This Space
For Rent

The new mermaid deck is a fucking monster. Let Saikyo walk you through.

I hope that the underwhelming value of things such as the Legend Deck has taught people about the trap of judging a book by its cover. I myself for example wasn’t entirely sure what Harmony was supposed to accomplish, other than forcing Bermudas to run the bounce gambit in its entirety to accomplish what they’ve always been doing.

Reliance on one gambit is still something I’m willing to forgive provided that it can do a LOT of it, in one turn, with not much effort needed on your part. If a deck has to basically nickel and dime you, then it takes longer to win, which means more chances for an opponent to suddenly drop a nuke on you to win. So the first investigation I needed to perform was whether or not Harmony could work, and how much stuff with Harmony you needed. If it didn’t stack up, it was just going to be one more set to totally ignore save for the extra archetype stuff for old stuff like PRISMS. If you’re total freaks, anyway. But to my surprise, they really are an absolute monster to face if you’ve done everything correctly.

I know on paper Harmony sounds like an elaborate way to accomplish something. But in actuality, when I first saw the deck in action I was surprised at how much most of it actually didn’t need Harmony to function. Indeed, only one thing actually actively relied on Harmony and that was the new Extraordinary Freshman, Shizuku, who became a free potential +1 Stride fodder as soon as she was set up.

This was actually rather nice to see because I ended up trying several iterations of it before finally settling on a more straightforward build. In the olden build of Bermuda Triangle, you basically ran bouncers and then a crapton of bounce targets as your main advantage engine. In G-Bermudas, this is a little more difficult to do, especially regarding the G1 lineup where most of it is actually largely rather vanilla. I tried running the usual suspects for bounce targets and starters such as Girl’s Rock Rio, but I found running those basically forced the inclusion of 8k vanillas, a problem that was recurring in Messiahs. I also tried Emilia but she was too slow and she was constantly getting attacked. In the end, I was once again reminded that simple is often the best approach to things and I just ran a decent vanilla beat, using Miracle Voice Lauris as the main bounce engine.

Before settling on the final build, Counterblast was a constant headache as I tried to juggle everything at once. This included a few variants where I ran an alternative boss that was powerful, but required taking MORE liberties in design and were actually really fucking CB-heavy. Now, I found the only real spenders of these resources are Lauris, Spica and when useful, Olyvia, which are +1s by themselves usually and doesn’t require spending a CB to accomplish nothing BUT a bounce, which is always nice. Not to mention Kukiri existed for getting the resources back. This is what I enjoyed about using this deck most of all; not only was it able to tank decently well, it was also able to hybridise the concept with an offensive approach as well. It wasn’t just more of the same old stuff, it actually was now using bouncing and calling as a way to attack more as well, one of the reasons Raindear was a viable build back when it first came out, despite the fact it was a common. In case you haven’t guessed, this is basically me saying I like Spica quite a bit; she was the attack refresher of choice to whittle down hand. While she’s no White Hank or Crayon Tiger, the rest of slack was picked up so well by the rest of the rear-guards it didn’t matter so much.

The large reason for a lack of need for heavy resource spending was Shizuku. She was frightening; by just sitting on the field and waiting for something in front of her to appear, I could add new Stride fodder to my hand for free, with no other penalty for failure. Even in the event where she arrived a bit late, Spica solved that problem with a bounce and a call if necessary. In the event I had a G3 already in the hand, the new one just translated into free fodder for a Perfect Guard or just another thing to save for an Olyvia gambit on the next turn, if I read the turn correctly and I had good reason to believe the opponent had no Perfect Guard themselves.

Speaking of School Etoile, Olyvia, she is basically the sum of all your efforts in this deck. She embodies what G-Bermuda Triangle is really all about: reinforce the hand like a madman, and if you have some spare time on you, go ahead and bring a painful attack, and hope to Daigo you don’t meet a Sentinel to the face. It doesn’t really have much in the way of actual PROPER finishers, but it tanks so stupidly well it can shrug off a lot of big plays and still have some cards spare to counterattack with.

My final build of G Bermuda ended up being actually pretty vanilla, which I know is going to be confusing to a few people, but it actually worked very well. With cards such as Olyvia and the rest of your bouncers, the card advantage doesn’t matter as long as the quality of your EXISTING advantage was already good. Bouncing the right stuff managed the guard quality which was able to decently make up for the numbers, and as for the vanilla play, being able to force extra guard out of the opponent was certainly a match for the guard-hoarding of a traditional Bermuda Triangle deck. Manya and Sanya together make a 22k column and with Olyvia, it was one that could be refreshed if need be, which was useful for burning hand.

In summary, G-Bermuda Triangle is actually quite frightening to fight and fun to use; exactly what I want to see in a deck. It carries on the legacy of Duos by hybridising offense with defence, with a slightly higher emphasis on offense, but it’s competent enough at defending, especially with Lauris that it’s not much of an issue. Get in cartons for everything good in multiple copies, because it’s worth it. At least for those into sexy fish people.

I guess all that’s left is for me to post the list that gave me the best results, for all you people who seek to moe the opponent to death:

G0:

x1 First Lesson, Akari 

x4 Cherished Phrase, Reina 

x4 Morning Impact, Lips 

x4 Whatever Critical you can find 

x4 Heart Lover, Pennelotta

G1:

x4 Image Master, Kukuri 

x4 Persevering Talent, Shandi 

x4 Superb New Student, Shizuku 

x2 Sweet Paradise, Manya 

G2: 

x4 Admired Sparkle, Spica 

x4 Top Gear Idol, Sanya 

x3 Unbelievagirl, Potpourri

G3: 

x4 Miracle Voice, Lauris 

x4 Sincere Girl, Liddy

G-Zone:

x4 School Etoile, Olyvia 

x2 Legend of the Glass Shoe, Amoris 

x1 Fluffy Ribbon, Somni 

x1 Snow Element, Blizza