Monday, December 31, 2012

Pacifica, Bermuda Triangle: Deck Run Through

Pacifica shows as one of the more consistent builds of Bermuda Triangle. Despite its Megablast, we're obviously focusing on its Soulcharging skill in this deck, which allows the deck extreme amounts of synergy. Between the huge surplus of bouncing opportunities created by Weddell, the Pearl Sisters, and Tyrrhenia, combined with the gigantic amounts of hand quality and card advantage generated by the raw draw power of the deck side by side with Pacifica's skill, and you easily one of the greatest decks in the entire game within the ability to generate card advantage.

Bermuda Triangle Cadet, Weddell
X4 Comical Rainie
X4 Cooking Caspi
Drive Quartet, Bubblin
X4 Drive Quartet, Flows
X3 Drive Quartet, Shuplu

X4 Mermaid Idol, Elly
X4 Mermaid Idol, Sedna
X4 Sweets Harmony, Mona
X2 Turqoise Blue, Tyrrehenia

X4 Girls' Rock, Rio
X4 Pearl Sisters, Perla
X3 Top Idol, Aqua

X2 Bermuda Princess, Lena
X2 Rainbow Light, Carine
X4 Top Idol, Pacifica



With Weddell here as our starter, we're offered an immediate choice of quality control. While Weddell herself isn't very amazing in any particular way, she does do 2 things perfectly well. While actually utilizing her skill, any major bounce targets along the lines of Rio or Carine will immediately be able to replace losing Weddell, essentially trading her meek 5K field presence for a fresh draw, adding onto shield reserves or a much better unit to field. On the other hand, you could use another bouncer on Weddell and send her to your hand, giving you a 10K shield and opening up space for a better unit to take her spot on the field, ultimately giving you much better defensive and offensive capabilities.

As for whether or not Bermuda Triangle should use Draws or Stands, and I see arguments for either side. On the Draws side, they can help set up, if only by just slightly, and offer a much better benefit if they are damaged checked. They also aren't prone to fizzle if I don't have the proper field. On the other hand, Stands are easily the most advantage eating trigger, and considering that once they do have their set ups, Bermuda Triangle will have absolutely no problem whatsoever generating card advantage. With Stands, Bermuda's would be able to put much more force behind their punches, and still are able to generate a sizable amount of card advantage - albeit a different kind than drawing and refining - so I can see the argument going both ways.

Sweets Harmony, Mona, is one of the newer cards to be introduced among Bermuda Triangle's ranks. While Perle definitely had her merits for scaring the opponent into thinking that Perla would be an all too threatening unit to ever be allowed to hit, the fact remains that without a dangerous pressure Vanguard, pressure Rear-Guards are a little shifty. With this card, unlike promising the threat of a draw like Perle does, Mona can straight up bounce a unit right away and facilitate their bounce abilities through it. If used right, she can end up being the key to powerful combo plays to generate massive amounts of card advantage and pushing you far ahead into the lead in a fight.

Tyrrhenia plays as another combo piece for the deck's bouncing shenanigans. Usually to be situated behind the Vanguard, Tyrrhenia trades off from the usual 8K or 10K boosters you'd see behind Vanguards to apply pressure throughout the early and midgame. Whether or not you can actually land blows, all this does is lead to even more card advantage generated. Had your opponent guarded, and they would have had to drop 2 cards to guard your Vanguard, a virtual +1 in card advantage and generally a good lead on the opponent. Had the opponent let its attack through, you can easily Soul-Blast your way into bouncing Rio or such and continue building even more card advantage through their skills. 

Girls' Rock, Rio is part one of the main draw engine in the deck. Bounced by Weddell, Tyrrhenia, Perla, and Lena, you can often rack up plenty of draws through the course of the match. I opted for 4, some people would go for less because of its 8K status, but its usefulness is something that I wouldn't want to miss out on.

As with another useful unit, Perla serves as another bouncer for the deck. Racking up pressure for each attack, the raw advantage she nets serves well throughout the match. As mentioned with Perle, this advantage is pushed even further when comboed with her Grade 1 Counterpart. Easily one of the more useful units in the deck.







Grade 3

Lena here serves as our Co-Boss. Bouncing the field on ride, she allows for easy field set up and use of Rio's, Carine's, and Perle's skills. Sporting 13K power while as Vanguard, Sedna more than helps her reach better numbers while attacking, and the 2 7Ks face the English meta's surplus of 10K Vanguards very well. She's useful enough to warrant 3, even 4 copies of in other builds, but a Pacifica deck is a Pacifica deck.

Carine's skill is exactly like Rio's soooo.

Pacifica is the main boss. Despite being a Mega-Blast unit, our main focus will be on her Soulcharge skill. Every turn, she allows us to draw a card and send a unit to the bottom of the deck. This ends up with amazing hands throughout the course of the match and allows the deck to function far more consistently than one would expect. Not only that, but she also sports 14K power on the attack, meaning any booster behind her is a solid Vanguard column at basically all times.




How the Deck Works

Unlike the ever threatening force behind Riviere, Pacifica decks better favor raw card advantage.

And just a quick note before I go off boasting about how useful Pacifica is, we all know that a 10K shield is worth more than a 5K and a 5K is worth more than a Grade 3, right? Okay, good.

This deck channels raw advantage from nowhere, quickly gaining the upper hand with more draws and cycling then the opponent can usually keep up with. Between Lena, Tyrrhenia, and Perla's bouncing, enough pressure and draw engines can go around to completely overwhelm almost any opponent's hand size to tank, optimize your field further, or go for even bigger combos later.

The deck requires a very flexible player in order to make best of its skills, but with a bit of forethought and decision making, the deck's abilities to draw out cards comes to shine. Often, the most ideal field would be Perla boosted, Pacifica and Tyrrhenia, and finally Rio/Carine boosted. However, this field isn't perfect for one of 2 reasons. For a first, late game offensive. While Pacifica's boost more than means you won't fall behind in offensive power with practically any booster you could call behind it, Tyrrhenia still isn't the absolute best use of her power. And with that, say Pacifica hits and bounces a Rio that attacked already. What do you bounce now, should Perla hit and attempt to bounce? There are countless situations that can often lead to a few derp ups here and there to make best use of bouncing, but at the same time, bouncing is your key to get past those derp ups.


Along with nearly always netting extra draws, Pacifica's cycling tops off to make the absolute best out of your advantage. Always cleaning your hand of Grade 3s, excess boosters, and any beaters that aren't needed, and in exchange usually netting in more optimal cards for a given situation and generally leaving you with a bit more and more shield per use, Pacifica's cycling allows for your hand's guarding and flexibility to increase exponentially. The best part about it is that you don't have to run any actual risks with it, as you always draw before you cycle a card out, meaning that instead of dropping any excess cards for the chance to draw something better like Aermo, instead you go ahead and draw to always get the most optimal result from it. Her skill also allows for a far faster early and midgame, cycling in beaters and boosters faster to allow for your field to develop quickly, and making the many combos of the deck that much more consistent to reach.

As the late game approaches, its usually in your best interest to move a 7K or 8K booster behind your Vanguard Pacifica/Lena in exchange for Tyrrhenia, as the power is much better suited to force out guard while the Vanguard isn't likely to hit. With this, your playstyle changes ever so slightly. By now, your field should be fitted just perfectly due to all the bouncing and exchanging you've been doing throughout the match, so needing to plan ahead for combos often flies out the window at this point. Here though, is where basic strategies come to shine. Your hand by now should be massive and/or of great quality, so from the late game out, its all about making the absolute best use of your hand to tank through. The late game is often a battle of attrition, and when your hand nearly doubles the opponent's in size and quality, that's often a battle easily won.

And as for Grade 3s, anyone who understands field scalability will be more than happy with this deck. Bouncing allows for you to field Grade 3s with less worry about locking up your field. Need to get a Rio on the board? Perla sitting in your hand? Perfect Guard in hand? All these and a quite a few more situations easily solved with the bounce mechanic

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2 comments:

  1. You might want to fix the Pacifica part. Her skill boost the atk to 13k not 14k XD

    ReplyDelete