Guide to a Deck: Yuzuki

Yuzuki is a powerful deck. She has an above average midgame, having access to Double Crush from very early on. On top of that, she has one of the most ideal ener charging engine in the entire game, which is a major thing. Having access to ener gives a deck much, much freeway in how they do things. Combining that with Yuzuki's offence can make a powerfu combination.

However, with the loss of Yuzuki's greatest weapon, Surrounded by Fire, Yuzuki started declining from the metagame slowly over the times, and isn't as high up in the game as she used to be back then. Regardless, with ener flexibilities and offense, as well as being incest girl, Yuzuki is still a very solid deck in the metagame.

Yuzuki-Four, Vermilion Maiden

Overview

Vermilion Yuzuki is the most commonly used build of Yuzuki, and unless something comes out to replace her, probably won't change. Her first Constant skill, while may seem underwhelming at first glance, will save you against a lot of matchups. She will completely secure your victory against Aiyai OTK, will annoy some Midoriko builds, and will have fun against Ril. Her On-Play skill is also pretty good. A free Life Cloth can never be bad. Well, in this case, it is if you decide to give up 7 ener for it, but if you only have 3 or so ener charged, you can use her skill and gain the ener back using the Green Dragon Beasts. If you have the 7 ener, you can use Bloom Yuzuki to not use the skill.

Overall, Vermilion Yuzuki is a great card that helps Yuzuki in the ways of defence, which is something she used to lack.

How the Deck Works

Ballshock Dragon.
I'm not removing this.

Yuzuki has solid card options, like I previously mentioned. She has a useful ener restricter, and she has great ways to gain ener in the form of her Green Dragon Beasts, namely, #Spazaus#, #Dracorex#, and #Stegoceras#. Being able to gain cheap ener easily is good, and these three help in exactly that. While the lower level ones have an ener limit, over-charging Ener can also be a problem, so in that sense, these guys are perfect. 

Her offence, being Red, is also great. Bolshack Dragon is a great card that gives you access to Double Crush from very early on, which can put great pressure on decks. In exchange, she does have a condition of having 6 Dragon Beasts in the trash, but that isn't a real restriction with Apato, #Cobra#, Echidna and etc. Sure, there are SIGNIs in front of Bolshack, but you can use things like Apato and Nile Wani to open up those columns. 

Outside of Bolshack are also all-round solid SIGNIs for Yuzuki. Namely, Svarog. Svarog is a great card with an On-Attack Banish, and an ability to lockdown your opponent's Ener. This can let you go full ham if your opponent has that much ener, or just horribly murder other decks, mostly Green. Midoriko is going to have big problems against Svarogs. 

Bahamut is another noteworthy card for Yuzuki. Having access to free Double Crush and Assasin at the same time is extremely effective on killing things. It may be simple, sure, but very effective. It is a level 5, which gives her quite a few restrictions, but regardless she's good. 

 

Even outside of her SIGNIs, Yuzuki is extremely good. Having access to a lot of ener gives her flexibility in usable ARTS, as she is able to easily able to spam high-costed ARTS. Some examples of this is Four Color Miasma, Flaming Dragon, Poisonous Snake, Sea and Sky Becoming One Blue, and Dragon Chain, all of which are very good ARTS. You can gain all the Ener back, anyways. 

In the form of cheap ARTS for Yuzuki, you have Storm Warning, which is one of the best Defensive ARTS in the game currently. Dragon-Guided Wave is also extremely good, being a better Bloody Slash when Bloody Slash was already amazing. Common Destiny is also a thing, which is good overall. Finally, Yuzuki has access to Absolute Extinction, which provides a decent payoff, with Penalty Chance at least. Flame Gained, Fire Lost is also a good option.

To top things off, I need to tackle the finisher options that Yuzuki has, all of which are pretty decent. The most common one is Phosphorescent Samsara. Samsara is a devastating card, and in most cases is unstoppable unless your opponent has some kind of counter to it. Admittedly, counters to Samsara isn't exactly rare, in the forms of Pinch Defense, Ice Flame Shoot and etc, but since both versions of Yuzuki 5 can kill off their opponent's Ener in one way or another, this can be avoided, especially in the more common case of Ice Flame Shoot.

The other finisher Yuzuki has access to is Rekindling Effort. Being able to lock your opponent's options for ARTS down is pretty good, and if you go first for this, you can make your opponent suffer for not having the ener to grow.

Overall, having great ener gaining and offence, Yuzuki makes a great deck.

Validity in the meta

Yuzuki did definitely fall out of the meta during the past few sets. With Surrounded by Fire being banned, Yuzuki lost her greatest asset and suffered a heavy blow. On top of that, Apato was nerfed, bringing her down even more than she already was. Despite all this, Yuzuki holds a Tier 1- in my book, having access to good cards and options, and being completely fucked by APEX.

Yuzuki-Four, Fire of Nature

Overview

Fire of Nature, surprisingly, is a popular option for Yuzuki. In exchange of having an On-Play skill that crushes one of your Life Cloth, you gain back the ener you used to grow on and gets a good Action. This was especially effective, since Surrounded by Fire could take the crushed Life Cloth and burn it down. This isn't possible anymore, cutting down Fire of Nature's value, but even then, Rekindling achieves the same effect.

Overall, Fire of Nature is a more offensive option for Yuzuki, but in exchange, more risky. Yuzuki's main benefit at the moment is being able to gain all the ener, do enough offence to pose a threat all while having enough defense to murder things, but Fire of Nature makes Yuzuki shift more to offence than defence. It's mainly up to preference, really.

Oh, and you could use Flower Bloom Yuzuki to nullify her On-Play alike to Vermilion's case, I guess, but in that scenerio you lose ener, which is not a good thing.

How the Deck Works 

The main benefit that Fire of Nature provides to you over Vermilion is Western Gunshot. Western is widely unblockable unless you have a counter to it, which is only likely if you're Piruluk. The moment you bring your opponent down to 1 Life Cloth or so, Western will win the game for you. With Common Destiny and Twists and Turns too, it's considerably easy to get Western out.

Also, you don't need to pay Colorless beforehand to get Fire of Nature's Ener Charging effect off, which, while can lead to over-charging, is useful.

However, there is a reason on as of to why she isn't seeing that much play anymore with Vermilion out. Vermilion has much more benefits compared to this Yuzuki. Namely, one of such things is the Constant that prevents death when at 3 or more LC, avoiding many OTKs. Another is the 11 limit, compared to this one's 10, which matters in a metagame in which Bolshack is a thing along with Level 4s all over the place. There's also the fact that if you cancel this Yuzuki's effect because of the minus brings you with Flower Bloom, you just wasted a bunch of ener instead of giving yourself one. Overall, however, is the fact that this one is extremely offensive based compared to Yuzuki's Vermilion playstyle, which is much more defensive.

... Erm, I guess there's something that this Yuzuki holds over Vermilion as a definite: It's half Hanayo, meaning that it can use some of the Hanayo support. Well, considering how none of the Hanayo cards are Dragon Beasts which you want as much as possible for this deck for Bolshack and Sparzaus, so that means much. Well, there is Western, I guess.

As a whole, Fire of Nature is a good card but is more of putting all your eggs into one basket unlike the balanced utility Vermilion, but is a good card regardless.

Validity in the meta

Fire of Nature, alike to Vermilion, gets a Tier 1- ranking. Fire of Nature and Vermilion are really similar in nature, one is just a lot more offensive and less defensive, while the other is passive aggressive. Both are used often, too.