Deck Variants: About 2-stops

It's gonna be a full week since I last wrote a blog soon, and I have a good reason for that.

Basically, I've ran out of things to write about.

... well, that and that I've been to Animethon for the past 3 days.

Sure, I haven't even come in close to finishing a blog for each LRIGs, but most of the ones not here yet I'm either not as confident in my knowledge on them due to either me not playing them nor anyone near me playing them, and others just plain generic to make an interesting blog out of. The biggest part, however, is the fact that WX14 data needs to come here for me to update about on stuff , notably on the Black Tawil I talked about a while ago and Iona.

Speaking of which, my Tawil blog literally disappeared into thin air. Wonder if blogger can fix that.

Anyways, the point is that I'm running out of things to write about rapidly, and I'd want a little time using certain decks before writing about them. The topic for today though, is a preety generic topic that I should be able to write about; 2-stop decks. Fortunately, I have enough experience with most of the major 2-stop decks and a Midoriko 3-stop I can slap in as a side thingy for me to make an article of, so this should probably satisfy you people anxiously waiting for a new blog for now.

What is a 2-stop?

Of course we need to start from here.

A 2-stop deck is, as the word implies, a deck that stops growing at level 2, and instead starts doing their shenanigance from turn 2, making the most of 2-stop decks offense oriented rush decks, that have extra ARTS space that they can dedicate to either more defensive ARTS to make them harder to kill, or utility based ARTS that helps them rush their opponent even more than they already do. Overall, 2-stop decks' main idea to do their shit so early that it outpaces the opponent's deck to the point they can't catch up anymore. More ARTS than normal 4-stops, check. Immense rush compared to any other deck, check. It basically looks perfect. If they had any flaws, it would be that they aren't as effective as proper 4-stop decks by turn 4 because they lack the explosiveness, but most of the time, you'll kill your opponents before they reach level 4, which makes it a really minor detail.

So is she the S or the M?

Hell, at one point of the game, 2-stops were all over the place, which forced TakaraTomy to banhammer all of the things that made those 2-stops good and focus some major support to level 4s instead. 

3-stops are basically less early versions of what 2-stops are. They're, as the name implies, decks that stop at level 3, giving them their "early game" only once they reach turn 3. This has quite a few disadvantages compared to 2-stops, mainly because they have less of an early game to compete against 2-stops, while not having enough late game shenanigance compared to normal 4-stops. This is why for the most part, 2-stops tend to be preferred over 3-stops, unless that 3-stop is a build for a very specific LRIG, namely Bondage Hanayo and Servant Midoriko the Lancer, who have their specific playstyles that helps them maintain a niche over 4-stops and 2-stops.

What are the different Variants of 2-stops?

This is the main part now.

First of all, we need to talk about a certain variant of 2/3-stop decks that are extremely popular; Servant decks. Servants, with the introduction of Gathering Protection during WX10, which turned out to be an extremely lethal rush deck with all those Lancers. Servant decks started appearing all over the place, mainly on Iona and, you guessed it, 2-stop decks. Decks that used Gathering Protection from a very early stage of the game to lancer their way through their opponent's Life Cloth, when combined with a good finisher/good utility, makes a really, really horrifying deck. That being said, it's not like slapping Servants into any deck would work. There will be times in which you won't be able to hit SIGNI easily even considering Gathering Protection's +5k, and some decks just use it better than others with specific niches, such as Piruluk with Lock You. Among all the decks that stands out the most from all the 2-stop Servant decks appear Hanayo 2-stop and Piruluk 2-stop, with Hanayo having a good finisher in the form of her Action and Rekindling Effort and Piruluk having Lock You to settle the scores.

Aside from Servants, there are a couple 2-stop builds that aid in rush. Coming in second place for most generic 2-stop ever next to Servants is~ *drumrolls* Heike Charmloop! I've mentioned the Skanda/Ganesha + Violence Jealousy multiple times in the blog, but never once have I mentioned using it with a 2-stop deck. Well guess what, you can! If it wasn't obvious enough. The deck's main idea consists of using Heike loop to banish all your opponent's SIGNI very early on, which can lead to some rabid rushing damage input potential. This type of 2-stop is obviously generally seen in Black LRIGs, such as Iona with Violence Splash supporting her back and Ulith with Enigma and Miasma supporting her. Surprisingly though, this loop is also seen in a 2-stop Piruluk variant that uses the Violence Jealousy fetching for SHOOTING, which is talked about more in the Piruluk post.

Aside from these "Big Two" 2-stop variants, there are a couple minor outdated ones, such as Ammolite builds, Ayabon builds, the bad Chemical Flash build, Umr Lost Technology spamming, so on and so forth, as well as specific 2-stops that are talked about more in specifics by the respective blogs. Namely from Tama, Alfou, Hanayo and Piruluk.

A 2-stop worth mentioning in specific would be Anne 2-stop, featuring Meril to tank your opponent's effects while baiting in attacks, and pushing the damage in with Destruction Spirit. The build did top once since Meril's release, but personally I don't like the idea.

Straying away from 2-stops, let's talk about 3-stops. That being said, 3-stop decks do tend to be ran for one very specific reason/niche, so to be honest it's difficult to pin down variants of 3-stops in general, so I'll just leave this at "it depends on the deck".

As a side note, few of the 3-stop decks in existance consists of Umr 3-stop with Lost Technology, a 3-stop version of Chemical Flash, Yuzuki 3-stops that uses Roaring Yuzuki for the offense, Myuu 3-stop that uses Scarab/Possibly Cerberun shenanigance, Remember 3-stop with DEF and stuff (never use anymore, trash), etc etc.

How does 2-stops get countered?

This should be an interesting topic to both 2-stop haters and players.

God you're so cute
But I hate you so much.

2-stops, with their monstrous rushing potential, can be an extreme pain to handle. However, most of the times, they do tend to be very fragile, since what counters them counters them hard. Mainly, I'm talking about Idol Defense. Idol was created for the very reason of countering decks like 2-stops that are too stronk for their own good, and does a preety good job of it. Idol, however, is a dead card in most cases, making it extremely scarce (save from decks such as Tawil and Yuki) in decks, making it hardly matter.

Something that does counter 2-stops (or rather, a certain build of 2-stop) while being considerably common though, is Vier=VX. VX counters a specific 2-stop, in the form of Hanayo easily, making that Constant skill backfire hard on her. This is preety damned good since it either forces your opponent to call no SIGNIs or waste an ARTS to remove that one specific SIGNI, which does hurt. Either ways, VX is a preety good counter to Hanayo 2-stop and actually gives you a fighting chance.

If you're a 2-stop, these are the main things you'd have to be careful about, aside from that, just play smart.

If you're looking to counter 2-stops, you won't have an easy time. Using Idol just because of 2-stops is sort of eh for an idea, that being said VX only counters Hanayo and isn't online till late on in the game. Overall, the best way to counter 2-stops would be to run easy cheap ARTS that easily block 2, preferably more attacks, namely Storm Warning and the likes. Timing them well can help you live until turn 4, of which you'd at least have a fighting chance. Note though that a certain card can be used to field wipe your opponent easily when they're 2-stop; which is Ancient Surprise. While most decks don't run Ancient Surprise anymore, decks such as Piruluk Vermilion and Umr do still run it, and possibly new Iona, proving it to still be lethal in certain decks. Overall, 2-stop decks tends to get fucked by AnSap and Idol, but if you don't run it, follow the "cheap ARTS" formula I just gave you. Aside from that? Well, 2-stops are made to fuck with everything so the only thing you can do is to quietly get fucked over.

3-stops shouldn't be too big of threats.