Hello and Good Day/Evening everyone, I am The AlphonZeus of Team Gradelock writing once more for Axis as we dive into the latest line of support of catgirls and order cards for the next ride line of Lyrical Monasterio!
Breaking this faction down, we see this ride lines focuses on singing songs in the form of order cards! There are some shoutouts given to other order-focuses builds like Zorga and Orfist, with the Lyrical twist! Let’s start with the main starlet, Loronerol! The starter shares the same similar skill as all other ride line starters, so no need to expand further than that.
The grade 1, Searching for Excitement, Loronerol, has a VG only skill, making her prime fit for just one slot in the ride deck. When you ride your Grade 2 over her, you get to place a Grade 1 song card into the Order Zone. If you searched the deck, you shuffle (common standard for many deck searchers), but what’s even more intriguing is that if you placed that Grade 1 song into the Order Zone from the hand, you draw 1 card! As subtle as this looks, this incentivizes equally between orders from hand and deck as you remain with the same cards in hand after gaining an order card. This flexibility hasn’t been exercised before to my knowledge ever since the safer ride lines of the Legion era, which gives reason why it deserves attention now. Plus, you can place more order cards in your deck saving you extra copies of this grade 1 to place into!
The Grade 2 of the ride line, Blooming Singer, Loronerol, repeats the same Vanguard skill of her Grade 1, except that you now can grab a Grade 2 song from hand or deck to place into the Order Zone! This resembles a concert as each time a new song enters the Order Zone, it’s the next number. However, she has a relevant rear guard skill as well, gaining +5k power if the Order Zone has a face-up Song. This starts to open up plays where we see a new chapter of the catgirls strategy, to manipulate the Order Zone with face up and face down songs.
And now for the main event! The Grade 3, Heartfelt Song, Loronerol, has two relevant Vanguard skills that makes her a deadly songstress! The first is for 1 Counterblast, you can “sing” a song from the Order Zone to gain its effects! The sing pseudo skill activates the order card and then flips it face down, where she cannot access that song again. She also has a Final-Rush esque deadly end-game skill where on Turn 4 after you already have two songs “sung,” (and face down already), on attack, you can sing a second song that turn and prevent your opponent from calling sentinels from hand to the guardian circle. Blocking sentinels is always a relevant skill, especially as columns are hitting higher numbers later in the game. If you can’t fully block a Vanguard, you better hope Loronerol doesn’t hit critical triggers! This changes how to defend against this ride line and my take is to allow for defending early to take heavier damage later on and not lose.
So now that we have this ride line, what songs does Loronerol have access to? Let’s move on to the jukebox then!
At the time of this article, there’s only 1 Grade 1 Song Order that we know of so far: Innocent Happiness! There’s no skill when placed in the order zone, but activates when sung! The skill grants your Vanguard +5k power and drawing 1 card. Simple, but still effective to both boost your Vanguard for a higher magic number and drawing you cards! You draw quite a bit in this deck, but is balanced out by notating these order cards still retain the similar defect of losing shield value. This definitely looks like a 2 of at least in the catgirl deck!
For Grade 2 Song Orders, we first got Red Runway, which is a star power worthy order to be included at 2-3 of! First, when placed in the Order Zone, if you are on a Grade 3 Vanguard, you draw 1 card. This already helps “pay” for riding from the ride deck to rise for Heartfelt Song, Loronerol that will always happen, solidifying consistency in every game. However, when sung, you can give your own Vanguard an additional critical! With the first two orders alone, we can already see how the mid and late game will go as Loronerol can threaten 2 damage by Turn 4 on her own, turning off sentinels, and additional boosts in power!
The second Grade 2 Song Order is The Sound of Waves at Twilight! Unlike Red Runway, I can see this playing after riding to Grade 2’s Blooming Singer, Loronerol! First, when placed in the Order Zone, your Vanguard gains +5k power for the turn. This is great to have an on place skill and also to save you a card to call as a booster for your Vanguard. Many times during playtesting you have to bank on an Overtrigger when swinging your 10k Vanguard and your opponent drops a single 15k shield trigger and says “Overtrigger to pass.” You want to deal damage to your opponent early to keep tempo, and even an extra 5k boost pushes that magic number just enough where it’s not a one card guard even with a trigger. Further, when the card is “sung,” you give your front row a mini-front row trigger of +5k each! Magic numbers keep helping and +5k is the minimum!
If you think these Song Orders are great, just wait till I tell you about the Grade 3 Song Order, Six Flower Fractals! This is also an ideal card to play on Turn 4. First, when placed into the Order Zone, you can flip a face-down Song Order face up! This can countercharge your songs so that you can gain even more criticals or power during a push turn! Even further, when sung, you can restand a number of rear guards equal to the amount of face-down Song Orders! This can guarantee 4 attacks every turn, and 5 by Turn 5 if your opponent did not lose already! You don’t want to miss out on including this stunner of a song, because we got a lot of the big meta strategies in extra power, critical, sentinel blocks, and restanding rear guards!
Next up, we have some other notable cards from the catgirls, or er, warbeasts that synergize with this deck.
First, we have Dance Score, Ermel, which when placed on Guardian Circle, you can soulblast 1 for gaining +5k shield value for every card in the Order Zone! Note that it’s not just song order, but every card, allowing her to be a trigger shield value for having two order cards, whether face-up or face-down (with higher shield value potential even past Turn 4)! I can see myself running this at 3-4 because of the amount of Order cards this build will be running that lack any sort of shield value.
Next up, we have a powerhouse RRR hitting the songstress’ stage in the form of Overserious President, Equinoa! She follows the trend of a star-powered rear-guard that turns it from 0 to 100 on Turn 3! When she swings and if the Vanguard sung a song this turn, she gains an additional +5k power and also a counterblast 1 and discard 1 to draw 2! This helps dump out excess songs you do not need and draws you into the Persona rides and sentinels to help prepare for your defenses or offense setup next turn. This is definitely the 4 of that I want to run in this build, and a prime target rear guard to restand with Six Flower Fractals!
Then next up, we got a star power unit in Contradicting Kindness, Virginia! Given how much counterblasting we can do, she helps out with resource management! After she swings while boosted, if we played an order this turn (Song Order included), she can soul charge herself to counter charge 1! This reminds me of Detonation Mutant Bobalmine, except instead of a grade 1 booster, we have a Grade 2 swinger with a soul charge/countercharge skill! She’s also a good target to restand with Six Flower Fractals as well!
And finally, rounding out the notable songstress supports, we got Spirit Recharge! Luisa! Whenever this unit boosts, if the Vanguard sung a song, she boosts an additional +5k power! Further, if she’s in the back row center boosting the Vanguard, you countercharge 1! The condition here is worth the effort, this support has plenty of resource management, and this is the icing on the cake to further help out! 11k boosting is no joke either, you want to hit a higher number on Vanguard to provide a threatening game-ending swing every time!
And that is all for the songstress support notables for this week. I look forward to playtesting this deck when I get my case, and standard is going to be one giant concert for Lyrical Monasterio. Take care everyone, and see you all next week!