Notes & Combos

Hello Branded Enjoyers

Second M1 with Branded Despia

The learning curve

I reached Master with Branded Despia the first time a few years ago when it came out with a 60 card build. It has been sitting in my account collecting dust ever since. I did play it once in a while for fun and even tried the radiant typhoon variant, but it was just too hard and time consuming to reach M1 with it. Sometimes when new meta is upon us, even M5 is hard. So when support finally came up, I did have some experinece with it, but I still had to learn how to play the deck well. I reached M5 last season with T.G Elfnote, then I wanted to use Branded to get to M1. I went on the whole rest of the season running out of time and losing to other simpler T1 decks like KT, SS, Elfnote... Best I could do was M3. Then I started over this season again with it from D5. Basically it took me a whole season to learn the deck again.

The decklist

I was playing droplet until I reached M2, where I was barely making it. Playing droll instead helped me get that final push. I didn't realise it at first, but Nadir servant is so good, adding Mercourier and Retribution to my disruption. Playing under Maxxc and fuwa was also a challenge. Unless my hand is stacked, my goal usually is to summon Quem at least before passing. Sword recycling my one of is great too. Not playing Gold Sarc because I love having mercourier in rotation with Quem.

All in all, it was a slow but very steady climb. I lost many matchups, but rarely deranked from D5 to M5. After I reached M5, I lost some matches of course, but the way was only up. The games can be long though, and you need to play almost perfectly, because even going first isn't a guarantee win if you mess up turn two. We don't have that many negate. You learn that you don't often need to win turn 2. If you are able to ensure turn 3/4 and follow up, you are good. It's also what is annoying with this deck, because you NEED to play despite the odds until you have nothing; there is always a chance to have one of your plays go through and pulling your opponent into the grind.