Friday, October 25, 2013
Roar!! I'm Dragonic Overlord, the star of this show!! Wha..? I no longer am!!?
Booster 11 have lots of upgrades for a number of clans; Narukami, Angel Feather, Aqua Force, Tachikaze, the new Genesis and Kagero. Many are hyped up about the updates but my attention will go to Kagero, which received lukewarm attention and simply because I don't play and am not interested in other clans.
Kagero used to be an extremely strong contender before BT10 was released for the Japanese game but many has abandoned it for the much stronger Narukami, Shadow Paladin and Link Joker. As for the English side of things, I suspect the same thing may happen. So far, due to the World Championship Qualifiers in Singapore, some are looking forward to the boost for Kagero, but most of them are going along the lines of Narukami or Aqua Force.
What intrigues me the most for Kagero in BT11 was that most of the new Kagero units introduced are of the Flame Dragon race. Ah hah, I like the look on your faces that you see where I'm coming from. For those who don't understand me, here's a quick explanation. Flare Whip Dragon is a card from Promo Pack 5. Its ability is wicked. By himself, he can attack for 16k without much effort. The reason why is that for every Kagero Flame Dragon unit that he drive checked, he gains 3k power. So by simply drive checking two flame dragon units, he gets 16k easily and with triggers, 26k. While he was considered bad initially, with BT11, his value shot up a little. So with a deck filled with Flame Dragons, you definitely will mess up your opponent's ability to calculate how much he needs to guard. Now on to the deck profile!
Grade 0: 17 units
- 1 x Lizard Soldier, Conroe (Starting vanguard)
- 3 x Blue Ray Dracokid (Critical trigger)
- 4 x Seal Dragon Biera (Critical trigger)
- 4 x Gattling Claw Dragon (Draw trigger)
- 1 x Seal Dragon Artpitch (Draw trigger)
- 4 x Seal Dragon Shading (Heal Trigger)
Grade 1: 14 units
- 2 x Iron Tail Dragon
- 3 x Seal Dragon Rinocross (Perfect guard)
- 4 x Seal Dragon Kersey
- 3 x Seal Dragon Flennel
- 2 x Embodiment of Armor Bahr
Grade 2: 11 units
- 3 x Seal Dragon Corduroy
- 2 x Berserk Dragon
- 4 x Seal Dragon Hunger Hell Dragon
- 2 x Bellicosity Dragon
Grade 3: 8 units
- 4 x Dauntless Drive Dragon
- 4 x Flare Whip Dragon
What the hey!? I thought this is a Flame Dragon deck! Well... it is! Conroe is one of the best starter for this deck, since he can filter your deck for a booster. You will also notice I have Bahr in there as well. After a few rounds of testing, a full Flame Dragon Flare Whip deck have a big weakness - the lack of 8k vanillas. One of the main reason why I use Conroe so that he can filter out Bahr to prevent you from drive checking at least one of them.
With most of the units hitting mostly 16k and 17k and only 4 units having a chance of hitting 18k himself that is Dauntless Drive, a Flame Dragon deck can't hit crossrides for big. With Bahr, at the very least you now have about 12 units hitting 18k to force a 10k guard from crossrides. But if you do want to play a full Flame Dragon deck, that is fine too, but I suggest simply hitting their rearguards away to pressure them fully.
Not much to say about this deck. It's pretty straight forward too. So far testings show it's a strong contender against quite a number of decks when played correctly but it still does take a bit of planning ahead while playing.
