[ECG] An Introduction to Regalia

[ECG] An Introduction to Regalia

  Tuesday, June 17, 2014    byak

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This month's release in the English card game is the Genesis Trial Deck, featuring the new archetype: Regalia. Like most Genesis decks, this deck comes with a lot of soul. How does the deck work? And how does the deck fare with others going into the release of Booster Set 14, where it's set to gain even more support?

Like most Trial Decks in the Break Ride era, the Trial Deck 13: Successor of the Sacred Regalia provides the base Break Ride for a new kind of archetypal deck. While the Trial Deck itself is fairly basic and won't be a tournament winning masterpiece out of the box, this is the first Trial Deck that's built around soul management, making the soul concept easier to learn for newer players. Additionally, the Trial Deck comes with a lot of key cards that Genesis players are going to want heading into Booster Set 14.

The new Genesis archetype, Regalia, doesn't really bring a unique playstyle to the table for the clan, outside of the fact that it's a Cross Ride deck from a very soul heavy clan. With this in mind, it's very easy to enable the Cross Ride defense, since not only can you set it up normally, you also have a very high chance of soul charging the right card.

The cover card of the deck is Genesis' newest Break Ride, Regalia of Wisdom, Angelica. When you Break Ride over Angelica, your vanguard gets +10000 power, and you can soulblast three to draw two. It's a simple exchange that emphasizes Genesis' unique use of the soul, which is repeated soulblasts. Chaining Angelica over Angelica is beneficial as well, since each time you Break Ride, you generate card advantage to break over even.

Compared to a Break Ride like Oracle Queen Himiko for example, Angelica creates much less burst. However, the raw card advantage triumphs over the double +5000 in the long run. It's never given that those two power boosts Himiko gives you create more card advantage through extra guarding, because they might not need to guard at all. In a really extended game, Himiko comes with a lot more value because those attacks are extremely important.

One of the most important quirks of Genesis Break Rides, however, is their own soul charging abilities. Whenever Angelica attacks, you can soul charge to give her +1000 power during the battle. While these kinds of Break Rides don't reach 13000 by themselves, this is never really too significant. Missing 13000 isn't missing that much at all, because you'd want to pair them with 8000 grade 1's, which are basically out of season. Overall, Angelica fits in really well with the theme of Genesis by herself and gives the average Genesis player another option when it comes to determining their Break Ride.

But this article is about Regalia, and when it comes to a Regalia specific deck, Angelica is the obvious choice. Angelica is about half of your grade 3 game, so it's important to keep your support units, namely power attackers, alive. Plus, part of Regalia's strategy is the resource generation before you can Break Ride.

While Apple Witch, Cider isn't a Regalia, she plays as a very interesting and unique support unit for the deck. When you guard with Cider and have a Regalia vanguard, when your guardians would be sent to the drop zone during that battle, you can add them to the soul. First off, Cider counts for herself, sending herself to the soul even if she's the only card you guard with. Additional cards that you guard with help as well, and when you're using units like Witch of Frogs, Melissa or Witch of Ravens, Chamomile, you can get extended value out of Cider by gaining advantage from the guard you add to the soul.

When you're playing a soul deck, one thing you need to be extremely cautious about is that when the heavy amount of soul charging mixes with the positive card advantage you generate with your bosses, your deck tends to deck out a lot faster than others. When you replace the soul charging from your deck with the soul gained from Cider, this aspect changes drastically.

The only bad aspect of Cider is that she takes up the slot of one of your grade 1's, the most reliable boosting units of your deck. If you end up dedicating those slots to Cider and using them primarily to guard, you lose a lot of offensive power. On the other hand, if you use Cider for soul charging and rely on Witch of Frogs, Melissa to fill your back row, you can most likely sustain your field while gaining a lot of soul.

Another cool perk to using Cider is her combos with the upcoming Quintet Wall for Genesis, Goddess of the Shield, Aegis. At the cost of a counterblast, when you use Aegis to guard, you can call the top five cards of your deck as guardians. Combined with Cider, you end up adding seven cards to your soul, since you use Cider, Aegis, and the five new cards off the top! Again, with this kind of strategy the chances of you decking out become higher, and Quintet Walls are weak to some decks while Perfect Guards aren't. In this case, I like to split them in decks like these.

So with all of this easy soul generation, where does it all go? Angelica burns up three per Break Ride, but the boss uses the most out of them all, and it just so happens that Angelica's Cross Ride sets the roof of Genesis' power for a while. Omniscience Regalia, Minerva is one of the sought-after cards featured in Booster Set 14. It may not be in the Trial Deck, but it'll reach our shores soon. Minerva being a Cross Ride of Angelica is the least of your worries, because her Limit Break makes her another self-standing vanguard. When Minerva attacks under Limit Break, after the attack you can counterblast one, soulblast three, and discard three Genesis to stand her and give her +5000 power.

Not exactly the newest skill, but it's a lot easier to activate when compared to other self-standers. It doesn't need any specific cards and it doesn't rely on your field, plus on top of that, it gains an extra +5000 for the lack of a booster on the second attack. The only problems are that the heavy discard cost can hinder your defenses if you fail to land a killing blow, and that it can only be used once per turn.

A successful Regalia deck takes on the image of reaching Angelica for the early game, and then transitioning into Minerva with a surplus of soul to self-stand every following turn. In order for this to work out, you need to be able to have enough soul for each time Minerva can activate. Depending on how long you sit on her, the net total can reach very extreme levels, which exposes Regalia's main problem: endurance.

You need to be able to kill your opponent very quickly with Minerva, since it's really difficult to maintain the soul to keep using her every turn. There are still easy ways to soul charge heavily, but even if you achieve this, your chances of decking out increase greatly. If you manage to gain a soul of 12 or even 15, each turn you swing twice with Minerva you're reducing your deck size by a minimum of 5, which can be fatal if your turns are weak.

At the very least, Minerva has brought some support with her to slightly help this. Ordain Owl is a member of a small group of clones in Booster Set 14, and also one of the only ways to maintain deck size before we get Legion. Ordain Owl can return any Regalia grade 3 from the drop zone to the bottom of the deck to give any Regalia grade 3 on the field +5000. This skill can be used any amount of times per turn, so to force out the most amount of cards in a turn, you can shuffle two or three Regalias back into the deck to stack +5000's on your self-standing Minerva, making her hit even harder. You can even stack +5000's on rear-guards as well, so even if your opponent manages to stop your first two swings, you can attack with huge rear-guard columns that may also be carrying criticals from your drive check!

Ordain Owl is what truly secures your late game. Once you're down to your last ten cards or so, you can continue to sustain your deck by sliding your grade 3's back in. They may be no triggers, but if it's between decking out and losing power from your drive check, the choice should be obvious. Also, they stay at the bottom if you don't shuffle your deck, meaning you can go through all of your triggers before having to see your grade 3's again.

The reason I consider Regalia to be such an important deck is because of how long they actually last over time. They storm the field in Booster Set 14, and Japan has already shown that they hold their place as one of the strongest decks of the newer releases. And even after the advent of Legion, they're given even more support in Extra Booster 12, where they get their own Legion boss to boost them back up. They basically have the potential to be relevant for a long time, making them a very good investment starting from their own Trial Deck. Be sure to try out Regalia for yourself, and stay tuned for July for when they get their proper entrance to the metagame with Booster Set 14! I definitely will, and expect a Deck Check when that time rolls around!