News: Brandon Smith Crowned National Champion

On-site informants have confirmed for us that Brandon Smith, Toronto representative in the North American national championship, has just been crowned the 2012 national champion in Los Angeles, California. Smith won the title using a Spectral Duke Dragon deck, currently believed to be the same build that according to an interview, he co-created with the help of his teammate, Brandon Bastianelli. Smith is the first person in history to receive the title, and will be the lead player out of four cardfighters representing North America at the world level.

Spotlight: Brandon Bastianelli

Fighter's Spotlight is an ongoing project concerned with tracking real-world professional cardfighters across the globe. 

Bastianelli is at the left, in his crowning match with Connor Murphy.

Brandon Bastianelli

Birthdate: April 18, 1989
Titles Won: Chicago Regional Champion
Current Status: Chicago Regional Champion (2012)
Deck Type: Gold Paladin (Spectral Duke Dragon), Dimension Police (Great Daiyusha)
Brandon Bastianelli is the former 2012 Chicago regional champion, having attended the event alongside his teammate Brandon Smith in a bid for the national title. Smith and Bastianelli are close friends, Bastianelli having been introduced to the game by Smith at their shop. Bastianelli was originally a Royal Paladin cardfighter, before discovering Duke's self-standing ability and later introducing it to Smith.

Following his original success, Bastianelli became a Dimension Police cardfighter on the English debut of BT04 to train for the eventual release of Ultimate Dimensional Robo Great Daiyusha, promising to run the deck in Worlds 2013. After some deliberation, he did run the Great Daiyusha deck on his return to Chicago, but was eliminated early. Since that time Bastianelli has expressed interest in running the new Link Joker clan for the 2014 tournament season, citing personal appreciation of control-based decks.

Decks and Play Style
Bastianelli's Gold Paladin deck was co-developed between him and Smith, with Bastianelli having developed the early build, later dropping it for the Royals while Smith fine-tuned it. As a result of their diligence, the finished deck would eventually top both the Canadian and Chicago regionals, with no modifications made between appearances.

The deck uses an eight critical, four draw build to try to maximize output critical, forcing the opponent to race Bastianelli for damage and activate his limit break more easily. The extra critical triggers also help with Duke Dragon's self-standing skill, as it retains the effects of the triggers upon standing, mitigating the relative lack of threat that it poses upon losing twin drive. Falcon Knight was passed over for Gwydion as his draw, most likely because Gwydion's 5000 power can still push Duke Dragon up to 16000 or Gigantech up to 17000.

Sleygal Dagger and Little Battler, Tron both work as alternative boosters to one another, Tron turning Duke Dragon into a 21000-power column while Dagger can achieve similar numbers by repeating her counterblast. Due to the popularly questioned integrity of the 2012 championship's double elimination single game format, the most widely agreed upon point about this deck is that its main feature is the ride security. Unlike other cardfighters, Bastianelli's use of the Vortimer ride chain gives him seven extra cards to parse through for his grade 2 and 3 ride, helping to ensure that he does not miss a ride or on his initial twin drive.

This Spectral Duke build also emphasizes Viviane more commonly than contemporary builds, compensating for the steep loss in advantage that Duke Dragon's powerful limit break confers. Aside from this, Viviane's main use is to force the opponent to defend at times when they would normally allow the attack through, as the threat of a superior call is oftentimes more intimidating to the opponent than the actual call itself. His deck is somewhat weakened by the absence of Tripp, as without the ability to unflip damage, any counterblast that is used is permanently lost. This weakens his capacity to survive the latter parts of a match, since without any counterblast the deck's skills are cut off from use, but as it's inherently difficult to survive a well executed Dragon rush, it's rare for the deck to reach that point in the game.

Winter 2012 Regional Tournament, Chicago: The Dark Knight
Card Pool: TD01-BT03, BT06-EB03, PR 0001-0029
Grade 0
x1 Black Dragon Whelp, Vortimer (FVG)
x4 Silent Punisher CT
x4 Elixir Sommelier HT
x4 Weapons Dealer, Gwydion DT
x4 Flame of Victory CT
Grade 1
x2 Sleygal Dagger
x4 Halo Shield, Mark
x1 Little Battler, Tron
x4 Scout of Darkness, Vortimer
x4 Knight of Elegant Skills, Gareth
Grade 2
x4 Knight of Superior Skills, Beaumains
x3 Player of the Holy Bow, Viviane
x4 Black Dragon Knight, Vortimer
Grade 3
x4 Spectral Duke Dragon
x3 Gigantech Destroyer

Interview: Brandon Smith & Brandon Bastianelli

Shortly before the award ceremony of the World Championship 2012 Chicago Qualifier, our team was able to interview regional champion Brandon Bastianelli and his teammate, Canadian regional champion Brandon Smith. Below is a transcript of the interview, which is also hosted above with photos from the event. This interview was taken at around 1824, as the tournament went more than two hours over schedule and the closing ceremonies were over around 1830.

Interview Transcript

CFP: Brandon and Brandon, you two are not only from the same team...
Smith: Same team.
CFP: ...but you are also both now qualified for the North American national championship, and if you take this far enough, you could take that to a world title. How do you two feel?
Bastianelli: I feel fantastic. I don't know why, but it's probably the best thing that's ever happened, ever. Like, not only am I getting to go on a trip that I really wanna go on, but I get to go there with a bud. Like, you can't get better than that. It's a dream.
CFP: And what about you, Brandon?
Smith: I've been excited because I won, but I came even though I had my championship title already, to just let my teammate get a chance and Brandon was the one that worked diligently, playtesting night and day and day and night. So it's a really really sweet end to see that you know, my feeling is that we worked so hard together and it actually pays off in the end. And you know I'm honored to be the Canadian national, even though I'm from the United States but I'm just really really excited right now, especially to have a teammate in top two and then also a teammate in third and fourth place. I really like it but Brandon for sure will be there.
CFP: How did you two get into Cardfight?
Bastianelli: That's—
Smith: I got it. All right, a lot of people don't know this, but Cardfight!! Vanguard came out in roughly November of last year, they came out with the English version, the very second they came out with the English version I had my store owner spearhead the whole bringing Cardfight to America, so a lot of vendors like GTS and Ed Storey at Global Enterprises in New York, a lot of distributors besides Hammergirl, Hammergirl was like the beginning. But besides Hammergirl, we were like one of the first people. Our state probably had like a little bit of an advantage, cause we had it the day it came out. So, that's like how I started in Vanguard, and then I got him started in Vanguard. I taught him basically, not him everything he knows, but a lot.
Bastianelli: Even though I was slightly before you in playing Golds to begin with.
Smith: Yeah, true.
CFP: That's a very heartwarming story. What's the philosophy behind your deck?
Smith: My deck?
Bastianelli: He fine-tuned it, so...
Smith: All right, so I'm an Oracle Think Tank player originally, and I love the control and the draw aspects of the game, and I played against him in one of our tournaments. He was playing Spectral Duke, never heard of it, you know I'm just like new to it, he's like "It stands again." I'm like "Wait. This is broken." So, I decided to play the same deck, he ends up dropping it for a little bit--he plays Royal Paladins--he also made top 8 in Canada. But besides that point, so he basically introduced me to Spectral Duke and the Gold Paladins, I fine-tuned the deck and I went undefeated, and he's playing my build today and he went undefeated.
CFP: There have been various controversies regarding the double elimination format of tournaments, the single match nature of individual rounds, the alleged nonrandomity of the matchups, and how the top eight were determined. Do you two feel that any of these factors have hurt the legitimacy of the tournament?
Bastianelli: No, I don't believe that a game would ever come here--I don't believe that they would come here and not have a system. They have a system, but America's not used to [it.] We're used to best two out of three, or best of the Swiss format, we don't understand the inner workings of double elimination. The tiebreaker system is very weird in double elimination, and we've never even experienced it before until this game started because this is more of a Japanese style of tournament structure. So, I know they have a system. I know they wouldn't lie about it, that's stupid like no one would ever lie about--they have too much to lose by doing that.
Smith: Exactly.
Bastianelli: It's so weird to us, and when people don't make it, they get upset no matter what. So first thing they're gonna do is attack the judges.
Smith: Yeah. Like I feel very sorry for people who didn't make it, who were like X-1 and didn't make it, but it's a fact that not every X-1 is gonna get in all the time. Like it was a fact that I lost to him also and so did Kyle Warfield, and it was a fact that I might not have made it. I came in sixth place, I was expecting third or second and I was second with Kyle instead of third or second--I came in sixth. And just because it was double elimination, and the way tiebreakers work are different from most things that North Americans are used to, like I'm used to Konami Software, I'm used to Magic Software, but this is a little bit different, you know maybe later on down the road they might switch over to a two out of three format, so right now it is what it is, I mean it's brand new. At this point in Konami's tournament organized play, there was none. So we gotta take what we have, you know?
Bastianelli: Konami doesn't even hardly have organized play here back then. We're only what, not even--
Smith: Yeah, we're less than a year in playing Cardfight!! Vanguard--
Bastianelli: --and we already have a tournament that sends you across the country and then possibly across the world, for free.
Smith: Where Konami did not. So like with the advancement of play, I give Bushiroad and Cardfight!! Vanguard a very very very high plus, because of their being ahead of the curve, you know what I mean? I know it sucks for some people who didn't make it, and I feel sorry and I definitely can understand how they feel, but you know we can't be mad at the fact that that's what happened. I'm very sorry you know, like I apologize and I'm not even that far.
Bastianelli: And even to suggest that they possibly are lying about this system, that's just asinine--there's no reason for that--I understand that people are mad, but they would never do that.
Smith: Exactly.
CFP: Okay, it's great to hear that player input, we better wrap this up seeing as the ceremony is starting. Thank you for the interview, guys. This has been Brandon and Brandon.