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Stopping, Stitching and Studying: G Technical Booster 2

3 under-supported clans, one booster to compensate. Saikyo analyses them all.

Well, now that every clan under the sun has had at least one wave of G Support, I suppose it makes sense to use the second Technical Booster to give clans who only got one shot at being restricted to the Generation Break trap to get some more support. With that in mind, this set is aiming to support Great Nature, Megacolony and Murakumo. Murakumo’s in particular could be seen as very significant as it actually provides a useable set of Triggers for them once the master plan to raise G1 rush awareness kicks in and Bushi are forced to invalidate our shit.

So out of all of the underdog decks, which one is the best of the worst? Well, I don’t intend to break schedule by simply cutting it short with ‘meh, it sucks’ because I actually have professional standards, so let’s get it on.

Great Nature

First up on the rollcall register is Great Nature. As we are pretty much want to do, they’re incorporating a new keyword: Success. Once a RG’s power hits a certain threshold, the unit becomes successful until end of turn. So we’re basically looking to use the usual strategy of ‘power then die’, except the best of the new support seems to want to say ‘fuck it’ and skip to the power part. That’s pretty unfortunate given some of the other good support here basically relies on them dying to free up space. The G Guardian they got is pretty much a case of this as it relies on an empty field to get the most mileage, which is pretty disappointing. The Bigbelly support here was pretty obvious, including the exclusive Crit, and as far as they go, they’re pretty neat I guess, but there’s too much of it in my mind and I would have preferred everything relegated to GB1 was generic, since no Minibelly to search means bad times.

Nostalgia-wise, there’s support for Hammsuke, of all archetypes. So far, the new cards they do have at least seem pretty straightforward, but because so much of it is dedicated to what happens when they die without a whole lot to make them dead in the first place, it’s a bit lacking in overall offense but has a fairly decent base. It’s no Magia though: it still runs on limited resources and there’s little in the way of springing their deaths all at once, so anything really aggro will still beat it, and in this day and age unless you can spam defence to absurd levels you can probably do better.

New G Units include a Stride Fusion for Bigbelly obviously, as well as Silvest retrained as a G Unit. The GR in this set, Afanc, is basically your expensive fast track to GB2. It’s a one-copy card at best though so at least it’ll alleviate your money woes some. New Bigbelly and new Silvest are the main draws here but still don’t really provide anything that screams ‘ridiculous finisher’. I’m assuming the whole point is to spam on-attack powerups to compensate but I’m a bit iffy.

All in all, I would say that the support in here made G Great Nature certainly better. I’m a bit surprised they didn’t choose to support anything obvious like Leopald but since I don’t main anything in this set, I’m fine. You’re mostly going for anything supporting Bigbelly as well as the G Units, because the Hammsuke support is a bit underwhelming. It’s certainly an improvement though, although that is by virtue of being previously starved for options.

Megacolony

But what about the mafia bugs? What about them indeed. Well, they’re now sporting the Dark Device restriction: these skills only work if every unit the opponent has is rested. That’s going to happen regardless of what deck you’re going against unless some hipster’s playing a Reverse unit or something, so at least it’s easy. As far as improving on Darkface decks go, first off, the G Guardian is pretty bitchin’. It only works VG on VG attack, but the shield it can generate assuming a big board is pretty neat: 15k shield without a -1 initially to you. Apart from that, there are, luckily, enough Dark Device cards actually worth running that allow for straight up improvements but it’s hardly worth centring the entire deck around those units, the common rarity cards especially. Superior Mantis is also seriously craptacular for a RRR fail-con. But at the very least, the keyword is less token than others I can name so it is at least worth investing in. Most of your better Dark Device cards support Darkface exclusively, but since one of the G Units here is a non-GB2 restricted Darkface, you can at least run them somewhat comfortably.

Old support spread over more than one deck with Megacolony. There’s one new card for Giraffa decks in the form of a Grade 3, so at least you’ll have a Giraffa heart for the deck whatever, but it’s mostly focused on the Machinings. Only problem is that not much of it could be used over the existing options save for the fact we can now run 12 mono-Machining Critical triggers. I mean, Dive Beetle is SERIOUSLY bad. They are therefore uninteresting to talk about and only exist to fill in gaps in the pack.

As for G Units, there’s the above GR Obtirandus, who’s a serious troll to Magia and Hollow. It’s hella expensive to play though but even then I’d still run 2 simply for the specific matchup trolling. New Darkface isn’t really worth making a massive fuss over but rather stupidly needs to be at 4 for the best results. Just be thankful we can run 16 G Units now, but even so, this over Stun Beetle? No way. Only Time Leap could troll the build and anything that doesn’t stay still, we have Obti here. Oh yeah, there’s also the Waspytail guy. Get him for techs.

In summary, by virtue of the fact that Machining is already perfect now we got our third Crit and Girrafa only got one new card, Darkface wins out. Out of the clans in this pack, I would say Megacolony got the better deal thanks to the fact it addressed the problem matchups it would usually face and for everything else MC players were finally able to drop the vanilla options from their old build in favour of more annoyance. Now all we need are more counterchargers. Maybe.

Murakumo

And last but not least, we have Murakumo. The keyword they’re looking to shill is Shadowstitch, which activate when their attack fails to hit. Well, it’s a neat idea for Late Game, and it’s nice they aim to do a bit more with the clones, but again, only a select few are worth running, and that’s mostly for straight improvements over the vanilla cards Murakumo players were forced to run before. Otherwise, cards designed to aid in consistency such as Lake Diver are pretty hard to drop, considering PGs and Stride enablers are already staples for the deck. Actually talking of which, Lake Diver got reprinted this set so at least you won’t have to go very far looking for any. Luckily there’s more room for manoeuvre regarding the Grade 2s so feel free to drop anything that didn’t help before for the new pressure units that love Kagamijishi so they can hit the Vanguard. The G Guardian sucks for Yasuie, don’t get any more than 2, as a side note.

For nostalgia, we’re getting Dueling Dragon support. And yet, Bushiroad have the audacity to not reprint Zanbaku to actually provide a reason to use the fucking things at all. The entire deck’s centred around discarding cards just to keep the usual number of Drive Checks, but frankly, the minus is hardly worth getting excited about given the extremely piss-poorly execution of the support cards. You have to centre the whole deck around them and cards that clone for temporary advantage, all without the G support to actually make any of it meaningful. Frankly, Yasuie and his own team could generate the same minuses just by attacking, so unless the opponent is regularly starved for cards they won’t really be phased.

G-Unit wise, we got a Yasuie Stride Fusion, Shibarakku Buster and Kiyohime. You’re only cracking the packs open for the first 2, and it’s mostly to fill space, since Homura Raider is still the finisher of choice, unless you’re feeling haxxy with Buster. Actually, since Buster chooses a unit to clone and grant RG circle Drive check, you can have your Yasuie heart cloned for 2 Drives, which explains why he’s a -1 cost. Yasuie Evolved isn’t really a card you need 4 of compared to Homura Raider because he’s only got one specific timing of the opponent being on 5 damage and you have an 11k attacker.

In summary, like Megacolony, Yasuie is still the most functional Murakumo deck after all. Some may argue that it really isn’t fair that only one build of the clan is actually the most functional, but from my point of view it cuts down on choice so you’re less inclined to make horrible choices.

Get mad at me about how I’m sealing all of these new tricks by refusing to be Grade 2+ at saikyocardfighter@outlook.com

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