It’s about time I start bringing up some more advanced topics for higher level players to think about. The first one being if you should play a character and attack or just pass turn after you clock going first.

This is something I hardly see players do in the North America region. I’m not sure if it’s because they don’t see the advantage they gain from it or maybe they just like playing aggressively. Lets take a look at the advantages of just clocking and passing turn.

One of the major reasons this is viable is that it builds you handsize while you don’t have to commit to your field for a turn. Weiss Schwarz comes down to hand advantage a lot of the time and putting your opponent in a position that they have to clock to play cards. This is why a lot of decks like Rewrite and Vividred do so well, their on field power +counters is tough to get over making your opponent ram things in if they plan to get any damage done. Another advantage is that you are able to react to your opponent. When you go first and play a character with little to no survivability in the front row, you are opening yourself up to slowly fall behind in the hand advantage war. You are trading your 1 hand for 1 stock in this case. There are a lot of decks that need to attack because of their play style or stock requirement at 1, but some decks don’t need this as bad. Look at decks like Disgaea, SAO, and Madoka these decks don’t mind slow rolling at level 0 especially if they get to go first.

Decks that WANT to be level 1 before their opponent. These decks you’ll gladly give up an attack for hand advantage and more damage so you can easily take control of the game at level 1. Decks like SAO love to abuse this so they can get their marker Asuna out and start building markers to overwhelm their opponent off their field of level 0 characters.

Lets take a step back though and talk about when you shouldn’t be doing this. If your opening hand has a solo character that gains power AND a level/can’t be reversed by auto abilities, You should consider playing the card. These cards are usually pretty tough to get over and can start building you hand advantage if your opponent can’t hand it. Also in situations you can play a runner, you should do so. Runners are probably some of the best if not THE best level 0 to have in a deck. They build you hand advantage while making sure your opponent still deals more damage to you so you can hit level 1 faster.

Countering the clock go strategy. In most cases if your opponent does this and you have no solid level 0 to play, you might consider doing the same forcing your opponent to play and attack you. Worst case is that they pass turn again and you both just sit there building up hand size and taking level 0 slowly. There is usually no real reason not to just pass turn when your opponents opening move is to clock pass turn unless you need stock or you know that your deck needs to play aggressively and win the damage war.

Next time you go first, consider how your deck wants to play out early game and level 1. This might slightly tip the odds in your favor. If you’re unsure about this strategy just give it a shot and see how it works out for you.