From Top 8 to Champion

How does a competitor change their deck after it performs well?

As you may know from these articles, I did pretty well at the 4th event in the Retro series, ending up placing in 6th place overall, as was previously discussed in this article. It was a solid finish and I was quite happy with it. Jasco later previewed a card that I really like being a one-time only foiled prize for top cuts of the 5th Retro series event, so I had to make sure that I made top 8 in Retro series 5! I decided that Andy is a great bet for the next event, so I stuck with him, but I wanted to cut out the parts of the deck that did not work for me. As you may have noticed by the standings being posted, by me talking about it, or simply by the title of this article itself, I did win the 5th Retro series event, so let's go over the changes that led me to swiss champ and undefeated champion.

I sat down and went over my deck and took out the cards that under-performed, and I had to find suitable substitutes for them to make sure that I made top 8 in Retro series 5. Here is my deck that did not get past top 8, keeping in mind that Double Crosser is a proxy for Andy's foundation, and that Yusuke is a proxy for Andy himself. I'm going to go over each of the individual cards I cut, what they were replaced by, and my thought process for each. Here is my winning decklist from Retro Series 5, so you can have both the old one and the new one open together and follow along!

Flashy Shadow Kick – This is a card that I was initially very proud of, and I even highlighted it in my Retro Retrospective, but it just ended up having to go. As I mentioned last time, it basically demands one of my two uses of Andy's enhance when I draw it, or it ends up being a wasted attack. This meant that I was using my character sub-optimally whenever I played this card, and it just couldn't stay for these reasons. I ran it at a 3x before, as I didn't really want to see it in pairs, but I did want to see it roughly every turn. I realized later that this is incorrect, so I actually replaced it with two attacks at 2x each, increasing my total attack count overall.

This was replaced with SPLAM! and Akimbo. I had realized through play that my deck wants to have considerably long attack strings, and that I can't always build enough foundations to make up for that. SPLAM! found its way in to the deck for this reason, it basically increases in value for every attack you play after it. It's a simple attack that gets thrown out early just to be an attack and maybe to do a bit of damage. Importantly, I like to end my attack strings with Shotgun, and SPLAM! shares two symbols with Andy, so it adds a bit extra damage to Shotgun without adding to its difficulty. Akimbo is basically 5th and 6th copies of Nut Kracker in this deck, but on high. I very often open my turns with a Sense of Morals or Burning with Revenge in my card pool, or even just any other foundation with the intention of building it from my card pool with Let's Cut Loose and getting that sweet Andy pump. Akimbo is a very easy 8 damage high attack that will generally demand a block from the opponent due to it being somewhat slow. On the worst case, this will lead to card advantage on my side with either them using a card to block, or they half block it and leave them a bit more open for my Meteors to do primo high zone damage.

Koppouken Training – This was a prime card for its years of legality and was something that almost always had to be considered when you were building a deck. I noticed that I did not have a huge need for it in the previous event, and that I was generally too aggressive for it. I wanted to speed reduction and better blocks, and was not helping in that regard. I replaced it identically of 2 in main and 2 in side with Fortress Frame. I would bring in extra copies of this if I fought an opponent who used many enhances on their character. I also got a couple uses out of this own my own turn when I used Andy's enhance for a tiny bit of speed pump. I had one attack hit because it was just 1 speed to many for my opponent, and that is already more use than I got out of Koppouken Training.

Law of the Land – This is a very strong card, but I just couldn't afford it in practice. The 3 difficulty was already too much when I had 4x Forbidden Technique in the mainboard, and I was very hesitant to remove those, so it just became a real hassle to side this card in, and it never ended up coming in to my deck a single time. It had to go. This wasn't replaced by any specific card, but I did use the empty sideboard slots to shuffle around cards from my maindeck, and so I brought 4 copies of Ominous Prophecy to the sidedeck. I loved the card in the last event, but I wanted my deck to go faster, so I sided all 4 copies of it.

Hidden Laughter – Was a little bit of a meta pick against Water decks that would flood my card pool that I thought might show up to the event, and a little bit of an easy build card. This was an incredibly easy cut. This being gone allowed me to have Protecting the Protector in the mainboard, leveling up its spot from the sideboard, and also a single copy of Relinquishing the Championship, a stellar card in its own right. Due to the fact that my deck tended to get one-turn kills in Retro Series 5, this card didn't get activated too often, but the few times it did get used is when it won me the game.

New Empress of Netherrealm – I love drawing cards, absolutely LOVE it, but this didn't feel too necessary to me. Nut Kracker consistently draws me cards, Deflection Swing consistently draws me an attack, and my 4x copies of Never a Day Without Training worked well enough for me. Since I also ended up adding Akimbo for more draw, and that I have more attacks overall, this didn't feel too necessary. One thing that I did do, is add a card to help ensure that my draws hit! 4 copies of Pulled to Majigen were added to the mainboard as a great defensive tool, and mainly to peep the top card of my deck to let me know when to trigger the draw abilities on Nut Kracker and Never a Day Without Training. If I saw something I did not want on top of my deck, I could trigger Andy's enhance to move the card to my staging area, and then I would draw the next card. It's about playing the odds!

A hugely important addition to the deck was Kaden's Blindfold, a card that when combined with Scarlet Meteor turns in to essentially an infinite combo. In fact, I won game 1 of the finals by just playing Scarlet Meteor over and over with Blindfold. This was a card that I neglected to include in the previous deck because I simply didn't notice it. Blindfold and Meteor was already making waves in the Retro scene, but I simply was ignorant to it at the time, funnily enough. This wasn't exactly the card that won me every single match, but it won enough games here or there, and gave a bit of speed to the deck, and an alternate kill condition in and of itself.

That's about it for my changes, so I hope that seeing my thought process on removing and adding cards will help players out there modify their decks and improve their analysis process. It was especially important for me to notice that Flashy Shadow Kick should get cut from the deck simply because it demanded a use of Andy's enhance, and I hope that more people can learn from my mistake! I'll see you all next time, and until then, may the checks be ever in your favor!