[Toronto, ON - 11/12/16] BEYBLADE SWITCH
Unranked Full Deck Rotation Burst Format - v3 Experimental Rules
1st: 1234beyblade
Dark Deathscyther Spread Defense
Wyvern Heavy Revolve
Deathscyther Heavy Yielding
Valkyrie Gravity Trans
2nd: JesseObre
Dark Deathscyther Spread Defense
Deathscyther Heavy Defense
Wyvern Heavy Revolve
Minoboros Gravity Zephyr
Victory Valkyrie Knuckle Trans
Dark Deathscyther Spread Orbit
Odin Spread Revolve
3rd: Kei
Deathscyther Heavy Revolve
Dark Deathscyther Spread Defense
Zillion Zeus Knuckle Xtreme
Victory Valkyrie Gravity Zephyr
Deathscyther Knuckle Defense
Minoboros Knuckle Zephyr
Will comment more on the
new rules we played with (which included 1 Point Burst Finishes) over in the WBO General forum soon, but in terms of the combinations and deck construction at this event, I found it to be quite challenging.
Last night I spent several hours testing primarily Zillion Zeus and Victory Valkyrie and was feeling quite good about the state of Attack in Beyblade Burst. I think so much of our time (well, at least mine personally) is–understandably so–spent trying to find an Attack Layer that can work well in any situation, but the fact of the matter is that certain Attack Layers do better against certain things than they do others. For example, I found Zillion Zeus on Xtreme to be effective against Dark Deathscyther in particular where Victory Valkyrie often had trouble with it. And Victory Valkyrie did well in my testing against Wyvern, whereas Zillion Zeus had trouble against it and could basically only win via KO with a well placed shot that is much more easy to accomplish in a controlled testing environment when testing by yourself.
When thinking about this tournament and how it would be Deck Format, the idea came to me to try including two Attack types in my Deck that would cover as many situations as possible. I realized this would make my type coverage spotty and put me at some disadvantage that I perhaps wasn't full aware of in the moment (it was like 3AM lol), but figured that if my confidence in Attack could translate at all to the tournament that I would be OK. The disadvantage manifested itself at the beginning of this event when I lost my first two battles to Naru Blader and Hato by a score of 5-4 each time due to Valkyrie Accel and Assault combos. With Z2 and V2 in my Deck, for whatever reason I had trouble catching them with Z2KX (which was partially due to my worry of self-KOing when trying to stall with Xtreme–which resulted in less than powerful launches–but that may have been due more in part to a lack of training for this scenario than anything since I know Xtreme should be faster than Accel at the very least) and in the case of V2, did not have the Stamina to OS them.
Also worth noting that I would have won the battle against Hato if Burst Finishes had still been worth two points. I'll talk more about how we all felt about this rule change in the WBO General topic, though. Z2 did quite well against Hato's Odin, but I ended up having trouble with it against D2 in this new environment of a tournament. This made things much more difficult in my eyes since I knew V2 wasn't great against it. I'm wondering, does anyone have any tournament success with an Attack type against D2 that they can speak about? I lost a very close battle against 1234beyblade's D2 in one of our recent tournaments with Valtryek Knuckle Variable 3-2, but he was launching relatively hard, which made it easier to defeat. When I played Mitsu with it in our last event–BEYwitched–he weak launched and I lost 3-0. The only thing that sticks out in my mind as having a decent chance right now in an actual tournament environment is Valkyrie maybe. Or maybe I just need more practice with Z2 with two people playing haha.
After my first two losses, I went on a 5-0 run which put me into a spot in the finals ultimately. Of course, this success came after I standardized and balanced my deck a bit more. I did end up losing my final two battles of the Round Robin before the finals against JesseObre and Temptest546, but on my part at least that was again due to deviation either from having a balanced deck (vs. Tempest which I describe below) or due to deviating from what I had actually tested after failing with it earlier in the tournament (I used Z2KA against Jesse instead of Z2KX and hoped the more easily controllable Accel would work against his D2, but it didn't; Z2 really needs Xtreme in my opinion to work consistently. And then I lost the match on a debatable 2 Point contact KO in a Deathscyther vs Deathscyther round where even Jesse admitted he didn't see contact).
The importance of having a balanced Deck manifested itself when I lost to Tempest546 at the end of the tournament when I included Driger S.K.R in my deck to try and get it on the winning combinations haha (I did win a round with it, but I was eventually left vulnerable since I left Deathscyther out of my deck because I figured Dark Deathscyther would be enough to do the job against his deck of Wyvern Gyro, Valkyrie Needle, and Obelisk Odin Yielding(?) which he didn't use. I eventually lost due in large part to Wyvern bursting D2 twice).
All of this being said, I do think what a "balanced deck" means does not necessarily mean it has to be 1 Attack type, 1 Defense type, and 1 Stamina type; I do think there is potential for a deck of 3 Stamina or Stamina/Defense hybrids to be successful (1234beyblade used a deck of Deathscyther, Wyvern, and Dark Deathscyther sometimes today), or for a deck of 3 Attack types to be successful as well (this may be easier to accomplish in v2 of the experimental rules where as the loser of a round you can respond directly to what their next Beyblade will be). The goal is really to just make sure you're never in a situation where you're like "Damn, I can't respond to X reliably"; you have to go all the way to cover your bases–with whatever combinations of Beyblades that is–unlike my deck in several instances today.
Finally, I lost my battle against 1234beyblade in the finals–5-2 or 5-3 I believe–after falling down an early 4-0 hole in a Valkyrie Knuckle Trans vs. Valkyrie Gravity Trans near mirror-match (he kept choosing sharp to my surprise!), but was able to pull out a win versus Naru Blader for 3rd Place due in large part to MKZ which has better stamina than and was able to KO his Valkyrie on Assault; not being able to properly counter that earlier in the event is what caused me to lose my first battle against him.
Anyways, not entirely sure where I was going with this other than to say that ... Beyblade is complicated! I'm not sure the v3 rules were my favourite iteration so far for several reasons, but I will elaborate more on that later. Regardless, Deck Format is always a ton of fun. And of course, I was impressed yet again by 1234beyblade and JesseObre's remarkable consistency! It was a great learning experience for me today, and I still have a lot more to learn.