Standard Neo Nectar: Playstyle adaptation and transition toward more aggression.



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Today, we will be going over the Neo Nectar Clan in Standard, and specifically, how its playing the deck has changed since its release, and how players are adapting a new build to adapt to the current meta.

When NeoNectar in Standard first came out in October 2018, the deck was very much focused around Cecilia's ability to call units and power up the front row, giving high powered attacks to all columns while filling up the field with ease.

Additionally, with an early game of Sylvias calling plant tokens, Irminsur to provide draw and high power to maintain a large hand while attacking, this allowed NeoNectar to secure itself as one of the best Force clans of the meta.

This is an example decklist, one that was widely used when Neo Nectar first came out.

This build had two key focuses: Plant Token Production, and Converting Field into Guard.

While Plant token production is fairly straightforward: Use skills to call free booster units or units to be retired by retire effects instead of using cards from hand, the concept of converting field into guard may not be as evident.

With Neo Nectar, the game plan is to be able to ride to Cecilia as your second G3 ride, allowing you to counterblast 1, retire 1 rear guard to superior call three units to your field, and pump your frontrow by +10k.

This is indeed a very powerful ability, but one of the downside to the skill is how while this does call you two more cards to your field, it does not help with getting cards into hand, as well as the advantage gained is limited by the number of rear guard circles you have.

For example, if you have 4 rear guards, you would be able to only get a +1 off of Cecilias skill, as you would only have two open rear guard circles to call into, unless you were to further minus yourself by calling over an existing unit.

The way to combat this is to instead put more focus on Converting Field into Guard , to get a field with cecilia, hit the opponent, then on the next turn be able to have more than just your drive checks to guard with.

The three key cards for this idea are:

Exploding Tomato, Maiden of Salix, and Lily of the Valley Musketeer Rebecca.

Exploding Tomato is used for its first skill, to sacrifice plant tokens to draw a card, and get a power increase for the turn. By Using this skill every turn, be it on rear guard or vanguard, you can get one extra card into your hand, while maintaining the offence. Even if its retired for its own skill or by the opponent, you can easily call out another one. With cecilia calling out units, you just need to maintain a steady stream of token generators to keep drawing cards.

Maiden of Salix is cards that often times is reduced in number in favor of Sunlight Gardens Guide, but as a 10k interceptor, if she is called off of Cecilia, gives you another 10k shield to use as guard. As it doesnt matter how many units are left on your board at the end of the opponents attack, as long as you can use Cecilia, Salix had a role in the deck to make it even harder to kill. After all, the difference between a 10k guard in your hand and a 10k guard as your g2 interept is in several matchups fairly minimal.

The third card that was used was Lily of the Valley Musketeer Rebecca, a unit that can return to the hand at the end phase, by retiring one plant token.

While players may see this as a heavy cost to pay only to re-use the +5k on place skill, he ability makes a lot of sense when combined with Cecilia.

Call her with Cecilia as a boosting unit, and use her on place skill to power up another column. Then, at the end phase, you return her to hand, giving you effectively another 10k shield into your hand to guard with.

Do note that even without the focus on her return to hand skill, she is still a valuable part of the deck, as the +5k to another g1 or less unit will allow for the increasing of power lines on any turn, helping fix your attacks and power columns to hit the magic numbers early.

Combined together, this strategy has proven to be effective and easy to pilot, giving NeoNectar multiple tops at standard events since its first release.

Some examples of decks built to this style that won or topped BCSs and other tournaments are:







2nd Place BCS Mexico, as piloted by Juan Antonio Brambila Ramirez and BCS Singapore 2nd place, piloted by Gavriel Teo

This is the decklist used by the player who won NeoNectar Clan Leader at Vangasai2019 in May.

for those interested, his article on the deck and playing is found here (Japanese Article)

ネオネク雑記「大ヴァンガ祭2019クランリーダー（スタンダード）ネオネクレシピ・プレイング」 : ズー支部長でネオネク民な虹色花園

Notice his increased count of Spinach Advisor as well as Corolla Dragon compared to previous builds, highlighting the trend away from the older, slower and more advantage oriented style and towards a more beatdown style.

This strategyworked, and it worked well, very well. For a time.

With more and more sets coming out, NeoNectar held its own against other clans, being particularly powerful in the Force matchup, struggling mainly against Angel Feather.

However, with the release of Bermuda Triangle and the Melody deck taking over metagames all across the globe, as well as other decks such as Murakumo, Shadow Paladin and others increasing their speed of aggression, the strategy of sitting on Cecilia for several turns on end to farm advantage became less and less of an option, as opponents would not allow you to get that opportunity to keep using Cecilia for many turns, and players with winning deck recipes started looking for a solution to combat the faster meta.

Early game momentum is very important against decks in the meta such as Kagero, and Bermudas low G1 count and high G3 count make it sometimes hard to guard against early game attacks. This style of deck aims to grab its wins by pushing early, getting in damage early, and forcing your opponent to deal with larger and larger power lanes as the turns progress, making it harder for them to guard, while you have the momentum from early game to be able to no guard a few big attacks they throw at you to buy enough time for you to win. This the key concept the newer style is focused on, Plant Token Creation combined with Early Game Momentum.

Some of the earlier changes can be seen with the adoption of more copies of Corolla Dragon, a G1 unit that gains 3k every time a unit is superior called. This includes plant tokens, allowing it to pump up power, and more importantly, get over power lines from much earlier in the game. With a corolla dragon on board, it becomes easier to push for damage earlier in the game, even if the opponent gets a damage trigger, an issue the deck previously had if you spend the G2 turn creating many plant tokens.





As you can see from this example decklist from BCS Malaysia 2nd place, piloted by Hong Wai, the deck still played Exploding Tomato alongside Cecilia, but has started to play more copies of Corolla Dragon.

Source: Joshua "Accel Circle" Lee





Another example of players preferring to speed up their deck speed and being rewarded for it was Joshua "Accel Circle" Lee's 3rd place NeoNectar deck from BCS World Finals, playing up 2 Corolla Dragon and bringing in Maiden of Trailing Rose, another card that was brought in to accelerate the decks speed, a card that often would not be played until later on into the Neo Nectars evolution to match the meta.

The second big change to the deck was removing Sunlight Gardens Guide, instead replacing it with Lily of the Valley Musketeer Kaivant

While Sunlight Gardens Guide is incredibly useful in the early game to get a field of plant tokens, some players have started adopting the use of Kaivant to instead gain power and launch an earlier aggression.

Kaivant, with two plant tokens, gets to 20k power on its own, allowing it to hit magic numbers on the g2 turn, as well as still hit for high numbers on the g2 turn should the opponent open a damage trigger. This, combined with being able to work well when being called off of Cecilia, as well as getting at least a 10k power bump from Maiden of Trailing Rose's 2 plant tokens always makes Kaivant a high powered attacker to reckon with, regardless of whether or not it gets the force gift on its circle, allowing you to distribute power equally across your board without dedicating a force gift to it.

The final change the deck has made is the removal or reduction of number of Exploding Tomato, instead bringing on board Maiden of Trailing Rose.



Trailing rose has two abilities: To call plant tokens, as well as to give plant tokens power. Of note, when you use her abiliy, even on an empty board, you can call two plant tokens into one column, give each 5k, and give the force gift to that column to create an easy 30k column for the low cost of one soul, with another 5k power to another plant to spare. This allows you to easily create a field on first ride, and a field that does not get stopped by damage triggers.

By giving 5k power to the plant tokens, it makes the effective 10k boosters. 10k booster units are not to be underestimated either, as they get many units over that magic number line, forcing a high value guard that will be hard for the opponent to pay for.

Of note, she works well with a corolla dragon that is already on the board. Calling at least 2 plants, this brings Corolla Dragon up to 14k power. Combine this with a plant token in front of Corolla Dragon (lets say, to replace an intercept that you used the last turn), and give it 5k power. This creates a 24k column, forcing the opponent to guard with 15k shield, even before taking into account the force marker.

As you are able to construct a field with Cecilia the next turn, it doesn’t matter much what units are on your board, as they will eventually be retired and replaced with other units during the course of Cecilia using her skill, so its quite common to see the next turn, retiring the plant token and calling 3 rear guards, giving corolla a 9k boost, bringing it up to 17k power. Combined with a 10k G2, this creates a 27k power line. Give it the 10k from Cecilia skill and you have a magic 37k power line (35k shield against a Protect/Accel Clan). This ease of constructing power lines is one of Corolla Dragons greatest selling points, and playing more Maiden of Trailing Rose only fits right into the more agressive playstyle.





Here we have a the first place NeoNectar decklist from BCS Atlanta, piloted by Nicole "Snips" Labrador.

Source:

https://twitter.com/KevinAjolt/status/1115106902114017280

Even in the same event, the 2nd place also played NeoNectar, piloted by Eric Zurita, also featuring this aggressive style playing Kaivants and a high number of Corolla Dragons.

Note how Eric plays the Exploding Tomato, both to get more power on the Corolla Dragon as well keeping the advantage farm option open. To compensate, he plays 4 Fruits Basket Elf.

Exploding Tomato, while boasting as much power as Maiden of Trailing Rose, nor its distribution, is still fomidible in being able to pump up your vanguard to 23k power on first ride while still drawing you cards.

Immediately following this, we can see a trend most obvious in America of players taking up this new build and playstyle, and having a lot of success with it.

Source: Solemn Vanguard Channel.

BCS New York Top 4 Clan Distribution. 3/4 Teams playing NeoNectar, 4/4 Teams playing Bermuda Triangle Melody

Putting it all together, this is my own build for Neo Nectar Standard.

Because of Maiden of Trailing Rose, I've reduce the number of Fruits Basket Elf in the deck, while maintaining the count for Corolla Dragon.

Even with the reduced G3 count, with Irminsur being more stable to draw cards (thanks to Trailing Rose), I can be more confident in my ability to draw into cecilia by the second ride.

By calling Corolla Dragons early to keep the pressure on, it allows several lines to always be hitting the opponent, and the increased G1 count allows for the assault to start even earlier, when either player is G1.

I hope you all have enjoyed learning about the newer style of Neo Nectar in Standard. Do give it a try and see how the more aggressive play style works in your favor against decks such as Kagero and Bermuda Triangle. You very much may see an increase in your win rate with the momentum you build from the early turns.