Premium Neo Nectar: New Tools and Adapting to the Metagame.

Yahallo, lads and ladettes, its me it's your best friend its CanYouSayG, and you're reading the CanYouSayBlog, where we learn how to be a better Cardfighter.

Today, we will be going over the new cards from VEB10 The Mysterious Fortune, and applying them in Premium Standard, as well as some adaptations the deck has undergone in both playstyle and deckbuild to adapt to the current metagame.

Following this, we will discuss some gameplay tips and gift marker selection and placement. Hopefully this will shed some more insight to the deck for you, be it for you to play or you to play against!

Premium Plants have come a long way from their humble beginnings to be the first and only time Neo Nectar has been a contender for a top deck of the format, so lets take some time to get to know them well.

In The Mysterious Fortune, Neo Nectar received cards for both the Arboros Dragon chain, as well as several cards for Musketeers.

On top of that, there have been results from around the globe for Premium Standard, showing us how our meta is shaping up, and prompting thought on how to adapt to the shifting metagame.

Card Choice Discussion



Lets go over some of the new cards that have been seeing use in Premium Standard

If you're interested in how the deck has changed for Standard, be sure to check here for building with Aroboros Dragon Sephirot, as well as here for building Musketeers

Peony Musketeer Martina

Our first card we are going over today is Martina. Martina is a musketeer whom has the ability to gain 5k power and 1 critical the turn she comes to R from deck. Combined with Green Katrina's ability to superior call her out of the deck, this creates an easily made 18k power 2 critical attacker.

She also has Force, which does makes her a good back up ride, in case you do not draw into your Maiden of Trailing Rose.

She is played in 2-4 ofs in the deck, replacing Exploding Tomato. While exploding Tomato was previously played as a backup G3 with Force while having a RG ability, being an ACT ability means it does not work well with Green Katrina, limiting its use to turns where you use Lilga to empty your board.

Martina, on the other hand, has very weak abilities when ridden or called from hand as an attacker, lacking the ability to gain 10k on command. This will be most noticeable on a Seabreeze Turn where you want to maximize power output on all of your columns to push for the win, but Martina will do nothing for that turn.

Martina becoming 18k power on its own makes her a 33k power column when combined with a plant token and not on any Force markers, which is a 25k power to guard. This results in an attack that, at minimum, requires two cards or a G-Guardian to block.

In terms of high powered attacking units that are called from Katrina, its important to compare Martina that is always a base 18k power with Kaivant, which gains 5k based on how many G0 Rear guard units you have.

While Kaivant does push out 20k power easily with two plant tokens in the backrow, its important to remember the power lines being created in the attack. If you have two plants in the backrow, one boosting Kaivant, the total power is 10k (kaivant) + 10k (effect) + 15k (plant) totalling 35k power, which is 25k to guard before force.

Should you repeat this with Martina, the 18k + 15k also totals to 33k, the same 25k to guard before Force.

Even if you repeat this while using Gladiolus to achieve multiple attacks, the same amount of guard is used.



Martina: 18k -> Gladiolus Column -> 33k

Kaivant: 20k -> Gladiolus Column -> 35k

As you can see, In a situation with only two plants in the backrow, Kaivant and Martina have equal power outputs on the multi attack turn.

Therefore, when aiming for power output, be sure to consider how many plants you want to be maintaining in the backrow, as well as which of the two attackers you want to be calling.

While choosing which attackers to call out on the multi-attack turn, be sure to think about the power columns, as well as the very important intercepting. If power outputs are going to be similar, and you know the opponent has to guard everything (eg: at 5 damage), Kaivant does have shield value, which can be the difference between winning and losing on your next turn.

One of the key differences is Kaivant's role not just as an attacker to call from the deck with Katrina, but also as a grade 2 to call from hand.

Unlike Martina, Kaviant's ability does give him power when being called from hand. This is generally done in two situations: in the early game to push for damage, and the stride game when you don’t have enough plants on the field.

Sometimes, when you are lacking attacker units on board when you have stride, you want to fill those slots with either Happy Lucky whom can soul in and draw one card (19k power line) or with Kaivant/Irminsur whom can maximize fire power. When both options are available to you, pick the one that maintains you the most cards in hand.

While Kaivant can perform this dual role in the deck, one of Martina's weaknesses is that she has only one primary role, with the other role being a backup ride.

For the above mentioned points, while Martina does fill a slot as an attacker, Kaivant does still keep his place in the deck. However, some players have chosen to play less copies, however, in view of access to more options for one of Kaivant's roles.

Peony Musketeer Toure

Our second main addition to the Premium Neo Nectar arsenal is Peony Musketeer Toure.

Toure has an ability that when placed, for the cost of counter blast one and retiring a rear guard, look at top three cards of the deck and superior call one unit or two musketeers.

This ability is used in standard to thin the deck as well as access cards such as Martina and Kaivant earlier, at the cost of dropping Irminsur from the deck.

However, in Premium Standard, its important to be very aware of how the early game fight goes down, with players sometimes being aggressive at you and sometimes denying damage, as well as both players fighting to maintain good power lines while restricting the opponents options.

In the early game, if you can set up two plant tokens and draw into Irminsur, you have a confirmed high powered column combined with a card draw for one counterblast. However, not being able to set up Irminsur does put a dent into your gameplan, just as bad as not being able to draw into Irminsur.

Toure, while a beneficial ability, does not have a confirmed +1 to her. She retires one and counterblasts one to call one unit, and sometimes call two. This means that often she can become CB1, Retire 1 to superior call 1, a +/- 0. It is only when she alone can superior call two units that she becomes a +1 to your board.

It is also important, however, to factor into her the potential abilities of the units she superior calls. If she can superior call Rebecca, that is a potential +1 to your hand at the end of turn. If she can superior call a Mirkka or Sylvia, those each generate another body on the board. While they are not musketeers, if you can superior call out a Maiden of Trailing Rose or Maiden of Happy Fawn, each of these generate further plant tokens to develop your board.

Perhaps one of the strongest cards to call out is, as in standard, Martina, whose power line and critical is devastating enough to almost completely swing a game in your favor if pulled off on turn two, even more so in Premium standard where there are many decks with lower average shield value per card in hand.

In playing Toure, its important to maintain your power lines, so instead of riding her and retiring the plant token behind V to use her skill on turn 2, often times riding something else to call Toure to the side and retire to activate her ability is the play to go for, as it maintains the 5k booster behind the Vanguard.

One of the most common tricks to use with Toure is to retire herself for her ability. As she just specifies rear guard to be retired. Just like her previous incarnation, she can retire herself to superior call from the deck.



By order of a command spell I order you Toure to kill youself

Lastly, do not forget that she can superior call Night Beauty Musketeer Daniel alongside another musketeer with her ability. While not a plant, a 5k body on your field that can boost when the other option is calling nothing is not something to pass up.

While Irminsur is always a confirmed +1 for one counterblast, and Toure is not, clearly pointing towards playing max copies of Irminsur, you can play both cards in your deck. This is one of the key points, as it means that instead of only 4 copies of Irminsur to take advantage of your counterblast in early game, you now have a 5th to 8th Grade 2 that can counterblast to gain you card advantage! This gives you the path out of a situation where you cannot gain card advantage because you could not draw Irminsur.

Anthrum Musketeer Gastone

Gastone is our Grade 1 Musketeer unit that is played in the standard Musketeer deck. If superior called from the deck, he becomes 18k power for a turn. This is 18k power on its own, not when boosting or when attacking, giving it additional flexibility.



On the Katrina turn, by calling out a Sylvia, Mirkka, Trailing Rose or Happy Fawn you can superior call out a token on top of the unit, allowing you to make any circle filled with a 15k power attacker or booster.

Gastone allows similar play, but by virtue of being 18k power, can hit that slightly higher power number, forcing one more card out of the hand.

This extra 3k power usually plays into turns such as being in the same column as Irminsur, as well as making your base power for the Gladiolus column 27k power.

If you are to play him, he would be played alongside Toure as four of, to increase your chances of accessing his ability earlier.

Maiden of Happy Fawn

Maiden of Happy Fawn is our third core addition to the deck. Happy Fawn has an almost identical ability to Sylvia, in that when called, she can superior call one plant token.

Do beware that if you ride her, she does not produce a plant, so be sure to ride Mirkka to secure the plant behind V for pushing damage.

With Happy Fawn, in the early game she creates two bodies totaling 13k power, but can split over two columns, at no cost.

Compare this to Mirkka, which generates 13k over two bodies in the same column with the benefit of having one turn at 16k power, but costs a soul.

This power output rivals Rebecca, which generates 13k power, but only one body on the board.

Previously, the deck would play Fruits Basket Elf, just to increase plant token production to maintain boosting units/attacking units over all three columns, but with Maiden of Happy Fawn, you no longer need to worry, as you can distribute even more power without any soul cost.

This lack of soul cost would also mean more access to Rebecca and Antero in when players start striding, both of which are cards that swing victory back into your hands.

Additionally, similar to Kaivant and Sylvia, she is one of the powerful cards in the deck that has her role in the early game when players are hitting each other at G1 or G2, while also having a role in the late game in being extra copies of Sylvia/Trailing Rose when superior called by Katrina, as you can call your plant token on top of Happy Fawn to create a 15k unit.

Autumn Leaves Maiden Rosie

Autumn Leaves Maiden Rosie is a PR card that was distributed as part of the Login bonus campaign in Japan, with unknown distribution to come for other languages of Vanguard.

Her art is spectacular.

At then end of the battle she attacked a vanguard, by CB1 and retiring a grade 0 unit, draw 1 and give one unit 5k power.

In the early game, if you have a plant token behind the Vanguard, you want to be aiming to deal 3 attacks. However, if the opponent opens a damage trigger and you do not open a drive trigger, the one or even two of your attacks will be stopped never hitting, without the opponent needing to guard.

Rosie is the unit that gets around this.

Given your other Rear guard has high enough power to hit, you can lead by attacking with Rosie and boosting with a plant token. If this attack hits and the opponent opens a damage trigger, you can choose to retire the plant token behind her to give 5k power to your vanguard, making it 20k power and hitting the opponent through one trigger, at the very least forcing the opponent to guard. This also means that if you open a drive trigger, you can pass that power to the other Rear guard to let that hit.

Arboros Dragon Sephirot

Arboros Dragon Sephirot is seen at times played in the Plant deck, mostly for his CONT ability to generate 10k power tokens. These still count as plant tokens for Katrina's ability to give 10k power to them, as well as have intercept.

However, as it is a CONT ability to generate these high powered tokens, as well as the 10k pump ability being an ACT, the timing use of Sephirot becomes limited, as if you stride into Katrina you cannot call the 10k tokens.

On rear guard, by retiring a rear guard, you can call two plant tokens. Similarly to Toure, this does not specify another rear guard, so you can retire himself to call two plant tokens. Note that this does fall into the same role as Fruits Basket Elf, which begs the question as to why you would choose to play a G3 over the G1 that does the same thing.

This means that there are two timings for Sephirot to be used in Premium: While going first and riding up to G3 first, and on the opponents turn.

When you are going first, you can access high power output for one turn before the opponent strides while using Sephirot.

On the opponents turn, in combination with G Guardians such as Rain Breath Dragon and Kosterina, you can superior call cards such as Sylvia and Arboros Dragon Timber to generate a 10k intercepter, and then intercept with both for a grand total of 20k shield + 10k shield + 5k shield over three bodies. However, do keep in mind that if you play with Antero in mind and to Antero's strength, Antero can generate the same amount of shield value in one card, as opposed to Rain Breath + Sylvia + Arboros Sephirot.

Arboros Dragon Timber

Arboros Dragon Timber is used as extra copies of Sylvia when you call him, meaning you can free up your grade 1 slots away from Happy Fawns or token generators and instead focus on using your Grade 2 slots to generate tokens once you hit the stride game.

In the early game, if you did not ride Timber, additional copies function as just more copies of one of the best cards of the deck: Sylvia, which is nothing to frown upon.



Arboros Dragon Timber becomes most impressive when you ride him, allowing you to generate one powered up plant of 10k power/shield the next time you call a plant this turn. This 10k body is instantly one more attacker, while if you ride something else you would have to call three columns to attack, so its an important consideration for when you feel you dont have enough attackers or quality front row.

One of the drawbacks to riding Timber is how he does not generate a plant token for you. If you ride from Mirkka, this isn’t an issue as you already have a plant token behind V to boost, but if you did not have a plant token behind V, you will still want to be calling two plant tokens in that turn to generate one for the frontrow (10k), and one for behind V. While three attacks from as early as possible is a key gameplay point, not calling any unit behind V can result in the game being pulled away from your victory, as your damage pushing did not start early enough due to the Vanguard line being easily stopped.

While having a 10k booster behind Vanguard isnt bad, its not worth giving up the quality slot in the frontrow, as a 5k boost behind Vanguard goes a long way to drive damage. Three attacks of 10k power is better than one attack of 10k and one of 20k, especially on your second turn.

Arboros Dragon Branch

Arboros Dragon Branch is the grade 1 Arboros Dragon, which allows you to search the top 4 cards of your deck for an Aroboros and add itt to your hand if the attack or the attack it boosted hit. This may help in the early game if you are playing multiple copies of Arboros G2 and G3, but does eat up cards from your hand. With the plant token mechanic, its very easy to fill up your board and boosting units, so its not very common to have a lack of boosting units. In the stride game, the power is extremely low, only 8k for an attacker/booster, easily overshadowed by the 15k of a plant token, so while it can theoretically be called off of Katrina and thin your deck further with its searching ability, the likelihood of that column (8k +15k) hitting is extremely low.

Card in contention but not played due to meta game matchups



In this section we will be discussing some of the existing card choices for the deck, cards you should consider collecting for the future, as some builds do play them.

Maiden of Pure Splash is a Grade 3 without a Force gift that has the ability to counterblast 3, superior call plants to all your empty circles, then give power to those plants.

However, due to not having a Force gift, she becomes a fairly restrictive card to use, as she is only good if you have many empty circles, or have a field full of plants.

With Katrina, although the plant tokens can reach powers of up to 80k power per column with Pure Splash, having an empty field and having three open counterblast is very rare and hard to come by, especially with some decks denying you damage to aim to choke off Gladiolus plays.

While some matchups like Gold Paladin and the mirror match will see you having many open counterblast to use, the issue comes with the multi attack pattern, where your high powered attacks go first, leading the opponent to no guard your rear guards, open damage triggers, and aim to block the much smaller attacks that are superior called with Katrina's ability.

Fruits Basket Elf

Fruits Basket Elf can retire itself and soul blast one to superior call two plant tokens, and give them each 5k power if you are at Grade 3 or higher. Previously he was used to be another token generator for the early game, but this role has mostly been taken over by Happy Fawn, as the latter does not use up soul, allowing you more use of cards such as Mirkka, Antero and Rebecca.

Additionally, as the power pump on the plants is only live after you ride to grade 3, its use in the first few turns when both players are fight for tempo advantage to get ahead is limited.

Maiden of Water Pot

Maiden of Water Pot is a very good contendor for a slot in the deck, with a few decks playing it. When a card is superior called from the deck, by sending her to soul and returning a normal unit from the drop zone to deck, countercharge one and draw one.

Not only does she convert field to hand but also supplies soul along the way.

In the Premium Plants deck, she is one of the only cards that can provide countercharge in the deck.

When you superior call Water Pot and another unit at the same time off of Katrina, you can activate Water Pots ability.

Therefore, if you have no open counterblast, you could superior call Water Pot and Gladiolus as well as other units, then send Water Pot to soul and Counter Charge, giving you instant access to multi attacks.

Combined this with Sylvia and Happy Fawn to replace the circle you called Water Pot into with a Plant Token, and your field will not lose any units at all!

Cherry Blossom Blizzard Maiden, Lilga

Lilga is one of our two null guard options in the deck, being a grade 1 unit that can bloom to return all copies of her to the hand, she is extremely potent with Katrina as it allows Katrina to call out Lilga and return many units to the hand.

While a very potent way of getting multiple null guards into your hand, the main reason the rates of Lilga being played is going down is because of the Gold Paladin matchup.

Against Gold Paladin, there are many attacks that need to be guarded with 5k or 10k shield, as while they have speed and many attacks, they do not have power. This makes two cards of 10k or 5k shield value in the hand more valuable than Lilga and another card, as this stops two attacks.

Additionally, against the Plant mirror match, another of the more common matchups, you would sooner be using your first stride to aim to kill, and even if you do not there are limited options to kill or even push damage if you are using up two or more of your circles to gain extra null guards. Most of the attacks in the stride phase of the game are two cards to guard anyway, and the high number of 15k shields and 10k shields in the deck allow you to guard through most attacks anyways.

The third most common matchup is against Dark Irregulars, against which, due to the opponents lack of early game power and your comparative speed in the early game, you often will be aiming to kill on first stride, reducing how often you will be trying to get null guards.

For the less common matchups, such as Luard, guarding with Null guards becomes suboptimal very fast due to Morfessas guard restrict, while against decks like Oracle Think Tank and Spike Brothers, you would need to use Lilga to build up and defend against specific attacks.

For these reasons, players have been removing Lilga from their decks, but while many players are confident in a 12 critical build, others prefer to keep the null guard option and play Maiden of Blossom Rain in their trigger slots instead.

While a very good card in the deck, the matchups unfortunately do not favor playing Lilga, or null guards in general in the deck.



Sunlight Gardens Guide

Sunlight Gardens Guide used to be played as additional copies of Sylvia in the deck, but due to the introduction of Happy Fawn and Arboros Timber, both cards can do the same thing while not suffering from the issue that Sunlight Gardens Guide had: not being able to us her ability when she is superior called from Katrina.

Maiden of Breed Rain

Maiden of Breed Rain used to be in for consideration as a card to convert field to hand at the end of turn while recycling cards from the drop zone. However, due to the speed of games in premium, as well as limited opportunity to use her ability in the early game combined with a low shield value, her usage has become more and more limited, as there is no more opportunity to go for a grindy, long game advantage based strategy.

G Zone Options

Next we will discuss some of the cards used in the G Zone.

While most of the stride chances are used to go into Katrina, there are some other cards you should consider keeping in your G Zone as options.



Costerina

Costerina is the G Guardian from Fighters collection that allows you to persona flip another G Guardian to gain 5k shield, then you may superior call a unit from your hand. While she does cost a coutner blast, she works best when you dont have more options to call more plants onto an empty board. After you stride once, she makes the number of face up plants in your G Zone go from 2 to 4, which leads to your next stride securing you a full field of plants off of Katrina.

Especially if you cannot ride Maiden of Trailing Rose a second time and generate full field for your second stride, this extra plant may be the trigger to push you to victory.

Do note that if you maintain one plant on your field, for example behind your V or the opponent didnt retire it, you only need to use a normal G Guardian to open G Zone to 3, as the next Katrina stride will generate you four plants.

Using GB8

The GB8 unit Lindroos Premier is a fairly important card to have in your G Zone. One of the weakneses of Katrina is that she does not put back units to your deck, meaning that after two or even one use of Katrina, you will be running out of good quality units to call from the deck. While it is rare for a game to go on this long, by having Lindroos Premier in the G Zone, you can have the finish with your GB8, as she allows you to return cards from your drop zone to your deck before superior calling.

Do note that the increments of 10k power that are given to all units called are for each card called. If you called 3 units, they and Lindroos each get 30k power, not 10k!

One of the common plays would be to return three Maiden of Trailing Rose, then superior calling them all out, making each 43k power. As for the trailing rose in backrow, just call a plant token over it to make your side columns 48k power before force!

Verna

Verna is a strange card that many lists do not play. By picking a rear guard, for each of your other units with the same name, Verna gains 5k power.

This means that selecting a plant if you have 5 plants, Verna becomes 35k shield, but most of the time when you only have 2 plants she is only 20k, or 3 plants for 25k shield.

Ultimately she is overshadowed by Antero for shield value, as its unlikely you have a field full of plants when the opponent is attacking you.

Break Weather Dragon

Break Weather Dragon is an option for the G Zone, a stride unit from The Awakening Zoo.

At the end of turn, by placing up to 5 normal units from your R and drop zone to your deck, you can Draw 1 then CC1/SC1.

Many matchups wont see this card being used, but on the turns that you are locked down by Gredora, you can use this card to open up your options and get at least one extra card to your hand to survive.

Do keep in mind that because plant tokens are *not* normal units, they are Token units, they cannot be sent back to the deck with Break Weather, but the normal unit boosting the plant in the column locked down by Gredora certainly can.

Another card that can be utilized for the Gredora matchup would be Inverno to return cards to the deck, but also Dream Spinning Rananculus Ahsha, just to give your board an extra 5k boost to your front row.

Deck Build Discussion

Here are some deck builds that have topped over the past weekend, all utilizing the new support from VEB10 The Mysterious Fortune.



First, lets go over this build that topped Brave VGCS last weekend

Brave VGCS was a 3v3 event that took place with 20 teams.

This build plays 3 Arboros Dragon Sephirot, as well as playing Arboros Dragon Timber to optimize the amount of calling of high powered tokens in the early game. Unlike other more aggressive builds, this deck plays no copies of Irminsur and instead plays Rosie to convert CB into card draw.

Max copies of Rebecca while dropping any other form of soul usage such as Mirkka and Fruits Basket is another deck build choice that allows the max copies of Rebecca, as if you were to play Mirkka alone, the soul usage would heavily limit your option to play more copies of Rebecca.

Do note that the combined max copies of Rebecca and Lilga do make this deck a very defensive deck, relying on the opponents having poor playing or weak defense that they cannot defend against a Katrina turn, even if the units called are of lowered quality.

This is further compounded by Arboros Dragon Sephirot being able to superior call 10k intercepting tokens on the opponents turn, which gives you even more guarding ability.

Another option for cards in this deck would be Honoly, as the deck has such low counterblast cost that you can just pay for honoly when you need to attack, or just attack four times in a turn only and focus on defense.

Note that this deck is not playing any copies of Padmini, the stride cost. This is because of the total G3 count being 10, enough for hitting the first stride.

In deck building you will often seen players aiming to have a total of G3 and Stride fodders at a total of 10, so they can ride and stride with stability.

Second we have this build that won Brave VGCS

We can see here that with a total of 9 Grade 3s and one Padmini, we have the same total G3 + Stride Cost count of 10.

This build notably plays three Kaivant as well as Fruits Assort Dragon. Fruits assort may only gain 5k per plant token on the field, but compared to Kaivant, his power output is actually one more power line higher, thanks to his extra base 3k power!

This build gives up the potential to multi attack, instead trying to win with high firepower and the 12 critical.

In both these decks we can see Rosie being played to complement the early game.

The key point of this deck is the deck playing Toure in 4 ofs over any Irminsur, and playing Gastone and Martina in conjunction with this. This increases Toure's rate of success, but suffers defensively due to lack of Rebeccas, Irminsurs and Lilgas as an option.

Finally we have my build that won a WGP Qualifier last weekend.

This build is much more traditional, and relies on similar strategy as the previous builds, instead incorporating the new cards as a complement to their gameplay.

As such, this build is the build that people fear in the early game due to their ease of deploying units, gaining power, and hitting with 12 critical to follow up their aggression.

Combined with the new Martina to effectively increase the number of kaivant in the deck once they get to the striding game, while maintaining the number of Kaivant in the deck allows this build to push hard and still follow up in the striding turns.

For players more familiar with the previous play style of the deck, this build will allow you to take advantage of that experience and win with this build, with much more emphasis on early game damage pushing and card advantage maintenance in order to fight mirror match or against decks that will try to fight you at grade 2, without sacrificing defensive options in Irminsur and Rebecca.

One of the key points of the deck is playing Toure. Toure is a card that is played as a 5th and 6th copy of Irminsur, as we have went over previously, allowing for more options to set up earlier in the game.

Do note how it plays no copies of Fruits Basket Elf in order to provide soul for Antero and Rebecca.



This build is the most effective against a metagame that has Gold Paladin, Neo Nectar, Dark Irregulars, Spike Brothers, Tsukuyomi in the metagame

Playing Pointers

Early game power pushing

The key to winning with Neo Nectar is to get the opponent to not be able to guard all of your Katrina turn, and this is done by hitting hard and early.

Although the opponent may guard the early attacks, this will not leave them with enough cards in hand to guard the Katrina turn effectively, so the goal of pushing damage early is not actually to drive the opponent to high damage single mindedly, but to be aware of how much the opponent needs to guard with and making them guard as much as possible in the early game.

Once you hit the striding point of the game, not only do you have Force markers but you also have the power up to plant tokens from Katrina. This makes each column harder to guard, and as such, a good opponent will aim to guard hard very early and no guard as many of the attacks on the stride turn as they can.

Since they are aiming to have as little damage as possible in the early game, be sure to hit them hard and fast across multiple columns. To this effect cards such as Rebecca and Happy Fawn provide power across two columns, while Irminsur can create a power line that can hit through one trigger easily.

After all, when the opponent can only say no guard six times, it would make sense to have them start using those no guards up as early as possible.

When you attack the opponent, you have to if you can afford it, consider placing down units that can help you get through the power line the opponent will have even if they open one trigger. This will allow you to attack twice as minimum if the opponent is lucky enough to open a damage trigger.

Cards such as Irminsur, Rebecca, Kaivant and Rosie allow you to attack while playing around a first damage trigger.

When attacking, you want to minimize as many of your columns that are hitting only for 5k to guard, as they are easy to afford with intercepts. Instead force the opponent to guard hard with a trigger or ineffectively with mutiple g2s by attacking with lines that are 10k to guard for the opponent. This also has the benefit of tempting the opponent to take damage and hope for a damage trigger, which does play into you pushing damage.

Maintaining Plant behind V: When to and When Not to Give You Up

During the early game, the plant behind the Vanguard Circle is one of the most important ones. This spot allows your vanguard to hit for 15k every turn, helping push damage as the opponent needs 20k shield (2 cards or a G Guardian) every turn to block the attack.

As the G Guardian is going to aim to block one attack on its own (with potentially further upside), many players will choose to keep their G Guardian cost in hand and rather no guard your vanguards attack.

When you reach the stride game, however, you can superior call up to the number of plants on your field. This also means that you can superior call into the circle behind V, for a unit that becomes advantage later such as Maiden of Flower Pot, Lily of the Valley Musketeer Rebecca, or Lilga.

These units become cards in hand after being called, and as such the most optimal location for them is behind V, as placing a plant in the side columns to boost is more effective.

However, in superior calling these units, they retire the plant that was previously in that circle. As it is during the battle that it was boosting, by being retired the boosted unit loses all the power from the boost! This makes Katrina go from 43k power total to 28k power.

This drop in power is one of the more important ones, as at 43k power, guarding even with a G Guardian is going to be extremely ineffective, as not many G Guards can make 35k power on their own... let alone even more power to try to account for drive triggers! Therefore, at 43k power, the most optimal play is to either Guard with a G Guardian that hits 35k shield, add on a 15k shield, Guard with a null guard, or No Guard the Vanguards attack.

When playing Plants, its important to try to read how the opponent is aiming to take this vanguard attack. If they are going to no guard the attack and still no guard it if its power becomes 28k power, then you can give up the circle behind Vanguard to call a utility unit, but if the opponent is aiming to guard it with a G Guard, be sure to keep that plant boosting.

If the opponent's ideal play is to guard with a null guard, and still guard with it after the power is reduced to 28k power, be sure to keep the plant boosting, but if the opponents plan will not change, just lose the plant and get some utility there. At worst its one more card thinned from your deck to increase trigger chance.

Our second reason is because when you have a plant behind Vanguard and three more plants (total 4), you can attack optimally, never having to overwrite the plant behind V while still calling out as many units as it takes to fill the field, and if you were to call something behind V, you have to be calling one token creator in the mix in order to have a full field, where you would sometimes just want more utility cards or more attackers.

And our last reason for keeping a plant behind V is to use with Irminsur. Against decks that you want to maintain a lot of hand, you want to be able to call two irminsur off of Katrina while putting a Rebecca into the mix (or two rebecca one Irminsur). However, to activate Irminsur in this situation you would have to call two plants to rear guard first to achieve your draw.

By keeping one plant behind the Vanugard, you can maintain high attacking power while having only having to call one plant to fulfil the condition of Irminsur, totalling you three extra cards in hand by the end of turn. While he does cost counterblast, Irminsur can rival Kaivant's total power output if you only have two plant tokens, so if the opponent cannot handle Kaivant at two tokens and you have two open counterblast, sometimes its better to save the Kaivant in your deck for later and call out Irminsurs to create your columns.

Force 1 VS Force 2

There is a hot debate as to which gift the deck should go, given the decks high firepower as well as needing to hit six times in order to win, making both force gifts very suitable for the goal of the deck.

Force 2 allows you to shorten the number of times you need to hit the opponent to win, but Force 1 makes it much harder for the opponent to block those attacks.

While Force 2 does have its role in victory (seabreeze turns, sometimes against Ezel, etc), the main reason I play Force 1 more often than 2 is inevitability . As I've discussed before with Standard, Force 2 is not inevitable. It can be played around, timing when to take damage and going from Even to Odd damage to take another opportunity at damage triggering and more counterblast without ever changing the number of times it takes for the opponent to have to hit to win.

In Plants, one of the glaring weakness of the deck is how its attack order is entirely predetermined. There is no poking first, allowing the opponent to guard, testing for damage trigger, then swinging in with the specific columns. None. Every turn will be Side -> Side -> Vanguard -> Side -> Side(Gladiolus) ->If you had Gladiolus, Side.

This means that if your opponent sees you going Force 2, they will very, very easily play around it by taking damage to go to Odd damage and use the increased opportunities to no guard to block your 2 critical columns.

Another reason I prefer to go Force 1 over Force 2 is how much it takes to guard. With Gold Paladin and Plant mirrors being some of the more common matchups, and other contenders such as Gastille Combo, Bad End/Bullspike Luard and Tsukuyomi having some very, very bulky shield value per card as well, Force 2 columns tend to be shut down very easily with one card.

On the other hand Force 1 plays allow you to push in with enough power to deal the killing blow, even if that means having to hit one more time than Force 2. Due to Plants access to multi attacking on its victory turn, its often easy to hit enough times to win before the opponent has a chance to gather enough cards to survive.

Therefore, with these current matchup of the metagame, its very common to aim for Force 1 plays.

Force Placement on the Gladiolus Column

When you are playing Force 1, a lot of players will aim to place the Force on the multi-attacking column, where Gladiolus does not have any force. This is not necessarily correct, as while multi attacking on a force column is the obvious play to get three uses out of your Force gift in one turn, the Gladiolus power line becomes incredibly easy to guard.

Unless given extra power, Gladiolus + 8k Utility unit makes only 17k power, which is not only 5k to guard for Force clans, but also completely shut down by one damage trigger. Placing a plant behind Gladiolus makes her 24k power, which is only 15k shield to guard. It is only when you give her 5k more power from Rebecca or 10k from a force gift that she becomes 20k or more to guard the attack, which makes the opponent have to guard with even more.

Furthermore, Gladiolus will be attacking as the 5th attack of the turn, giving the opponent FIVE chances to open a damage trigger and reduce your attack to block able with a measly intercept.

If youre going to be calling Kaivants to the other column with three plant tokens, you create a line where after Katrina attacks, you go with 25k power into 34k power into 40k power, where your attacks go up in power, making it harder for the opponent to rely on damage triggers and making damage triggers affect less of your attacks, while if you placed force on the Kaivant circle, the opponent has to guard a 35k -> 24k -> 50k power line. In the first example, the opponent, if at 3, would guard the first attack and take the next two, but if you placed gladiolus into your force column, they would no guard the first attack, guard the second with ease, then no guard the third and final attack.

Unless the opponent is at 5 damage or going to be at 5 damage before your final three multi attacks, its important to consider placing Gladiolus on your force column.

Once again, its important to assess the situation of how the opponent guarded and no guarded with your first two plant attacks and gauge how they will guard or no guard, your vanguard attack as well. If they are no guarding the vanguard attack at 3 or 4 damage, you can expect them to go to 5 damage and almost die, making placing force on the multi attack circle efficient, while if they are going to be guarding early and you need to be hitting hard with the next few attacks, you should consider placing gladiolus on the force circle.

This is another reason why I recommend placing the second Force gift of the game on the other side column, instead of placing two on one circle.

Timing the kill turn: What to think about if you cannot set up the kill turn on first stride VS Aiming to Get second stride



Perhaps the most important point in playing Plants is thinking about how you are able to win that turn, or more importantly if you are not able to. Getting a clear read on being able to kill will allow you to dedicate the resources and do the appropriate play to aim for the win that turn, where as if you are unable to win that turn, you will not have enough cards in hand to survive to claim your victory the next turn.

On the other hand, if you know you cannot kill that turn, instead focus on pushing damage and gathering cards in your hand, for example via Irminsur, Rebecca, Lilga plays, and go for the win the next turn, where you have already set up well by pushing damage while still having enough cards in hand to survive.

Of course you have to have these cards in your deck for the latter to be an option.

The next turn you only really need to stride into Katrina and have 4-5 plants out to win, so everything that is not cards to be discarded to stride are to be used to guard. Just one G Guardian allows your Katrina to spawn 4-5 plants next turn, and that required number is reduced even further by the number of plants out on your field already.

Being an aggressive tempo deck, Plants only have one shot at their kill turn in a close competitive game, dont waste it.

Playing into Antero

Antero is our most powerful G Guardian. For a soul blast one cost, he becomes 20k shield. Most importantly, if you have zero, one, four, or five rear guards, Antero then becomes a 35k shield for one card, an extremely efficient number.

However, this requirement means that in order to handle Antero, you need to be able to create the situation in which he is 35k shield when you need the big shield: having exactly those numbers of rear guards.

If your opponent will be able to access retire abilities, they can play around Antero by setting you to two or three rear guards, or perhaps attacking them to reduce you to this number, keeping your G Guardians from becoming effective. On the other hand, by intercepting with your front row G2 rear guards, you are able to reduce your number of units on board by how many G2 rear guards you have while still guarding effectively.

Therefore, to play Antero effectively, its important to consider when you want to be calling it next turn and create a situation that no matter what the opponent does, retires, or attacks, you can call Antero at 35k shield. This is done by not giving the opponent the option to play around Antero, by either: having a full field and using Dizmel on one of your front row rear guards, such as against Gold Paladin who have no retire, or by reducing the number of units on your field using Rebecca to three: Two G2s in the front row and one G1/G0 in the back row. This creates a situation where even if they retire any of your rear guards you can intercept down to one or zero rear guards, and then use Antero to become a 35k shield.

If you are not on your kill turn and you need Antero to survive the next turn, be sure to leave on card in soul and create a situation where they cannot burn your board accordingly to play around your most powerful G Guardian.

Conclusion

That's all for today folks. I hope you have enjoyed our discussion on the updates to Premium Plants, and some deck build discussion, gameplay tips and things to be aware of while playing the deck. I hope you continue to enjoy playing the deck and Premium Standard.