To finish off this week’s Card of the Day, Bushiroad has gifted us with the final two foil cards for Great Nature. These two cats are at very different places on the food chain, but each serves his role well. Third time is supposed to be the charm. Hopefully this is the case this Generation Rares as well, since Great Nature’s first two have been very niche cards.

Artistic Ocelot

[AUTO](VC/RC)[1/Turn]:When this unit attacks a vanguard, choose one of your other rear-guards, and you may have that unit get [Power]+4000 until end of turn. If you do, at the at the end of that turn, retire that unit.

[ACT](RC)[1/Turn] Generation Break 1:[Counter Blast (1)] If you have a vanguard with “Bigbelly” in its card name, choose one of your other rear-guards, it gets [Power]+4000 until end of turn, and at the end of that turn, draw a card, and retire that unit.

Taking a lesson from Binoculus Tiger, Artistic Ocelot gives Great Nature a second RRR Grade 2, and what a doozy it is. Taking another lesson from Binoculus Tiger, Ocelot’s first ability is…well, it’s Binoculus Tiger’s. The justification for what is basically blatant power creep is the fact that Ocelot is limited to being used once per turn where Binoculus is not. Even so, Ocelot does not have Tapir’s restriction of only being usable on Rear Guard. This means that Ocelot is just as useful as Binoculus in the early game, giving you ways to retire units for Mikesaburo and Duckbill. If you are feeling particularly brave, you can run four Binoculus Tiger alongside four Artistic Ocelot to help ensure you have ways to retire your units early in the game.

However, Ocelot’s abilities don’t only stop at being a carbon copy of Binoculus. In addition, locked behind Generation Break 1 as well as requiring a Bigbelly Vanguard, Ocelot has the ability to Counter Blast 1 in order to buff a unit by another 4000 power and net you a draw. This just adds on additional pressure from your already ever-growing Rear Guards and gives you more draw power to live through your opponent’s subsequent turn, if they live through yours.

A downside cards like Binoculus had in the past was the fact that later in the game, the other column was generally spearheaded by Crayon Tiger and you do not necessarily want to be retiring Crayon Tiger. Now though, Great Nature is moving toward a place where you retire your Rear Guards even more often, such as with our new Generation Rare.

Omniscience Dragon, Barawool

[Stride]-Stride Step-[Choose one or more cards with the sum of their grades being 3 or greater from your hand, and discard them] Stride this card on your (VC) from face down.

[ACT](VC)[1/Turn]:[Soul Blast (1) & Choose a face down card from your G zone, and turn it face up] Choose any number of your front row units, and they get “[AUTO](VC/RC):When this unit’s attack hits a vanguard, draw a card.”. Until end of turn, those units get [Power]+4000 for each face up card in your G zone, and at the end of that turn, retire all of your rear-guards chosen due to this effect.

Right off the bat, this card is somewhat reminiscient of Sage-saint Professor, Bigbelly. Bigbelly gives a singular unit 4000 power for every face-up card in your G Zone. However, Barawool does that same thing but does it for as many front-row units as you want. The downside, if you want to consider it one, is that any Rear Guards chosen for this buff must retire at the End Phase. As mentioned above, this lets you more freely assign power buffs to units such as Crayon Tiger that would have given you pause before due to the need to retire them. Now, because those units will be retired by Barawool anyway, there is no reason not to go ahead and stack extra power buffs on top.

The late-game applications of this card are obvious. The more you Stride, unflip, and G Guard, the more powerful your assaults are going to get. A fantastic thing about Barawool is that he also supports your early game. Even though his power buffs will be much smaller earlier in the game, you also have the bonus of giving every one of your attacks the added pressure of netting you an extra draw if it hits. This means that even in the early game, your opponent will be hesitant to take damage in fear of giving you advantage and can sometimes cause them to over-guard earlier in the game, leaving them more open later on.

Before, there may have been some concern that Barawool does not by himself facilitate any multi-attack antics, but we have less worry over that nowadays. Not only do we still have Crayon Tiger, but Bigbelly decks will now be running what are essentially an extra four copies of Crayon Tiger in Astonishing Professor, Bigbelly.

The downsides are that Great Nature still does not have a fantastic out to Lock mechanics or mid-battle retires, but it appears as though Bushiroad is sending us a message that these will just have to be weaknesses we will have to live with.

Great Nature always welcomes more cat units, especially our first new lion in quite some time. We have gone far too long without a king of the jungle.

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