Notes & Combos

I'm not gonna pretend this was the strongest deck for the Cup, but it's what I had lying around so. ¯\(ツ)/¯

Hardly steamrolled, but I did win more than I lost and had pretty good matchups vs the popular picks of Cent, RDA, and Tenpai (except when they open every board breaker ever and still have their starter).

You might notice a conspicuous lack of Sinsister Longyuan, and there's a good reason for that... I'm too cheap to make him.

I started out on a more typical Swordsoul Tenyi with Vishuda and friends, but without link access the Tenyi cards are dead more often than not. You can still weave them in while you have a token on field, but I found the Bystials to be more consistent interaction.

Don't sleep on Suruya though. Always fun to drop her on the field when Mo Ye and Taia inevitably get negated.

Rumble is there for Crimson Dragon, but it's not bad to hard draw if you have a way to get Suruya in grave, and Taia can easily send her if you didn't already have one there from your synchro plays. Ecclesia works, too, and she loves to jump into the grave.

Second Blackout also came up a bit, and it's nice to have it as an option to banish for another token.

Iris Swordsoul is underrated. Also a brick half the time.

Extra Deck is pretty flexible. Most end boards will be Chixiao + Baronne + Blackout, but you've got a lot of room for toolkit picks.

Mind Castlin was a dumb cook for Six Sam matchup to try to get around the level floodgate if I didn't have Longyuan. Thought it might put their Shien in a no win situation if you can get something else on the field, but I never got to try it.

Crimson Blader never came up, but if you can find a chance to use it, it can probably win certain matchups on the spot.

Baxia was even more relevant than usual with all the stun and burn decks running around. I absolutely needed both copies.

White Aura Whale came up a couple times, just note you can only make it with Mo Ye and a token.

Vahram came up once or twice, but if I was down enough to go for it, my opponent usually had a way to stop it.

Baronne was my go-to 10 over Chengying or Dis Pater, but Dis Pater did win me a couple of games by itself. I was usually only able to make it in "win more" situations though, but it is a dragon, so you can grab it off Crimson Dragon if you see your line. Otherwise you're only making it with a Bystial.

Crystal Wing and Crystal Clear Wing were also there for Crimson, but they came up less than I expected them to.