Cervantes5 making top 8 at the UFS 2008 World Championship Event at GenCon must be a surprise for many players, but for me I always knew that this character was a beast.  Being the character that had the ability to neutralize potential field hazard and build up momentum with his ability alone, he was the best choice (in my opinion) for countering the most top tier control decks. This article is about how this character has developed within my playgroup and my team's journey to and within GenCon 2008.

It all begun sometimes before the 2008 Gulf Coast Championship.  Cervantes has always been among the favorites of my Soul Calibur characters alongside Nightmare and Talim.  Not so long after the release of Military Rank, I've built the deck known to be Three-Piece: Pirate King Cervantes.  The main combo of the deck was looping Immortality via Military Rank to force the opponent to fail their checks on their turn.  Cervantes5, whose symbols are Chaos, Evil, and Order, had access to many split cards such as Infiltrating, Dead Men Tell no Tales, Ancient Arts of Combat and Countless Days of Killing made it easy to setup the CC hax.  I've used this build for a couple of months in my local events and side games at the GCC and eventually got bored of him.  It wasn't that it was not competitive nor fun.  The reason was because the combo was too degenerate.  I can see the frustration in my players eyes when I sat down with him out.  So, with that, I moved on to try out other builds, but keeping him built and updated with each release.  But with each release the degenerateness of the build increase due to cards such as Blood Runs True and N-Type Human.  I eventually abandoned my treasured deck and took it apart.

It wasn't long before a local player and teammate decided that he wanted to give Cervantes5 a try.  Begging me for approval, which I had no rights to deny to begin with, Nick aka otakuV built and updated the Three-Piece into his own adaptation with a few new cards from Set 9.  Ira-Spinta and Mega Spike made its way into the deck without second thoughts.  Ira-Spinta was a obvious choice since it was pretty much Cervantes5's ability on steroid.  Mega Spike, being a 3 DF throw, made it's way in because of its split side's 6 Difficulty for the Immortality setup.

 The new build was so strong that I nearly gave in to rebuilding him again, but didn't do it since I promised Nick that I would not run Cervantes5 for Worlds.  My only chance of defeating the 3-Piece was via my aggro build, Fire Adon3.  With that marked the weakness of Cervantes5.  He requires heavy setup and is weak toward decks that can kill turn 2 consistently.  But once the setup is complete, there is virtually no stopping it since the opponent will always fail the 1st card they attempt to play each turn thus ending their turn.

 The day of GenCon finally comes and I was the only member of my team, Team Misdirection, to qualify for Worlds on the 1st day of Grinders.  Nick had been playing with Cervantes in each event.  The plan for the next day was that if my team was to lose early on in the Team Event that we would drop to allow my other teammates to try getting qualified for World Singles Event.  We lost the 1st game since both my teammates lost and I drew due to time (I was playing against Jihan's Talbain deck) and then drew in the 2nd match so we dropped to allow Nick and Finch to participate in the 2pm Grinders.  All was for nothing when later that day Mr. Steve Horvath announced that he was able to open up space for Worlds (after negotiating with GenCon reps) so that everyone who came would be able to play in Saturday's big event.  That's great, but I can't help but wonder how far my team would have gotten if we had stayed in the Team Event.

Saturday comes around and Nick being his usually self is unsure of what to run.  He borrows some Dan's Dragon Punch to build promo Dan since he was unsure of Cervantes.  Nick hasn't lost any games with Cervantes since he played with it at GenCon and only lost to diversity in the 1st Grinder because of his 3-0-2 score against another Cervantes's 4-1-0 score.  I eventually talked him into playing Cervantes5 as well as advising him to maindeck Tag Along, which he ended up regretting as the biggest mistake in building the deck.  I would've been disappointed in him if he didn't use Cervantes since he made me promise to not build Cervantes5 for the event, but not maindecking Tag Along was only a small matter to me since it was only for protection against what I predicted to be the deck's greatest weapon against the aggro builds.  With that I gained my 2 shots at worlds since he's running my previous character.  I, on the other hand, played with Iori which I've never lost with since building him 1 day prior to the event and throughout the event on Thursday and Friday.  My girlfriend insisted that I use Adon but I instead allowed her to use it since it's the only deck I have that she's capable of playing.

At the end of the Swiss rounds, I ended up with an average score of 3-3-1 while Nick made an outstanding 5-2-0.  There was little doubt that he would make it into the top 16 cut which he did.  With that, I was satisfied since he was able to leave a greater mark than I have at the GCC.  I knew at the bottom of my heart that he would not make it into the final round because of the few aggro builds that I saw in the line-up but I did not tell him so that his motivation would remain and hopefully some luck falls upon him.  He defeated 2 opponents and was stopped cold in the semi-finals against aggro Ukyo.  Ironically enough, that was the last character he used prior to picking up Cervantes.  I do not know the exact contents of his build, but I'll go ahead and list my own version which isn't too far from his current one.  Visit the FFG board for the Cervantes build listed by otakuV since I know he's going to post it up there eventually.

I present to you Three-Piece: Pirate King Cervantes.

character: 1

1x Cervantes5 (Chaos, Evil, Order) - 6HS, 26VT

action: 10

2x Infiltrating

4x Immortality

4x Tag Along

asset: 8

2x Basket of Tricks

2x Heisheng Jian

2x Olcadon's Mentoring

2x Addes Syndicate

attack: 10

2x Ira-Spinta

2x Moon Sault Slayer

3x Mega Spike

3x Widow Maker

foundation: 32

4x Megalomania

4x Blood Runs True

4x Cursed Blood

3x The Curse Broken

4x Countless Days of Killing

4x Military Rank

3x N-type Human

3x Ancient Arts of Combat

3x Dead Men Tell No Tales

The build Nick used had 2x Tag Alongs in the sideboard and did not use any Widow Makers.  He also ran 3 copies of Ira-Spinta and Moon Sault Slayer.  The foundation and asset distribution also varied slightly.