Today's Card Analysis: Farfalle Magus and Shooting Bobby

 

The Japanese cards of the day for May 9th, 2018 are two Oracle Think Tank grade 1s from V-Booster Set 01: UNITE! TEAM Q4, the Single Rare Farfalle Magus and a Common, Shooting Bobby.

Farfalle Magus 
AUTO [Rearguard Circle]: When placed, look at the top card of your deck, and place it on the top or bottom of your deck.

Farfalle Magus is a grade 1 clone of a card revealed in this month's issue of Monthly Bushiroad magazine, Yellow Witch MeMe. Regardless of whether you place the card on top or bottom, just looking at it will cause CEO Amaterasu's autoskill to meet its check timing and resolve, giving her a 5k power boost. Farfalle's 8k is necessary in the deck, as it's the best way to make base 17 columns with Oracle Think Tank's primarily-9k rearguards for taking on base 12 vanguards like Asura Kaiser and Amaterasu herself. For facing base 13s like Dragonic Overlord and Alfred, our options are currently limited. Farfalle can make a 23 column when lined up with Weather Girl Saft if you've used Amaterasu's draw skill that turn, but 23 columns only require a single Critical Trigger to guard in this format; it would be better if there were a costless way to make an 18, or a costed way to make a 28, than a costed means of getting to 23.

Shooting Bobby is something else. We've already seen what a vanilla grade 1 looks like in an Accel clan, with Death Army Guy being a shieldless base 9000. In a Protect clan, a vanilla grade 1 is instead a 7k base with 15000 shield, reflecting their defensive properties. Bobby can still make a base 17/18 column with Battle Maiden Sarasa or the vanguard itself, but the logic in running him is naturally defensively oriented since he has the same shield value as a Critical Trigger. It's hard to see a defensive grade 1 having much place in the deck though, seeing as boosters are a very valuable resource in any format.

Bobby does make the most of those extra grade 1s you draw once your field is set up, but any act of committing him to the field in the early and midgame is going to be something of a wasted resource.

As it stands now, the Oracle Think Tank grade 1 lineup is completely fixed, with only three options.

Grade 1
x4 Farfalle Magus
x4 Goddess of Time's Passing, Mizunohame
x4 Shooting Bobby

From this point on, we can evaluate additional Oracle grade 1s according to what they bring to the deck in comparison to Bobby or Farfalle; Farfalle represents an additional 5k shield taken away from the opponent via Amaterasu, while Bobby represents an additional guard against a 23k or less column. For future cards to justify themselves over these, they must either contribute as much or more than what Farfalle and Bobby do.Oracle Think Tank has 2-3 Single Rare slots remaining, depending on whether or not Wyvern Strike Agaruda is the Rare above Vortex Dragon, and somewhere in the vicinity of 12-14 Commons. In light of the kind of support the other clans have seen like Marron and Raizer Custom, Farfalle Magus may very well be the only grade 1 listed here that survives into the clan's final deck.

The previous Japanese cards of the day were Maximum Raizer and Jet Raizer.

V-Booster Set 01: UNITE! TEAM Q4 will launch in Japan May 25th, 2018, and in English June 22nd. It will be accompanied by sleeves based on Dragonic Overlord and Blaster Blade. V-Trial Deck 01: Sendou Aichi and V-TD02: Kai Toshiki will launch in Japanese May 11th, 2018, and in English June 8th. They will be accompanied by a new sleeve based on the "Imaginary Gift" design.

The first Extra Booster set of Standard, V-EB01: The Destructive Roar will launch in Japan June 29th, 2018, and August 3rd for the English-speaking world. The accompanying new anime series, codenamed "Origin," began airing May 5th, with an English-subtitled simulcast on both YouTube and Crunchyroll.