Guide to a Deck: Anne

I play the melody of horror
into my opponent's ears

Anne is probably one of the most defensive decks in the game. Actually, I'd even call her the most defensive deck in the game. It's to the point that it's almost impossible to win against Anne if you aren't running ARTS/Spells that can get rid of SIGNIs that have more than 12k power to get past Contempora and Suiboku combined, do enough offense to make sure that your opponent's Anne 5 runs out of Exceed fodder, and in general, crushing your opponent's Life Cloth enough to the point you can kill them... a.k.a. never. There are ways to play around these, but they sure aren't easy and are conditional, compared to just how easily Anne is able to set up her perfect field.

Anne isn't all plusses though, in fact she has one big flaw. It's that she's way too defensive for her own good, which helps her not die, but due to that utter lack of offense, she won't be able to kill her opponent easily either. This makes Anne restricted to being a stallout deck, which is not a particularly good thing for any deck. Being defensive is one thing, being only defensive is another. Now, this became a lot better for Anne when she got her WX14 support and got Mouth, Laborious Work and Thinker to adress the problem, which is a good thing, but Mouth, while good, isn't getting that returning off too easily, and using Laborious Work, with that 3 ener cost, isn't going to be spammable, despite the fact that Anne can gain quite a lot of ener. Thinker is fantastic, but you can only use so many of her and get only so much into the trash. Destruction Spirit is a good card in this regard, but it's extremely conditional.

Overall, Anne is a very defensive deck which makes her hard to kill, but isn't offensive enough to do much damage, putting her in the same standing as her opponent. She does just... automatically win against certain decks without giving them a chance at victory all all though, namely Hanare and Umr.



On a side note, I hate Anne, although not as much as I hate Eldora.

Anne=Wincon is opponent ragequiting

OH GOD NO
THE TERROR

Anne's ideal field consists of Contempora-Suiboku-Mouth. The reason on this should be obvious, but I'll elaborate on it for beginners since that's who the blog is meant for in the first place. Contempora makes all your SIGNIs immune to everything except ARTS and Spells, which straight up shuts down a few decks, namely True Mayu's skill, Hanare, Hanayo Chinese Dress, and Tawil. Contempora is the cornerstone of all Anne defense. On the contrary, it means that without Contempora you're fucked, but that'll hardly ever happen, especially because Suiboku can help in reviving Contempora (while triggering off Mouth's skill). There are very few stuff that can target Contempora and during rare cases that those things appear, Suiboku can save the day very easily. Anne=Fourth, Melody of Horror's Action can search Contempora out too, and Contempora has a Constant that helps her stay in the hand even if Piruluk forced you to drop her. With Anne 4's Constant of +2k, Contempora, hitting 14k to avoid Dragon Chain, Miasma and likes, is just immortal. No questions asked. However, this is only if she can stay at 14k. Remember that Anne 4 only has 11 limit, which forces you to put down a level 3 SIGNI, which won't hit 12k+. This means that that one SIGNI would be easy enough to remove, and if they remove even one SIGNI, it immediately becomes so much easier to hit a 12k Contempora. However, this problem is amended by Mouth, which becomes a 12k when you have 2 other Beautiful Technique SIGNIs in the field. This makes a perfect 14-14-14 lineup. Now you know why Contempora-Suiboku-Mouth is your ideal Anne field. You could replace Mouth in this case with Radabura, which hits for 14-14-16, but Mouth's extra synergy with Suiboku is worth noting.

You came from Madoka,
didn't you?

Basically the only thing you'll ever need in an Anne deck is Mouth, Contempora, Suiboku and like, 12 Servants, but since the deck requires you to run exactly 40 cards let's add in a bunch of fillers.

The most noteworthy filler is Cubi, which is a fantastic resource gainer. Extravaganza is a great ener gainer who when combined with Cellon, triggers off Mouth preety easily. Speaking of Cellon, Cellon's a great card. I'd run her at 1-2, with one or two of the Level 1 and Level 2 Cross pairs to mess up early game shenanigance. An even better way to block off early game shenanigance exists though, in the form of Meril. On the topic of Cross, To'on is an interesting tech-in, with a good lifeburst and a conditional, but fantastic Banishing blocking skill. Going back to Thinker (who you should run at 2-3), Thinker synergizes well with Storm Warning and Anne 5, letting you possibly block 2 attacks while getting a boost in offense. Marche is a good card that can help trigger off Mouth, while helping you filter through your deck and tutoring out Contemporas and the likes. Also, that Constant is amazing. Recorders is a good card, but you'll hardly ever need to use more than 1 if any. Cola lite is amazing, but not usable at mass numbers. Grid can be used for Cubi support and possible lifeburst, but i wouldn't. At most, I'd run 1. Contra can be used for the Constant, which helps in certain scenerios. Surrelis helps Merlin tank, while being tutorable with Puri. Finally, Rebirth is an option if you have a really hard time getting Contempora out because of horrible luck, while gaining one ener (while Extravaganza is a better spell for that). Aside from these, a few Vanila level 1s for level 1/2 with the almighty Merlin can work.

Also, as a side note, if it wasn't obvious enough, do not run any non-Beautiful Technique SIGNI aside from Servants. While Kayappa is extremely good, Anne was not built to work with non-Beautiful Techniques.

Seven different strokes.
Stroking something
very long and hard.

Now then, enough of the Main Deck choice dumping, let's get into ARTS options. First of all, something very noteworthy is that while Storm Warning is extremely good in any deck that can pay the Green cost, it's especially good in Anne. Not only does Storm's cost get nullified by Suiboku (provided your opponent attacks), Storm can trigger off many things, mainly The Thinker. Hell, Storm even has Anne's art plastered right in front of it. Storm is more of a staple than ever in Anne, and can even be used at 2 if you feel like it.

Aside from Storm, another staple is Laborious Work. I think I've established why preety clearly. Then there's Anne 5, which is overall amazing. Common Destiny can synergize well with Anne's need of white ener at times, as well as helping getting The Thinker and Recorders into the trash easily, by tutoring them out and paying for them afterwards. Pluralism Depiction is a good card to prevent certain LRIG devestations, namely Samsara, Enigma, Arc Destruct and etc. Spirit Salvage is always nice to have. Divine Grace can clutch save you in multiple occsions, although I wouldn't run any. Vanish like Mist helps Anne in being offensive... but with the card being banished, which is not as good as returning, but good enough. Moisturer/Different Strokes could be used as Anti-Spell, but eh, both are preety shitty cards in general to be honest.

Two popular choices worth noting down are Phosphorescent Samsara and Retribution, both of which gives Anne a finisher. I heavily dislike the both of them, but considering how Anne hardly ever needs to use any of her ARTS, you could. Hellspin also fit into that category at one point of time, before it got banned.

Since Anne runs a lot of Servants (12-14 generally), there are a few builds every now and then that runs Gathering Protection. Note though that this is a shitty choice in cards due to the fact that you'll probably never put those Servants down in the field, by the time you reach level 4 at least.

Anne=Two, the bad shenanigance

Where there are decks, there will be 2-stops, putting aside whether those 2-stops are good or not. Anne has a cheezy 2-stop build that does a bunch of stuff, mainly tanking with Merlin. For the offense, there are two variants. The main one, and the better one if you ask me, involves in using Destruction Spirit as many times as possible by running a lot of stuff that can charge the ener early on, such as Pay Charging and Common Destiny, letting you secure an easy Destruction Spirit each turn. The other build consists of Thinker shenanigance, which, in summary, uses Storm Warming/Recorder to actively trigger off Thinker against your opponent. Destruction Spirit Spam variant works preety well if done right, despite being conditional and a subjectively worse FREEZE THROUGH spam, but it'd still be better than Thinker Spam, which is extremely unreliable and not worth the waste of space. You could do a mix of both, but that wouldn't make it much better.

Verdict: Anne 2-stop is bad, don't.