This situation has been made worse with the addition of yet more bees: Swarm Decks in Weiss

Every set in Weiss has a wide variety of cards that can be assembled in a variety of ways to achieve near limitless strategies. Man, fuck that noise, that shit requires effort[1]. It’s time to put 42 of the same character in a deck and call it a day. That’s right, we’re talking about swarm decks!

Swarm decks are based around cards that allow you to have as many of them as you like in your deck instead of the usual maximum of four. Most swarm decks will run other character cards to make sure the deck does things other than turn cards sideways every turn, but for some decks it really do be like that. We’re going to look at a few swarm decks today, from pure suffering to actually effective.

The very first swarm deck

Disgaea features the very first card that allows as many copies as you like, Prinny Squad (aka doods)! On top of allowing infinite copies of itself, you may discard a dood to make one of your opponent’s front row characters lose 1000 power for the turn. There is almost no situation you want to do this. Not going to lie, playing 42 of these guys is 100% suffering and you should not dood this. All you can dood is attack three times and use whatever stock you have to pay to keep at least one Prinny on the field.

Fortunately, Disgaea D2 comes to the rescue! Pringer X allows you to stuff doods under him to make him swole. You may place an on field dood underneath him as a marker to give him an extra soul for the turn. On top of that, he gains 1500 power per dood underneath him. Further, he has the Bodyguard ability, meaning that all your opponent’s attacks now target Pringer X! Now you’re cooking with some gas, as most level three fields will have a hard time dealing with this, Megumin and Reinhard excluded. Sadly, green events aren’t going to be too useful to you, unless you want to meme with Winged Slayer, so you probably still don’t have a ton of variety here. Pringer X at least makes the deck threatening at level three.

Decks that are actually fun

We’ve seen the first swarm deck and how much suffering it brings with it, now let’s look at some playable swarm cards. What you’ll notice is that these mostly interact with effects on other cards in the deck that are greatly enhanced by having many copies.

The first are the Puyos from Puyo Puyo. There are five four playable Puyos, one for each colour. Each colour Puyo does the same thing: for each other matching Puyo in the front row, it gets an additional 2000 power. This means you can build a pretty formidable level 0 wall, and that the Puyos are effective even at level 1. What makes these even better is that some of Puyo Puyo’s brainstorms interact with the Puyos themselves! Amitie, Dreaming of Being a Wonderful Magician allows you to salvage a character if you hit at least one red Puyo while Arle lets you free play a level one or lower character if you hit at least one yellow Puyo. The Puyos replace some of the other utility that Puyo has to offer, but Red Puyos basically guarantee that you get to salvage a card every turn if you so wish, keeping that hand nice and full. This allows the Puyos to fit into almost all of Puyo Puyos game plans, for maximum flavour.

Unlike the previous examples of swarm cards, Nox Core from Accel World is level 1. It operates in a similar manner to the Puyos, gaining power for each other Nox Core, except when you play a Nox Core you can pay two stock to search another Enemy trait charact, probably a Nox Core. The big payoff of this deck is Nyx, Goddess of the Night. When she comes to the field, you may discard a card from hand and mill the top seven cards from your deck. You do damage for each Nox Core in those seven cards. This allows you to close out the game quickly at level three. Not bad, but in my experience, the fact that you need a level zero game outside of the swarm reduces the actual effectiveness of the burn and makes the deck kind of clunky overall. Still pretty fun though.

If you want something that has seen some recent success in Japan and doesn’t actually rely on things like “other characters,” may I point you towards the following Gun Gale Online Deck:

Card Name	Level	Count
ZEMAL, Machine Guns are fun!	0	42
Love Without Risking Life	Climax	4
Hedonic Massacre	Climax	2
Sadistic Smile	Climax	2

 

Basically, Machine Gun Mans get 1000 for each other Machine Gun Man on field, meaning they are 6500 at level 0. Machine Gun Mans are terrifying at level zero and are a decent level one field. The way this deck goes is pretty simple: turn machine gun guy sideways, play climaxes when you get them, pay stock when a Machine Gun Man dies in order to pay out climaxes in stock. Doing this, you compress and win with the power of Machine Gun Man. Cry a bit when you inevitably get stock washed but keep shooting with Machine Gun Man. Pretty straight forward really. My personal taste is more plus two soul climaxes, but I can get why you don’t want to be dropping two souls every turn. Machine Gun Man is an art, not a process.

Wrapping up

I haven’t even touched on all the possible swarming builds, and there are a lot. Even my favourite sets in Kemono Friends and Macross Frontier have swarm cards. These cards are interesting because they break a pretty fundamental constraint in Weiss, and it lets you feel like you are commanding a peasant army[2]. In many cases the peasant army analogy is apt, as they don’t do a whole lot and then die. But every so often, you get some real winners like the Puyos and Machine Gun Man. Most of these cards are commons too, so the barrier to entry is low. So go forward young Weiss player, and flood your opponent!

[1] Swarm decks ratios are more often than not really well thought out. It requires a good bit of effort.

[2] Or professional army, in the case of Machine Gun Man.