Guide to a Deck: Midoriko

Midoriko is a good deck. And when I say that, I mean really good. Midoriko has access to extremely powerful offense in the form of Souryuu, and a lot of utility. Not only that, she also has Retribution, which is one of the best finishers WIXOSS has ever seen. This is a major point. Having a reliable finisher to walk back on makes a deck extremely crucial. Plus, Midoriko can gain a lot of ener, enough to consistently use Retribution at least once per game. On top of that, Midoriko also has great consistency in getting her cards out, using Common Destiny and her level 4 to fetch whatever she needs from the deck.

Combining all of these, Midoriko manages to be an effective offensive-utility deck, and by constantly pressuring her opponent of Retribution, manages to be able to hold the tempo most of the game.

Midoriko, Beast Type Four

Overview

Midoriko's current winning image is consisted of using Souryuu's overwhelming offense and high offensive potential to bring her opponent down to 2 or lower Life Cloth, then proceeding to use Retribution to nail the coffin. While this strategy does get crushed by Costless defense, mainly in the form of Code Piruluk APEX, Lambda, and Crisis Chance. Despite that, Midoriko's hyper offense may bring down Piruluk to 2 Life Cloth while she's still at level 3, or have enough offense that Crisis Chance becomes irrelevant, or hell, even Spirit Salvage your Retribution. Midoriko has countless ways to play around against the appropriate opponent. While this is also true for your opponent, that's what WIXOSS as a card game is in nature. The decks that have flexible moves and has access to good unorthodox moves will generally hold the upper hand in games, and Midoriko is the very embodiment of that.

How the Deck Works

Earth/Sky Beasts are the most popular variant of Midoriko currently. The main reasoning for this comes in quite a few forms, mainly that Souryuu and Seiryuu are Beasts, making a deck around them ending as a deck that mainly uses Beasts, utilizing Hachi. Miao and/or Punito makes great early game damage pushers too. On top of that, Kosaki is a Beast. Kosaki is extremely good, allowing Midoriko to use Retribution with only 8 ener instead of the usual 10, which is a big difference. Osaki's Life Burst is also extremely good, and if you fail on getting Osaki into the ener, you can use Common Destiny. Also, Kosaki's On-Play skill is solid, while most of the time, isn't ideal. Plus, just like all the other cards in the deck, by using Midoriko-4 Piercing Woman and Common Destiny, getting Kosaki out is extremely easy. As an icing on the cake, Beasts have access to a lot of useful cards, namely Hachi, Monkey and Wasabi.

One of the other things worth mentioning for the deck is Hawk. Hawk is a great card. With her second Constant of ener charging on-attack bringing Midoriko great utility. Her third Constant is also good, helping in finishing your opponent off from 3 Life Cloth. The damaging skill, however, can be hard. Even with Midoriko, pulling off Hawk isn't the easiest feat. That being said, Beiar and Kosaki makes getting Hawk off extremely easy.

Alike to Hawk's purpose, a tech-in of Bolshack is also worth mentioning. Bolshack combined with Souryuu achieves what Hawk does, just with Double Crush. Hawk serves other purposes, such as Ener Charging, but Bolshack achieves the lethal zone purpose the easier.

Or, as an alternative to both of these, Urban and Jeweled Sword is something to put your opponent into lethal zone from 5 Life Cloth, if that's what you prefer.

On top of all these useful SIGNIs, Midoriko also has access to utility ARTS, namely Storm Warning, which is one of the best ARTS in the game, currently. Plus, having access to virtually unlimited Ener Charging, you can use multi-colored ARTS with little to no hesistation. Some of the examples of this is Blue Punish, Spirit Salvage, Dragon Chain and Four Color Miasma. Adding in Pluralism Depiction, that makes up most of Midoriko's most commonly seen ARTS. Vanish like Mist can be added as Anti-Tawil, I guess, but Souryuu doesn't care much of Tawil.

Validity in the meta

Midoriko is an extremely potent deck, being able to fight square on against most of the decks in the meta. I would rate her as Tier 1-. Midoriko can pick a fight with most of the meta decks and possibly come out victorious. The only thing stopping her from becoming meta is that APEX murders her hard, and that being too offense oriented isn't always a good thing. Retribution is avoidable if you pay attention, and rushing Midoriko hard will most likely put her in a disadvantage. Even then, Midoriko is definitely a good deck and stands a chance in the meta.

Midoriko, Abundant Girl Type Three

Overview

Midoriko 3-stop, in this sense, is a deck that uses Abundant Girl as it's main focus. In essence, this deck is a slightly faster deck compared to Beasts, but not as explosive. This variant has access to whole field Lancers starting from turn 3, which can help in shaving down your opponent's Life Cloth by quite a bit. However, that's really as far as it goes. The typical Midoriko already has access to turn 3 Lancer with Souryuu and Miao, so having Abundant Girl doesn't really help. Plus, Abundant Girl makes you use 12 Ener for Retribution, and that can be annoying. Abundant Girl isn't really worth it anymore with Souryuu.

She still makes a fun deck, so I guess I can cover it for people who want her.

How the Deck Works

The main way Abundant Girl gains her Lancers lies in Misuzaku. Abundant Girl makes the best use of Misuzaku in the current metagame, for obvious reasons, and having access to her from turn 3 can make rushing easy, especially with Miao. Hell, you might want to go cheeze and run Souryuu and 2 Seiryuu in the deck as well, giving you access to 12 Lancer SIGNIs. This is significant. One last benefit worth mentioning for Abundant Girl, I guess, is that she can use Hyakko easily.

While Misuzaku might fall behind during late game, being unable to Lancer level 4 SIGNIs, Komaris and Corondum can help on that matter.

Validity in the Meta

While Abundant Girl, as a concept, might not be that bad, comparing her pros and cons to Beast Mido's, she is definitely underwhelming. However, she is still Midoriko, and has access to most of her cards, namely Retribution. Due to this, I would classify the deck as a middle Tier 2 deck.

Plants

Overview

Plants can gain virtually unlimited Ener, even by Green standards. Hell, Plant's only gimmick is to gain Ener and go ham with it. This leads Plants into being a natural utility-based deck, stalling your time out using your ener, slowly dealing damage until you manage to win. There are good things and bad things about this strategy, but with the death of Servant Z, Plant decks have definitely fallen in number. Not to say that Plants don't have their own niches in the metagame nowadays, though.

How the Deck Works

Gauche Agnes is the key card to all of this. Gauche Agnes is your unlimited Ener supplier, in the literal sense. All of your hand can turn into ener with this girl. Combined with Kiku and Rafflele, it's extremely easy gaining unlimited ener, in the truest sense. After gaining all those ener, your strategy is to spam Repairs. This is extremely annoying. Watching your opponent go from 2 Life to 6 is pretty frustrating, especially if you're Red. By refreshing, this loop can continue on and on, and virtually give Midoriko unlimited Life. Refreshing isn't hard either, since you can charge as much Ener as you want per game. Like such, you just beatdown slowly and slowly, until your opponent dies.

Of course, this strategy has flaws, namely that a lot of things can easily counter it. Ril, with Double and Triple Crush, doesn't really care about all those Life being gained, and Piruluk can just Blue Punish the Repairs. Even then, Plants can survive long enough with their ARTS if needed, and still has access to Retribution.

Plant Mido also has benefits outside of just ener gaining though. Rosary's benefits in searching out Kano makes for good card advantage and tutoring. Kano is a great card, being able to banish something whenever you ener charge enough, by the cost of banishing herself and gaining even more ener. With this, Kano supplies you with minimal offense, which is good for a utility deck like Plants. Plus, having a 5k meatshield in itself is already good, which makes Rosary still worth.

Outside of Rosary, we have Yashi, who has a good effect and aids even more in offense. All of her costs can be paid in Servants, which are relatively easy to charge, considering that this is Midoriko. All of her effects are extremely good, and two of them are offensive, which is a great help for Plants. I've yet to test with her, but she does look extremely solid.

Validity in the meta

Plants are the very definition of mediocre currently, not being too weak, but not being too strong either. A lot of things can counter Plants, while Plants will one-sidedly crush the other. Without Servant Z, Plants aren't as overwhelming anymore, and their only niche remaining is Repair, which isn't as major as Souryuu. Due to this, Plants gain a Tier 2+ rating from me.