[VG] [Oracle Think Tank] Decking Myself for the Sake of Research [G-OTTs]

[Beryl]

Grade 0 [17]:
1x Little Witch, LuLu
4x Psychic Bird (Crit)
4x Assault Dive Eagle (Crit)
2x Oracle Guardian, Nike (Crit)
2x Battle Sister, Ginger (Crit)
4x Lozenge Magus (Heal)

Grade 1 [14]:
4x Mediator, Amenosagiri
4x Divine Sword, Amenumurakumo
3x Shrine Guard, Tsunagai
1x Tankman Mode Morning Star
2x Weather Forecaster, Miss Mist

Grade 2 [11]:
3x Silent Tom
3x Divine Calm, Kurokazuichi
3x Diviner, Shinatsuhiko
2x Oracle Agent, Roys

Grade 3 [8]:
4x Supreme Sky Battle Deity, Susanoo
3x Silent Witch, CoCo
1x Imperial Daughter

Grade 4 [8]:
4x Descended Sword Deity, Takemikazuchi
2x Nimbus Summoning Nine-Headed Dragon King
1x Soaring Auspicious Beast, Qilin
1x Rain Element, Madu


Took a bit of a break from expanding upon Neo Nectar and fiddling with Thing Saver to try and build other decks without running smack dab into a mental wall. I wanted to make something that worked efficiently enough to keep pace with most decks people were playing, but also not be locked into the archetype styles, despite them being the clearly superior styles.

G-Era OTTs are a weird deck to try to make work. When they do, you outnumber the opponent's hand by ~5-6 cards on average. When they don't, they look like they're trying to match the power of other United Sanctuary clans (including their alter ego counterpart Genesis) and failing. I wanted to curb some of the consistency issues using a well-known g0 + g3 combo and make way for a stronger Vanguard-centric game. LuLu + CoCo fits quite well here for that purpose. You draw at least a card for your troubles at worst and at best push yourself into a +6 for turn, assuming Qilin connects.

I was originally trying 10 crit/2 draw, but moved to 12 crit after some discussion with a few different people. OTTs don't really need draws anymore. They get them from skills that are so frequently available/active that what you'd rather have is pressure. I've been debating trying 10 crit/2 stand with the GB1 stand, but I'm not confident it's as potent.

The grade 1 lineup plays around the grade 2 lineup. I have 3 8k boosters to go with Tom, the stride enabler and unflipper perfect guards are both musts, and Miss Mist is there for protecting from legions and when I need to perfect guard early. The singleton Tankman is a personal choice/tech to have an additional way to unflip damage.

Sirvat convinced me to play around with Tom. Despite having some lackluster results recently, I wouldn't attribute it to playing Tom at all. In fact, Tom's probably one of the stronger cards in OTTs at the moment because it allows the deck to have even more pressure. Kurokazuichi and Shinatsuhiko are both pretty G-Era OTT staples, although I've been unsure how to balance their numbers around also playing Roys.

Roys is probably one of the harder cards to defend being in this list. For generic OTT support, there's not that much else to consider playing beyond the G-Era options and Tom. One could argue I don't even need to play Roys. But I play him for two reasons. One is to avoid gradelock that I may be inflicting upon myself in exchange for using the LuLu-CoCo draw engine. The other is, funnily enough, grade 2 Vanguard pressure. I like riding Roys regardless of whether or not I have a grade 3, because if I get the extra, it's bonus to use for a later stride, or to fuel a stride-enabler search if I have to call it for some reason. If Roys gets guarded, I feel like he's served a purpose regardless, because an early guard means more pressure when I hit the g3 turn.

The other hard-to-defend card is the single copy of Imperial Daughter. I have never ridden the damn thing despite all of my testing, and my argument for having it is super-flimsy. It's for Link Joker. But does that really matter? I don't know. I'd like to think it is, but Susanoo kind of puts it out of a job in a way. I might go to 4 CoCo or try teching something like Goddess Amaterasu. We'll see.

As a final note, I'm of the same perspective as Cherry in that I'm not a huge fan of Blizza. Blizza doesn't really do much here, because if you're using both of your Takemikazuchi strides, you should be finding a way to win without needing Blizza. Also, the fact that 3/4 of OTT's strides are useful as hell for generic cards should basically give it away that there's no reason not to play some combination of Dragon King and Qilin. I personally prefer 2 King/1 Qilin, but the other way works just as well.

I'd love some comments/critiques/suggestions. There's a pretty good chance I'm going to drop playing Imperial Daughter.

[Lequier]

My major problem with a deck like this isn't so much the deck itself (although there are definitely some things that I disagree with) but I suppose why this deck? This deck will always be comparable to Tsuku and, as far as I'm seeing, there isn't an overly big reason to be playing this over Tsuku unless I'm missing something big. You talk about big Vanguard columns but, when both decks are going to be striding 9/10 turns anyway, the power difference isn't really even that big. You just have access to a more consistent line-up of strides in Tsuku and get a much better end game situation.

Regardless, the deck itself.. I wouldn't see myself playing any less than 4 8k G1s or 4 Toms. The main point of decks like these is to cap out on the crits and then go for easy kills with Tom and the like seeing as how their bosses suck at actually dealing damage outside of Susan, who even then is questionable at best since +5000/+1 crit that late will probably never actually get through. I know that a lot of the decks in OCGland tend to play anywhere up to 6 8000 G1s to maximise Tom's potential.

Imperial Daughter seems like a poor choice to go up against Link Joker. I'd rather just play Sakuya so that all my rearguards go back to my hand and then they don't have anything to actually lock that way, especially since it synergizes so well with Madu and LuLu anyway. You're going to be forced to ride Imperial Daughter a lot of the times that you don't want to and it's going to cost you games, I can already see it.

[Misaka Mikoto]

This deck does kind of have a niche over Tsukuyomi because Coco is a much faster and burst in card advantage meanwhile Tsukuyomi may have the risk of failing the chain and leaving you with a frail 9k defense (though yes this is fixable with the Tsukuyomi Stride). Overall if they decide to play the G2 game, riding Coco is seriously gonna hurt them a lot due to widening the gap between card advantage.

As for the G1 lineup, 4 8ks here are kinda necessary because asides from being Tom's partner-in-crime, they are usually one of the best rides because it gives you more defense if your going first and has the niche of being able to hit even if the opponent rides an 8k too (Lulu doesn't have forerunner which makes early game quite difficult since your attacks are sometimes going to be guarded by 10ks). Miss Mist seems a bit too situational nowadays, I mean yes they can perfect guard legions but legions are much less prevalent compared to before. The top legions in the meta: Abyss, Thing Saver and DOTX all attack multiple times or have a G3 as a mate and so I don't think Miss Mist is really needed. You also won't necessarily be throwing down this early game either as you want at least 2 CB before you ride Coco (3 if your using Roys too) and 6k makes an undesired ride which risks not hitting if you lack another booster.

Personally the deck is already CB heavy and so I don't really like Roys here, but I can see how it works with the deck because it searches G3 to stride with and deck thins. However the deck already does CB1 for 1 card but Roys has the chance of missing and so it would seem like a waste of counterblast when you can CB for other things (also Lulu problems again, you might be lacking the booster and so it could be hard to hit). Not to mention that Roys CBing could potentially make you lack CB for Coco when your ride. As for my personal preference, I like running G2 Vanillas a lot because they seem to help wall a lot of rushes, and early game OTT are quite frail so it helps counter that a bit.

For G3, the lineup is standard besides from the 1 copy of Imperial Daughter. Personally I would use 1 copy of Gelee and 1 copy of Pudding instead because this deck is going to burn through the deck fast and so if the game lasts long enough, you are prone to deck out. Gelee being a legion helps prolong the game by another turn and shuffles triggers back into the deck alongside with the natural deck thinning from selective drawing and so this could possibly give you that last chance to win.

As for Blizza, I like it more than Nine-headed Dragon King. I know some people dislike Nine-headed Dragon King a lot because its a CB1 for nothing but I can see how the hand filtering could help, not to mention it shuffles the deck and you could possibly throw triggers back for higher chances of checking them next turn but the problem is mostly space issues. Blizza's power is not something to be underestimated because its definitely forcing out a PG, and that means theres more chances of them going to have to raw guard Silent Tom which is what you want to happen on a finishing turn. Meanwhile if you stride something else, they could possibly throw out enough 10ks to guard at least 2 to pass and so Blizza really makes a difference for the finishing turn. As for Qilin, its a really nice on-hit stride and I would probably run at least 2 of it because if your still in early game phase, its a much better stride compared to your other late game ones.

[Beryl]

-2 Miss Mist
+1 Tsunagai
+1 Tankman

-2 Roys
-3 Diviner
+1 Tom
+1 Pudding
+3 Shrine Guard, Asuha

-1 Imperial Daughter
+1 Jelly

-2 Dragon King
+1 Qilin
+1 Blizza

Decided to test these changes in an effort to maintain this deck. The 10ks do seem a lot better primarily to hold ground and prep with the 8ks for the eventual crossrides we're more than likely to see again in upcoming G-BTs. Felt like droping the g2 9+3 was okay if only because I value drawing cards a bit more at the moment.

I'm still not huge about Blizza because it's very inconsistent as when to best play it, but I'll try it if only because Madu gives it a free bonus. Also do enjoy playing Qilin, so we'll see how it goes.