Today's Card Analysis: Storm of Love, Kiskil-Lilla

The Japanese card of the day is a single rare stride for Dark Irregulars from G-BT03: Sovereign Star Dragon, the Storm of Love Kiskil-Lilla. Named for the Sumerian incarnation of the night-storm demon Lilith, Kiskil-Lilla is an early game on-hit stride on the same level as Gablade and Grim Recruiter in other clans. Like those units, Kiskil-Lilla's primary role is to act as a high power pressure unit that baits opponents into dropping more guard to block her than her cardfighter would gain from her on-hit, but in the event that her attack does hit the setup it grants will greatly expedite the process of setting up killing moves like bringing out the Abhorrent One.

AUTO (Vanguard circle): When this unit's attack hits a vanguard, Soul Charge 2, and if the number of cards in your soul is six or more, draw a card.

Counting the cards granted from her on-hit, to reach the six soul skill for Kiskil-Lilla's draw skill you'll generally need to soulcharge 2 beforehand. The easiest way to do this is with the House of Amon series, as in addition to the Hell's Draw, Deal and Nail soulcharge support they already have, in G-BT03 they've also received a new first vanguard "Amon's Follower, Barmaid Grace." When striding with Kiskil-Lilla you'll also receive the name of the unit in the heart, and by striding over either Astaroth or Amon himself you'll be able to use their skills to reach Grace's conditions. Using the Amon series also grants access to the trigger unit Amon's Follower Grausam, who when soulcharged can pay a cost of counterblast 1 to retire an opponent's unit. G-BT03 introducing on-soulcharge skills scales up the threat of Kiskil-Lilla immensely, as without any particular dedication on your part the opponent is now threatened by these skills giving you forms of advantage in addition to Kiskil-Lilla's draw. This incentivizes them to put down their hand guarding a high power center lane they should be ignoring, weakening their defenses for later on in the fight.

Alternatively, when using the on-stride counterblast of Charharlot Vampir the soul will already be at 4 from Charharlot's soulcharge 2 and so naturally reach 6 if Kiskil-Lilla hits. The skill that Charharlot gives to Kiskil-Lilla when she strides will also trigger with a timing just prior to her draw effect ("when this unit attacks a vanguard"), so that if you reach the 6 soul threshold prior to attacking you can both draw a card and retire an opponent's rearguard that turn while getting the soul prepped for the Abhorrent One. Werbat Ordonnanz, Dimension Creeper and the Alluring/Flirtatious Succubi can all enable this. In other words, both Amon and genericized Dark Irregulars give you access to similar soul engines as well as draw and retire skills, but they come attached to different timings are each convenient in different ways. Using Charharlot generally means losing access to the benefits of legion as well as quick on-call soulcharge skills, while using Amon takes away the guaranteed nature of your retire skills and makes you dependent on rearguards for soulcharging. The choice of which to use is up to you.

One should be careful not to make the mistake of trying to combo Kiskil-Lilla's soulcharge to Doreen the Thruster; because Doreen only benefits from main phase soul charges, and Kiskil-Lilla's on-hit takes place in the battle phase, it's impossible for Doreen to power up from the Storm of Love. Similar mistakes were common with No Life King Death Anchor several years ago, with many newer Irregulars cardfighters mistakenly believing they could put +15000 power on Doreen from Anchor's on-attack skill because it put five cards into the soul, and it would be easy to make the same mistake with Kiskil-Lilla's soulcharge 2.

Yesterday's Card Analysis: Abhorrent One, Gilles des Rais

"Behold, all the evil in this world stands there before you."

Friday's Japanese card of the day is a superpredator among vampires who stands apart from the infighting of Dark Zone's noble houses, the Abhorrent One. A triple rare stride for Dark Irregulars from G-BT03: Sovereign Star Dragon, the Abhorrent One is a lethal finishing move that rewards cardfighters for building up their soul in a way that surpasses all of the clan's past boss cards. Be sure to read his card lore at Arkadiaworks.

ACT (Vanguard circle): Once per turn: [Choose a face down card named “Abhorrent One, Gilles des Rais” in your generation zone, turn it face up] If the number of cards in your soul is 10 or more, this unit gets Power +10000 until end of turn. Then, if the number of cards in your soul is 15 or more, until end of turn, this unit gets "AUTO (Vanguard circle): When this unit attacks a vanguard, until end of that battle, your opponent cannot call grade 1 or greater units from hand to the guardian circle." If the number of face up cards in your generation zone is two or more, this unit gets Critical +1 until end of turn.

While past cards from the House of Amon series have advanced a center lane-strategy that uses the soul as a threshold to increase the vanguard's power and critical by, and the mutant Fighter's Collection 2014 unit Echo of Nemesis controlled the cards the opponent could guard with, the Abhorrent One unites these two ideas into a single killing blow. Several conditional factors ensure that the Abhorrent One can do progressively more damage to the opponent's resources the longer the game goes on; if the number of cards in the soul is ten or greater, the Abhorrent One's power increases by 10000. If the soul count reaches fifteen or greater, the opponent cannot guard with grade 1 or greater cards, negating the benefits of perfect defense and quintet wall skills. Finally, if there are two or more face-up cards in the generation zone, his critical increases by one--factor in triple drive and you have a surefire killing blow that will send the opponent from four to six damage immediately. With his power bonus and a booster with a base power of at least 7000, at fifteen or greater soul the Abhorrent One will attack for 43000 power, demanding 50000 shield to guarantee a block. That's approximately one-third the shield your opponent will have available to them in their entire deck with grade 1 and greater cards invalidated.

As a stride, one of the benefits the Abhorrent One enjoys is taking on the name of the grade 3 used as his heart card. Thus by striding over a unit that belongs to the House of Amon, like Demon World Marquis Amon or his legion revival Astaroth, it becomes possible to use Amon-series support with the Abhorrent One. This makes it easy to reach the requisite soul count using Hell's Draw and Hell's Deal to soulcharge 2 on-call for each, but more importantly it also allows you to take advantage of the new Amon support units introduced in Sovereign Star Dragon. The subclan's new first vanguard, Barmaid Grace, is especially relevant to the Abhorrent One. By resting her and paying counterblast 1, you can use Grace to soulcharge 2 and give your vanguard a continuous +1000 power for every card in the soul; with exactly fifteen cards in the soul, the Abhorrent One will reaches 58000 power after boosting, raising the threshold to guard him by one-tenth of the total grade 0 shield in the deck.

Running the Abhorrent One in Amon is not your only option. When using him in pure Dark Irregulars, you can benefit from their breakstride Charharlot Vampir, as well as an existing FVG from BT07: Rampage of the Beast King. Greedy Hand is an old hat combo for veteran Dark Irregulars cardfighters; the idea is that you use his counterblast 1 to put him into the soul and search the deck for Dimension Creeper (Binding Force of the Black Rings) to soulblast itself and soulcharge 2. This is a net -1 in card advantage, but with Charharlot's on-stride soulcharge 2 and additional soulcharges from the promotional card Flying Librarian, it helps expedite the initial buildup to 15 soul. A playset of Dimension Creeper can come in handy, since it allows you to effectively soulcharge an additional card every time you get Creeper into the soul, and unlike the Hell's series Creeper doesn't require you to have any specific cards in hand.

The chief difficulty behind the Abhorrent One is that his soul threshold is so much higher than what was once the standard for Dark Irregulars. Years ago it was feasible to stop soulcharging at as low as six or eight cards, and even Astaroth would stay at ten; twenty soul would only be reached very late in the fight. Needing to hit fifteen and have a third of the entire deck in the soul is a very high-maintenance strategy. Without the Amon series soulcharge support, reaching that number is an uphill battle. But the greatest vampire in the world makes it worth the effort invested, as he brings together the best of Dark Irregulars' past boss cards. Where the House of Amon struggles for total dominance of the nation Dark Zone, the Abhorrent One rejects all goals and seeks only to continue destroying, consuming and draining the world of life.

News: Monthly Bushiroad Leaks Subclan Support for Glendios, Deletors, Seal Dragons

The latest issue of Monthly Bushiroad magazine has had its street date broken by an unspecified retailer, spoiling upcoming support in G-BT03: Sovereign Star Dragon for Link Joker's Deletor and Kagerou's Seal Dragon subclans. Only two new card skills were revealed from the set, Light Speed Cheetah and Immersion Star-vader Bohrium. These two cards are respective support for genericized Link Joker decks and Star-vader “Яeverse” decks.

Mixed Deletor Chwawos and Amon's Follower, Barmaid Grace.

The magazine provided the artwork and names of several upcoming units; Taciturn Liberator Brennius and Seal Dragon Gari Serge. Like past Seal Dragon cards Weathercloth, Rhinocloth and Brocade, Gari Serge is named for a particular fabric. "Gari" Serge is a specific variety of Serge fabric often used in children's clothes. The skills of these units have not yet been unveiled. Over the past few months Monthly Bushiroad has scaled back card reveals in favor of Bushiroad's regularly-scheduled Tuesday information bulletins. Fan reactions to the decreased importance of magazine reveals has been mixed. In the past entire clans would be revealed in the 2011-2012 issues of KeroKero Ace, but the last Monthly Bushiroad issue to reveal a multitude of cards at once was the August 2014 volume for MBT01: Neon Messiah.

Of the units teased but not unveiled, Mixed Deletor Chwawos' name is a deliberately garbled rendition of "Chaos" which is normally written is katakana as カオス Kaosu but is here written with the archaic katakana ケヰヲス Kewiwosu. For comparison, Acquire Deletor Igor's name is rendered ヰゴール Wigooru in Japanese rather than the standard イゴール  Igooru.

Light Speed Cheetah is a base 8000 power grade 2 whose skill activates when it intercepts; by locking one of its own fighters' rearguards that is not currently being attacked, Cheetah gains +10000 shield for that battle. Cheetah follows the trend of those of other special interceptors like Outlaw Shield Mac Lir from LD01: The Dark “Ren Suzugamori,” and Pure Wind Jewel Knight Kymbelinus from G-BT02: Soaring Ascent of Gale & Blossom. As with those units, Cheetah's skill is not a generation break, and so can be used as early in the fight as it can be put on the table. The self-locking aspect of the cost synergizes with the new Messiah Link Jokers most of all, as the Messiah subclan relies on unlocking units to trigger card effects.

Meanwhile Immersion Star-vader Bohrium is a support card for “Ω” Glendios and Edict Star-vader Halcion. When an attack hits that Bohrium boosted, if her cardfighter has a Star-vader vanguard, her skill will allow them to check the top five cards of the deck for a “Яeverse” unit and add it to hand. By using this early game with the grade 2 Magnet Hollow, an “Ω” cardfighter can quickly add two “Яeverse” cards to hand and set up their turn 3 plays. Bohrium also helps support Glendios' new stride from Fighter's Collection 2015, Death Star-vader  “∞” Glendios.  “∞” places a card from the opponent's deck into a locked state for every “Яeverse” unit his fighter has in play; through a combination of World Line Dragon on the initial two turns with Ruin Magician on the third, and Magnet Hollow and Bohrium used in conjunction on the second, it's possible to have four “Яeverse” units prepared on the third turn. However, grade 1 space in Glendios decks is tight due to already being split between perfect defense cards, Ruin Magician and the unflipping grade 1 Praseodymium. The advent of a G-perfect defense for Link Joker in G-BT03: Sovereign Star Dragon may alleviate this, as being able to unflip damage through a G-perfect defense would take the weight of unflipping off of Praseodymium.

Next month's issue of Monthly Bushiroad magazine will include with it both black and white versions of a PR♥ISM-Duo limit break enabler for the Bermuda Triangle clan.

Images of the issue's card lore section have also revealed another card for Deletors and one for Shadow Paladin's witch subclan; Delighting Deletor Awiin and Witch of Black Pigeons Goewin.