Premium Watch: Premium Collection 2019

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Today, we will be going over some of the meta changes with the release of Premium Collection 2019, how the builds have changed with each deck, some of the latest tournament results, and some opinions on the progenitor dragons.

Lets go over some of the changes for each clan:

Royal Paladin

Royal Paladins have recieved Saint of Twin Sword, a unit that calls out two G2 units from the deck, as well as giving power to units that are called from the deck.

With this addition to their arsenal, they can play a much more powerful first stride, doing at least 5 attacks. However, with Floral paladin flogal as well as multi-attack enablers such as Llew and Knight of Twin sword, this deck can easily pull off up to 7-8 attacks on the first stride.

One of the common builds for Royal Paladin remains to be Alfred, as calling out a Blaster Blade and Blaster Javelin Larousse with high power onto a force circle allows for easy chaining into Blaster Blade + High Power + Several Flogals to kill the opponent with the attacks.

However, one deck with rising popularity is the Messiahnic Lord Blaster build. While the standard focuses on getting up to massive power and 6 critical, the Premium Standard version forgoes that, instead relying on the blaster name to make riding your main G3 easily, and using the blaster name to access countercharge with Blaster Friend Barcgal, which allows for more chaining of attacks, even in situations with limited counterblast. With the addition of Agnos, the blaster build, with its increased ability to search out its G3s with Wingal Brave, can access Agnos easier than other builds. However, given the decks speed and aggressive capabilities, you can often end the game on the first stride.

Example Decklist: Premium Blasters

Gold Paladin

Ezel: Ezel is a deck that was previously one of the top of the meta, and is poised to only get better. While its new card Spear-Ex dragon doesnt open up as many new competitive builds, it does subtly help the existing Ezel deck by allowing superior stride after using Wonder Ezels/Raven Haired Ezels to still get that stride. A cheap SB1 to call 2 units is also quite cost effective.

Ezel still retains its spot as one of the top meta decks, but not only due to the addition of Gift II. With superior rides, wonder ezel, and raven haired ezel, the ezel decks existing weakness was running out of cards to attack with, but if you play Accel II, this often becomes less of an issue as you are able to superior ride and regain some card advantage.

Shadow Paladin.

Luard Ritual. Luard Ritual is a deck that has held a top spot in the meta over the whole year, thanks to the high card power of its key components such as Dragfall Luard, Dagza, Esras, and Belial Owl.

With the addition of Dragprinciple Morfessa, the deck has gained another powerful finisher. Mofessa gives your whole front row critical, +15k power, and guard restriction at Ritual 10.

This is often used in combination with Dagza, which allows for 4-6 attacks. With the extra critical, you dont need to deal as many hits in to win.

To help this, luard decks have started to play more stand triggers, namely Craiftaine. Craiftaine helps speed up the drop zone needed to achieve ritual 10 by dropping more G1s and G0s, while being a stand trigger to increase the number of attacks you can do with Dagza.

Luard, between its powerful early game thanks to Nemain, Macha, Swordbreaker and Blaster Dark, as well as powerful stride game with Ritual units, Dragfall Luard, and the powerful finisher of Morfessa, remains a mainstay of the format.

Example Decklist: Winner POPsUP02 by Benjamin Thaver

Angel Feather; Angel Gyze

While Angel Feather has recieved Raphael Mythra, it has not done much for the deck, angel Gyze remains in the similar position it was in before.

Genesis: Wiseman Loop

Genesis is a second deck that benefitted only minorly from the new set. Wiseman loop, while powerful enough to continue to be played, its weakness to agressive decks remains the same.

Oracle Think Tank: Ichi-Tom

The new Ichikishima has done a lot for the deck. Not only has it given the deck an excellent first stride, but the power increase that it gives your field allows you to push for damage earlier and set up the kill turn. In fact, there may be many games that you will win without going into the Ichikishima + Silent Tom combo that is the namesake of the deck!

While the deck had weakness to protect clans, the weakness has been removed, as the new Ichikishima allows you to negate protect gift, removing this existing weakness.

Oracle Think Tank has access to draws early as well as ways to draw using their counter blast from the early game, not relying on GB or stride to gain advantage, giving this deck a lot of fighting power in the early game.

Example Decklist: 4th place POPsUP02

Genesis:

Genesis hasn't changed much with the introduction of Amaruda Aphross. The gameplay remains the same for the deck: to aim to pull off the Wiseman-Tahro combo. However, Amaruda Aphross does provide Wiseman a 10k power boost as well as 1 critical, making it easier to kill the opponent once you pull off the loop.

Kagero: Overlord and Blademaster

Kagero recieved Dumjit as their new G Unit in the Premium Collection, a unit that restands when the opponent uses some of their most powerful guard option: sentinels or G guardians. If you stride this, the opponent must heavily consider using any of these options, often times not using them at all and having to take a lot of damage. Kagero also goes excellently with the new Force II, which gives your units an extra critical. This makes your restanding vanguards even more threatening, with 2 critical, its harder to no guard your attacks, and even if they do, you can just attack again with the critical up.

Kagero has two main builds, both of which heavily rely on Denial Griffon to fight against the uptrend of aggressive decks: Overlord, and Blademaster.

Overlord has changed little from the older builds, only taking in Dumjit to its G Zone, but Blademaster, a new addition from The Heroic Evolution, has created a whole new deck on its own.

Blademaster TransAm is a deck that utilizes Blademaster's skill that creates a Vision Token, as well as Stand Triggers that restand that Vision token to deliver the kill with multiple attacks in one turn.

Example Decklist from article by Tokage

Analysis Article Link: https://ameblo.jp/tokagevg/entry-12459737499.html

Narukami

Narukami is a clan that underwent interesting changes following Premium Collection.

While the new Conquest Dragon falls short of the utility of VOLTAGE and VOLTAGEBUSTER, Narukami is kept in the meta by Accel 2, which came out on the same day.

Previously, Narukami had a glaring weakness of inability to maintain hand, as there were next to no options to call units without using your hand, meaning that it had a lot of issues calling units to fill up the accel circles. However, with Accel 2, as well as a rising trend of playing Dragonic Descendant Sigma means that you have much less issue calling units to accel circles.

Accel 2's weakness, that its reduce power boost makes it easy for the opponent to stop your attacks with a single damage trigger, is interestingly not found in Narukami. Narukami's units have various abilities that increase their own power, as well as pump up rear guards power, making the weakness of Accel 2 negligable.

Tachikaze

Tachikaze, while being an unpopular clan, has recieved an incredible boost in Gluttony Nebulos, boosting both Engorge decks, and Equip Gauge decks.

Restanding with Triple drive while retiring two units is a very powerful ability, but the ability to pay with both units as well as equip gauge is fairly important.

The deck centers around the standard deck, using Megarex and other equip guage to gain advantage, while setting up a powerful Gluttony Nebulos.

One of the interesting tech options seen is the use of Great Cannon Dragon, Heavy Arzene, to not only regain advantage when you retire it from rear guard, but also chain into multi-attacks.

The trick is to use Gluttony Nebulos's G-Zone skill to give Arzene the equip guage and turning it engorge instead of feeding another unit to it.

Nubatama:

Nubatama recieved one of the weaker cards in the set: Mujinlord, whom calls two of the opponents face up units from the G Zone to attack. That being said, Nubatama has no reliance on this unit, instead staying with its tried and true strategy of discarding the opponents hand, and using Rinne as their main stride.

Make no mistake, though, nubatama remains one of the most stable decks of the meta at the moment. Just because it is slow does not mean it will not turn the tables on a player easily.

Murakumo:

Murakumo unfortunately did not change very much with the addition of the new Jibarak Victor, with its main strategy either revolving around the infinite loop, or a advantage based beatdown strategy using MUSASHI and Jibarak Victor's skill to string into multiple attacks.

Nova Grappler

Nova Grappler has shown instant results with the new Universe Ace Busterd, topping events on opening weekend.

Revolving around getting mutliple stands during the turn via Raizer Custom, Stand Triggers, on attack stand abilities such as Kick Kick Typhoon and Gosachi.

While it may seem weak in the early game, the deck does use a large number of V series cards, giving it a lot of abilities in the early game, giving it enough utility in the early game to bring the game to striding, enough for you to win.

Similar to Winning Champ Victor opening multiple G Zone to access Favourite Champ Victor for the finish, Universe Ace Bustered allows for a similar play style, using drive checks to maintain your hand before you go in for the win.

Example Decklist: POPsUP02 2nd Place Derek Wan

Link Joker:

Link Joker did not change much with the introduction of Premium Collection's Glueball Avalanche, with Deletor Messiahs and pure Deletors showing the most success of all the builds.

Final Daimax DX:

Dimension Police has changed very little with Final Daimax. While he does enable a lot of deploying from the deck, the lack of control over what is called, as well as general lack of synergy with the existing strategy without creating a new strategy for the clan has resulted in the card, while being quite admirable, fairly lackluster in giving new changes to the Dimension Police clan in the meta.

Violence Ace:

Spike Brothers has recieved a huge boost in their power thanks to Violence Ace. Already a stable and powerful deck owing partially to its destructive first stride while having a high powered early game push, Violence Ace provides a solution to one of Spike Brother's problems: Card Advantage. Classically, spike brothers have had power, but not much solution to lack of Card Advantage. Dirty Picaro was one of the few cards that gained actual card advantage for the deck for a long time. However, with Violence Ace, you can instantly draw into a lot of cards to fuel your assault for the tiny bit longer you need to win.

The second skill to call more units and continue the assault works excellently with Force I gift, as the unit that is called with have high power, but the deck, owing to the already existing high numbers, benefits greatly from Force II to give the deck even more finishing power.

The main deck has changed little, and the play style has changed little, but Spike Brothers remains in its spot as one of the heavy hitting decks of the format.

Gear Chronicle: History Build Dragon

Gear Chronicle recieved a revival in their famed Time Leap build with both the removal of restriction on Ur-Watar and their new stride, History Build Dragon. History Build allows you to time leap units when your vanguard attacks, but most notably, is able to be copied with Chronodragon GG, allowing the player to combine both Chronodragon Nextage with History Build dragon to reach a high number of multi attacks.

The power pump from History Build Dragon can stack up very fast, reaching up to 9k to 12k power pump to all units with time leap.

Instead of playing Chronojet Dragon Z like the ZTB build, the time leap build plays Chronojet Dragon G. Not only does it work well with Chronodragon Nextage to give your whole field a power pump, but as a unit with Time Leap, putting a Chronojet dragon G on rear guard allows it to gain the power pump from History Build. As an added bonus, Chronojet Dragon G on RG also gets a power bonus from being a ZTB.

One of the interesting cards used in the deck is Causality Dragon. When placed, it allows you to pick one unit to give an on-hit time leap ability to.

However, since History Build only looks if the unit has a time leap ability or not, this allows you to selectively give units power during your battle phase, getting over those power lines, especially if the opponent gets a damage trigger.

Example Decklist

Gastille Demonas

Gastille Demonas is a card that has brought Dark Irregulars suddenly back to the forefront of competetive play. It allows you to copy and combine any two units from your decks vanguard skills, giving you access usually to the likes of NoLifeKing and Master of Fifth Element.

It has already started taking wins in tournaments, and has shown a high level of popularity. Usually it will go about either using NoLifeKing to superior ride into Master of Fifth Element (with an extra 12k power from Demonas's skill), and use the two cards together in a high powered 7 attack single turn with first stride, as long as you can get up to 13 soul.

Example Decklist: Winner GPAkiba Qualifier

Darklord Princess

Darklord Princess hasnt changed the Palemoon build much, as the deck still is centered around either the Songstress Loop, or Magia Multi attacks. However, the introduction of Darklord Princess and her connecting directly to the Harri stride allows for easier setup for the plays of the deck, increasing the clans stability and first stride game by a long margin. Even in an absolute Vacuum, Darklord Princess is a restanding vanguard for no cost, and gives you a 4th drive check.

Bermuda Triangle:

Trois Ange has been a dominant force in the Premium Standard meta up until this point, but their new stride Shandee has given rise to a large amount of other decks.

While Trois Ange is by no right out of the running to be a top deck of the new meta, players are gravitating towards the newer Melody-Ange build to take better advantage of Shandee, while compensating for the weakness of Trois Ange: Its weak first stride.

The Melody Ange deck uses Colorful Pastorale Caro and Delight Genius Ange to instantly access stride cost regardless of which G3 you ride, opening up deck space.

As Shandee reaches its maximum output very fast with a full field of Harmony, one of the tech choices for the deck is Garland Blossom Ayna, a unit that can give the Harmony Ability to other rear guards, as well as Gift of Effort Shandee (G2) to not only have a much more powerful early game, but also to increase the number of Harmony units to enable Shandee plays.

Of note, this new deck has extremely high synergy with Balanelena, the Megalanica Nation stride, as you can easily stride into it, as well as search out cost to discard for its effect of retiring guardians.

Granblue:

Big Obadiah is Granblues addition in Premium Collection 2019, a unit that allows you to pinpoint drop any card you want from your deck into your drop zone, then instantly call them back out to the field. This allows for the deck to cut out a lot of cards such as Chappie the Ghostie that were previously used to just speed up drop zone and to get the parts into the drop zone to be revived on first stride.

However, Granblue has yet to come back into the meta, despite getting this powerful support. This is due to both the value of Protect gift going slightly down thanks to Ichitom being now able to work around it, as well as the meta speeding up, punishing slower decks such as Granblue whom rely on a few turns of stride to grind the game out and set up a controlled, calculated win.

Valeos Revive:

Valeos Revive is a card that allows Aquaforce to chain their multi attacks into card advantage, as well as at GB2 onwards, lock out the opponent from getting damage triggers by being stuck at 11k power.

Valeos Revive has not done much for the clan competitively, but there is an article on Tenma's blog going into how to use it well. For now, Aquaforce has yet to break into the meta, and Valeos Revives requiring GB2 onwards to lock the opponent at 11k power does not help the deck much.

Example Decklist, from analysis article by Tenma:

NeoNectar

NeoNectar, with the introduction of Pure Saintess Katrina, has become an aggressive powerhouse deck of the format. The deck gives up the previous bloom playstyle of the Ahsha decks in favor of plant tokens and cards that utilize them in Standard, both to rush in the early game as well as maintain a high powered assault in the stride game.

NeoNectar has solidified itself as one of the agressive decks of the format, while being simple to put together and play.

Not requiring any utility strides, zeroth dragons, or even progenitor dragons, its also on of the cheapest decks of the format.

Example Decklist: Winner VG Arena Fight Palladium

Analysis Article: Premium Watch Plant Token Beatdown

Megacolony

Megacolony has recieved on of the most powerful strides of all of Premium Collection in the form of gredora, which shuts down all of the opponents superior calling from anywhere from hand, as well as forces the opponent to re-ride in order to stand their vanguard. This powerful ability, however, is kept in check by two things: the deck's speed, as well as only shutting down a few decks of the meta.

If you build your deck to better handle the early game rushes, you will find a lot of success with Darkface Gredora decks, as they shut down some of the most powerful decks in the meta: Shadow, Royal, and NeoNectar, while being vulnerable to some of the other decks in the meta that do not call much from outside of hand: Gold Paladin, Kagero, Nubatama, Victor.

Great Nature

Our final clan to go over is Great Nature. Great Nature recieved Managarm, a unit that gives you an uncertain distribution of +10k power and +Drive checks, a unit that ties the clan themes from success, multiple attacks, and random effects due to mill together.

With Managarm, the deck strategy has not changed, but the option for Managarm to get more power or drive checks at an early stage of the game is very much present.

Great Natures win condition remains both beating down with high power while maintaining good card advantage, as well as using the Zoa-Rhino combo to steal wins against an opponent who doesnt see it coming.

Conclusion

We have summarized the changes of all the clans from Premium Collection 2019, with some clans going through a massive overhaul, other clans changing their playstyle, and others yet just receiving a massive boon to their existing strategy.

While the meta will, of course, differ from region to region, with the post Premium Collection, the popular deck choices appear to be: Blaster, IchiTom, Ezel, Luard, Rinne-Crow, Illuminal-Victor, Gastille Combo, Gredora, Trois Ange (Its not gone yet!), and Neo Nectar.

However, in your testing you should not leave out these decks that do hide very impactful power behind a veil of unpopularity: Wiseman Loop, Blademaster TransAm, Murakumo Loop, Dimension Police, Deletor Messiah, Spike Brothers, Magia/Songstress Loop, Granblue, and Great Nature.