A Beginner's Guide: Level Ratio Management

There is a problem most players carry when they first start the game; which is "how many level 1s should I run? What about 4s?" and so on, which is a major aspect of deck building. Vanguard had riding, which makes you require a specific ratio (or something close to it) of 17:13:12:8, and Buddyfight had the size 3 rule. However, WIXOSS only has limits, which makes it tricky to figure out how many of certain stuff you want to learn. That's why I'm here though.

Selfcest?

First of all, I'll lay down a certain point of information that is true in many card games. That is the fact that running a lot of spells isn't as good as running a lot of SIGNIs. Remember, those SIGNIs are what does most of your job for you, such as attacking, serving as shields, giving you effects and so on. On the contrary, spells are... useless, unless you cast them, which limits their use by quite a bit compared to SIGNIs. This makes having too many spells harm you greatly due to the fact that they act as vanilas.

Your ideal field would be a field that has SIGNIs in all the SIGNI zones, due to obvious reasons of defense, and spells will generally get in your way of doing that. Certain spells are still ran however, such as THREE OUT and MIRROR, which can help you draw and get those SIGNIs you need out easily, Three Swords, which gives you a lot of ener to utilize, Lost Technology, which is amazing for offense, so on and so forth. Also, it is worth mentioning that spells that cost 2 or more are generally shunned at, since that means that you can't use them early on in the game because you could risk missing a grow, and they rarely have effects good enough to make them worth using even late game.

Waifus.

Anyways, enough stomping down on spells, let's get back to the premise of the blog; "How many cards should you run for each level?". As I've said, a good field is a full field, which would lead to too many level 4s and 5s becoming cancerous for you in the long run due to having an empty field. However, run too little of Level 4s and you will suffer late game. Those level 4s tend to have good effects anyways. So, without running too much or too little, the typical number we see for Level 4 SIGNIs is 8-10. 8 is what I'd recommend, but if you're, let's say, Yuki, and have too many quality level 4s to not run, 10 should be fine. You can charge those away anyways. 12 is still justifiable, but will not make you feel happy. 14+ is bullshit level which is never gonna be justifiable, even if you run the vanila 12 limit LRIGs.

Am I the only one who
really doesn't like those glasses?

Now, we have the level 4s that hurt our early field out of the way, so now we'd want to discuss level 1s. Starting from the conclusion, generally, 12-14 level 1s are what we see in the metagame. The reasoning is simple; because a full field is a good field, and you want that full field at all points of the game, including turn 1s and 2s (although turn 1 would only let you put down 2 SIGNIs due to level 1 LRIGs having 2 limit at most). This would mean that in your opening hand, you would want to draw as many level 1s as possible. Simply put: you need to pull out level 1 SIGNIs consistently, so you run a large number of them. Well, if we're talking low-leveled SIGNIs, level 2s are a thing, but since level 2s can't be put down during turn 1, and since the power +1k LRIGs (like Beta) are more preferred than vanilas, they're shunned at and level 1s are used much more often, and are generally better. There are, again, exceptions to this if the level 2 SIGNI has an incredibly useful effect, such as Aztec, Hisui, Stegoceras, Heike, and so on.

Oh, and on the topic of level 2 dissing, note that if you're using Umr, due to Assylen and Mage you tend to like running more level 2s than normal, generally 8 or so.

She will make your
balls shake due to fright

What benefits do Level 3s have? Eh, they can help you fit the field during Level 4 with 11 limit, and a lot of level 3 SIGNIs have really good effects, such as Ballshock, Kiaha, HTR and etc, making them very worth running. That being said, level 3s suffer the same problems as level 4s, being put down late, but in the case of level 3s, it isn't too late, which makes running them a lot better compared to level 4s. The typical number of level 3 SIGNIs ran in a deck varies from 4-8, with 8 being typical. A few wierd decks go 10, which doesn't pose too big of a problem if you run enough level 1s/2s.

Level 5s? People hardly ever actually run Level 5 SIGNIs, except for pre-Hellspin ban, and even if they did it was 2 in most cases, 4 in extremely rare cases (Bahamut Hellboros).

To sum it up: The general ratio for cards would be

Level 1: 12-14
Level 2: 0-4
Level 3: 4-8
Level 4: 8-12
Level 5: 0-4
Spells: 0-4

Or so.

Of course, there are exceptions to this ratio, such as Umuru, who I have mentioned before on why, Tawil, who runs as many Unique Angels as possible, fucking up the ratio, Piruluk, who runs 8-10 spells, and so on and so forth, but this should be the basic jist of it.