[JCG] Deck Check: Trinity Crimson Flame!

[JCG] Deck Check: Trinity Crimson Flame!

  Tuesday, August 12, 2014    byak

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Welcome to our series of Booster Set 17! We'll be kicking things off by featuring the cover card of the set, who has already managed to see top table tournament play: Vortex Dragonewt!

Booster Set 17 hit Japanese shelves over the weekend, giving players access to new powerful cards for decks such as Gold Paladin, Link Joker, and Kagero. Kagero, being possibly one of the most consistent and popular clans of all time, made a good reentry into the Legion metagame with a brand new archetype: Perdition. The deck utilizes heavy field control like any old Kagero deck, but a huge portion of the power lies in its flagship Legion boss.

Perdition Dragon, Vortex Dragonewt collected a lot of hype on its public debut, as it showcased an ability only shared with the moderately recent Revenger, Dragruler Phantom: burn damage. While Dragonewt is in Legion, you can counterblast two and discard either another copy of himself or his mate, Perdition Dragon, Whirlwind Dragon to retire two grade 2 or lower rear-guards and inflict a point of damage if your opponent is at four damage or less. As I mentioned in last week's Set Check, the value of this skill is very reliant on the timing of when it's used, since the value of dealing a damage depends on how much damage is present to begin with.

Despite being available for use in the early game, Vortex Dragonewt actually doesn't work well when used at that point. It's good to have the 23000 base power for attacking, and retiring two units is a pretty big deal, but the damage is meaningless when you're knocking them from one to two, or from two to three. However, knocking them up to four or five damage becomes a lot more menacing, since guarding becomes even more important at that point. Aiming for the late game with Dragonewt is ideal as well due to the nature of it's cost, since you're more likely to see another copy the longer you play the game. It is ideas like these that drive the direction of the deck, so let's not waste time and jump right in!

Trinity Crimson Flame!

17 / 14 / 11 / 5 / 3

1 Red Pulse Dracokid
2 Perdition Spirit, Flare Lover [Draw]
2 Perdition Dragon, Buster Rain Dragon [Critical]
4 Demonic Dragon Mage, Rakshasa [Critical]
4 Gattling Claw Dragon [Draw]
4 Perdition Dancer, Agafia [Heal]

4 Perdition Dragon, Rampart Dragon
4 Nouvelleroman Dragon
3 Dragon Monk Gojo
3 Calamity Tower Wyvern

4 Perdition Dragon, Whirlwind Dragon
3 Bellicosity Dragon
2 Berserk Dragon
2 Nouvellecritic Dragon

3 Perdition Dragon, Vortex Dragonewt
2 Dauntless Drive Dragon

3 Transcendence Dragon, Dragonic Nouvelle Vague

The Dragon Trinity

Despite Legion influencing just about every tournament deck in this season, Perdition Dragons appear to synergize very well with Kagero veterans Dauntless Drive Dragon and Transcendence Dragon, Dragonic Nouvelle Vague. As mentioned above, activating Dragonewt to force your opponent to a high amount of damage is huge, and Dauntless Drive only adds onto the threat of stealing the game in the same turn. Break Riding Dragonewt over Dauntless Drive and using Dragonewt to ramp your opponent to five damage is one of the scariest things this deck is capable of pulling off, especially because your Dragonewt swings for 36000+ power twice.

Unfortunately, you have to make a sacrifice of throwing away early game damage potential by sticking with a Limit Break unit, but the reward for doing so is among the power levels of some of the strongest Break Ride combinations from season three. The fact that you're killing off two units and forcing out a serious amount of cards from your opponent's hand makes it difficult for them to come back, especially since they have to deal with Legion levels of power from your vanguard every following turn.

The easiest way to tie these two powerhouses together, outside of maxing out both of them, is the use of Nouvelle Vague as an engine. Nouvelle Vague might be past his prime at this point, but it's still true that using him with Nouvelleroman to tutor one of the two grade 3's you need is huge. Not being able to max out on Dragonewt might appear unappealing at first, but if you consider that your chances of drawing into a Nouvelleroman in a game is notably high, you're basically using six copies, as well as five copies of Dauntless for your setup. Nouvelle Vague is also a great transition after you've used your grade 3 combination, since Nouvelle Vague terrorizes the late game with his heavy defense and restrictive continuous skills.

Basically, even though Perdition Dragons can play a very control-esque game, Dragonewt's burn damage cannot be ignored, especially since it creates synergy with Dauntless Drive Dragon, making Dauntless a much more valuable second grade 3. Nouvelle Vague simply brings it all together while offering an optional third stage of late game potential. It's possible to also play four copies of Dauntless and four copies of Dragonewt, but I personally prefer the Nouvelle approach due to its flexibility.

Consistency over Control

In the set check, I put a bit of effort into emphasizing the retire-heavy properties of Perdition Dragons, including their alternative Legion, Perdition Dragon, Pain Laser Dragon and their unique damage un-flipper, Perdition Battler, Mareiko. Pain Laser Dragon can't fit itself in for obvious reasons, and Mareiko's soul blasting cost takes away the effectiveness of Calamity Tower Wyvern, Kagero's essential "soul blast for a card" clone. The goal of this iteration of Perdition Dragons is to reach your high grade combos as fast as possible, making draw units like Calamity Tower Wyvern and Dragon Monk Gojo and absolute necessity.

It's also important to note that these two units set up for Dragonewt's Legion ability relatively quickly, keeping you from guarding excessively for the sake of putting units in the drop zone so you can ramp up to Limit Break potential. They also help give you options in what you can actually return with your Legion, as you want to return triggers more than anything, plus they can also find more copies of Dragonewt and Whirlwind Dragon.

For this build, draw triggers were also given more importance than usual, resulting in a ratio of six draws and six criticals. While criticals are important to work with Dragonewt's burn damage, they fall off after Dragonewt's burn damage comes into play, since they hardly make a difference at high damage counts. Draw triggers on the other hand are a boon for the deck, since the deck relies heavily on drawing into your combo, or at least more cards that help dig into your combo.

Draw triggers also work well with Dauntless Drive Dragon and Dragon Monk Gojo's costs of cards from your hand, allowing you to mitigate their naturally low shield and power value in exchange for other resources. Since you create damage with your vanguard skills, you aim to use the rest of your deck to create positive card advantage, which is why draw triggers are so good in the build.

General Strategy

The deck plays very similarly to the traditional Nouvelle Vague decks but with another option for damage output. You want to set up a rear-guard Gojo turn one as much as possible due to the filtering it provides over time, allowing you to drop your dead cards while either putting together your high grades or helping you ride successfully. Red Pulse Dracokid is played over other options due to its ability to make Calamity Tower Wyvern live on your grade 2 ride to give you an extra draw. Hopefully, unless you opened very poorly, you should have been able to successfully fish for a Dauntless Drive Dragon to set you up for your late game.

As previously mentioned, incorporating a Break Ride with your strategy is not the best thing to do in a Legion metagame, since your opponent gets access to late game power a lot earlier than you do. Going against decks featuring units like Ultimate Raizer Mega Flare or Bluish Flame Liberator, Prominence Core can be difficult considering how they can outpace you really early on, putting you in an unfavorable position and keeping you from effectively accessing your power plays.

Fortunately, it's not impossible to adjust your play-style to accompany these poor match-ups. Kagero's grade 2 lineup once again comes with a lot of built in retiring, with units such as Berserk Dragon and Nouvelle Critic Dragon to help fight back while waiting on your Dauntless Drive. It's important, however, to monitor your damage available while using these units, since Dragonewt still comes with a hefty cost of two counterblasts. Retiring early can be helpful, but if it locks you out of your late game skills, your chances of making a comeback suddenly drop.

Of course, that's why three copies of Bellicosity Dragon are also included, but those aren't guaranteed to return what you exactly want. It's not the easiest thing to write about, since the value of all these cards vary from situation to situation. I'd throw in Perdition Mage, Astica for the 10000 base, which is needed for the infamous grade 2 wars, but I predict that those are going to fall out of favor really soon and variety is a lot more important for this kind of grade 2 lineup.

Overall, the deck shouldn't be that hard to play at all. Your winning image is to go Dauntless into Dragonewt into Nouvelle, which should hopefully shove enough damage at your opponent's vanguard. The deck features a lot of consistency options to help you reach this winning image while also featuring some control support to keep you from getting overwhelmed too early.

Once again, if the Nouvelle Vague engine turns out clunkier than expected, running four of Dragonewt and four Dauntless has a lot of potential behind it, since you have room to drop off variety for consistency and play more draw power, such as the fourth Gojo and even the fourth Wyvern. You can even play more Perdition support for the portion of the game where you're sitting on Dragonewt, but it might end up being dead as a result.

Overall, I think Dragonewt is a really powerful card when used in combination with the rest of Kagero's long lasting support. Its primary problem is that it lacks a proper early game in a metagame that's all about the early game, but it makes up for it by retaliating with massive force, making it an interesting choice that has the potential to win tournaments.

I wouldn't seriously consider a pure Perdition build for tournament play because of its lack of damage output. While Perdition Dragon, Pain Laser Dragon offers a lot of field control, the deck as a whole doesn't do nearly enough as the new Brawler builds running Brawler, Big Bang Knuckle Buster and its ability to essentially wipe boards. Therefore, the only reasonable route is to capitalize off of the free damage that Dragonewt provides, while using the retiring portion of the skill as a bonus.

Perdition Dragons are still fun to use, no matter what version you run, due to the satisfaction of resolving Dragonewt's skill. Dragonewt has the potential to carry the entire deck, so it should definitely be taken advantage of in this Legion era.

Stay tuned throughout the rest of August for more Booster Set 17 articles, as well as the last of the English Booster Set 14 articles. Feel free to leave any comments or questions down below, and thanks for reading.