Gekiha Dan – Episode 18

Nothing much to lead in here, we’re now on Episode 18, and as mentioned consistently before, it’s now time for Clackey Ray to get involved.

And the nonsense starts immediately, as apparently Clackey Ray is capable of biting hearts into Apples the size of his god damn head.

Just… Just take me to the Episode Title

…Oh… Oh I remember this.

Oh this is going to be incredibly fun.

So, as indicated by the title, yes, the featured strategy of our opponent is going to be a One Turn Kill. That is, the opponent is going to employ a strategy that eliminates the opponent in a single turn.

Naturally, Players of Batosupi in this world need to get their cards from somewhere, and as Cards can be used to settle disputes here, it’s possible they would be quite popular to have.

Clackey however, has absolutely zero interest in engaging with the cards the same way Dan and Zungurii do.

Clackey’s Deck is comprised of cards he specifically likes, when your likes are, let’s say, picky, it becomes easy to be disinterested in looking at a mass of cards because you will be unlikely to find anything you like even with that many options.

…Infact more options can make it harder to decide what you like from among them, it’s a concept called overchoice, the potential to make an incorrect choice is larger when you have more of them to choose from, so it becomes more difficult to make a distinct selection from more choices, even when it’s something subjective like “What cards you like”

Clackey strikes me as anti-stress, he’d get it.

Granted, no one’s listening to him talk about himself, so sucks to be him.

We interrupt this casual stroll to give you a situation involving the return of Dark King Jin.

I love the idea of trying to make the subtitled titles sound cool… But it does bother me a little bit that “Gekitotsu-Ou” and “Mei-Ou” have the “Ou” (King/Emperor, etc) translated 2 different ways.

I suppose it’s contextual but come on.

The small kid Jin was holding onto just turned his bollocks into mashed potatoes.

The child’s immediate dart behind Clackey seems to make Jin believe that they’re in cahoots.

…Well, for how hard he purports to be, Jin really doesn’t have any resilience in an actual fight, guy’s filled to the brim with Hot air.

I’ll skip the big long introduction, but essentially, she says she’s “The First Imperial Princess of the Astoria Family, Former Instructors of Battle Spirits”

Essentially her family appears to be one of the main people who taught the game to others I guess?

We now skip to Seiru slapping the table like it insulted her and making a meaningful request to Dan.

That seems like a reasonable request, but… Aren’t you from a family of instructors?

WHY!?

WHY ON OTHERWORLD’S 6 FUCKING WORLDS WOULD TEACHING SOMEONE BATTLE SPIRITS BE “EXCESSIVE?!”

Dan raises the point that someone else could teach her, though his reasoning misses the whole point of INSTRUCTOR FAMILY.

Okay, so distant from her mother and father.

Figures, the only available instructors who would be willing to teach her aren’t about.

Once again, why is Dan protesting teaching her Battle Spirits?

It appears Seiru has a purpose for learning however, she wants to be strong in order to enter the Tournament.

It probably wasn’t clear earlier if you weren’t having a keen eye, but Seiru was actually holding onto a set of Purple cards that Jin wrenched out of her hands, one card was Jin’s main card for his battle with Dan, The HellFighter Balam

-Audible Snorting noises-

I would describe Jin’s deck as many things, but containing strong cards is certainly not one of them.

In spite of his rather loud… everything, Jin is actually quite modest, he knows what his limits are, be it intelligence or ability. He’s an abundance of uncontrolled passion.

Jin flashes back to a battle he was having in the Gunslinger it seems. He’s opened his first move with The Depths of the Netherworld, not a bad start.

It seems like Jin’s opponent, who’s giving me some real Char vibes not gonna lie, has declared he’ll win in a single turn.

Jin is visibly irate from the suggestion that he’s going to lose already.

This is a weird analogy, but essentially, it doesn’t matter how strong or how pretty something is if it perishes anyway.

…And the guy follows up with Goradon, 2 Erimakilizards, Lizardedge and Rokceratops (who’s cost reduction makes it Cost 0), amassing 5 Spirits all for no cost, maintained by a single core each.

That’s right, behold people, an anime portrayal of an incredibly infuriating playstyle, Weenie Rush.

A Low cost deck that abuses the existence and re-occurance of Cost 0 cards or cards that can make themselves Cost 0 by having a single symbol on board, provided the opponent doesn’t play a card they can defend with on turn 1, such as a Nexus, you win the game the second your turn comes because the opponent can’t defend against it.

You might think the answer is simply to play a Spirit, but your spirits are likely to be of equivalent quality as these, and if they are Cost 3, you’ll only defend one attack, if you’re unable to amass a worthwhile defense following, you’ll lose the turn after.

It’s a deck that produces an incredibly uninteractive game state, in the sense that you either have an answer to it or you don’t. It flies in the face of the concept of consistency.

Nowadays this would be impossible however due to the introduction of new card types that each make this kind of strategy worthless, it’s still annoying if you’re not prepared for it.

Naturally, a Battler’s title is very strongly associated with their playstyle. This particular technique is apparently the hallmark of the name in the Title, Lightspeed Shula, and also because of that title, we know that Shula is going to be Clackey’s opponent.

Based, my guy doesn’t browse Otherworld Social Media.

Shula then proceeds to apparently BREAK THE SPEED LIMIT by exhausting all of his cards by gliding his finger across them.

Look at those FRAMES.

And with that, Jin loses 5 lives one after another, losing him the game.

It seems Lightspeed Shula’s strategy is likened to that of a Meteor Shower, 5 small hits colliding all at once.

Decks like that are indeed scary, but worse still, they have the very irritating downside of being incredibly unfun to play against.

Losing a game within the first turn based on whether or not you drew something to answer that specific strategy are not good moments to have, and a game where that kind of win condition is common has a glaring design flaw.

Battle Spirits has various answers to the problem now, so attempting it nowadays would get you precisely nowhere. There are similar strategies that also win in few turns but they can never win on your first.

Battle Spirits Saga, though I loathe to talk about it for personal reasons, got around this issue early on by very seldom printing cards with a Cost of 0, they eventually did but they introduced one of the anti-weenie card types incredibly early that put a stop to that kind of strategy.

I’d say Dan and Zungurii were gossiping about Jin behind his back, but my guy is directly infront of them.

I’m with Jin on this one, it’s incredibly unfair to treat him that harshly given he wanted to participate and win the tournament just like any other player.

And he lost to one of the most out-of-buttfuck-nowhere strategies he could have possibly run into.

Jin’s loss to that deck isn’t a very clear indicator of his skill or deck building because he had only 5 cards, 5 chances to draw an answer from a deck of 40.

If one such answer existed, and those answers happened to be entirely contained in the other 35 cards, he was boned even if he did prepare.

“Escalators can never break, they simply become stairs”

Yeah I can make deep-ass quotes too.

Jokes aside it looks like that particular phrase sparked a memory within Seiru

So we see a Flashback in which a young Seiru is deeply upset because she can’t defeat her Brother, she assumes it’s because the cards she is currently wielding are too weak and that she would win with stronger ones.

It appears that this is hinting that her brother is infact Shula, her Brother in this instance demonstrates his analogy, by stating that though a pretty ring with a shiny rock, and a regular, dusty old stone, were both dropped into water, both sank the same, and settled on the same level.

In the grand scheme of things, when push came to shove, what they were and how much they were valued meant nothing when both drowned in water.

He then says that cards are the same, and that victory is not determined simply by the rarity of a card.

…So who wants me to rip into this ideology?

First I’ll say what’s good about his example, yes, rare cards don’t win you games by themselves, and it is possible to win with a deck comprised completely of common, unwanted cost 0s.

But his analogy fails, yes, a pretty rock and a stone both are meaningless when it comes to drowning at the bottom of the ocean, their value means nothing… But their value has meaning when used for their intended purpose, a pretty rock excels much better at being pretty than a rock does.

Applied to Battle Spirits, cards are intended to be played with and are given differing values which differentiates how they’re played and how they affect play. Sure, once you lose it doesn’t matter how many rare cards you loaded your deck with, but stronger cards make it easier to win, and make you less likely to lose. This value isn’t determined by a card’s rarity but it is determined by a card’s power which will be informed by a card’s Rarity.

The Weenie Rush is strong because it attempts to win the game before anything of value can be created. It has the lowest inevitability of any deck in the game and is the beatdown of any game by default.

It does not take a lot, at all, to prevent it from achieving that goal, it’s simply impossible to do consistently. But once it’s done, the deck folds, it has no more plays, it cannot remain in the game. And because of it’s low value, there are many cards, with value limitations like BP destruction, where those cards fall within the scope of.

Shula’s been lucky to not have been answered so far, but the second he is capable of being answered, he will be out of the tournament, there might be a world where he wins the tournament, but there for sure are not many of them on account of the glaring weakness of his deck.

Seiru doesn’t understand the depth of the analogy, but she says that she will try, she seems to have kept the analogy close to the forefront of her mind at least which is a good start.

Either way, Seiru is given a present by her Brother, if you can just about make out the text, you’ll realize that’s a Cost 7 Yellow Spirit by the name of The ArcAngelia Isfiel.

Yep, it’s to find her missing Brother. Which Clackey concludes

Lady you said your Brother was missing, and you wanted to enter a Tournament and then waxed lyrical about a Story about said Brother where he tried to help you learn Battle Spirits.

THE FUCKING DOTS WERE IN A STRAIGHT LINE.

One thing I like Clackey doing here is that he’s not treating Seiru differently because she’s younger, a lot of people infantalize children who are very clearly dealing with a relatively mature problem, Clackey here isn’t treating her like a Brat, he’s treating her as he would anyone else… Or at least any other woman.

So we cut to a match Brustrom is involved in and what the fuck is this board?

There is not a single card beneath Cost 5 here. Sweet jesus.

No colour matching between the lot either. Obviously this is trying to paint Brustrom as a big X-Rare buff, by having him wield cards from the first series, the only missing colour of X-Rare here is Purple, but Desperado would likely make no sense and Destlord I guess was too low cost?

He’s playing against Suzuri, who appears to have a very loaded Trash, and many many low cost spirits in play. Given that there is no Trash pile on Brustrom’s field it would be very easy to conclude that Suzuri let Brustrom win.

I know I spent a long time raking Shula over the coals for his ideology being wrong but this isn’t correct either.

The most cohesive, impactful and consistent strategy is what determines the odds of a Battle Spirits game, the victor however, beyond that metagame preparation, is determined by how the cards are played.

No amount of skill will save a terrible deck, and no amount of powerful cards will make up for poor skill, that is because good cards and good skill are both required to execute powerful and complex strategies, all must be above a certain baseline, then all that’s left is the game.

…This however I can’t argue with, making a finishing attack with a pretty card is always cool.

Also it looks like Brustrom gave Suzuri a copy of The TwinRowdy Diranos, further indicating that Suzuri let Brustrom win.

It appears that Brustrom has a problem with Shula in particular, I can’t imagine what the difference might be…

If you’re noticing a change in the subtitles now, That’s because I’ve gotten a hold of a more convenient player with which to actually take these.

Anyway, Brustrom comments that Shula’s deck should be confiscated…

For what reason?

Hoo boy, I’m not about to get into the weeds of taking away people’s decks because they’re not expensive enough.

It’d be like kicking someone out of a restaurant because they didn’t spend buy an expensive enough menu item. If you weren’t content with them buying only that item, don’t offer it as an option.

Applied to cards, the deck is allowed to exist, so he should be free to wield it.

The only thing absurd about this guy is the reading on his weighing scales.

Shula has broken into Brustrom’s room, he appears to be spying on The ArcAngelia Isfiel.

We then flashback to Brustrom throwing a shitfit about… something.

It seems Shula vehemently disagrees with the way Battle Spirits cards are being wielded by Otherworld King to suppress others, and so seems to have protested against Brustrom in some way.

How he’s done so is not clear.

It appears that Brustrom retaliated to this protest by ransacking the Astoria Estate and confiscating every last card they could find.

This feels like a more adequate explanation for why no one at home can teach Seiru Battle Spirits than the one she gave, they don’t have any cards to teach her with.

It also explains why Seiru felt the need to try and steal a deck, she has no cards to forge one of her own.

And thus, Shula became a complete Edgelord, can respect.

And thus the brother became Lightspeed Shula, one who vows revenge on Brustrom.

…Wielding a Deck of nothing but Weenies.

Sexy?

No! Galaxy!

“Gala-hotter” is an interesting way of translating Galaxy’s use of “Galaxy” right before certain words, I probably would have gone with “Galactically Hotter”

What bloody tipped you off? The several minutes of exposition showing the audience Shula’s your brother?

Oh don’t insult me Zungurii, you don’t stop Battle Spirits, no one leaves until I see 5 broken holes where Core used to be.

It seems Clackey has made an agreement with Seiru to fight in her stead.

Shula once again declares his victory as he did with Jin. He declares he’ll defeat Clackey in a single turn.

Clackey has an interesting way of being dismissive of his opponents, he’s doing this for a selfless reason but he’s acting selfish to rile them up and break their flow

Clackey informs Shula that he’s made a promise with his sister, and is aware of the history leading Shula to where he is now.

Shula naturally has never met Clackey in his life, so he’s understandably irate that someone who under any other circumstance should know nothing about his past is standing in his way as if he’s personally involved.

Release!

Looks like Clackey’s going first, which is unfortunate as this is the ideal situation for Shula, Shula wouldn’t be able to win on his first move.

Serge inquires about Mai not watching but Mai basically ignores the battle, asking Serge to let her know if something “Good happens”

I can empathise, being a blogger myself but uh… bitch.

And it’s the worst case scenario, Clackey throws out a Nexus for his opening move, a new Nexus mind you, The Miraculous Hill, but a Nexus nonetheless…

A Cost 3 Yellow Nexus from BS04 that supports Divine Spirits, it’s designed to make them a little stronger and, later on, make it so that they aren’t sent to the Trash when defeated.

This synergizes well with Divine Spirits who have effects when they’re summoned.

Oh piss off Galaxy, unless he had a Cost 0 in his hand, that was all he was EVER going to do…

Maybe a Cost 1 too but even so!

Have you tried moving your bangs out of your face? Might help.

Shula reminds Clackey that he declared he’d win in a single turn, and if he’s prepared.

Shula’s turn, I can’t be bothered saying all the names so I’ll let Galaxy do it for me.

Anyway, Shula summons 5 weenies, all at Lv1.

Shula does the unthinkable entirely thinkable and somewhat predictable action of attacking with all 5 spirits.

Welp, the win con is here, how will Clackey react?

Clackey takes 4 of the 5 attacks from his life.

On the last attack, Clackey fires Mist Curtain, declaring the last Erimakilizard, meaning it can’t reduce his life this turn.

Magnificently would have probably left him with more than one life remaining.

My guy Clackey needs a Board wipe or a LOT of spirits… like, STAT.

See through you- My guy you’re a BLOODY WINDOW.

You straight up told him you’d win this turn, you were about as Opaque as a Glass of water!

Oh now Mai’s watching. Didn’t take her long to get invested in the GAME HER BLOG IS ABOUT!

Hyoudo out here being dismissive as ever, why do you think this battle’s pointless Hyoudo?

Hyoudo seems to be dismissing the battle outright because Shula’s constructed a deck that functionally has the most simple strategy a Battle Spirits deck can have. There’s nothing to be learnt from the battle in question.

Dan’s also precisely correct, this Battle actually has nothing to do with depth or skill, Shula’s attempting to obtain victory using a deck of commons, but the downside to his method is that the deck produces precisely 0 opportunity for a Battle style. There are no decisions, preferences, what have you, there is only one particular course of action when wielding it, which makes it worthy of criticism and incredibly boring.

Essentially, the deck operates in a manner known as “Set Play”

“Set Play” is a term used to refer to a deck that essentially never has to make a decision between actions, you will always play the same cards, reach the same end state, and once all the boxes off the list of things the deck needs to do to win is done, you win the game. And the deck will never deviate from these decisions.

Decks that follow “Set play” do not hold a battle style, there is no way of battling they’re suited for, there is only the list of actions needed to be taken for victory, which is what Shula is doing, following the singular thing his deck is designed to do.

Dan’s issue is, likely, that the deck holds no soul, no personality, and no opportunity for expression.

It appears that Brustrom’s irritation earlier was due to Shula defeating Brustrom in exactly the manner he’s utilizing now, Brustrom retaliated as he did.

In order to restore Astoria castle, Shula entered the Tournament and planned to use the Wish granted to Battle Brustrom and essentially publically humiliate his deck full of X-Rares the same way.

To further summarise, it seems Seiru’s issue is that Shula’s plan of defeating Brustrom’s X-Rare deck using a Common Deck has zero reason to produce the result he expects, that is, improving the Blue World, Seiru believes that Shula’s hatred of Brustrom is clouding his judgment, and worse, he’s attempting to use the game he loves to exact vengeance, which may ruin his relationship with the game.

I will say, he’s corny as all hell but the guy is fairly good at Magic tricks

Seems to be that this was when Clackey agreed to defeat Shula after Seiru poured her heart out.

He may have only 1 life, however that incredibly reckless attack is going to let him start his turn with a grand total of 9 Core.

Clackey summons Froger at Lv2 and passes

Shula doesn’t seem to have drawn a Spirit he can summon? Which is strange considering his deck, instead he raises Erimakilizard’s level

Shula sends Rokceratops in to finish off Clackey

Clackey blocks with Froger and immediately uses Heavy Gate.

Not sure we’ve seen Heavy Gate in this anime, let’s have a look again!

Heavy Gate is a BS02 card, so this card’s been around for as long as Yellow has been a thing.

Now Shula won’t be able to attack or block with any Cost 1 or less Spirit, which just so happens to be his entire deck.

Not necessarily, exhausting them would have been better, they can still block for Shula next turn.

Froger’s 3000 BP blows Rokceratop’s 1000 out of the Water, see ya Rokceratops.

Unable to do anymore, Shula ends his turn.

Seems we’re getting a better look at Shula’s rather insane deck of low cost. I don’t even think he uses a single Magic.

Also Shula you have attempted twice and failed, you made declarations you couldn’t complete twice.

What happens twice will happen thrice.

Clackey levels down Froger, now we’ve got a Total of 9 Core and 2 yellow symbols to facilitate essentially whatever the hell we want

You mean the core you gave him.

It’s still a little jarring that Sophia of all things is animated in 2D rather than sharing the CGI with the rest of the cards, but I suppose they hadn’t quite figured out how to make a 3D Divine Spirit model yet.

Thanks to Sophia’s effect when summoned, Clackey can summon an Imaginary Beast for no cost as long as he doesn’t utilize any of it’s on-summon effects, he naturally selects his Iberix, which lacks an effect on-summon.

3 spirits to 4, still a bit dicey here, and Clackey only has 1 card in his hand.

Ah boy, there we go, he’s said something he won’t be able to take back very easily.

Shula’s focus on the equivalent of Human-Wave Tactics means he doesn’t actually trust any of his cards individually, simply the overwhelming amount of them will win eventually no matter how many are destroyed.

And hoo boy, welcome a new 5th spirit, Goradon!

Shula’s disagreement with Clackey’s belief in Sophia specifically seems to stem from the fact that any card can win, so therefore faith in a specific card is meaningless.

Shula once again declares a full attack.

Welp, let’s hope that card in Clackey’s hand is a good one.

Clackey declares all of his blockers but there’s still 2 attacks unaccounted for, and he needs to block both.

Sophia and Froger both take out the 2 Goradons.

During Iberix’s battle, Clackey uses Same Tired.

Ooo, Crafty, this had to be handled incredibly well for this to work.

We’ve seen this card used by Meganeko in the previous show, but essentially, as Clackey has destroyed 2 of Shula’s spirits, on his 3rd Block, all 3 of his Spirits were exhausted, but technically 2 of Shula’s wouldn’t have been yet, as attacks are officially waged one at a time.

Meaning by doing this on the 3rd battle, Shula would have been forced to exhaust his last 2 spirits.

That puts a stop to Shula’s plan.

Oh dang, Shula uses a Magic of his own, Fourth Draw.

For Shula’s deck type, where he’s liable to empty his hand frequently, a card like Fourth Draw is amazing.

Being able to empty your Hand and then draw until 4 cards are obtained is a godsend.

Naturally however, Shura isn’t using it for it’s draw effect, he’s using it to give his currently Lv2 Erimakilizard 3000 BP.

Iberix at Level 1 only has 4000 BP, so the 5000 BP Erimakilizard defeats it.

Hoo boy, a Cost 7 Spirit, defeated by a Cost 0.

I wonder if Shula should have held onto that Fourth Draw so he could draw into new Spirits on his next turn, but it occurs to me that Fourth Draw would have needed 3 Core, and Shula only had 2 he could pay without giving up one of his spirits.

Plus Clackey would have 3 spirits, which gives him better odds of winning on the follow-up than he does now.

You keep saying that, but you’ve been wrong literally every single time this match.

Clackey raises an impeccable rebuttal, the guy’s been going on about how he’ll defeat Clackey in One turn, then the next, and the next, it’s now Turn 7 and he’s no closer to winning than he was on Turn 2.

This time, Clackey makes a declaration of his own, that he’ll defeat Lightspeed Shula this turn.

Hrm, 2 Spirits, and 1 card in hand, he definitely needs a way to get 3 more attacks, which would be difficult with only that one card… which means it must be a card to obtain more cards.

MY GUY’S NAME IS KEITH.

Sorry, I don’t mean to shame people named Keith but it’s a very well disliked name.

Kevin is after all, right there.

Clackey berates Shula, or should I say Keith, for having a Battle Spirits that is “Isolated” (I presume that’s the closest translation to describing a Battle Style that invalidates all other Battle Styles)

Then declares that his Battle Spirits is a fun match with everyone, claiming it’s the most fun game (which I agree with)

After having used some of her core for Same Tired, Sophia is re-raised to Level 2.

He’d need a Nature Forces + Refresh Combo to do that, he only has 1 card, not that he can’t get more though…

Clackey summons a new card, The Angelia Cherubim.

A Cost 5 Divine Spirit from SD02, so not a particularly new card release-wise but it’s the first time it’s been used here.

On summon Cherubim is able to reveal a card from the top of the deck for every Yellow Symbol on the field, take 1 Magic card, and then return the rest to the bottom.

At Levels 2 and up, when Light Spirits are attacking, blocking Spirits are treated as being Lv1.

And at Lv3 it has the Light ability, naturally it has the cheapest possible Lv3 requirement at 3 core, making it easy to access.

It’s a Magic-searcher with Light, it’s a bit hard to dislike honestly.

Clackey uses Cherubim’s effect when summoned, as he has 4 symbols, he reveals 4 cards, he can now add a Magic, he has only 2 options here. Heavy Gate, and Royal Potion.

Heavy Gate would be good to defend against Shula again, but Clackey said he would win this turn. The only way to achieve that is via Royal Potion.

Naturally, this is the card Clackey selects.

Luck!?

He only got this far from pure unadulterated skill.

Piss off, Hyoudo.

Froger attacks, and Shula, having no refreshed spirits, takes it from his life.

Shula also has no cards in his hand, so he’s also out of responses.

Next is Sophia’s attack

During Flash Timing, Clackey uses Royal Potion, this refreshes all Cost 2 Spirits, meaning Clackey’s Froger is refreshed.

All of Shula’s spirits are Cost 1 or below, so they’re unaffected by Royal Potion.

Shula eats the attack from Sophia, reducing him to 3 lives.

Thanks to Sophia’s Light, Royal Potion returns to Clackey’s hand as he’d used it during Sophia’s attack.

Froger attacks again, Shula drops to 2 lives.

Not sure why they do this after, but Clackey uses Royal Potion again during Flash timing to refresh Froger.

instant follow-up, Froger takes another life from Shula, leaving him with 1.

Seems like the large surge of lives being lost all at once is having an adverse affect on Kajitsu due to it’s effects on Mother Core.

Clackey, taking this opportunity for a pre-final attack lecture, berates Keith for going through this entire charade

Cherubim wages the final attack, without any blockers, Keith is forced to lose his final life, and loses the game.

Our Noble Youth of Light is the winner!

We then cut to Seiru reading some kind of letter, with what appears to be Isfiel included alongside it.

But the prick is completely vamooshed so Zungurii’s question is probably what’s on my mind as well.

It appears Keith wrote that letter to Seiru and then vanished again, however it seems like he’s promised to 1. Not pursue revenge, and 2. re-develop his own style of Battle Spirits again.

Seiru tries to give Clackey the Yellow X-Rare she obtained, but Clackey refuses, knowing the significance of that card.

But apparently it seems like the card was indeed for Clackey, as it was meant for someone who could make Seiru smile.

Not like he can argue with that, Clackey takes the card, and now actually has an X-Rare with his deck, as I believe Clackey’s been operating entirely without X-Rares up until now.

In his defense it’d be a bit difficult to wield an X-Rare, As of BS06, Yellow only has 3 of them, Mikafar, Valiero, and Rean, they didn’t receive one in BS04 or BS06. The reason for this is because only 4 X-rares were printed per set up until BS08, because the first set only released with 4 colours, BS07 is the final set where only 4 Colours received X-Rares, and from BS08 onwards, there will be atleast 1 X-Rare for every colour, no questions asked.

Naturally, that Isfiel had to come from somewhere, looks like Keith nabbed it while he was there, and naturally Brustrom would look to the one person interested in X-Rares to the extent that he himself is, Suzuri.

After all, Suzuri has a track record of trying to steal X-Rares after all…

And that’s the episode!

Interestingly there isn’t a card of the day, instead this section explains that Shula’s strategy was defeated thanks to Magic.

Weenie rush was a very strong strategy and I do recall an entry, perhaps around BS03, where such a strategy was able to make it to top 2, but it featured a lot of magic to refill the hand as well.

I guess it would be premature of me to guess that the reason this episode was made was partially to indicate to players how to deal with such basic strategies, namely that they need to use magic capable of keeping those spirits from attacking.

It’s easier said than done, after all, Clackey only survived due to “having the out” multiple times over the course of that game.

It’s just not a particularly fun strategy to use.

Anyway, that’s all I have for this one, I’ll see you all in Episode 19!