CFV - Meta Analysis August 17

I decided to hold off this analysis for a bit simply because there hasn't been much major events, its "that" time of the year again so results pool was small. Again analysis I'll be collecting data from vg.xpg, twitter and izazin counting only decks that topped 2 or more times in the past 2~3 months.

Once again remember to take this with a grain of salt because I'm no professional analyst. As I am writing this its around 24th~ of August.

TOP DECKS LAST 2~3 MONTHS

These are the decks seen in top 8

Chronojet 11 

Luard 9

Blasters 7
Fenrir/Wiseman 7
Nightrose 7
Blade Wing/Assassin 6
Dragonic Blademaster 6

Shiranui 6

Crazy Eight (Spike Brothers) 2

Seven Seas Rush 2

SGD/Blasters 2

This is always the "weird" time of the year since its in between more significant sets and tournaments. Here are some notes for each top.

CHRONOJET

More focused on ZTB shenanigans after set 11, the play style IMO is kinda the same but with more emphasis on aggression than generating card advantage (still better than a lot of decks though).

• The deck can rush as they do have early game cards (a slight edge over the typical GB decks). This strategy is to prevent the luxury of taking damage from multi-attacks during stride.
• Compared to Time-Leap the deck has more play making options and doesn't completely fall apart to defensive triggers. 
• Disruption still hurts the deck depending on build they play quite a few one offs.

LUARD

Not enough players have caught on to the more defensive/grind builds the Japanese game have been abusing Luard with. The deck revolves around abusing Grosne, Raven, Luard, Belial and Esras' abilities to create loops in the deck; exceptionally strong in Japan because of the restriction list, the deck can be played in English but for some reason everyone's hard-stuck on Hoel and Morfessa =S its hard to explain in a small paragraph so I will have an article for the deck soon on the new site.

• This GrosneRaven build is less popular compared to Hoel builds I believe due to it being harder to play and requires a faster player because of all the looping action (think Refros in its prime); requires more thinking in the English game as you need to consider the 3 extra turns playing in to time and in Japan going in to time is a double loss. 
• Depending on build the deck has multiple win conditions; most prominent ones being control with Aurageysers and PBD and the GrosneRaven loop but if all fails the deck just falls back on the ultimate win-con of never decking out.
• The deck still has a hard time against rush and grade stuck though. 

As usual there is more variety and interesting other tops are more interesting tops outside of the most popular:

BLADE WING/ASSASSIN & BLASTERS

Have pretty much replaced SGD:

• Slightly weaker in the early game (because no Benon, some have even dropped Violinist but I'm against that) but still applies enough pressure and can basically match or be stronger than SGD on first-two strides. 
• More importantly they don't fall apart to Heal triggers or G-Guardians and actually has a mid-late game/back up plan if it gets there. 

FENRIR/WISEMAN

Set 11 dropped Earth Elemental, Connell which gave an indirect buff to Fenrir/Wiseman.

• Set up a combination of multiple Wiseman and Connell so you have enough targets to essentially bypass a lot of disruptions then proceed with Wiseman shenanigans so as long as you're not against Kagero or Narukami... 
• The 2 biggest issues with Fenrir/Wiseman are: 
• They have 0 early game and an inconsistent mid game; either super strong if you're lucky I guess? or again irrelevant, even if you play the whole 0 damage thing a lot of decks can apply pressure with little resource for example even without counter-blast Chronojet and Altmile/Brave can still make extra attacks with stride abilities.
• Most importantly they don't generate enough if any card advantage. 

NIGHTROSE

I believe the higher number of Nightrose tops are because a lot of people still play the deck considering it was the best deck just a while ago. Nightrose took a huge power hit with Mick to 1:

• Lost the ability to make big columns without effort.
• Nerfed mid/late game where recycling/stacking Micks was huge to enable extra turns and make late game stride turns (Galleon) super scary.
• The deck is still strong/solid but not on the same level as Chronojet or Luard. Before the restriction players against Nightrose were on a timer as stalling the game out will allow Nightrose to Galleon (one of the strongest G8s) twice, now its the other way around Nightrose players are playing on a timer in order to keep up with decks that can grind or generate lots of advantage as Galleon turns are weaker now and the deck mills to generate advantage she can/will lose by deck out. 

BLADEMASTER

The deck is well-rounded and slides in to the competitive meta easily as a control deck. Expect to see this deck more often now!

• The deck puts out a lot of pressure through board wipe presence, VG abilities; basically spam Ziegenburg (re-stander) with the occasional Taiten (built-in crit) and annoying G-Guardians.
• Kagero can finally generate card advantage, counter-charge effectively and make powerful columns through Kouen's GB2 ability, Nadel, Mbudi and Jaugo albeit not on Chronojet or Luard's level but its something Kagero has been longing for. 
• Unlike Overlords the deck struggles against things like Luard (can just straight up deck you out) and Gurguit (any deck that can easily replenish field with little cost and doesn't care about the G-Guardians). 

SHIRANUI/DOMINATE

Shiranui/Dominate is a interesting concept as an off-aggressive/control deck (multi-attacks+power up/hand & field disruption), it kinda tries to do everything like Chronojet and Nightrose... but the tops are really shifty, almost their entire G2 line are 10k vanillas. I think its hype right now because new theme, remember last year the same thing happened when Luard was released (before Belial dropped). I'll need more data before I make a proper judgement but watching gameplay they're like a iffy version of Time-Leap that being said, future support for them is already looking solid!

CRAZY EIGHT

Crazy Eight is another interesting concept using 12 draw triggers and 4 Mecha Trainer to fish out heal triggers, then G-Guarding appropriately to enable the use of GB8 early. It feels kinda cheesy because it's not the most consistent thing and you can effectively play around it for example denying counter-blast to slow down their search and learning when to actually attack/all in to deny the use of G-Guardians. I really hope Bushiroad supports this kind of deck/play style because it's kinda funny; some games both players will actually just sit and pass for 5-6 turns to deny the use of G-Guardians.

SEVENS SEAS RUSH

Seven Seas are not dead yet! There is already a stable build floating around; I'll also be doing an article for this soon. Though the theme is much unchanged it's A LOT harder play now; all about maximising card value and planning turns ahead of time. Deck isn't as oppressive as before as getting Nightspinel to hit the 21 magic number and generating advantage is harder, a lot of decks are playing draw triggers and Skeleton Assault Soldier, some even play Dancing Cutlass. A generic turn is something like this now:

• 3-4 attacks/turn, something like:
• 11 (RG attack) > 14/16 (VG attack) > 16 (RG attack) 
• 11 (RG attack) > 14/16 (VG attack) > 16 (Slash Shade column) > 21 (boosted Spinel that's been pumped a few times)

SGD/BLASTERS

Most players have converted to pure Blasters but there are still some SGD floating around. IMO there's little reason to stick with SGD because for a small trade in early game power Blade Wings and pure Blasters are overall better to play as an aggro deck, their concept/goal are the same but are more consistent, harder to play around and doesn't get wrecked by heals or G-Guardians. 

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Because of G-Guardians being stronger games generally draw out a couple turns more; with hardcore aggro decks (SGD & Seven Seas Rush) and fast advantage generators (Nightrose) falling out of flavor slower decks are creeping back in. However the general gameplay remains more/less the same; early game is still very important to create a snowball effect and getting first stride is important as ever. It is still very much generate a whole bunch of advantage and run with it.

*images from cardfight.wikia*