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

Spotlight: Ishige Yuudai/石毛優大

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

Ishige Yuudai/石毛優大
Age: Unknown; Seniors Division
Titles Won: Tokyo Regional Champion (Senior Class)
Current Status: Tokyo Regional Champion (Reigning)
Deck Type: Royal Paladin (Majesty Lord Blaster)
Ishige Yuudai is the reigning Tokyo regional champion for 2012, and accordingly is the city's representative in the Fighter's Climax 2012 national championship. Notably, Ishige defeated Sekiguchi Tetsuya in the regional finals, a fighter who had been sporting a very close replica of the previous national champion Gotou Kiyomi's Alfred deck. This upset the at-the-time prevalent view that Majesty could not take the title in face of the post-BT05 King of Knights deck, which was based on the results of the Summer championship putting Majesty in fourth.

Decks and Play Style
Ishige's regional deck ran three types of critical trigger, and like his contemporary fighter Nakamura, Ishige maintained draw triggers as a necessary way to reinforce his advantage. His single copy of Lien was seemingly adapted as a means of trading those triggers in the hand for more valuable cards, as her skill is usable without affecting the field in a noticeable manner on turns when his lone Alfred takes point, or otherwise provides a strong opening when taking the first turn. Ishige chose to run more copies of Toypugal than either Nakamura or Tanaka, but less Kay--possibly due to his deck being based directly from Nakamura and Tanaka's rather than Minami Takeshi's, or otherwise out of personal preference.

Despite the numerous count of single copies in his deck, the overall strategy remains unchanged from his contemporaries; using Wingal Brave with a vanguard Blaster Blade--potentially one retrieved with Gancelot in his previous turn--to search out Majesty Lord Blaster and then set up Lord Blaster's skill by calling his missing Blasters with Starcall Trumpeter. This creates a temporary 22-30000 line with Marron, and a permanent 12000 defense with one extra critical. On subsequent turns Ishige follows up with Palamedes and Toypugal to consistently break the 21000+ line, effectively shutting down the defense of most base 10000 and base 11000 decks. However, as both the vanguard and rearguard lines top out at 22000 in this build, they cannot have the same effect versus crossrides, leaving him open to The End, Blaster Overlord, Great Daiyuusha and the many crossrides to be released the day before the championship finals.

Winter 2012 Regional Tournament, Tokyo Seniors Division (Japan)
Card Pool: TD01-BT08, PR 0001-0079
Grade 0
x1 Wingal Brave (FVG)
x4 Bringer of Good Luck, Epona CT
x1 Knight of the Future, Llew CT
x4 Yggdrasil Maiden, Elaine HT
x3 Margal DT
x4 Alabaster Owl CT
Grade 1
x4 Flash Shield, Iseult
x4 Little Sage, Marron
x1 Lake Maiden, Lien
x3 Toypugal
x2 Knight of Friendship, Kay
Grade 2
x4 Blaster Blade
x3 Blaster Dark
x1 Knight of Loyalty, Bedivere
x3 Starcall Trumpeter
x1 Knight of Determination, Lamorak
Grade 3
x1 King of Knights, Alfred
x1 Solitary Knight, Gancelot
x2 Swordsman of the Explosive Flames, Palamedes
x3 Majesty Lord Blaster

Spotlight: Tanaka Shouta/田中将太

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

Tanaka Shouta/田中将太

Age: Unknown; Seniors Division
Titles Won: Sendai Regional Champion (Senior Class)
Current Status: Sendai Regional Champion (Reigning)
Deck Type: Oracle Think Tank (Tsukuyomi)
Tanaka Shouta is the representative for Sendai in the Fighter's Climax 2012 winter national championship. Breaking a two-year tradition of Sendai representatives being Royal Paladin cardfighters, Tanaka is the first Tsukuyomi-based fighter to qualify for the senior championships since the Grand Prix. He is also the second such representative to be the champion of their region, after Komoto Takuya. His entry comes as a surprise to many, as the tournament environment of the time was dominated by crossride-endowed Kagerou, then thought to have outmoded Tsukuyomi as the defensive deck of the year.

Decks and Play Style
Tanaka's Tsukuyomi deck features many contemporary innovations over Komoto's, most noticeable among them the inclusion of only four grade 3s. A trend that first emerged in the FR2012 Trio Fights, the line of thinking behind this is that by using the Godhawk-Tsukuyomi line's search skills, grade security on par with running eight grade 3s can be achieved using only four. Thus, rather than try to maximize his available security using the line, Tanaka instead uses the skills to devote other slots in the deck to grade 2 units.

His trigger makeup is also interesting in that it consists entirely of critical and heal triggers, without the draws now standardized in professional play. This is compensated for both with Tsukuyomi's own counterblast skill, and with the draw skill of Luck Bird; unusual for a Tsukuyomi deck in that it takes away from the soul and therefore potentially becomes a hindrance to his overall strategy, Luck Bird is fueled both by Tsukuyomi's draw and by the soulcharging made available by Tanaka's maximized count of Oracle Guardian, Red-Eye. The trade off of these changes is that they give him further defensive power on par with and exceeding The End, but they also put Tanaka in greater risk of decking out.

Also unusual is that Tanaka's deck does not include Dark Cat among its grade 1s. The logic behind this is that Dark Cat gives cards to the opponent as well as himself, while Luck Bird functions as an adequate substitute that confers no such defensive strength, giving Tanaka an advantage over other decks of this type.

Winter 2012 Regional Tournament, Sendai Seniors Division (Japan)
Card Pool: TD01-BT08, PR 0001-0079
Grade 0
x1 Godhawk, Ichibyoshi (FVG)
x4 Lozenge Magus HT
x4 Oracle Guardian, Nike CT
x4 Psychic Bird CT
x4 Battle Sister, Ginger CT
Grade 1
x4 Battle Sister, Chocolat
x2 Oracle Guardian, Gemini
x4 Luck Bird
x4 Goddess of the Crescent Moon, Tsukuyomi
Grade 2
x3 Battle Sister, Mocha
x4 Silent Tom
x4 Goddess of the Half Moon, Tsukuyomi
x4 Oracle Guardian, Red-Eye
Grade 3
x4 Goddess of the Full Moon, Tsukuyomi

Spotlight: Watanabe Hiroki/渡辺紘生

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

Watanabe Hiroki/渡辺紘生
Age: Unknown (Senior Class)
Titles Won: Nagoya Regional Champion (Fighter's Climax 2012)
Current Status: Nagoya Regional Champion (Reigning)
Deck Type: Kagerou (Dragonic Overlord The End)
Watanabe Hiroki is the first senior class cardfighter to be qualified for the Fighter's Climax national championship, and an advocate of the The End build. Entering with it despite the deck being disproven in both divisions of the previous championship, Watanabe remains an advocate for the crossride and a strong candidate for the senior title.

Decks and Play Style
While Watanabe's build, with its six-draw, six-critical trigger setup, certainly calls to mind Nakamura Seishirou's setup from the previous championship, Watanabe's is geared toward deception by including two different single-copy draw triggers, giving the illusion that he is running nine to twelve draw. Like many Kagerou cardfighters, Watanabe has coopted Nakamura's technique by including single-copy cards for Conroe to search the deck for, in this case the Flame of Hope to sift through his deck for extra copies of Dragonic Overlord The End, and Guard Gryphon for one-off defenses against Silent Tom and trigger-empowered rearguards. Dragon Monk, Gojo makes full use of the first turn when he takes it, while Berserk Dragon allows for field control and Burning Horn forms his main rearguard offense. Typical for a Kagerou fighter of the time, Watanabe uses a full eight grade 3s, four Dragonic Overlord and four The End so that even in the rearguard he can have difficult-to-assail 11000-power units and to maximize his odds of creating a 13000-power defense. Surprisingly the deck does not include the long-championed Raopia for vanguard support, but The End tends toward tenacity rather than raw power.

All of these are very safe elements of deckbuilding that have been tried and proven by cardfighters that came before him. However, Watanabe is missing a key element in his build; the national championship has not been won without innovation since Shitakawachi's time. Gotou Kiyomi and Rikino Sakura's decks were both left-field contenders that while interesting, were passed over in the days leading up to the finals as unlikely title candidates in favor of the deep influx The End decks. Gotou's Alfred deck was innovative for removing Soul Saver Dragon, Majesty Lord Blaster and all other heavy-hype candidates in favor of a deck that was designed to mow down crossride, while Rikino's CoCo build was considered inferior to Tsukuyomi until she proved how effective the deck could be. Even Masuda Yuusaku's 2011 deck had some innovation from the Galahad line, which many at the time had considered passing over for Stardust Trumpeter and the extra deck space they would make from not using the grade 1 and 2 forms of Galahad. In a highly diverse and developed pro scene, Watanabe is potentially too cautious compared to what he is potentially up against post-BT09.

Winter National Championship 2012, Seniors Division (Japan)
Card Pool: TD01-BT08, PR 0001-0079
Grade 0
x1 Lizard Soldier, Conroe (FVG)
x3 Embodiment of Speaer, Tahr CT
x1 Dragon Dancer, Monica DT
x4 Dragon Monk, Genjo HT
x4 Gatling Claw Dragon DT
x3 Blue Ray Dracokid CT
x1 Red Gem Carbuncle DT
Grade 1
x1 Flame of Hope, Aermo
x4 Wyvern Guard, Barri
x4 Embodiment of Armor, Bahr
x4 Dragon Monk, Gojo
x1 Guard Gryphon
Grade 2
x3 Berserk Dragon
x4 Burning Horn Dragon
x4 Cross Shot, Garp
Grade 3
x4 Dragonic Overlord
x4 Dragonic Overlord The End

Spotlight: Nakagawa Yuuki/中川祐岐

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

Nakagawa Yuuki/中川祐岐
Age: Unknown (Junior Class)
Titles Won: Nagoya Regional Champion (Fighter's Climax 2012)
Current Status: Nagoya Regional Champion (Reigning)
Deck Type: Royal Paladin (Majesty Lord Blaster)
Nakagawa Yuuki is one of the first cardfighters to qualify in the Fighter's Climax 2012, the Winter tour of the 2012 Japanese national event. Nakagawa is a rising star among elementary cardfighters; due to his deck type's overall lack of presence in the Seniors division, the Junior class events are the primary tournaments in which it sees much use, and so Nakagawa is one of the only fighters currently in the running for the title representing the Blaster deck.

Decks and Play Style
Compared to contemporary builds, Nakagawa's deck places much heavier emphasis on critical triggers, numbering twelve of them in the entire list and even cutting one heal trigger so that these along with draw triggers could be fitted in. The deck is wholly devoted to its Blaster mechanic, with four Kay despite the benefit that extra Toypugals could have on his Palamedes, Bedivere and Starcall. Due to Wingal Brave being the only effective way to search for Majesty Lord Blaster, exploiting alternate search methods to gather the remaining two pieces of his skill is essential. The inclusion of a lone Gancelot allows for Blaster Blade to be effectively run in five copies, necessary for a deck where counterblast is reserved for a few occasional but very big moves with Starcall Trumpeter, to bring out the otherwise-difficult to grab Dark.

The deck uses only seven grade 3s, following a pattern of Nakagawa's time where Palamedes was generally run as a two-of staple rather than the three/four-of advocated by previous RoPala decks. This is to maximize the odds of getting out a first-turn ride with fifteen grade 1s, but also because Nakagawa seems to have put together his deck with the idea of repeating Majesty Lord Blaster's autoskill across multiple turns, and so having two frontline circles available would frequently benefit his high-pressure strategy. Unlike in 2011, running four perfect defense cards was very common throughout 2012, due to the rapid power acceleration of limit break and crossride units. Because of the ease with which a Blaster deck can set up its frontline formation, repeating that skill is a costly but sometimes worthwhile maneuver, and its setup can have a secondary effect of drawing attention away from the vanguard. Interestingly, Nakagawa's final regional match with Nakamura Shunto was very close to being a mirror match from grade 2 upward, with Alfred replacing Gancelot in Nakamura's deck. The defining difference between them then, was Nakagawa's use of four perfect defense cards over three, Toypugal over Apocalypse Bat, and maximizing Kay over including Lien. Part of this can be ascribed to Kay's attack skill, as with Wingal Brave's boost he can either force the opponent to guard for difficult numbers in the opening of the game, or make Brave's search skill highly effective at the start to compensate for the lack of general early deck-sifting that Lien gives.

Winter 2012 Regional Tournament, Nagoya Juniors Division (Japan)
Card Pool: TD01-BT08, PR 0001-0079
Grade 0
x1 Wingal Brave (FVG)
x4 Bringer of Good Luck, Epona CT
x2 Knight of the Future, Llew CT
x3 Yggdrasil Maiden, Elaine HT
x3 Margal DT
x4 Alabaster Owl CT
Grade 1
x4 Flash Shield, Iseult
x4 Little Sage, Marron
x1 Soul Guiding Elf
x2 Toypugal
x4 Knight of Friendship, Kay
Grade 2
x4 Blaster Blade
x4 Blaster Dark
x2 Starcall Trumpeter
x1 Knight of Loyalty, Bedivere
Grade 3
x1 Solitary Knight, Gancelot
x2 Swordsman of the Explosive Flames, Palamedes
x4 Majesty Lord Blaster