Guide to a Deck: Alfou

Alfou is a good deck. While she is restricted to level 2 for all of her stuff, the things that she can do with just a level 2 is vast. Alike to many other 2-stop decks, Alfou's bane is rushing. Alfou does this well, combining Sayuragi's On-Play effect to banish things from early on, while also crushing additional Life Cloth indirectly by milling her opponent out. She can also mill herself out to use Bride of Usurpation to do an Attack Phase banish with Sayuragi, and being Black, has access to quality salvages. Finally, Alfou milling out her opponent can lock APEX and the likes down.

Overall, Alfou is a good rush deck that can pressure your opponent throughout the entire game, while being able to crush 4 Life Cloth in a turn.

Alfou, Bride of Usurpation

Overview

I more or less covered everything worth covering in the overview section in the blog overview, because Alfou only has one build, while there are many cheese versions of this one build. Can mill your opponent's deck out, use a ton of things to banish your opponent's SIGNI from early on, etc etc. I'll go straight into the next section.

How the Deck Works

Sayuragi is arguably the best level 1 SIGNI in the entire game. The On-Play skill is extremely easy to pull off, since Alfou's entire deck is built to help that condition. This lets her be used early on in the game for the rush, which lets Alfou pressure and threaten your opponent from turn 2, which is devastating for certain decks.


Additionally, since refreshing your opponent acting as a LC crusher, Sayuragi lets Alfou be one of the best rush decks around in the game. Plus, when synergized with Alfou, Bride of Usurpation and being at 3 or less cards in the deck, Sayuragi can act as an On-Attack banisher, which is undoubtedly great. Also, since Sayuragi can act at any point of the game, you can kill even level 4 SIGNI that come into play, provided the trash is available.

Alfou decks have a tendency to build their decks to support Sayuragi, who is their best card. The most noteworthy way is by using Code Art †SC†, and at times, even †JV†, to fuel their trash from early on, to guarantee getting Sayuragi's effect off and milling yourself off in general. Plus, if they mill Violence Jealousy, they can get extra cards into their hand while being able to salvage Sayuragi.

Another way Alfou decks support Sayuragi is by using things like Violence Jealousy to make sure they can spam Sayuragi consistently. Since Violence Jealousy itself can be salvaged with Skanda and Ganesha, Sayuragi tends to be extremely consistent with the pairs. Plus, with Heike and the former two, you have an alternative for banishing instead of just Sayuragi, which is good.

Going into other options worth mentioning, first up is Texahammer and Hammerfake. Using these two with Sayuragi can help in avoiding ARTS that removes cards from the field, namely Four Color Miasma. In this sense, they are pretty niche, but still useful in many other ways.

Alike to those two, Ariton is also an option, but unlike the former two isn't as worth due to her being Ulith limited, and you being unable to play her. Charm isn't that big of a benefit to sacrifice SIGNI space for, if you ask me.

Another is Ifrid. While Ifrid, alike to Ariton, is limited to Ulith which makes you unable to play it into the field, her benefits is great unlike Ariton. First of all, she can be an On-Attack Banish. This means that she can deny her opponent ener if they use an ARTS to block Sayuragi, which can put a lot of restrictions on your opponent. Plus, Ifrid's extra effect of giving something -15k if you have 4 of it in trash is also good, while it also serves as a defence measure.

Fracturing Lust or Dragon Extinguishing Chain make great finishers. Restricting your opponent to 4 eners will generally give them enough ener to use ARTS, but if you manage to bring them down rapidly enough and fire either one when they're still at level 3, it becomes extremely effective. If you don't like Chain because you need 3 Servants for it, though, you can use Common Destiny to make it work.

Alfou is one of the few decks that make good use of certain ARTS, namely Halo Effect. Not only does Halo work as a 1-cost Black ARTS that banishes one, it synergizes well with Alfou's common choices, such as Crisis Chance to guarantee growing into your level 2, Exclude to remove certain threats, Grave Curse to mill your opponent to death and guarantee Sayuragi, and so on. With all these cheap ARTS that will most likely be spammed from early on, Halo Effect becomes extremely easy to pull off, and at the same time aids a lot of Alfou's faults, such as getting rid of SIGNI with immunity such as Malachite and Gabrielt.

Another major ARTS that Alfou makes good use of is Ancient Surprise. Considering the amount of cards Alfou can mill in a game, Ancient Surprise's field wipe becomes incredibly easy to use in Alfou, and early wiping can be extremely lethal. On the other hand, however, is Fatal Punish, who can do it more easily than AnSap, but in Alfou, 20 cards in trash might as well not be a condition. It's up to preference on which you want to use in your deck; AnSap or Fatal Punish.

Other noteworthy ARTS consist of Four Color Miasma, Flaming Dragon, Poisonous Snake, Pay Charging instead of Crisis Chance if you like that better, and etc.

Overall, Alfou is a great deck that can control your opponent's options by constantly pressuring them into the lethal zone consistently, and will just destroy certain matchups.

Validity in the meta

Alfou, while good, does have quite a few weaknesses. Namely, if she doesn't manage to kill her opponent in time due to their opponent having cheap ARTS, she could, ironically, get outpaced and lose the match. This won't happening all that often, but it is definitely possible. She also flat-out loses to Midoriko, due to Souryuu nullifying Sayuragi's benefits and a powerful finisher in the form of Retribution. Even with all these faults, Alfou is extremely good and potent. Her rush is still deadly to most decks, and she has a lot of utility, which earns her a Tier 2+ in my book.