What’s up Cardfighters! This week I wanted to discuss the results from Sakura VGCS in Japan that has been stirring up the Meta talk amongst the community. It’s really exciting to see what Japan brings to the table because most of the time it’s fresh decks and brings lots of hype across to the West. First off here’s the results:


Top 16 Decklist for Sakura VGCS:

Top 4:
1st - Royal Paladin (Thing Blaster)
2nd - Royal Paladin (Thing Blaster)
3rd - Shadow Paladin (Revengers)
4th - Gear Chronicle

Top 8:
Royal Paladin (SGD)
Gear Chronicle
Granblue (Nightrose)
Link Joker (Glendios)

Top 16
Link Joker (Chaos Breaker Messiah)
Link Joker (Chaos Breaker Messiah)
Bermuda Triangle (Duo Nemuel)
Royal Paladin (Thing Blaster)
Royal Paladin (Thing Blaster)
Royal Paladin (SGD)
Royal Paladin (Seeker)
Aqua Force (Ripple)

As you can see the event was primarily dominated by Royal Paladin with majority of them being of the Blaster. It’s strange seeing only one Revenger deck (even though he did top 3) and one Aqua Force (oddly enough being Ripples). I understand the high placements of Control Decks like Gear Chronicle and Link Joker because there are so many rear guard dependent decks topping, but the absence of Brawlers and Blue Wave was a little surprising. I’ve been toying with CBD/Messiah as well because it’s really useful to force-lock cards in the Messiahs although I think it’s sub-optimal, I’ll watch a few matches before I make my decision. It’s hard to tell what is going to translate to the US from Japan because they come up with wacky stuff and sometimes it just doesn’t catch on like Chatnoir/Testerfox even though that’s a killer deck. However the Royal Paladin hype has already hit the U.S. with MLB and Soul Saver reaching crazy prices, which means that people believe in the Blaster deck and rightfully so because they’re extremely potent and going to be around for a while. Let’s look at the Royal and Shadow Paladin decks that topped:

Thing Blaster:

G Units:
2x Holy Dragon, Saint Blow Dragon
2x Holy Dragon, Religious Soul Saver
2x Aerial Divine Knight, Altmile
1x Shrouded Divine Knight, Gablade
1x Rain Element, Madew

Grade 3:
4x Seeker, Thing Saver Dragon
1x Blue Sky Knight, Altmile
1x Majesty Lord Blaster

Grade 2:
4x Favorite Disciple of Light and Darkness, Llew
4x Blaster Blade
3x Blaster Blade Seeker
1x Blaster Blade Spirit
1x Blaster Dark

Grade 1:
4x Laurel Knight, Sicilus
4x Blaster Friend, Barcgal
4x Holy Knight Guardian
2x Swordsman of Light, Blaster Rapier Laura

Grade 0:
8x Crit (4x Floral Paladin, Flogal)
4x Margal
4x Heal
1x Wingal Brave


I really like the design for this deck because it plays much like an OTK deck. It goal for this deck is to use MLB to stack soul by adding all the Blasters on the field and gain extra power. When you have enough CB you go into Thing Saver Dragon and you are able to swing 3-4 times with VG. It is extremely efficient and very deadly because there isn’t much the opponent can do to counter or control this deck. If you do decide to stride you have a plethora of options from on-hit pressure to extra crits. I asked my teammate Hebi on his take of Blaster Thing:

Recently in Japan the release of G-Set 6 was released. The set gave incredible blaster support for Royal Paladins. The Royal Pally builds coming out of this set has been utilizing this support with the classic Thing Saver Dragon deck. Thing Saver Dragon needs huge soul to be able to restand multiple times and the new blaster support makes it easy to build soul and at the same time put a body onto the board. The new Llew lets you grab a blaster blade after attacking and goes into soul further fueling Thing Saver while also calling a unit for another attack! You can easily pull off triple Thing Saver in one turn! What makes Thing Saver shine even better is that at the moment there has been a rise of Link Joker, Chaos and Messiah decks just got support in the last G-Set and have been showing very positive results. Royals as a clan has a difficult match up against link joker, however Thing Saver is good against Link Joker because it can function through Vanguard alone. It has the ability to restand and has access to Soul Saver Stride, which gives a critical as a quick first stride. Most people let first stride hit, but if someone is swinging for an automatic 2 damage before triggers, they are more than likely going to dump hand to guard this first stride. Sanctuary Guard is definitely still strong, but just a lot more difficult to function if you have no columns. So if the front row is locked, Sanc Guard is essentially a vanilla stride. Although, there are some crazy heavy cb combos in the new SGD deck that I will definitely put together when new set comes out and it’s going to be nuts, it will definitely be harder to pull off because of the great number of control decks being played in this current meta.

The other deck I wanted to talk about is the Revenger deck that topped:

G Units:
4x Dark Dragon, Phantom Blaster "Diablo"
2x Supremacy Black Dragon, Aurageyser Dragon
1x True Revenger, Dragruler Revenant
1x Supremacy Black Dragon, Aurageyser Doomed

Grade 3:
4x Revenger, Raging Form Dragon
3x Revenger, Phantom Blaster "Abyss"

Grade 2:
4x Wily Revenger, Mana
4x Blaster Dark Revenger "Abyss"
4x Revenger, Dark Breath Angel

Grade 1:
4x Dark Revenger, Mac Lir
4x Vigor Revenger, Maul
4x Tempting Revenger, Finegas
2x Transient Revenger, Masquerade

Grade 0:

8x Crit (Revenger)
4x Draw (Revenger)
4x Heal (Revenger)
1x Judgebau Revenger

When I first saw this decklist I thought that this guy topping was a fluke. He played a deck that nobody really talked about with Raging Form Dragon and Abyss plus he was the only Shadow Paladin player to be in Top 16. But the more I discuss this deck with my teammate Hebi and the more I ran some simulations, I came to the conclusion that this deck is actually extremely dangerous. Its goals are pretty similar as Thing Saver in that you want to set up for a huge, multiple swing VG turn. The biggest difference is that this deck doesn’t have to wait for soul therefore you can get your combo off earlier. This form of Revengers is much more balls to the wall because you are sacrificing your entire field to swing 2-4 times with your VG and hopefully kill your opponent that turn, or at least whittle them down for an Abyss or Diablo turn. With Dark Breath Angel and Mana tutoring any G1 in the deck means that you will always have LB4 available and you will have enough Raging Forms in your hand thanks to Maul’s skill. With 3CB and a full board you can easily swing Raging Form three times. That’s 6 drive checks with no Laurel! I really like make or break decks so when GBT06 gets released this is the first decks I’m revising, I am super hyped for Raging Form!

It’s an exciting time of season due to all the tournaments being held both in Japan as well as here with Springfest. I am certain we are going to get a well diverse group of tops this year with many people experimenting not only with different clans, but different ratios of sub-clans also. SackSquad will be attending Springfest in Anaheim so be sure to say hi, we’d be happy to talk Vanguard with you! See y’all next week




~kooj out