[Blog] VEB14 Neo Nectar: Standard Ahsha

VEB14 The Next Stage Neo Nectar Part 2

Est 45 Min read, 9000 Words

Talofa alii ma teine, its me its your best friend, its CanYouSayG, and you’re reading the CanYouSayBlog, where we learn how to be a better cardfighter.

Welcome back to our series of articles going over the Neo Nectar clan and the updates from VEB14 The Next Stage.

This series will be covering the clan playstyle and strengths as a whole, assessing all of the new and relevant cards, covering multiple decks over several formats, playstyle, combos, optional card choices, match ups and in depth playing and goals for each deck.

Whether you are a seasoned Vanguard player or have just started with the VTD12 Ahsha Trial Deck, I hope you can find a deck and understanding to fit your needs. We hope these articles can help you form an idea of what cards to try to find and buy.

For Part 1 of the series: Playstyle and Arsenal, click here.

Today, we will be going over the newly released VR for Neo Nectar: Dream Spinning Ranunculus Ahsha, and the deck built around her. We will be covering the deck build, Playstyle of the deck, How to approach thinking about Flower Fairy Tokens, A short discussion on Force 1 and 2 Selection, Planning damage progression around Ahsha’s ability, Identifying the timing to pump more power for Ahsha, and finally matchup concepts and considerations when facing various opposing decks.

As one of the potentially defining decks of the format, its important to understand the Ahsha deck in order to take advantage of its weaknesses to win against it as well.

Deck Build

We will begin with our recommended deck build.

This build is focused on the points of consistently forming a field with Ahsha Fairy Tokens, as well as having access to card advantage, flow of plant tokens, and minimizing excessive card usage from hand. All of these without giving up a form of finisher and balancing out counter blast cost usage.

For those whom want a text deck list to quickly look up cards, find it here.

4 Dream-spinning Ranunculus, Ahsha 4 Ranunculus Flower Maiden, Ahsha 4 Osmanthus Maiden, Anelma 4 Pansy Musketeer Sylvia 3 Spiritual Tree Sage Irminsul 2 Rindo Gentian Musketeer, Antero 4 Valkyrie of Reclamation Padmini 4 Maiden of Sweet Berry 4 Budding Maiden, Diane 8 Critical 4 Flower Garden Maiden, Mylis 4 Heal 1 FV

Ahsha, being the newest deck on the block, can be built almost entirely out of cards from the Trial Deck as well as VEB14 The Next Stage. In fact, in the alternate card selection section I will be showing you a deck best suited for players whom have no previous experience with Neo Nectar, and therefore are starting Vanguard or starting Neo Nectar from VTD12 Ahsha, building a deck entirely out of new cards.

As mentioned before, the majority of cards for this build are from the latest EB, making it extremely easy to acquire cards for. While easy to build, it is important to keep in mind how the deck covers the weaknesses of the deck as a whole.

As the weaknesses of the Ahsha deck are: Limited number of attacks, card advantage, and lack of finisher, this build has been built to try to accommodate for those weaknesses.

Grade 2 Lineup: Plant and Advantage Production

First, by playing Anelma as well as Irminsul, we aim to be able to use our counterblast effectively to gain card advantage through drawing additional cards at all points in the game. While Irminsul was previously seen as a powerful early game card, due to the counterblast usage of this deck at turn 2 if you ride Anelma, the amount of times you will be able to call down Irminsul on turn two to push may be limited.

In order to accommodate Irminsul, we have played 4 copies of Sylvia, to allow for Irminsul to be used on turn 2 to push damage.

Unlike other Neo Nectar builds, the Ahsha deck can still take advantage of Irminsul later on into the game by calling him behind Vanguard to give 5k power to both your Vanguard and any Ahsha Fairy Tokens, as well as on the third column to create high power while conserving card advantage and converting counterblast to advantage.

Finally, its important to remember that Irminsul requires two Grade 0 units, not two plant tokens. Ahsha Fairy tokens count as Grade 0 units for Irminsul, allowing you to activate him even easier. Power pump, card draw, and creating difficult to guard columns at any stage of the game, Irminsul is one of the power cards of the Neo Nectar arsenal, and should be built around as such, should you choose to play it.

Of note, we are not playing Cela in this build. While an alternate build utilizing Cela, Anelma, and Sylvia as our Grade 2 lineup allows you to get a plant token in your center column and help push damage no matter what you ride, this balance is chosen in order to better accommodate Irminsul, as well as balance out counterblast usage.

When going into turn 2, you want to be keeping low on damage in order to guard later on into the game. Hence, you will usually have only 1 or 2 counterblast to use.

A Combination of Cela + Irminsul requires 2 CB, Cela + Anelma Requires 2 CB, and Anelma + Irminsul only uses 1 CB as Irminsul cannot be called down effectively, and finally the trio of Cela + Anelma + Irminsul requires 3 CB to run all your effects and push, resulting in the more cost effective play being Riding Cela and calling Anelma to fill one column with plant tokens and attack with only cb2, ignoring the Irminsul.

However, by replacing this slot with Sylvia, your turn 2 plays can run smoothly with only one counterblast, allowing you to guard effectively early without having to take damage to be greedy with your effects.

As Sylvia does not use Counterblast, the total counterblast usage for the deck is Irminsul, Anelma, and Ranunculus Flower Maiden Ahsha, keeping the deck from relying too much on counterblast and allowing you to guard effectively and still perform all your desired effect activation.

This doesn't change how running Cela, Sylvia, and Anelma all together in the same deck is indeed an option, especially if you are willing to drop Irminsul and thus sacrifice card draw for consistent plant token generation. This direction is equally possible in deck building. This form does allow much easier calling of Grade 2s from as early as possible and also allows you to attack with three columns from early in the game, even if that requires you attacking with two plant tokens for 10k power.

Grade 1 Lineup And Plant Tokens

Next up we will discuss our Grade 1 Lineup, how we want to minimize calling cards from hand, and how this plays into the Plant token mechanic.

If you notice, we are playing Diane, Sweet Berry, and Padmini. All three of these cards have on place V/R skills, meaning that when you ride them on turn 1, you will gain an ability. For Diane and Padmini, they are exchanging cards and setting up future turns, and for Sweet Berry, it would call a plant token.

Now, the reason why we want to gain maximum value out of riding these cards and are not playing any units that have effect on R only is the concept of minimizing cards called from hand. Neo Nectar’s mechanic allows you to call plant tokens to be boosters or attackers, minimizing how many boosting units you need to call from your hand.

This allows you to, given ideal deck flow, fill up your board and have boosters for your units without calling any cards from your hand.

Conversely if you are behind and playing on the defensive, you don’t want to be calling any cards with high shield value from your hand, instead saving them for guard and playing to stay in the game is a higher priority.

If you are doing well, you don’t need to be calling any cards from your hand. If you are doing bad, you don’t want to be calling any cards from your hand.

As such, given the minimal amount of times a Grade 1 unit will be called from your hand, you want to build to maximize having to call your Grade 1s, making each call impactful with its effect, not only in being a boosting unit.

On top of this, as Ahsha Flower Fairy Tokens do not gain any power from boost, the necessity for Grade 1 units to be used as boosters for your rear guards is not only decreased, but the role can be taken over by a Grade 2 or 3 unit (with much lower shield value in your hand). This results in the deck become very non reliant on boost.

Sentinels: Mylis and Blossom Rain

Next up we come to our sentinel selection: Flower Garden Maiden, Mylis. We chose Mylis for this deck over Blossom Rain for a few reasons. This is a sacrifice of later game defense for a shorter term high efficiency guard.

Firstly, as the deck does not have good draw source, your hand will be limited in number. This results in not having as good a selection to discard cards with for Blossom Rain, resulting in potentially giving up key parts or high shield value. Thus, the deck would rather aim to guard attacks highly effectively in the short run with single or two card guards rather than aim to last until the late game where very high powered attacks will be coming at you, taking advantage of Neo Nectar’s speed and consistency to either close out the game earlier or preventing the opponent from setting up an ideal finishing move.

Second would be the deck’s comparatively mediocre late game as compared to other deck’s ideal formations, consisting of only three high powered threatening attacks, without access to guard restrict, multi attacks, etc. This makes Neo Nectar weaker than other decks in the end game, enough to make it difficult to catch up. Hence as a deck, you would rather be aiming for having enough momentum in the early and mid game that the opponent will be the on trying to make a comeback instead of you being the one to. This will result in you having more opportunities to no guard, allowing you to save them for the high powered attacks.

Of note, as Dream Spinning Ahsha does not require any counterblast to move, you can still hard guard attacks when you have used up all of your counterblast. This makes the deck quite functional against damage control strategies, preventing the opponent from being able to sneak in damage by taking advantage of your need of counterblast to perform your moves. Together these result in your deck being able to better keep itself at low damage early to no guard large attacks later in the game.

After choosing Mylis over Blossom Rain, we then turn to our trigger balance.

Sentinels should not be chosen solely based on desired trigger lineup, but instead be used to complement your choice based on your desired outcomes for your deck.

That being said the Ahsha deck does want to play 12 Critical. The reason behind this is primarily how impactful Critical triggers are in comparison to draws or heals, they convey critical and power to more than one column, as opposed to draws and heals, which only convey power to them.

A small amount of experience with the deck will quickly show you the difference between an Ahsha Flower Fairy Token with or without an additional critical will have on your opponents guarding and response to your play.

Indeed sacrificing draw triggers does hurt in a deck without good ways of generating card advantage, but Neo Nectar can compensate for this with its not only its consistency, but in redundancy in its card effects. If you cannot draw into your main Dream Spinning Ranunculus Ahsha, you can still ride Ranunculus Flower Maiden Ahsha and create your fairy tokens. Cant draw enough units to boost? You don’t have to with so many plant tokens. Not sure which of your grade 2 units creates plant tokens? Well you don’t need to worry about that if all of them do. No attackers? Soul blast one and retire two of literally anything and you have one of the best attacking units in the game.

Because Neo Nectar can compensate easily for lack of Grade 1s and has a high amount of redundancy, you don’t need draw triggers to help you assemble your parts to construct a field, the need for draw triggers in the Ahsha deck is significantly reduced.

These factors together point the Ahsha deck towards a 8-12 critical direction, being willing to play Mylis over Blossom Rain. Do keep in mind that these two are interchange, and shifts in the metagame may point you towards slowly shifting those slots towards Blossom Rain.

Mylis’s large guard value also does come in handy against certain match ups over Blossom Rain, but especially so against Altmile, whom will be constructing 40k columns on the rear guards and tend to play Force 2.

Finisher: Antero

Our last card of discussion is Antero, the last Grade 2 in our Grade 2 slot. Now while we have discussed redundancy in plant token calling, calling down grade 2s early to attack, and using the slot to gain card advantage, Antero is the only card that does not fit this image. Instead, Antero is a card that can give a huge boost of power to your Vanguard for one turn, according to how many token units you have. At 5000 power, its unlikely he will be called early or to the board at all, hence its all right to call him to the back row or retire him for Ahsha’s effect after giving a power boost. As any rear guard circle behind a Fairy token is a flexible slot, due to boost value not counting for power, calling to the corner Rear guard circle is a common play.

Usually you want to be aiming to give anywhere from 10k power to 20k power to your Vanguard. Do note that Ahsha Flower Fairy Tokens also count for Antero’s effect.

Now, while you may think Ahsha’s power will already be enough for the win, its important to think back to Neo Nectar’s weaknesses. One of them being the lack of finisher effects. Therefore, the only way for you to win is to have enough primary offense in the form of power and critical to overwhelm the opponent and bring you your victory. While Ahsha does have a lot of power on several columns, it does not hit game ending values unless you open double trigger or stack several force 1. Note how this means that when you choose to go Force 2, or are unable to re-ride frequently, you have no finisher, and hence will rely on grinding out the opponent until you win.

As such, Antero is used here to create a huge burst of power that is translated to power over multiple columns, enough to overwhelm the opponents defenses and finish the opponent off. Antero is the deck’s Finisher . You will be aiming to use him combined with any Diane you have in your hand to deal the finishing blow, so when the opponent must guard all attacks and has already been spending their sentinels.

The only other option for Finisher in the Neo Nectar arsenal would be the Normal Order Powerise Elixir, which will grant 20k power to one unit, which will be Ahsha, at the cost of CB2. As this deck has Irminsul to increase the counterblast cost of the deck, we have chosen not to play Powerise elixir in order to balance counterblast cost. Additionally, you will notice that because we are playing Mylis, and therefore not Blossom Rain, there is no way to discard cards from your hand. This results in any Powerise Elixir coming to your hand in drive checks, etc being open information, and can allow the opponent to play around this by never giving you two open counterblast if they wish to avoid your finisher. Combined with being unable to discard, Powerise Elixir becomes a dead card in your hand which cannot be used to guard, not something you want to have happening to you when you already have minimal card draw and advantage engine and need every card in your hand to count.

The upside of Powerise Elixir is how Ahsha, in true Neo Nectar fashion, is very counterblast cost effective, with Dream Spinning Ahsha not using any counterblast at all. Once you have reached Grade 3, other than the occasional Anelma or Irminsul, you wont be using any counterblast out of necessity to do the effects you want to be activating. This allows you to be very resilient against counterblast control strategies, as well as free up much counterblast to be spent on the otherwise cost heavy Powerise Elixir.

As for being a finisher and playing only two copies, it is because the card is a finisher and has very minimal other utility in the deck, as well as being dead cards in the early game that we play only two copies. If you draw them early, they are stuck in your hand until you are setting up your killing blow. Other decks have finisher cards that can have other utility and therefore will play them in 3-4 copies in order to use them at various stages of the game. Hence, by playing only two copies we can reduce how often they are seen too early, reduce the amount of times multiple copies clog up the hand, yet have enough copies to be able to draw into them by the time the end of the game is in sight.

Antero and Powerise Elixir are parts played to grant the deck a finisher.

Alternate Card Choices

Here are some alternate cards you may choose to play in your own build

Reduce Ranunculus Flower Maiden Ahsha to 3

The Trial Deck Ahsha is a powerful card indeed, but in the Dream Spinning build you will be aiming to use her on Rear guard, and playing her at 4 is to draw into both copies by turn 3. As you will never re ride from Dream Spining to Ranunculus Flower Maiden, but will always ride up from Flower maiden to Dream, you in theory require less of the TD Ahsha. You could potentially reduce the count for Ahsha to fill in more of your Grade 2 slots, at the cost of your first ride critical consistency dropping.

Genuine Maiden Ferine

Ferine would play into the same slot as Sylvia or Irminsul in this deck. While not as powerful on turn 2, in the later game the additional 5k can have an additive effect on regaining this lost tempo, especially once the opponent has hit the point of having to guard.

Of note, for players whom have started Neo Nectar from the Trial deck and have difficulty finding older cards such as Sylvia or Irminsul, Ferine is a very welcome replacement.

Cela

Cela is another card that you want to consider playing. The changes you would make to replace Cela would be to drop Irminsul and Antero, and replace them with Cela and Powerise Elixir, bringing your G2 Balance to 4 Cela, 4 Anelma, 3 Sylvia and 2 Powerise Elixir, or Alternatively Ferine instead of Sylvia. Building your deck with Cela, Anelma, Ferine, and Powerise Elixir would make your deck entirely out of cards from the TD and VEB14.

As mentioned above, Cela is not a bad card, it just does not mesh nor have enough cost to be used effectively if you play Irminsul.

Of note, if you play Cela, Anelma, Sylvia and Powerise as your Grade 2 Lineup, you have a 100% rate of riding something that can generate booster unit behind your vanguard, making your Vanguard attack 20k to no pass from as early as your turn 2, even if you did not ride Sweet Berry.

Taniya

Taniya fills a similar role to Diane, allowing you to give your Vanguard 5k extra power with ease, at the cost of having to be called out of your hand. If you wish, you can replace the Diane in the deck with Taniya, in order to provide extra power to your Vanguard. Especially useful in F2 situations, but very lackluster when you go Force 1, while still lacking the on ride versatility of Diane.

Deck Playstyle

The Ahsha deck has a distinct playstyle from other Neo Nectar decks before, while still capitalizing on the strengths of the clans mechanics.



When you play an Ahsha deck, the first two turns should be focused on trying to attack as many times as possible, while filling your board with plant tokens. All of this while trying to acquire at least Dream Spinning Ranunculus Ahsha to your hand, and if possible a copy of Ranunculus Flower Maiden as well.

In the early turns, you want to prioritize superior calling a Plant token behind the Vanguard. The reason for doing this is that by providing a 5k boost to your Vanguard, the attack can no longer be guarded with a single card. Each attack requires 20k guard to account for triggers, which forces the opponent to give up their heal trigger, which they only have four of in the deck, in order to guard a low risk attack in the early game. This allows you to push in damage earlier, as the opponent cannot stop attacks that would otherwise be stopped with 15k shield of a trigger.

Sweet Berry, Anelma, Cela and Sylvia all superior call plant tokens, and thus should be prioritized.

Another point is calling down as many attackers, but conserving boosting units with high shield value in your hand.

As Neo Nectar only has three attacks, taking advantage of the early turns and attacking with as many units as you can is very important. On turn two you definitely want to be attacking with all three columns, even if that means creating a column out of two plant tokens that only requires 5k guard to stop. You main mechanism of creating an advantage gap between yourself and your opponent is for the opponent to have to throw guard to stop your offense. In the early game, even smaller amounts of guard are more valuable due to how little cards are available to each player, and as such, columns that would never dream of hitting or forcing the opponent to drop key parts will be able to do so. Capitalize on this by attacking fast and hard.

As Ahsha will be able to retire your own board, do not be afraid of filling it with plant tokens or Come into play abilities such as Irminsul or Sylvia. These units, even if not attacked or used for intercept, will still be valuable on your board as they in turn become cost for the future turns.

Once you hit Grade 3, this is the first turn you will be able to create a Flower Fairy Token, as well as select your Gift. As Flower Fairy Tokens copy the power and critical of your Vanguard, the obvious choice would be to start by placing force on Vanguard. On turn 3, even if you ride Flower Maiden or Dream Spinning Ahsha, you will gain 10k power from effects, making your Vanguard and token a 23k 1 Critical attack before triggers and force.

If you ride Dream Spinning Ahsha, you want to be calling a third Ahsha down in order to gain access to the early critcal across two columns. However, do try to keep the third Ahsha in the back row. This is to protect her from being attacked and retired, so the next turn you will either still have your flower fairy token, and then retire that Ahsha to create a second fairy token, or retire two other units to create one Flower Fairy token. Either route would still allow you to gain both the power and critical from Dream Spinning Ahsha’s skill.

Due to this Fairy Token mechanic, you are not afraid of 2-to pass, as if you put trigger power to your vanguard, it will still translate over to at least one of your columns.

Gameplay takes place both on the offense as well as Defense for Any deck. As mentioned before, to supplement the defense of the deck you want to not only use card draw effects through Anelma and Irminsul, but also want to take effort into conserving your Grade 1 units to use as guard rather than calling them down to boost.

Guarding effectively is another key point in playing the Ahsha deck. Because your deck lacks good card advantage, and the main Vanguard does not generate card advantage, guarding effectively and being careful to save your no guards for the opportune moment is another key point. Be sure to aim to use as few cards to guard as possible, rather than being aggressive to keep your damage extremely low. Playing Mylis helps this strategy further.

Thinking About the Flower Fairy Token

When playing Ahsha, be sure to master both how to play with only one Flower Fairy Token, as well as what plays are stronger when you are playing with two. While you will always create one on your first Grade 3 turn, not every matchup will allow you to achieve getting two Flower Fairy Tokens, so mastering how to play both is the key to conquest.

Of note, when playing with only one Flower Fairy Token, do not always default to giving all power and critical to the Vanguard, as you have one other column that is not gaining power or critical. If in a situation where power or critical on the Vanguard does not matter, and you are only giving it to V to have the Flower Fairy Token gain it, consider balancing out power and critical to your other column in order to make that column threatening as well.

For example, if your opponent is at 4 Damage, they null guard your Vanguard, making Crit and Power of your Vanguard not matter. As Ahsha’s ability grants your rear guard the critical already, you can grant the critical from a trigger to the other rear guard.

Another example: Your Vanguard is 43k power 1 Critical. Your opponent no guards, making your Vanguard power not matter anymore. You open a Heal Trigger. Instead of defaulting to giving power to your Vanguard to make your Flower Fairy Token 53k power, instead put power to the other rear guard, in order to have it a high amount of power when the opponent wants to guard the smallest attack.

If the opponent attacks into or retires the flower fairy token, you will be creating one new one every turn. However if the opponent is unable to remove the Flower Fairy Token, you are able to follow up and create a new one the next turn. It is when you have two Flower Fairy Tokens and the opponent must guard two of your three attacks that you want to be using additional effects to give your vanguard power. This is because is at this point that, as your opponent must guard two times or three, any power given is getting twice as much guard value out of the opponents hand, enough to devastate their hand or perhaps finish them if you open triggers.

Know that while you can only create one Flower Fairy Token a turn, know that your max output for both pushing the opponent as well as finishing the opponent will want two flower fairy tokens, so guard effectively and aim to maintain these tokens. Conversely, this is also one of the weaknesses of the deck, as creating these Flower Fairy Tokens always costs negative card advantage, and Neo Nectar as a clan has poor card draw, and Ahsha as a deck does not generate card advantage every turn, being able to retire one of these tokens is both effective for card advantage as well as slowing the Ahsha deck.

One of the counters to Ahsha is to retire via effect the Flower Fairy Token every turn.

When playing the Ahsha deck, especially against a deck like Royal Paladin that has access to effect retire but not at a cheap cost, you want to limit how much cost your opponent has to play with and limit what cost they have to retire your Flower Fairy Token. One of the key plays against a deck such as Altmile which wants to use their V to superior call two units as well as Blaster Blade to retire your Fairy Token is to keep an eye on their counterblast and soul cost, never giving them two soul and two counterblast to be able to do both. This makes it so they have to choose between furthering their own game plan by using Altmile’s ability, or to slow down your game plan by using Blaster Blade.

Notice how you are trying to use your speed, consistency, and redundancy in effects combined with your gameplay skill to force the opponent to bend their game plan.

Limitations and Weaknesses of the Flower Fairy Token, And Taking Advantage of Them.

The big weaknesses of the Flower Fairy Token mechanic are

1) Requiring Negative Card Advantage to Create

2) Big, Buff, And that’s it

3) Requires Specific Abilities to complement

Requiring Negative Advantage to Create

First, we will be going over how it requiring Negative card advantage is a weakness. Because creating each Flower Fairy Token costs negative card advantage, either by retiring three rear guards for Ranunculus Flower Maiden Ahsha or two rear guards and one soul for Dream Spinning Ranunculus Ahsha. This being a weakness because it creates card advantage investment in one unit on board, thus requiring that one unit to be effective in power and critical for those two cards. On top of this, as a single retire target, opponents attacking or retiring the Flower Fairy Token can effectively get two or three retires for the price of one. By tackling the Flower Fairy Token and forcing the Ahsha player to dedicate more resources to keeping one up, or discarding more cards to guard it, you can use this to close the card advantage gap.

To counteract this, you as the Ahsha player should be aiming to make each Flower Fairy Token very cost effective, and this is done in more ways that just making it big and attacking with it. By being a lightning rod for retire effects you can protect other key cards such as Anelma, a backrow Ahsha for setting up the Three Ahsha conditions to gain both Critical and Power for Ahsha, or a powerful card advantage generator such as Maiden of Blue Lace.

Additionally, as the cute fairys also function as lightning rods for attacks for clans that have no retire option, you want to optimize this by using the Flower Fairy Tokens to attract attacks, slowing down attacks against your Vanguard. Use this especially against decks like Altmile, Ahsha, Claret Sword, whom will have to sacrifice all important attack count just to try to take down a fairy token. Always remember that while having two is great, you don’t need two fairys to win, you can win just as easily if you push with one.

Second, Ahsha Flower Fairy Tokens are Big, Buff, but thats it.

The second constraint of Ahsha Flower Fairy Tokens is that they may have text on them that copies the power and critical of your Vanguard, but they do nothing else. In effect, they are “only” big beatsticks that require card investment to create and take advantage of. Once your Vanguard has done the drive checks, the opponent knows exactly what is coming at them. No guard restrict, no on hit effects, no uncertainty, just a number to guard. When facing down the opponent’s Flower Fairy Tokens, especially only one of them, take them at how much power their vanguard is, and consider one extra triggers worth of power.

Unlike other clan mechanics, the Ahsha Flower Fairy Token can only do one thing: Attack for big power. Additionally, not being able to gain power from a boosting unit will cap its power at how much you can give your Vanguard through abilities and gift.

If the fundamentals series has taught you well, you will know that just because something is simple does not mean it is bad. Though it does go against the previous point, some players will underestimate this and ignore the flower fairy token and greedily go for damage against the vanguard, allowing you to counteract this by generating a second flower fairy token and push for massive tempo.

Additionally, your deck isn't trying to win off of something special or pull of a whacky combo. Neo Nectar generates tempo and can always achieve high power columns, so focus on that to forge your win.

Though it is a Force 2 play, the opponent seeing Flower Fairy Tokens as something to underestimate will allow you to capitalize on this by going Force 2 and threatening with 3+ Critical attacks every turn. Going Force 2 and opening a critical trigger will force the opponent to guard at least two columns every turn from as little as two damage. Say goodbye to any counterblast you were planning to use.

Thirdly, Requiring Specific Abilities to Complement the Mechanic.

The Ahsha Flower Fairy mechanic is one that requires your Vanguard to gain Power and/or Criticals. While we will be going over how to choose Force 1 and 2, as well as the goals of doing so later in the article, this weakness of requiring supplemental abilities to support your main mechanic forces your deck to be built further around it, as well as requiring more parts to perform well. An experience player can take advantage of this by controlling your cost or conditions to activate these abilities. This weakness also means you will find it difficult to push damage without additional support from complementary abilities.

While Dream Spinning Ahsha does provide power, and a critical with conditions, if you choose Force 2 wrongly, the lack of access to additional power into the late game can be the nail that secures your defeat. Similarly, if you chose Force 1, while you have enough power to push after one or two rides, the lack of a critical, especially if you do not open critical triggers, will means your rear guards have no threat to them. This potentially gives your opponent enough time to secure control of the game again, or not giving you enough attacks to drive through your victory.

As you may have experienced before, a simple one critical attack is very easy to no guard, especially once it gets to requiring 30k or more shield to guard.

To counteract this, not only will we be playing according to this weakness, planning for this weakness by packing a huge power boost in the form of Antero or Powerise Elixir to provide the power pump on the finishing turn, but also focusing greatly on Dream Spinning Ranunculus Ahsha’s power pump.

Be willing to play with only two critical on Vanguard and rear guard, and always plan your turn according to not opening triggers. For example, if the opponent is at three damage and your Vanguard has Force 1, consider the likelihood of not opening critical triggers, and instead attack with the non fairy rear guard first. This forces the opponent to guard the attack in order to null guard the center and guard the fairy token, or no guard the attack to go to lethal range for both your Vanguard and your Fairy token, even if you don’t open a critical trigger.

Force 1 VS Force 2 Selection: Differing Goals and Differing Paths

The choice between Force 1 and Force 2 is a difficult one to make, and choosing the wrong one will give you either not enough power to finish the game, or not enough damage to drive the opponent to their last stretch

In the Ahsha deck, most of the time you will be giving your first Force gift to Vanguard, in order to obtain that power or critical across two columns. Additionally, the main ride target Dream Spinning Ranunculus Ahsha also conveys an additional 10k power to your other column through the Fairy Token, and potentially another Critical. This means that you will usually be generating 33k 2 Critical, or 23k 3 Criticals over two columns (plus triggers)

Now, when you go for Force 2, you may have a lot of Critical across multiple columns, each column hitting for 3 damage, but the power is minimal, and your rear guards have no threat. As such, while the Vanguard must be guarded from 2 damage, your rear guard does not. If you chose to go for Force 2 and attacked with your Vanguard, your opponent at 2 Damage would have to guard. However, should you not open any critical trigger, your rear guard can be no guarded, the opponent go to 5 damage, and hence invalidate all of your critical for the rest of the game.

Hence, when playing Force 2, its important that your opponent is forced to guard all of your attacks. You want to be aiming to keep the opponent guarding everything, even if it means having to guard with less. Your final column should be attacking against a rear guard, to maximize the amount of cards dropped from the opponents hand if your Fairy token is lethal without any critical trigger, but attacking the Vanguard to get cards out of the opponents hand if it still requires that one extra critical to be lethal.

Focus on pressure and keep the pressure lethal, and let the opponents loss of advantage be the road to their loss.

Force 2 plays suit the deck better when the opponent is reliant on counterblast, and you have managed to disadvantage the opponent early in the game. Don’t be too greedy as the Force 2 Strategy is easy to fall apart and harder to keep together, but much more devastating.

For Force 1, the common play would be to stack Force 1 on center. This is because your Dream Spinning Ranunculus Ahsha allows you to gain a critical on V, putting herself and a second column at 2 Critical. While each individual hit is doing less damage, Force 1 will allow you to disadvantage the opponent more when they guard.

When you are unable to maintain a damage control strategy with Force 2, go with Force 1 on V. Instead of focusing too hard on the critical of Ahsha to control the board, slowly build up your field with multiple Ahshas and use the critical over two columns to drive in damage.

Do note that while Force 1 is extremely synergistic with the Ahsha Flower Fairy mechanic, Force 2 does not work very well together beyond the first one. This is because the Flower Fairy tokens do not gain the power and critical from force markers on their own circle.

If you go Force 1, you place them all on V, conveniently passing power to two columns and then the whole board.

However, if you go Force 2, your first Force 2 is impactful, improving critical over several columns, your second Force would go on the third column, the column you did not call an Ahsha fairy token into. When you call your second Ahsha Fairy token into this column, that Fairy Token will not be able to obtain any benefit from your second force marker. It is only when you are not at full power output, when you have only one Ahsha Fairy Token that this Force 2 marker is effective. Even then, it is in the air if you will have three Ahsha on the field with only one Fairy Token, potentially cutting you off of your Critical 3 across multiple columns play.

This results in Force 2 being very powerful, but at the cost of effectively playing with one or two Force 2 markers the whole game.

Big Versus Big Enough: Budgeting your Vanguard powering abilities.

When utilizing high power based strategies, one of the key skills to master is the concept of “Big” and “Big Enough”. Creating gigantic columns of 50k-60k power is flashy, but is it necessary? This is especially important in a clan like Neo Nectar where reaching high power columns is easy, but reaching even higher than that requires use of cards from hand and effects.

Simply put, this concept of Big versus Big Enough is understanding how there is a point where no guarding this attack becomes more effective than guarding it. This point itself is moved according to various factors such as duration of game, amount of cards in hand, on hit pressure, guard restrict, etc.





Usually this is utilized in the inverse way in control decks, to apply pressure and guard restricts to make it difficult to guard, then deliberately lowering the power to ensure that the attack is always below the point of No Guard.



However, in the Ahsha deck where you are playing with high power and potentially higher power, you want to be sure your timing of Vanguard power increasing attacks is timed perfectly.

When used in a proactive deck, you want to make sure your attacks are “Big Enough” to cross this no guard line in order to push the opponent to more damage, then once they have to guard your attacks, make them “Big” by using power increasing effects. This maximizes the amount of cards the opponent has to use to guard when they guard. Games are thrown off plan by trigger power suddenly pushing an attack through to the “big enough” zone, forcing you to no guard an attack you planned on guarding.



Do note that in a game of Vanguard, you will be pumping power to several columns before you attack. As such, do consider how the opponent will react to your attack of the turn, and plan carefully during your main phase. You want to pump power if you know your opponent must guard attacks this turn. While your vanguard may be just “Big Enough”, the attack hitting may, and with Dream Spinning Ahsha critical ability it often does, drive the Flower Fairy Token’s attack to be needed to be guarded, hence your reaction to make it “Big”.

Considerations for the Popular Matchup

We will be going over some of the considerations you should have in mind for the popular match ups

VS Altmile

Altmile is going to be a very popular deck out of the gate, focusing around his powerful abilities that activate when the deck reaches zero open counterblast. Additionally, every turn for CB1 SB1, they can generate two more rear guards. Do note that each grade 2 will be a 10k shield, even the ones called from hand, but only if the Altmile player has no open counterblast. Additionally, if you deal one damage to them, they will not be able to intercept through Starlight Violinist.

When fighting Altmile, you have to consider their Blaster Blade, namely if they can activate both Blaster Blade and Altmile together in one turn with CB2 SB2. You want to avoid a situation where they can both superior call and use burst blaster to retire your Flower Fairy Token. I mention their soul because Altmile decks are significantly constrained by their soul amount, as its a cost for their most powerful abilities. If you force a use of Blaster Blade, the opponent may lose enough soul that they will not be able to use Blaster Blade again, having to spend the soul instead on Altmile’s superior calling ability.

Another consideration for the Altmile deck is how although they wish to spend all of their counterblast, they are in fact, not as effective at spending large amounts of it at once. Ahsha’s ability to gain critical works well with this as you can drive large amounts of damage in a single turn, potentially shutting off Altmile’s entire mechanic if they don’t already have the cards to use up that counterblast. Altmile decks will also have to rush to spend up their counterblast, perhaps ineffectively, just to activate their mechanic. For example: calling Livarot to counterblast, and not being able to call any rear guards due to all being full.

Though the complete opposite of the previous advice, also do note that without counterblast, the only way to gain card advantage in the Altmile deck would be to use Livarot from the hand. Though allowing the Altmile deck to have free access to their full range of abilities may sound like a poor decision, this out of the box approach of preventing advantage gain with a damage control strategy may just be what you need to win.

As mentioned before, Altmile’s columns of 40k are easily stopped by one Mylis.

VS Chronojet

Chronojet is a potentially difficult matchup. Chronojet has a lot of support in Stroboscope Dragon and other retiring rear guards that can snipe the Flower Fairy Token, preventing you from forming the double Fairy formation and overwhelming the opponent.

While Chronojet’s rear guards are weak, their Vanguard is very powerful. Often they will aim to stack force on Vanguard to make it very difficult to guard, especially once they apply their guard restrict.

As the Chronojet deck does not spend very much counterblast, their main CB usage is Chronojet Dragon’s guard restrict ability itself. As such, Damage Control strategies do not work well against Chronojet.

Due to the mechanic, Chronojet Dragon players will often go for Force 1.

Against Chronojet you want to be allowing the guard restrict attack to hit, due to a combination of difficulty in guarding as well as high power, but instead aim to guard effectively the Nextage attacks as well as the rear guard attacks.

VS Vanquisher

Dragonic Vanquisher is indeed one of the most difficult matchups. This is due to Neo Nectar flooding the board, the Flower Fairy Token being called to the front row is the core of the deck, and always providing abundant cost for Vanquisher to move. Flower Fairy Tokens cannot intercept, and therefore are ideal prey for the Vanquisher combo they want to pull off of using Jaggyshot Dragoon to bind a unit during battle phase, then spawn multiple Rising Pheonix to further their multi attack.

Against Vanquisher you will expect the opponent to be able to be at full potential, and yourself to never achieve double Flower Fairy Token. The deck has no tools to counter the Vanquisher strategy. As such you should aim to devolve the game into a damage race, one that takes full advantage of Ahsha’s critical up skill to drive as much damage as possible.

Vanquisher’s weaknesses include no front row to bind, weak first ride unless you have enough parts to bind 3, good card draw but weak defense, and no way to search null guards.



Take advantage of these weaknesses by focusing on Ahsha’s Critical up ability while protecting your third Ahsha required for the Critical up skill. As a flower fairy is going to be bound every turn, be sure to save Sweet Berrys to supplant the cost.



Because of the Force VS Accel matchup, damage triggers are far more beneficial to you than other matchups. Vanquisher is happy enough to have any attack be guarded for small amount, utilizing their multi attack combos, rather than have fantastic lines against Force clans. A lot of their power lines are focused around 14k or 12k. This makes them weaker to force clans opening a damage trigger, but still better than most other accel clans in that aspect.

Against Vanquisher, if going first, I would recommend you play one Flower Fairy Token in the front row, leave the other empty, and call down your third Ahsha behind the Vanguard. This ensures that there is only one way to get the three bind required for the 10k to front row on the first ride by disadvantaging your board: Jaggyshot Wyvern and a Second Jaggyshot/Voltic Shred. Even so, the first attack will never have enough bind to activate the +10k. Notice how this requires multiple cards or the opponent to be playing rare tech in the form of Bolt Capture Dragon.

As you are giving abundant counterblast to the opponent, calling to a corner can open you up to being blown out by ChouOu or Voltage Horn Dragon pulling up the rear guard from the back row to be bound.

The further counter strategy to that is of course to be good enough to draw Jaggyshot, then use Vanquisher to shoot one of your own useless rear guards, Jaggyshot to bind the Flower Fairy Token and achieve 3 bind this way, but that's not well known unless the Narukami player is reading this Neo Nectar article.

The second further counter to the counter would be to have two Rising Pheonix in your drop zone and superior call one behind your vanguard every turn maintaining that 33k power line, so you can get the opponent to drop two cards to guard your Vanguard, even through a damage trigger.

VS Revonn

Revonn is a tricky matchup. Because of lack of card advantage as well as lack of retire option, the Aquaforce matchup can easily overwhelm your defense.

However, with Revonn, because of the mechanic of decreasing the vanguard power and thus making most attacks be pointed at the vanguard, as well as lack of effect retire on the Revonn player side, your Ahsha Flower Fairy tokens are comparatively safer compared to other decks such as Vanquisher.

In the Revonn matchup be careful for the opponent tricking you into thinking all attacks are pointed at the Vanguard, then having their last attack with a high powered unit like Coral Assault instead turn and attack your Flower Fairy Token.

Similarly to the Vanquisher matchup you want to drive the opponent into guarding as soon as possible, then disadvantaging them by making them guard with a large amount of cards.

VS Ahsha

The Mirror match. How the deck works has been explained thus far in the article.

As for the mirror match, do be sure to go first. Unlike other matchups, where protecting the third Ahsha is fairly important to maintain critical from turn 3 to turn 4, the Ahsha match-up poses no risk to the rear guard Ahsha as any attack that is not pointed against the Vanguard is not effective. Consider putting an Ahsha-Anelma column to the side, instead of calling down Grade 1s to attack when being boosted by Ahsha, as well as be willing to call down Ahshas to be attackers.

Because damage control strategies do not work well against Ahsha, be more willing to take Force 1 in your matchup.

VS Chronofang

Chronofang Tiger is a powerful foe. Do note that with Chronofang Tigers ability to retire front row units, you can count on your front row Ahsha Flower Fairy Tokens being retired every turn. This means placing an Ahsha in the corner rear guard to secure critical every turn is a key play to winning this match up.

Chronofang Tiger has very potent abilities, but to access them they need to be discarding and using up their hand every turn. This puts a limit on how good their defense can be, so you want to be preying on this by pushing the offensive and pumping your power high, so your attacks will be breaking through their defense.

Because 2 passing your Vanguard is a very dangerous play when facing Ahsha decks, they will have to take risk or over commit to guarding, further limiting what they can do on their turns.

Their vanguard is very powerful with power, potentially three critical or more, multiple drive checks, and a shield reduction ability, but their rear guards tend to be comparatively smaller and easier to handle. Guard accordingly and come out victorious.

VS Makluth-Melekh

Angel Feather is quite the Favored matchup for Ahsha, as while they have protect, Makluth Melekh has a tendency to be built to play Protect 2. Protect 2 works well against medium sized attacks, working off of incremental guard value every turn, but Ahsha and Neo Nectar do not function off of medium sized attacks. They hit big and very hard. Use this overwhelming power to run over the defenses of Makluth Melekh.

Against Makluth Melekh, damage control does not work. Not only are you agaainst angel feather which has one of the best counter blast recovery in the game, Makluth Melekh can damage itself to put you out of threatening range for your high critical attacks. Instead focus on high power and overwhelming the protect two.

Should they go protect one, allow them to and push the attack. They will have to spend it on your vanguards attack, but can do nothing against the high powered swings of the Fairy Tokens.

One of the key points to remember against Makluth Melekh is that their removal does not work against Ahsha Flower Fairy Tokens the same way it does against other clans. By sending the Flower Fairy Token to the damage zone, it removes it from the board but also causes it to be disintegrated, allowing you to heal up a different damage. This effectively heals you for one damage! Because of this, Makluth Melekh’s removal abilities do not work against Ahsha Flower Fairy Tokens or Plant Tokens without a massive drawback, allowing you to easily create the double Flower Fairy Token formation you desire in due time. Even if they take the tempo and advantage loss to snipe the Flower Fairy Token, one extra damage will help you build back enough to eventually being able to set up the double Fairy plays.

Conclusion

Today we have gone over one of the meta defining and powerful decks of the upcoming VEB14 The Next Stage format, Neo Nectar Ahsha. We have covered the deck build, multiple cards for consideration for your own build, the approach to the Grade 1 lineup, Choice of Sentinel, Incorporation of a Finisher into a clan that lacks one, In depth gameplay considerations for both early game and late game, and thinking about the approach, strengths, weaknesses of the Ahsha Flower Fairy Token and accommodating for them.

We continued with a discussion on the different situations and considerations for picking Force 1 and Force 2, as well as how to best capitalize on each choice. We followed this up with a discussion of big versus big enough, on how to utilize the sliding scale of power versus pressure to optimally disadvantage our opponents when attacking, and finished up our discussion with some gameplay tips against the meta prevalent decks, some of the strategies those decks will be employing against you, and how to further counter said counter play.

We hope this discussion today on the Ahsha deck can help you see the full potential in the deck, as well as how it will shape the play environment. While simple and direct in its approach, this simplicity is both Ahsha’s strength and weakness in any match up, given the correct pilot.

Thank you for joining us on Part 2/6 of our VEB14 Neo Nectar discussion! Tomorrow we will be going over a very different style of Neo Nectar, one that can generate a lot of card advantage while still boasting high power output of the clan, this time focused around the RRR of the set: Cornflower Flower Maiden Ines. This one has the potential to be even better than the Ahsha deck!



Thanks for tuning in to learn about Neo Nectar with CanYouSayG, Best NN Player in world(TM)