[JCG] Deck Check: Curse of the Shadow Witch!

[JCG] Deck Check: Curse of the Shadow Witch!

  Monday, July 14, 2014    byak

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While the newest Shadow Paladin Extra Booster gave new toys for Revengers, it also managed to create a brand new archetype for Shadow Paladins, one that would take form of perhaps the most unique control deck up to this point: Witches!

If you really want to nitpick at it, Witches aren't actually that new at all. In fact, the very first Witch cards date back all the way to Booster Set 4 with Skull Witch, Nemain and Witch of Nostrum, Arianrhod. While they were technically Witches, they were not linked together by their name by any means. Witches aren't native to Shadow Paladins either, as Genesis have many Witches themselves. Not only did they get their own Witch support in their extra booster, but they've also had their own Witches for a while as well.

Disclaimer: in the English game, Gold Paladins, Oracle Think Tank, and Granblue all have cards with Witch in their name. However, in the Japanese game, they don't have the proper "Witch" name to fit in with the Shadow Paladin and Genesis Witches.

The Shadow Paladin Witches revolve around their own unique field control gimmick in order for them to create dangerous negative numbers, letting even their weakest units deal tons of damage! What is their unique gimmick, you might ask? To answer your question, Witches have the ability to turn any of your opponent's rear-guards into grade 0's!

Pan-nyarara: Curse of the Shadow Witch!
17 / 14 / 12 / 7

1 Witch of Banquets, Lir
4 Death Feather Eagle [Critical]
4 Black Crow Witch, Eine [Critical]
4 Witch of Goats, Medb [Stand]
4 Black Cat Witch, Milkre [Heal]

4 Barrier Witch, Grainne
4 Witch of Precious Stones, Dana
4 Witch of Nostrum, Arianrhod
2 Witch of Pursuit, Sekuana

4 Inspection Witch, Deirdre
4 Witch of Reality, Femme
4 Witch of Attraction, Adora

3 Cultus Witch, Rias
4 Witch of Enchantment, Fianna

In a standard Witch deck, the most basic form of field control comes from both Witch of Precious Stones, Dana and Inspection Witch, Deirdre. As usual, they come as a 7000 9000 pair with the same ability, which triggers when they're called as a rear-guard. By soul blasting a card, you force your opponent to call a grade 0 from their drop zone onto a rear-guard circle of your choice! And of course, if you choose a circle that contains another unit already, they have to call a grade 0 over that unit, effectively retiring it.

Compared to retiring, there are a lot of pros and cons to using this "curse". For one, it's ridiculously inexpensive for Dana and Deirdre to be used. None of the other Shadow Paladin Witches require soul, which leaves you to dedicate all of it to these two. However, despite being cheap, you're not always creating advantage for yourself. You might be able to trade their 7000 booster for a 5000 booster in the form of a trigger, but they could easily pair it with a 11000+ attacker in their next turn to make your efforts meaningless. You also need to consider decks that use their field primarily for fodder, making your curse a bit more tolerable for them. Swapping out a unit can end up being meaningless when that circle is used for fodder of a Phantom Blaster Revenger "Abyss", for example.

Despite all of this, the most important thing about this gimmick is that it's a very inexpensive way to deal with any valuable rear-guard your opponent might have on the board. Witches aren't restricted to controlling the front or back row, giving them more flexibility to their strategy. Something that creates high levels of amplification like Commander Laurel could end up becoming a measly target for your units to pick off.

Another thing that you need to keep in mind is that Dana and Deirdre cannot be used to their full effectiveness if your opponent doesn't have any grade 0's in the drop zone to begin with. This can be a huge factor in the early game, forcing you to hold your units in your hand until the game begins to unravel. Eventually your opponent will be forced to guard an attack, which would then allow your deck to begin working its magic, but holding 0's seems to be the way to survive the early game against this deck.

If your opponent happens to be stubborn enough to conserve his grade 0's, you can manage to force them out with Witch of Attraction, Adora! Adora takes the Witch's curse and executes it in her own fashion, making it easier for your other Witches to come into play! If Adora manages to land a hit on your opponent's vanguard, at the cost of a counterblast, you can choose a rear-guard circle on your opponent's side of the field. Instead of calling a grade 0 from the drop zone, they reveal the top five cards of your deck and call a grade 0 onto that circle.

The combination of Adora, Deirdre, and Dana basically means that your opponent's board is going to be flooded from all directions. You want Adora to come into play early so you can put the first grade 0's on the board, but there's another benefit to using Adora in this fashion. If your opponent doesn't want her skill to go off, they need to block her attack. If you set up a proper 16000 column with her, chances are, your opponent will be investing a grade 0 to stop the attack. As a result, you just prevented your opponent from holding their grade 0's early, letting your Deirdres and Danas do as they please, using Adora's pressure to force the curse through!

Adora also manages to retain her value throughout the whole game, unlike other on-hit units that tend to only stick around to give you a good early game. It's always good to pull a grade 0 from the deck, especially since you're also effectively reducing the number of triggers that your opponent has at their disposal. Adora won't always connect, but when she's not connecting, it's due to the pressure that you would otherwise not have.

In this deck, both of our chosen boss units take advantage of the curse, as one fuels it and the other thrives off of it! Witch of Enchantment, Fianna is the main boss unit that stood as the leader of the Witches, taking one of the three RRR slots of the Extra Booster. Her mate is the Witch power attacker, Witch of Reality, Femme, making it easier to incorporate both ends of the Legion. While the pair is in Legion, you can counterblast two to choose two of your opponent's rear-guard circles. Then, you can reveal the top ten cards of your opponent's deck, where your opponent has to choose two grade 0's from them and call them over those circles. This skill alone is huge, turning two of your often open counterblasts to remove two of your opponent's immediate threats. Usually you're trying to call over their two front row spots, but it's fine if you have to choose a back row for this skill.

In addition to this powerful skill, Fianna comes with another skill that can only be used once per turn while your opponent has two grade 0 units on the field. By discarding another Fianna or a Femme, you can draw two cards with no strings attached. This helps you with the issue of having too many grade 3's in your hand, and there's no real value to riding multiple Fiannas outside of shuffling back cards, so you should have no problem with the trade-off. Being able to gain two cards for one without any other costs is huge and lets the deck deviate from draw triggers.

Fianna is basically the grade 3 you always want to see first, as it provides the ideal setup. It's very easy to put four cards in your drop zone, thanks to Nostrum Witch, Arianhod, letting you get to work really quickly. But what comes after Fianna? After all, she comes with no damage pressure outside of her natural 20000 base attacking power from Legion.

That's where our second boss unit comes in: Cultus Witch, Rias. Rias comes with a skill that basically imitates Adora's skill, except it's an activation skill that costs one counterblast more, but her true value kicks in when you manage to Legion with her. When you Legion with Deirdre (Conveniently, keeping you from playing excessive grade 2's!), you can retire a Witch rear-guard to make your opponent's vanguard lose 5000 power for each of their grade 0 units. You basically combine an old Dimension Police gimmick (Think Dark Dimensional Robo, "Reverse" Daiyusha) with Witch's gimmick to create huge damage pressure for a turn. As long as all of your attacks are focused on your opponent's vanguard, each of your columns cost an extra +5000 power for each grade 0 your opponent has on the board. This can range from a low 5000 to a maximum of 25000, and that 25000 is extremely rewarding.

You ideally want to set up Rias with as many Danas and Deirdres as possible, so it's recommended that you don't waste them early on. If you manage to reach four or five grade 0's, which isn't that hard with Fianna setting you up, your columns don't even have to be well crafted for your turn to be deadly. Your average grade 3 vanguard will be at -14000 power (In case you weren't aware, power reduction in Vanguard doesn't stop at 0, like in other card games. When you reduce a unit's power below 0, it keeps going), meaning that a Deirdre by herself will need a total of 25000 shield to block, and higher columns like a sole Femme and a standard 16000 column will cost even more for your opponent. This skill hits insanely hard in the late game, so make sure to use Rias wisely!

In addition to Rias, another new little Witch has shown up to help the rest of your Witches land their attacks! Witch of Pursuit, Sekuana works sort of like a mini Rias, and while she definitely isn't as strong as her, she can be used in a flexible manner which supports the rest of the deck. When you call Sekuana to the field, by retiring a different Witch rear-guard while your opponent has two or more grade 0's on the field, you can take away 5000 power from your opponent's vanguard for the rest of the turn.

Once again, like Rias, if you're focusing the vanguard with all of your attacks, they all effectively gain +5000 power for the turn. Even though you have to kill off another one of your Witches, Sekuana by herself creates a column that hits for the turn, since you're usually matching 6000 against 6000, letting your other columns hit for huge numbers!

An important factor to keep in mind with units like Rias and Sekuana is their timing. While taking away power from your opponent's vanguard, it makes everything hit a lot harder, but if you're using these skills really early on, there can be little to no value coming from it if your opponent has no incentive to guard. Basically these cards are at their strongest when your opponent is at five damage, and these cards are at their weakest when your opponent is at no damage, as they don't have to guard. Four damage is a reasonable timing window as well, since your vanguard usually moves in first and can stack criticals on huge columns, so don't think that it's bad to use it at that moment.

Finally, like most of the other new decks, grade 0's have been growing slightly stronger with the advent of Legion. Witches are no exception, and their newest starter has a lot of potential. Witch of Banquets, Lir comes with the average 5000 power, and if she boosts a unit that hits while you're in Legion, you can add her to your soul to call two grade 0 cards from your deck at rest. This can mean more fodder for units like Sekuana or Rias, or just free boosters for later in the game.

Lir might not be the best of the new starting vanguards by herself, as most of the non-trigger targets from Shadow Paladins don't synergize very well with her. Sure she can get something like Frontline Revenger, Claudus, but the topic on hand is a Witch deck, not Revengers. So, what exactly do you get with Lir? Is there anything special that actually gives it value?

Fortunately, Witch's new stand trigger was basically designed to work with her. When Witch of Goats, Medb is called to the field and your opponent has two or more grade 0's on the field, you can un-flip a damage and soul charge a card. Sure, Lir might not use any counterblast, but we know that Rias and Fianna are definite candidates for this, making it easier for their curses to activate. Replenishing your soul can also be clutch, depending on how often you use Dana and Deirdre. Lir into Medb gives you a net total of two face-up damage and three new soul, basically replenishing all your Witch units!

Being a stand trigger is hardly detrimental to your deck's play style as well. Since Rias and Sekuana increase the power of your rear-guards, being able to stand them and make even more huge swings can turn the tide of a battle fairly easily. Fianna's card advantage also makes it easy to ignore draw triggers for the inclusion of Medb, making stands fit quite well into the deck.

To summarize the Witch deck, you want to start everything off by applying Adora's pressure early on, either cursing units on your opponent's field or taking advantage of the grade 0's your opponent guards with Deirdre and Dana. Deirdre and Dana will take all of the used guard to replace your opponent's field, reducing your opponent's offensive power tremendously. On top of those, you can let Fianna hit the field to filter through your hand and swap two more of their units with grade 0's from their deck! Once you've stalled the game out long enough, you can finish them off with Rias and Sekuana, taking advantage of all of the grade 0's that accumulated over time to make a huge final push!

One benefit that this deck has against other Legion decks it that it can play the "grade 2 game" a lot better than them. Most Legion players have taken onto a certain strategy where they would stay on grade 2, since you can only use your Legion if your opponent has a grade 3 vanguard. Decks like Musketeers only use four copies of Licorice Musketeer, Vera, and if they don't draw her, they just sit on one of their grade 2's until they can drop Vera and use all of their burst to swing the tempo in their favor. If you end up playing against a strategy like this, the best route to take is just creating a 16000 vanguard column with Adora and a grade 1 like Arianrhod. You'll have to set Lir to the side, making it harder to resolve her skill later, but it's not that big of a deal.

Having Adora in a grade 2 war is huge, since her skill can be applied as a vanguard or rear-guard, so while your opponent is sitting on a grade 2 that doesn't do much, you on the other hand have much more pressure thanks to Adora. In this scenario, if both players remain at grade 2, you'll win in the long run as Adora manages to curse units one after another. If your opponent ends up riding their grade 3 Legion before, that's when you end up capitalizing by riding Rias and making a huge damage push thanks to her skill and the amount of grade 0's that might have accumulated up until that point.

In fact, if you get paired against Raizers, this is literally your only acceptable strategy versus that deck. The one weakness of Witches is that your opponent gets to choose what grade 0's are placed onto their field. Usually this isn't too relevant versus some decks, but in the case of Raizers, your strategy can blow up in your face thanks to their pesky Cat Butler.

If you let your opponent Legion with Ultimate Raizer Mega Flare and use up a single Cat Butler in a turn, your Danas and Deirdres essentially become useless, unless you can deal with the Cat Butler immediately. You can force them to put their Butler in the front row, but in the end it just takes all of the damage pressure away from their vanguard. Basically, the match up is almost impossible unless you play the Adora game and keep them from using their Cat Butlers.

Fortunately enough, most of your match ups aren't nearly as bad as Raizers. Early game Arianrhod clones from your opponent can end up in your favor if they mistakenly discard a grade 0, allowing you to capitalize. As long as you can keep your opponent's field under control, you should be able to succeed with Witch's powerful late game.

Thanks for reading this issue of Deck Check! As always, if you have any questions about how to use the deck or some of the card choices, feel free to comment below. We'll be taking a short break from the Japanese game to cover the new additions to the English metagame thanks to the release of Booster Set 14, so stay tuned for that!