Silver Thorn Dragon Empress, Venus Luquier

   This time the review is on our last boss card, and the latest of the Luquier lines! I've finally played enough of Venus to feel more comfortable writing about her and giving tips (this article has been sitting as a draft for the past month or so.. lol). If you are not familiar with her effect, you can look her up here.

   Long story short, Luquier Venus gives you a potential +5 for a cost of ECB2. She's basically the original Luquier with 33.3% off the cost that can call potentially 25% more than Luquier, and with higher quality. She also lost the +3k power gain per superior call, which had to be made up using Upright Lion. Unlike Luquier Reverse, she gains the advantage in an instant, but is unable to reallocate power to her columns, and cannot prolong her effect over the course of the a game; her effect happens at most twice a game without heals, but usually once because she's not the only CB user of the deck (the first 2 CBs usually end up going to Ana/Maricica).

How to Gain the Most Out of Venus

   Venus is a little tricky to play. While her skill is fairly straightforward and you can really only fill your field with it and pump up a few Lions, she's often seen as a +5 for 2 CBs, and situations where we would naturally gain +5 off of her is actually very rare. In order to get a +5 off 1 usage of her skill, you literally need to eat a full field wipe, or not call any boosters at all and intercept with your entire front row, both are either rare or unpractical. But what you can do is to artificially prepare for Venus beforehand and make a +4 or at least a +3 off her skill very reasonable and reachable.

A field like this picture keeps your early game
presence, and sets up for a +4 for Venus

   How do you do this? Here's the trick: call as little boosters as humanly possible without hurting yourself or giving up bigger advantage (eg. not calling Ana to boost a RG Rising Dragon when your opponent is sitting on anything 9k or less for the sake of an additional +1 off Venus is just plain dumb), and delay your Emil usage for as long as humanly possible without hurting yourself (eg. seeing a Linchu as FVG and not using Emil right away is just stupid) before you use Venus's limit break. This way, when you intercept with your entire front row the turn before you're going to use Venus's ability, you just opened up 3~4 spaces for Venus to +3~4 (see picture). You can also take a look at my video here to see how it works in practice.

   So what's the catch? The catch is, you still need to maintain your early game advantage and play properly with your early game combos while still planning ahead for your Venus play. If you lose the game momentum only because you're trying to get an additional +1 off several turns later from Venus, it's not worth it. Cards are generally worth much more earlier on in the game because your opponent will still only have access to a single drive check (so less cards generated naturally), and they need to keep enough cards to ride successfully to G3. Cards several turns later that really only translates to an additional 5k shield in hand is also not worth losing your entire early game momentum to. This is also why you can reasonably gain a +3~4 off Venus fairly easily, but gaining a +5 without hurting yourself is extremely difficult.

Venus's Role

   There really isn't much to it. I mean, she's essentially Luquier without the +3k per call and a cheaper cost  to Luquier's skill. So she's really just 1.) a field re-generator, 2.) massive advantage engine, and 3.) a finisher.

Technically he's not strong for the field
wipe. But it happens from time to time

   Her field re-generator aspect is fairly obvious. When you eat a field wipe, she literally makes up the entire field back for CB2. Obviously this field-wipe thing occurs fairly rarely. The more common scenario is when you committed a field early and mid game and your opponent kills your RGs to try to slow down your damage, you regenerate and keep the pressure pumping for CB2. This aspect makes her very suited for rushing and committing to a field early because she can just keep the flow going even if your opponent tries to stall by bullying and taking out your RGs. This aspect also makes sure that if you have Eva to break ride onto, that you'll always have a full field for your Eva.

   Her massive advantage engine aspect is what was descried on top under how to gain the most out of Venus. By calling something like 4 units, you are extending the advantage gap by 4 in a single use. Honestly, it's still not nearly as impressive as CBD + IZD combo since each lock is worth 1~2 cards (you spend at least 1 less card to guard per column locked, and an additional card for each trigger checked), and CBD further gets +2 off each locked card, meaning triangle locks are worth 3~6 cards saved in guarding, and CBD gets +2 *3 off that triangle lock, which totals to a 9~12 card gap per combo. It's literally less than half of what the CBD + IZD combo generates in terms of raw advantage, but hey they don't have the early game we have, and that's why they attracted all the hate because CBD is just way undercosted.

This is what a finishing field looks like, if you
have 2 Lions just replace the dragon with a lion

   Lastly, Venus acts as a finisher for Silver Thorn. This is a more common use of Venus, and she's really the only reliable finisher Silver Thorn has if you didn't break ride. However, Venus cannot finish a game by herself because she lacks any power boost. Instead, she relies on Upright Lion to do the power up. By calling a fill field with her skill, each Lion will gain at least +12000 power because you call 4 other Silver Thorn units (3000 *4). This number goes up by +3000 for each Zelma you called along with Luquier Venus's ability, usually up to +6000 power (2 Zelma). So she essentially creates 1~2 28000 (up to 34000 if you have Zelma) columns with Upright Lion (9000 + 7000 + 3000 *4), resulting into a very Great-Nature like field for your push. Keep in mind, since usually 2 CBs will go to Ana and Maricica during your early and mid game, this means Venus will probably only go off once per game. So don't waste this big push as it's very valuable to Silver Thorn. If you have seen my video on Venus and Zelma, you'll see how this works in practice.

Skyhigh Walker

   Alright, I'm sure some of you probably have the question "is it worth it to run Skyhigh Walker to unflip damage for Venus?" in mind. The thought process behind it will probably be something along the lines of "if Venus's ability costs 2 CBs, then having 2 Skyhigh Walkers makes her skill free constantly! +5 for free! OP!" Here's how I'm going to answer: go try it out yourself, but I can share you my experience with it.

   Skyhigh Walker is a stand trigger, and stand triggers actually works fine with Silver Thorn if you know what you're doing. So the concern with Sky High Walker isn't here. The concern with Skyhigh Walker is essentially how consistent and reliable he is, how gimmicky he is, and how well he actually works with Venus.

   Lets first look at the real side of Skyhigh Walker. Yes he can be called out by Venus for free (grade 0), but if you want to keep the 'loop' going for discounts on CB, you either have to 1.) keep him around for boosting and then use his effect next turn right before you use Venus, or 2.) call him out, use him right away, and then call boosters from hand or don't call any boosters. Either way, you're going to have to save spots open for him and give up a legit unit out of Venus's potential 5 units she'd be calling.

   For scenario 1, he's a horrid 4k booster. The only 16k+ column that will happen with him around are 1.) Rising Dragon, and 2.) VG booster when your VG is cross ridden, and 13k bodies will be a nightmare for any column he's boosting because nothing in the deck hits for 14k+ solo besides Lion. The fact that he's not a Silver Thorn and therefore won't be pumping up the Lions didn't help here either. This means chances are you'd have a bad column with him around trying to boost. For scenario 2, it just defeats the purpose of Venus in the first place, because you're trying to avoid calling from hand and widen the advantage gap. By needing to call from hand you're reducing the effectiveness of Venus.

   The second issue is that there's no reliable way to get your Skyhigh Walkers because he's not a Silver Thorn. This makes relying on him not so reliable. He's also a 10k shield. For each Skyhigh you are using, you're reducing your defense by reducing the available 10k shields at your disposal. 

   His final issue is, you simply don't have that much deck or soul to abuse him. Lets say you actually can call out 3~4 quality units with Venus (3~4 because the last 1~2 spots you need to save for Skyhigh). You'd eventually run out of viable units in your soul to call after 1~2 uses. This means you need to refill your soul with Emil. Add to that Venus soul charges 2 every time she uses her effect, you end up with something unsustainable.

   So my personal thoughts on Skyhigh? I wouldn't focus on it because it's too gimmicky. I'd just rather pump up my Lions and slap people with it than making weaker Lions but try to prolong the use of Venus.

   However, Skyhigh Walker is decent in that as long as your not aiming for a "free" Venus skill, as he doesn't cripple your columns nearly as much; making Venus's skill equivalent to CB1 is more than enough in most cases. He is also very, very situationally useful during the late game when all 3 of your columns are consisted of something that includes Ana or Maricica and when your CBs are typically all used up; getting 1 CB open at that stage when your opponent is at 4 damage drives them nuts as letting anything through will result in an additional attack, so that letting a column through doesn't actually save them shields. But I still don't find Skyhigh Walker worth using over Silver Thorn triggers for the sake of EBC and Zelma; being swappable by Zelma is a big plus during the early and mid game when you can scale and change your field to a much more threatening one.

   Lastly, some of you may already have seen this, but here's a video that shows a good example of how to prepare for and use Venus: