I said last time I wouldn’t be writing anything until GP Manchester. I lied. In an attempt to escape revision, RIPEMD-160, and Illumination Based Lighting, the London boys once again decided to embark on a journey of salt and cardboard. Normally I wouldn’t bother with Aldershot because of how far it is and how low the turnout usually ends up being, but this time I figured I’d make an exception seeing as it was their “Championship”. Unfortunately for the guys there (all great people for what it’s worth), the store can’t really support even the monthly events anymore, and they won’t be able to supply prizes.

So, as is now routine, here’s who and what:

Me – Blue/Red Girlfriend Beta

Mervin – Da Capo Seitokai

Cheeho – Green/Yellow To-Love Ru

Kevin – Green/Red Milky Holmes

Chung – Red/Yellow Angel Beats!

I should point out here, with no ill intent towards anyone who frequents the shop, but the from the handful of times I have been to Aldershot, the average level is a little lower than what we’re used to up in London. And that’s even with Dario pushing up the average. That said, there were only four Aldershot natives there this time, and most of them were about what we were expecting. Card games aside, they’re all great folks. Dario, Sonja, Andrew, and Jason made the event a 9 person shindig; 3 rounds with a Top 4 cut.

I didn’t really want to play GFB, but it was the only deck I had translation sheets for. I guess that’ll teach me to be more prepared next time.

I’ll keep this one largely succinct. After all, the deck didn’t change from when I last played it. Most of the content today will come after the tournament details.

I’d also like to mention that the day was slightly blurry, so there is a very high chance that I have put the following in the wrong order. I don’t remember what round was who, but I can confirm that this is who I played against.

Round 1 – vs Sonja (Blue/Red Fairy Tail)

Her Level 1 game was very rocky; I didn’t see many of the 1/0 Happy, so she relied mostly on the climax combo Natsu to force damage through. I managed to hit a lot of my gates throughout the game, so was able to stay comfy on cards and ride the 3/2 Saya to victory.

Round 2 or 3 – vs Jason (Red/Yellow Nanoha)

He wasn’t able to do a lot of damage early which meant I could hold onto a lot more cards going into Level 1. Fishing Saya and aggressive brainstorming meant that eventually I could even backup my Confirmed Capture against his 1/0 Accelerate Nanoha. Didn’t help that he had trouble getting the 1/1 Fate encore change into play also.

Round 3 or 4- vs Andrew (Red/Yellow Angel Beats!)

I triggered most of my StockSoul climaxes early, which was bad because it meant it was harder for me to pull off the climax combo, but on the plus side, he had a lot of trouble finding his global hand encore Kanade. Though the existence of the 1/1 7.5k beater made it extremely difficult to use Kokomi at all. That said, once I pulled out Saya, sitting behind a 11.5k and a 12k at Level 2 while cancelling most attacks made things a lot easier. Then Pumpkin happened.

Round 3 or 4 – vs Cheeho (Green/Yellow TLR)

No clock-suicider Yui meant that my 4k Fumio went through the entirety of Level 0, only to die to his Mikan combo. No 1/0 Mea backup to protect his Mikans meant that Confirmed Capture plowed through. I play Saya and he triggers two whirlwinds. So I replay Saya and slam a climax and then he dies without getting to play Yami.

X-0, undefeated, Top 4, etc. In reality, I wanted to come third today, because the prize for Third place was a WS TD (and I had wanted to exchange that back into the shop and pay a bit more to pick up the Vanguard Shadow Paladin Legend deck instead), as opposed to the playmat for first. Later on we would find out that even if I had gotten third, I wouldn’t have been able to exchange for the VG deck anyway, so alack. On the plus side, the joke about me cheating/rigging the standings/purposefully misplaying to get third was the source for a handful of jokes throughout the day, so it was alright.

Semi-Finals – vs Andrew (R/Y Angel Beats!)

This turned out largely similar to the previous game. This time, he managed to get his 1/0 global encore a lot earlier and even had the GDM backup to keep his 1/0 alive as well. In fact, I very distinctly remember having to side attack with a Confirmed Capture just because he had too much power on board. But Pumpkin is still Pumpkin.

Finals – vs Cheeho

I mean, this game was even more of a train wreck than the first. His Level 1 was rather bad. In fact in his first two turns I distinctly recall a Yami being clocked, a Yami being discarded for the Mikan brainstorm, and a Yami being discarded for the 1/1 Event. I can only assume that he had the whirlwind as well to add insult to injury. You know it’s either a sad state of affairs or a sign that you’ve already lost when the 1/0 Mikan combo has to search for a 3/2 Mikan healer instead of a Yami. He even had a 3/2 Mea in play when he died.

So, at the end of it all, I had won the whole thing. I got a handful of promos, two deckboxes, and the Angel Beats carton-topper playmat. Not bad for £5. It’s a shame I didn’t get to pick up the VG deck (£23 was a bit dear for what it is), but I figure next time I head down I’ll buy it anyway just to support the store.

We went for Chinese Buffet afterwards. This seems to be a recurring thing now that we go for buffet after a Weiss tournament. Sadly, no chicken nuggets, so we couldn’t show off our rich fuccboi status. RIP in pepperonis. Food was good though.

Anyway, onto what you really came here for.

How to not-lose to Blue/Red GFB

I don’t want this to come off wrong, but the victory that day was possibly the hollowest I’ve ever earned. I only beat Cheeho because his draws were balls, and everyone else just didn’t know how to play around the deck. They just knew it as “the big bad meta”.

So, let’s go over in detail the core facets of the deck and how you can prep against it so that shit like this doesn’t happen again.

At it’s heart, the deck relies on using the 1/0 Confirmed Capture Kokomi climax combo to search out it’s late-game pieces while also being an effective wall with huge power in your opponent’s turn. The climax combo gives it +2000 power until the end of the opponent’s turn, effectively making it a 6500 power base at all times. Combined with the fact that most blue GFB support cards give global power during the opponent’s turn as well, it’s not uncommon to see Confirmed Capture hit a minimum of 8000 power on the defensive. Should you be able to aggressively rush GFB, then they can early-play the Saya. It’s a 3/2 that gets -1 Level in hand as long as GFB has 4 or more blue characters in play (which is basically the whole deck barring Pumpkin and some Level 0s). The drawback is that it gets -1500 on the turn it’s played (8500), but being 10k printed makes it much better defensively than other early-play Level 3s. That, combined with the fact that it can give +4k to any character at the beginning of the opponent’s turn can make your entire field unbelievably tanky. If you used Kokomi’s climax combo, and you have the right backrow, you’re looking at 12k on Saya and 12.5k on the Kokomi (assuming you put the +4k on Kokomi) on the defense, before backups. Fortunately, GFB’s counters are nothing to write home about. I’ll talk about them more later because nearly all of them are utility.

Once it’s beat you around enough (or it clocks itself to Level 3), it’ll play the 2/1 Mirror Girl Kokomi it probably searched for earlier. This 2/1 is a normal Level Assist, but also has two stupid abilities. The first is a bond effect; on play, discard a card to salvage Pumpkin Ghost specifically. The second is that it can rest itself to give Pumpkin specifically an additional +2500 power. The signature card of the deck, Pumpkin Ghost Nonoka, isn’t an amazing finisher per se (not in the realms of Marika, Yami, or Musashi at least), but the fact that it’s 1. consistent, and 2. very easy to do is what makes it so scary. Pumpkin Ghost is your regular 3/2 10k healer. Almost. When it reverses its battle opponent, if you have Mirror Girl Kokomi in play, you can pay 3 stock, discard a card, and deal 5 damage. Let’s go over the three things that make this ability dumb.

The first is that because Mirror Girl Kokomi bonds Pumpkin Ghost, you’re basically guaranteed to have it in play. The second is that as well as being a Level Assist, Kokomi rests to give Pumpkin another +2500, meaning with nothing else, you’re staring down a 14k Pumpkin. If you don’t have a sac counter or an oversize, you’re probably going to get reversed. The third is that it can activate in your opponent’s turn. A good GFB player can notice that you might not cancel the Pumpkin’s attack soul damage. So rather than waste stock and cards in hand, they’ll just use Saya to give the Pumpkin +4k (making 16.5k defense on average), effectively forcing you to ram, where they can deal 5 damage to you after you trigger that climax, for example.

The backup game of GFB isn’t impressive, but it’s part of what helps the deck be both flexible and consistent. The main one to worry about is the 1/0 clone of Railgun’s Ice Cream Mikoto; it gives 1k, plus an additional 500 for each card in your Level zone, meaning it’s basically vanilla at Level 1, but a 1/0 2k at Level 2, and 1/0 2.5k at Level 3. There’s also a traditional pay 2, sac anti-change, a 1/1 2k mill 3, and a 2/1 2.5k that puts the top card into stock if all their characters are blue. Basically 2500 power is the number to keep in mind for their backups. The only one that’s not 2500 power is the 1/0 that can give one of your characters -1 soul, so be aware of this if you’re trying to crash in with 1/0s to push for game without a climax.

So, let’s look at how to not lose to this.

GFB plays a defensive game from the very beginning; depending on the build people will either play the 0/0 3500 power Kokomi with Hand Encore, or the 0/0 that’s 4k as long as you have 6+ cards in hand. This, combined with a handful of utility cards (Windy Day Fumio for filtering/hand sculpting being the major one) allows them to build up stock and hand size quite easily going into Level 1. There isn’t a whole lot you can do here, because most of the effects are on play (like the deck searcher or the PR that clocks to draws a card). The only utility 0 that you can play around is the Haruko suicider; 500 power, and when it moves from stage to waiting room you can pay 2 to salvage. A stock/clock suicider can help remove this while denying them the salvage. Aside from this, there isn’t a lot you can do. Ideally you can remove their entire field, but then that just puts you down on cards and has another issue that will be come apparent later.

One thing you may notice a GFB player doing is that if he’s at 0.4 or 0.5, is that he will throw out a low-powered front row. This is usually a bait/attempt to get you to commit your slightly stronger Level 0s or even your Level 1 game to the board, which gives them easy targets to reverse for the Confirmed Capture combo. You can either level-lock them by not attacking, or you can try and play suiciders and damage rush them so that your front row is empty in the opponent’s turn. If you still have most of your climaxes in deck, it also makes you more likely to cancel while denying them that precious card advantage. Basically, the GFB player is looking to capitalize on low power for easy cards, so if you can either make it difficult/impossible for them to reverse you (i.e. 3x Imprisoned Queen Asuna front row) or give them nothing to reverse (by using Level 0/1 suiciders), you can keep them down on cards. Outside of that combo, GFB doesn’t have many ways of recovering or filtering through to find what it needs. Windy Fumio and the brainstorm are about it.

The Level 2 game is rather easy to play around. If your series has access to an Anti-change backup, you’ll want to hold onto it as much as possible. If you can kill Saya in their turn, unless they encore, they won’t be able to turn Kokomi into a huge wall. If not, then be aware that despite being 12k power, Kokomi is still Level 1, so you can side attack it if needs be to force damage through. That said, if you don’t think you can feasibly get them to a dangerous damage level, the high power also makes it easier to crash in and deny them a reverse target for either a repeated 1/0 combo or the Pumpkin kill. Sac counters in general are very useful because you can also use them to prevent the Pumpkin from getting their burn effect. In general, the line of thinking for Level 3 is similar to that of Level 1; deprive them of things to reverse and it’ll be harder for them to kill you. Just be aware that you won’t be able to kill anything with sac backups, so Saya will still be there to give Pumpkin +4k on your turn. It’s almost impossible to stop it unless you’re playing something like Log Horizon or Railgun. Sometimes it’s better to just side for no damage than to take 5 and risk dying. You can still crash into anything else just fine; you just need to hope that they’ll take the damage. Note that if they do use Pumpkin in their turn, that their waiting room will be 4 cards larger, so if you can force a refresh, you can damage their compression slightly.

The hope is that if you can prevent their Level 1 game from going off, they should struggle to find the 2/1 or the Pumpkin itself. Anti-burn (Charlotte, Log Horizon, Money Counter) is also an effective tool, as Pumpkin requires a reverse to proc, meaning they can’t side you. Some builds will play the 3/2 Fumio, however, which forces you to refresh minus two climaxes (without refresh penalty), so if you’re well compressed at the end of turn, that can also be what kills you. Most decks only play 1 copy, however, so you can see them searching/salvaging it and be aware of it ahead of time. The main issue that you will struggle with is preventing Level 1 from happening.

Level 1 suiciders are the best way of answering Kokomi; it’s still Level 1, and you’re still forcing damage through. Even if they have more Kokomi to play, they won’t be able to search again. Though it’s preventing the first Kokomi from happening is what you want if you can help it. If your Level 1 game is large enough (i.e. base 7500-8000 power before backups) then you can hope you hit Level 1 first and commit. Sword Art Online, Angel Beats, Soundless Voice, and Railgun can all do this fairly easily, with strong backup options too. You either force them to side for 1 damage, leaving them with less cards and a set of 8k defenses, or you force them to ram and trade so that they’re overall card neutral (search for something to replace the Kokomi that killed itself). Even TLR can do this to an extent; the 1/0 Mikan is base 5500, with an additional 500 from assists makes it potentially 6500 in the middle and 6000 on the sides; the 1/0 2k Mea usually puts you out of range. GFB needs to have a god hand to breach 8000 power in its own turn, most of the time you can just expect 7000 if they have the Assist in play. Otherwise, it’ll usually be 6500 base, maybe 7500 with the Ayame support.

A lot of what GFB does is costless, barring Saya and the occasional brainstorm, meaning the deck compresses very naturally. Some sets have access to green cards that wipes an opponent’s stock and replaces that from the top of deck. This can be very damaging, especially in the late game when they’re preparing for Pumpkin. As mentioned, the main issue is that even through any mishaps, the deck is consistent, because unless you have the right draws and predict their plays perfectly, they can almost always find something to reverse with Kokomi, which will search for the 2/1 which will bring out the Pumpkin. Failing that, they can always brainstorm for it or even salvage it using Gates. Your main recourse is the fact that early on they won’t be that well compressed, so you have to make sure that up until Level 3 you’re winning the damage race. The Minami combo from Cinderella Girls (or any Akatsuki effect really) can be useful for setting up in a way that keeps you relatively balanced for climaxes. While you don’t want to straight soul-rush them, aggressively attacking and using climaxes can cause them to cancel using the Stock Soul that they might need for the combo, meaning they’ll be less likely to draw one (assuming they didn’t start with one in hand). If not, then you’ve forced through some more damage, which means less time they have to sit behind Saya and Kokomi and set up further for Level 3.

Once you do reach Level 3, your priority isn’t so much not-dying as it is killing them. There are no tricks for GFB, and Pumpkin is (usually) the only healer, so if you have any good finisher, then throw it at them and hope it sticks. Clock-shoots are a little unreliable because of how much power they can get, but anything that deals damage on attack or on cancel will be useful. Wherever possible, attack the Pumpkin last, because if you’re forced to crash into it for damage, their damage check occurs before they can reverse you and burn 5. Of course, if even crashing into Pumpkin won’t kill them, don’t do it. Don’t be disheartened if you can’t stop things from happening. GFB has good synergy because of the fact that the cards don’t explicitly rely on each other; you’re just playing cards because they’re good and can defend well. The important thing is knowing what they’re planning next; GFB is a very linear, very braindead deck, meaning if you can anticipate the next play and give them the toughest route there, you should have more breathing space.

Well, so much for succinct. As long as at least someone takes something on board, then it won’t be for naught. Even if you still lose, as long as it isn’t as one-sided next time you play GFB, hopefully this will have helped. If nothing else, at least remember that GFB isn’t an unbeatable deck (and most certainly doesn’t need anything banned). Hopefully this helped you in some way.

When the Kagero Legend deck releases in English I’ll probably make something detailing what I like/dislike and how I’m modding my deck for everyone to see.

Until next time, stay salty.

~ Z