… aka the useless goddess isn’t that useless!

The deck

WS Decks link: Water to Her Mill



Quick stats:

Colors : 100% blue.

: 100% blue. Level 0 = 15 characters

Level 1 = 8 characters

Level 2 = 9 characters

Level 3 = 8 characters

Events = 2

Cards with triggers (excluding CX cards) = 17

Level 0



2x “Troublemaker” Aqua

Your other character in the middle slot of your center stage gets hand encore.

BRAINSTORM: Pay 1 / rest her / flip 4. For each CX revealed, put up to one cost 0 or lower character from the WR to stage.



3x “Significance of Killing Snow Sprites?” Aqua

When she’s played, you may put a card from your hand into your clock to search your deck for up to 1 ::Goddess:: character.



4x “Covered in Snot” Aqua

When she is reversed, put 2 cards from your deck into WR. If there is at least 1 level 2 or higher card among them, you may put her into stock.



4x “Full of Smiles” Aqua

When she’s played, give one of your ::Adventurer:: or ::Goddess:: characters +1500 power for the turn.



2x “Urgent ally Recruitment!” Aqua

During your opponent’s turn, your other character in the middle slot of your center stage gets +1500 power.

BRAINSTORM: Pay 1 / rest her / flip 4. For each CX revealed, you may draw up to 1 card.



Level 1



3x “Sacred Create Water” Aqua

When she’s put into the WR from stage, you may reveal up to 3 cards from your deck. If you reveal at least 1 card, choose an ::Adventurer:: or ::Goddess:: character from the cards you revealed, put it into your hand, put the rest into WR and discard a card from hand to WR.



3x “Sacred Turn Undead” Aqua

If the character she’s facing is a higher level than her, she can’t frontal attack.

When she reverses an opponent, send that character to memory.



2x “Real Goddess?” Aqua

BACKUP 1500, level 1: Drop this to WR.

Level 2



4x “Going All Out!” Aqua

She gets +1000 power for each of your other of characters.

CX COMBO w/ Sacred Break Spell: When she attacks, choose one of your opponent’s front row characters that gets -3000 power and the following ability for the turn: “You can’t play events or backups from hand during battles involving this.”



2x “Heaven is A Dreamy Place?” Aqua

BACKUP 3000, level 2: Pay 1, drop this to WR.



3x “Pride of A Goddess” Aqua

Frontal level assist.

When she’s played, you may discard a card from your hand to WR. If you do, look at up to 4 cards from the top of your deck, take up to 1 ::Adventurer:: or ::Goddess:: character to your hand and put the rest to WR.



2x Sympathy of Eris Sect

Search your deck for up to 2 ::Adventurer:: or ::Goddess:: characters.

Level 3



4x Aqua

Your opponent can’t play backups during battles involving this.

When she’s played, you may pay 1 to return all cards except 2 climaxes from your opponent’s WR back into their deck.

CX COMBO w/ Resurrection: If she’s in the front row when the CX is played, you may discard a card from your hand to put an ::Adventurer:: or ::Goddess:: character from your clock into any slot on stage.



4x “Goddess Who Governs Water” Aqua

Heals on play.

Gets +500 power for each of your other ::Adventurer:: or ::Goddess:: characters.

Climaxes



4x Resurrection

1k1soul, PANTS trigger.



4X Sacred Break Spell

Split 2k1soul (gives +2000 power and +1 soul to 2 characters, no draw effect), 2SOUL trigger.

Analysis

This was the first Kono Suba waifu deck I set out to make: maybe because I just like to play blue (literally all but 1 of my main decks have blue in them) or maybe because I was just really interested to see if the useless goddess had any useful cards: and she does!

Level 0

There are two different brainstormers that both support the middle slot of your center stage, one giving it hand encore and the other +1500 during the opponent’s turn. If you really want to nit pick, a global +500 power might have been more useful, but the deck works fine even without it and often benefits from having that extra 1.5k boost focused on one character instead of having +500 across the board. It’s also worth mentioning that neither of the two brainstorms allow you to search your deck: instead, one is a draw brainstorm and the other lets you get cost 0 or lower characters from your WR on stage, potentially letting you early play any of your level 1s. The lack of a search brainstorm doesn’t really hurt the build because you can easily search for any character in your deck at level 0 with Snow Sprites Aqua‘s effect. While it doesn’t plus your hand, it also doesn’t dig into your stock and it helps you hit level 1 faster!

The main attackers at level 0 are Smiles Aqua who gives +1.5k to a character when she’s played (can be used on herself as well to make her a temporary 3.5k beater) and Snot Aqua which hopefully goes to stock once she is reversed. Given that you get to mill 2 cards and need to hit level 2 or higher, of which there are 19 cards in the deck, it’s pretty likely you’ll get extra stock with her.

Level 1

The level 1 play is a split between utility and power based characters: first off, you have the 1/0 5k Aqua that mills / hand filters when she’s sent to WR – basically a watered-down version of the Re:Edit 1/0 Kirito. Since she won’t be able to kill many other level 1s, hitting level 1 first is really important when playing this deck – but if it doesn’t happen, you can still rely on the 1/0 7k Aqua to reverse your opponent’s characters. Now, this card is kinda weird at first glance: her obvious downside is that she can’t frontal attack higher level characters & we’ve already been introduced to the same type of penalty with the Re:Edit 1/1 8k Asuna, but this doesn’t explain why this Aqua is a 7k character. If we follow the LL Sunshine and BanG Dream examples, it should clearly have only 6.5k, right? Well, the +500 comes from her memory kick effect, which is, in fact, another penalty of its own.

Before anyone gets their panties in a twist about how great it is to have the option to kick reversed characters to memory – I agree. It’s an amazing tool to completely remove some of the opponent’s characters from play, even more so if they have encore. But Aqua’s effect isn’t optional: whatever she reverses goes to memory, whether you want it or not & since that actually compresses your opponent’s deck, they might not even try to outright kill it and instead crash into it on purpose a few times. All in all, the fact that it’s a two-edged sword is the reason why she’s only at 3 copies and not 4: it can be very useful, but I suggest you never play more than two of her at the same time, avoid killing and kicking unnecessary things and most of all, get rid of her as soon as you hit level 2.

Level 2

In terms of power, level 2 offers a nice upgrade! You get access to a frontal level assist that’s also an Akatsuki clone and more importantly, the first climax combo with the 2/1 Aqua which has 10k power if you have a full board (or up to 12k with the aforementioned level assists). Now, I usually don’t like 2k1souls at all – but this climax isn’t the usual 2k1soul we’ve been used to so far: it doesn’t let you draw a card, but it gives the power up to 2 characters! Essentially, that means as long as you have at least two of the 2/1 Aquas for the combo, you’re able to create two 5k gaps in power (+2k to your characters and -3k to their characters). But you can also distribute that power around in any other way needed to kill your opponent’s characters and because the combo blocks events and backups from being used on the chosen characters, this CXC is actually a pretty viable way of killing even bigger level 3s (unless, of course, they’re hex proof). Not to mention that only one of your characters misses out on the +1 soul so you’re not falling far behind in damage either.

Level 3

Both other level 2 cards, the deck search event and the 3k backup, are used to set up your level 3 game and then keep it alive. In contrast with the power you have at level 2, Aqua’s end game seems pretty disappointing since it’s not as much about power as it is about healing. The TD Goddess Who Governs Water is kinda bland with an on-play heal and +500 power for each of your other characters, but the remaining level 3, simply named just Aqua, is ironically less boring when it comes to her effects. It blocks your opponent from playing backups while she’s attacking, it gives you the chance to ruin their compression and most of all, her CXC not only bypasses anti-heal but also gets you extra characters on board, all for the cost of discarding a card from hand to WR, so she suddenly opens a whole new field of possibilities. Play her, play the CX, fill out your board or just play over the characters you don’t need, rinse and repeat – hopefully until you win!

Climaxes

Climaxes are the already discussed split 2k1soul, which I find very fun to play, and a 1k1soul PANTS trigger which makes it easier to always have the needed CX in hand.

Important stuff to keep in mind when playing:

All cards are ::Adventurer:: and ::Goddess::

::Goddess:: All your level 1 characters are costless.

Being the first to hit level 1 is relatively easy with this deck and will do your 1/0 5k Aquas a big favor.

Don’t compress your opponent too much with the 1/0 7k Aqua’s memory kick.

Level 2 has a lot of power. Level 3 not so much without the level assists.

Make sure to keep up your hand size so you can pull of the level 3 heal combo

On an unrelated note, I wanted to mention just how useful the KonoSuba TD+ is if you plan to make this build: it has 4 of the level 0 draw brainstormers, 2 of the 3k backup, 2 of the level assist, 2 of the search event and 2 of the Goddess Who Governs Water level 3.

Possible changes & other card options

You can run this 4k level 0 beater, but I see no reason to because Smiles Aqua can boost herself to 3.5k or boost another level 0 to 4k for the turn for the basically same effect, but that boost remains useful throughout the game while the 4k beater … not so much.

At level 0, you can also play the 3k promo if you wish to build more stock, but generally, stock isn’t a problem with this deck and after level 0, she’s basically a dead card, so keep that in mind. Not to mention that blindstocking in the first few rounds of the game isn’t ideal either.

If you don’t want to risk it with the 1/0 7k Aqua, your best alternatives are “Head of the Axis Sect” Aqua or “Demanding Apology” Aqua

Wanna have that global +500 boost? Sure, there’s a level 1 global support that also lets you pay 2 to heal. Aqua sadly doesn’t have a global +500 at level 0, but she does have this frontal assist which you can also rest to give 1 character an extra +1000 power for the turn.

Obligatory meme because this is Kono Suba after all!

And in case you just want a better blue deck, spare some of the waifu loyalty, add Eris into the mix and play the Goddess deck! (Which I’ll link soon.)

