Greedy Hand
X3 Blitz Ritter
X4 Cheshire Cat of Nightmareland
X4 Dark Knight of Nightmareland
X1 Mad Hatter of Nightmareland
X4 Hysteric Shirley
X4 Alluring Succubus
X4 Demon Bike of the Witching Hour
X4 March Hare of Nightmareland
X3 Yellow Bolt
X4 Decadent Succubus
X3 Emblem Master
X4 Flirtatious Succubus
X4 Bladewing Reijy
X2 Dark Lord of Abyss
X1 Stil Vampir
Working from the bottom up, as usual, we've got Greedy Hand as our starting Vanguard. It's usefulness is not to be understated, despite appearing to be a direct -1. Including supplying another way for Demon Bike of the Witching Hour to get off its skill, its skill adds an extra card in the soul to help for the Vanguard's shenanigans later down the road. Along with that, the deck uses a 7 crit-5 draw set up to keep resources in check while also maintaining its offensive capability. An extremely noteworthy card from this line up is Hysteric Shirly, which once again may look like a direct -1 at first, can quickly play into the Vanguard's shenanigans and turn the battle in your favor.
For Grade 1s, Alluring Succubus and Yellow Bolt are 2 of the deck's soulchargers. Both ever useful 7K boosters, Alluring Succubus Soulcharges from the top of your deck when called allowing for easier set ups, while Yellow Bolt works like a Gojo half-clone to help cap off the Soulstack. But the real star of the line up is Demon Bike of the Witching Hour. For every other copy of a Demon Bike in the soul, Rearguard Demon Bikes gain +2K power, quickly leading to 8K, 10K, and sometimes even 12K fielded Demon Bikes for powerful field set ups.
Decadent Succubus takes a rather different approach to what people expect from a Grade 2. Rather than having an all around utility skill, it has a Vanguard only skill to soulcharge for every unit called during the turn. It may seem a little hazardous to run 4 otherwise vanilla units before you remember 7 of the boosters are 7K and 4 of them can gain huge power bumps with just a little bit of set up, and its consistency, floating somewhere around 60%, but the benefits of its skill are just too good to pass up, quickly building 3-4 more soul than you would've otherwise if you rode, say, a vanilla. Along with it, Emblem Master takes the role of on-hit pressure, and for a single counterblast, could soulcharge 3 and just keep pushing for more soul for you. Finally, Flirtatious Succubus works just like Alluring Succubus, soulcharging on-call for quick soulbuilding.
Bladewing Reijy takes as the boss unit of the deck. On ride, it selects one unit on your field and soulcharges up to 3 more copies of it from the deck to your soul, almost instantly setting up Demon Bike plays and for its own secondary skill. When there are 15 Dark Irregulars in soul, it gains 2 more Critical for a 3 Critical strike at the opponent, often invalidating many Limit Break plays and working away at the opponent's resources within the midgame, rather than having to wait on the late game attrition wars. Speaking of, Dark Lord of Abyss plays the role of the deck's secondary Vanguard. Should Reijy not have completed its soul by the time the game picks up and paces into the late game, Abyss' 11K defense and overwhelmingly powerful Limit Break can make up extremely well for late game pushes. Finally, Stil Vampir is a tech Vanguard for a huge final turn finish, should the opportunity present itself. With its Megablast and the increasing use of 6K boosters *ahem*10K Vanguard Boosters*ahem*, it can quickly turn into +5K forced out in each column and hampering Grade 2s in their hand, which if you ask anyone who's played Zeal or Soul Saver Dragon before, is more than a devastating assault.
How the deck works:
Spam those soulcharges. And I mean spam the crap out of them.
Ideally, the deck wants to pull together that 15 soul by turn 3-4 to immediately start threatening other decks off with that +2 Critical. With Reijy set up immediately, your playstyle changes drastically from regular plays. Instead of aiming all attacks at the opponent's Vanguard, now one'd only use Reijy for threatening the Vanguard, while the work at other Rearguards. Now this may sound odd at first, and even more so when I tell you that it's about 25K shield and 3-4 cards forced out per turn only, but in fact, it's so much more effective than one can get at.
One of the defining reasons why even though the deck's b.a.s.s. value is so low but still so powerful is that it can set up so early. Since we know that most decks regularly +3 every turn from Twin Driving and their opening draw, if we negate that from as early as turn 3, their gameplay stagnates to close to a slow crawl, emphasized even further with you always attacking and hopefully killing of their Rearguards only to further slow down their forward momentum. This puts you in a delicate sense of balance, with you fighting from the safety of not giving the opponent their Limit Break or all the necessary Counter-Blasts to go off and dragging down their gameplay, and your opponent trying their hardest to get themselves out of this soft lock.
Speaking of, this is another benefit for the deck as a whole. If the opponent is caught at 2-3 damage for the whole game, they'd have almost no access to their Limit Break skills and extremely limited Counter-Blasts to spend, dealing another blow to their forward momentum. Ideally, with Reijy perfectly set up and enforced by a Demon Bike, the game becomes a depressingly steep uphill battle for the opponent as they try to get themselves out of the many locks you are putting them into.
Of course though, with such a unique strategy, there's always a little gimmick to keep in mind. Here however, it's a pretty big blow: Consistency. Consistency to set up soul by the time damage is still in the ideal range for you to take advantage of. And to put if frankly, it's not very consistent at all. More than often, I'd find myself just short of that 15 soul threshold, caught at 12-13 or so Soul before it becomes far too late for Reijy's shenanigans to truly be of use to me. At that point, it's often best to just abandon the strategy for on of the other back up Vanguards, Stil Vampir and Dark Lord of Abyss. Dark Lord takes a great role for the deck as a Vanguard and easily makes up for any soul just short of Reijy. Let's say I have 12 Soul and I ride Dark Lord. Even if I don't Soulcharge anymore from that point, just one use of Dark Lord's skill sends it skyrocketing to 26K, unboosted. Pushed even further by Demon Bike which hopefully should be a 10-12K booster at that point, and essentially you reach one of the highest power ranges that this game can even begin to imagine. Timed right and with good attention to the opponent's hand, and the late game is almost always yours. Stil Vampir though, is its own world of scary. Including probably increasing the attack value of your field all across the board, limiting your opponent's options to guard no matter how minimal always becomes a huge blow to the opponent, and if for some dumb reason it doesn't manage to finish the opponent, the losses are almost always usually too much for the opponent to ever get back from.
And so, my Bladewing Reijy deck. Even with its minor intricacies over its playstyle, Reijy's approach to victory is an odd but often safe and even prosperous route which almost always plays to your advantage in the end, and with such a huge emphasis on Soulcharging within the deck, allows for huge and powerful finishers that can often crush your opponents at ease.
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