Last week, we talked about how to Rock Japari Park. Today, we’re going to look at individual cards in the set. Like with the Macross Frontier set, this will serve mostly as a reference list. Feel free to bounce around as you need. We’ll split it up the list into four main sections: key cards, climax combos, utility and jank. Hopefully, this will give you some ideas to structure or tech a Kemono Friends deck.
Key Cards
If you’re playing Kemono, chances are your deck will rely heavily on at least one of these three cards. This is for good reason, as they are each powerful and help you generate a lot of advantage.
Café Waitress, Alpaca Suri: Alpaca is a currency generating dynamo. You may tap her in exchange for putting one Friends character into stock from your waiting room. This ensures that you will generate at least two stock and up to five every turn. It also makes keeping your stock clean a lot less painful, since stock is less scarce. On top of that, each character gets 1000 power and tea trait on play, which makes this a bit beefier and more flavourful. In my opinion, Alpaca is one of the two cards that stirs Kemono’s drink.
Kaban at the Congratulation Party: The other main stir stick. When Kaban is reversed you may; pay one stock; take one damage; search for a Friends character; and if you are level two or lower, send Kaban to memory. From memory, Kaban blocks your opponent activate abilities that deal one damage to you. Not only do you defend against burn damage, you take cards out of deck making it easier to cancel, and build your hand.
Kaban, Full of Ideas. This level three can be played at level two if you have two or fewer climaxes in your waiting room. Kaban also allows you to search for an event, lay it underneath Kaban as a marker, then you may retrieve that marker in exchange for discarding a card from your hand. This makes events a lot more reliable than they are in other sets, given that you can grab them almost at will.
Good Climax Combos
Although a lot of Kemono Friends decks don’t rely on Climax combos, that isn’t to say they don’t have any good ones. Kemono Friends has three high caliber climax combos to work with:
Common Raccoon, Always Full Power: If Alpaca isn’t your style, Kemono has another way to generate stock quickly. This combo is in the vein of Apples Kyoko and Sayaka from Madoka Magica. The supporting Fennec gives each Arai san an extra 2000 power on your turn, allowing you to easily bust walls. On play of the supporting climax, a gold bar called Capture Completed?, Arai san gets an additional 1000 power and when she reverses her opponent, you can place a character from waiting room to stock. This allows you to burst an additional three stock on each play.
This falls out of key card level for me because I find this combo nets you a lot less than Alpaca does. You will likely only get this combo off once netting you two to three bonus stock, while Alpaca generates two bonus stock every turn. However, if you want a beefier level three field than what Alpaca offers by allowing level assists on field at level three, this boost strategy is viable.
Serval, Curious About Everything: This is Kemono Friends big finisher. When it comes on field, it gains 1000 power for each Friends Character on the field, getting it to 13,500. Then, when the stock soul climax is in the climax zone and you have two friends characters in your memory (given that a lot of stuff in this set goes to memory, this isn’t hard), you may stand Serval when she reverses her opponent. The cost for the extra attack is two stock and one card discarded. Not too bad, but given how hard of a time Kemono has generating hand advantage, this becomes cumbersome.
Lion King of the Beasts: This is a techable extra attack. When this comes into battle due to the effect of Kemono’s switch trigger, you can pay two, ditch two and stand Lion. This is expensive, but at the same time, it allows for an extra attack and you can leave this as an outside option in many Kemono decks to give them an extra bit of damage support.
Good Support
Kemono Friends has a ton of fantastic support options. I’m not going to be able to list them all here. However, here’s some of the cream of the crop:
Serval, Driving: This is fantastic hand fix. On play, check the top card of your deck, if it is a Friends character or event, add it to your hand and ditch a card. On top of this, this gets an extra soul if it’s in the center slot of center stage, making it able to contribute offensively at any point in the game.
Commerson’s Dolphin, Loves Playing: This allows Kemono Friends decks to maintain some hand and power at level one. On play, they get 500 power for each other friends character. Then, at the start of your encore phase, if you have another Dolphin in hand, it can come right back! On top of that, you can totally deny your opponent their on reverse effects. Power and disruption, awesome.
All Together Pull: If you have three Friends Characters, you may heal a Friends Character to hand, this event goes to memory. Heal to Hand is always good. Searchable heal to hand is fantastic.
Small Clawed Otter, Genius at Playing: Whenever this attacks, check the top card of your deck, if it’s a Friends character, you can give one of your other characters 1000 extra power for the total number of Friends characters you have. This allows Kemono to knock down marker stacks, which tend to give Kemono decks fits. On top of that, it’s green which allows you to run the green healing event.
Paper Airplane: Pay three when an opponent front attacks, tap them down. Pretty simple. Since you can search this and generate a buttload of stock, you’ll be able to get this out pretty easily if you run one or two. Your opponent will likely have to play sub optimally just due to the fact that you have this in hand.
Aurochs, Start of the Battle: Kemono level one fields can get pretty squishy. This is now exception, however it can stay on field if it reveals a level two or higher card when it is reversed. It is likely that it’ll rest instead of going to waiting room since you’ll be playing events, early plays, and level zeros that go to memory.
Sand Cat: Really Interested?: When it reverses its opponent, it runs to memory until your next draw phase. Since level zeros are fragile as all hell, this can be trotted out turn after turn, and really help your hand out. The Calgary record for most Sand Cat appearances from the same card is six in one game, held by Ben.
Serval, RAWR: She Attack, She Protect, but most importantly she gets the hell out of the way when she is no longer useful. When she is reversed, check the top card of your deck, if it’s a Friends character or the paper Airplane event, off to memory she goes. Nice compression early in the game.
Jank
This is stuff that’s either really weird, or just doesn’t really fit with what the set is trying to do.
Crested Iblis, Menacing Singing: In many other sets this would be pretty decent and not really worth noting. On attack, pay one to burn one when the gate trigger is on field is pretty okay. However, this set’s pride and joy is turning off all auto effects that do one damage. It really doesn’t fit. You have better game plans available to you.
Northern White Faced Owl and Eurasian Eagle Owl, Chiefs of the Island: This is a card that a lot of people wanted to like. It has an easy early play condition, it allows you to chain a character in for dropping hand instead of stock (including another copy of itself or the Kaban early play), and it searches two Friends characters on a climax combo to replenish hand completely. What makes this a harder inclusion is that a lot of Kemono decks focus on healing, and taking out a level three that likely has heal for the owls and replacing a door trigger with a two soul trigger does hamper that end goal. That isn’t to say there isn’t a fun deck here, I’m just yet to find it. When I do, this moves into Good Climax Combos.
Serval, Rescue Operation: This card is very powerful, but it is also very expensive and its costs are hard to deploy. Pay three, discard the Hearth event and the Paper Airplane event during the start of your opponent’s attack phase. If you do, tap down one of their characters and salvage a character with Kaban in its name. Not only does this have to be on field, you have to discard two specific events. Even with these two events searchable and bondable, that’s asking a lot. Although, man, stopping a restander in its tracks and giving your opponent no recourse or way to play around it is too satisfying. Also, so much flavour.
Lion, Leader Battle: The battles between Lion and Moose can be best described as “It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.” And boy does this card embody that. Basically, if you reveal a higher level card: nuke a level zero. If they do, lol rested. This card is dumb. I run it.
Wrapping up
I hope you found this more in depth look into what Kemono has to offer at a card level. I’ve posted two silly Kemono builds previously tagged with Kemono Friends, here and here, , if you want to see how Kemono builds play when you aren’t focusing on healing. More Kemono content is on the way, so as always, stay tuned!
Wild Wild Weiss 