Skull Warriors - Discard Yamigitsune Variant

The goal for this deck is to create a variation of Skull Warriors that utilizes the cheap, easily accessible temporary plusses of Skull Warriors, then trade them for direct card disadvantage of the opponent.  Flags that start with lower hand sizes (Dragon Ein, Dragon Zwei) and decks with minimal forms of card advantage can quickly get overwhelmed.  The deck poops out soft and hard advantage like crazy, but if you don't open with the means to do either (all defensive cards, only cards that need to be revived from drop zone), then you have bricked and have to hope you can hold out until you can produce card advantage, although this is rare.

Buddy - Undying, Benishojo
Flag - Katana World

Items
4x Ninja Blade, Chirizakura

Spells
3x Return to the Underworld
3x Demon Way, Kasumienran
3x Clear Serenity
3x Demon Way, Arakuyou
3x Demon Way, Jugonrensa
3x Ninja Arts, Snake Gaze
2x Demon Way, Sakurafubuki
2x Benefit
2x Odd Ritual, Skull Festival

Monsters
4x Undying, Benishojo
4x Companion Katana of Magatsu, Yamigitsune
3x Demon Kid, Hiunmaru
3x Godly-speed, Natsubame
3x Thunderclap, Goraiko
2x Blood Knife, Kimensai
1x Diversion Torublemaker, Bakemujina

Impacts

2x Demon Way, Karakurenai

Sideboard
3x Barbed Wire
3x Leaping Ninja, Sarutobi
3x Ninja Arts, Half-Kill
1x Ninja Arts, Snake Gaze

This build plays like most other Skull Warriors builds.  We have removed Shiden and the Ninja Arts engine from the build, as Half-Kill, Minawagakushi, Item Blast, and Mat Flip do far less in this metagame of removal immunity.  Consequently, we are now running more Demon Way cards than ever before.  Sakurafubuki is back to help add pressure and close out games.  With the focus being on forcing discards, nothing is quite as devastating as them trying to use a spell to stop your attacks, then having it nullified, and being forced to discard on top of having their other card wasted.  Again, this deck has an extreme advantage over decks with low card advantage engines, decks that have small starting hand sizes, and combo decks.

There is, of course, the standard play of Goraiko with Yamigitsune to force an additional discard in the main phase.  Benishojo allows you to trade a gauge for a soft advantage that can be converted into a permanent disadvantage for the opponent.  Jugonrensa, Kasumienran, and Benefit all increase life, giving more sustain.  This deck's advantages are many and its weaknesses are essentially only to Penetrate immune, multi-soul, unremoval soul wall decks, Legend World, and bricking.  This deck has many things in place to deal with bricking and many cards can produce soft or hard advantage to unbrick you, but if you cannot keep a board (especially if you get hit with RIP Caliburn), then you can struggle.  Of course, that's in Legend World, where forcing them to discard is usually beneficial for them, so we'll just mark that as a general problem match-up.

Karakurenai is in here, because in a build like this, it's not just plausible, but likely that you will reach a point where they have 2 or fewer cards in hand, and I heard that Infinity Death Crest! was a good card.

Thunder Chess

People have been asking me, "Tim, how would you play Chess with its new support"?  Well, I actually have tried many builds and many worlds, and I have actually settled on the build that is, without a doubt in my mind, the best mixer to use with Chess.

To start off with, due to King the Dominator's new impact monster form, Chess has the ability to set the opponent's life to 4.  This comes with some enormous implications.  First, you don't need to attack their face or commit a board early, because you will set them to 4 when you go for game.  Second, because you don't need to worry about damaging them directly, you can play for card advantage, swinging into their units over and over to drain their resources.  Finally, due to how the new Pawn and new King function, we have easy access to insane killing pushes with a large amount of attacks once we set them to 4 life.

Now, Demon Slay Chess is still a solid way to play the build, but it has its drawbacks.  Primarily, with the addition of Prism Dragons adding another center-based meta build with copious amounts of soul to try and break through, I just don't see Demon Slay Chess working when it flat out requires your opponent to have an open center to have its win condition, and Chess monsters and Danger Spells lack the ability to clear the center effectively.

Deep Chess is a valid option that gives you access to solid self-milling engines with Accel End and Million Edge.  The real reason you'd want to use Deep Chess is for Brutal Disaster!, which has an attribute specific discard cost, making it lose out in consistency, but setting them to 4 and then dealing 4 damage regardless of their field setup is an amazing concept.  winkyface.jpg

There are other builds circulating around, Katana Chess to have Snake Gaze against Thunder Empire, Magic Chess to have access to their spell and advantage cards, and Executioner Chess to have access to their mill engine and borderline guaranteed setup.  Or, if you are a meme, Dungeon Chess just to run Rolling Stone to clear the center and THIS STRIKE SHALL DETERMINE THE FATE OF THE WORLD!  HWAAAH!

However, none of these builds do as much as the build I'm presenting to you.  The true way to play Chess if you want to win with it is Thunder Empire Chess.  The first thoughts that would go through someone's head might be, "Tim, you can't even spell negate when you Checkmate!"  No, you can't.  But Checkmate doesn't have to be our win condition if we set their life to 4.  We have other win conditions available to us.

Flag - Dragon World
Buddy - The Promoted Pawn

Spells
4x Blue Dragon Shield (Staple McStapleton)
4x Fire Dragon Shield (Mill 3 to reduce damage to 0, sets up drop zone requirement for King and Checkmate)
3x Gambit (Return your Pawns back to your hand then play them again for more turbo, is also a Chess in the drop zone)
3x Dragonic Thunder, Rage of the Thunder Dragon (Mill 3 to pop a size 1 or less, sets up drop zone for King and Checkmate)
3x Batzz X Link (If your cards have attacked three or more times, you can check the top three cards of your deck, add one to hand, put the rest in the gauge.  Great for fishing out your win conditions AND giving you gauge acceleration)
2x Pawn Storm (+5000 attack when your weenies need to bop a monster, also a Chess in the drop zone)
2x Dragonic Exchange (This card will allow you to search your gauge and grab any card from it in exchange for a card from hand.  This is a hard minus, but if you haven't gotten Pawn by turn 2, it might be a good idea to have the added consistency so you guarantee your setup)

Items
3x Thunder Dragon Staff Sword (Gain a life when it attacks OR pay a life to pop a size 1 or less monster.  Solid stats and does amazing things.  We don't need their Dragoanthem clone because we only need 3 attacks for Link.  Our impact is 2.  These are practically conditionless)

Size 0s
4x The Promoted Pawn (Mill 3 cards, add a chess monster or chess impact from among them to your hand.  Then Gambit and do it again.)

Size 1s
2x Battle Unit, Knight Fighter (Vanilla)
2x Attack Unit, Flying Bishop (Vanilla)
2x Mobile Unit, Soldier Pawn (Vanilla)

Size 2s
1x Control Unit, Suppression Queen (Vanilla)

Size 3s
1x King the Dominator (Vanilla)

Impact Monsters
4x King the Dominator, End Game (If you have 5 Chess in drop, their life becomes 4.  Gives himself and all Chess double attack.  Has soulguard.  Makes lethal by himself if they have no attack negates.  Procs your impact with just its own attacks.  Amazing card.)

Impacts
4x Thunder Sword, X Tempest Blade (If your opponent has 4 or less life and you attacked two or more times this turn, deal 4 damage.  We set them to 4 with King and then boop them with this for game.  If they have a damage reducer, then we still have a good amount of attacks left to try and end the game or cripple them.)
4x Dragon Secret Arts, Dragonic Resurrection (After you have buddy called, you can use this card to buddy call Pawn during the final phase all over again.  Not only do you get to mill to potentially hit your Kings/Checkmates or just get free cards, because Pawn can attack in the final phase, it also gives you an extra attack.  Two if King comes out.)
2x Checkmate (RIP Zwei.  Extra wincon and has favorable match-ups against certain decks.  Keeps Drei/Retaliation Force from ever going live.)

The gist of the deck is to turbo Pawn to get out King.  You have added consistency increasing cards with Batzz X Link, Pawn, and Exchange.  You have alternative wincons, easily proc your Thunder Empire abilities, and can kill almost any builds regardless of what their field setup might be.

Potential sideboard cards:

Maximum Skill, Breaking Flames - If you're fighting a center monster that makes them immune to burn damage while it's in the center, or if you just want to go in for a Checkmate.

Thunder Spear, X Tempest Buster - Dead them deader.

More Checkmate - Zwei are you so sad?

I think I like impacts or something...  Anyway, give this build a few tests, you will see how much the Thunder Empire Engine does for the build.  I think there's still room for improvement as well, and it's already the strongest version of Chess, so that's saying something.  And with Thunder Empire being the new main attribute for the show, I wager it will only get stronger from here.

Guess who's back. Back again. Grendel's back. Tell a friend!

So, I decided to try an old meme because it got support.  Hilarious support, actually.  Teiwaz Gard is already kind of a stupid card.  But the implications of what it can do in conjunction with other cards is kind of disgusting.  Especially cards like Ultimate Buddy!.  You can actually target an Ultimate Buddy! from your drop zone and add it to the soul of your buddy monster to give it [Soulguard] and an extra soul.  This sounds awesome!  The only downside is that Legend World only really has one monster with limited survivability that would be solid if you can wall with it.  And that's good old Grendel.  Whenever Grendel is attacked by a monster, all monsters that attacked it are destroyed at the end of the turn.  It also cannot be destroyed by spells.  Its weaknesses were the hefty 3 gauge cost, its 6/2/6 statline, no real attack nullifiers that worked with a closed center, and not having [Soulguard].  This build fixes a good chunk of these issues and makes Grendel actually playable.  This deck's only real inconsistency is in drawing into Grendel to make the meme go live.  And you have a slew of Omnilords that can make use of your spell support while you're waiting to draw into Grendel.

This deck's strengths lie against decks that focus primarily on spell destruction and link attacks to get over walls.  It, however, has many weaknesses.  Especially [Penetrate], Balle Soliel, and mass soul removal.

Here's the list.

Size 3:

4x Demonic Beast, Grendel
1x Omnidai
1x Deathmodai
1x Gadez
1x Devilgadez

Size 2

3x King of the Forest, Zlatorog

Size 0

4x Loki the Ehrgeiz
4x Retainer of the Demonic Dragon, Horned Serpent

Items

4x Magic Sword, Azoth

Spells

4x Ultimate Buddy!
4x Teiwaz Gard
4x Illusion of the Void Deity
3x Darkness Rune
4x Medusa Shield (Grendel still procs even if the attack is negated)
4x Scorn of Gremlin
4x The Hardworking Fairies

Ozon Meme - Unlimited Ozon PUNCH!

Many people loved my Ozon meme video and were asking for the decklist.  The list is pretty straightforward in accomplishing three things.

1.  Get out Ozon-Z as fast as possible.
2.  Have the most outs possible to make Ozon-Z get in several attacks.
3.  Survive long enough to reach points 1 and 2.

With that being said, here's the list:

Flag - Dungeon World
Buddy - Ozon-B/Ozon-B's Cat

Items

4x Dominion Rod - (Makes your Ozon-Z hit that magic number of 10000.  RIP Omnidai.  Relevant even when you have a closed center.  Doesn't make Ozon-Z too big to Pillar of Fire.)
OR
4x Alcsbane - (On destroying a monster or dealing damage, you gain a gauge.  Solid stats.  Amazing card.)

Size 0

4x Chaos Blade Joker (When discarded with Rolling Punch, call it over Ozon-Z to revive Ozon-Z, then use its skill to give Ozon-Z a bonus critical.)
4x Ozon-B (Free call OPT from drop for a gauge.  Makes getting Ozon-Z out much easier.)
4x Ozon-B's Cat (Free gauge and pops a monster, solid card.)

Size 1

4x Ozon-A (The best card in the deck.  Searches any Ozon card from the deck.  Makes getting Z moderately consistent.)

Size 2

4x Ozon-C (Free res if it's in the drop zone when you res another Ozon.  Not a bad call to charge this, pay a gauge for your staff to get this into the drop, then revive this when you revive Ozon-B if you haven't gotten Z out yet.)

Size 3

4x Ozon-Z (Zombies Falcon Punching for days.  When it goes to the drop zone it comes back as a new card, so it gets to attack again whenever it does get sent to the drop zone.)

Spells

4x Divine Protractor of Shortsnobby (Pay a gauge, stop an attack, gain a life.  When used early with the other null, they end up just being "Negate an attack." which is amazing.)
4x Glacious Isn't a Word Bushiroad Defense Wall (Pay a life, stop an attack.  When used early, also gives you a gauge.  When used early with the other null, they end up just being "Negate an attack." which is amazing.)
2x Crouching Tiger, Hidden Crossbow (Counter pop a 3000 or less defense opposing monster.  Sadly, this doesn't let our memes come true.)

Memes

4x Rolling Punch (Discard two Chaos Blade Jokers to meme hard with Ozon-Z.  Otherwise, you can choose not to pay the [Cast Cost] most of the time and just counter-pop a monster for FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE)
4x A Wise Move! (Call Ozon-A from drop to size out Ozon-Z.  Ozon-Z tells Ozon-A "plz" and comes back.  You get to add a dank cat to your hand in addition to getting extra swings during that battle.)
4x Pillar of Fire (Blow up your own Ozon-Z after he has attacked to call him right back for some more dank swings.)

That's the main decklist for now.  It is focused on living long enough to get the Ozon-Z plays.  There are a few other tech cards that may help the deck in some situations, but didn't make my main list.

1.  Battle Deity Robo size 0s.  When used with A Wise Move!, they can get in an extra attack.  There are three problems.  Mass Soldier is a vanilla 1/1/1 in this case (even though you could have used his skill earlier to set up the play).  Silver Rabbit is a great call from the drop, but it costs an additional gauge.  Finally, deck space is severely limited.  It doesn't seem worth it for one extra damage only in this case.

2.  Demon Lord's Dungeon.  The pros here are spam reviving Cats (even post Ozon-Z) and Ozon-As (to get your setup and more advantage).  The cons are that you continually have to deal with the fact that you only have one reliable Demon Lord in your deck (Dominion Rod) if you are even running it.  This card feels winmore and inconsistent in an already setup reliant deck, so I cannot recommend it.

3.  Dangerous Fuse.  This deck lacks both card advantage and gauge advantage.  If you fight anything that can snipe your gauge early, you struggle heavily if you didn't get your setup out first.  Drawing cards is appreciated in any deck.  This is a solid card that is a win/win for you, regardless of what it gives you.  Can replace Hidden Crossbow.

4.  Oracle of Tuval.  This deck enjoys having a drop zone, and trading in your hand for a new one can be a lifesaver in turn 2-3.  You can also partially manage your own life totals with your Lifelink cards.

There are plenty of other cards and options available to the deck.  Feel free to experimeme.

How to utilize Counter Timings to make Guardians have a bad day.

D-BT02A: Four Dimensions brought with it two new flags of such sickeningly unparalleled consistency that the game simply was not prepared to manage it.  Guardians and Executioners get top notch filtering, drawing, searching, and a cancerous amount of free resources.

For Executioners, which have high gauge costs and low base life, the consistency seems like it should be a fair trade-off.  For Guardians, however, they only start with -1 gauge and +2 life.  Then, they got a vastly superior, completely free combination of a vanilla weapon and Rune Staff that doesn't have to rest to get gauge.  Yeah, about those "gauge problems" they were supposed to be having... RIP.

To make matters worse, the Guardian's gate spell is stupid.  It lets you get ANY Guardians monster in your deck for only its [Call Cost] if you have no monsters on the field or cards in your drop zone.  Essentially, if they open well, they get to just fish their deck for a free card draw, their busted ass boss card that is Fahne with Soulguard on roids, or their size 1 Double Attacker that gives free life.  Or, if they need a counter card from their deck like Angel Frill to wreck your soul, well, they can get that too.

So, what can we do to stop this nonsense?  Well, not a whole lot I'm afraid.  There are currently 3 types of cards that will stop Gate of Pardon, -Forgiveness-, but first, let's establish how Gate works.

Gate has two effects that its user can choose from.  Both are "You may only use this ability once per turn." effects.  Upon declaration of the ability, they must select which ability they are using.  If they are using the life gaining effect, they must also target which 3 cards they are sending back.

At this point, you get your counter timing.  If there was a card with counter (RIP Bucket Arm Dragon) that removed from play or sent cards in the drop zone back to the deck, if you responded by using that effect on one of their targeted cards, they would not gain the life.  But, this is a moot point when no cards exist currently that do this.

Okay, so we want to stop the other effect, then.  What are our options?  We really only have one, and that's to make a card enter their drop zone in response to them activating Gate of Pardon, -Forgiveness-.  We can do this in one of three ways.

1.  We can mill cards from their deck at counter speed.

Example - Gale Destruction

Gale Destruction will destroy a size 2 or less monster on the opponent's field and mill the top 2 cards of their deck.  We don't have a valid target for the monster effect, but we can still cast it to force them to mill 2.  When Pardon tries to resolve, it will fizzle because it will fail its check for having no cards in the drop zone.

2.  We can destroy Gate of Pardon, -Forgiveness- at counter speed.

Example - Soaring Dragon Spirits

Soaring Dragon Spirits will destroy a size 1 or less and a set spell on the field.  If you destroy Gate in response to its effect, when the effect tries to resolve, it will see a card in its drop zone and fizzle.  Keep in mind that Soaring Dragon Spirits targets a size 1 or less and it doesn't specify on the opponent's field for the size 1 or less check, so if you have a size 0 or 1 monster, you will have to target it.  Choosing no target is only allowed in Buddyfight if no target exists.

3.  We can destroy their equipped item if one exists.

Example - Dragons All Staked in

If the Guardians player has an item equipped, you may also destroy that item in response to Pardon's effect to cause Pardon to fizzle.  This is the most preferable way to go about it if available, due to Pardon being unable to be removed by the Guardians player.  They won't be able to play a second Gate that turn since their current Gate never left.  Since Gate's effects are not named once per turn effects, if you blow up Gate and they play a new one, they can just use those.  So item destruction is very solid against Guardians for the short-term.

There are plenty of cards that destroy anything at counter speed for higher costs.  Caliburn can blow up the Gate as well.  There are numerous options to make things work out in your favor.  In some cases it might be worth waiting out their Gate for them to call Angelus and using Caliburn in response to Angelus' on-entry effect to negate the card draw, blow up their monster and Pardon, and have them still shuffle a card from hand back into deck.  LeHeroes OP.

Obviously, forcing discards at counter speed, effect nullification at counter speed, and numerous other mechanics that simply don't exist yet/are impractical to make work currently will all have more ways to interact with Guardians.  By time these are released though, I'm certain the power level of the game will catch up and Guardians won't be as big of a problem.

Azi Turbo

I don't typically make lists for meta decks on my blog, but I love using this list to get two 6 crit swings in a single turn, so I'm going to post the latest version of Azi Turbo that I've been using.

Buddy - Dragon Knight, Cagliostro
Flag - Dragon Ein

Spells

4x Hundred Demons Sorcery, Rineryusho
4x Blue Dragon Shield
4x Dragon Emperor Legend
4x Dragon Throne
3x Divine Dragon Creation
3x Black Dragon Shield
2x Sky Dragon Divinity
1x Green Dragon Shield

Items

4x Demonic Demise Sword, Aqulta Gwaneff

Monsters

4x Demonic Demise Dragon, Azi Dahaka
4x Yearner of Extinction, Azi Dahaka
4x Dragon Knight, Pisaro
4x Twin Demon Dragon, Zahhak
4x Dragon Knight, Cagliostro
1x Seventh Omni Earth Lord, Count Dawn

Sideboard

3x Barbed Wire
3x Dragon Flame Cascade
2x Wicked Lord Dragon Sword, Aqulta Gwaneff
1x Black Dragon Shield
1x Sky Dragon Divinity

A few things to note about this list.  As a turbo list, it is specifically designed to get Azi out turn 1 in the vast majority of games.  We have 12 combo pieces that we need (Throne and both Azis).  We have a whopping 21 cards that draw more cards or directly search for the pieces.  At 33/50 cards, this comprises 2/3 of our deck.  All of these cards are dedicated to turboing Azi Dahaka on to the board.

We don't have this insane consistency just for giggles, either.  We're more ambitious than that.  We also want to get out Azi #2.  And maybe Azi #3.  The ability to swing with so many high-threat cards really makes the deck pack a punch, and getting out these cards through a combination of ways is really important to making the deck work as a whole.

Let's discuss the new additions.  Sky Dragon Divinity is a new draw 2 spell that can put cards back into the deck.  This is very useful for us because we can play it and Divine Dragon Creation in the same turn to hit our early set-up.  While there is a chance for it to be a dead card later in the game, it still offers us the invaluable asset of placing Aqulta Gwaneffs not just back into our deck, but at the bottom of our deck, which is exactly where we want them.  Dragon Flame Cascade is the only iffy card many people would consider a poor choice for running.  However, this is in consideration of the current metagame.  Superheroines are played frequently and topping a bunch, and Pillars, though small in number, consistently top due to their natural ability to easily proc their abilities that require multiple cards on the field.  Cascade shuts down both of these decks, and does nifty things in a few other match-ups.  Everything else is pretty easy to understand.  Of the remaining 17 cards, 8 are Dragon Shields.  One is a revivable sack-bot.  Rineryusho and Aqulta Gwaneff are the remaining cards, and are the keys to the combo plays this deck seeks to accomplish.

Skull Warriors - Anti-Meta Variant

The goal for this deck is to create a variation of Skull Warriors that has favorable match-ups to many common meta decks by utilizing powerful counter cards while consistently filtering through your deck to reach all of cards you need for your setup.

Buddy - Undying, Benishojo
Flag - Katana World

Items
4x Ninja Blade, Chirizakura

Spells
4x Return to the Underworld
4x Clear Serenity
3x Ninja Arts, Half-Kill 
3x Ninja Arts, Snake Gaze
3x Demon Way, Arakuyou
2x Demon Way, Jugonrensa 
2x Water Technique, Minawagakushi
2x Art of Item Blasting
2x Ninja Arts, Mat Flipping Technique

Monsters
4x Undying, Benishojo
4x Electron Ninja, Shiden
4x Demon Kid, Hiunmaru
4x Godly-speed, Natsubame
3x Yamigitsune "White Fire Shigaisoshi" 
2x Diversion Torublemaker, Bakemujina

Sideboard
3x Barbed Wire
3x Leaping Ninja, Sarutobi
1x Ninja Arts, Snake Gaze
1x Ninja Arts, Mat Flip Technique
1x Water Technique, Minawagakushi
1x Ninja Arts, Half-Kill

This deck plays much like any other standard size 1 Skull Warriors variant.  It has a few cool tricks, though.  It runs the Ninja Arts engine that Katana Omni is known for.  This engine is loaded with counter cards that give you an edge in particular mach-ups.  If you draw a card that's not as useful for your current match-up, then you filter it out with Shiden or your charge and draw and get different cards in the process.  When it comes time for game 2, you side in the counter cards that are favorable for the match-up and side out the cards that don't do as much work, giving you a deck specifically tuned to counter any common meta deck pre-Guardians.  This engine has a major issue, however.  It loses to some pretty non-meta decks.  For example, it can't handle size 1 Shadow Dive rush, as Minawagakushi and Snake Gaze are the only outs I have to stop an attack.  Conversely, put this deck against Aster, 5th Omnis, Dragon Ein, or Sun Dragons, and watch it outperform them consistently with specifically tuned counter-cards and a solid board state, advantage engine, and pressure.  The remaining spells are all directly for advantage and help you reach your set-up with extreme consistency.

As for the grade 1 line-ups, as I mentioned in my video, I don't run Snake Princess, Setsuna because the card is suboptimal when compared to Benishojo.  Shiden is there to filter out excess cards.  Due to not toolboxing with Sabifukuro or Art of Explosive Hades Fall, I run four of each of the targets I want to bring back.  Hiunmaru and Natsubame give resources when brought back and are your primary targets to revive.  Benishojo brings himself back whenever you need that.  You can convert a Clear Serenity into a board with the right drop zone.  Impact Yamigitsune gives us added offensive pressure and enables 6 attacks in a single turn.  Bakemujina is a body with move that costs no gauge and doesn't retire itself.  It's useful to have in many situations, due to the low shield value of our cards in general.

This build was much stronger on release, but with the powerhouse of Divine Guardians entering the metagame, and them having essentially none of the conventional meta weaknesses, this build has fallen out of favor.  Superheroines also have a similar advantage, and they have remained popular, topping a few events recently.  It also loses to a few powerful dark horse decks, like Control Pillars, which was a very good meta call in the previous format.  These are all things to keep in mind when deciding whether or not you want to build this variant, or stick with a more traditional Skulls build.  This is a build that performs better the further into a tournament it goes on average, and would be more likely to top at a national event than a locals.  For these reasons, I find it very interesting and fun to play with.