Notes & Combos

Hello everyone. I've been the biggest raika hater ever since these cards were released, but since so many people came into the traptrix channel asking, I figured I'd do by due diligence and test it out thoroughly for myself.

I'll say this. The deck feels VERY unsolved. And it's nice when the opp throws non-maxx c interruptions at you. In that way, it's very TCG-brained, i.e. just pushing through disruptions. I'm not sure it's better than pure traptrix, but it does have some positives.

Everyone knows by now how much of a warcrime Aromaseraphy Jasmine is. And she is a big chunk of the strength of this build. Her ability to access traptrix, rikka princess, or raika is busted. (Lonefire is also nasty too, and you can get at least two lonefire summmons each turn. Some Japanese builds run 3x lonefire to thin the deck, and I tried this for a bit, but I needed to strengthen my going second.)

Some TCG players didn't really like butterfly as much, but I think butterfly drawing into handtraps is exactly what BO1 calls for. Sometimes I did brick on handtraps, but overall the handtraps put in serious work. Ghost ogre was awesome.

My most common endboard was mantis monk, skeletal and strenna with rikka princess in hand and backrow/handtraps. I liked the double negate with rikka princess and hyperyton, and I felt that just ending on hyperyton was more susceptible to disruption.

I'm not sure that the raika ratios are correct. Seed requires RIP monsters, which aren't always available when running multiple handtraps. I might consider running more bloom and decreasing seed to 2.

Overall, it was an interesting journey, but I'm not sold on it being stronger than traptrix' combo builds or trap-heavy traptrix. But, mantis monk and hunting dance will probably be core for all traptrix builds moving forward.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask me here or in the traptrix or raika channels.