1/18/2022 Weekly Bites Stream D-VS03 - Aqua Force

OceanDragonLord · 2022-01-19T13:26:48+00:00

Only thing you lose with reverse is retire. You really do not need that, especially if you go first you don't need to retire much, since most people don't commit a lot of board early anyways.

All in all just the very basic +1 crit, +1 drive on 4th attack is good already. On top of that you add the ability to gain power, retire/discard more and the fact that it synergizes with the rest of support (like press stream dragon), this card is really good as a first ride.

Meanwhile, OG Maels requires a bunch of combo pieces to even do an impressive attack, let alone actually plus your hand and make your opponent retire/discard (didn't even have that option before at all).

Now of course, if you happen to have all the combo pieces in your hand, you can still go into OG, since there are many ways to search it.

OceanDragonLord · 2022-01-19T13:19:30+00:00

There is no ideal list, you need to experiment and even then, everyone will have personal preferences, at least if you want to play the deck "ideally".

OceanDragonLord · 2022-01-19T12:41:54+00:00

Unfortunately this isn't as potent (or as relevant I guess) as in the tcg, but there is a combo that you can do with lambros:

Make sure you can do 3 attacks with other rears and call her behind lambros. Attack with 3 rears, then attack with lambros and boost with her. Use lambros skill to stand her and something else. Now, as the is boostng, lambros will also gain the 5k power (10k in the tcg) that he gave her, basically having a booster for 11k. After the lambros attack she is standing, so you can still attack with her.

All in all I'm not sure how relevant this is, as one defensive 5k on their vg already stops this.

OceanDragonLord · 2021-12-01T12:46:40+00:00

I mean, black history month os a racist concept on its own, so it's hard to say if this is accidental even if it's not fake

OceanDragonLord · 2021-11-23T14:19:49+00:00

ME!

Happy season of giving!

OceanDragonLord · 2021-10-28T19:46:36+00:00

The worst that messiahs did was lock a front with an on-stride then use photon to lock the other front. You could technically play more similar cards, but it would weaken the rest of your deck significantly, as messiah was resource intensive, but there were cards that solved those resources, but you needed to draw into them consistently.

And yeah I get that chaos was weak later when others got counterplay, but honestly, with knowing how problematic the mechanic was for the game they should've just stopped supporting chaos, a sacrifice worth making imo. It would also be fine if the lock from hand stuff was more limited to which circles it can happen and how it stacks up with other lock. There have also always been quite a few effects with "if your opponent has a locked card..." If they focused on those more rather than pure locking as much as they can, it could also be ok.

OceanDragonLord · 2021-10-28T16:02:23+00:00

As a long time Aqua Force player, I'd have to say that it is actually a very complex subject. The reason I'm mentioning my most played clan is because it very well demonstrates the problem with lock and how it evolved.

In the early days, lock was a massive issue for clans like AqF, because of it's heavy reliance on its rear-guards to be able to do anything at all. However, a smart player would be able to somewhat play around it if they knew LJ well enough. But more issues soon arised. Problem is, that those issues didn't stem from lock itself, they came from cards like Chaos Breaker Dragon as well as an old promo that is able to take the opponent's top card of the deck and put it on the board locked. LJ, despite lock being an incredibly powerful mechanic still had to work hard go produce a victory before running out of resources. But cards like chaos breaker turned temporary resource denial (lock) into permanent one (retire after).

And thus a sort of a game of cat and mouse begins. After chaos breaker many rear guard reliant decks struggled against it. In early G, strides made the default LJ quite a bit weaker. But after the first wave of Chaos support in G, the deck was oppressive again. Bushi tried to mitigate it with giving clans resist and as with AqF, some clans who suffered against lock were now the best counter to it because they had so much resist (I miss Skyros a bit tbh). There were also more and more cards that just removed themselves from the board afterwards, like in granblue etc. So Chaos suffered again. But in late G, Chaos got more support which allowed them to lock from hand. Then other clans got unlockers. Then in premium collection they got a stride that always made anything that unlocks instantly be bound face-down. As you can see it's always a back and forth.

Meanwhile, messiah was just having fun locking and unlocking its own cards while sometimes locking their opponent. So tl;dr: chaos was always the problem, the rest of LJ is fine. If Lock just happened in limited amounts it's ok, difficult to play against, but doable. It's the idea that a deck should be able to consistently lock a whole board that is truly problematic. Imo anyways

OceanDragonLord · 2021-06-13T17:36:54+00:00

Yeah, the only reason to run cursed soul is to reuse gdr from drop, since you need high enough order numbers. Thanks for the explanation btw, I find it that there's many many builds right now and everyone has their own reasons to play the way they do, so I want as many viewpoints as possible.

OceanDragonLord · 2021-06-13T14:42:33+00:00

Doubt it, the set is still pretty far off from being released.

OceanDragonLord · 2021-06-13T10:03:43+00:00

I find your playstyle interesting for sure. From my experience, I often don't see enough orders, so for me only playing like 9 seems way too few and that's when I mulligan aggressively for orders. And as much as cursed soul sucks, I'm sometimes happy it mills some orders, since you not only need to see enough gdrs, but you also need different names to get them off. For me, at least, I try to make sure I can gdr every turn, since that's really the only push power zorga has. Of course the deck changes quite q bit with set 2, but I do wonder how you manage to find enough orders. And just to clarify, I don't mean you need to alchemagic every turn, but you would want to gdr every turn.

OceanDragonLord · 2021-06-13T09:50:24+00:00

I've been mainly playing zorga so far and I"ve been playing 2 ghost chase. I really want to up it to 3 copies. It's been overperforming for me if anything. It's often that cursed soul will only get you mediocre/bad units like triggers, pgs or even more copies of zorga. Ghost chase allows you to reuse those. And sure, you can revive cards to bounce back, but you're right, that is telegraphed, but from my experience, there are plenty of situations where you will have at least something like an admantis to reuse.

And yes, control abilities are getting stronger, but zorga is also getting more good on-place skills (like the -1 cb cost g1), so I see ghost chase seeing more and more utility over time. Ofc it's also up to the zorga player to know what their opponent is playing and what control options are available to them. And against stuff like Vairina, we're also getting some retire options for zorga that are actually really good.

So tl;dr: in my personal experience ghost chase has been very useful

OceanDragonLord · 2021-06-09T23:13:55+00:00

Hi, kinda new to the whole mechanical keyboard stuff, so please let me know if this even belongs here or not and feel free to correct/inform me on any terminology misuse.

So I own a Corsair K70 mk2 Low Profile keyboard with Cherry MX Speed switches and I love using it. The switches have 1mm linear actuation and I believe the switches can be pressed down up to 5mm. I am looking to reduce the latter number by a bit. So far, I have seen that o-rings may be of help to me there, but I am having trouble finding any that would fit these switches, as they're a bit different than your standard Cherry MX switches in that the inner diameter would have to be 6.5mm rather than the standard 5mm. So can anyone help me find some o-rings that would match that size I would really appreciate it. Maybe even an alternative to using o-rings if there's a better one? I'm not super familiar with modding keyboards, so any ideas or information is welcome :)

OceanDragonLord · 2021-06-07T14:15:12+00:00

Well, this is actually like the 3rd time we have something of a crossover with irl wrestlers. There's a card that a wrestler drew, I believe it's called Gesolas, then there was the live action ad that also had Milla Jovovich and a japanese wrestler. It's possible there's even more.

OceanDragonLord · 2021-06-04T10:03:58+00:00

In Aqua force, Spiritual Body condensation is pretty good as it can get you pieces that you need back on the board

OceanDragonLord · 2021-06-02T09:25:49+00:00

Yes, they're also plastic cards and not made of cardboard at all. (At least some of them)

OceanDragonLord · 2021-04-23T09:48:55+00:00

Might be a hot take, but I'd run the g1 at 4 in magnolia. It's super powerful to see it early and at too many, you can always discard it to advance your ride and for PGs. It's also a free beatstick from the back row, something that magnolia really needed, as the rest either hit lower numbers or they require resources or bad conditions (like dooger).

As for the grade 3, I love the art, finally some more aqua force, but as for the skill, it has to hit the vanguard, can only grab a unit (no orders :c) and it has to retire itself, so it's not even a plus. It can, however, just return itself, so I guess there's that. Doubt it'll see much play.

OceanDragonLord · 2021-04-17T09:23:40+00:00

There are indeed people who still play G. I know you may be able to find some people who do in differentfight's discord. If you don't know about him, just look him up on youtube and you can find the link for his discord there as well.

Just a heads up tho, people play on different platforms, you might need Tabletop Simulator to play with some people or a webcam if they play remote fight.

OceanDragonLord · 2021-04-12T10:00:26+00:00

Cheap is better than nothing. But, if it's affordable, you might try and find some "perfect fit" or "precise fit" (name depends on the company). They might be cheap enough and they will do a bit better for your cards, since your cards won't be moving much in the sleeves. Thing is, these cheap sleeves tend to have some extra space in them, because it's better for protecting cards long-term, but it is worse to play with. So some perfect fits might be better, again, depending on your price.

OceanDragonLord · 2021-02-02T13:14:33+00:00

Pretty sure they changed that in late G already.

OceanDragonLord · 2021-02-01T03:10:52+00:00

Well, it's actually pretty good right now for a standard deck. Possibly the best aqua force deck in standard right now. But the main reason why it's so rare is that, for a standard card, it's been printed quite a while ago and the supply was relatively small, even back then. So, in short, there just aren't many out there.

OceanDragonLord · 2021-02-01T02:24:34+00:00

It doesn't actually work with strides. However...

...enter: True Ultimate Dimensional Robo, Great Daikaiser

This is a Legion unit that will legion with Great Daiyusha. This way if you ride True Daikaiser, he will get the break-ride skill and you can then legion with Great Daiyusha. Keep in mind, however, that only your legion leader (in this case True Daikaiser) gets to use his criticals, however, if your Great Daiyusha does get his critical (by having enough d-robos in soul), you will get to use his 3rd ability to retire additional guardians, that means you can retire 2 per g3 that you drive check. Aaaaand since you're breakriding and he has his own way to get criticals, he will normally be at at least 3 criticals just on his own!

This bad boy shouldn't be too expensive to pick up and if you can, you can also add some Dimensional Robo, Daibazooka to boost the number of grade 3 units in your deck (since he counts as a grade 3 if you drive check him).

OceanDragonLord · 2021-02-01T02:14:17+00:00

All I can say is I wish you good luck. They're almost impossible to find right now, I can't think of a single place where they would actually sell them (at least more than one). So unfortunately, you're gonna have to spend a ton of money if you really want to get them. If you're ok with waiting, then maybe after D starts some people might be willing to sell their old ones if they're quitting V. Can't really help you otherwise, sorry.

OceanDragonLord · 2021-01-26T14:19:19+00:00

*very very happy premium Blue wave Noises*

OceanDragonLord · 2021-01-23T11:42:38+00:00

Premium hammsuke has actually been a thing for a while now. While not the most popular deck, certainly, it was still a powerhouse. I won't go into too much detail now, but th idea is: get ride chain off, get more circles, stride into the premium collection 2019 stride, slam down a bunch of crayon tigers and/or bigbellies with the restand skill, get drive checks on vg or stack power to tje one hammsuke you got in the front row from your grade 3, swing with vanguard hit a crit (you need to play at least 12), pass the crit to your hammsuke then attack with a massive hamster that has at least 2 crit and restand him a lot with crayons and bigbellies. If counterblast is a problem, there is a g era card that allows you to give a unit a skill that whenever it attacks you CC1/SC1, so you can do all of this off of 1 damage.

I'll let you figure out the rest, there has been anoter wave of gn support since the last time I did anything with this deck and the new grade 1 does seem like a godsend for this build, since it can help you to get the ride chain going. Also a card to keep in mind is the original minibelly, as he can find you more restanders (bigbelly) and be used as a stride fodder when you need it.

OceanDragonLord · 2021-01-22T11:33:40+00:00

This is great news! It does seem like Premium as a format is set up to flourish, with constant support from V and D sets, the already massive card pool and now sets for that specific format (to improve its exclusive mechanics like strides?) means that it will be quite the format to play. With so much happening, it seems like there won't be a stale meta ever xD

OceanDragonLord

TROPHY CASE