Notes & Combos

Went back to my roots and played 8-axis blind second. Just minus the axis a bit since none of the good rank 8s are available this festival. I originally wanted to play Gren Maju but Desires as the only banish source feels pretty bad. So I went with a synchro-heavy variant utilizing Deep Sea Diva.

To make Deep Sea Diva more consistently accessible, I'm running Small World as an option to get to her. Synchro Overtake is also an option that doesn't neg, but I prefer Small World's toolbox flexibility with the option of getting other monsters. That's probably just making excuses for my Small World addiction though.

Specifically I love the wacky soft garnets bridges that can be half-justified when building around Small World. The Small World network graph for this deck can be found at:

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Copy-pasting ^ should work even with the link censor.

Gameciel + Maxx C already bridge most of the deck, so my two strange inclusions were to fill out the rest while still being moderately useful if drawn. Of note, all of the monster stealing Graydles can bridge Ash Blossom to Diva, and Alligator won the tie-breaker by being able to bridge Maxx C as well. There's a bit of anti-synergy with Kaiju spam due to the one-per-side restriction, but removal is still removal, and Alligator has helped me with pushing for lethal more than that's come up.

Red Resonator was also a consideration if there was a remotely useful lv11 Synchro to be made with Ash.

Gameciel was the last 3-of I needed a bridge for, so I opted for Meluseek, who coincidentally also serves as a backup bridge for Maxx C. Like Alligator, she(?)'s battle phase removal, which while not stellar is more than I can ask of more traditional garnets. I do appreciate that she can contribute to backrow removal since the deck is more slanted to monster removal. As a normal summon she reminds me of a really, really off-brand Denko Sekka from more traditional builds.

edit: I recently got forced first by blind-second Lyrilusc and they ended up scooping when I revealed Meluseek with Small World. I really hope they thought I was on Altergeist. 🤣

Kurikara is another 4fun inclusion. Since I aim to synchro off the Kaijus, having too many in hand is a fairly infrequent problem and there's definitely been times where I'd rather she be another name. I can't complain too much though: she's often been handy vs Marincess, and it's always deeply amusing to "accidentally" summon to Salamangreat Sunlight Wolf's link point. I've yet to see someone not take the bait, and to be fair, I would too.

The extra deck barely matters outside of Baronne+Chengying and occasionally the Charmers.

• Exblowrer is decent removal but feels like an overcommitment of resources for its stat-line.
• Final Sigma is very funny if I don't have resources to make two lv10 synchros, but most decks have a way of making a 3k+ beater so Sigma usually ends up being worse than just passing on Baronne/Chengying.
• The lv8 and below Synchros are holdovers from an older list and still technically makeable with Change of Heart or Alligator
• Likewise for the lv9s, but at least Pank+Diva make them. Like Baronne, Vermillion's pop can target either side, and so can pop my Chengying->Chengying protect by banishing->trigger Chengying's banish effect.
• Vespenato is for keeping stolen XYZes since I have the room. It's come up for me vs Suship so far.

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Before I ran Small World I was running a set of 3 Righty + 2 Lefty Driver as a supplementary normal summon package (which oh so coincidentally aligns with 3x Small World + 2 weirdge tech bridges in size) with 3x Goyo Guardian + Ashura King in the ED because I saw someone else do it and it seemed funny. It gave me something to do against empty boards that was almost complete lethal (7500 damage). And in relation to the main synchro strategy, 1+2+8 makes Trishula, Zero Dragon of the Ice Barrier for a banish 3 + float, which was pretty neat. The issue was that the damage was lacking, and sitting on Trish Zero for the opponent's next turn usually ended up worse than just sitting on even a lone Baronne.

My main issue though, was Lefty Driver since it does next to nothing in hand/as a normal summon and I was obligated to run at least two when paired with Desires. In the end, I much prefer wacky garnets to boring ones so I switched to Small World.