Cardinal Envoys Deck Study (Brandt Gate)

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Introduction

    Released in Genesis of the Five Greats, the Cardinals are the second Brandt Gate archetype presented to us in the overDress. The main strategy is to generate Shadow Army Tokens to create heavy hitting columns and forcing the opponent to guard heavily. In order to create these Tokens, a player must use World Set Orders to change the world into the Abyssal Dark Knight. By creating these Tokens, the hand is conserved for Guard or calling out other Rear-Guards with abilities that complement the playstyle. On the side, the deck can play a slight control when all else fails removing front row Rear-Guards or even attacking an entire column at once.

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Core Cards

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Deck Building

    Due to the nature of this deck, you would want to be able to create the Abyssal Dark Night World as soon as possible, so the Deck is filled with 7 – 8 World Orders leaving almost a third of deck as Orders. The rest of the Deck is left with cards benefiting from having the Dark Night or Abyssal Dark Night.

• At least Dark Night
  • Cardinal Deus, Orfist – Gains an additional 5000 power
  • Cardinal Noid, Routis – Gains an additional 2000 power
  • Useful Recharger – When put on Guardian Circle, gains +5000 Shield by paying Counter-Blast 1
• Abyssal Dark Night
  • Cardinal Noid, Cubisia – Gains an additional 5000 power
  • Lightning Thief Monster, Jabattail – When this unit attacks, it attacks the entire Column.
  • Frigid Mutant, Drumler – On place and by paying the cost of Counter-Blast 1 & Soul-Blast 1, draw 1
  • Useful Recharger – When put on Guardian Circle, gains +10000 Shield by paying Counter-Blast 1 instead of +5000

Other Cards to Consider

• Detonation Mutant, Bobalmine – After boosting for an attacking, you may put this into soul to Counter-Charge 1
• Lightning Barrier, Emergency Deployment! – A Blitz Order to give the Vanguard 30000 additional power at the cost Counter-Blast 2 during the Battle it was attacked.

Triggers

    In terms of picking which offensive triggers you should have Critical Triggers are recommended over Front Triggers. Critical Triggers have more of an advantage of progressing the game faster.

As for the Brandt Gate Over Trigger, we have Star Dragon Deity of Infinitude, Eldobreath which has the additional effect grants the entire front row double of the current power and critical. This encourages to have cards out on field early to grant power via this ability. Since the power is from the Over Trigger is granted before the additional effect, this makes the power gain to one unit 200 million instead of 100 million.

The remaining triggers are support with the Standard 4 Heal Triggers. Draw Triggers are viable as there currently is not a way to search out the units for a field. However, the last slots could also use Fronts Triggers if the draw effects from units can meet the demand for hand and field resources.

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Deck Lists

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Strategy

    When playing Orfist, the main win condition is to push the opponent down with high number columns that are made with the Shadow Tokens. Due to this, you should focus on rushing early game to keep momentum going rather than waiting till you can generate tokens.

By running multiple copies of both the G2 (Howling Moonlit Night) and G3 (In the Darkness Nobody Knows) World Set Orders you increase your chances of getting to Abyssal Dark Night on your first Orfist ride. This is crucial in putting Orfist fully online, being able to then Counter-Blast 2 to generate up to three 15,000 Shadow Army token units that each have boost as well.

Hand Re-Draw

Optimally, you would want at least 1 World Order in hand and a Grade 2 turn beater regardless of build.

Example hand:

Gameplay

    On Grade 2 turn, Cardinal Noid, Cubisia is the main Vanguard that when playing a World Set Order, you give +5000 to one unit. It is highly recommended to call a Rear-Guard to grant that unit this power and make a high hitting Rear-Guard Column rather than a Vanguard column. The decks choices can vary if wanting a early game booster or beater such as using Cardinal Noid, Routis with a 10,000 base with the World Set Order.

   Starting with your first grade 3 ride of Cardinal Deus, Orfist and setting your 2nd World Order, you should have Abyssal Dark Night as your set world. By paying Counter-Blast 2, you can create 3 tokens that turn. When placing tokens, it is recommended to keep in mind what you have in hand when creating the field. Generally, you would want your tokens in the backrow to prevent them from being attacked and giving a consistent +15000 power booster.

If you are wanting a conservative field, place 2 tokens in the same column and one in the other Rear-Guard column backrow RC. As for the empty front row RC, 13,000 – 15,000 rear-guard would be the best.

In contrast of an aggressive field, place all 3 tokens in the back with the front 2 rear-guards with 13,000-15,000 rear-guards to make 28k or 30k columns. If your opponent is on Grade 2, you want to have 30k over a 28k column forcing 25000 guard minimum.

  Detonation Mutant, Bobalmine which is the main resource recovery in the deck, needs to always be a booster. It is recommended to place behind Vanguard as Triggers can boost for more power and to keep the Rear-Guard columns at a higher point.

By Persona Riding, this further increases the need to Guard to fend off the deck.

Other control plays that the deck can perform using Lightning Thief Monster, Jabattail and In the Darkness Nobody Knows to remove Units from the opponent making the decision to reserve a hand for field instead of guarding.

Magic Number Guide

By using Orfist, there is no shortage when it comes to making large numbers in the deck to combat the opponent.

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Weakness

In order to kick off the deck, you must be able to have Abyssal Dark Night active. However, there may be instances when you cannot activate another world therefore stuck at Dark Night and the deck cannot create Tokens or use any abilities requiring Abyssal Dark Night.

This deck can run out of Counter-Blast for more Shadow Tokens. If the opponent is playing Control, the player should focus on a more conservative approach to playing. Bobalmine can be used to recover ,however, this is not a consistent way to maintain Counter-Blasts.

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Additional Information

• If a Token is imprisoned, the Token is returned back to its pile and the Token is no longer in prison.
• If guarding for Lightning Thief Monster, Jabattail, a player can guard each card being attacked separately.

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History Update:

Coming Soon

See Also:

Brandt Gate “Cyber” Reveals… by Zero2pass

What Orfist Teaches Us About “Simple” Decks by GleamingGarmore

Orfist Aggro by Zero2pass