Guide to a Deck: Hanayo

My hand glows.
KAME HAME HAAAAA

Hanayo. Now now everyone prepare to shit your pants off. This damned deck, my friends, is ridiculously bork, and has maintained being one of the most competetive decks of all times since her first release.

Hanayo-Two Remodeled, Roaring Flame, is a ridiculous card to build one's deck around. The pure rush potential this deck brings when built right is ridiculous, and when we combine that with Hanayo's quality supports in the form of ARTS such as Dragon Extinction Chain, Rekindling Effort and Absolute Extinction, along with a few finishers available in your life such as Fracturing Lust + Rekindling, Western Gunshot, and finally; Hanayo-Remodeled's built-in "block Level 2 or less Servants", since hardly anyone uses level 3 and higher Servants. Overall, Hanayo 2-stop is an effective and powerful deck that has high rush powers and solid finishers, making her one of the most powerful decks in the entire game and being able to murder most decks brutally.

I've been talking about 2-stop for a while now, but by no means is 2-stop the only viable Hanayo build available; it's just that it's the most used and probably the best. Other viable Hanayo builds consists of Hanayo 3-stop, and Hanayo Elementals. And this is before Flathro build will become a thing after WX14. I'll mention the Cross Build out of pity, I guess...

2-stop

Mhm. Open up that hole.

Now, when we talk about 2-stop Hanayo, there are a few variants, but the most common variant available is ServantRush + BanishRush. Servants, with their ridiculously godlike spell named Gathering Protection. A +5k and a Lancer to the whole field is frightening. When we combine that with Hisui and Orichalcia (with Common Destinying out an Adamasphere), you have 12 cards in your deck that can banish stuff early game (even more if you had the space for Budo). That's some serious damage input there. Then, since you use a lot of Servants in the deck, you can run all sorts of utility cards in this deck too, namely THREE OUT, Three Swords, and so on. In the first place, Hanayo has a couple niche cards to play, such as Fissure of Condemnation.


 Other variants of the 2-stop build consists of running Ammolite and Gun Smoke Flame Aura for extremely early Double Crush, and Ayabon build that consists of running multiple copies of Charging and Pay Charging, along with Next Ready to Double Crush as much as possible. Ammolite + Spellz build uses a lot of hand, and Ayabon build eats up all your ARTS (which is another reason on as of why 2-stops are good), so compared to the former option I wouldn't recommend this as much as the ServantRush build.

 3-stop

... Where's the bondage?

 Hanayo 3-stop (a.k.a. Bondage named by me) is a pretty decent deck in the metagame. It has access to 6 ARTS Slots, and the LRIG's skill is pretty damned good, being able to completely neglect Servants, making good finishers. When combining this with Iris Agate, incredible Shenanigance known as "banish whole field, no LRIG guard, Rekindling Effort, GGNORE" is born. The few problems with this deck would be that spells are a limited resource in your deck, provided that SIGNIs are obviously better, and that for the most part, 2-stop is overall more effective. However, with the unique niches of Iris Agate and shit, Bondage deck holds an interesting and unique place in the metagame. Also, Bondage has access to a Fracturing Lust SEARCHER and being level 3, can use Urban, which is a good card for finishing off your opponents at an early game. Also, note that this deck can do Hisui + Orichalcia too, since you're likely to run Three Swords anyways for Common Destiny fodder. Personally, I don't like the Orichalcia idea that much, but Hisui's defenitely a great card to run for rush.

Another advantage that Bondage has over 2-stop is the fact that Bondage likes running the Kayappa + Three Swords engine (you could Cyclamen over Kayappa, but this deck's running 10 spells or something), allowing it to effectively use the ARTS it gets, unlike 2-stop which likes just Servants. I guess you could call Bondage more balanced compared to NiKai.

Hanayo Elementals

... I don't see Wind , Moon
and Snow. All I see is Fire,
Sakura, and flat bewbs.

 Hanayo Elementals is a good deck. Mainly, that Exceed 2 is great. Giving Hanayo a hand engine (albeit temporary; but that doesn't matter since you'll be using it all anyways) while giving it Goldaura too makes the deck pretty darn frightening. The Assasination comes in extremely handy playing around many stuff too, and she has a good Ener Engine in the form of, again, Kayappa/Cyclamen + Three Swords, allowing a lot of offense to come out of her. Hanayo Elementals serves as the perfect counter to Piruluk, as well as an overall well-versed aggressive deck that can kill your opponent at any amount of LC with Urban. Her main finisher, however, which is Fracturing Lust/Dragon Chain + Rekindling Effort, is a little unreliable against Storm Warming and the likes of 2 ener costed ARTS, and the alternative is a Western Gunshot which is situational. Despite all that, Hanayo Elementals is still an effective deck in the metagame.

Pitiful Cross Build

What part of you is Gold?

... Cross Hanayo. The really, really cheezy version of Hanayo that consists of LC crushing via LRIG skill, finisher with Rekindling, and Assasinating. This version of Hanayo is... pitiful. It's performance is probably worst among all the "viable" Hanayo builds and just borderline makes up to the competetive validness scene, and before Bonds came in to make Cross even slightly more consistent, it was impossible to even trying to play the build. With Bonds, sure, it's better, but it's still... eeeeeeh...

It should be noted, however, that Cross Hanayo is an extremely fun deck to play with in casual play, and borderline effective. It still doesn't make it up to the metagame, but it's there as a thing.