With the Destructive Roar dropping in the west this week, people are going to be scrambling with decks for premium format. Megacolony has some good stuff to work with, mixing its new toys with either pure Machinings or even Gredora. Spikes have some nasty combos with Hellhard Eight, but what does Tachikaze have? Well, it’s a bit complicated.

Tachikaze, for premium, is very awkward because the old and the new just doesn’t mesh well together. In G-era, everything relevant in the clan was all about the engorge keyword, which was all about retiring x number of rearguards on attack, and then reaping the benefits from it, “When this unit is engorged…”, “When this unit is retired by an engorged unit…”, “When this is retired while engorged…”, you get the idea. Everything centered around being engorged or having a Gaia vanguard for the purpose of calling back those engorged units to multi-attack with. Now, keeping the name wasn’t too hard, as Gaia was your main ride, so every vanguard was a Gaia vanguard. But Standard Tachikaze is a whole ‘nother ball game. Hell, it’s not even in the same park. They ditched the engorge mechanic entirely for a new system: the Equip Gauge (Busou Gauge for you weeb fans out there.) Everything revolves around either gaining gauge (by putting cards from the top of the deck under your rear guards, think of it like soul on your rear guards,) or getting benefits from being retired with/eating something with gauge on it. Though similar in that you’re killing your own stuff for benefits, issues arise when you put the two together. Standard units cannot be engorged, as they don’t have the engorge ability. So when they eat, a unit that needs to be eaten by an engorged unit doesn’t get their effect off. So you have to a choice to make: gauge-style tachis or engorge-style tachis?

I have 2 examples of decks that I believe work well, through my own testing, either by proxy or by Cardfight Area (CFA). One Gaia based deck and 1 non-gaia based deck.

This deck is mainly based around using the equip gauge as an advantage tool while using engorge units to make easy ways to eat units without needing skills to do so.

Seems pretty simple, so I won’t go over every card choice, as I’m sure you all can tell why cards like Lacertarex and Megarex are in this deck, so I will go over anything that may be questionable or the goal of the deck.

The goal is to push with hard numbers using your engorge units, forcing a lot of guard with assault mammoth, and gaining hand in the process with the likes of Lacertarex, Megarex, and Sonic Noa. The end goal is usually Gaia Dynast+Sarcoblaze. If you can get an accel circle out, that makes this play even better. Due to the new triggers, as well as perfect guards becoming draw triggers in standard format, Sarcoblaze has gotten an

indirect buff, because anyone with standard support is playing them.

Silent Tom isn’t the only one who can get a lot of pressure going in premium. After Sarcoblaze’s first swing, you eat it with Dynast at GB3 to bring it back form the dead so Sarco can do its job all over again. And if Dynast can’t kill, then just call in the big guns and go Drachma. Simple enough. Deathrex-V is included because of the ability to add an accel circle if you are forced to ride it. Also, it’s a good RG to because it can get very big thanks to Noa, as well as retire an opponent’s front row rearguard, making it very versatile.

That’s about it for that list. That list may cost you some money (thanks Drachma!) but who needs a rainbow triceratops when you have…

A MOTHA FUCKIN’ T-REX!!!!!

Yes that’s right, I’m bringing Rexes into the premium light as well. This deck is funny, because in my opinion Rexes mesh well with the new standard format cards. Much like engorge, this is all pre-GB, its all eat for advantage and/or more attacks, and the best part, your main G3 in standard is a Rex. However, unlike engorge, you don’t have to play around silly Gaia name restrictions. In fact, BOTH of the G3s you play in standard are Rexes. So that works out very well for these guys in that you literally cannot misride when it comes to name. But enough with this, let’s break the deck down.

Rexes are a much more raw card advantage-based deck than Gaia is. This deck is also meant to pop off early before stride to get the drop on your opponent. The dream team combo in this deck is getting a Megarex, Assaultrex, and a Squall Rex in hand by G2 turn. Ride Megarex, call Assault, bind Squall to power up assault(or mega if you’re against a 10k g2), and all of assault’s skills are active now. SO now you just swing Assault, then swing mega, retire assault for Mega’s draw, get Assault’s draw, and then drive check. You lose assaultrex and squallrex from hand, but you gain 2 cards and the possibility to recall squall later, which can be what we’ll call a deferred plus. If nothing else it’s early pressure on the opponent. That’s very good for a deck like this, as its just as good as the standard dream setup of megarex-raider-blightops.



Once you’re past that turn, you want to ride Deathrex. Why no Schathrex in this deck? Well, it has a half decent on place, but the only rexes you have that should be bound can bind themselves, and it’s not like it has a stride skill. So being that Deathrex is more useful on VC than Scathrex due to the accel marker and Deathrex has 1k more power, it has become the main ride of this deck. First stride is usually Hellrex Maxima, as it is a great setup tool to send a squall rex to the bind from deck and power up your front enough to let your 9k g2s there hit 13k power (which allows them to hit force power VGs.)

Your game ender is the same as the Gaia build, except instead of the assault mammoth abuse, you are spam calling squall rex to accel circles, which is very potent when your opponent is at 5 damage.

There are a couple things to note about this deck, mainly in the ratios. Skyptero and Beamtero, which are the main “prey” along with lacertarex, can be changed and altered to your heart’s content. Both units are useful, with beam allowing squall to hit over the 23k mark to hit force vg with damage trigger power and skyp to just be more guard for the following turn, but their numbers are interchangeable. If you find yourself wanting more gauge, you can also replace any number of these two units for any number of Sonic Noa-V. He isn’t the best choice overall for units I would add, but he can still eat units on hit and give out gauge to power up megarex and deathrex, so there is a case for him.

And that is the gist of these two decks. I hope you enjoy them and find some competitive use for them. And to thank you for getting this far down this weird tachi rabbit hole with me, I have 1 more surprise for you.

That’s right. I have TWO variants of the Rex deck for you today. The one before this was the main one. Simple, yet effective. But if you just want to meme your opponents into next week, then this is the list for you. Very similar, but with a couple changes to make things more…interesting. You see, you use Hellrex to bind your darkrex from deck in case you haven’t seen it yet, then continue your game as normal. But come the time to nom your opponent down after getting them to 4-5 damage, then they will be sorry they came across your path. Once they guard your VG for fear of crit/death, you’ll retire as many beamtero’s and other units as you can to ride darkrex for another vg swing. Beamtero is VERY important here, because without him, Darkrex isn’t hitting anybody for any kind of numbers. One beamtero will always need to be retired by Darkrex for this to work. After that attack, if your opponent hasn’t died or fled the scene in fear of your mighty jaws and gigantic dinosaur schlong, NOW you may spam Squallrex to accel circles, retiring a unit over and over and over again until you run out of CB or the opponent dies. Pretty fun build. Not as consistent as its big turn requires quite a few things to be set into place beforehand, but still a fun deck to try nonetheless.

And that is the actual end of my premium tachi profile. Now remember all the lists shown to you today are just my personal lists that I have worked on. I am not perfect. I am only human. Remember this when looking at them and trying them, because the lists themselves may not be perfect. If you feel something is off, change it and try it out. If it didn’t work, try again. If it did, come back and tell me so we can discuss, because I had SO much fun messing with these decks to see what would fit where, so any improvements would be great to see.

Til next time,

Guzmada