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When Is A Dull Card Too Much Effort?

If you have to run something boring to make another boring card fit…then something’s wrong.

Sometimes, the problem with decks is not that the main gambit is necessarily terrible, but that people are trying to make something not-amazing fit by running stuff that would maximise its effectiveness.

I can sort of understand this at first. But then of course, like the too-smart-for-their-own-good joyless bastard I am, I realise that it is completely unjustifiable to the competitive mind. If you want to try and make a hard-to-fulfil gambit happen within your own deck, and then I swan up wielding something that does what you do without needing to try as hard, what are you going to do about it, Timmy? Chuck your deck into the furnace and start again? (Actually don’t do that, think of the people who want what you have. Suckers.)

But I hate to re-iterate what a previous article could easily tell you, so I’m going to talk about something similar on a smaller scale. I’m talking about shoehorning in some card, usually a token choice at that, simply because it’s there. The types of people who do this usually fall into two categories; those who run it because lack of context, which usually results in problems such as shit-ass columns, since they’re usually poor attackers or boosters, or people who deliberately then centre the deck around accommodating this card at the expense of your main gambit without realising it.

Luck Bird, and all other clones thereof are the main culprits. They may sound nice at first glance, but I believe the quality of your advantage is just as important as the advantage itself. I would have hoped that people having spent their first years using 1^st-Gen Gold Paladin would have had this lesson drilled into their heads, but apparently not. Look, I’m all for a practically free +1, but I personally wouldn’t use them unless there was some way to comfortably manipulate them in a way that doesn’t encroach on my rear-guards, since they have a crappy 5000 power, or at the very least, I want to be able to get rid of it immediately after on a 1:1 basis so nothing is lost. I will admit back in the day, I did run a Kagero deck when I didn’t feel like using my Eradicators, and I did use Calamity Tower Wyvern, but that was only because Conroe hadn’t been banned as a starter and I could sack him away to search, so I didn’t need to put it behind a rear-guard and run the risk of shit columns. Now that he’s gone, that’s not really something I can do with my own deck now, so I dropped it. Besides, I’ve got better shit to run than Burning Horn Dragon, as in not vanilla crap.

Technically, this could apply to basically every crap booster with a somewhat average skill. To me though, if you must run a weak booster you need to have some sort of justifiable reason to start running it in the first place. If your deck can abuse it several times over, or get rid of it for a greater whole, fair enough. Otherwise, if he’s just there for a one-time +1 and requires that you lose a Grade 2 slot just to comfortably use it, you might want to consider something else. For stuff that starts off weak, but then powers up if you meet certain conditions, then it could probably stay, but only if it can maintain a steady enough stream that means it can consistently force more guard. It also needs to be able to comfortably have enough partners to make normal columns if ever production slows down. Lacking any better options other than one slot that be spared for vanilla column formers doesn’t hurt, even if it does make me question why you’re running something so inflexible.

Of course, it doesn’t just apply to boosters though. You can of course have people who use weak Grade 2s with some sort of skill they hope will justify its existence. In instances like these you just turn the logic around slightly; if you must run strong boosters to accommodate your crap attacker and nobody else, not even making 21k columns with another rear-guard, then it may need to go. However, there is a difference between shoehorned Grade 2s and shoehorned Grade 1s, and that is token Grade 2s tend to be a bit more detrimental. You see, poor boosters can at least be compensated for with strong attackers, and there tends to be more of those compared to strong boosters. Sometimes they can even carry another skill along with it: see something like Big Bang Slash Buster or Regulation Aglovale, for example. Sure, every clan seems to be getting 2 8k vanilla Grade 1s now, unless you’re Link Joker in which case go nuts (I kid. You don’t have enough shit worth running to justify it.) but really, I don’t see much point in running the risk of bad columns should you have an 8k Grade 2 with no 8k Grade 1 to pair him with when you can simply have everything make normal columns with everything. Or if you do run lots of it, then it’s your Grade 2s and 3s that are the only ones doing the talking. You could have just avoided it all with Grade 1s that set up the Grade 2s and 3s, like my Lava Flow/Burnout combo. Love that combo.

The only thing that provides some form of comfort to me is that this is usually only a tech. But even so, that tech still influenced how you ended up building the deck, not necessarily for the better, so you may want to consider some better options. It’s especially bad in the case of Grade 2s because their columns tend to be less forgiving. So really, combining two otherwise not terribly-interesting cards together to make up one whole equal to one card’s efforts is the same as you taking several lukewarm showers in the hopes it adds up to a hot one. All you’ll get is a big water bill at the end of it. Yes, I stole that quote from somewhere and I’m not sorry.

Ask me why I continue to play if I’ve found this much to complain about every damn week at saikyocardfighter@outlook.com