the original photographer's express permission.

Oracle Think Tank is one of the more intensive clans to play, requiring a great deal of forethought and planning to control the overall direction of a fight. Their strategy can be summarized as predicting the future; both the immediate future just moments away, and the distant future up to several hours in advance. As one of the oldest clans in Cardfight, Oracle came out of the box with its prediction strategy enduring to this day.

Like all Descent of the Knight King-era first vanguards, Lozenge Magus (and her reprint, Sphere Magus) is designed to leave the field. When ridden over, she moves to any rearguard circle of her fighter's choosing. And when boosting, Lozenge adds an additional +3000 to the attack, making her a solid +6000 power booster that can either form a 13000-power line with most grade 1 vanguards that will make the attack difficult to justify guarding, or set the second turn up for forming a 16000-power line with Wiseman. Cards like these are a form of hand conservation. Lozenge comes from "nowhere," taking nothing away from your hand and instead giving you a free unit. When compared to the likes of Stardust Trumpeter, Undeux and Kaleido Ace, you will generally call one less unit because you are gaining one automatically, removing the pressure from your hand. The flip side of this is that after boosting, Lozenge then returns to the deck in the end phase, and while this resets her user's card advantage back to 0, it's par for the course of a set 1 FVG.

Another option is to move Lozenge to a forward-facing rearguard circle and then call Gemini as a booster for her. This unusual method can produce an 11000 column that is occasionally sufficient for the first turn, but opens Lozenge up to being retired, and requires briefly flipping the column around to cycle her into the deck and open a circle up for Gemini to boost something more powerful once the game proper gets underway. That maneuver will likewise open Gemini up to attack, and still ultimately leaves Lozenge's fighter at a disadvantage while possibly deepening the disadvantage by ending with Gemini retired. Thus, Lozenge is usually best used as a booster on the first turn.

With the upcoming set 7 "Rampage of the Beast King," OraThin gets a new first vanguard for their old style of play. Like Lozenge, Battle Sister, Eclair moves to the rearguard when ridden over, and while her 4000 power won't be bringing any rearguards to speed, it can work with some vanguard OraThin skills that give power bonuses. More importantly, Eclair's skill is to counterblast 1 in the main phase, then soulcharge herself and look at the top five cards of the deck for a grade 3 Oracle Think Tank and add that unit to hand. While the random nature of this skill is a key weakness to Eclair, the resulting lack of advantage is essentially the same as using Lozenge while providing the opportunity to gain a one-card boost, and OraThin is a heavily soul reliant clan that benefits from having more cards in the soul. Even if Eclair doesn't grab a grade 3 for you, her presence in the soul can combo with some other cards described below like Luck Bird, or otherwise fuel vanguard soul-based skills. Most of these types of units don't have an argument for them because their skill is most useful later in the game when retire-based units like Gwynn, Saishin, Tejas, Blaster Blade and Berserk Dragon have hit the field, but in Eclair's case using her on the very first turn can be an enormous benefit to OraThin's play style.

While there's no particular grade 3 that Lozenge or Eclair are intended to work with, the units introduced in OraThin's debut set are CEO Amaterasu and Oracle Guardian, Apollon. Amaterasu will be the focus here, as Apollon is intended for the rearguard circle. Like her contemporary Vortex Dragon and Lohengrin, Amaterasu is a megablast unit that can counterblast 5 and soulblast 8 with a particular timing to achieve a clan-related effect. In her case, this skill is active in both the vanguard and rearguard circles, and she can activate it when her attack hits to draw five cards. This is fueled by her autoskill, soulcharging 1 at the start of the main phase; unlike the aforementioned units and more in the vein of Mr. Invincible, this skill is clan-related. While most megablast units gain +2000 power from their soulcharge, Amaterasu instead looks at the top card of the deck and choose to place it on the top or bottom. This is where Oracle Think Tank's short-term prediction abilities come in, because this lets you immediately know whether top card of the deck is a trigger or not, and if it isn't you can then place it on the bottom, or otherwise leave a good card on top to wage psychological warfare with the opponent while adding a good card to your hand.

The booster that ties in best to Amaterasu is Weather Girl, Milk. Milk's skill is simple--at the time that she boosts an Oracle Think Tank vanguard, if you have four or more cards in hand, the unit that she boosts will then gain a total +10000 bonus, bringing Amaterasu up to speed with 9000- and 10000-power vanguards. This also ties to Amaterasu's continuous skill, which gives her +4000 power when you have 4 or more cards in hand, for a 24000 total. However, while Amaterasu's skill will kick in even if you drive check your third and fourth cards, Milk's skill requires that you have four cards in hand when you boost with her. So if you only have two cards in hand and then use these two together, the sum power will only be 20000, not 24000, which gets in the way of fighting 11000-power vanguards.

If you know ahead of time that you'll only have two or three cards in hand during the boost, Gemini makes a better call than Milk does. With Gemini's 8000-power boost, Amaterasu can then reach 22000, just enough to get the same effect as Milk versus all but crossride units. The reason that 22000-24000 is such an important number is that experienced players usually guard your attacks to account for at least one trigger. When your attack power is just 20000, most vanguards will need one 10000 shield card and one 5000 shield card to defend with, but when it's at 22-24000, they'll need two 10000 shield cards. And at three or more damage, most people guard for two triggers, being wary of the maligned double-critical. So that's three 10000-shield cards and one 5000, taking four cards right out of their hand and leaving them open to pressure from your rearguards.

And speaking of rearguards, OraThin has one of the strongest grade 2 units in the existing game. Silent Tom only has 8000 power, and so will most certainly need Gemini to oppose higher-power vanguards, but his skill prevents him from being guarded with a grade 0 unit as long as you have an Oracle Think Tank vanguard. No grade 1 unit has a shield of 10000--only through specific, counterblast-based skills can a grade 1 unit achieve that amount of shield. So Silent Tom with Gemini automatically demands two cards to defend against, and if you apply one trigger to him, he now demands three. Amaterasu, Milk, Tom and Gemini applied together correctly can drain as many as six cards on a well set-up turn, barring a perfect defense coming into play.

Stressing the emphasis on prediction are the duo of Circle Magus and Battle Sister, Cocoa. Like Amaterasu, Magus allows you to examine the top card of the deck, this time when she's ridden or called. However, Circle requires you to leave the card on the top. Cocoa has just 6000 power, 1000 less than Magus, but lets you choose whether it goes on the top or bottom. These two, when used in a proper sequence with Amaterasu, can help you ensure that the top card of your deck is a trigger, or otherwise build a stack of cards on the bottom of your deck that you can eventually drive check into by using these units with OTT's draw skills to shave off the cards between you and your stack.

Aiding this is Luck Bird. Like Tom, Luck Bird is a part of the second set, and in the style of Amaterasu he brings into play OraThin's draw mechanics. For a soulblast two, when called Luck Bird can immediately draw one card, giving his cardfighter a one-card advantage right off the bat while providing a sufficient booster for Wiseman or Apollon to oppose 10000-power units with. Because this drains the soul, Luck Bird brings in a case for Eclair and her return-to-soul model rather than Lozenge's cycling-out style of play. That way, with Amaterasu's soulcharge taken into account, up to two Luck Birds can be used in one game (as long as you don't mind missing out on the megablast, but this usually doesn't go through in the first place.)

In addition to Silent Tom and the standard Wiseman, another recommendable grade 2 for OraThin is Battle Sister, Mocha. While like Tom, she has just 8000 power, when she attacks and you have four or more cards in hand, her power increases by +3000; this isn't enough to break the 20000 line even with a powerful booster, but it can let her get by with Luck Bird or Eclair as a boosting unit, and she's very likely to hit that number since you should be trying to have four cards in hand in the first place for Amaterasu and Milk.

Oracle Guardian, Apollon and Maiden of Libra bring a different variety of pressure. Most cardfighters prefer to either block a weaker rearguard and then take a full attack from the vanguard, or put everything into stopping the vanguard while taking both rearguard attacks. Apollon and Libra work differently--both of them counterblast 2 to draw a card when their attack hits. In the vanguard circle, Apollon pays the same cost to draw 2 and then return a card from the hand to the deck. Apollon's vanguard skill is actually less desirable because he then forces you to shuffle the deck, ruining your growing stack of cards, but in the rearguard these two units force the opponent to guard in order to stop you from gaining hand advantage. They can also combo versus 9-10000 power units (11000 for Apollon) with Moonsault Swallow, a 6000-power grade 1 that returns to hand when the attack of the unit that it boosts hits. If the attack is spent on a rearguard, you present to your opponent a scenario in which they would lose one card while you add two to your hand, giving you a potential minimum of 10000 and a maximum of 15000 extra shield to stop their attacks with. This forces the opponent to go from guarding just one or two units in the turn to all three, and as mentioned with Amaterasu and Silent Tom, they're already going to be down six cards by the end of that turn. In Apollon and Libra's case, that's an additional 10000 shield that they may just not have to spare, occasionally forcing them to accept you gaining a large lead in hand over them.

When I revisit this clan next, I'll be discussing their six-soul play style and the Goddess of the Full Moon, Tsukuyomi.