Saturday, May 11, 2013

What is a Beatdown Deck?

Alrighty, so I was asked if a Vermillion based deck was a beatdown deck. Rather than answer "No lol, it's a stun/control deck", I realized that, at least for Vanguard, I have no idea what a beatdown deck really was. Now this is probably from our days of Yugioh for the most part, and the easy to recognize term can easily be applied where it should be. The problem is, without any sort of definitions or guidelines to abide by, and the fact that Vanguard is almost entirely an offensively orientated game, even calling a deck a beatdown deck is entirely useless, as the category can be applied to nearly every deck that exists.

"A quick google search, and then once more on the Cardfight Vanguard wiki, and you can find that no such definition or guideline exists, at least for Vanguard. Yugioh has one though, so let's look it over.
A Beatdown Deck is a strong offensive Deck which concentrates on using high powered monsters to bring down the opponent's Life Points as quickly as possible. To have a successful Deck, players must be able to apply pressure to their opponent at the outset of the game before any real strategies can be employed. A common misstep in such a deck is to use powerful monsters simply for their power. A successful deck will include monsters that are not only powerful but have powerful effects to ensure the safety of your monsters."

So with some editing here and there

"A Beatdown Deck is a strong offensive Deck which concentrates on using high Powered Units to wear out the opponent's hand and deal damage as quickly as possible. To have a successful Deck, players must be able to apply pressure to their opponent at the outset of the game before any real strategies can be employed. A common misstep in such a deck is to use powerful Units simply for their power. A successful deck will include monsters that are not only powerful but have powerful utility skills to consistently establish them."

From here, we can draw that a beatdown deck is mostly made up of cards that:

-Uses high powered units, like good pressure Vanguards or those with skills that greatly improve your forward push.
-Must be able to set up quickly.
-Skills not only centralize on power, but setting up and quickly establishing them.

So does Vermillion based decks count as beatdown decks? Well, no. The only really 'high powered units' are Vermillion and Photon Bomber, but Vermillion's skill is basically a pseudo frontrow retire, making it no more beatdown than, say, Goku's antics, if not for the slightly off chance to kill intercepts. So in fact, a Vermillion deck is nothing like a beatdown deck.

Alright, since that's out of the way, what gives, Cardfight Wiki? I realize this is second hand knowledge for most Cardfighters already, but someone needs to draw the lines in the sand somewhere. Since this is already up, does anyone have any decent definitions for other major decktypes, or recommendations for edits to expand or fix my current definition of a beatdown deck? It may not be much, but giving a more obvious goal for a deck can greatly benefit new deckbuilders, and at least better inform any newer players who haven't even heard the terms before.

5 comments:

  1. I feel, because of the lack of "playstyle" customization for most decks, that Vanguard decks are best categorized by their performance in Early/Mid/Late game and not "beatdown, control, etc".

    Something like G1 Spikes rushdown obviously has a strong Early game and peters out towards Mid/Late. Tsukuyomi is also a pretty clear example of a very Late-centric deck (with some focus in Mid if you get to ride CEO), and tanky Tachikaze can probably also qualify. Scary on-hit pressure like Stern, Giraffa, Eclipse, The End, Gold Rutile, and most Dimension Police vanguards can put on a good show for Mid.

    Not to say any of the above are ONLY good in those timeframes, just throwing in my 2 damage for a game-specific classification.

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    1. A bit of both classifications would also be well suited, no?

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  3. I think that 'beatdown' should not necessarily refer to decks which focus on hitting high numbers. I mean, I see a lot of people refer to decks based solely on making good column setups (without focusing on hitting high powered RGs)as beatdown decks. For me, it kinda makes sense, not every clan has access to the units to make them consistently hit pass 20k in the RG circle and such.

    Although sometimes it is actually very strange the way people define 'beatdown' in Vanguard. There are various Pale Moon builds which rely on swapping units in and out of soul to achieve multiple attacks. Many refer to this as 'beatdown'. If that's the case, the Asura-Azure build of Nova Grapplers focuses (in a sense) on standing RGs, so why is it not called a beatdown deck? No idea.

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    1. I never actually specifically mentioned 20+ columns...

      "-Uses high powered units, like good pressure Vanguards or those with skills that greatly improve your forward push."
      "good pressure Vanguards or those with skills that greatly improve your forward push."

      And, conveniently, you will never find my mentioning of those power columns specifically. Soooooo....

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