Notes & Combos

In my experience, one of the hurdles with blinding second currently is assembling lethal through all of the floating & chump blocking in the format. So the new pack dropping Volcanics that can facilitate a "good" FTKーi.e. one made of multiple, smaller burns that doesn't automatically die to one well timed disruptionーseemed like it'd be interesting to play blind second.

To help explain the gameplan with the Volcanic portion a bit, if this deck is forced first it can still almost pseudo-FTK starting from (Bonfire →) SnAsh normal summon even without Geonator Transverser shenanigans:

• → Poplar search Original Sinful Spoils
• → both for Flamberge
• → OSS the Poplar backrow for Volcanic Rimfire
• → make a link 2, Proxy F is fine and not important, Rimfire send Volcanic Trooper to GY
• → link one Snake-Eye into Anima before getting FIRE locked
• → link the other Snake-Eye + link-2 into Promethean Princess
• → Princess revive Trooper, add Volcanic Emperor
• → make a bomb token with Trooper's ignition effect (Emperor is usually a free discard)
• → Summon Greater Inari from deck (Anima is Spellcaster, Trooper is Pyro), on summon burn 1k with the token (7000LP remaining)
• → link Princess + Inari into whatever, probably Amblowhale, search Fire Art - Kurenai
• → Summon Emperor by banishing 3 pyros, burn for 2k with 4 banished pyros (5000LP remaining) and set Volcanic Emission
• → on opponent's turn, Emission targets Emperor to burn for 1650 (3350LP remaining), Kurenai tributes Emperor to burn for 3100 (250LP remaining)

Emperor burns for 500 every time the opponent special summons, so if the opponent has to special summon at all before they can negate Emperor, waiting on the traps a bit is enough damage for game. Likewise, extenders that let Volcanic Blaze Accelerator be added to the combo can add 500 damage from popping the token.

Of course this combo is very brittle to interruption, but as a blind second build I'm not really aiming to do most of this combo usually. But because I can "OTK" without a battle phase, Evenly Matched felt like a natural inclusion which is kinda neat in a dedicated second strategy. It hasn't been overperforming since I've been encountering a decent amount of synchro stuff Snake-Eyes builds, but it's been very good against most everything else I've been running into so I can't complain.

As a tangent to the above, Blaze Fenix is my favorite spicy tech by far. I originally included it as a cheeky option against Formula Synchron boards as another (potentially very good) burn option. But in the end it's actually saved me the most against Kashtira: Arise-Heart is a machine + any of my normal summons as the pyro. ¯\(ツ)/¯ Super Poly in general has been performing fantastically for me and Mudragon calling an attribute to access a charmer will always be funny to me.

I added Proxy F Magician as an extension to this since Sky Striker Kagari and Amblowhale are machines, in addition to whatever I might be able to steal. In the end I barely ever used it as anything more than a generic link-2, so feel free to substitute Masquerena or another charmer, etc.

I'm playing 60 cards because without side decking, there doesn't seem to be a huge need to stay at 40 outside of playing either side of the Maxx C minigame. There's enough soft garnets in the deck that I've accepted having to play into the roach more in order to play a big pile with a better non-engine ratio. This approach might be a bad idea if/when Droll becomes more popular in response to Bonfire, but for now it's been working out alright.

I was running Grass Looks Greener since it's a natural pick for any 60 card atrocity and I do get some value out of it mostly thanks to the Volcanics. Mostly I was just running it as a funny card to bait interaction, since well, it's Grass. But I ended up cutting it before someone called my bluff and let me mill all my searchable 1-ofs. 😅 Maybe with more Volcanics.

Relatedly, I'm not running Blaze Accelerator Reload with a suite of Volcanic Scattershots even though a board wipe would be right at home in a going second strategy. I believe I'd have to search it before and send it off Diabellstar/OSS in most circumstances which is way too inflexible for such a mediocre payoff going second compared to like, just slamming down a Raigeki or whatever. There's some blind second discard outlets like Droplet and Super Poly but it doesn't seem very reliable and I'm not a fan of running even more Reload copies to hard draw. Maybe after the Horus engine comes out it's worth reexamining, but even then it still seems squarely like a going first tech that can flex when forced second.