Enter the Swarm

Published on 26 February 2024 at 08:06

Good morning class. Today we are carrying on looking at the DZ01 decks, and this time we are moving onto the new crime syndicate from Stoicheia - "Sword Princess of Dream Blade, Lascaria Veleno". This line is a TCG-only rideline and has some interesting mechanics, so let's get started.

Rideline Discussion

Rideline for Lascaria Velano is honestly easy to pinpoint, as her own one is just so good for the deck, so let us dive straight into "Days of Training, Lascaria"

Now, "Days of Training, Lascaria" starts off by giving the hint to the fact that the deck is going to be revolving around blitz orders, and having the ability to get any grade 2 or greater one of choice for free for riding is really good for the deck. Not being able to search a Regalis Piece is fine as it would be too strong otherwise, plus we do have other cards within the deck that can still search it out anyway. Following the trend, the next card in the rideline is "Oath Upon Mother's Sword, Lascaria"

So "Oath Upon Mother's Sword" is also a +1 for free when rode upon, same as "Days of Training, Lascaria" but with some changes. The selection pool is smaller, but the options of what we can add to hand are bigger. Being able to search not just blitz orders, but also any of the archetype's cards is really good. On top of that, due to Lascaria Velano also having the Veleno name, adding Persona Rides to hand is really nice to do as well. But talking of Lascaria Velano, let us move onto her

So "Sword Princess of Dream Blade, Lascaria Veleno" has a pair of really interesting skills. Looking at the first one we have some really solid scaling given to the archetype. Having all of your Veleno units gain 5k leads to some really big pressure columns, but having the critical on the Vanguard on top of that, leads to having damage deny abilities within the deck, locking the opponent at certain damage when you want to. The second skill is massively enjoyable for how devensive it is, drawing a card just for playing a blitz order in that battle is good on its own, but then getting a Counter Charge once per turn is really icing on the cake, plus it is not limited to once a turn on the drawing. But seeing as you can only do 1 blitz order a turn, how do we get multiple uses of this a turn?

Well that is where the on theme blitz order in the deck comes in, in the form of "Effervescent Shadow Dream Blade". While this may not be in the ride line, I feel it is worth mentioning in this section due to how important it is to be able to fully discuss Lascaria Veleno. Not only is this a solid shield for attacks, it allows us to bypass the once per turn blitz mechanic. Chaining more copies of this card off of the original does still carry on increasing the count, allowing us to be able to activate up to 5 blitz orders in a single turn at maximum. Do note however, that Lascaria Velano only draws for each attack, not each blitz order you use, so don't go wasting too many on just a single attack.

After having looked at the rideline, Lascaria Velano has a solid base to start from, but let's take a look at what else we have to support this deck.

Key Cards

So with the key cards section this time, we are going to dive in and look at all the supporting Veleno units we have access to, starting off with "Veleno Caporegime, Erafus".

So Erafus is our multi attack in the deck, which alone due to the scaling from "Sword Princess of Dream Blade, Lascaria Velano" is already good, but add on the fact that Erafus gains even more scaling leads to some really scary numbers, especially on a Persona Ride turn. It being grade locked is a small hinderance, but due to said power scaling within the deck, it makes sense to not let you have 5 attacks whilst the opponent is on grade 2. As for other support, let's take a look at the consistency piece of the deck with "Veleno Famiglia, Fiore".

Now in a deck that already had good search from the rideline, the fact we have Fiore for even more searching and deck compression is amazing. Her restriction being tied to having a Lascaria Vanguard is another massive buff for this deck, as without a grade restriction, we can play this down before we reach grade 3 to start the compression early. Add on the fact that Fiore also gains 2000 power just for having a Lascaria vanguard, we get some nice scaling columns, as makes magic numbers when boosting a grade 3, or actually allows Fiore to hit grade 2s. For the final key card in this deck, we have the revival support in the form of "Veleno Famiglia, Melial"

So Melial increases the combo's with the deck, as the revival can grab Fiore, which can in turn grab more cards from the top check, or help us out against decks that retire our units so we can get back to having the 5 Veleno units on board for the power gain and critical. The other option is that you can grab blitz back to hand from the drop zone, which allows us to use more copies of "Effervescent Shadow Dream Blade", as the deck becomes somewhat lackluster when you don't have more copies. It also allows you to utilise Ride Deck discards to be the selection targets for Melial, making the deck very resource efficient, but do be wary, as she does need a grade 3 Lascaria Vanguard to be able to use her skill, so there is no early rush enabled from this card. 

So, the key cards really combo off well together as it's a nice bundle of units that share the same name to help out " Sword Princess of Dream Blade, Lascaria Veleno", but let's look at what we can tech into this deck to strengthen it even further.

Tech Options

Unfortunately due to how "Sword Princess of Dream Blade, Lascaria Velano" plays, there isn't much space for tech options in terms of units, but there are plenty of Blitz Orders that we can discuss.

So the first Blitz Order I want to discuss is a fun little one that allows us to reuse our cards that we have on board. So "Ghost Chase" has not seen play for a very long time, but now we have a deck built around being a Blitz Order toolbox, this card just fits in perfectly. Having the ability to bounce back key Rear-guards, such as "Veleno Famiglia, Fiore" or "Veleno Famiglia, Melial", and use their on place skills again to gain more advantage is really nice to have. This is also really useful if we only need a small amount of guard to block an attack and activate Lascaria Velano's skill without wasting shield, so a really nice option to have.

Another good blitz order we have access to is "Sweet Honey Garden", which is a blitz that works off of other blitz. Outside of the randomness of "Fine Drink of Abolishment for Sins", this is one of the biggest shield values the deck can get off of a single card, and needing to have a blitz order in the drop zone to gain the extra 10,000 shield really is not a restriction for this deck.

And as for the final blitz we are going to discuss, why not end it on a high note and talk about our lovely Regalis Piece, in the form of "Evergreen Transphere". Being a Regalis Piece locks us in to only being able to use it once, and we cant run other Regalis Piece, but for the deck that we run, we wouldn't want any other option. Again, this is another massive shield, but also having the small bit of protection against overTriggers is a bonus. I will stress that even if the unit has 100 million power and 0 critical, it still counts as hitting, therefore will not let you draw off of Lascaria Veleno.

Overall the deck is really benefitted by how flexible the blitz orders we have access to are, and the deck naturally gets better as more blitz orders are released. But enough about that, let us have a look at a quick example list.

Example List

So the main thing I want to stress here is that this is just an example of what I am currently testing, you do not have to copy my list card for card, as well as the fact I may make changes down the line as well.

Clicking the image will open it up in Decklog (new tab)

So as you can see from the example list above, Im using a lot of the cards that we have already discussed, but we do have a few other things left to discuss, so let's go over some of those cards.

So the first card to discuss is one of the cycles that came out a while back, in the form of "Love-binding Maiden, Margaret". Margeret is mainly in this deck due to her first skill, as her ability to dig for more cards really helps the consistency of the deck. The Soul Blasting also helps, as gets the rideline into drop to combo off well with "Green Jeweled Beast, Elmedar" as Elmedar can send them from drop zone or soul back to ride line, so why would we not remove them from soul first to gain an additional use out of the cards.

The other card on the discuss list is also a cycle, but a more contraversial one in the form of "Hallucinatory Morpho". This card is really useful in the early game to compress for even more orders to hand, because in the later game, we need 5 Veleno units on the board for the power boost and critical, which Morpho is not one. Morpho also self clears itself off the board, so that our opponent cannot choose to damage deny us by swinging at Rear-guards, even though this deck really doesn't need that much damage to work off of. The first skill also helps with power scaling, helping us to break over any defensives that the opponent may have hit, as well as combo'ing off with "Green Jeweled Beast, Elmedar", just like how "Love-binding Maiden, Margaret" does.

Overall, "Sword Princess of Dream Blade, Lascaria Veleno" is a very solid defensive deck, that can hold its own against a lot of decks. It does have its weakness against decks, such as "Blue Deathster, "Skyrender" Avantgarda", that have the ability to stop you from use Blitz orders, but it would be too strong if there was no counters. But that's all from me this time, I will see you all in the next one!

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