Stand and Draw: Card game rants and experiences

Eldora, one of the most underused LRIG in WIXOSS but she's extremely fun to play with. Constructing a deck that plays well around here however, may take a bit more thinking than most other LRIG.

The key reason why she is not as popular as other LRIGs are mainly due to the lack of support for her play style. She mainly aces at control of your Life Cloths, and at time, your opponent's Life Bursts. But that is what actually made her harder to use sadly as her plays require the manipulation of Life Cloths.

But, with the release of Next Selector, it opens up a new kind of play style for Eldora that is extremely fun to play with too. Interested in the deck list? Carry on!

LRIG Deck:

• Eldora=Mark 0
• Eldora×Mark I
• Eldora=Mark II'
• Eldora=Mark III'
• Eldora=Mark IV' or Eldora×Mark IV
• Surprise With Me
• Cross Life Cloth
• Cross Life Cloth
• Xeno Multiple
• Don't Escape or Don't Move

Main Deck (Normal):

• 2 x Una, Water Phantom
• 3 x Servant D2
• 1 x Servant T2
• 2 x Code Art OSS 
• 4 x Code Art SPK 
• 1 x Code Art RGN
• 1 x Fracturing Lust
• 2 x RAINY
• 4 x FREEZE THROUGH

Main Deck (Life Burst):

• 3 x Servant O
• 3 x Code Art GRB
• 3 x Code Art TAP
• 3 x Code Art KEY
• 2 x Code Art CPU
• 1 x SEARCHER
• 4 x FREEZE
• 1 x Arc Aura or No Gain

Main deck breakdown:

LV 1	LV 2	LV 3	LV 4	LV 5	Spell	Total
14	3	5	5	0	13	50

For my LRIG, I play until Level 4. I would recommend playing Eldora×Mark IV over Eldora=Mark IV' but the latter is easier to get as it's from the Trial Deck which the former is a LR. Mark IV allows you to draw a card with each crushed Life Cloth while Mark IV' needs a Life Burst to draw, but she does come with a costly banish cost. Surprise With Me is a must for Eldora deck so that you can rearrange the top 4 of your Life Cloth. This way, you can put your Life Bursts in front or non Life Burst cards and swap one out with Cross Life Cloth with a Life Burst card in hand. Requires some memorization, but at the very least, you can manipulate what Life Burst you can get and plan your damage ahead. Xeno Multiple gives you a choice of abilities you can use. Most of the time, you'd be gunning for its Freeze and Draw effects. The other effects can be useful in situations where you need the extra defence. Last but not least, Don't Escape. If you are on a budget, Don't Move is another option you can use. Both cards down 2 of your opponent's signi, although the former is cheaper on the ener, with slightly stricter condition.

This deck plays LOTS of Spells. The reason is quite simple. You simply want to FREEZE your opponent and finish it off with FREEZE THROUGH. In the event you can't use FREEZE, there are other cards like CPU, SPK or KEY that allows you to FREEZE your opponent's SIGNI. Aside from freezing, I have cards that allows me to check my opponent's hand, like TAP, or drop cards like OSS, SPK, TAP's Life Burst and RAINY. Hand size is pretty consistent as well thanks to cards like GRB, SEARCHER, RAINY, and KEY and GRB's Life Bursts. I also have teched in Arc Aura for it's defensive Life Burst, but No Gain has a good mention as well as it prevents your opponent from using Arts like Idol Defense when it's time for your final push.

That's all I have for now. Until next time!

Ladies and gentlemen! Welcome to Mayu's Room. Have a seat (points to a comfy looking couch) and enjoy some tea. Now, are you all relaxed? Good. I have some...good news, which sadly, may be bad news to others.

Three cards have been added to the ban list. Now now, don't get all worked up. I have yet to announce which cards are banned. Now without further ado, here are the cards that have been "nerfed".

You can only put up to 2 of each cards in your deck(Source):

• Repair
• Valkyrie, Unforgettable Fantasy
• Arcgain, Archangel of Pioneering

Whoa whoa...stop throwing things at me Green and White players. It's not restricted just yet! The banlist will be enforce starting on 25th April 2015, which is a month later. Once enforced. this means that you can play all three cards in a single deck, but you can only play 2 Repair, 2 Valkyrie and 2 Arcgain in that deck. Takara Tomy has also added the following notice regarding the banlist.

• Official Takara Tomy WIXOSS PARTY SPECIAL or non-WIXOSS PARTY events may enforce this rule at their discretion.
• Free plays and events outside of WIXOSS PARTY may enforce this rules at your own discretion.

This is quite straight forward. For official events and shop tournament, the host can choose to enforce the banlist or disregard it. Free plays too can enforce the banlist or disregard it. Straight forward no?

Now what does this means? I say nothing much. A deck can originally put up to 4 cards on the same name in the deck. You just put 2 less for each cards that has been restricted so it's not really the end of the world. Mayu and Midoriko decks are still strong enough with the restriction. I'm personally okay with the ban list, seeing that Tama/Mayu decks are topping too many tournaments.

But who will actually follow the list? Well, most players, free players or tournament-centric ones, tends to follow the banlist. It's a trend I noticed with most card games. Even if the a banlist says it's only for official events, most players will still follow it, simply because they want it to be tuned for tournaments or, during free plays, not having issues with another player that follows it, which means, more fun playing, less arguments.

Looks like the date for Wixoss booster 7 is out and is set to be released on the 23rd May and it comes with many new terms such as Resona Signi, Cross and Heaven. I'm going to talk about these new skills and comment on them as much as I can, although for now, there isn't much information available.


Resona Signi


First up, is Resona Signi. Simply put, it's a Signi you put in your LRIG deck. But you can't just put any Signi you like in there. Unlike a Signi card, it has a white backing and and border, similar to your LRIG. Of course like other Signis, you're still restricted to what level and cost your LRIG have. You can only play this Signi when certain conditions are met, however, whatever condition it was wasn't mentioned. Is it like Vanguard's Stride? Or the condition is simply the text on the card itself? For now, I'm assuming it's the latter. It could be played like Mecury (image below) where you put 3 <Space> Signi which is not Resona into trash and call this card out from the LRIG deck to the field. When they leave the field, instead of going to the LRIG trash or ener, they return to the LRIG deck instead.

I find Resona Signi kinda nice although, it may take up ARTS space that is is already tight if one were to play until Level 5. I'm assuming that Resona Signi is probably meant to take up that Level 5 space but it could still be played with Level 5 decks for builds that does not actually need too much ARTS.


Cross


Cross is another mechanic appearing on new Signi cards. My very first impression when I saw this mechanic was "Whoa, this is just like Vanguard's legion!" I know Vanguard is not the only card game that can have two cards in a slot but I only know of Vanguard so sue me. So anyways, Cross Signis needs to be paired with specific signis (Just like Legion and its mate). The card that is needed to Cross itself is mentioned on either one or both of the Signis. When Cross is active, so is any skill that is needed Cross via (X 常) that is written on the card. Of course there may be cards where the Signi will have both Cross skills and non-Cross skills but again, this is merely speculation on my side. Apart from simply having two cards in the same field for Cross, we're assuming the positioning for the Signis are important as well. That means that if Cock on the third column of the Signi zone and Heckler is on the middle column, Cross is not activated. If Cock is on the first column of the Signi zone and Heckler in on the third column and there's another Signi that is not Cock in the middle column, Cross is not activated. If Cock is on the first column and Heckler is on the middle column, Cross is activated. Still, this is just an assumption as there is not much information for how cross is activated when on the field.

Cross is definitely like a high powered play and a good skill to add in. I kinda wish there's more information Takara Tomy can reveal to us but probably we'll have to wait till May for more news?

Heaven


Cross also includes another skill which is Heaven. You can see at the top of both cards that there's a half a logo. Only Cross Signis will have Heaven and is only activated when both cards are in the "down" state. The logo on top will make into the Heaven logo. With the example of Cock and Heckler, when both are down, it's now in Heaven. You can pay 1 Red ener to crush 1 of your opponent's Life Cloth. Now, apart from that scary looking Heaven's skill, it's not sure whether the skill can only be used once or can be used indefinitely as long as they're both in heaven as the ability states "as long as the Signi is in Heaven state". If there's no limit, you can just keep paying 1 Red and crush all of your opponent's Life Cloths till they have nothing left. Which could be too over-powered in my opinion.

I believe Takara Tomy may put restrictions on Heaven in the rulings, else I can just use a card skill to down myself and shotgun ahead with 7 Reds. It could be there when the Signis goes in Heaven state, you can use the ability in that instant, but hey, I could be wrong. There isn't much information to pull up for now. Again, we may have to wait for more news in the near future.

Personally, I think that Takara Tomy may have introduced too many new skills and gimmicks at once. Now it makes me wonder what new things will be in store for Booster 10 onwards.


Source: @wixoss_hanayo

And it's finally time for Fortune Selector!! Okay, I wanted to write about it before the booster is out but I've decided to put it off and post it with the unboxing videos. Yes, this is going to be a rant, meaningful or not, is completely your decision; I just want to get it out of my systems.

Firstly, I'm glad we're still getting more stuff for Wixoss. But I am quite disappointed with what was released in Fortune Selector and it's targeted mainly at the common cards. Head to the Wiki and look through the list. So what did you see? If you didn't see much stuff, then you're not looking hard enough. Here's a hint - all of the common Signi cards are cards with trait power-up effect aka "If you have another <trait> in the field, this Signi's power is XXXX.".

Yup, it's just that for ALL colours. I get that some of these traits needed them, like red's Ore or green's Beast. If these cards are released in Booster 7(?), I'd be more than happy to welcome them but in Booster 6 where slots are limited since set has only 56 odd slots, you would expect to see something better. I get that it's a supplementary booster to Booster 4 and 5 but Booster 3 have a much better pool of card for the commons and a number of these cards are staples in many decks. Now I just hope booster 7 has a much better outcome.

Secondly, the point exchange. For those who didn't know, Singapore can exchange the points they get from buying packs for foiled promo cards (look for point campaign remarks). Collect 100 points and you can change them for one of them shiny promos. It's all good and dandy when you printed out the form and was told to cut out the points and paste them. Then, drop it off to at any Wixoss supporting card shop and they'll send over the points to the supplier who will send it over to Takara Tomy Japan. The process takes about a few weeks as it involves waiting for the cards to be delivered to Singapore and back to the store.

Turns out, there are some, sorry to say this, idiots out there who think they are being extremely smart by PHOTOCOPYING the points and pasting them on the form. It wasn't officially mentioned (I may be wrong. If there is a source, direct me to it please) by Genesis Frontier (the supplier who got Wixoss in SG) but it was mentioned by a few card shops I visit for Wixoss stuff that was doing the points exchange as well. They were told not to collect any points for the time being and was instructed to tell the players not to cut out and paste the points onto the form, and instead, just pass the stack of points with the forms and written details. Apparently, after the points was delivered to Japan, there was an outrage by Takara Tomy that there was lots of fake points coming in from Singapore. Another thing to note of is that there is a limited number of Wixoss cases that was officially shipped to Singapore by Takara Tomy and they were overwhelmed that the points they received from Singapore was more than what was shipped to Singapore. They had to scan through each forms and check the point cut outs to separate the legit filled forms from the fake ones. The shops that I wanted to exchange with said they can't accept any points for now until Genesis gives them the green light for it again.


Seriously, for those who are planning on photocopying the points and exchanging them for the promos, don't be a smartass and do that, please. You're making it hard for us legit point collectors to exchange them. If people still decide to continue "cheating" the system, Takara Tomy may just announce "Hey look, we gave you a chance to get the promos, fooling me once was fine but second and third time? Know what? We're scrapping the point exchange for you guys. Nope, no promos for you!". That may just happen and who knows, Takara Tomy may decide to not export Wixoss again to Singapore or any other country.

It's a Sunday and I finally have time to sit down and write in something here! WIXOSS booster 5, Beginning Selector was released about 3 weeks ago and I'm both happy and frustrated at the release (I'm looking at you Mayu). Before the release of Beginning Selector, Hanayo decks aren't really worth considered to play with. The best decks out there is the Hanayo level 2 and sadly, playing Hanaya to Level 4 can means suicide pre-Booster 5. But still, this is simply my opinion after using Hanayo since the inception of the game itself.

Ever since upgrading the with booster 5, I was able to beat many meta and odd decks out there, with the exception of Mayu decks. The only time I managed to defeat Mayu was when my opponent misplayed at 1 life cloth left and my field have 2 Diabrides and he used Rococo Boundary on two of my ore signis. Apart from that, I have yet win against that ener locking deck.

Well, enough rants. The deck list awaits!

LRIG Deck

• Hanayo-Zero
• Hanayo-One
• Hanayo-Two, Hard Flame
• Hanayo-Three, Blazing Flame Dance
• Hanayo-Pure Four 
• Hanayo-Five
• Salvage
• Fiery Spring Landscape
• Rekindling Effort
• Ancient Surprise

Main Deck (Normal)

• 1 x Topaz, Natural Stone (LV1)
• 2 x Code Anti Henge (LV1)
• 2 x Code Anti Aztec (LV2)
• 2 x Servant D2 (LV2)
• 3 x Bronda, Natural Stone (LV2)
• 1 x Rubyl, Natural Stone (LV3)
• 3 x Ordnance, Roaring Gun (LV3)
• 1 x Servant T2 (LV3)
• 3 x THREE OUT (Spell)
• 2 x Fracturing Lust (Spell)

Main Deck (Life Burst)

• 4 x Carnelian, Natural Stone (LV1)
• 4 x Servant O (LV1)
• 2 x Servant D (LV2)
• 2 x Mithril, Natural Stone (LV3)
• 4 x Adamasphere, Natural Pyroxene (LV4)
• 4 x Diabride, Natural Pyroxene (LV5)

Signi breakdown:

LV 1	LV 2	LV 3	LV 4	LV 5	Spell	Total
11	9	7	4	4	5	50

I have linked each cards to the appropriate Wiki pages for easy references. My deck looks a little weird but I find it's quite effective against many decks out there.

My LRIG deck starts out simple. I play the the Trial Deck's Hanayo-One simply because she has a limit of 2. In this way, I can call out two LV1 signis for defence and if I start first, I can use Carnelian to grab extra cards to hand. LV 2 and LV 3 Hanayo is quite standard in most Hanayo decks; Two adds power whilst Three banishes one of your opponent's signi to open up a path of attack. My choice of Hanayo-Pure Four may baffle some but if you were to think about it properly, she fits in the deck perfectly. She costs two ener to grow and have a signi limit of 12 but, she doesn't have any abilities. The keywords here are "two eners". Her other LV 4, Hanayo-Four, Hundred-Fire Profusion, is...not so great and she costs 3 eners to call out. Her effect in itself is not as great. Sure I can banish away a signi of less than 10k, but I find it quite costly as I have to trash away a card from hand despite being cheap at 1 red ener and to add on to that, I don't even use that skill at all, and same goes with other Hanayo players I know. So Hanayo Pure is the best option for LV4 and you get to save 1 ener for some other effects. The ace LRIG for the deck of course would be Hanayo 5. As soon as you grow to her, your chances of winning shoots over the roof. All signi gets double crush and I can banish 30k worth of signi? You could easily destroy the whole field and finish the game there and then!

For Arts, Salvage and Fiery Spring Landscape helps with Hanayo based decks' achilles heel, hand size. Among all other decks in WIXOSS, Hanayo players can find themselves having not enough cards in hand and they don't quite have a good drawing engine like most other decks have. Rekindling Effort is another extremely good card to play, especially when you're at Level 5 and planning to finish things right away. If you used Hanayo Five's Exceed and gave your opponent 4 ener, Rekindling Effort helps away at whittling away those ener to prevent them from using their Arts. Most Arts like Don't Move, Black Desire and Ancient Surprise requires 3 eners and by preventing them from using this, the chances of winning is higher so combo Fracturing Lust with Rekindling Effort is an extremely good combo. Of course there would be some cards that can still throw in the wrench in the works such as Idol Defense if you used a spell and arts on the same turn. Now among the midst, there's a black Arts, Ancient Surprise. This card is mainly to do the following - Prevent Green decks from getting their Lancer off by lowering their power by 5k or 8k and defend against Mayu decks to prevent them from finishing you off. Dead Splash is a good mention against Mayu decks if you can't get your hands on Ancient Surprise.

Now, I separated my main deck to two parts, one with no Life Burst and another with Life Burst. Let's start with the former. As you noticed, I play 2 black cards, Henge, for my LV1, this is to be used by Ancient Surprise when needed later in the game. Topaz is a tech card if I need to fish out Fracturing Lust. Aztec is another black card for Ancient Surprise. Aztec calls out a LV1 ancient weapon from the trash so Ancient Surprise + Aztec + Henge makes a good defence combo when needed. Servant D2 and T2 for guarding and Bronda is a vanilla 7k LV2. I play 1 Rubyl and 3 Ordnance. Rubyl is good for that sudden power burst but Ordnance can snipe away a Signi from the field for a direct attack. Three Out is obviously for hand size while Fracturing Lust to destroy your opponent's ener, especially against Midoriko Repair and Big Bang decks.

For my Life Burst cards, I would say it's a standard recipe amongst many players. Carnelian can help with hand size with resting her and reveal top card for a gemstone. Her life burst lets you draw a card. Servant O and D are your guards as well as ener chargers. Mithril is your 15k guardian and 18k attacker whom is just a Level 3. While her on-play effects forces you to discard a card, it's well worth the cost as she'll be in the field for a very long time. Her life burst is a direct opposite that allows you to draw a card. Adamasphere increase field power, banish a weakling away and even let you get double crush, but her life burst is great at early and mid game. Most signi are less than 10k apart from some LV3s and above, and therefore have lots of targets for banishing. The ace of the Signis in this set is definitely Diabride. After burning away the field with Hanayo 5's skill, you can attack a total of 5 times (2 Diabrides attacking twice and another signi). Her second ability also forces your opponent not to use Arts like Don't Move or Rococo Boundary carelessly when they're at 1 Life Cloth and you have two Diabrides in the field. Of course Diabride is without any weakness. If you're unlucky enough to get your opponent triggering Arc Aura, Final Distruction or even FREEZE, it may be the end, or you may get a chance to finish it off at the next turn.

That's it for my deck profile. While it may looked like there's way too many unnecessary card in the deck, each card is in there for a reason and they complement each other quite well. Probably more will come up soon, probably not. Until next time!

After a long week of delay by the new distributor, I finally managed to get my hands on WIXOSS booster 04. Why the long delay? Turns out, the distributor encountered some hiccups with the delivery of Booster 4 and there wasn't enough for all pre-orders by every other stores. So they decided to do the next worst thing: Distributing the boosters to the larger chain of stores first (which obviously have a larger amount of pre-orders) instead of doing a "first come first serve" basis. So yeah, majority of the smaller stores got their pre-orders last despite being the first ones to pre-order them. And we did like what other humans will generally do, bombard the distributor with complaints.

Phew, that was a load off my chest. I did not take an unboxing video for this booster sadly due to technical issues. But for those who have been waiting for singles from this booster, I have good news! It's now up for grabs in the store! (Images will be updated soon)

I've updated the prices for WIXOSS booster sets 1 and 2 as well as more stocks added in. Not much differences but you may have noticed the foil cards are steadily dwindling down in price and has stabilized mostly. And yes, I finally got off my lazy butt to upload the images for each cards as well! So long to those "Now printing" images!

I am saddened to announce that WIXOSS booster set 3 will be slightly delayed for one or two days however. The prices are spiking up and down a little as various stores across Japan having slightly different prices by a large margin as well. I expect for the price to settle down within one or two days though.

Ninja update: Prices seems to have stabilized. WIXOSS booster set 3 have been added in to the store!

Visit the webstore now!

Finally! Spread Selector is out and has reached my door. What was the first thing I did? Take an unboxing video of it of course! I've tried to keep it quick,  short and simple, so instead of having my normal (and boring) commentaries in the video, I went back to how it was used to be done!

I apologize for not updating for too long. No, it's that I'm lazy. I literally have no time to do any updates as I've been doing lots of overtime work in real life, working 6 days 12 hours shift a week. I did take a few unboxing videos (Ange Vierge Chapter 4 and Project Diva F 2nd) but I have yet to upload those. I have some free time these few days but I hope the lazy bug didn't get me.

For now, I'm just here to announce that there have been major price update for WIXOSS. The market price over in Japan have stabilize and the updates have been done to reflect them. From what I heard, the price have been stabilize for about two weeks but I delayed a little in case there was another unforeseen fluctuation. You'd be glad to see cards that used to cost more than $20 is now just about $10 odd. Well, except for Three Out which is has increased to $12 despite being just a common card (and I heard it may still increase some more). For those who are sceptical about the prices, I'm using Bigweb and Card Kingdom as a reference, which most players and shops in Singapore are using for Japanese singles. Head down to the store and get those cards that you've been itching to get!

Yes, the singles for Set 2, Stirred Selector, are up in the store now! As usual, I followed the Japanese market rate for these cards. Stocks are limited so get them while they last! Level 0 Yuzuki and Eldora promos also available so you can build a deck without needing the trial deck! Scanned images of the cards will be added soon.

Hey there again and I'm back with Wixoss Booster set 2 unboxing! The video is long, since it is about 15 minutes per box (on average) and most likely bore some people (sorry for not being so colourful with words).

Yes, as you've seen in the video, one of the boxes is a mispacked box. Full of parallel foil cards that includes in a SECRET card too! Aki-lucky! Here are the images of the SRs that I managed to snag from the 4 boxes!






Of course some of the cards shown here are for sale. I have yet to add them into the store yet but I'll be putting up another post ones it's done!

I've been getting lots of requests for WIXOSS, and now, here's more! Previously, we had a box opening for WIXOSS Blue Appli trial deck, today, we have White Hope, Red Ambition and Black Desire! As for Green Wanna...sorry, I couldn't get my hand on that one...But, at the very least, here are some images for you to enjoy! For those looking forward to getting the WIXOSS trial decks, my store is currently taking pre-orders for them! However, there are limited slots so you'll need to be quick before it all runs out! Pre-order closes on 19th June 2014.

A few days ago, I've posted the WIXOSS booster set 1 unboxing video. Now it's time for the Trial Deck, Blue Appli. This is just a short and quick video so there isn't much for me to comment on except for you all to enjoy the video!

Wixoss is finally out and my boosters are finally delivered. What else should I do other than a box opening video. Admittedly, this is a long video, spanning about 45 minutes.


So what is Wixoss? Well, it is a TCG that appears from the anime Selector Infected WIXOSS. The anime is a little dark, not like Madoka and Daybreak Illusion dark but it's quite an interesting watch. The game play is a little lengthy but Anime Senshi Subs has kindly translated the Quick Start Guide for us to read comfortably in English. If you're interested to see how the game is played, you will be interested in the Wixoss tutorial by Kudou Kun. Interestingly, Takara Tomy has the TCG's recommended age to 15 and above.

Also, here's a quick breakdown on how each box of WIXOSS is packed.
1 box have 20 packs. In the 20 packs, there's 5 alternate foils (in total) for the Commons, Rares and LRIGs, there are 4 SR (Super Rare) cards and 1 LR (LRIG Rare). In addition to that, if your box have a SECRET card (or a signed card), it will replace one of the 4 SRs. So in total, one box of 20 packs have 10 packs that contains a foil card.

With the introduction out of the way, here's the awaited video! If it is too long for you, scroll to the bottom for some pictures of the foil cards! If you're looking for any cards that you need, feel free to come by the online store!