There was a distinct lack of good tsundere characters on this website, so I’m here to solve that.

Hey guys, my name is Pedro Mendes and this is my deck tech for one of my Railgun builds. But that is not important right now.

Before we proceed, it’s imperative that you, the reader, understand something about this specific deck tech.

The build I’m writing about is for the R/Y Railgun version. So before we begin and to answer the obvious question of why no green cards in this deck (aka Uiharu and Saten wall deck), I will have to use some advanced statistical data and scientific proof of why the R/Y version is superior to the R/G version:

Actual proof:

“Mikoto has been ranked first on the light novel guidebook “Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi!”‘s annual female character rankings for five consecutive years (2010-2014), a record achievement for any light novel character.”

With that in mind and knowing that the R/Y version has a lot more Mikotos in it, we can take this question out of the way and proceed with this deck tech. If you are actually expecting to find the most competitive build of Railgun possible to date… these are not the droids you are looking for. That said, I still believe this build is pretty strong and has some pretty good hidden value.

Railgun (and Index) is a pretty big and varied set, enabling some tweaking and variation between builds. I say some because the set is pretty old and most of the cards are very weak in value when compared to newer sets. There are however some cards that have some good value and most of the Railgun staples are actually pretty good cards. I have a few variations of the R/Y but this one is the version I think is the most unique.

On to the list:

Lvl 0: 20

3x Mikoto, Tokiwadai’s Lady

3x Komoe Tsukuyomi

2x Accelerator. Strongest Esper

4x “Heaven Canceller”

2x “Railgun” Mikoto

4x Kuroko, Admiration for Onee-Sama

2x “ITEM” Takitsubo

Lvl 1: 15

3x Mikoto, A Certain Day Off

2x “Pigtails” Kuroko

2x Mikoto, Good Sport Reflexes

4x Mikoto, Where the Coin Goes

4x Kuroko, Tokiwadai’s Lady

Lvl 2: 3

3x Last Order, Administrator of Misaka Network

Lvl 3: 4

2x Mikoto & Kuroko, Under One Roof

2x Mikoto, Works Hard

Climax: 8

4x Railgun

4x Misaka Network

Ok, now that you have seen the numbers and the 4 lvl 3, I’ll let you throw a tantrum while you observe this gif.

Well, now that we have a list, let’s actually see what the cards do. I’m not going to spread them here by levels, that’s the whole purpose of the list above, so instead I’ll just present the cards and respective synergies.

Mikoto, Tokiwadai’s Lady is a bond for the still solid 1/1 Kuroko, Tokiwadai’s Lady. By paying 1 life we get to retrieve this 7.5k onee-sama obsessed character and the bond itself gives her the needed 1.5k buff. If there is a reason needed to deviate from the green build, this might as well be one of them. One might argue that this Kuroko is still not as strong as the Saten/Uiharu walls, and that 7.5k is pretty weak in an era of soundless voice combos, overgrown Asunas, Marika suiciders, etc. Even though that is true to an extent, the bond is still definitely a pretty big plus. Besides we can milk some extra value with the following cards.

Teacher Komoe Tsukuyomi is a global 1k for espers during our turn, and +500 assist to the cards in front of her. We can have access to this card at lvl 0 by paying 1 stock. This is another of the staple cards usually seen in a non green build. Komoe can power up your seemingly weak espers with the power of knowledge and help you turn the tides in the fields of justice (wait… wrong game). Even though Komoe ends up being a very stock heavy card, she immediately impacts the board in your favor, ensuring that our field is very strong during our active turn. The previously mentioned Kuroko can go into a beefy 9k power, without any kind of climax buff.

The problem with this strategy lies in the opponent’s turn, when our cards are back to being some weak espers with almost no protection. Here comes a new challenger!! Professor Oak… err I mean, “Heaven Canceller”. Now with Kuroko out of the restricted list, we can use frog guy to give more survivability to our field. He gives hand encore to all our espers and… well that’s it. Although he is not the most exciting card ever (if only we could tap him to hand out 1k to a character), he still is useful to boot in this deck.

Don’t get too hooked on the hand encore thingy though, save only the cards who are truly valuable at each point of the game(most of the cases, it will be Kuroko for the lvl 1, Last order and the lvl 3). The reason we are running this many heavy copies of both cards it that neither is a actual esper… and as such they are a bit harder to get in your hand when needed. I always try to mulligan aggressively for at least one of them.

“Railgun” Mikoto is one of the best Brainstormers in the game. It’s also one of the more unique. Pay 1, for each climax you reveal you can railgun an opposing character with cost 0 in the face, followed by an evil grin. This card is pretty useful in the early stages of the game but it loses some (if not all) effectiveness as the game goes on. Still it’s a very good card to have and can punish hard some opponents that rely heavily on costless/greedy level 1.

Kuroko, Admiration for Onee-Sama is a runner, and a great one at it. She can run freely to any empty space in the front row and she has a decent body of 2k. You can just smash face with the help of Komoe powering her to a 3.5k on your turn and avoid any unnecessary battles in the opponents turn by teleporting away to an empty space. The ability to leave an empty row for a direct attack from your opponent also helps you accelerate into lvl 1, where this deck has most of his strengths.

Speaking of acceleration, Accelerator. Strongest Esper is true to his name. This card is a lvl 0 stock reverser. It can deal with pesky cards that usually normal reversers would fail to deal with, as it prevents any kind of encore and it also nullifies cards with going to the WR effects. In sum, he is a pretty strong lvl 0 reverser.

“ITEM” Takitsubo is a difficult card for me to grade. I like drawing cards. I like searching for cards. All my background in other card games tell me, card advantage is great. In Weiss though, even though CA is still important, it does not have the same impact as in other games. With that said Takitsubo lets you search for an esper, by resting her and paying 1 stock and 1 life. You can repeat this until your hearts content (or until you reach lvl 4… if you know what I mean). That’s a lot of value. There was a time where I ran 4 copies of this card, fascinated by it’s sheer power but we need to have some things in consideration.

First of all we are already hitting ourselves in the face each time we use the bond for lvl 1 Kuroko. Also, in this particular build, where we are trying to milk the bond mechanics for CA, we don’t run that many tech cards, so Takitsubo ends up not being that relevant most of the time. Don’t be mistaken, this card still holds great value, but if you want to replace it for a less greedy CIP pay 1 stock discard 1, you are free to do it, it even will add some additional consistency by giving you a discard outlet (that this deck is lacking).

Mikoto, A Certain Day Off is a very powerful backup. It scales as the game goes on adding on to it’s versatility. It gives 1k base as a backup but it gives an additional X power, where X is 500 multiplied by your level. Don’t forget you need at least 2 espers on the field to be able to do this though (it’s not that hard with so many espers running around).

If you have been playing Weiss for a while now, you’ve probably heard that “Bonds are great”. Being faithful to that statement, at lvl 0 we already saw that we have a strong bond in the deck giving us an extra card at the cost of paying1 life. “Pigtails” Kuroko is the 2nd bond engine of our deck, and one that it’s actually pretty good even though she rarely sees play.

Her first ability is a top check, which can help you in several ways, from planning your attack phase with more information(those sometimes key wind climaxes) to just free milling a card. The second ability is the pay 1 stock and retrieve Mikoto, Where the Coin Goes from the WR. Disclaimer: I always loved this Mikoto card. I simply love the drawing and background, even though I never found a reason to play it. Mikoto, badass where the coin goes, is a combo climax card, where if you have the Railgun climax in play and you reverse the opponent character battling your Mikoto, you can pay 1 stock and burn him for 1. I always looked at this card and it always seemed to costly. So why play it?

Well, as you have seen in the full list, I’m running very few card in lvl 2-3, and this combo is one of the reasons behind this. Being the deck as stock intensive as it already is, I had to adjust the deck a bit to this reality, I mean, in a normal game where you aren’t winning by a lot and the game is even, the most realistic scenario is having 2-4 stock while reaching lvl 2/3. So is it worth playing this combo by expending so many resources? I think so. You are basically paying 1 stock with the Kuroko bond to have another free lvl 1 card. Mikoto is a 5k card but powered by Komoe and the Railgun climax reaches a decent 7.5k body on your turn. Even if she doesn’t survive the opponent’s next turn, she was basically a 2 for 1 anyways and if you have another Railgun climax and want to repeat the combo you can just save her using Heaven’s Canceller hand encore ability.

One of the things to have in consideration is that you don’t always need to use the combo when you drop the climax. Have several factors in consideration. If it’s your last card attacking and your opponent is at 5 damage in the clock, it’s very likely that burning him for 1 is not worth the cost and helping him reach the next level. If you see a better play for the next turn and you need the stock, you might also want to reconsider using it. In most cases burning your opponent will always be very worthwhile and in some cases will even take a climax out of the way with the burn trigger and allow a full face attack with the next character. You can watch the gif below that resumes this climax combo.

Mikoto, Good Sport Reflexes is a pretty good card in this deck. First things first, lets go over what this card actually does. This Mikoto has a 5k body that gets 1k extra for each other esper that has attacked, easily reaching 8.5k with the help of Komoe-sensei, no climax thrown into the equation. In sum, for 0 stock you get a very powerful card during your turn that will help your powered up Kurokos do some damage in the enemy lines. So why only 2 copies? Flexibility and greed. You should adjust to the meta where you play in. If by basis in your local scene, people play a more power based decks, you can simply reduce the copies of Mikoto, where the dank goes and Memester Kuroko bond to 3 and 1 copies respectively and increase this pole dancer Mikoto to 4 copies. This will ensure you some better trades with those type of decks and also fewer resources spent trying to maintain board. If your meta is actually filled with ship girls and girls holding some funky ass keys, you might as well go to the dark side of the greed and fry those pesky annoyances with your Railguns.

We finally reach the most innovative part of the deck(well there are surely people out there who already tested or found this card, but I had never seen a list with it, so for me it was a breakthrough). In my quest of turning this R/Y capable of competing with the more stable green version, I reached the conclusion that I wanted to start by cutting the 2 copies o the changer for Misakuro from the deck. Between the rampant growth of the anti-changers or just the sadness of someone bouncing my Misakuro and punishing a deck that already suffered from stock problems and sometimes cards in hand, I needed a card that would give me a different approach to the game. I went from testing Muginos to Accelerators. None of them added much to the deck, except even more raw power, or some cool effects that did not matter that much in the long run.

I wanted to have a way of dealing more damage or ate least give damage more consistently. That’s when I found Last Order, Administrator of Misaka Network. Her first ability is the ever useful climax combo of searching your deck for a clone or esper card, for free. Fetch your lvl 3 or just some backups and enjoy the freemiums. It’s her second ability being very relevant that’s actually interesting. When she attacks you can pay 2 stock, to give all your espers (including her) +1 soul. I can’t express how much this ability was awesome in some games where I was lacking the damage for the final push. There are a lot of games where I had her in the field and I never used the ability, but sometimes you will need it, and it will be key in winning (or not) the game. The fact that even though she isn’t exactly huge in power stats is easily compensated by Heaven Canceller encore ability. You just need one of her to do the ability, so just keep in mind that unless you need to replace her on the field, she will always give you an extra out to win the game.

Another thing that I like is that by using this card, I reduced the 8 gates I was using to 4, and I’m free to use the Wind climax, which I think it’s very good in the actual meta. Railgun lacks things like anti-changers, so sometimes the bounce will come very handy. It also fuels the rest of the strategy of this deck by increasing your damage swings. Sometimes bouncing a pesky card and giving an additional point of damage will turn the flow of the game in your favor.

I don’t think I need to explain why this card is here. Even though we live in an era of more and more powerful finishers, Mikoto & Kuroko, Under One Roof is still a very powerful finisher. She heals you and you can pay 1 discard a card and she gets 2k and the ability to burn your opponent for 1 if you reverse the opponent character. The only question is, why is this card still in the restricted list in a set that hasn’t really made an impact for more than a year now.

Mikoto, Works Hard is the closing card for this deck. This card fits the strategy of this deck perfectly. When she enters play, you can salvage an esper from your WR (Misakuro, for example) and she gains 1k for each other esper that attacked that turn. So with Komoe (again) she can reach a beefy 14.5k while replacing herself in your hand with a potentially even better card. If you don’t have enough stock to play something that costly from the WR, it will also give you the chance of picking something else from the WR for the final push. Sometimes instead of Misakuro, you will only need a cost 0 card and use the Last Order to pump +1 soul to your field. This card is pretty flexible and that’s why I like it that much. Since you can also search your deck with Last Order or Takitsubo, you get this and the 4 gates for the WR. Even with only 4 level 3 you should have a pretty decent game when you reach this stage.

In conclusion:

This build obviously has a lot of glaring weaknesses. From the lack of the ability to discard at will to the lack of library manipulation, very few lvl 3 etc. What I tried to do here was instead of trying to keep competing with more modern decks in sectors where they already have the clear advantage, was finding a strategy that would take advantage of some of the good cards that this set has to offer and play its strengths. This deck can have some pretty explosive turns, while keeping hand consistency and a playing field. By the time you reach lvl 3 you should be in a position to be able to win the game, if not, there are still answers for you at that level.

As I previously mentioned, this is not the most competitive Railgun deck ever made. You should look elsewhere if you are looking for a more tournament proved/less hipster deck. With that said, I still think this deck is pretty decent and fun to play (have I mentioned it has a lot of Mikotos? It also contains Last Order)

Whew. We finally reached the end of this article. I hope you enjoyed it or at least enjoyed the gifs. Don’t forget to leave a comment below if you wish so and I’ll let Touma finish this article. He might be back by the end of the year. Maybe.