Meet the new Megablast.
The Japanese cards of the day are Oracle Think Tank's final Double Rare and a Common from V-Booster Set 01:
UNITE! TEAM Q4, Victorious Deer and Petal Fairy.
Victorious Deer
ACT [Vanguard/Rearguard Circles] Once per turn: [Soulblast 2 grade 3 cards, discard 1 card from your hand] Look at 7 cards from the top of your deck, reveal up to 2 Critical Triggers from among them, put the revealed cards on top of your deck in any order, shuffle the remaining cards and put them on the bottom of your deck, and until end of turn 6 of your units get Power +10000.
Victorious Deer is a High Beast that gives us a direct look at exactly when Bushiroad Research & Development expects games to end. Soulblasting 2 grade 3s might sound like a strange condition, until you consider exactly what kind of gameplay the Imaginary Gift mechanic encourages; cardfighters are expected to be constantly reriding for additional Gifts in the new format, whether that's for another Accel circle in Nova Grappler or another Force Marker in Kagerо̄. Deer confirms that R&D intends for games to end on your second or third grade 3 ride; the only way to be able to use Victorious with the current card pool is to ride two grade 3s and then him, ride three grade 3s with a Victorious in the rearguard, or to ride him the turn after riding
Imperial Daughter and sending a grade 3 from the top 2 cards of the deck into soul with her skill.
In practical terms, Victorious comes as close to unguardable as possible in the new format. Giving 20k to all three columns falls short of
Soul Saver Dragon at a glance, but stacking 2 Critical Triggers on top of the deck means two more 10ks as well as +1 Crit to both rearguard columns. That makes Deer equal to SSD with +2 Crit. It's doubtful if this card is really intended to be
interacted with all--or if it's just intended as a guaranteed win locked behind the condition of surviving to your third ride with a full field.
Victorious also possesses the Protect Gift like CEO Amaterasu and Imperial Daughter, but because the game is intended to end on the turn that you ride him, the purpose of this is not so much to be able to defend as it is to have something in hand to discard for his cost. The idea is that you'll discard the Gift Marker, sending it back to its zone. That way even if you topdeck draw Victorious with nothing else in hand, you'll still be able to use him.
The question then is; how many Victorious do we run? On average we'll see 1 copy of a card we run 3 copies of per game, or 2 copies of a card we run 4 of. We only need to see one Victorious to win the game, and the card is really overkill on top of a second ride
Imperial Daughter turn, so 3 will be fine for most decks. It's possible to simply 4-4 him with the other Protect unit of your choice, with Imperial Daughter likely being the majority preference, but because each of Oracle Think Tank's Protect grade 3s has an important role in the deck a more balanced option would be to run 3 of each.
Grade 3
x3 CEO Amaterasu
x3 Imperial Daughter
x3 Victorious Deer
This slots in nicely with the optimal grade ratios of 17-13-11-9 (reading from grade 0 to grade 3) ideally with you cutting one of your redundant grade 2s to make room for that last Deer. If you're not comfortable with cutting grade 2s then you can either go 3-3-2 on your grade 3s and accept a hit in Deer consistency, or run only 12 grade 1s and increase your risk of Assisting for a grade 1 by ~3%.
Petal Fairy
ACT [Rearguard Circle]: [Cost: Put this unit into your soul] Look at 1 card from the top of your deck, and put it on the top or bottom of your deck. If you put it on the bottom, 1 of your units gets Power +5000 until end of turn.
Petal Fairy is a net -1 that either tells you a trigger is coming or gives 5k to a unit. By itself this exchange isn't particularly impressive due to the inflated shield on Standard format cards, but it's worth noting that Petal Fairy will cause
CEO Amaterasu to meet her check timing and so allow you to gain 10k out of the use of the skill, effectively giving up 10k shield to take 10k away from the opponent. If Oracle Think Tank ever gets a grade 1 version of CEO that gains 5k every time you look at your deck, Petal Fairy will become that much better--though 3-card combos are obviously less stable than 2-card ones.
The previous Japanese cards of the day were
Transraizer and Twin Blader.
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 English June 8th.
The first Extra Booster set of Standard, V-EB01:
The Destructive Roar will launch in Japan June 29th, 2018, and
August 2nd 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.
