70th Place Armor Rush Deck
I wasn’t sure I was going to do a deck profile for this, but screw it, let’s do one!
Notably, this deck was actually made by another Colorado player, Joe Turner of Team Loaf. And he specifically wanted me to know that it was actually a group build from Hoang’s server.
But apparently I am now taking it and running with it, though I suppose I did make one tech choice of my own out of laziness, but I still maintain it was the right call! (I didn’t care to find my third mental training so I ran a digimon Emperor)
Just a heads up, I’m going to be in Boston working PAX East when this goes up, and I’m hurriedly writing this with like five and a half hours until I need to be at the airport, so all of the text from here on is what I wrote to my teammates when I was asked about changes that I would make to the deck and how the individual matches went. Sorry about any spelling or grammatical weirdness. Oh, also more swearing than I’d normally do here. Deck list and the full regional VoD at the bottom!
Final Score 5-3 because of bad tiebreakers Round 6 knocked me out of top 16 contention for sure, and Round 7 knocked me out of 32 and apparently 64, but that was much closer
Round 1 W: Beelze player, it was a wash, I made some stupid plays not killing Baalmons when there were no Beelze's in trash, but it was fairly one sided, took it 2-0 and only almost lost one game but I zudo ace'd thier second body during their first swing with Beelze so they managed to go Beelze X and blast mode to clear all my security but had no way to swing for lethal, they set me to 2, I hatched, evoed into a jamming vee they knew I had, played Lui, recouped 1 memory to maintain turn, and swung for game.
Round 2 L: Levia, I played 3 of these, the match is basically 50/50 and mostly relies on early aggression, which my hand just refused to provide. The match isn't fun, and flamedramon never dies in security because everything short of a mega or options that they can choose to not use don't armor purge the idiot, its the only match up where the BT8 magan doesn't feel great, and ST17 is great in security, but it's levia so it's almost never getting the full effect because rookies just melt.
Round 3 W: Looga, kind of a gimme, plus the list didn't feel fully optimized, and I had to call them on trying to mind link after declaring an attack, they were nice about it, and I made it clear at locals I would have been forgiving, but not with invites on the line. They also didn't realize that if Fenri fails to pop it doesn't unsuspend after they used the effect on my only armor in play. wouldn't have changed the outcome as they card they hit was ST17 magna, only time it really helped in security, de-digied the Ferni and bounced thier blocker, so turn passed since fenri was no longer making 3 memory the turn end condition.
Round 4 W: Levia, still a 50/50 went 2-1, don't super remember it, but I know I won one game off them not hitting 5's and one by just being pure gas.
Round 5 W: Omni Turbo, this was fucking goofy, but felt pretty favored to me? They had a hard time getting successive deletions and it turns out level 7's with only a source or 2 are SUPER easy to remove with Zudo Ace and ST17 Magna, plus I could almost always count on jamming to matter and for armors to die on the first hit, so even Flame was useful.
Round 6 L: Melga, it was bad, might have been doable if my security had ever contained good security bombs, even a damn fire rocket would have saved me, but there were basically none, best case was a double ST17 magna, but they were very good about using all thier effects to make sure if I had bodies on board they were only armors, so I couldn't get the full effect. There were some shenanigans because a garuru should have died in security but they told me thier digimon had +2k instead of only +1k, but it wouldn't have effected the outcome. EX5 Melga X basically shuts armors down.
Round 7 L: Levia, still salty about this one, went 1-2, won game 1, game 2 I lost because first hand had 0 rookies, mulligan had 1 veemon 2 magnas, a tamer and... something else? Proceeded to draw magna, magna, magna, then die. checked the top cards of deck, 2 more magnas, 6 or 7 of the 8 all clumped. Game 3 I had them DEAD actually just dead if I could draw any armor of my first mental training, any of the 5 cost armors off my second mental, or a lui, or promo veemon because I had them at 0 security, a body in raising, they had no blockers, and I had a tapped down armor, and both Kimeras in hand. But, saw none of those cards. Also, the player didn't seem to get that they could do the full combo with into Levia X off a single play by effect, so they took so fucking long because they tried to make me play by effect twice every turn and even then all thier decisions took forever. we went to time and were maybe a minute short of over time, by MY over time turn 1, they were turn 0.
Round 8 W: Numemon, honestly pretty easy to abuse, don't think they were running Azulong, or if they were they didn't see it. Pretty much did to them exactly what I've been saying pre-bt15 nume's problem is, it's only searchers only works [on deletion] so I never deleted it, always bounced RB-01 nume, did the same with Monzae's but that was more incidental because I was worried about zulongs, so I mostly saved bounces and source strips for Nume X and RB Numemon to deny thier combos and search. Not sure I could have done the same to BT16 version as easily, but it was pretty easy, I was finished in like 15 minutes, and that included shooting the shit with them after, though I think they might have thought I was rude at the end, my push to talk pedal was going, or I was so out of it I kept letting off on it too much so I said I was going to head out and as I did they said something that made it seem like they hadn't heard me, so gona feel bad about that for a bit.
Pinch points and Tech choices
Digimon emperor came in clutch at multiple points, mostly against levias, but couple other places too, though I kept forgetting the card draw trigger, which would have made him even better.
Flmaedramon is an annoyance because it just never fucking armor purges when it hits security, so I'm thinking about rebalancing, probably add another lighdra, the tamer deletion in this meta made it a bit hard to consistently have color source for Heaven's, and maybe a gold veedra? Too bad that fucker isn't a [free] type.
The deck feels like it wants more 2 cost evo armors. I'd also probably throw an armor texture in, getting some kind of ability to armor strip my own bodies feels necessary, plus with Ukko I can basically use it to swing with Jamming Veemon, then play armor texture, evo, and get an unsuspend without burning the tamer effect. Also, I didn't realize it had an errata on the security effect to make it optional or I'd have probably run it yesterday.
I still like Kimera, but in this levia dominated meta, or at least what I kept finding, I don't think I like it here. I basically never DNAed it because I so rarely had 2 armors on board in matches where Kimera would have helped. Pretty sure the biggest thing it did all day was let me meet color requirements for a Heaven's in a game I could almost win, but never quite did.
I am waffling on BT13 Magna, but I think it's lack of armor purge just clinches that it doesn't work here, maybe as a one of, but it's another play by effect I don't really want to fuck with and it doesn't help me dodge deletions and it's purely defensive, if I swing with it and it dies, I don't have a body I can keep using, I have a new rookie without rush.
Magna X is also on the maybe list, but mostly just to get a L6 and as a "shit magna didn't purge when I swung and now I want a defensive play" choice. Also, I'd kill for that new promo Flame in here, would have been unbelievably helpful
So, yeah, I had a lot of thoughts, you’d think my teammates would stop asking, but they keep do so I guess they actually want to know?
// Armor Rush list
BT11-002 Wanyamon 4
BT14-002 Bukamon 1
BT3-021 Veemon 4
BT12-021 Veemon 3
P-117 Veemon 4
P-123 Ukkomon 4
BT8-012 Flamedramon 2
BT8-038 Magnamon 4
BT8-053 Lighdramon 3
ST17-13 Magnamon 4
BT14-026 Zudomon 2
BT8-084 Kimeramon 2
P-124 Davis Motomiya 3
BT8-088 Davis Motomiya & Ken Ichijoji 2
BT8-094 Digimon Emperor 1
P-130 Lui Ohwada 3
BT8-095 Fire Rocket 4
P-104 Mental Training 2
EX4-068 Heaven's Judgement 3
