Thursday, June 13, 2013

Musketeers, Neo Nectar:Deck Review

Since the issue has been made abundantly clear to me irl, you pronounce 'bass' in B.a.s.s. values like the instrument.

While not as outright powerful as some clans and decktypes, the Musketeers take a radically large step towards field consistency, near unprecedented in almost any other decktype except the most dedicated of the Royal Paladins. Focusing almost entirely on constantly scaling the field, the Musketeers' ability to make early game strike forces with almost no repercussions for rush power, take advantage of almost any gamestate from building out of almost anything, and even exhibiting light levels of tanking and other defensive tropes, the Musketeers represent a jack of all trades for flexibility in most if not all situations they are thrown in.

Broccolini Musketeer, Kirah
X3 Chestnut Bullet
X4 Dancing Sunflower
X1 Four Leaf Fairy
X4 Hibiscus Musketeer, Hannah
X4 Night Queen Musketeer, Daniel

X4 Lily of the Valley Musketeer, Rebecca
X4 Maiden of Blossom Rain
X2 Tulip Musketeer, Mina
X4 Water Lily Musketeer, Ruth

X4 Cherry Blossom Musketeer, Augusto
X4 Lily of the Valley Musketeer, Kaivant
X3 Tulip Musketeer, Almira

X4 Black Lily Musketeer, Hermann
X4 White Lily Musketeer, Cecilia

Out of 10 fights, generally 6 of them will result in you immediately riding into a Grade 3 you run 4 of without misriding. Kirah however, can bring this up to 7 fights, allowing the deck to play optimally just that much more. Along with helping to secure an immediate ride into Cecilia, Kirah's namesake makes it the perfect candidate for early game field scaling when you don't need its skill, and otherwise get your Musketeer shenanigans off as early as you can by always giving you fodder to work with right away. Through this, Kirah's in general role of stabilizing the deck can also act as a way to facilitate a solid way to develop a legitimate early rush on the opponent by giving you field set ups generally much faster than that the opponent can deal with.

Of course, fodder is fine up until something can actually make use of it. Lily of the Valley Musketeer, Rebecca is one of the key cards to facilitate this with its ability to retire a Musketeer unit to check the top 4 cards of your deck for a new Musketeer to call. Through this, you can trade in virtually any Musketeer out for another one which may be able to serve you even better than before, creating and generating constant auxiliary advantage to get an edge over the opponent. Including direct upgrades like changing Kirahs into Ruth, the skill also allows for far more flexible field set ups not possible in other decks. Mina's here almost completely for namesake, but Ruth takes spotlight for this deck. Not only will it almost always have its skill, turn 1, 2, or so on, but its ability take both a beater spot and a booster spot allows the field and resources                                                                even more flexibility, along with giving a much more reliable buffer to get a beater out                                                                 of any other Musketeer's cycling skill.

Moving on from the 12K beater almost everyone should know of, Kaivant plays the same key role as Rebecca in being able to trade out units to constantly tune your field setup. With over a 75% chance to pull a booster and, counting Ruth, nearly a 93% chance to get a beater, it's quite safe to say that whatever field set up you're aiming for is very tangibly in your grasp with the cyclers. While not as reliable on their own, or only trying from a single usage, the 65% chance of calling out an intercept also gives you a good defensive edge by giving you virtually no direct drawback to using your 5K intercepts early on to maintain advantage.

Moving past another 12K beater, it finally comes down to the boss card of the deck, White Lily Musketeer, Cecilia. Cecilia's secondary skill, unlike the other 2 cyclers that check 4, will check through 5 cards. The 75% chance for a booster rises to almost 83%, the 93% chance for a beater rises to almost 97%, and the 65% chance for an intercept rises to nearly 74%. In conjunction with lower-Grade cyclers, any field you aim for is well in your reach, and the ability to execute any Musketeer tactics is increased even further. The constantly maintained field is further exhibited in her Limit Break, as for only one Counter-Blast and returning five Musketeers from the drop zone to the deck, you may call out two more copies of Cecilia out from your deck. It should be noted that fattening the deck by 3 cards, and most likely just immediately trading out a card out so only by 2, has virtually little to no notable effect on you trigger potency, so please ignore anyone who even begins to mention this. Anywho, through the constant generation of 10K beaters, you'd have a near endless source of card advantage and fodder to go through, loading you with more interceptors at a steady rate and improving your defensive measures greatly through giving you another 5K shield to work with.

How the Deck Works

While it's hard to write down an exact guide on how such a malleable deck works, there are many key aspects to the deck to follow.

The Musketeers' Early Game is going to be followed through with all sorts of rush elements. Instead of having to shuffle through whatever you call, Rebecca and Kaivant work together to put your field development on overdrive. Along with immediately trading out Kirah if you don't need its skill, you can trade out weaker boosters while your field still has holes in it for higher powered beaters right away, taking advantage of the limited resources of the early game by loading you up with better offensive units to quickly gain an offensive edge over the opponent. Even if you have more Musketeers that you can trade out than you actually can afford too, there's almost no repercussions for making weaker columns thanks to Cecilia's advances later on.

By the start of the midgame, you can expect the field to nearly be full by this point. So long as it's filled with Musketeers, any poor columns are virtually meaningless through any cycling skills. Just like the early game, thanks to being able to use basically any unit you draw and turn it into any good role for your field, you'll be taking advantage of almost any limit of resources. Even if both you and your opponent may generate the same amount of card advantage, you can expect your field to be full maybe even turns ahead of them, giving you a huge advantage lead in the fight. From here, defensive measures also begin to show themselves. While you still aren't really creating any card advantage, so long as you have another Musketeer to replace them, you have every reason to use an Intercept if the moment arrives, with no drawback of say, losing out on your offensive capability. Basically put, when coupled with the advances for your offensive capabilities, the Musketeers can draw into amazing capabilities through battle, giving a good leading edge in a fight.

With all the cycling and intercepting, it shouldn't be hard to expect 5 Musketeers in the drop zone by the time the Late Game rolls around. About when the opponent begins attacking you, you have, say, 3 damage, and if you have 2 intercepts, around then is the best time to drop both intercepts on attacks, creating yet another damage buffer to help keep you in the game. With Cecilia, you can immediately replace your attack forces, meaning that buffer only served to your benefit, giving you yet another edge over the opponent. From here, ignoring Kaivant, you can generate on average some 167255/45402 or 3.7K shield turn per turn through Cecilia's skill, bolstering your defense even further. Eventually, your earlier strikes and enhanced defense will continuously wear away at your opponent until victory.

14 comments:

  1. Love musketeers, double intercept away, call two cecilias get another intercept or even try for two, rinse and repeat pretty much.

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  2. How would this deck stack up against cross-rides like DOTE if the opponent survived long enough to get to ride a G3 on top of another G3? From what I've seen, they can easily get 17-19k columns before triggers, which through use, has worked wonders for me against 10k and 11k vanguards, not too sure if 13k would really change anything, since the 19k columns will still force them to use 10k shield or intercepts to save their 10k shields for bigger threats.

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    1. I'd like to note that /this specific decklist/ may not be the best of choices. The greater general purpose of being well rounded for 11K Vanguards left out choices like 8K and 10K Vanillas which would help greatly in a fight against Cross-Rides.

      For Musketeers in general however, yes I would think that they can fare generally well. While not as amazing at setting up 21K columns as some builds, a properly tuned deck can more than easily create 18-19K Columns all across, so they aren't /too/ directly hampered by Cross-Ride defense. However, this is a statement for Cross-Rides in general. Huge threats like Vanguard based pressure is a threat to any deck, regardless if its equipped to fight Cross-Rides or not, so against, say, DOtE, I can't really say for certain that the Musketeers can perform well.

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    2. Thanks, so it can do "okay" against cross-rides but works better against 11ks, that does explain my two matches where I got 2W-0L against raptors, ancient dragons, and Dark Irregulars. So much consistency it's kinda scary. I love it for that, it's what I've been looking for in a deck.

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    3. I tried building a musketeer deck on my own, I think my mistake was not using the damage adders, my setup was pretty much this minus the damage adders, in their place I had Dandelion Musketeer, Mirkka (which I ended up having to ride.... more often than not) and for some odd reasoning, that I still question, I also had Iris Knight (I think I less paid attention to the name, and more the art in thinking it was meant to be used in a musketeer deck, till I tried to use Cecilia's LB.. only to be missing a musketeer card...)

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  3. Have another question, would dropping Tulip Musketeer, Mina for Dandelion Musketeer, Mirkka have any negative impact on the deck? Mirkka being a 9k booster could help push columns up a bit higher, and getting Mirkka to 9k isn't hard, since the condition is when you shuffle the deck via a card effect (especially easy to pull off once Cecilia is on the VG circle) the only thing I worry about is having to ride it and if having 2 would be too little. Thanks in advance for the advise on this.

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    1. I recall being asked to make a BT08 decklist for Musketeers, so I didn't mention it right away.

      On that note though, Mirkka is definitely a solid choice for the deck, and the deck's consistency shouldn't drop much at all if it were to replace Mina.

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  4. Okay, I'll give it a test run at 2. Thanks again.

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  5. Okay, so 2 Mirkka are not working, kinda figured. Would it hurt too much if I dropped 1 of the Almira for a 3rd Mirkka? I don't want to drop my beaters or searchers so she seemed like a good choice, just not too sure on it.

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    1. Honestly, I had only taken the time to test out BT08 cards, so I don't exactly know where to go when including Mirkka. I'm a little surprised that 2 Mirkka over 2 Mina wouldn't be working, but the only advice I can solidly give is to just play around with it. Dropping a single Almira may do, though.

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    2. Tried it with 3, after dropping an Almira, to add a third Mirkka, I managed to get two of them, sadly, I got destroyed by link joker though, I did survive multiple breakrides if they had not kept getting them, I could've rushed them from 4 to 6 but when I went all out to guard, since they ran out of breakrides and had no other G3s, he gets a stand and a critical trigger, but yeah, the third Mirrka helped considerably the game had been 1 vs 4 damage for awhile (I tried rushing him from 3 to 6 but he had more guard than I had expected, looks like I need to work on that perfect memory some more)

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    3. Since we lack Mirkka, how much would it hurt to add 3 Corolla Dragon in place of 2 Mina and 1 Almira, I'd be losing 3 targets for all my searchers, bringing the total number of non-targets up to 15 and the total targets to 35 (this counts Kirah, if she gets recycled) I'm not good with probability, so I have no idea if this would really hurt anything, I know with Mirkka, it changed nothing since it is a Musketeer, but he/she probably wont be out till late next year.

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    4. It wouldn't hurt much, but Corolla Dragon's just plain out overkill in trying to reach for power, which actually isn't as useful as it may seem.

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    5. Ah, cause I've been having trouble with people getting large hand size though certain effect (stupid nemain.... stupid Ildona) I just have too much trouble breaking through large hands, has me a little worried. Online I do great, thanks to Mirkka.

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