Showing posts with label Deck Profile. Show all posts

7/03/2016

CB3 G-PR♥ISM Prototype 4

Test Build - 4

PRAISE THE SUN!

FVG:
PR♥ISM-Duo, Tisza *1

Trigger: (8 crit/4 draw/4 heal):
PR♥ISM-Image, Sunshine Clear (Critical) *4
PR♥ISM-Miracle, Canary (Critical) *4
PR♥ISM-Miracle, Adria (Draw) *4
PR♥ISM-Miracle, Timor (Heal) *4

Grade 1: (*13)
PR♥ISM-Duo, Aria (Perfect Guard) *4
Persevering Talent, Shandi *3
PR♥ISM-Promise, Princess Leyte *4
PR♥ISM-Romance, Mercure *2

Grade 2: (*11)
Admired Sparkle, Spica *4
PR♥ISM-Promise, Princess Celtic *4
PR♥ISM-Romance, Lumiere *2
PR♥ISM-Image, Sunshine Rosa *1

Grade 3: (*9)
PR♥ISM-Image, Vert *4
Brand-New-PR♥ISM, Garnet *3
PR♥ISM-Promise, Labrador *2

G-Zone: (*16)
PR♥ISM-Promise, Princess Labrador *4
School Etoile, Olyvia *4
PR♥ISM-Image, Sunshine Vert *2
Air Element, Sebreeze *1
Hand in Hand, Leona *1
Sailor's Medley, Nasha *2
Dark Element, Dizmel *1
Metal Element, Scryew *1

So it's been a while since the last update, and honestly after being bombarded with bad cards after bad cards that were revealed during Clan Booster's reveal month, I wasn't so sure that Prisms would make it back alive. However, they DID manage to make it back alive and also turns out to be the only surviving deck type out of the disaster that is Clan Booster 3. PRAISE THE SUN is really all I can say as the Prism Sunshine indeed did save Clan Booster from becoming a complete train wreck.

Anyways, before I start I want to show off my swag that I pulled out of my 5 boxes of CB3 ~:3c

Coral bre... bestest!

Alright, now back to the deck. So I've started testing since the Brand New Prisms reveal (without much success for obvious reasons), and right after Sunshine Prism's reveal, I started vigorously testing to see how the new Prisms cards would play out. The list you see here is my 4th prototype iteration I worked on and so far, and I'll explain some of the thought processes.

Earlier Prototypes

Typically unless something is dead obvious, I sanity test most new cards before I start diving into cooking up prototypes as doing so gives me a better picture how cards are intended to work and how they actually work in practice. So yes, I have tested with Emeral and Sapphires prior to the prototypes to verify their playability, but they unfortunately don't really make it to the playable cut.

To give a brief preview of the prototypes I messed around with prior to the 4th one:

Prototype 1:
4 Garnet 4 Lab 1 Vert all in gorilla (this variant attempts to abuses the extra attacks from Sunshine Vert into Garnet/Labrador)

Prototype 1 ends up with a lot of multi-attack, but lacks the consistency abuse Garnet/Lab's LB4 after a Sunshine Vert attack due resource issues and how Sunshine Vert is a more costly restand than your typical restanders (net -2 instead of -1). Overall I didn't like it because it is too much of a glass cannon, and the added reward didn't feel like it justified the amount of risk that's added to this variant.

Prototype 2:
4 Vert 4 Garnet 1 Lab with some Clears and Rosa (this variant attempts to abuse Sunshine Clear)

Prototype 2 had some serious issues with Sunshine Rosa and OG Clear where both of them ends up just being vanilla and dead draws way too often. This resulted into a build where if you can't afford to abuse Clear either due to CB issues or other reasons (or, simply damage checking/drawing into your Vert/Rosa/Clears), you are stuck with cards that doesn't do much overall. It ends up being a less consistent and less powerful original gorilla.

Prototype 3:
4 Vert 4 Garnet 1 Lab 4 Emilia and Akari over Tisza for anti-kagero/Chaos semi-advantage bruiser (this variant attempts to ignore Kagero and generate good advantage by giving up speed)

Prototype 3 was interesting; a LOT of tempo were lost in this build because Mecure and Tisza has to be dropped with that many non-Prism G2s. The trade off while isn't terrible, is not great as it makes the deck very slow (and while being slow, does not hold up the power to other slow decks like Seven Seas or Nociel). At the same time, it reduced Sunshine Vert plays consistency considerably due to the heavy amounts of non-prisms in the deck. However, it does give Kagero some serious headaches with Emilia having Resist because as most people are aware, Kagero today tends to run 2~3 Denial Griffins and 1 Defeat Flare Dragon. What this means is if you use a Princess Labrador to pump up your Emilia lane into 26k, Kagero will have trouble guarding that lane with only 1 card because vanilla Griffins/Defeat Flares only guard for 15k shield value.

Here are a few more random notes regarding my testing during the development process for the prototypes.

Current Build

For prototype 4, after having experimented with the new cards quite a bit and having issues over complexity, I reverted back to the simpler build that goes back in focusing on consistency and treat the new cards as a bonus rather than the main game plan. This ended up being much better than the other prototypes and is basically an extension of the original gorilla.dek.

The deck largely plays similarly to the original gorilla, but has several new combos and options to jump into, now allowing the deck to adapt to more different hand types and situations. Other than the obvious Sunshine Vert plays, most of these combos involves Sunshine Clear. I'm still exploring new combos, but I already know that you can get some funny interactions on Sunshine Vert turns.

New Toys

PR♥ISM-Image, Sunshine Clear

You thought Flogal was strong?
Well here's our version.

While everyone were probably hyped all over Sunshine Vert as a Prism Nextage, and she is indeed a great card, Sunshine Clear is the true MVP in my opinion of the Prism Sunshine trios. For the first obvious bit, she has Prism in her name, and that alone already did a lot. But when she was revealed, what completely blew me away was her skill; I was not expecting Prisms to receive a critical trigger as strong as this.

Sunshine Clear is one card that fits in multiple roles rolled all into one. For starters, she gave Prisms an additional way to perform multiple attacks during battle phase, and that is huge. What this means is Prisms are now less reliant on Spica to perform multiple attacks, and it gives more ways, and hence consistency, to push in those extra attacks than before.

She can turn into a 9k beater on a Princess Labrador turn and then turn herself into a 9~11k beater in the same turn. She can also allow Olyvia to make 5 attacks instead of the traditional 4 without a Spica (eg. attack with her boosted/boosting something, attack with the other side front row only, then Olyvia bounces Sunshine Clear column and the solo beater on the other side and calls 2 back, Clear's skill superior call a beater/attacker from deck), or even with Sunshine Vert (eg. Sunshine Vert bounce her and a front row unit, superior call Sunshine Rosa to the front, then Vert break ride to trigger Rosa twice). She also works with Spica, allowing you to call a full column, or turn into a Clear that returns to hand but gives whatever beater Spica called out a total of +7k with Spica's power boost, pushing even your 9k beaters casually to 16k. I'm sure there are more combos, but these are just a few examples (I'm still exploring other ways to abuse this card).

She also increases your striding consistency, allowing you to almost always have stride fodders in hand once you start striding if you need to (which also conveniently adds to Sunshine Vert consistency). Besides that, due to the fact that she can transform into either an attacker or a booster, she drastically increases the consistency of providing you with a flow of attackers should you need them. Better yet, she does all this while diluting your deck of non-triggers and shuffling her back and increase your deck's trigger concentration. To make things even more favorable, Olyvia and Princess Labrador both have the ability to bounce your rear guards before they perform drive checks, so you don't even need to wait to receive increased change of hitting triggers as a nice little bonus.

All in all, this card is ridiculously fluid and strong, and I'm sure there are more combos to be explored from this card.

PR♥ISM-Image, Sunshine Vert

Then we have our big star of the show, the one card that attracted all the spotlight in Clan Booster 3, a card that some claim to be broken - Sunshine Vert.

A 3rd finisher-tier stride along side with
Olyvia and Labrador is great

On first sight she seems OP and seems like another Nextage, but that's only on the surface and isn't entirely true. Once you read a little deeper, you'll notice there are several key differences: for starters, Sunshine Vert is more costly to use than your standard restanders.

Instead of costing a net -1 like everyone else, she costs a net -2 (discard 3 + 1 from reride for a +2 from twin-drive). On top of that, she has a lot more conditions slapped onto her, requiring a Prism G3 to re-ride into, and for you to be in LB4. What this means is she's not only more costly, she's also generally harder to use than Nextage, and therefore having a much higher risk to stride into due to making you prone to take damage (she costs a net -2) when you are already at high damage. To make the matter worse, her skill is a limit break, and she doesn't activate her skill until after performing drive check, giving her a chance to fail if you happen to check a heal trigger. Lastly, unless you are already sitting on a Vert or at least going into a Labrador, the 2nd attack generated from Sunshine Vert isn't as consistently strong as Chronojet.

However, this doesn't stop her from being a great card. Unlike Nextage, Sunshine Vert has tremendous synergy with other Prism G3s, typically enabling 1~2 extra attacks while being a pseudo-Nextage. This alone already gives Sunshine Vert a good chance to be deadlier than a Nextage. In additional to that, she also works well with cards like Princess Leyte or Yarmouk, making sure the quality if your extra attacks are high. Finally, unlike Nextage, she is not generation break bound, and this means if someone tries to trade damage with you and ends up high in damage, you could now dunk them with a Sunshine Vert play, which works nicely in conjunction with Labrador's LB4 (who could dunk people before if you were to ride to G3 first).

Do keep in mind that typically Sunshine Vert forces out pretty much the same amount of cards in terms of minimum amount of cards required to guard all the attacks as a traditional Olyvia-Spica turn (although she does require higher quality otherwise), and the classic Olyvia-Spica turn is of much lower risk to perform. So make sure you stride accordingly depending on what is the best in terms of risk-reward factor based on your situation.

In essence, she's a high risk, very high reward card. But due to her high-risk nature, it is very unlikely that you'd ever want to stride into her more than once, and that's the primary reason why you see me only running 2 at the moment.

Brand-New-PR♥ISM, Garnet

Just as we rejoice getting another G3 in Prisms,
Vert is mandatory at 4 again.

Garnet is a new Prism G3 that Prisms received in CB3, and functions similarly to Labrador in that her LB4 allows her to call up to 3 Prisms. Unlike Labrador, she trades the +10k power and +1 critical for a LB5 triple-drive, and cannot bounce on her own.

The greatest difference between her and Labrador is that Garnet's LB4 can call over occupied circles. While this may not seem like much, it's actually not a small deal, because that means unlike Labrador, she can enable up to 5 attacks on her own, and on a Sunshine Vert turn, it means she can call over an existing Spica to allow you to weave in some Spica madness with Sunshine Vert that Labrador cannot do. However, unlike Labrador, she attacks for weak numbers after a Sunshine Vert if you managed to miss Vert as your initial ride, and on top of that, the bonus skill she gains through LB4 is prone to failure if you check heal triggers. And these factors together makes her not really a direct upgrade to Labrador, but rather a G3 that does similar things with different niches, and hence she's not going to be replacing Labrador directly.

Another niche she has over Labrador is her 2nd skill can be triggered off by Leona. Honestly, this isn't something you can count on as Leona is usually rather underwhelming most of the time (card Leona calls cannot bypass guard restrictions that prevents calling from hand, and the call to guardian circle is mandatory if she chose to bounce a unit), and that the ability is very weak to controls and opens you up against control decks if you chose to try to do it. However it's still a neat little bonus if it happens.

I'm still currenly unsure of which is the G3 of choice between Garnet and Labrador, but as of now I'm leaning towards Garnet.

PR♥ISM-Image, Sunshine Rosa

Vanilla

The last of the Sunshine Prisms, that unlike the rest of her sisters, is unfortunately a vanilla the bulk of the time. What killed this card's utility is that requirement of having a vanguard with LB4, meaning she does not function when you are on Olyvia or on Princess Labrador. The reason she's ran is for a increased consistency for Sunshine Clear, and how she still has the niche of making some funny plays on a Sunshine Vert turn (and you can directly search her out with Sunshine Clear). Another small little niche that has yet to occur for me is that she is also triggered by Leona for more defense boost.

Keep in mind that even if she is bounced herself, her skill can still be triggered. What this means is that for example, if you have her on the field and used Shine Vert's skill and then proceed to break ride, she can easily be triggered 3~4 times and give you a nice little power-up (just make sure that if she is bounced herself, she's bounced by the break ride and not the stride so she dips in from the bounce from the break ride).

Overall, I can see 1~2 of her being ran in the deck, but being a vanilla really hurts her, and I'm honestly not sure if she's really worth the spot.

Emeral and Sapphire:

Unfortunately for Emeral and Sapphine, they're not going to be used in the new Prisms for several reasons. Mostly because they are way too limited and narrow in their timing, have way too limited targets, and way too limited uses to justify running them. Emeral for example doesn't even function properly on Olyvia turns (she'd be practically vanilla), and Sapphine basically provides nothing to the deck as she bounces before main phase (meaning you not only need to have units on the field, it also doesn't synergize with Princess Leyte) and is limited to bouncing Prisms only (meaning she really isn't doing much).

Closing

I believe this prototype variant will be the core where my stable builds will stem from as it's got the best all-rounded performance overall. However I do feel there is still room for some tweaking, namely the deck could use a bit more finishing power (I'd probably run a bit more crits), and I'm kinda iffy with running Princess Celtic now that she's lost the bulk of her power with Sebreeze being a thing. I'm also still juggling between Mecure and the original Clear, although so far Mecure seems to have been better. G-zone might see some tweaking too, such as Sebreeze may not be necessary (need to test it out really), and due to how Sunshine Vert can whiff, I've been considering running 3 or 4 Verts. But that boils down to if a more diverse G-zone benefits me more often, or if adding in more Verts benefits me more often.

This time I also chose to list out the other routes and prototypes I've gone through to hopefully give you guys a better understanding of my thought process, which I hope helps make that more transparent.

As usual, if you have any questions, comments, wants to let me know if I'm missing something, etc, let me know in the comment section below.

11/28/2015

GBT-05 Silver Thorns Prototype & Card Reviews

For the list of Silver Thorn card effects, click here

FVG:

Silver Thorn Beast Tamer, Emil *1

Triggers *16: (10 Crit/2 Draw/4 Heal)

Grade 1 *14:

Grade 2 *11:

Grade 3 *8:

G-zone *8:

Wow, I have been incredibly busy recently that I don't even know if I'll come up with a recipe I'm happy with before GBT-06 hits, so I'm kinda merging a deck post with card reviews. We'll see.

So a little bit of what's going on here for me...

The most recent event that happened was the CA regionals that attended and scrubbed out with a 0:2 using my gorilla Rrisms, where both games I lost when I was at 2 damage versus my opponent's 5 with basically no cards in hand or field on their end, only for me to never drive check triggers, not draw into PGs, or draw into all my G3s and die to their 6th heals and double/triple crits. Oh well, that's CFV in a nutshell, and considering my deck did perform exceptionally well, I'm ok with it. I mean, consistently taking control of the game tempo and driving my opponent to the corner with a 3 damage lead and a 6~8 card lead while drive checking pure crap is no simple feat, even if I literally died to a combination of 6th heals and double/triple crits or getting 6 of my G3s all happening at the same time. My gorillas did well, and I have no regrets. Ok maybe I do, I wanted the name gorilla to become more public, but yeah.

Other than that, work has been a sh*storm for me recently, and I've been incredibly busy the past couple of weeks; working late, skip entire weekends, etc. Fortunately after working over weekends for 2 weeks back to back, we got most of our stuff done. Busy season for our clients means busy season for us too. Meh.

Anyways, now that the rant is over, let's get to the new toys Silver Thorns got from GBT05. Specifically, we got 2 new Silver Thorn units and some generic support.

Silver Thorn Magician, Colette

Wa... wait! Stop, stop soul charging
that non-Silver Thorn!

The best asset we received by far is Silver Thorn Magician, Colette. Colette is great; being a 10k booster in a deck full of on-hit pressure units that can reuse on-call abilities to re-use that 10k boost is pretty darn good. She significantly reduced our reliance on Upright Lions to do anything in the late game, and removed the complete reliance on superior calling to create big columns. She easily forms 21k columns with Clemens and Lions, and she makes Mystique Luquier able to form 21k columns much more consistently, and removed the reliance of needing Zelmas to make larger columns. To make things even better, even with Colette's slowness of requiring a G3+ vanguard, she can punish those playing G2 games very hard by pushing Maricica or Clemens to a 19~21k column with on-hit effects. Yup, we not only have the luxury of playing the G2 game, but we also have the luxury of choosing not to participate in that G2 game and begin with a punishing G3 turn even without stride. If we ride to G3 with being the first to stride? Ouch.

Obviously, it's not all pure goodness for Colette. She's not online until we sit on a Luquier, she's adding more competition for the already very cramped G1 space, and for whatever reason, Bushiroad decided it was a good idea to give her a chance to fail. However, even with all that in mind, she's still easily the 2nd best G1 we have access to now following Zelma because she boosts our mid/late game power quite significantly, and also greatly improved our finishing capabilities.

Silver Thorn Magician, Clemens

If only she's online with any Silver Thorn
VG, like Machining Mosquito...

Another thing we received is Clemens, who while is not bad, isn't nearly as great as Colette. She's not even a direct upgrade to Rising Dragon that we've learned to love. While she largely fulfill the same niche of being a solo beater as Rising Dragon, she's completely vanilla early game, cannot solo swing at a 7k VG body with a trigger, and cannot form 19k columns. However, she does add that delicious redundancy to our already plenty on-hit pressure, and makes it much easier to achieve a field where there's on-hit effects across the board. To make things better, her (to-VG-only) Mirror Demon ability is free, and theoretically she can perform infinite attacks with 2 Zelmas if the opponent somehow cannot guard and doesn't check damage triggers. She is also quite delicious when we toss a Colette behind her, making a quick and dirty 21k column with some on-hit effect that also baits bad plays out of your opponent. Overall, she's not-bad/10 but also not-great/10.

Masquerade Bunny

Not being a Silver Thorn hurts a ton.

Finally, we also got 2 new Stride units and a stride enabler. These support however, after play testing, perform very awkwardly with Silver Thorns. Masquerade Bunny is very cloggy and is quite a dead card as long as you're not using her to stride due to Silver Thorn's extreme xenophobia; initially
I tested the deck with 4 of her, and then 3, and then 2, and now completely removed her. It's a shame that she's kinda necessary to spam stride consistently without hurting yourself, but her very existence itself is hurting yourself. I'm still trying to find ways to fit her in, but so far it seems unlikely.

Jester Demonic Dragon, Lunatec Dragon

Apparently he likes candies and children.

Lunatec also plays awkwardly with Silver Thorns. His ability doesn't really mesh with Silver Thorns at all, and he basically just ends up being a very bad version of Saint Blow Dragon in Silver Thorns as we don't actually do superior calls mid-battle unless we land hits... and Lunatec doesn't actually make those attacks harder to hit unless you hit them first (even when you do, 2~4k power doesn't break into a new stage that often). See the problem here? Essentially, he's a card that threatens your opponent that "if I land hits on my attacks, even my 9k beaters will become 11k solo beaters" and potentially carry a crit himself. But that's all he does other than being a CB-free Blizza.

Dragon Masquerade, Harri

Well Primerva didn't have a GB3 slapped on her.
Why do you do this to us, Bushi!

Harri on the other hand is actually not a bad finisher; you can achieve attacks with similar effects to Primerva with Harri where you attack 5 times (Zelma can stand a column), and at the same time powers up Lions and Colette to achieve even better numbers. However, that GB3 slapped on Harri is a very significant drawback as it makes him incredibly slow. With the only way to speed Harri up being using Blizza or Lunatec Dragon, when Silver Thorns don't actually spam stride that much and when Lunatec is so mediocre for Silver Thorn, that GB3 becomes very hard to achieve, rendering Harri mostly unused or unusable in the vast majority of your games. Also do note that Harri gets completely tyrannosaurus rekt by lock, which is quite unfortunate.

The Deck

Now to the deck... First keep in mind that this is still a prototype and not even a stable build yet, as I still feel there are parts of the deck that runs 'clunky' and not 'smooth' or 'flows properly' yet. In essence, even though I have started testing this deck for a while, it's still far from finished as I just don't feel the deck flows right yet.

Colette is a great asset to Silver Thorns, now the only real issue is that, due to PG and Zelma being absolute staples, Colette needs to compete space with Masquerade Bunny, Breathing Dragon, and Ana (and even LB4 enabler, although I can't see that really trumping over any of the 3). Considering that Colette is vanilla pre-Luquier, replacing Ana with Colette wouldn't really be an upgrade to the deck as it'll just be shifting power from early to mid/late. Keeping both however, we are adding a much stronger late game without giving up what gave Silver Thorns a good early game and earned them the impression of being a weenie deck. As I've explained in my card review, I have decided to drop Masquerade Bunny due to her being a dead card way too often.

The logic of the deck is actually very simple: we keep what made us good at early game, and we add in new assets that gives us a much stronger mid and late game than before. We still have the early rush, but now we have a stronger on-hit pressure across the board, and we get bigger columns and more consistent big columns in our late game.

I'm still tinkering with how the deck is going (this is still a prototype, even if it is revision 3), but I think I'm on the right track. I'll be testing stands as well as we now have 8 on-hit beaters in the deck, although I have a strong feeling that crits will mesh better with this current deck due to Silver Thorns being able to make larger columns more consistently and more easily. I also am thinking of testing a Silver Thorn-Harri hybrid build as it can potentially be the 'mesh' that fixes Harri's early game and Silver Thorn's late game due to Silver Thorns while being quite xenophobic, doesn't care that much about who your vanguard is.

Ultimately as I mentioned earlier, the hardest part to decide is still the G1 line up, as after the staple 4 PGs and 4 Zelmas, there's only 6 spots left for all the other G1 goodness, and all of the G1s are very valuable assets that one could potentially run; I feel like whatever happens before GBT06, chances are if this deck recipe is going to change, it'll happen largely on the G1 lineup.

One other thing I did notice through testing PMs in general (not just Silver Thorns, but also the Harri and Catherine variants. Yes, I do like Pale Moon a lot.) is that PM has an incredibly weak overall stride lineup. Most strides PM has access to right now are quite lackluster, and feels that there's something missing. The variant with the strongest initial stride is Harri due to synergy with Lunatec Dragon, but even then it's still rather mediocre. Lunatech Dragon is still essentially a largely worse version of Saint Blow, and Harri being a largely worse version of Primerva due to that awkward slowness and the inability to actually plus from it (yes you do minus your opponent quite a bit, but you can't actually plus off it like Primerva can). Clifford still is just another typical on-hit stride, and Amanda unfortunately is a largely-inferior but occasionally-superior Clifford. Considering GBT06 will further PM's support, I feel that's when Bushiroad will wrap up PMs with their (hopefully) proper support.

As usual, if you have any questions, suggestions, etc, feel free to leave a comment below.

10/16/2014

Blue Flame Liberators

Blueflame Liberators

Stable 2

For all decks labeled as:
stable - working as intended.
test - still under tuning and some things may or may not work as intended.

*Note: Working as intended != finished build, it just means deck functions as planned and is overall consistent

FVG:
Coronagal Liberator *1

Trigger: (6 crit/6 stand/4 heal)
Liberator of Holy Tree, Elkia (Heal) *4
Liberator of Hope, Epona (Critical) *4
Liberator of Ambition, Asus (Critical) *2
Catchgal Liberator (Stand) *4
Fortune Liberator (Stand) *2

Grade 1: (*13)
Shine Formation Liberator, Eldol (PG) *4
May Rain Liberator, Bruno *4
Fast Chase Liberator, Josephus *4
Little Liberator, Marron *1

Grade 2: (*12)
Liberator of Destiny, Aglovale *4
Liberator of Oath, Aglovale *4
Liberator, Lawful Trumpeter *4

Grade 3: (*8)
Bluish Flame Liberator, Percival *1
Bluish Flame Liberator, Prominence Core *4
Bluish Flame Liberator, Prominence Glare *3

So I haven't posted for a while... with Silver Thorns not getting any support and being creeped, I've been playing and testing with a lot of different decks... mainly Revengers, Blue Flame Liberators, and then recently, Star-Vader and Perdition. I wish I can do more tutorial-ish things, but real life is real, and I don't think auto-pilot decks like Revengers or straight-forward decks like Liberators would be good tutorial material. And then there's also some decks I don't feel comfortable enough to say I know the guts inside-out because I have not spent as much time exploring them as things like Silver Thorns. Anyways, there's like a great-wall-of-text down below so I'll stop my ranting here.

So, this is a stable build 2 because... it has gone through the prototype stage and initial stable stage, and this is an improvement based off the initial stable build. I'm pretty happy with build honestly, as it works really well at what it is intended to be doing and packs a fairly good punch. Furthermore it kept the chain-calling ability with minimal effort to net you free advantage without compromising a lethal, crit-heavy center.

ProGlare is a great finisher, and
a valuable addition to Blue Flames

The prototype was there to try out Prominence Glare as a main boss, and while Glare is a great boss, he's not strong and reliable enough to dedicate the entire deck's winning image on him, hence putting all the eggs in one basket. The issue behind it being, that a pure Glare focused build does not benefit from chain calling, and so you would naturally steer away from chain-calling. However, Glare is a 20k boss, meaning without chain calling, he would be only swing with 30k even if you have Bruno sitting behind him. While 26k 2-crit glory clone attack is great, it's not great enough to always win you games because if we take interceptors into consideration (glory skill does not stop interceptors), all your opponent needs is 2 10k shields in hand and they can 2-pass you. While saving 2 10k shields isn't incredibly easy, it's not incredibly hard either.

If Glare was cheap at doing his skill, then it would have been fine. However, Glare is very resource intensive, and so by dedicating to his skill, you end up hogging CBs and suffer minuses for that big play that's good enough to win a lot of games, but far from guaranteeing a kill, and with all the CBs hogged, you also lose the ability to keep your columns pumped and burning to make those delicious 21k Bruno columns as well as always calling with Oath Aglovale whenever you get the chance. He is also literally an inferior Prominence Core at all stages of the game except for the 1, maybe 2 turns you use his glory skill. Overall Core is still a much better and more consistent backbone boss that you should use as the core (lol pun not intended) of your deck, as he is strong throughout the game and keeps your deck running and pumping (similar to our red flame friend, DOtG, who lacks kill potential and burst, but is extremely consistent and powerful as a backbone boss that keeps the deck running, pumping, and creating advantage gaps), even though he has less burst and his attack is less lethal than Glare.

Now while Glare isn't that great as being a backbone core boss, he is excellent as a finisher. He completely excels at this role, and as a bonus, he's still a great boss and therefore a very good backup boss if you fail to ride Core and does half of Core's job, making Glare still a very robust unit to run. And those are the 2 roles he play in this build - a finisher and a back up mid-game boss.

ProCore is truly pro at being the core...
...
omg that was so bad

Why is Core a better backbone boss than Glare? Using at most CB1 per turn through Core, it means he is not CB intensive (costs as much as DOtG). His 1st skill also procs for free, and any form of superior call can potentially trigger it. Assuming we look at top 4 and ignore Catchgal, there's a 41.75% chance that we will hit Black Jack. Even if we only look at top 3, that's still a 33.01% chance of hitting a Black Jack, and both these probability ignores Catchgal, and ignores the fact that you can superior call more than once per turn. Lets say you legion Core and triggers Lawful Trumpeter, and use Core right after, that's instantly a whooping 7 cards looked for only CB1, and this is a common scenario that gives you 62.49% at hitting Black Jack. And all this chance and actual acquiring Black Jack with Core comes completely free.

Some people argue that his effect is inconsistent, and therefore unreliable, which is true. Relying on Core getting Black Jack is like relying on triggers. However, on the other side of the table, assuming Core will not go off would be like relying on 1-passing. You simply cannot assume that Core will not go off with such high probabilities, and assuming that he won't fire (lol another unintended pun) can easily cost you the game with Core's ability functioning kinda like critical triggers (you can proc it more than once, and with looking at top 3 having a 33.01% success rate, getting him to go off twice is literally about as common as getting double triggers). And even at 33.01% proc rate, that's about as likely as checking a trigger with a single drive check.

Skill costs as much as ProCore,
people say he's light on CB.
Then people say ProCore is too
CB heavy to run with Glare...

Another myth people often claim against a Core/Glare build is the deck being too CB heavy. This is not true. Glare is CB heavy (when you rely on him), but Core is not. A pure Core build actually have trouble burning out all the CBs because he alone uses at most 1 per turn, with the only other CB user in the deck being Aglovale. Core/Glare actually works incredibly well because your backbone is on a boss that uses but is not heavy on CB, who also can make very good use of Glare's finishing power, but is not required to rely on Glare. A boss that has built-in 41.75% chance at getting 2-crit for CB1 is often good enough to finish the job on his own.

Now why do I run the cards that I run? What is the reasoning behind my choice?

The first thing people might notice is that I run Catchgals and run a 6/6 scrit/stand split. While both Core and Glare work incredibly well with crits, Catchgals is just way too strong of a card that really doesn't have much of a drawback if you know how stand trigger works. Catchgals is a trigger unit, which means he doesn't take up precious deck space, yet he is the main backbone for chain calling even before Glare was even announced. Catchgal makes your top-deck calls more consistent and reliable at finding a card that fits your role, he also helps boost your Bruno and Corongal columns, and proc Core's crit skill. While the deck is now significantly less reliant on chain calling to reach magic numbers, a 2nd call still makes huge differences. For example, a Bruno boosted 9k attacker will be attacking at 22k instead of 19, and a Corongal boosting a boss will be at 31 instead of 28. That's literally an additional stage of power and consistency for free even in terms of deck building and space allocating. For how ridiculously much Catchgal is offering, he's way too good not to run.

Then there is 4 Lawful Trumpeters. This guy, is a must-4. Mandatory. He is a free +1, literally free of any cost. That alone is really good. What makes him better is that his free +1 also comes with a great bonus - triggering Core and Glare's skill for free. With Glare as a finisher, chances are we will not try to ride him until later in the game. Lawful Trumpeter instantly turns Glare from a CB2 finisher into a CB1 finisher. That's significantly easier to achieve than CB2. Significantly. The difference in 1 CB can easily translate to an additional turn you are making 21k columns, or another +1 you can get through Aglovale, on top of his free +1. And as I already mentioned, he also procs Core, making our awesome core boss even better. He syngerizes so incredibly well with the deck and the bosses on top of his super awesome sauce free +1 makes there absolutely no reason not to max this guy. His only hiccup is that he doesn't work too well with Percival, who is a mediocre and incredibly situational boss that we either don't run or don't run more than 1 copy anyways. So yeah, moral of the story, Lawful Trumpeter too stronk.

I don't think I really need to explain my reasoning with choices on Destiny, Aglovale, Oath, Aglovale, Bruno, and Josephus as it's fairly obvious why they are run at max copies. Both Aglovales are legion mates, and both are excellent units themselves. Bruno is the bread and butter of the deck, and Josephus is a free +1 that utilizes a resource that we don't otherwise use (now with 1 other competitor).

Doge Liberator Corongal

Now finally, Corongal. He is naturally a 8k booster for your VG, and if your Core finds a Black Jack, he makes your column 31k. Or if you find a Catchgal, that's again 31k. Many sees this as a weird choice as Guido now exists, who is also an excellent card. Here's the thing with Corongal. We want our crit-heavy center to hit hard. Our VG is 20k. Bruno is literally as effective a VG booster as Corongal. We want Bruno behind our VG if possible because then we might be able to hit the next stage and not get stuck on 27 or 30k. Guess what Corongal is? He's your wet dream center column already pre-setup, guaranteed, since the beginning of the game. Any Bruno we find can now just go to a RG column and wreck faces because our perfect center column is already set. This means, what Guido gets as best case scenario (getting a Bruno somewhere), we already have as a default.

"But froliz, what if Corongal gets sniped/locked/caught drunk driving and taken away by the police? He's too slow!"

Now here's the thing. Both Guido and Coronal require your VG to be in Legion. This means they are as slow as one another. If Corongal will get sniped/locked/high on drugs, so will Guido, and vice versa. So speed is not a determining factor in choosing one over the other, because they are the exact same. In fact, Corongal is actually slightly faster than Guido in most cases because you'd be using him as soon as you legion, where as Guido has his value in triggering ProGlare for free.

Now we have looked at the big-o and big-omega... I mean the best and worst case scenarios, lets look at the average case scenario. On average case, Guido will probably turn into a 7k booster if you find one, or a front row attacker, where as Corongal will be a 8k booster because you'd be pumpin' every turn anyways in most cases. That means on average, they're likely going to be a 7k booster vs. a 8k booster, so their average case is also, generally speaking, equal.

The only thing that Guido has over Corongal, is that he can sack a Josephus and +1 for free (because he is a soul himself), and he can potentially tigger your ProGlare for free if you sit on him for a while (which isn't a great idea btw, 25k columns...). So why are people super crazy over Guido as a FVG? *shrugs*. I mean, Guido is very useful and pretty awesome, and great as extra G0s to toss in the deck if you don't mind the slightly skewed ratios. But I see Corongal bringing in a much larger impact to the game in your favor.

So that's basically it for my Blue Flame Liberator deck. I think I've explained my choices fairly clearly, but if you have questions, disagree, etc, leave a comment below.

8/27/2014

Ancient Dragons Prototype 3

Test Build 3

Similar to Jibril, Ancient Dragons have been around for a long time,
and are like embodiment of violence.

At least he's kinda cute.

So in the end I ended up using Babysaurus again. Why? The problem is, Babysaurus only have 2 other Babyrex. The issue with Babyrex is common with Baby Ptrro and Babysaurus, which are you won't really feel the need to use their abilities in most your games.
competitors, with one being Babyrex which requires you to play Tyrannolegend, and the other being the G3 searcher. Tyrannolegend is lackluster most of the time, but that's not the main issue with using

Then why Babysaurus over other starters? The reason is that Babysaurus serves as a safety net in fetching a Tyrannobite if you can't get one. As powerful as Tyrannoquake is, he's really reliant on his gool 'ol pal Tyrannobite. Without Trannobite, Tyrannoquake becomes an inferior Cormac that can't even just eat anything to gain the crit and loses out on 5k power. Once Tyrannoquake gets Tyrannobite to aid him though, he instantly becomes one of the scariest and most pressuring bosses an opponent can face.

What a waste of good art :(

Magma Armor is dropped because of how situational he is. His winning image is you push your opponent Tyrannoquake first, I found that I don't really ever reach the point where I need to use Magma Armor to secure the kill because Tyrannoquake being 36k with 2 crit is alreay so hard to handle that you usually kill your opponent on the spot from 3 or 4 damage, and cases where they're at 5 are rare enough that it warrants the dismiss of Magma Armor. Volcatops is also a better backup vanguard than Magma Armor due to it not only having Tyrannoquake's 2nd ability, but also that his 1st effect can also wreck some havoc if you are forced to sit on Volcatops (eg. +5000 to your boosters, then swing Tyrannobite @ interceptor unboosted, swing with Volcatpos and eat Tyrannobite, you are essentially swinging for 9>21>21>21 even without a 2nd eater.)
to 5 damage, and the use his ability to make 1 extra attack for each CB and soul you have. Problem is, he's the worst first ride you can have, and is completely useless until you reach the point that your opponent is at 5. And if you successfully ride

Hurry! Kill the Lao-Shan Lung!

I also cut back on Night Armor because the guy's too slow and now that I only have 4 copies of Legion boss left in the deck. Requiring a VG in Legion really hurts him way too much in effectiveness, and even when you are in Legion his use is still somewhat limited and acts just like another Dinocrowd most of the time.

Lastly, I popped in another ~~Lao-Shan Lung~~ QW to make it a 2/2 PG/QW split even though it has the risk all QWs have in
decks that eats a lot of CBs. There are 2 reasons for this: 1.) It significantly helps out performing Legion because AD often have trouble accumulating enough drop zone in an affordable manner to legion ASAP due to having absolutely no way to make up on the loss of cards, and 2.) Ancient Dragons really lacks an advantage engine, and being to guard large attacks with 1 card helps out the deck a lot.

I still don't consider the deck completely in stable mode due to the extremely heavy reliance on Tyrannobite as a win condition throughout the entire game span, from early to late. Seeing no Tyrannobite is so devastating to the deck that it's pretty much a death sentence.

8/16/2014

Ancient Dragon Prototye 2

Ancient Dragons Prototype 2

Test Build 2

Similar to Jibril, Ancient Dragons have been around for a long time,
and are like embodiment of violence.

For all decks labeled as:
stable - working as intended.
test - still under tuning and some things may or may not work as intended.

*Note: Working as intended != finished build, it just means deck functions as planned and is overall consistent

FVG:
Baby Ptero *1

Trigger: (8 crit/4 draw/4 heal)
Ancient Dragon, Ornithhealer (Heal) *4
Ancient Dragon, Titanocargo (Draw) *4
Ancient Dragon, Dinodile (Critical) *4
Ancient Dragon Fire Priestess (Critical) *4

Grade 1: (*14)
Ancient Dragon, Paraswall *3
Ancient Dragon, Rock Mine *1
Ancient Dragon, Iguanogorg *4
Ancient Dragon, Gattlingaro *4
Ancient Dragon, Gioconda *2

Grade 2: (*11)
Ancient Dragon, Dinocrowd *4
Ancient Dragon, Night Armor *3
Ancient Dragon, Tyrannobite *4

Grade 3: (*8)
Ancient Dragon, Magma Armor *2
Ancient Dragon, Volcatops *2
Ancient Dragon, Tyrannoquake *4

Why is this Prototype 2 and not 1? Because I already went through the prototype 1 stage lol.

So this build in a sense, is to mimic what Silver Thorns does best, by abusing the early game. Unlike Silver Thorns, Ancient Dragons have less direct advantage and can run low in resources and not be able to recover from it if you're not careful (no Venus for ADs, guys), and Ancient Dragons, while having as much early game power and rush potential as Silver Thorns, have a slightly heavier cost in doing so (CB1 for 2 additional attacks is impossible), less flexibility (all the on-attack eating-abilities requires an attack on the Vanguard), higher risk (you're paying your CBs before you know if they'd let it through and hit a damage trigger), as well as worse attack quality (Silver Thorns typically CB1 for 1 additional full column attack, where as Ancient Dragons gets an additional 9k attack). Unlike Silver Thorns, Ancient Dragon players also need to be careful about the situation where your opponent leaves no 9k or lower RGs in their front row, because in those cases Tyrannobite cannot grant an additional attack alone.

He's MVP.
He solves world hunger on Cray.

While Ancient Dragons have a bunch of short comings compared to Silver Thorns in the early game department, that doesn't mean Ancient Dragon's early game is strictly worse. Unlike Silver Thorns, all it takes is 1 Tyrannobite to fire it off multiple times in the same turn (Zelma cannot be used until the next turn once it leaves the soul, but Tyrannobite can be eaten multiple times as long as you have enough CBs and eating/call-over skills), and unlike Silver Thorns, while we are required to attack the vanguard to trigger the on-attack eating skills, hitting is not required and so we are the ones deciding if I get to attack multiple times, not my opponent. Another thing unlike Silver Thorns is, rather than requiring a total of 2~3 copies of Ana/Maricica to get the chain-attacks going, Ancient Dragons can also achieve additional attacks by only having 1 eater if you happen to get multiple copies of Tyrannobite (or other self-revivers), by attacking with both Tyrannobites first, eating one of the Tyrannobites, and then reviving the Tyrannobite on top of the other one to perform a pseudo-restand on both of them.

Run away, little girl! Run away...

Ancient Dragons also have a much stronger mid and late game as well as finishing power due to Tyrannoquake being a beast that either burns through hands early and fast, or puts your opponent into their
danger-zone very quickly for your small-but-multi-attacks to actually become life-threatening assaults. Tyrannoquake going for over 30k by default with little effort and threatens with 2-crit as long as you can eat a persona is very, very powerful. That kind of attack generally only costs you CB1 to do each turn, but is very unsustainable to guard against, and even Quintet Walls have trouble guaranteeing guarding the attack by itself. QWs average out to be ~25k shield, which is a 2-pass on-average
if your Tyrannoquake is only boosted by a FVG. In cases where you hit the lower end of the average (which isn't entirely rare; QWs resulting in 20k shield is fairly common as well), or when Tyrannoquake is boosted by a legit 6 or 7k booster, QWs are only worth 1-pass. This kind of attack is not something you'd want to have to guard against every single turn, especially when it also has a 2-crit to punish you for letting it through.

Volcatops servers as a backup vanguard should you fail to ride Tyrannoquake due to it having the same eating effect as Tyrannoquake (without even requiting a LB4). Magma Armor, while powerful as a finisher when your opponent is sitting on 5 damage, is very underwhelming to ride first as he has no built-in eating ability. Magma Armor is your finisher if your opponent is sitting on 5 damage and refuses to die, although he does have the risk factor in him that if you still didn't finish them off, you'd be completely exhausted of resources.

And why 4 Draws? I usually prefer crits and stands, but in this deck's case, I still feel the deck needs that occasional raw card count to do its thing due to the lack of advantage. There will be times where you just need the raw card count for PGs or just for eating/boosting purposes. I still much prefer 12 crits (and 12 crits with Tyrannoquake is super scary), so I'd be likely to juggle with that and adjusting the deck overall to a form that can just run 12 crits and eat faces.

So overall, I'm liking the new Ancient Dragons quite a lot. They have a top class early game, a top class mid game, a competitive late game, good finishing power, and are great as a budget deck (the most expensive card in the deck is like $5, which is Geoconda. Tyrannoquake are going for like 150 yen per, and Volcatops are like 30 yen per, meaning a full playset of G3s costs under $7, and PGs are like 120 yen with QWs being 50 yen, meaning a full playset of both costs under $7). They also have the fun, dynamic, and engaging play style that requires the pilot to steer and make plays and reward good plays without feeling tedious. I also see potential for more wombo combos, which I'll certainly enjoy exploring.

7/28/2014

Black Witches Stable 1

Stable Build 1

Everyone's favorite ~~loli~~ witch, Lir
and witch hats are still awesome

(White Witches would be Genesis Witches)
If you want to see the previous version, click here

I was wrong about her :(
she's MVP.

So this build ended up working significantly better than the previous ones; Sekuana literally makes all the difference. My initial thought was focusing on control, which proved itself to be extremely inconsistent and prone to your opponent's maneuvers. Now that I realized the control aspect is just a method for the power reduction so you can attack aggressively; the control part is a bonus, but the main focus should be on the power reduction, which is significantly more consistent and reliable (as long as you're not shooting for -25k or -30k, -5k~15k is fairly consistent)

Adora, our only pressure unit

Adora is the G0 generator for the drop zone. When boosted by a 7k booster, she requires 10k shield to be guarded (unless against cross ride bodies, but those are rare today). So there can be 3 scenarios: 1.) your opponent guards with a single G0 and now has a G0 in their drop zone for Deirdre and Dana to use, 2.) they guard with 2 5k shields or a PG (which is not worth it btw, since even if you take the hit and then simply call over the G0 that's still only a -1 and not a -2), or 3.) they take the hit and have 1 - (2/3)^5 = ~86.83% chance having one of their RGs transformed into a G0.

Even when they only have a FVG on the field as target, I'd usually still use the effect to call over the FVG even if the total G0 count doesn't go up. The reason behind that is 1.) you kill their FVG, who is usually important for most decks and 2.) you popped a G0 in the drop zone for your Deirdre and Dana to use.

As why certain cards are ran at their amount, here's a break down:

4 Fianna because she's your best first ride, and her 2nd effect is good
4 Rias because she's an awesome finisher or a boss to put your opponent straight to 5 damage, and she's our only other boss
4 Femme because she's the best G2 the deck has, and the more you have the more you can plus off Fianna's 2nd effect
4 Deirdre because she's the 2nd best G2, offering control and soul blast that aids Legion
3 Adora because she's a great G0 generator, but her window of relevance is small (she's irrelevant as soon as your opponent hits 4 damage)
4 Sekuana because she's Fianna's only win condition, and is a pseudo +5k to all columns. She's very important
Total of 4 Sentinels because they're mandatory at this era
4 Dana because she's the other best G1, and helps out the deck's gimmick
2 Scathach because this deck runs off stands, and she forms 16k columns with Sekuana. She's also this deck's other best G1

So overall, the main focus is pretty much to mildly control your opponent and setting up for your win condition (the power reduction) while swapping out priority targets and messing up power columns. There are two approaches to the power reduction. If you have enough resources (since all power drop takes a -1 in cost), you can drop a power-drop earlier and directly put your opponent straight into their late game, forcing them to guard everything that comes afterwards. The other is obvious, where you try to wrap a game up and seal the deal with a power-reduction when they're at high damage.

See something like this? Yeah... no
Kill it before it lays eggs.

The tricky part is knowing what to target and swap out. Key units with annoying abilities are obvious. The
harder part comes in the rest, and really comes down to the situation. One way is to swap out boosters so your opponent will be less likely to call over them and thus keeping a higher G0 concentration for your Rias play that'd hurt them greatly later. another approach is to swap out an entire column, forcing them to swing for 10k max with that column, or call over it to suffer actual minuses all while putting G0s in the drop zone for you to use Deirdre and Dana. Swapping out the interceptor is another obvious one when you are ready to pop a power drop and push for game, but it's not always the right choice. There will be times where if you swap out their interceptor, your unboosted attacker (often 9 or 10k) will be unable to hit anything other than the G0 you gave them, which is counter-intuitive (and this happens quite often due to the nature of the deck if you are not careful). You will want to avoid creating that scenario yourself at all costs.

So that concludes the first stable build. Again, don't be afraid to disagree with me and do your own thing and discover your own stuff. If you have any questions, comments, or just want to say 'hai' just let me know lol