On-hit Neo Nectar - Opinions on Card choices welcomed.

Just working on my draft for a budget option I'm testing out for my next blog post. It's essentially an upgrade to the ye' ole Neo Nectar (inspiration was drawn from a list I saw the other day featuring Azure Dragon, it was crazy.) deck before BT-08 came out, but this time it has the benefit of Fruit Basket Elf, a common with quite an interesting effect. It took me some getting used to in the initial stage, but now that I got a feel of it I'm working out the kinks in the deck. 1stly, the list:

1 Shield Seed Squire
6 Stand
6 Draw
4 Heal

4 Blade Seed Squire
2 Fruit Basket Elf
4 Corolla Dragon
4 Maiden of Blossom Rain (perfect guard)/ Lily Knight of the Valley

4 Knight of Young Leaves, Gene
4 Iris Knight/Poison Poison Mushroom
3 Glass Beads Dragon/ Maiden of Rainbow Wood

3 Maiden of Trailing Rose
2 Knight of Harvest, Gene
2 Forerunner Battle Maiden, Laurel

I initially had Poison Poison Mushroom as a really cheap and gimmicky option that works really well with Elf (at least he can touch cross riders!), but on testing he merely forced me to overcommit to the field (granted, on a good game I was able to snag myself 4 cards in a single term turn), and he's really bad even if we're still talking English Meta, so I took him out in favor for a solid beater in Iris Knight, being able to use Lily Knight of the Valley in place of the Perfect Guard (which should have its price jacked up by the intro of BT-08). I'm feeling I might try out Hey Yo Pineapple since he has that 11k body and my field's always flooded later on in the game anyway.

It was very cool to pack 20+ (including Mushroom) on hit effects in the deck, but I found that over-focusing on that theme hurts the deck, especially if you play too much Elf effects (I've since then learnt to use it sparingly).

Thoughts, opinions welcomed, this is still a work in progress at any rate. Oh right, the initial idea (although not very detailed nor well done):
http://cvhoab.blogspot.sg/2012/09/week-1-neo-nectar-creating-idea.html

In Theory at least, the problems I see are

Maiden of Trailing Rose - You would not want to invalidate the most threatening attacks the deck has

Glass Beads Dragon/Maiden of Rainbow Wood, I do not want to spend 3 counter-blast to draw one card

Gene line - Ehh, The problem here is more of the fact Gene's don't too much other than that +1. It isn't terrible or anything but again it is a lot of a work for 1 card especially when you would want to be decking more Laurels to have an easier time making 18000 versus Cross-Rides.

Personally, I do enjoy the over-all concept of Fruit Basket Elf but outside of Trailing Rose whose attack I don't want to invalidate, everything else seems to be too much work for minimal effort.

Thing about most On-Hit skills is that they are versatile, either your Opponent defends them +1 (or more) cards down or takes the hit +1 (or more cards) for you.

Point is, Fruit Basket Elf is relatively weak and in the long run costly for what the deck naturally causes just by running the on-hit skills themselves. There isn't a card with a strong enough result in Neo Nectar to justify running it in the first place. (Again, the exception is Maiden of Trailing Roses but as I mentioned, negating your most threatening attack isn't the best of scenarios).

3XXXDDD wrote:

In Theory at least, the problems I see are

Maiden of Trailing Rose - You would not want to invalidate the most threatening attacks the deck has

Glass Beads Dragon/Maiden of Rainbow Wood, I do not want to spend 3 counter-blast to draw one card

Gene line - Ehh, The problem here is more of the fact Gene's don't too much other than that +1. It isn't terrible or anything but again it is a lot of a work for 1 card especially when you would want to be decking more Laurels to have an easier time making 18000 versus Cross-Rides.

Personally, I do enjoy the over-all concept of Fruit Basket Elf but outside of Trailing Rose whose attack I don't want to invalidate, everything else seems to be too much work for minimal effort.

Thing about most On-Hit skills is that they are versatile, either your Opponent defends them +1 (or more) cards down or takes the hit +1 (or more cards) for you.

Point is, Fruit Basket Elf is relatively weak and in the long run costly for what the deck naturally causes just by running the on-hit skills themselves. There isn't a card with a strong enough result in Neo Nectar to justify running it in the first place. (Again, the exception is Maiden of Trailing Roses but as I mentioned, negating your most threatening attack isn't the best of scenarios).

That's what I figured. However, I did mention that since then, I have learnt to use the effect sparingly. On-hit attacks create a lot of pressure on the opponent, but there are times when you need to create that extra column, or you need to hang on for that one turn and you don't want your opponent to just guard that attack. Early game lets you get away with those, but it is later on in the game where On-hit skills lose much of their advantage, either being dead due to the opponent being at 5 damage, or being walled to the point of no return since my enemy has packed a ton of cards on hand. In that sense, the opponent is able to "command the course" of the game as long as he has the cards to do so (and that is most likely in the mid-late game), pressure non-withstanding.

And of course, no idiot would waste 3 CB just for a card unless it's the greatest of emergencies, but Glass Beads is at least live throughout the game (he can still touch RG if not the VG, but anyways.)

In short, this makes the deck lose out in momentum if the enemy can weather your initial rush. In that sense, would't you want to have a few more cards to defend with? Or do you want to commit less to the board? Either way, I wouldn't mind giving up a point in damage (even if it is from my most threatening attack, which is now essentially a tiger without fangs since I'm not playing criticals) for the chance to do what I want for a change in the mid to late game. And of course, 1 CB (and send back mr. grade 3) to create 2 interceptors looks great on paper, but getting it free sounds a lot better.

I have to admit though, it will have a lot of problems against crossrides.

Everything has problems against crossrides. Either you play the crossride meta or your don't. No point building a deck normally and then thinking about crossrides later.

Alice wrote:

Everything has problems against crossrides. Either you play the crossride meta or your don't. No point building a deck normally and then thinking about crossrides later.

Pretty much this. If you're really worried about the Crossride match-up and you want to play Neo Nectar on a budget, you basically have to bank on switching your entire game up as soon as the 13k hits to pressuring on rear guards with your Libra skills and ditching Genes unless you're ready to immediately elf through and get extra cards or something- and even that's not going to help much.


EDIT: ...Fruitbasket Elf, curse you for encouraging me to make "elfing" a verb.

Welp, I had meant it for casual play in any case, so I guess I'll just have to live with it. Hmmm...

Edit: decided I have some way to go before I become better at this, so I made the following cuts:
2 G3 Gene
4 Iris Knight

In favor of this:
1 Maiden of Trailing Rose
1 Laurel
4 Hey Yo Pineapple.

Farewell, oh Knight of Harvest. You were a good card, but sadly misplaced in this here meta.

Double alas, that's probably the easiest go-to combo for Fruit Basket Elf :<

Dunno how the deck plays, but you might want to consider switching up that starter and Bladeseed slot now that you're no longer running the full line. Albeit the only other real option for a starter you have short of converting this thing over to a rather more expensive Sephirot deck is Kyla/Kira/The littlest Musketeer, so there's that.

Not sure I'd run Hey Yo over Iris Knight. It's capable of attacking for a little more, but ever since Crossride meta hit I've always been iffier on running rear guards with lower base power that I intend to actually protect or keep in play for more than a turn or two. Rear guard sniping is a lot more dangerous in a metagame where your big attacks really matter.

@FoodForThought, you don't have to consider the deck casual just because it ignores crossrides. You can play against lots of competitive decks, just refuse players who want to use the broken decks vs you.

Alice wrote:

@FoodForThought, you don't have to consider the deck casual just because it ignores crossrides. You can play against lots of competitive decks, just refuse players who want to use the broken decks vs you.

Hmmm? Funny thing is, I take on all comers, so I really don't care if I might not win, as long as I have a decent game to show for it. Heck, I had also taken to trolling people by the walling the living daylights out of them since I'm getting a fistful of cards from Maiden, Draws and Mushroom, hehe. Trouble is that I just deck out before them lol.

@Scarlet: I'm actually considering Sephirot over the Musketeer line; for one thing I already have most of the cards (including Perfects), and just need to get my hands on 2 copies of G1, and 3 each of the Grade 2 and 3. By comparison, most of the key cards of Musketeer line are in the RR to RRR range, so it's really expensive to get a deck like that. It's really sad though, Musketeer seems to appeals more to me however, almost like playing Granblue.

FoodForThought wrote:

Hmmm? Funny thing is, I take on all comers, so I really don't care if I might not win, as long as I have a decent game to show for it. Heck, I had also taken to trolling people by the walling the living daylights out of them since I'm getting a fistful of cards from Maiden, Draws and Mushroom, hehe. Trouble is that I just deck out before them lol.

@Scarlet: I'm actually considering Sephirot over the Musketeer line; for one thing I already have most of the cards (including Perfects), and just need to get my hands on 2 copies of G1, and 3 each of the Grade 2 and 3. By comparison, most of the key cards of Musketeer line are in the RR to RRR range, so it's really expensive to get a deck like that. It's really sad though, Musketeer seems to appeals more to me however, almost like playing Granblue.

...You, sir, have my mentality exactly. Let's get married and have five beautiful children.

(Seriously though, remind me to tell you about the time I nearly won the equivalent of a locals tournament with a Murakumo/Nubatama hybrid and nearly beat out the top player with MLB- if he hadn't sixth-damage healed.)

Musketeer is ridiculously pricey, yeah, considering they're the 'quirky alternate strategy' especially- though Sephirot being a ride chain probably necessitated making each piece a bit less rare than otherwise. That said, I was more recommending Kyla because the search-top-five skill might do you more good than Shieldseed's boost/on-hit if you aren't actually running the full Gene line. That's probably a perception of mine slightly warped by a lot of games playing with Shizuka-clone starters by necessity or just for funsies, but for what it's worth...

Also if you're gonna invest in Sephirot, definitely just spring for investing in four copies of the thing. He changes what the deck does (but also what you can do WITH it) considerably.