[ECG] Deck Check: The Birth of a New Genesis!

[ECG] Deck Check: The Birth of a New Genesis!

  Saturday, December 14, 2013    byak

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Welcome back to Deck Check, cardfighters! We're going to follow up from our last English Card Game article and continue with another new contender from Booster Set 10: Genesis!

Genesis are the newest clan to be added to Vanguard's population, and function similarly to the other mass soulcharge decks, Pale Moon and Dark Irregulars. They focus on building up a huge soul, and then use their soul to activate their Vanguard's powerful ability. Despite being a soulcharge heavy deck, only your boss monsters soulblast. Your support units on the other hand focus on setting up your soul for your end game combos.

What kinds of combos can you pull off with Genesis as they stand? Right now, they have three solid boss monsters. Goddess of Good Luck, Fortuna was the first one that we received in the English release of Set 11. It had a Limit Break, where at the cost of soulblast 3, it could get rid of your current drive check (given it wasn't a trigger) and let you drive check again, as many times as you wanted. Battle Deity of the Night, Artemis' Limit Break let you soulblast 3 on attack to draw two cards, then add a card from your hand to the soul. I personally decided to go with Eternal Goddess, Iwanagahime, and here's my list:

The Birth of a New Genesis!
17 / 14 / 11 / 8

1 Vivid Rabbit
4 Cyber Tiger
4 Battle Maiden Kukurihime
2 Bandit Danny
2 Fancy Monkey
4 Witch of Big Pots, Laurier

4 Goddess of Self-sacrifice, Kushinada
4 Witch of Frogs, Melissa
3 Existence Angel
3 Witch of Cats, Cumin

4 Witch of Ravens, Chamomile
3 Witch of Owls, Paprika
2 Battle Maiden, Sahohime
2 Broom Witch, Callaway

4 Oracle Queen, Himiko
4 Eternal Goddess, Iwanagahime

The current problem with Genesis is that, with only two sets of support, they don't have too much to offer. Thankfully I'm still able to flush out my lower grades with 7000's, 9000's, and a slightly weaker power attacker. The goal of your grade 1's and 2's is to simply soulcharge a lot to the point where you're ready to burst your opponent with advantage.

Iwanagahime is the boss that ties everything together. Her Limit Break imitates the late Dragonic Kaiser Vermillion: at the cost of soulblast 6, you can retire both of your opponent's front row rear guards. It is very easy to build up a lot of soul in this deck, which makes this skill quite easy to use. There are even some cases where you can pull off this Limit Break twice in a fight, retiring a total of four rear guards in the process.

Iwanagahime also comes with a smaller soulblast effect, which trades 3 for +5000 power during the turn. You probably won't be using this that often, but it can be handy at times, especially in cases where you need to utilize certain units, or if you're simply behind. There's not much else to this unit. It's just pure advantage that you can redeem from building up your soul for the whole game. When paired with Genesis' first Break Ride, Oracle Queen Himiko, it tends to work very well.

Oracle Queen Himiko tends to mimic Solitary Liberator, Gancelot in terms of being a Break Ride. When you Break Ride over it, Himiko gives +5000 power to two of any of your rear guards, and then when your vanguard attacks, you can soulblast 3 to draw a card. It's not too shabby as a Break Ride, and it can also be very difficult to play around. Your opponent can try to control your front row, but even if they clear it, your rear-guards can hold the +5000 boosts while you recreate your front row for your attack. Being able to get a card back from your Break Ride investment is very nice as well, and this is a very good Break Ride to chain with itself.

A cool thing to note about Genesis Break Rides are their second skills. Normally, Break Rides gain +2000 power through a condition when they attack. Break Rides like Himiko, however, soulcharge 1 on attack and give themselves +1000 power. This means that for each turn you sit on Himiko, you're gaining additional soul which really piles up when you're ready to redeem it. Also, Break Riding is another method of building up your soul, because Himiko becomes part of your soul when you ride over her.

The two cards in my opinion that really push this deck forward however, are Witch of Frogs, Melissa, and Witch of Ravens, Chamomile. Melissa is a grade 1 with the average 7000 power, and Chamomile is a grade 2 with the average 9000 power. When either of them are sent from the soul to the drop zone, at the cost of a counterblast, you can call them from your drop zone as fresh units. There's a lot of versatility when it comes to using these skills. Iwanagahime can bring them out whenever you want with her skills, and during Himiko's Break Ride turn, you can soulblast them on attack to create new columns over your old rested ones for overall more damage pressure.

The only issue with these cards is actually bringing them into the soul to begin with. The most consistent way by far is to simply ride them, but other than that, you have to rely on randomly soulcharging them with your other skills. Thankfully they come with average power levels so drawing them doesn't suck as much as you'd think, but the main issue with them is having to rely on luck.

They do offer a lot of payoff though. Versus retire heavy decks like Eradicators, they can keep your field consistently full. Otherwise, it's very easy to use them to rush if you can pull them together. However, it is strongly recommended to look out for your counterblasts, because if you can't manage them properly, you'll regret it in the end.

This is also why I've tended to stay away from too many counterblast units, with Vivid Rabbit, Broom Witch Callaway, and Battle Maiden Sahohime being the only ones. Callaway and Sahohime can apply a lot of pressure in some cases, but it's heavily recommended not to overuse them, because Chamomile and Melissa are a lot more important in the end.

I did mention at the beginning of the article that Genesis has other bosses, but you might wonder why I chose Iwanagahime over the other two. Well, here's why.

Starting off with Battle Deity of the Night, Artemis, it doesn't feel to be as consistent or powerful as Iwanagahime. It comes with its own ride chain, which gives your deck more consistency, but Artemis carries around an ugly 10000 base as a rear guard, which is something I absolutely do not like. As stated before, its Limit Break gives you a Tsukuyomi-like effect on attack, at the cost of soulblasting 3. The problem with this is that it can only realistically be used once per turn, and you only get a +1 in card advantage from it. Artemis also gains +5000 power and it's more flexible when it comes to triggering Melissa and Chamomile, but in the end it takes too much time to get enough payoff from it.

Genesis also have Goddess of Good Luck, Fortuna, which is a very interesting card on its own. Its Limit Break is very unique: when your drive check reveals a grade 1 or higher Genesis, you can soulblast 3 to discard it and drive check again.

This intrigued me a lot when it was first revealed. You could theoretically pitch 3-4 drive checks at the cost of 9-12 soul and increase your chances of getting double triggers by a lot. It could also trigger Melissa and Chamomile in the process. I ended up testing it extensively, but I was not satisfied by the results.

If you were devoting your end game to Fortuna, your soul would be quickly consumed and at the most you'd only get one or two turns to benefit from it. Most of the time you'd even deck out, because you're combining a huge amount of soul with digging through your deck by a lot. I ended up by concluding that the investment was nowhere near the payoff, which is why I decided to stick to using Iwanagahime. This revelation of Fortuna also lead to me concluding something about Genesis that I should've realized as soon as the clan came out: you eat through your deck really fast.

If your game plan is to build up an average of around 9 soul, you have to remember that most of that soul is coming straight from your deck. On top of this, your bosses are very costly, so if you never achieve a large soul your deck can't do anything for you. The lesson from this is to simply be really careful when playing this deck. The deck has very alluring payoffs, but you can't be reckless and soulcharge your whole deck. You can gain all the advantage you want, but it can all become meaningless if your deck is empty. This is also why I strongly dislike draw triggers in this deck, because they only eat through your deck even more. Unfortunately, you can't take a 12 critical lineup yet, and I don't think stands are very strong in this deck, so I'm sticking with draw triggers for now.

In conclusion, this deck can work very well, but you need to be very careful with it. Feel free to mix up the grade 1 and grade 2 lineups to your liking, because the only important units in there are Melissa and Chamomile. Just remember to maintain a balance of pressure, advantage, and power. If you dislike draw triggers in here like myself, I strongly encourage you to test stand triggers. I haven't tested them enough to get an opinion of them, but theoretically they should be more useful than draw triggers in here. Other than that, I wish you good luck, and have fun using Genesis!