Card Review: Fighters Collection Winter 2015 Review: Part 1

Hi everyone.

Welcome to the first Fighters Collection Winter 2015 Review. I'll featuring some of the more interesting cards and positing my thoughts on some of these cards. Today, I'll be mainly focusing on the older cards that had been largely bypassed in the Legion and Stride era and had only gotten support recently in FC Winter 2015. In my opinion, these cards targeting at reviving older cards and abilities are particularly interesting because they generally get the best of both worlds: older cards that work pre-GB1, and new boss units that can be used in the mid and late game, along with more generic stride support for their clans.

Kagero, Seal Dragons Revival

 The Seal Dragons as a Kagero archetype were first expanded upon in BT-11, with a playstyle revolving around the opponent's G2 rearguards, either through preventing intercepts, gaining additional power or other special effects. Having neither Legion or Stride units, the Seal Dragons were largely unplayable in today's meta until the release of a new Seal Dragon stride and a new G2 support for the archetype.

The new Seal Dragon boss, Helldeity Seal Dragon, Crossorigin, is a new powerful unit that gives additional offence to the Seal Dragons as well as disrupting the opponent's field.

[ACT](VC)[1/Turn]:[Counter Blast (1) & Choose a face down card from your G zone, and turn it face up] If you have a heart card with "Seal Dragon" in its card name, for each face up card named "Helldeity Seal Dragon, Crossorigin" in your G zone choose up to one of your opponent's rear-guards, and retire it. Your opponent reveals four cards from the top of his or her deck, and chooses a grade 2 card from among them for each unit put into the drop zone with this effect. Your opponent calls the chosen cards to separate open (RC), and shuffles his or her deck. If your opponent has two or more grade 2 rear-guards, this unit gets [Critical]+1 until end of turn.
Basically, if you are able to fulfil the condition of your opponent having two or more grade 2 RGs, your vanguard gains +1 crit on first stride, which is a lot stronger than most GB2 auto-criticals, since by the time you stride a second time, your opponent may well have been pushed to 5 damage, making any auto-criticals useless (To me, it seems like just another sign of power creep. Yet on the other hand Bushiroad did a great job designing a card that makes Seal Dragons relevant and a threat again in today's meta).And fulfilling this condition is not that hard due to the Seal Dragons speciality and the ability of this card to force an opponent to call a grade 2. Undoubtedly, one way to play around this card is to not call more than 1 g2 rearguard, or call a column composed of g3 and g1. However, this greatly compromises the offensive power of the opponent in order to avoid the auto-crit condition. Either way, the opponent is caught in a bad position in which the Seal Dragon player benefits merely by the presence of this stride.

Great card and nice art overall.

The new Seal Dragons support is also remarkably good. Hellfire Seal Dragon Knight's ability is as follows.

[ACT](RC)[1/Turn]:[Counter Blast (1) & Soul Blast (1)] If you have a vanguard with "Seal Dragon" in its card name, all of your opponent's rear-guards cannot intercept until end of turn. Then, this unit gets [Power]+2000 for each of your opponent's grade 2 units until end of turn.

This once/turn skill has no GB restriction, which is a bonus, but of course this card shines most late game. The strength of all G2 RGs lies in the fact that they can function equally well for offensive and defensive purposes, by transiting into intercepts at the end of a player's turn to guard for 5k if needed. This card destroys that by making it impossible for opponents to make use of their grade 2s as intercept, thus losing them 2 5k shields. As I see it, having this card on the field gains the Seal Dragon player 2 benefits. Firstly, being unable to guard with g2s tempts the opponent to focus one RG column on attacking the Dragon Knight in a bid to remove this card from play. This is great for a Seal Dragon player because it effectively saves the player 10k shield. Secondly, this card is basically an offensive card because it makes it harder for the opponent to guard, while at the same adding power, although this is a small bonus that only becomes significant at 3 g2 rearguards.

Overall, this is a useful support card for Seal Dragons.

Pale Moon, Nightmare Dolls Revival

The Nightmare Dolls are a series of Workeroid cards with "Nightmare Doll" in their name. They did not really have significant or unique mechanics on their own initially but after the introduction of Nightmare Doll support in G BT 05 and Fighters Collection 2015 Winter, they quickly became an archetype in their own right. The support introduced in G BT 05 and FC 2015 Winter revolved around making Nightmare Doll, Alice relevant for the Stride Age, using support cards such as Catherine to search for Alice and Ginny to call Alice out from soul. Without any GB1 requirements, the Nightmare Doll deck is fast, powerful and a real nightmare to fight. A Nightmare Doll decklist may be provided at a latter date by one of our own resident editors.

Nightmare Doll of the Abyss, Beatrix, is a stride unit meant to support the Nightmare Dolls deck. Without the need for any counterblasts in a counter-blast heavy deck, it basically gives two additional RG attacks at the cost of -1 (moving one unit into the soul).

[AUTO](VC):[Choose three of your <Workeroid> rear-guards, and put them into your soul] At the end of the battle that this unit attacked a vanguard, if you have a heart card with "Nightmare Doll" in its card name, you may pay the cost. If you do, put this unit into your G zone face up, choose up to two <Workeroid> from your soul, and call them to separate (RC).

What is truly scary about this card is its combos with Alice. After attacking with your two RGs and Beatrix's main VG attack, you get to call out two additional RGs (one who can be an Alice from your soul) for additional attacks. This card supports the Catherine-Alice interface by returning to the G-Zone at the end of the battle, allowing Catherine's effect to activate on a RG Alice. Beatrix is incredibly powerful stride because by itself, it enables a minimum of 5 attacks (2 RG attacks, 1 VG attacks, 2 RG attacks). With the combos with Alice, the Nightmare Doll player can continue attacking until he runs out of Counterblasts.

Beatrix is truly a fearsome card and possess a lovely art as well.


Oracle Think Thank, Witches Revival

I am not too sure if I could term it a revival, given that the witches in OTT were pretty strong to begin with, and had aged well in spite of the Stride Age. However, now we have new support for the Witches, let's see what we got.

[AUTO]:[Choose a card with "Witch" in its card name from your hand, and discard it] When this unit is placed on (VC), if you have a heart card with "Witch" in its card name, you may pay the cost. If you do, your opponent may choose two cards from his or her hand, and discards them. If he or she does not discard two cards, you choose one of your opponent's vanguards, deal 1 damage, and during that damage check, all trigger effects are nullified.

Our new ace stride for the Witches. As a non-GB2 restricted stride, this card is relevant at all damage points in the game, as there are not restrictions on how many damage does your opponent needs to be at before the skill can be activated, making this card extremely useful at virtually any strideable stage of the game.

Here are some of the scenarios.

1) Opp at 2 damage: Have to decide between discarding 2 or running the risk of going to 3 damage, running the risk (quite significant) of being double crited and losing the game.

2) Opp at 3 damage: Have to decide between discarding 2 or running the risk of going to 4 damage. At four damage everything changes because it is no longer possible to take the most powerful attack (the VG attack) safely, i,e, he must perfect guard the VG. Furthermore, if the witch checks a single crit trigger he would be forced to guard the RG attack, leading to at least -4 on your first stride (2 for PG, 2 to guard 15k shield).

3) Opp at 4 damage: Becomes less useful at this stage. The differential in guarding from 4-5 damage is less significant. Although pushing the opponent up to 5 damage also means that he needs to guard all attacks, resulting in the loss of 5-6 cards this turn if not outright loss.

4) Opp at 5 damage: One of the strongest uses of this card. You can imagine a Witch player after striding Takemikazuchi at GB2, and instead of striding Takae again, opt to go straight for the kill at 5 damage by striding this unit. The opponent is forced to -2 or lose instantly, making it even harder for the opponent to survive against the OTT player.

This card is easily the strongest minus hand advantage card that puts Nubatama to utter and complete shame :(. The opponent is forced to make a choice between losing hand advantage or suffer damage advantage both which benefits the OTT player (either pushing the opponent to late game or minusing his defence). While an opponent player who may be able to scrape through at 5 damage while having only 5 cards in hand, this card virtually guarantees that the opponent cannot survive. Even if he is tempted to take the damage and hope for a heal,this card's ability nullifies all trigger effects from the damage check taken by Mimi's ability.

The OPness of this card can be further put into perspective. This is a straight up -2 for the opponent in exchange for a -1 from the Witch player who can afford it because it has a naturally large hand advantage by virtue of its G3 support and the Takae stride. In other words, the Witch player can afford to pay for the cost easily, while further taxing the resources of other decks that may not be so well-endowed. Whereas a Nubatama player would kill to have such a card ability (permanent -2 or take damage), this card is even stronger in OTT due to the ease that an OTT player can pay for the cost. Furthermore, it is much stronger that similar cards like Divine Knight of Flashing Flame, Samuel due to the lack of any Counterblast requirement that can be saved for other cards like Take, as well as being usable at 5 damage.

In conclusion, this is a card to be feared. It's art and effect are badass...

Another excellent Witch card support. Rose Red Witch, CuCu's ability is as follows.

[AUTO]:[Counter Blast (1)] When this unit is placed on (VC) or (RC), if you have a vanguard with "Witch" in its card name, and the number of cards in your soul is one or less, you may pay the cost. If you do, draw two cards, choose a card from your hand, and discard it.

Essentially a backup card for CoCo, with no Generation Break requirement for an easy +1. Nothing more to be said. Get out of my deck Susanoo!!!

Thank you all for reading.