Water/Lightning Fusoya
Hi guys, my name is Brian Ng. I’m a regular at the Trials of Zodiac Braves circuit series in Northern California, and here to share and breakdown some interesting decks. Today, we’re going over Water/Lightning Fusoya.
Basic gameplay:
Primarily, you want to be abusing Fusoya to convert your health points to board control. In addition, you play cards to stack EXs at the top of the deck before using Fusoya so you get additional value off as many Fusoya activations as possible. Cuchulainn + Fusoya to remove a single forward and draw a card, or Odin + Fusoya to remove a big and small/medium power forward.
Without Fusoya, you can still push with smaller forwards and trade up by utilizing Rygdea, Onion Knight, etc. Or utilize Famfrit to trade smaller forwards for larger ones.
Fusoya:
The main engine of the deck. As previously mentioned, Fusoya allows you to utilize your health points to control the board. The majority of summons that you run also are able to combo with Fusoya to get additional value from each Fusoya activation.
You typically want to use your card draw to dig for Fusoya, and Artemicion/Merylweb to dig for Fusoya or filter out extra copies from your hand later.
Stacking summons:
Ephemeral summoner, Lightning, Seymour
Stacks summons to combo with Fusoya. Can also stack Famfrit or Odins to deter opponent’s attack.
You generally want to stack Cuchulainn to get card advantage and remove an expensive forward. If your opponent’s board is 2-3 forwards, you can potentially use Lightning to stack Odin to remove more than 1 forward off a single Fusoya activation. Once in a while, you’ll draw an extra copy of Seymour and get a cheaper Raiden cast (see combo section below).
Damage/Power Reduction Forwards:
Rygdea, Onion Knight, Black Waltz 3, Cloud of Darkness
-Most of the time combo with other effects to remove a forward. Also can use to trade out forwards since your forwards tend to be lower in power. After combat, during Main Phase 2 target damaged forwards and replace your forward that you lost during combat.
Situational Cards:
Halicarnassus, Tidus
-Halicarnassus can help you to deal with some problematic forwards for the deck. Forwards that cannot be targeted by abilities or punish you for targeting (O6 Zidane and Dadaluma specifically). Considering increasing to 2x in the deck if your meta has a lot of these cards.
-Tidus is a big body that enables the reuse of ETBs (Enter the Battlefield effects). Strong targets are Seymour, Leila, Ephemeral Summoner, Halicarnassus, and Artemicion.
Card Advantage: Leila, Viking
-Pretty straight forward. Helps you to draw additional cards and provide cheap bodies to push damage after you remove opposing forwards.
Combos:
-Tidus + <X>. Tidus’ ETB enables repeated use of cards to search for answers (Artemicion/Merylweb/Oracle/Baderon), put EXs or extra copies of Fusoya back into the deck (Artemicion), or replay Ephemeral Summoner/Lightning/Seymour to stack EXs and develop a 9k body.
-Seymour special to cast raiden for cheap. If you have a Seymour on board, and have Seymour + Tidus in hand, for 10 cp (instead of 9 to cast Raiden) you can play tidus to bounce Seymour and replay it to stack Raiden on top of the deck + cast raiden while develop a 9k.
-Halicarnassus + single target removal or Cyclops to kill vikings and deny the card draw.
-Halicarnassus + Fusoya to kill problematic forwards (O6 Zidane, Dadaluma, or Galdes).
-Seymour (or other summon stacking card) + Famfrit a viking to draw the summon to cast or save for later turns. Acts like a summon searcher in situations where you really need to draw a specific summon.
Flex Slots:
Black Waltz 3, Raiden, Merylweb, Black Mage, Halicarnassus
-Black Waltz 3’s power reduction is small, so it’s not always relevant. But there are some cases where power reduction is much more relevant than damage
-Raiden is clunky, probably better as a 1 of.
-Merylweb could be Oracle/Baderon
-Black mage is situationally useful. But a lot of times just gets played as vanilla 2 drop backup early. Might be better as something else that can get value later.
-Halicarnassus isn’t always necessary. You can always focus on removing all the other forwards on the board and use Famfrit to remove the last one you’re having difficulty targeting.
Potential Tech/Alternative Cards:
Leviathan, Thordan, Garland, Cyclops, Dycedarg, Pupu, Oracle, Baderon, Odin
-Leviathan for more tempo instead of removal. Could be an easy switch for Raiden. I would probably favor either O1 over O7 Leviathan, but it depends if you can think of situations where you would want to stack Leviathan over Cuchulainn with Ephemeral summoner or Seymour.
-Thordan can help to find your Fusoya early. Could consider running 2 Fusoya and 1 Thordan, but seems like it would be too slow.
-Garland is a good defensive forward. The forwards in the deck are generally low power wise, so having strong blocker like Garland might be helpful to stifle early aggression
-Cyclops is more of a meta call. If you see a lot of smaller forwards you can tech this in to help clear wide boards. Has some potential use with Seymour and Fusoya, though it doesn’t generate you any card advantage like Cuchulainn and doesn’t remove a forward on it’s own like Odin.
-Dycedarg is an interesting choice to be more aggressive. His on break effect can help remove a large forward or sometimes enable removing an additional forward. Notably his on break effect only targets active forwards, so it is usually much better when attacking rather than defending.
-Pupu can help to get rid of extra copies of Fusoya and refill your hand.
-Oracle helps to filter the deck so you draw more of what you want. It is more or less the same as Merylweb. The notable benefit over Merylweb is it doesn’t push you towards decking out, which is a real concern for any Leila + Viking deck.
-Baderon is similar to Merylweb and Oracle where it helps you fitler for the cards you want. High consideration to try to use Baderon and run 2x Fusoya since Baderon allows you to see so many cards. It is probably slower to get your Fusoya down though.
-4 drop Odin does not have EX, but is very efficient to remove some problematic forwards. Namely O6 Zidane and Dadaluma. Can also remove Yuri, Zemus, and other forwards that rely on sticking to the board for multiple turns to generate value.
Closing:
Hope you all give the deck a try, there’s a lot of card interactions and cool combos. And of course, it’s a lot of fun to play. If you have any ideas for decks to breakdown or other content ideas, leave us a comment. Thanks for reading.