Fighter's Spotlight is an ongoing project concerned with tracking real-world professional cardfighters across the globe.
Tanaka Shouta/田中将太
Age: Unknown; Seniors DivisionTitles Won: Sendai Regional Champion (Senior Class)
Current Status: Sendai Regional Champion (Reigning)
Deck Type: Oracle Think Tank (Tsukuyomi)
Tanaka Shouta is the representative for Sendai in the Fighter's Climax 2012 winter national championship. Breaking a two-year tradition of Sendai representatives being Royal Paladin cardfighters, Tanaka is the first Tsukuyomi-based fighter to qualify for the senior championships since the Grand Prix. He is also the second such representative to be the champion of their region, after Komoto Takuya. His entry comes as a surprise to many, as the tournament environment of the time was dominated by crossride-endowed Kagerou, then thought to have outmoded Tsukuyomi as the defensive deck of the year.
Decks and Play Style
Tanaka's Tsukuyomi deck features many contemporary innovations over Komoto's, most noticeable among them the inclusion of only four grade 3s. A trend that first emerged in the FR2012 Trio Fights, the line of thinking behind this is that by using the Godhawk-Tsukuyomi line's search skills, grade security on par with running eight grade 3s can be achieved using only four. Thus, rather than try to maximize his available security using the line, Tanaka instead uses the skills to devote other slots in the deck to grade 2 units.
His trigger makeup is also interesting in that it consists entirely of critical and heal triggers, without the draws now standardized in professional play. This is compensated for both with Tsukuyomi's own counterblast skill, and with the draw skill of Luck Bird; unusual for a Tsukuyomi deck in that it takes away from the soul and therefore potentially becomes a hindrance to his overall strategy, Luck Bird is fueled both by Tsukuyomi's draw and by the soulcharging made available by Tanaka's maximized count of Oracle Guardian, Red-Eye. The trade off of these changes is that they give him further defensive power on par with and exceeding The End, but they also put Tanaka in greater risk of decking out.
Also unusual is that Tanaka's deck does not include Dark Cat among its grade 1s. The logic behind this is that Dark Cat gives cards to the opponent as well as himself, while Luck Bird functions as an adequate substitute that confers no such defensive strength, giving Tanaka an advantage over other decks of this type.
Winter 2012 Regional Tournament, Sendai Seniors Division (Japan)
Card Pool: TD01-BT08, PR 0001-0079
Grade 0
x1 Godhawk, Ichibyoshi (FVG)
x4 Lozenge Magus HT
x4 Oracle Guardian, Nike CT
x4 Psychic Bird CT
x4 Battle Sister, Ginger CT
Grade 1
x4 Battle Sister, Chocolat
x2 Oracle Guardian, Gemini
x4 Luck Bird
x4 Goddess of the Crescent Moon, Tsukuyomi
Grade 2
x3 Battle Sister, Mocha
x4 Silent Tom
x4 Goddess of the Half Moon, Tsukuyomi
x4 Oracle Guardian, Red-Eye
Grade 3
x4 Goddess of the Full Moon, Tsukuyomi
