Interview w/ WCC | TTH BABBYYY | Spring Fest 2022 Premium Champion Team | #BushiroadSpringFest2022

Hi amigos, today I have the opportunity to interview one of the Champion teams for achieving multiple wins at the Bushiroad Spring Fest 2022 events in Texas and Georgia! They are Noman, Andrew, and David! Let’s dive into it!

Interview:

Team Name: WCC | TTH BABBYYY
Teammate 1’s name: Noman Irfan
Teammate 2’s name: David Smart
Teammate 3’s name: Andrew Williams

Jaime: First off, congratulations to Noman Irfan, Andrew Williams, and David Smart for achieving multiple wins at the Bushiroad Spring Fest 2022 events in Texas and Georgia! Today I wanted to do an interview with you amigos about your overall experiences and even get to know you a little bit for the readers. Sounds good y’all?

WCC | TTH BABBYYY: “Sounds great Jaime!”

Jaime: Tell us a little about yourselves. Where are you from? Are you from any specific Vanguard teams/communities? Any other events that you and/or the team have done well? Etc.

Noman Irfan: Hello! I am Noman Irfan and I am from the state of Alabama. I am a member of team WCC and I have been playing Cardfight Vanguard for about 3ish years now, however, I have been playing TCGs in general for about 7 years. Prior to our double win this weekend for both Premium and V-Premium format in Houston and the V-Premium win in Georgia, we have won the previous 2 Houston premium BSF events in 2019 and 2018 and topped a Georgia BSF in 2019 as well. Aside from BCS and participating in Vanguard’s world championships last BCS season, I did have tops and wins before playing Vanguard across other games, primarily in Yu-Gi-Oh! which was the game I really focused on before as well as it being my first TCG. It was a really good feeling coming back from the pandemic and being able to play in-person events again as well as seeing a lot of my out of state friends again! 

David Smart: My name is David Smart and I’m from Birmingham, Alabama, but I moved to a small town in South Georgia about a year ago. I don’t remember exactly when I started playing, but it was at least 8 or 9 years ago at this point. The first time I hit Top 8 in a vanguard event was BCS Atlanta 2017 with one of my favorite decks of all time, Demiurge. That was the first time I realized that performing at a high level was something I was capable of in vanguard and have been playing competitively ever since. Like Noman said, Andrew, him, and I have been playing as a team for team League ever since Springfest 2018. Other than that, Andrew and I were also able to reach top 8 in Vanguard Springfest Atlanta with our friend Kyle Keith in 2018. In addition, Andrew and I along with Bryan Headen made Top 8 in Buddyfight also at Atlanta Springfest 2018. 

Andrew Williams: Howdy, my name is Andrew Williams, I’m from Birmingham, Alabama, and I have been playing Vanguard off and on since 2012, but I have been playing TCGs off and on for most of my life. My first real top was in Team League with David Smart and our buddy Kyle in 2018 playing Bigbelly, and after that Noman, David, and I began to be on a team together consistently, winning 5 total team events and topping one other, as Noman previously mentioned. Besides that, I got third at BCS Houston 2018 Standard playing Megacolony, and I top 8ed the next day playing Dimension Police, but  I was unable to go to Worlds that year due to money and school, so I decided to really get on the grind so I could earn my invite again next season. After that, I got second at BCS 2019 Standard playing Royal Paladin, and I got fourth the next day playing Great Nature. At BCS 2019 Atlanta, I got top 8 with Murakumo, and I top 4ed Buddyfight the next day (RIP). At Worlds that year, I got to top 8 playing Great Nature, and I was the only Great Nature player in the entire event for Standard, which I was really proud of. Besides Bushiroad games though, I have some other accomplishments in some other games, but not as much as Vanguard.

Jaime: Awesome, thanks for sharing! During your preparation, what are some things that you mainly focused on? Certain matchups, deck builds, strategies, etc.

Noman Irfan: For both V-premium and Premium format, I’d like to give credit to Maxime Solemn and Jey Kobus for providing me with the deck lists that allowed me to perform well at these events. Solemn provided me with the Prism deck and gave me a run down on how to play it efficiently, and both Jey and Solemn provided me with a list for Nightmare Dolls as well as give me a run down on the deck as well. 

For V-Premium, the only decks I was worried about were Prism (Solemn’s list to be exact} as well as Gurguit. For the Premium format, I didn’t really get a chance to test so I learned my deck throughout swiss and then was able to actually play it normally for top 8 and up. I still had the knowledge provided to me by my team and Jey, so I didn’t exactly go in blind, my biggest worry was Order Colony and was primarily prepped for that match up.  

David Smart: For the Gurguit list I played in both events, it came from WCC’s Steven Lee and I couldn’t be happier with how it is built. I made sure to understand Bermuda Triangle Prisms very well since we went into our preparation with the understanding that that was the best deck in the format despite Bushiroad’s past attempts to limit the deck. I played a lot of games versus Noman while he was learning that deck and I was able to get a really good handle on how exactly to play against Bermuda Triangle. While there are plenty of threatening decks in the format, Bermuda was the only deck that I heavily play tested against before the event, on the theory that if I could beat it, I could beat anything. 

My premium Megacolony list is very heavily based on Solemn’s list that he played in his springfest competitions. I already had a lot of experience playing megacolony before I started preparing for these events, but I needed to understand how each deck in the meta was affected by Darkface Gredora and Brillian Blister since those are fairly matchup-specific cards. I also needed to understand which decks it was worth trying to grade two game against and which decks I really wanted to just ride up against. 

Andrew Williams: I am going to be honest, I did not seriously touch Vanguard during the pandemic. The lack of in person events really stifled my drive to compete, since in-person competition is one of my favorite parts of the entire experience, so when Noman and David approached me to be on a team with them, I had to catch up and learn pretty quickly. So when I was diving back in, I basically asked Noman to just give me a deck he was confident in, and I would order it and learn it in the time remaining, and he gave me a WCC Granblue list. Besides that, I depended on my fundamentals and game knowledge to help me throughout the event while I was catching up with the card knowledge (I only read Vert the day before the event, but it’s chill).

When it came to my Dimension Police deck, it was created very close to the deadline to turn in decklists, since we were unsure about what to pick as a team since the deck I originally planned on playing ended up not being able to be picked up in time. David and I just bounced ideas off of each other, and created a deck purely based off of theory, and the first game we played with the deck was the day before the event. 

Deck Lists:

V Premium:

Noman: https://decklog-en.bushiroad.com/view/6ZQ2
David: https://decklog-en.bushiroad.com/view/P3G2
Andrew: https://decklog-en.bushiroad.com/view/FDWA

Premium:

Noman: https://decklog-en.bushiroad.com/view/Q37Z
David: https://decklog-en.bushiroad.com/view/97N7
Andrew: https://decklog-en.bushiroad.com/view/LQ43

Jaime: Awesome, let’s dive into your deck lists. We’ll discuss both V and Premium formats. With these builds, what were your Winning Images for most of your games? Like did you have a setup, game state, or strategy that you focused on?

Noman Irfan: I was once again spoon-fed by Solemn and Jey hahaha, so credit goes to them for these.

V-Premium Prism: Solemn has a video on this list on his channel, so if you would like a better understanding, I would check out his video as well.  This highlander-ish list is the most powerful version of Prism I have played so far. I didn’t feel comfortable taking the standard list to the event where mirror matches are more favored by luck than anything, so this list had its own unique edge I was quite happy with.

The only change I made personally was putting in 1 Radka in place of some g1 that lets you SB to gain shield/draw. I preferred the Radka because I did not want to keep track of my soul to add on to another task to juggle while playing the game. The main 2 cards that outperformed were the Pearl Sisters. The list allows you to dig A LOT into the deck, the Pearl Sisters are just absurd in general, and being able to bounce them back to hand with Vert to keep them safe was just unreal.

Premium Nightmare Doll: This list is pretty standard with the exception of two cards. I couldn’t find a few cards in time that I wanted to play, but they didn’t really make too big of an impact. The card that really shined during the event for me was Direful Doll, Violetta. Violetta is not only a Workeroid, but since it had a 10k body to it, I was able to overcome g2 gaming against MC and the NMD mirror match. Its effect never came up for me, so you could play the Silver Thorn 10k vanilla, but would rather have an effect unit just in case it did come up for whatever reason. Aside from the 10k unit, everything else is pretty standard compared to other lists. My primary win condition was just going into Dust to fold MegaColony since we can’t call from soul due to vanity’s emptiness/Gredora. 

David Smart: V Premium: With Percival newly put to 1 copy instead of choice restricted with Gurguit, it turns out to be a fairly huge buff to the deck as a whole. That combined with the small Ezel engine gives the deck a chance to just explode with plenty of accel gifts to push out tons of high-power attacks in a single turn thanks to cards like Mach Slash, Wonder Ezel, and Sagramore. By combining the Ezel engine and the Percival, you have so many opportunities to high roll and get some bonus Accel markers that it makes the deck very powerful against pretty much anything. 

Premium: The order Megacolony deck is pretty well known at this point and for good reason. Ruination Dragon combined with Book of Strong-arming lets you get tons of cards to hand to survive while striding into Darkface Gredora over and over again to deplete your opponent’s resources until eventually you break through to win the game. Darkface Gredora prevents superior calling, so it is close to an auto-win against many top meta decks, and preventing your opponent from standing means they have to refill their entire board from hand every single turn. Over the course of both events, I never strode into a card other than Darkface Gredora. It is a super powerful win condition and probably never should have been printed. 

Andrew Williams: V Premium: Granblue’s game plan is pretty standard at this point: set up your drop zone, and attack your opponents repeatedly with big columns, whether it be Skull Dragons or Ghost Ships. In my opinion, this is Granblue’s biggest strength and weakness. The deck is extremely linear in what it wants to do, so if the game plan is working, then you are fine, but it is fairly easy to prepare for when you are playing against Granblue. The faster you can push your opponent to high damage, the sooner you can close out a game with Skull Dragons, since you can efficiently attack with Skull Dragon 3 to 4 times every turn.

Premium: The game plan for the Dimension Police was a little wacky, when compared to the “standard” Dimension Police deck. Bravest-peak X-Gallop is an insane card, consistently hitting 80k+ thanks to its own skill and Commander Laurel, and that can be difficult for any deck to block when it is attacking twice every turn. Since David and I decided to go on a linear, all-in on Gallop strategy, we figured that the deck would eventually win as long as you could outgrind the opponent, so we decided to play much more defensive cards than normal. I think the standouts of the deck though is the Zeal package, which are cards that I don’t believe get enough recognition. The grade one Zeal searches for your grade 2 and 3 Zeals, which allows you to play some weirder grade ratios. The grade 2 Zeal allows you to rush effectively by dropping your opponent’s power, whether it be on VG/RG or when rode upon. Galactic Beast Zeal is easily my favorite card of the deck, as it calls a card when placed, and drops your opponent’s power, which helps solve one of the bigger issues that Dimension Police has, which is its over-reliance on the Vanguard, so being able to make your rearguards more threatening helps a ton in finishing a game. 

Jaime: Great, can you elaborate more on why you came to those choices/ratios for your lists? Feel free to break it down by Grades or groups of cards, whichever makes more sense for your decks.

Noman Irfan: V Premium: Solemn can explain the Prism ratios much better than I can, so check out his video for the answer to that.

Premium: As far as Nightmare Dolls goes, I was actually missing some cards haha, so the list isn’t actually optimized to what I wanted to play and has filler cards to take its spots hahaha. I was missing two Masquerade Bunny (V Series), so in place I played an extra Earth Elemental, Rollock, and 1 extra Chelsea. I was also missing some G Zone cards, but they weren’t that big of a deal honestly.

David Smart: V Premium: Again, this list was given to me by Steven Lee from WCC so all credit goes to him for the list, but after playing all of those games I don’t think I’d make any changes. The Wonder Ezel, Mach Slash and Sagramore all exist to allow you to get even more attacks during a single turn. The Aglovale is there to speak up your board to make room for more stuff to be called during the battle phase while giving you one good card that is always decent to call from any of your skills. It also guarantees a near infinite amount of soul. The Dindrane and Berengaria give you a way to counter charge with Dindrane also having the option to give you more draws to dig for shield and combo pieces meaning you maintain your hand even while putting out some board. The Gold Paladin card pool is short on good quality grade ones for this strategy, so the Howell, despite being close to a vanilla for the entire game, is a natural choice for the off chance you have Wonder Ezel Howell on turn two to ride up into Blonde Ezel and effectively start with an extra accel gift before you ride into Gurguit. 

Premium: The only change I made to Solemn’s list was adding 1 more Book of Strong-arming after I played in Atlanta in preparation for the Houston Team League. This change was made so that I could see it a bit more often, which was valuable in my eyes for the matchups where you couldn’t afford to grade two game which tended to be the worst matchups for the deck. The card I removed was 1 copy of Brillian Blister which is debatably the strongest card in the deck, but in my defense, the opponent in all of my games pretty much played around it the entire time so I only remember resolving it a few times. The Giraffa grade 2 and Armor Beetle are great for early game and for grade two gaming. The Giraffa is also a big attacker that can be restood by superior calling Intrude Scissors or Hell Demise. High Class Moth gives the deck repeatable countercharging and ensures you can keep recycling a Hell Demise or Intrude Scissors for the 5 attack Gredora combo. Giraffa, Armor Beetle, and High Class Moth also can block intercepting to make sure that the opponent can’t get any value out of their grade twos that won’t stand next turn anyway. Area Stiller and Bikkun are both there to make sure that vanguard-centric decks, like the Genesis Minerva Restand combo, don’t overwhelm you with high-power vanguard attacks which megacolony always struggles to deal with. 

Andrew Williams: V Premium: My Granblue list is a WCC creation entirely, so I cannot really comment on it, since at this point I believe everything is pretty standard. I will say, the standout card for both events for me was Jessie the Ghostie. A lot of my opponents would damage deny me, so being able to have a repeatable and “free” way to countercharge was super helpful, and it also allowed me to guard early a lot more since Granblue really only needs 1 counterblast a turn to go off.

Premium: The Dimension Police main deck’s main goal was to easily be able to put “replaceable” rearguards on board to be able to rest them for Commander Laurel, which made Bravest Peak, X-Gallop extremely threatening as early as turn 3. In order to try to outgrind the opponent, we built the deck to be extremely tanky by using Dimensional Robo, Dailiner, Tazer Lage, Ginguard, and Enigman Calm, headed with Geomaglass in the G-Zone. Enigman Calm is honestly the star of the show though, being a repeatable perfect guard that you can recycle every turn you X-Gallop. Reika and Sludge are part of the advantage side of the deck, along with Zeal, which allows you to keep your resources up while trying to break through with Gallop. 

Jaime: Awesome, thanks for the insight! During your games, which decks/clans did you face? How were your personal records?

Noman Irfan: For both formats,. I played against pretty much most of the tier 1 decks and mirrors with like maybe 1-2 tier 2 decks for all 3 events.

My personal record for the following events with both swiss and top cut combined were:
-Premium with NMD in Houston: Undefeated
-V-Premium with Prism in Houston: x-1 
-V-Premium with Prism in Georgia: x-1 

David Smart: Team League events are always very diverse due to the rule that you can’t have duplicate decks on the same team, so it is always fun to be able to play against so many diverse strategies and see what people can come up with. For V Series the common decks I ran up against were things like Kagero focusing on Overlord and Shadow Paladin either focusing on Revengers or Luard. In Premium my most common matchups with Genesis focusing on Divine Gauge and the Megacolony mirror match. There were too many different decks in both formats to list them all, but I think those examples were the decks I remember playing against the most. Personal win record is a little hard to track down since all three of us decided ahead of time that if we were finished with two games that decided the round, such as by winning twice or losing twice, the third player would surrender in order to give as much time between rounds and to help combat fatigue over the course of the day. But as far as I remember, there were only 5 games that I played out and lost across all four tournaments (two in Atlanta and two in Houston).

Andrew Williams: For V-Premium, I played against a wide variety of decks for both Houston and Duluth, but I can definitely say that my hardest matchup with Granblue is Prism. From my experience, the only way that Granblue can beat the WCC version of Prism is to get lucky with triggers to push them to high damage extremely early, since Prism seems to be almost unbeatable once it gets set up. I do not remember my record for Duluth, but my record in Houston was x-1 after everything, losing one game to Prism in Top 4. For premium, my record with Dimension Police was x-1 throughout the entire event, losing only in Round 5 to Nightmare Dolls after whiffing G-assist while at grade 1, which put me too far behind to really have a chance.

Jaime: Definitely understand it was 3 events in total ha! Thanks for mentioning what you guys remembered! Was there a game you would like to highlight? Like your toughest matchup, best game, break or deal moments, etc.

Noman Irfan: My favorite game within the 3 events was hands down the finals of V-Premium in Houston, TX. The finals was pretty much just our hotel room LOL and to top it off, both James and Alex asked me for a list for Gurguit and Prism, so we literally entered with the exact same decks. Since we are all friends, the games practically had zero stress on them and we were just happy to both be in the finals together.

My toughest matchup was hands down Ordercolony for premium, it was the main match up Solemn gave me a course on how to beat which all worked out in the end since I left with an undefeated record (thanks again Solemn). 

David Smart: My most fun games of the day were probably the two against Alex Pham in Houston V Premium, First in the final round of Swiss, and second in the finals. We were both playing the exact same Gurguit list card for card and we both knew that there wasn’t a lot you could do to outplay in that specific mirror match. Because of that we were able to relax a little and have a bit of fun with the game as we just sat back and waited to see who had the best hand. 

Andrew Williams: Like my teammates, my favorite games of the event were against James and Alex’s team, with me facing James Tran on Prism. My favorite part about Vanguard is the people, so being able to just goof around with friends with little pressure and just having a good time was a blast. I will also say that my Top 4 game against Kyle Warfield’s team in Duluth was also fun, since we were all friends, and we were talking and joking around with each other while we were playing.
I would also say that I had a blast playing Dimension Police, since the deck is so fun, swinging with a huge vanguard over and over again, and what started off as a meme quickly became real. 

Jaime: During your games, what is something that you appreciate about your decks from the preparation you’ve done? The strategy of it, consistency, power, plays, etc.

Noman Irfan: I did the same game plan I do at every event, and that is to just have Solemn provide me the lists to play LOL. Personally, I feel I am a much better player than I am a deck builder, so I am grateful to have friends with incredible deck-building talent. 

David Smart: I was very happy with the change I made with Solemn’s Megacolony list. The 1 game I lost with it in Atlanta was because I couldn’t get an Order card in drop zone soon enough to play how I wanted to play. In Houston, after I tweaked the list, there wasn’t a single time I remember that I didn’t have access to the Order card as soon as I needed it. There was even one mirror match where I won mostly due to the fact that I had a Book of Strong Arming in the drop zone and my opponent didn’t. It’s a small change and definitive results can’t really be found without lots and lots of test games, but I decided to go with my gut in Houston and it looks like it paid off. 

Andrew Williams: I think something that I appreciate a lot about the Dimension Police deck was working on the deck, applying theory to it, and having that theory come to fruition and be really successful. The game plan for Granblue and Dimension Police is essentially the same, attack with incredibly big cards over and over again, which I can appreciate the consistency of.

Jaime: After the tournament, did y’all take some time to reflect? Anything that you learned from your experiences?

Noman Irfan: I learned that I’m not washed up yet 🙂 (jk jk LOL).
Normally what we do after an event is immediately go eat and celebrate and then just continue on with our nights and have fun with friends. Playing in Georgia and Texas really refreshed my love of Vanguard honestly. We don’t have locals for Vanguard here, so we don’t get to play with real cards or any kind of tournament outside of these events. Just being able to play with real cards again was a blast, especially right after the time skip of the pandemic when we didn’t have real-life events. 

David Smart:  there were certainly a lot of strategies in both formats that I initially wrote off as not quite viable that after playing against I saw were much stronger than I initially gave them credit for. It’s a good reminder that just because you don’t see a deck as being strong doesn’t mean that there isn’t a different way to play it that brings out the deck’s strengths more effectively. 

Andrew Williams: After not playing and caring about Vanguard for so long, jumping back into events was both nerve-racking and exciting, as I did not want to let my friends down. I learned that there are a lot of cool decks in both formats, and that game knowledge can help propel those decks into the spotlight. I will say this, my love for the game has definitely been reignited after these two events, and I can appreciate that I am not as washed up as I feared I was. 

Jaime: Awesome! Would you like to do any shoutouts to people that you know and/or have helped you along your journeys?

Noman Irfan: I would love to shout out my team WCC for being the best team in the world as well as David and Andrew for always being on my team for Springfest season! Huge shout out to all of our sponsors for being fantastic and all my friends that loaned me a deck to play these events with! I’d also love to give a shoutout to my employers and work team at The Ōnin Group for being the best coworkers I have ever had and for giving me such a great work environment to work in where I can attend these events with zero stress! 

David Smart: There are so many people that have helped make me into the player I am today from all my years of playing Vanguard. I have to thank all the people who I used to play with at Card Addicts in Birmingham and Game Time Hobbies in Opelika. And of course the many many people from across the country and in some cases across the globe that I have met at events and come to call friends. Vanguard is great because it gives you an outlet to meet so many new people and enjoy a great hobby with them and maybe even try and figure out how to win a little more. Of course, I couldn’t have done this at all without my teammates Andrew and Noman. I look forward to Springfest each year because it is always so much fun to play as a team. 

Andrew Williams: I want to give a shoutout to my teammates David and Noman for always being so fun to play with, and for trusting me enough to carry my own weight despite me not being super involved in Vanguard over the past few years.  I can definitely say that I would not look forward to the spring season if it was not for those two, and I look forward to trying to stack more wins with them in the future. I would also like to give a shoutout to all my friends in Birmingham, and everybody I’ve met while traveling, for being super supportive and cheering me on, it would definitely be a lot lamer if it was not for all of them. Everybody that comes up to me at every event to ask how I am doing, or recognize me as “The Great Nature Guy” makes it seem like I am having my own impact, in my own way. 

Jaime: That’s all great stuff! I’m sure your friends are happy and excited for your accomplishment! Just one more question and we’ll be done amigos.

While preparing for your decks, did you use/see any social media to help you solidify your build? Such as blogs, YouTube videos/channels, Facebook, Reddit, etc.

Noman Irfan: Facebook messenger and discord to mooch deck lists off Solemn. 🙂 

David Smart:  I don’t tend to use social media much, usually I’ve found it’s more helpful to have quality playtesting sessions with people I trust, although there is some good information to be gained by looking at general opinions on different decks because that might more strongly correlate to things like deck representation and general deck building trends. 

Andrew Williams: No, not particularly. I mostly just bounce ideas off of my teammates in order to nail a build down, but I did watch a lot of Gameplay videos on youtube in order for me to familiarize myself with how I thought people would be generally playing the newer decks while I was catching up. I do think that being able to look at the general discourse about cards and decks on social media is valuable to an extent, since that can generally indicate how people will build and play with those strategies. 

Jaime: Awesome! Thank you for sharing that as well, very much appreciated. Thanks again for joining me in this interview! I wish you the best and hope to see more from y’all in the metagame! Till next time amigos!

Key Takeaway

Play At Your Strengths

Noman had mentioned, “Personally, I feel I am a much better player than I am a deck builder, so I am grateful to have friends with incredible deck-building talent. “

This is often overlooked and most players feel that they have to figure out everything in order to see success. That’s not always the case.

Having friends that you can trust both as a person and with great ability, allows you to really play at the strengths you all can contribute. Also, saving you time in the long run.

Final Thoughts

I’m glad that they did extremely well. Having multiple tops and also being Champions for all 3 events, is amazing! Keep it up amigos!

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