Welcome to the first in my line of articles about the Path Of The Thirteen Seals. Good is the flavour of August, and a variable one it is at that. I'll be covering the various strategies and characters that are feasibly runnable for such tournaments over the next week or so, and today I'm talking about cards you should expect to see when entering a Good tournament.

Now Good is an incredibly varied resource, in the sense that you can play Aggro, Control, Hybrid or anything in between. There are so many different ways to play Good that it can be puzzling. Is too much choice a Good thing? 

Lets look at some of these 'staple' cards for Good. I hate to use the word staple, as it signifies that somebody playing Good HAS to play that card. But facts are facts, some cards are better than others and we all need to expect certain cards.

Foundations-wise, you're expecting to see a whole bundle of Holding Ground around. With damage pumps like Fight Or Flight and Savage Fighter and the immense amount of damage reduction cards flying about, it's a pretty big necessity, and the chances are, if you're not playing it, your opponent will be. The best way to get around Holding Ground is to bait it out. Save up more than one attack in your hand, and then force them to use their Holding Grounds on something big, and then surprise them with something bigger. 

Speaking of which, Fight Or Flight is a pretty massive card to watch out for, especially if your up against Multiple attacks. We can't forget that Fight Or Flight has the same effect on Multiples as Holding Ground, it reduces the to their printed damage, (which is  0) and then pumps it by it's printed damage (also 0), and thats just its defensive capabilities. Playing it on a Darkness Blade, Feline Spike, or anything with damage thats at least 5 can be lethal, ands it's pretty harsh on cards with less than 5 damage too if you're careful. Spiritual Center ought to sort this out, as they can't boost damage after it's been used. 

Other massively popular cards are bound to include Roam The World, Red Lotus Of The Sun (you wouldn't have thought Good would have that much commit/destroy power, but it really does, as I'll explain in a moment) Mentally Unstable, The Don's Right Hand Man and many more. Combos such as N-Type Human/Achieving Your Goals and The Sword That Protects are bound to be rife as well.

Action/Asset power is where Good excels. As a matter of fact, it's here that you'll have most trouble deciding on what to play. In my opinion, it all depends on the style of play you intend to employ. Control decks are  most likely to run Bringing The Master To His Knees, Assassination Arts and the like in order to stop your opponent from doing what they want to do, whereas Aggro decks will be more likely to run One Armed Maneuvers and Temporal Ascension. I intend in my Good deck, however to be taking a slightly different approach at disruption, as Good is the only resource to have both access to Dark Heart and to Crippling Strike. Both of these cards are surprises to your opponent (being actions), stop your opponent from gaining something that is clearly very important (momentum or cards in hand) and can have a lot of gain for yourself. Now this can be a game turner in the right deck. Imagine that you're playing against a Felicia deck who decides to use her Form on you to clear her card pool into her momentum. If you play Crippling Strike, it messes her turn up completely by having the cards remain in the card pool, and clearing your own.

Dark Heart has the same effect, but for drawing cards. If your opponent plays Temporal Ascension or Antisocial (Or even your own Antisocial can work for this) expecting to make them self safe for your turn and you Dark Heart them, they've left themselves open for your turn and given you the attacks you'll need to kill them with.

Other popular Assets and Actions will most likely include Mysterious Stance (it's best to bluff this one out in the same way you would Holding Ground), About Face as a replacement for the Injury assets, Turnabout (which I would play as bait for Holding Ground) and Basket Of Tricks.

Attacks in Good are possibly the most variable part of it. For a control-orientated deck, there are a LOT of attacks that Stun, Commit and Destroy, making those Red Lotus all too important in at least your sidedeck. Shadow Blade, Flashing Buckler, Ichi No Tachi, Charlie's Fierce Punch, Not The Strongest and Crippling Strike's attack half are but a few of the Stunners you'll encounter. In this type of deck, you'll generally encounter 2 main choices for kill cards, and the one played will most likely depend on whether the player is generating momentum or not, Those cards are Feline Spike and Darkness Blade.

As unfortunately expensive as these cards are, both to acquire and to play they are amazing cards. As a matter of fact, Feline Spike covers one of Aggro's main killers too. It's a difficult card to get around, as if the enhance on it has been used, the opponent becomes unable to play a "multiblock" sych as Ichi No Taschi on it, as cards may not be removed from the card pool anymore. Staring either of these down as reversals is daunting to say the least, especially if your opponent also has Fight Or Flight down. If you didn't already have a reason to play Holding Ground, this is a big one.

If you're wanting a slightly less expensive approach to playing a tournament level Good deck, then playing cards such as Flowing Gale Hook, Turning Kali Strikes, Ryu's Shin Shoryuken and 125 Rapids Of Rage might be more up your street. However, to play 125 Rapids, you need a lot of momentum to pull it off, so you may want to consider running a character that can get it quickly like Felicia, Frogase or if you're planning to be Unorthodox; ::Charlie. 

 Thats it for now, but next time, I'll be writing about the Characters that you'll be likely to see within the tournaments, and I'll post up a decklist that's cost-efficient and effective for those who can't afford all those Feline Spikes, Mysterious Stances and About Faces :)

Henshin-a-go-go Baby! :P