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David NavyCherub Lynn |
Eisenkugel
Before support for themes, certain bosses, archetypes,
and such was really cemented in a solid, playable way,
stuff like set 4 happened. In particular, cards like
Eisenkugel happened. The intentions here are clearly
good - access to another 10k base grade 2 who can even
swing for 12k? What a great incentive to play
specialized builds, right? Unfortunately, the problems
vastly outweigh the benefits here, leaving cards like
this unplayable. That is to say, seemingly in order to
balance out the great offensive and defensive
capabilities granted to this card, you are punished with
a 5k loss of power for not having the specific supported
units in your vanguard circle (here, the Blaukluger
cards). As if the possibility of a 5k vanilla grade 2
wasn't enough, this effect happens in both the rearguard
and the vanguard, meaning that riding Eisenkugel is
almost a death sentence, as he sits at 5k just waiting
to be slapped across the face as hard as possible while
providing just about no pressure of his own for the
turns he is in command. This leads Eisenkugel to being
one of the worst possible cards to have if you didn't
get exactly what you want, making him essentially
unplayable. A valiant effort, but the price of failing
is too great.
1/5
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TehNACHO |
More Nova Grapplers this week as we
move on to Eisenkugel, a rather interesting Ride Chain
support unit.
Eisenkugel is a rather interesting
card for having a rather uncommon trait, a skill on top
of a base power of 10K. With Eisenkugel’s 12K attacks
barraging the opponent, on top of soon to be discussed
Stern Blaukluger’s assault, all amounts of damage and
their shield will be worn out quickly, working
wonderfully for the deck’s offensive capabilities.
From my observations, it seems
Stern decks can be based in 2 major categories. Firstly
is a mixed playstyle, using a combination of both Stern
and Asura Kaiser and the Death Army duo, and second is a
column building set up using Tough Boys in conjunction
with Death Metal Droid and Eisenkugel. While both builds
have their own merits, it’s rather obvious where
Eisenkugel comes in, and he serves the deck amazingly.
Now Eisenkugel’s 10K+skill status
has to come up at a cost, and depending on your tastes,
a rather costly one. When you don’t have a Blaukluger,
Grade 2 or 3 in your Vanguard circle, Eisenkugel will
lose 5K power, leaving it at a miserable 5K base power
and 7K attack. Now this is a downside people don’t
really like, but luckily enough, I actually know how to
calculate these numbers. Now disregarding your Grade 1
and 2 misrides, Stern is looking at about 7/10 games to
be your 3rd ride, with 2 of those 10 being
forced to ride into your secondary Grade 3(s) and 1 of
those 10 simply not riding a Grade 3 by turn 3 at all.
To put it simply, only 1/5th of the time will
Eisenkugel’s restriction matter. On top of simply not
drawing an Eisenkugel with the right numbers, this is an
extremely small window for error for Eisenkugel’s
restriction to actually be restrictive. This also
ignores those builds that run 4 Stern, an X amount of
Death Metal Droids, and no back up Vanguards whose deck
performance is substantially subpar if it doesn’t ride
into Stern right away anyway, who
basically can
justify this weakness with the fact the deck will lag
anyway without a Vanguard Stern.
There’s also that panicky moment people have about
riding Eisenkugel, guys if your deck is well built you
really don’t have to worry about that much at all any
more than you do with getting triggerscrewed.
As for its role in Stern Blaukluger
decks, it’s rather simple as a 12K beater. With Death
Metal Droid, this is basically coming up with up to 8
different Rear-Guard beaters who enable the deck to
reach +20K in its Rear-Guard lanes, and due to the
higher amount of beaters is much faster and more
flexible to set up than, say, a DA column. As a whole,
the beaters in this deck’s role is to work in
conjunction with Stern’s ability to bumrush the opponent
for damage or wear out the hand extremely through the
course of the match simply by making big columns. Thanks
to the added flexibility to set up faster and in general
better numbers, you could often immediately follow
through with even more big and costly strikes if the
opponent were to let Stern’s skill through even once.
Along with this, when Stern’s skill doesn’t go off but
it checks a Critical Trigger, the high power range they
make can almost certainly guarantee the opponent is only
going to have to chuck far more precious guarding
material or risk eating that 2 damage.
Overall, Eisenkugel is a solid card
all around, even despite its restriction. It serves a
rather important role in a Stern deck built on its
principles, and its harder to kill 10K base and 12K
attack are just in general good stats to have on a
Vanguard card.
From me, a solid 3.5/5.
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