Security Through Obscurity Hardly Works

You’re only going to confuse yourself before confusing the opponent.

I could bang on about how running several copies of something is vitally important in basically every TCG under the sun…and you know what, I have a fuck-ton of free time as I write so why the hell not. I would have thought it would be common sense, but if I have to write this after seeing terrible decklist after terrible decklist apparently not.

There are players who try and tech basically goddamn everything they can think of in one deck, trying to have an answer to any situation. This usually takes the form of online newbies running a Season 1 Royal Paladin deck about as coherent as South Park’s Kenny if he had his tongue fed to vultures. And he was drunk off his tits. But they’re newbies, what do you expect?

No, what I have beef with are people who alter something that has already been established as being consistent enough among the player base (even if it’s not always actually the BEST option) and then trying to alter it so it “suits their playstyle”. All in the name of wanting to win more.

Stop. Just stop this stupid bollocks. Unless you’re playing casual, in which case you lose all right to hold onto your crap ideas when someone offers legit advice to make it better. Trying to run several things at once in a deck means it does nothing well and it’s going to get fucked right over.

This can come in several forms. The most common is an extremely fucking wonky trigger lineup (usually close to rainbow or running mono with like 2 out-of-place ones). What the hell is the point? The lower the copy count, the less chance you have of actually encountering it. Those few slots could have gone into expanding the triggers that you originally focus on, making the deck more coherent and consistent. To be honest, I’m really not sure what the thinking behind this was, if indeed there was any at all. Vanguard is not a game that’s packed to the brim with quick and easy searchers. Those that don’t involve some CB cost down the line usually wind up being stuff that searches 1:1 and even then, they tend to be restricted in some way such as only searching a specific Grade 3. Triggers are not things you can really will to you short of OTT and some types of Genesis, and even they don’t stack the EXACT trigger you need.

Slightly further down the line are people who tech in some stupid unoptimal choice, and not in the name of anything ironic or for the purposes of fun. I don’t understand the thinking behind a random choice being thrown in. Well, actually, yeah I do, I just think they just have the self-awareness of a sack of frogspawn.

I attribute the whole thing to a very severe overestimation of the element of surprise. They only way that this would have any payoff whatsoever is if Vanguard had a large bluffing element incorporated into its gameplay. But this totally falls flat on its face for two reasons.

One, Vanguard has very little in the way of bluffing thanks to Drive Checks: you know approximately two thirds of the opponent’s hand and so it’s easy to tell what’s coming from a mile away. Secondly, even if an opponent can tell what’s coming, there is minimal interaction with the opponent during their turns, and so even if you saw something coming, you wouldn’t even be able to stop it anyway. There is seemingly no upside to sacrificing something consistent and effective if the opponent can do nothing about it regardless. Even in the case of anything that CAN interfere such as Kagero and Link Joker, the best they can do is try and deal with the problem pre-emptively, because rarely will they ever be able to respond to anything the opponent’s doing during THEIR turn. It’s all got to be done in such a way that it would be impractical to drop whatever they want to play now.

And even if the opponent actually genuinely doesn’t see it coming because you put it in the hand without revealing such as a normal draw, save for some extremely specific “counter or die” cards such as such as Phantom Blaster “Diablo”, most of the time, they won’t be impactful enough to actually get the opponent to change whatever they’re doing. Remember, people tend to build decks in order to play around whole decks, not whole cards. Like me for example: I chose decks that fuck up opposing boards because that’s the closest I’ll get to countering anything. Sure, as I said before most of it is either pre-emptive or it affords an opponent one turn of having it, but I chose it because I felt that as an all-rounder, they were the most strictly dominant out of what was available. If the opponent ever decides to randomly drop a card on me almost always it won’t be anything worth worrying about since I’m confident enough in the security of my entire deck over theirs.

No stock at all should be placed in tech choices, not unless you had room to spare and you didn’t cut anything important. People are idiots, a fact I know all too well. It’s in human nature to make assumptions, but that’s not something that you can really afford to do here. Just because some deck topped a tournament while incorporating something random, that doesn’t mean they won BECAUSE of that choice. In fact the opposite may be true, but as long as the skeleton of it was optimally built they probably won in spite of the card/s that may have otherwise held them back. This isn’t even taking into account how easy it is to miss a spot in the top at official tournaments because hateful, hateful chance.

I’m just sayin’. Context matters. If something random happens to be in a deck, odds are it probably doesn’t need to be there and if your gut says it shouldn’t be it’s probably right. Screw you. You’re not special. You’re made of the same decaying flesh as everyone else and your opinion in the long run doesn’t matter.

As you can probably tell, being a kindergarten teacher was never an aspiration of mine.

Join me in my disappointment new Gurguit does not in fact re-stand at saikyocardfighter@outlook.com

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