Notes & Combos

Standard Branded for the most part, only weird inclusion is Baronne. After being in many spots where I was able to (or did) summon Verte off of Quem/Cartesia + Bystial and wishing Baronne was available instead I finally decided to just replace Verte and see how things went. They went very well! It's tough to get two creatures into play without locking yourself into fusions (Branded Opening and Fusion Deployment both do this), with the most common scenario involving Quem + Bystial or Cartesia + Albion/Foolish/BiHS + Bystial which can both make Baronne. On later turns of the game Baronne is significantly better than Verte because Branded Fusion is usually not in your deck and while there was one occassion this season where Verte'ing into Fusion Deployment actually won me a game having an omni-negate is more generally useful. 😅 If you run Super Poly then Verte has more utility, but I don't like it atm.

Nadir Servant is total garbage and every time I've put it in a list its been terrible. Absolutely would not recommend including it.

1 Cartesia and 2 Quem because Cartesia is usually getting pulled off Fusion Deployment or sent directly to the GY at which point she recurs, and Quem + Bystial is a solid start for what would otherwise be a medium opening hand. Often I Quem -> bin Mercourier -> Banish Mercourier to summon a Bystial, tutor Albion -> Bin Branded Sword to rebuy Mercourier or bin whatever else would be useful in the GY with the hand you drew.

I could definitely go for a second Retribution, its frontside is very very good when you can meet the condition, but 50-card decks look nice in the deckbuilder and running 1 copy seemed to work okay.

Puppet lock is extremely win-more, its a terrible brick in hand and easily answered by the same things that are commonly run to answer other graveyard threats. Meanwhile, Sanctifire rebuying Albaz, Mercourier, Baronne, or whatever goodies your opponent has in their yard is more than sufficient in justifying running a copy in your ED, not to mention that when an opponent Maxx C's your Branded Fusion dumping Cartesia to make it is a good hedge. And if you have Banishment in hand or BiHS to tutor it, you can even dump Quem who qualifies as a target and whose effect will trigger if she's still on the field after being reborn by Banishment and using whatever other fodder to fuse something. Huuuuuge swing.