Good morning class, and whilst glancing as the cover image you would presume this was talking about Standard Pacifica in Lyrical, we are instead talking about Pacifica and how she works in Premium, as both the Standard format Top Idol Pacifica and Planet Idol Pacifica have massively increased the strength of the deck. This list is meant as a fun way for those who play Standard can move into Premium casually and enjoy their time just playing the format.
The Focus of the Deck
So seeing as we are now in Premium, there is no Ride Deck here, leading to there not being a Ride Deck section of the article. Instead, I am going to use this section to talk about the main cards that the deck is built around. So we are going to start off with the main ride of the deck in "Top Idol, Pacifica"
So "Top Idol, Pacifica" is our intended main ride target in the deck, as it has solid skills on the Vanguard Circle, plus also gives us access to Persona Ride in the deck, helping our multiple Rear Guard attacks scale even higher and put on a lot of pressure. Whilst the [Act] skill will only come up on the first grade 3 turn if we go first, the [Auto] now allows us to have access to "Radiate Ocean, Heltrauda", due to having a skill that activates during the Battle Phase. This skill also being another attack extension expands the hits we can swing with on a Heltraude turn, but it costs us a Pacifica in soul, which is not the easiest to do...
...until now, with the new "Planet Idol, Pacifica". Not only does "Planet Idol, Pacifica now put herself to soul at the end of the battle she attacks from the back row centre Rearguard Circle, she also increases the power of another unit and draws a card on top, replacing herself and letting other Rear Guards hit. Add on the fact that when we are at the point of Striding, "Planet Idol, Pacifica" will also be scaling as well, this card does not lose out on not gaining the power from Persona Ride. But the title of the blog post is focusing on threes, so we need to talk about the final Pacifica in "Eternal Idol, Pacifica".
So "Eternal Idol, Pacifica" has yet to have a upgraded form in either V-Premium or the Standard format, but you may be asking why we even run it at this point. Well my dear readers, a lot of the Pacifica support cards gain additional effects for having 3 different named "Pacifica" units in our hand, so for that situation we do need to be running this form of Pacifica as well. Bonus part is that when we are through with those effects, we can still use this card as a stride fodder discard target, saving us from having to use either of the other "Pacifica" forms to stride with and use them for their intended effects.
So the 3 Pacifica forms are all unique in what they provide for the deck, but let us now dive into the key cards that the deck has gained over the years that work well with all three of them.
Key Cards
So due to Pacifica being an archetype since nearly the beginning of the game, we have gained access to a multitude of cards to support the deck in varying strengths, and where better to start than one of the oldest cards that still sees use within the deck in "Friend of the Sun, Marikka".
So "Friend of the Sun, Marikka" is our main search card of the deck, as when we bounce her, she can grab whatever "Pacifica" card we are missing at that time and add it to hand. She also has the bonus of if we do have all 3 "Pacifica" forms in hand after that search, she can not only give 5000 power to any unit, she will also provide the deck with 2 resources, a Soul Charge and a Counter Charge, making her a long time staple to Pacifica based decks. But if you remember from what we discussed with "Top Idol, Pacifica", the Standard Format version does not return her back to hand, so how do we do that?
Well that is where our next card comes in, in the form of "Twinkle Happinessā, Pacifica". This "Pacifica" form is slightly different, as whilst she is a unit, she is not placed within our main deck due to being a Stride Unit, instead getting placed in our G-Zone. But as for the card effect, not only do we get to return a card from field back to hand with her, we also get to search our deck for a "Pacifica" card and add it to hand. She also has the same additional effect as Marikka, in that if we have 3 different "Pacifica" units in our hand we gain a bonus, this time in the form of an additional critical. With all this utility and setup this card provides, we normally would use this card as our first target for striding, to set us up for the rest of the game. But our final card in this section is taking us back to the Standard format in "Rousing Vocal, Louison"
So "Rousing Vocal, Louison" allows us to recur our "Pacifica" cards back to deck, and with how easy it is for us to search them, refinding them from deck again is literally no issue at all. On top of that we gain a really solid Counter Charge, extending the resources that we have in the deck even further. She does have to retire herself to gain this skill, but we can also recur her back from drop as well, due to cards such as "Expect Rhythm, Vierra".
So whilst the key cards all focus heavily around the Pacifica package, they all do so much for the deck, but its with our tech options that we branch out from that area and start to move into the more generic card pool.
Tech Options
So instead of listing the sheer amount of G-Guards that all fit into this catagory, I am instead going to look past that and cover cards that support the deck overall, both offensively and defensively, starting off with the ever solid card of "Jack o' Parade, Theretheas".
So you may be starting to think why "Jack o' Parade, Theretheas" is in this deck, considering that she mainly revolves around a "Siana" Vanguard in order to gain her power and drawing a card. Well she is in this deck for the first skill that she has, as it does not need a specific Vanguard, and can be used very nicely as a defensive mechanic in this deck due to our G-Guards. Because Theretheas does not need to be placed during our turn to return a card back to hand, we can utilise cards such as "Highest Society, Citron" to place her down during our opponent's turn and bounce a unit that is yet to attack, removing the potential pressure. You can also use "Wonderful Wand, Ruoboa" either alongside Theretheas or instead of her, as Ruoboa has the exact same effect.
Carrying on the defensive theme, we are now moving to the V format with "Sparkling Soul, Nikita". What Nikita does for the deck is provide additional shield for the deck by utilising our soul. This deck as a whole generates a lot of soul, but not many uses for it, which can end up with our "Planet Idol, Pacifica" being stuck in there with no way to reuse them. But Nikita can also be used offensively, as that same skill can also provide herself with power, depending on whether its Rear-Guard Circle or Guardian-Circle that she is placed on. Add in that she also draws you a card if you soul blast 3 or more leads to a really solid support. But with all these tech based cards, how do we see them consistently?
Well, whilst we might have some really good options in the card pool, such as "Mermaid Idol, Sedna" we are instead going to look at "Live in Happy Vacance! Germaine" for our consistency this time. Whilst it does need us to be on a grade 1 or less Vanguard, we can discard her to check the top 5 cards for any grade 2 or less card and add it to hand before riding up, giving us 2 turns of being able to utilise this skill. I do need to stress that this skill does not activate before the G Assist timing, so if you do not have a legal target to ride into after using this skill, you are stuck on that grade for the turn. But once we have passed that point in the game, Germaine still provides us with some good late game usage, as an attack extender that is restricted to calling "Mermaids", which for us is not that hard considering that is most of our deck.
Honestly, the techs that Premium Bermuda has access to really does get to shine in this deck due to them being so flexible about how they work. But let us take a look at an example list just to see how well it all slots in together.
Example List
I will stress that the list below is something that I am still currently testing, and things may change over time. Some cards in here are also player preference and you can easily adjust them to what fully suits you.
Clicking the image will open it up in Decklog (new tab)
So most of the main deck cards have been covered at some point in this article, so instead of going over them again, I am going to use this section to look into the options located within the G Zone, as those can be used in a variety of situations to adapt to our opponents gameplan, starting off with "Radiate Ocean, Heltrauda"
So "Radiate Ocean, Heltrauda" was our stride that we received back in "P Clan Collection 2022" and covered a lot of the Bermuda decks in her support, as most had a signifigant Vanguard skill that was worthwhile going back into. Pacifica as a whole did not have that till as of late, and now we do, we can utilise Heltraude to extend the number of attacks this deck can perform by a massive amount. We can also use the call from this to combo off with "Friend of the Moon, Marina" and extend the calls that we get off Heltrauda from 2 to 3, as well as drawing a card. The discard 3 may seem like a heavy cost, but when our early game is all about farming grade 3s to hand, they make solid discard targets where needed.
Our second card we are going to discuss is a stride that has been around for a long time throughout Premium Bermuda history, and that is "Chouchou Popular Favor, Tirua". This card is really good for Bermuda as a whole, as it gives us a generic stride to go into and still apply pressure when we do not have access to Counter Blast. Not only do we gain access to a restanding Vanguard, we also get one that scales by the number of open Rear-Guard circles, which is going to happen seeing as the cost for restanding is returning 3 Rear-Guards back to deck. If we are in a really good position, we can utilise this to return triggers back to our deck in order to check them again later on in the game. The other route is returning our "Pacifica" units, as we can easily regain them again via the search cards that the deck naturally has.
The final card we are going to look at for this post is going to be opposite kind of G-Guard to "Highest Society, Citron" that we mentioned earlier, in "Hand in Hand, Leona". So whilst "Highest Society, Citron" works around calling a card from hand to Rear-Guard circle, "Hand in Hand. Leona" instead works around bouncing a card from Rear-Guard circle to hand, and then calling a card from hand to Guardian Circle, gaining shield if the card names for both parts match. not only does this allow us to commit cards to board that we can then later use for guarding, it allows our grade 3s to be utilised for shield value. We can combo this off even further with "Friend of the Sun, Marikka" that we covered earlier, to then search our deck for a "Pacifica" card on top, and even potentially gaining some more resources and a 5000 Power on the Vanguard during our opponents turn to be used defensively.
All in all, Pacifica is a really fun and combo based deck, that has solid plays for both offense and defense. Whilst this may not be a top tier deck and win every single game, it is so much fun to play around with. But that is it for this blog post, and I will catch you all in the next one.
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