Cardfight Budgetguard 7.5: Granblue Cocytus "R" + Negrobolt

Hey Cardfighters,

Updating last weeks Budgetguard deck on Granblue due a misunderstanding of Stormride Ghostship.

(If you want to read about the cards and costs of the deck please see the original article. I will only be mentioning the changes to the deck.)

New Winning Image: Gain Advantage with Cocytus "R" and then use Negrobolt to finish them by grinding them down with 4 attacks per turn.

New Deck List:

Starter: Skeleton Assault Troops Captain
12x crit
4x heal

G1s:
4x Reef Banshee
4x Brutal Shade (LBE)
4x Sea Strolling Banshee
2x Samurai Spirit


G2s: 
3x Pirate Belle, Pinot Blanc
4x Dragon Undead, Ghoul Dragon
2x Greed Shade

3x Dragon Corrode, Corrupt Dragon

G3s:
4x Ice Prison Hades Emperor, Cocytus "Reverse"
3x Witch Doctor of the Dead Sea, Negrobolt

Deck Comments:
     Lets break down the changes by Grade.
Grade 3: -1 Negrobolt because he's ideal to ride after Cocytus "R" so we don't necessarily want him early game.

Grade 2: Stormride Ghostship is gone. Since he isn't actually able to make power columns as I initially thought we change him out for 2x Greed Shade and 3x Corrupt Dragon. Greed Shade is an 11k attacker when you have more cards in hand than your opponent. This means he can enable a strong 4 hit pattern with negrobolt. Corrupt Dragon becomes a 12k attacker when he is revived so he can be good without a booster.

Grade 1: Dancing Cutlass has become a Sea Strolling Banshee because there was almost no scenario where he is better. And this way you have a better chance of calling them with Cocytus "R". The one-of grade 1s have become 2x Samurai Spirit. This is important because you can change out Sea Strolling Banshees (most grade 2s are 9k so its important to have a 7k booster).

Starter: The new starter is a grade 3 searcher which lets you grab Cocytus "R" first more often which is vital for the deck.

Match ups: (VS. Deck win-loss)

• VS. RPBA + Mordred 3-7
• Match up tips, Pressure them with revived Ghoul Dragons because they won't want to lose judgebau. If you let judgebau hit and they can get 2 sword breakers its really hard to come back from. 
• VS. Thing Saver + Alfred 2-7
• Match up tips, Negrobolt is the hero of this match you really really need to get him. Setting up a good field isn't enough to beat Thingsaver. You have to follow up the set up with a good attack pattern. 
• VS. Perdition Dragonewt + DOTG 6-4
• Match up tips, Cocytus "R" is king in this match up, it can be hard for them to out match its field reviving powers for no counterblasts. Ofcourse if you don't get Negrobolt you'll probably deck out but Cocytus is the all-star ride him first and go up to 4 damage early if you don't have the LBE you can still out advantage them. 

Overall Performance:
     The update on the deck is much worse which was to be expected as I thought Stormride Ghost Ship was much better than it once was. The best part about Ghost Ship was that it solved the horrid late game that Granblue has. As a hand power style deck it doesn't really hit high numbers late game so other decks with restanding vanguards or high power columns can easily burn through your hand before you can get through theirs. You'll do well against a field of Perditions but you probably won't do too well against much else.

Tips for Mastering:

• Figure out what units are best to call in what scenarios (Knowing when to call out Samurai Spirit or Pinot Blanc will increase your power alot)
• Learn how to build your field effectively with Cocytus R. The order in which you do so can be really important
• Playing around Cocytus "R" is important. If you don't have the LBE you might want to put yourself at 4 damage to recover by filling up your field.
• If you play aggressively it can make up for the lack of end game but if you don't have Cocytus "R" it can also hurt you since you have no way to replenish your field

Tips for adding money:
     Same as last time get Gust Jinns (Perfect Guards) they are necessary.

Do you have any comments on the deck? Want to request a budget deck from me? Please comment below and help me help you.

If you want to be updated on the latest information and be notified about new posts click the link and like the Bambguard Facebook page. 

Thanks for Reading,

~Bambi

Cardfight Budgetguard 7: Granblue Cocytus "R" + Negrobolt

Hey Cardfighters,

* DISCLAIMER* - In this deck article I misread the card Stormride Ghost Ship and because of that the testing result should be much better than the actual deck is. Update  *

Got a Granblue Limit break Legion hybrid deck for you all this week. Based around the boss cards Ice Prison Hades Emperor, Cocytus Reverse and Witch Doctor of the Dead Sea, Negrobolt.

Winning Image: Set up your ideal field and then beat you opponent with power columns.

Starting with the main boss card of the deck Ice Prison Hades Emperor, Cocytus Reverse.

(Courtesy of Cardfight Wikia)

As the main boss of the deck Cocytus "R" puts in a lot of work being able to fill the field for free while at limit break using his ability. "Put the top three cards of your deck into the drop zone & lock one of your Granblue Rearguards: Choose a Granblue from your drop zone and place it on Rearguard with +3k". This is great because it allows you to revive attackers to pressure your opponent and each time you use it you will have more options in the drop zone to choose from. The +3k can also be useful to lock a booster and then call out 9k attacker turning it into 12k so it can hit the vanguard on its own. Cost: 1


(Courtesy of Cardfight Wikia)

The next grade 3 of the deck is Witch Doctor of the Dead Sea, Negrobolt. His purpose in the deck is to create multiattack sequences and/or power lines to push for game as well as shuffling in your drop zone so that you don't lose from deck out. His non-legion effect is +3k when there is another unit in the middle column which lets him hit for large numbers with an 8k booster and easily hitting 21k before legion. The legion effect is When Negrobolt attacks you Counter Blast 1 and retire one of your own units then you can call a unit from the drop zone to rearguard. This will let you creat multiattacks by attacking with a rearguard and then using Negrobolt's effect to call a new one at stand. Cost: 0.50

Cost after Grade 3s: 6

Next is the grade 2 rares which are Negrobolt's mate, Dragon Undead, Ghoul Dragon at 4 and Pirate Belle, Pinot Blanc at 3. Ghoul Dragon is super important in the deck allowing you to retire a unit if it hits a vanguard (during the turn it was revived) and Pinot Blanc helps you gain advantage by calling itself to the rearguard for Counter Blast 1 when you legion. Cost: 3.7

Cost after grade 2s: 9.7

Lastly are the grade 1s First we will look at Sea Strolling Banshee which can Soulblast 1 when called from the drop zone to draw a card. She is really good at building advantage and costs .33 a piece while we run 3. Similarly is Dancing Cutlass which can Soublast 2 to draw whenever it its placed on rearguard. (Cost: 0.2) Next is the quintet walls Reef Banshee which goes for $1. Perfect guards are out of the question because they are priced at $20 and I'd prefer to have a deck over a perfect guard.

Final Cost: 14.7

I just want to point out that while this deck is far far under the normal budget constraint I give myself  there aren't much improvements I can make without adding perfect guards which totally break my budget.

Deck List:

Starter: Captain Nightkid
12x crit
4x heal


G1s:
4x Reef Banshee
4x Brutal Shade (LBE)
3x Sea Strolling Banshee
1x Dancing Cutlass
1x Boatswain, Arman
1x Dandy Guy, Romario

G2s: 
3x Pirate Belle, Pinot Blanc
4x Dragon Undead, Ghoul Dragon
4x Stormride Ghost Ship

G3s:
4x Ice Prison Hades Emperor, Cocytus "Reverse"
4x Witch Doctor of the Dead Sea, Negrobolt

Deck Comments:
     There is a lot of odd choices in the deck so lets start with the starter and special stand triggers. Captain Nightkid lets you look at the top 10 cards of your deck and put one of them into the drop zone for CB1 and moving it into soul. This is great to set up your dropzone with a desired card to revive to the field. Next is the 12 crits, this is because the deck excels at creating power columns and by using criticals your just adding more punishment.

     For the Grade 2s there is the odd choice of Stormride Ghost Ship which can't attack unless you called a granblue to the field during your turn (including itself). But its an 11k and when it is boosted by a granblue it gets +5k shooting it up to 16k by itself to create power columns. There are 4 because he is vital to the end game strategy of the deck.

     For the Grade 1s we have 4 Limit Break Enablers (LBE) to help speed up Cocytus' ability and give that free field early in the game. Then we have 2 one-ofs we haven't discussed, Arman and Romario. Arman is used to revive behind an existing Ghost ship to create a 26k column as it gives itself +3k on revive. and Romario is used to place behind Negrobolt to hit for 31k. So in short they are there to make magic numbers and they shouldn't be too hard to fetch using Nightkid and other selection effects.

Match ups: (VS. Deck win-loss)

* DISCLAIMER* - In this deck article I misread the card Stormride Ghost Ship and because of that the testing result should be much better than the actual deck is. Update *

• VS. RPBA + Mordred 5-5
• Match up tips, I'm sure I sound like a broken record but take damage early and guard Judgebau. Its better to ride Negrobolt in the case you don't have the LBE so that you aren't tempted to let it hit just to get limit break. If they don't get the double sword breaker its pretty easy to win. Games that I lost were from having Reverse but no LBE, not drawing into a negrobolt which resulted in deck out/ not being able to use a quintet wall. I also lost games when they were able to restand twice in one game but it was usually compounded with one of the other factors I just said.
• VS. Thing Saver + Alfred 4-6
• Match up tips, This match is really hard because you can't stop their advantage engine by guarding. If they start with alfred it will be a hard match because early guarding isn't as useful when they have the crit. Try to go for Ghoul Dragon if possible to try to weaken their field presence/force them to guard lots.
• VS. Perdition Dragonewt + DOTG 6-4
•  Match up tips, Cocytus R is the MVP in this match he can completely out advantage perditions by himself. The only thing you have to watch out for is decking out. Most games are lost if you don't get cocytus and or if you do but don't draw into Negrobolt to prevent decking out.

Overall Performance:
       I knew that Cocytus R was strong with LBE but I didn't realize it was this strong. Wow. The deck easily beats out other decks without strong advantage or distruption engines. (It can even out advantage perditions in some cases!) As you can see it doesn't do as well against Thing Saver because you can't really stop what they are doing and the crit on Alfred really undoes a lot of advantage you can gain from early guarding. I would suggest playing the deck if you like a lot of advantage and hitting high numbers.

Tips for Mastering:

• Figure out what units are best to call in what scenarios (the most important being when to revive a Pinot Blanc while you legion because counterblasts are oh so important)
• Learn how to build your field effectively with Cocytus R. The order in which you do so can be really important
• Lastly, Learn when to use Nightkid to set up your dropzone and when to keep him as a "free" booster or sacrifice.

Tips for adding money:
     By far the most important and really only way to add money to the deck is to add in the Perfect Guards Gust Jinn. He goes for $20 so its not really fair to call it budget once you put him in but it will increase your win percentage a lot. Many times you just can't use a quintet wall because you don't have the counterblast or you have too little cards in your dropzone and you wouldn't be able to win if you used it.

Do you have any comments on the deck? Want to request a budget deck from me? Please comment below and help me help you.

If you want to be updated on the latest information and be notified about new posts click the link below and like the Bambguard Facebook page. 

Thanks for Reading,

~Bambi

Undersupported: Granblue

So I've been trying to keep up with spoilers for Set 17: Blazing Perdition or whatever its called. and the comments seem to be riddle with Granblue player uuuugh-ing and sighing and expressing discontent at the lack of support that Granblue is seeing.

(Disclaimer: I do understand that the main characters clans getting more support due to popularity is a thing but I made this series to show that there are other reasons why they aren't getting the same support other clans are. You may disagree with me and I might be wrong but this is my opinion on the matter)

These complaints made me want to start this article series about why under-supported clans are under-supported for reasons other than that they are not used by the main characters. So we begin with Granblue, mainly because this is the reason for me wanting to start this series.

Why does Granblue not get a lot of support. Its actually really simple.

Graveyard Mechanics.

Thats it. Granblue's main gimmick is letting you bring back certain cards from the graveyard or in the case of Cocytus and his reverse form which can let you bring back anything. I think a lot of people underestimate how powerful this ability can actually be. This misunderstanding is why several Granblue players are upset at the lack of support. For graveyard mechanics there is a very fine line before balanced becomes broken to all hell. (for those of you that don't understand broken its a slang term meaning overpowered or something along those lines.)

For those of you that don't believe me just remember how when cocytus "R" came out along with the GB breakride. It jumped the deck into competing with the other top tier decks almost immediately even with the relatively weak support overall. Bushiroad has to be very careful with Granblue otherwise it will roll out of control bring out the banhammer. Its probably more fun to not have a tool than to have an obscenely powerful one that gets taken away. Most people would be even angrier that they banned a card from an already under-supported clan.

All in all the reason that Granblue doesn't get a ton of support is because it has to be balanced precariously. Being able to revive cards from your drop zone is incredibly powerful and so Bushiroad needs to take a lot of time to balance it so that its not either super super good are mega bad. So rather than complain about not getting support realize how powerful the mechanic you have already is and understand that Bushiroad is trying to make cool things happen with out making Granblue destroy the metagame.

Well thats my spiel on the under-supported Granblue. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope all you Pirates out there understand how amazing your clan's ability actually is and that not being a main character clan isn't the only reason you're not getting support.

~Bambi