Notes & Combos

IT IS HERE! In celebration of the recent release of the final World Legacy Solo Gate, Astram icon, and The World Legacy sleeves + splash art: GO-FIRST PURE WORLD LEGACY WIN-CON MEKK-KNIGHT CRUSADIA!!!

Massive shoutout to BinocularBiff in the Crusadia channel for alerting me to the incredible value of World Legacy Survivor and the neat utility of World Legacy Awakens (based on his cool World Legacy Magical Musketeers deck)!

Thanks also to Crusaddy and Raseruuu in the Crusadia channel for the discussions and combo ideas for turn 1, as well as my good friend Davin for the constant sanity-checks as I tried to build a go-first strategy over the past few months.

I think go-first Crusadia is underrated compared to Kaiju Crusadia; this playstyle is pretty underexplored. I had a lot of fun with blind second Mekk-Crusadia over the years, but am absolutely loving now being able to focus on World Legacy win-cons instead of hoping to draw the out and spamming board breakers. More Crusadias in the main deck also means more Equimax OTKs (with Spatha to align the board nicely)! That said, this is absolutely not a meta or tier-worthy deck lmao.

WL Survivor is BY FAR the most important card in the main deck because it is one of the few Normal WL spells that WILL get into the GY on my turn, which means access to the best card in the entire deck, Lib. It also has an incredible excavate/mill effect that can add a WL card to hand, which can mean 1 extra extender, 1 extra disruption (if it hits one of the traps), or even access to an additional line (the Mekks, which I have cut down a fair bit from before). I built my strategy around it and the WL engine that it epitomizes, with a focus on extending to reach Lib as often as possible. This means playing more WL names, which is a huge constraint because many of them have no chance in the modern meta.

I also tested extensively with World Legacy's Corruption and World Legacy Guardragon, but could not justify playing them in the end. I was looking for WL Normal/Quick-Play Spells that have value going first as well as second (playing into established boards). It doesn't seem like they exist, but this is a new dawn so I am sure I will discover new synergies down the line.

Typical endboard is:

1. Lib
2. 1 Crusadia below Lib (NOT Reclusia)
3. Crusadia Vanguard set
4. World Legacy's Secret or World Legacy Awakens set

With enough gas (typically means not opening a handtrap on turn 1) or lucky enough mills off Survivor, I did also end on BOTH Secret and Awakens quite a number of times. With the full suite, that's 1 targeted destroy with Reclusia off Vanguard, 1 bounce from linking away Lib, and potentially 2 column-based monster negates with good ol' Indigo+Secret.

That's why Survivor is so good: if it searches Secret and mills Indigo, for instance, I get free access to my classic WL Secret play without even having opened a Mekk. Absolutely incredible. And if the only Crusadia I open is Draco, which was usually a death sentence in Mekk-Crusadia because of lost value, Survivor can sometimes mill another Crusadia name so that I can activate Draco's search with WL Succession and extend. Such a fun new way of playing with Crusadia!

One big problem with my previous D1 decks was the overreliance on Mekks given that I am a Crusadia OTP at heart. It cannot be denied that the same issues remain with the Crusadia archetype.

1. The 2nd Crusadia in hand provides close to no value.
2. Draco is the only main deck name that potentially forces an interaction, as opposed to Blue Sky and Purple Nightfall being able to bait negates going second.
3. And of course, the link climb is linear and easily ruined.

I wanted to focus on giving Crusadia an actual core role in this strategy. Now, the Crusadia monsters become critical starters and extremely reliable column-creators because I can search Vanguard off Regulex.

Therein lies the dilemma. With a 40-42 card deck, 8 normal summons is more or less optimal; you want the others to be special summon extenders. Crusadias are not hard normal summons, so they don't really brick if you play the usual 13-15, but they offer no value compared to other archetypes' extenders, so you will fall behind in card economy quickly if you open multiple. Yet, in this list, the endboard is severely impoverished if I have to fall back on normal summoning a handtrap to start the combo. Thus, I settled on playing 9 Crusadias, accepting that some hands will be lower in value but hoping the more consistent disruption is sufficient. Then, well, if I'm going to see Crusadias more often than Mekks or WL engine cards, I really need a reliable option that is always live in hands where I only open Crusadias and handtraps, for instance. Enter Crusadia Vanguard.

Truthfully, Vanguard is not great even though its art is legendary. It requires linking into Regulex, which is poor value because of the solitary link arrow. It is slow. It is needy; it usually must be activated before any sort of Lib link play. But it is also a trap version of "Heavenly Dragon Circle at home", so it is far from useless. I was determined to make it work. The usual play is to tribute a non-Reclusia Crusadia to summon Reclusia under Lib for a free pop. If I have WL Secret set up, I may pop Reclusia instead of Vanguard to free up the column. Otherwise, I have also won games by summoning World Crown or World Chalice instead, shutting down Hugin's search for instance and setting up for next turn with newfound Lib access.

As you can probably tell from the above, the big weakness of my main endboard is that it requires specific sequencing and decision-making. Most of the time, I can only reliably end on 2 of the 3 traps: Vanguard/Secret/Awakens. There is also the possibility of ending on Lib+I:P Masquerena (circumventing the need for Awakens) with WL Secret underneath. I am a poor combo mind and lack creativity, so I often defaulted to Vanguard. This probably isn't optimal, but I have not figured out what truly is.

In any given duel, after committing to an endboard, the key is to understand the matchup and figure out which kind of disruption is better. Know the difference between Trigger and Ignition Effects and sequence the disruption properly. Removing the Spright/P.U.N.K. normal summon is better than removing Aluber's normal summon, etc. You know the drill.

Finally, Elf, the elephant in the room. No, Elf is not a WL monster. But it is not part of the core combo or win-con at all. Elf is not at all necessary. It is simply great as a fallback option and helps clean up games when I misplay (Elf summon Regulex to trigger Vanguard-Reclusia pop was a thing). I just could not find any better value Link-2 to summon on turn 2 with Lib+Awakens (if not Lib again or Unicorn). Open to suggestions!

I'll stop here as this writeup is getting too long, but feel free to DM me or chat in Crusadia channel if you have questions or suggestions for improvement!

And yes, this list will become worthless when Tears hit next week KEKW