The Perfect Curve Series 25 Preview #3: For you, Victory is Merely an Illusion!
Hey everybody, welcome to another TPC Kage Summit Preview Tuesday! After the big reactions to last weeks preview I fully expect an explosion on the Bandai boards after you read the card that I have the pleasure of previewing. So here without further adue, here is the elusive 15th Super Rare preview you have all been waiting on:
So yeah. Before you start flipping out and screaming at the top of your lungs that Bandai is crazy and such, I just want to note: You cannot force your opponent to concede, and you can't make him do things the game will not allow, in order to force him to get disqualified. Okay, now you can flip out.
So yeah. Before you start flipping out and screaming at the top of your lungs that Bandai is crazy and such, I just want to note: You cannot force your opponent to concede, and you can't make him do things the game will not allow, in order to force him to get disqualified. Okay, now you can flip out.
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... Alright, is it out of your system yet? Good. Genjutsu is, as many of you realize, game breaking. Because you control all of your opponent's decisions you basically should opt to do everything to completely ruin their chances of winning.
BUT ZERO, WHAT DO YOU MEAN?
Here is what I mean for those of you who aren't sure:
1) Oh, sick full clutch, I think I'll charge your entire hand.
2) Man I think I will seperate all of your teams and attack with your 3 best ninjas by themselves into my full teams.
3) Oh no, it looks like your big Ninja is going to get OV'd by my team! Good thing I kept this Hydro pump in hand, which I will now use to target all of your relevant ninjas that I didn't send out to battle.
4) Look at these cool effects like Hidan (Cursed mode) and Warhawk, I think I will use them to give up as many Battle rewards as I can!
2) Man I think I will seperate all of your teams and attack with your 3 best ninjas by themselves into my full teams.
3) Oh no, it looks like your big Ninja is going to get OV'd by my team! Good thing I kept this Hydro pump in hand, which I will now use to target all of your relevant ninjas that I didn't send out to battle.
4) Look at these cool effects like Hidan (Cursed mode) and Warhawk, I think I will use them to give up as many Battle rewards as I can!
The fun goes on and on. Seriously, unless you have no board presence, resolving this card is
very close to outright winning the game.
very close to outright winning the game.
BUT ZERO DOES THAT MEAN THIS CARD IS UNFAIR????
When it resolves it sure as heck is, but that can be said with alot of jutsu. the balancing aspect of this card is that it costs 9 chakra minimum to play, and has roughly 4 users in the game, all of which are late game Ninjas. It also can't be used to counter commonly played Jutsu making it super awkward on the chain:
Player A) "Atomic Dismantling on Itachi and his team!"
Player B) "Itachi uses Genjutsu!"
Player A) "Okay... Chain resolves. I wipe your team"
Player B) "I... I... I can't even kill any of your ninjas because my field just got blown up"
Player A) "LOL"
Player B) "Itachi uses Genjutsu!"
Player A) "Okay... Chain resolves. I wipe your team"
Player B) "I... I... I can't even kill any of your ninjas because my field just got blown up"
Player A) "LOL"
BUT ZERO DOES THIS MEAN THE CARD IS BAD???
No, the cards high cost can be somewhat lowered with good deck building, and the late game requirement isn't too big of a deal if the rest of your deck is set up to get to the point of the game where you are capable of casting this card. There is alot of effort involed in properly utilizing this card, but is as you can see the pay off is huge! I personally think that this card is awesome and is what I like to call "A card that promotes being good at Magic."
BUT ZERO THIS IS NARUTO NOT MAGI...
Shut up, I wasn't finished. I've played alot of Magic over the years and one of the biggest differences I've seen from professional players and scrubba-dub-dubs is telegraphing. Baddies have a habit of giving it all away, and might as well just tell the world they have a wrath effect, so that the other player knows not to over commit to creatures on the board. In Magic, a good pokerface wins games, because litterally anything can happen. Naruto is a bit different. Sure, your opponent needs to keep from telegraphing what his hand situation is looking like, however instead of trying to guess the hundreds of instants and trick plays that can kill you because you swung in or blocked, all you ever have to ask yourself is "DOES HE HAVE REMOVAL AND IF HE DOES HOW SCREWED AM I?" and then either attack/block or don't based on how screwed you would be, and in most cases throw a chump blocker in the way instead.
Genjutsu changes things up a bit by being a gamebreaking threat off of a chump block made to buy time against assumed removal. But Genjutsu will only work if your opponent doesn't see it coming, so staying calm and keeping from wetting yourself in excitement is kind of integral in using Genjutsu effectively. Additionally, it also helps take power away from "Unaffected by Jutsu cards" and "Cannot be the target of Jutsu cards" effects which have had a nasty habit of being one of the best effects in the game since forever because Bandai has bottlenecked Jutsu effects into mostly "KILLS/Damages/Injures A NINJA OR DOES NOTHING." By making powerful Jutsu cards that aren't removal, I feel like they are adding depth into the game. Suddenly players need to think a little when making blocks/attacks and weigh their options a bit more.
BUT ZERO HOW DOES I GENJUTSU WELL?
I'm glad you asked. Here are some important steps involved in utilizing Genjutsu in a competative setting:
Step 1: Do not build a Genjutsu only theme deck- Seriously, this is the biggest mistake I always see people make when good new cards are shown. Their first instinct is to build a deck consisting only of some kind of theme to try and play these cards in what they believe is their home. For example, Shizune Tonton. Every derp on the planets first instinct was to build a deck of random female ninjas to utilize this card, which is why it didn't do anything too significant until I built a deck that had a ton of synergy with the card but wasn't dragged down by it either, and then I won a Shonen Jump Championship and the card was banned (Inbeforehaters).You obviously need to play Genjutsu ninja to play the card and lower it's cost, but don't just throw Cee in your deck because you play Genjutsu and what to lower it's cost to 5 from 6, cause I'll be the first person to tell you that the difference between 5-6 chakra cost is smaller than the difference between the playability of Cee and just about any other 4 drop in the format, Genjutsu or not
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Step 2: Build a deck that can reliably play Genjutsu- This means that you want to play a deck that has enough draw power where you can consistently draw the card, have a user for the card in play, and actually get to the point in the game where you can play the card. With the tutoring in the format being pretty good right now, you probably only need 3-4 users at maxium so that isn't a big deal, but what you do need is a tough early game. 0 drops like Sea Monster, Sakura, and the new Shikamaru are good ways to slow down your opponent and keep the game from becoming too one sided early on. You also want to play a mix of good draw cards (that I'm not even going to name because it's pretty obvious what the best draw missions are right now) to insure that you can sift through your deck and grab the copies of Genjutsu for when you need them.
Step 3: Have a game plan that involves not casting Genjutsu, which isn't "Roll over and Die"- This is SUPER important because things don't always work out the way we want, and for all you know you could have easily shuffled all the copies of Genjutsu to the bottom of your deck. Sucks bro, but you still have to win the game somehow, which is hopefully what the other 47 cards in your deck are built to help you do. At the Georgia SJC (I know I know, this is the last time I'm going to mention it) I got my Tonton's hit with Sealing barrier and Shino dropped against me, multiple times. I didn't clean up my cards and go cry in the corner after that because I walked into that even't assuming that stuff would happen to me, which is why my entire deck wasn't dedicated to resolving a single card. They stop your Genjutsus with Temari and such? Beat them down with Dragon flames, Pressures Damages, and good ninja effects. Make it so that a side deck and some lucky draws don't take you out of the equation.
Hopefully you liked my review, and Good luck to those of you who are already building decks for this guy. Check back next week for our last preview from set 25!
-Andrew 
7 Comments:
About Us
The Perfect Curve is a blog dedicated to Bandai's Naruto CCG, bringing you the latest news, tips, tournament reports, and even *gasp* drama that comes with it. Run By:
Patrick O'Neill
(Tsu Kiyo Me)
Andrew Kardis
(Zero)
Joshua Lu
(JDragon)
Staff Writer(s):
Nick Botchis
(Shino'sDad)
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And that was with the assumption that your entire metagame would be ShizTon just like California (post WA SJC) was. Like seriously... how do you get away with Kakashi Boyhood durdling in a 3 ShizTon + lots of tutors metagame? The ShizTon turn is the turn where you can completely blow your opponent out of the game - only reason to not do so is if your opponents are also playing durdle do nothing decks that can't punish you for not going broken. And if I remember correctly, GA was filled with do nothing Fire and Earth - maybe your positioning might have been the best, but strategy as a whole is definitely debatable.
Furthermore, for the events before GA, Water Dragon was at 3 and Snake Waves was at 1. I believe at GA Water Dragon was at 1 with Snake Waves banned, dramatically reducing the importance of Water (and its power missions such as Medical Ninja and Rules for Medical Ninja).
http://www.bandai.com/naruto/events/index.html
Everyone there played Respective Dreams, apparently.
I had two decks I wanted you to play: the Hand Control ShizTon variant and my pet deck (Big Animals). If you look at our Facebook messages you will see a few iterations of the animal deck from June 9 and 10 (which I felt could beat ShizTon because of the unbeatable late game), no mention of hand control (the first mention of this was in a call to you the night before iirc), some really bad preliminary decks to your GA-winning deck, and several complaints from you of me not helping you out.
I have always been vehemently against the decks that I term "do-nothing Fire" and I still feel that your deck did not maximize the sheer power that ShizTon provided. The only advantage to marrying ShizTon to a do-nothing Fire Boyhood shell was the multiple Trigram draw. Like I said, your positioning was definitely very good in a field of do-nothing Fire mirrors and do-nothing Earth decks. But I don't really agree with your claim of strategic superiority, and I likely never will as long as your strategy is so depressingly fair.
And still remains chakra to negate some negation from my opponent. =)