Guide to a Deck: Eldora

Eldora is a great deck. With her signature ability to manipulate her Life Cloth, Eldora can live through most forms of offence your opponent can throw at you, provided you could do the setup. This makes Eldora virtually immortal, being able to live through anything. Her offence is also threatening, thanks to the Squid Sisters, who lets Eldora break through at minimum 1 Life Cloth against most decks per turn, at best 3. This offence is also consistent, considering how much Blue decks can draw. Spamming THREE OUT can bring you a long, long way.

Overall, Eldora's tactics of defending her life by manipulating her Life Cloth combined with the offence that you have access to through your cards makes Eldora an extremely solid deck.

Eldora=Four, with a Dash

Overview

Eh, I covered most of this in the blog overview so I don't have that much to say here. I would be repeating myself even if I did say anything, afterall.

How the Deck Works 

The typical Eldora build, like I've implied in the overview, uses her cards to manipulate her Life Cloth to fit her needs. The most common cards featured as Life Burst fodder are Repair, To'on and Perforation. On the side, however, there is Diabride, albeit that she's rarely seen on a proper Eldora deck nowadays. The Life Burst cards Eldora does use though are mainly defensive. Being able to set up your defence in your Life Cloth without having to use Ener can let you avoid many comboes that will put you onto lethal otherwise, such as Retribution and Rekindling Effort. Otherwise, though, it can be used to bait out comboes that will most likely finish you off without the To'on in your Life Cloth, namely Ril shenanigance. Otherwise, it just feels extremely good to know that you have an impenetrable wall at all times, that will only be played around against irrelevant decks most of the time.

Getting into how Eldora actually sets that Life Cloth up, though, is a different matter. To start with, there's Haigyo that lets you get whatever Life Burst you want onto the top of your deck, then you use your other cards to get that top card into your Life Cloth. Namely, there are Ryuuguu, Scylla, Hammer Chance, Flash Back and etc. The one you'll most commonly use among all these is Ryuuguu, considering how it's cost is minimal, and being level 3 lets you use it the moment you reach the said level, synergizing with Eldora=Mark III'. Using Mark III' to rearrange the LC to your liking and calling a Haigyo and Ryuuguu to get a Repair or something into the Life Cloth is Eldora's ideal turn 3 play. This situation isn't exactly uncommon either, especially since Ryuuguu and the likes can be searched out by SPADE WORK, which is a fantastic card, especially for consistency.

On the topic of Scylla and Namakozu and while I'm at it, there are a couple interesting things you can do with these two. Most notably, you can use Burst Rush and these to gain the Life Cloth using Repair and gaining 2 cards with your main LRIG, or use Arowana or Diabride for the offence. This is the best use you'll get off of Burst Rush ever, aside from baiting your opponent to just end their turn there.

Daihouika is a great card, and the place it righteously belongs to is in Eldora. Daihouika works especially well in Eldora too, since Eldora lacked offence before Daihouika came out, and it helps you refresh your hand of Green cards that jam your hand, if that was still a problem for you on top of Haigyo, Hotaruika and/or Yariika, Kumanomin and the likes. Just in general, Daihouika is broken in many ways, and Eldora makes great use of her.

Alongside Daihouika also lies Aorika and Arowana for extra offence. Aorika helps you get past immune SIGNIs, which Daihouika can't. Arowana is mainly a poor man's Daihouika for when he can't have two on the field, but is saved by the fact that it doesn't have to discard any cards from the hand. It can, like, temporarily remove a Souryuu from the field for a Daihouika play, I guess. Mainly, you use it for the Life Burst, but it is worth something.

Anyways, let's get into the smaller details for this deck.

Eldora's most common problem since Ancient times was that everywhere got clogged with the green cards she used only for the Life Bursts, and had nowhere to go. While the case for your hand was solved as countless cards that helped in this matter came, the ener is also clogged with Greens that can be stuck there permanently if you aren't careful. However, alike to how there are cards that discard to get rid of these clogs, there are cards that help you get rid of these cards from your ener. Namely, there is Three Swords, which has been a popular choice for clearing your ener since it came out. Other than that, you can actually make use of these Green Ener, and run ARTS on them. Most notably, there is Storm Warning, which I continuously praise as one of the best ARTS in the game, and Sea and Sky Becoming One Blue, which is one of the most commonly used ARTS currently. Other than these two, there is Common Destiny, Body and Soul, Twists and Turns, and so on.

On the topic of ARTS, I'll list out the usable ARTS that I didn't list earlier here for reference; Don't Escape, Blue Punish, Ice Flame Shoot, Arowana Panic and Four Color Miasma. Ice Flame Shoot works especially well with §Otagame§.

DYNAMITE is a great card, despite the fact that it's rarely seen in competitive play. The main reason being that Eldora doesn't need it to be good (but still likes it), and there are cards that does what it does. It's also a spell, which has downfalls. On the other hand, for Eldora's spell though, we have VOICE CHANGE. While VOICE CHANGE seems overcosted at first look (which it is), but that doesn't keep it from being great. 4 Cost is huge, but not impossible when you run Three Swords, and the effect honestly makes up for it. Being able to fit in any card from your trash into your Life Cloth is considerably good. 4 Ener to get a free turn off of just one Life Cloth isn't such a bad tradeoff. VOICE CHANGE is still only a 1-of, but it is still good.

Demenigisu is amazing. It's one of the best SIGNI that Eldora has access to. The first effect is extremely good and forces your opponent to need to get rid of it before attacking you, which can be hard with the 15k base. The second effect is basically DYNAMITE, just better. Combined with Haigyo, you become free to use whatever Life Burst you want from the deck, whether it be Repair for defence or Arowana to kill 2 during Attack Phase. Overall, Demenigisu is very flexible and effective. It does have a downside, however, which is that it's a level 5. This holds her back from most Eldora decks, but at the same time, very welcome for other builds, namely Spinner Eldora.

Now, to touch things up, I'll mention a few cards worth using into the post. One of such cards is Suzumeda, which is an ideal card to play during turn 2 for that free draw. Any amount of plus can mean something, even in WIXOSS in where advantage is fairly easy to gain. Suzumeda is a dead draw otherwise in most cases, though, and is a level 2, so use on your own risk. Other than that, Gurehozame is worth mentioning. While it doesn't synergize well with Daihouika, it does work with Hatahata, Hotaruika and the likes.

Validity in the meta

Eldora is very usable in the current metagame. I would personally give her a Tier 1-, based on how well she can tank hits from most decks and how well she can hit damage for using her SIGNIs. No one uses her anymore, but they're really, really underestimating all the things Eldora can manage to do with her Life Cloth options, namely with Burst Rush and the likes. Done right, Eldora can stand her own against many of the meta decks.

Eldora, the Superwoman

Overview

Eldora is an extremely annoying deck, being able to consistently check things such as To'on to defend herself. There is however, a perfect counter to Eldora's plans though. This counter, however, does come in the form of Eldora. EldoraxMark IV SUPER is a card that was made specifically to counter Eldora, or in a more general term, control the card your opponent checks with their Life Bursts throughout the entire game.

However, SUPER is generally a one-sided pony, being able to do not much aside from just controlling her opponent's LC. Her main strategy requires her to consistently stay at 7 cards in hand, which is hard to sustain, albeit easier now with things like Daihouika.

Overall, SUPER is a gimmicky deck that can work in a really interesting way if you manage to pull it off, but is extremely hard to sustain and even pull off in the first place.

How the Deck Works 

Seemingly, Eldora SUPER was meant to be a counter to the common Eldora, ironically, using cards such as Nafushu, Erenozu, and Superdora herself, while making sure your opponent didn't hide a Repair using a Haigyo up in their deck to surprise you with cards like Arowana, Teppouo, Dugong and etc. With that, it was possible to make your opponent never check a Life Burst during the entire duration of the game while killing SIGNIs with Arowana. However, this idea proved to be ineffective. The main reason was because keeping the cards in the hand above 6 at all times was proven difficult even with Blue's prominent drawing power, and that outside of Eldora matches, and even against Eldora matches, the offensiveness the deck was supposed to provide was close to mediocre.

Well, that being said, they didn't give up on making Superdora better and introduced Daihouika and friends with WX12 in an attempt to make Superdora at least good, and it worked. However, the deck branched off heavily. You would hardly ever use Superdora's LC controlling effect because you had enough discarders in your lifetime (Daihouika). Dugong, Erenozu and etc have even been kicked out of the deck because Hotaruika and Yariika replaced them. At that point the only thing you really used Superdora for was the +2k. Which was why I made a deck blogpost about a Super Piruluk decklist which worked exactly the same way it was supposed to anyways. So with that, the only hope really left for Superdora now is a deck completely made to counter normal Eldora, and nothing else. Preety unfortunate, considering Superdora was the one Eldora deck I didn't despite from the bottom of my heart.

To elaborate before I move on, it's not like Superdora lost all it's benefits compared to her Piruluk counterpart. Superdora still has access to Hammer Chance, which is a good card (but defensive, and Piruluk has Lock You), and you can still make a passive-aggressive mix of your LC control and your opponent's too if you feel like it. Overall however, these niches are all too minor to matter, or have poor synergy with the wincon of the deck to matter though. To be honest, the main stuff that Superdora has over Piruluk is Hammer Chance, Eldora=Mark III+ to protect your Aorikas and SPADE WORK, which can tutor out Daihouika.

The biggest thing that Superdora has over Superpiru is Levia, which is a great supporting Resona for the strategy. It's amazing. It draws up till your hand reaches 7, which solves most of Superdora's problems. And just think about how ridiculous it would be with Gurehozame. It's problem would be that once it's stopped with an ARTS, it'd be horribly wrecked, and that it requires Water Beasts, 3 of them, from the field which can be hard to achieve. However, on paper, Levia might possibly be the only thing that makes Eldora SUPER have enough sustain and hand size to do what she needs to do at all. Daihouika is better in many ways, but Levia fits SUPER's core idea of using Arowana to put a non-Life Burst SIGNI onto the top of their deck and getting that card into the LC using SUPER's skill better.

Validity in the meta

Eldora SUPER isn't a very good deck, and if I had to tier it at all I would go as far to putting it into Tier 3. It is a considerably fun deck, and works interestingly when pulled off, but really doesn't have much worth otherwise. Unless you want to annoy back your friend that mains Eldora, using Eldora SUPER isn't the best idea.

Eldora 1-stop OTK

Overview

Once upon a time, there was a very bored man. He thought of creating a completely original Eldora deck. After thinking for a long time the cancer masterpiece that he has created has brought over fear to countless residents of the WIXOSS universe as well as a dark shadow that covers this universe with that Diabride terror. 1-stop Eldora is a deck that needs only 4 DYNAMITES and a bunch of Diabrides to help you get pushed from 7 Life Cloth to 0. Using a bunch of other comboes while you're at it, you can finish your opponent off easily from that 0 LC. Overall, Eldora 1-stop OTK is a scary deck that combines a lot of cards to kill your opponent with a high risk of getting killed yourself because you crushed all your Life Cloth too for Diabride.

How the Deck Works

Eldora 1-stop is all about that aggro, and coincidentally runs a lot of red cards, namely being Diabride, One Rule Two Birds, Fracturing Lust, Svarog, Gear of the Flaming Machine, Flaming Stubbornness and most importantly, Tenacity at 2-3 copies to murder your opponent as hard as possible with Burst Rush + Diabride.

Overall; here's how the deck basically works.
First step: You use Burst Rush.
Second step: Use stuff like Aglaea and Get Open to check the top cards, and rearrange it for the thing you were looking for (generally Gear Machine first, then Diabride).
Third step: Use DYNAMITE, and activate Gear Machine two times. Now you have about 3-4 LC. Now use Tenacity to get down to 1-2. Now you're ready to go.
Fourth step: Repeat Second step, get out a Diabride multiple times and get your opponent down to 0-1 Life Cloth.
Fifth step: Use Fracturing Lust.
Sixth step: Use Svarog and Burst Rush to kill of all of your opponent's ener.
Seventh step: You win! Congratulations!

Alternatively to Step Six, you can use TAP discards or One Rule Two Birds as your finisher, or all of them.

Validity in the meta

I would give this deck a solid Tier 1. Like all the other 1/2-stop decks meant for OTKO, with this deck it's either you hit or you miss, but if it hits it becomes extremely devastating and you can't do anything against it. Due to this, the deck feels extremely broken. However, if you have anything that can block DYNAMITE or Fracturing Lust and the likes, it's considerably easy to make the combo miss. And once the combo misses, it's extremely easy to kill it.

Basically, what I want to say here is that this deck can miss, which is why she doesn't get 1+ rating, but isn't exactly easy to stop.