Explaining 8 Standby deck meta with Million Live deck

Japanese meta love the 8 gate (comeback) deck. Being one of the most useful CX, it’s hard to argue that the gate trigger is one of the most versatile trigger for climax selections. They even run that with a deck that doesn’t combo with the CX themselves, as there used to be a Alchemist (Symphogear) deck that ran 8 different gate CX, and it topped in a BCF tournament. The only other CX that offers that much flexibility is your generic 2 soul CX, but with decks aims to compress itself after the first refresh, their usefulness drops as your opponent compress their decks. That is, until the 8 standby meta actually became good.

Slight history lesson

The first standby CX ever printed was for BanG Dream!. The CX itself didn’t really make a splash, as the meta was Level 0 promo into Level 1 Kasumi + event into Level 3 Yukina finisher, which shut off any room for the Standby cx that doesn’t combo with any card. Following BanG Dream!, a few sets such as Fate/Illya, Kemono Friends, and SAO also started to include 1 standby cx in their print runs, and eventually became almost a standard to have at least 1 standby cx per set.

However, it wasn’t until when another promo standby CX for BanG Dream! was printed, that the 8 standby deck was possible. The popularity of 8 standby meta started to explode when K from Yuyutei won trios with his Million Live deck, which solidified it as one of the main meta build for Million Live. From there, BCF trio has seen a surge of 8 standby decks topping, with Fukui Bros taking 1st place in Sapporo Trios with a 20 standby team of Million Live! – Fantasia Bunko – Bunny Girl (set only has 1 standby CX). From there, 8 standby decks actually became a serious build. In a recent meta analysis video by Astin Famiglia, only 2 of the top 10 set does not run a standby as their meta choice of deck, while 2 sets fully embraces the 8 standby build. Finally, perhaps not as impressive of a result, but recently on a weekly shop tournament featuring trios, our team ran a 24 standby team and went on a 4-0 sweep in a 24 player, double elimination tournament. So while the standby/gate build is probably the most popular and versatile, this article will talk about the 8 standby builds instead. Because it’s more fun.

Requirements for 8 Standby decks

It’s only normal to mention Kamen Rider Faiz

Well, obviously you need to have access to 8 standby in the set, since we play neo-standard. As of writing this article, the only sets that can do that are:

BanG Dream!
No Game No Life
Love Live Sunshine!
Nanoha
Idolm@ster Million Live!
Fujimi Fantasia Bunko
Card Captor Sakura
Jojo Part 5

Strength and Weakness of 8 standby triggers

Because of the nature of standby, there are strengths and weakness to the build. First, the strengths:

You can play higher level characters with very little cost. This is huge for level 0-1, as you can play out a couple level 1-2 characters to establish board presence.
You can actually play cost 1/2 cards for level 1 and 2, which you usually would have to spend stock for. This helps with building stock and thus helps with compression.
You can generally overpower your opponents with your characters because your characters are a level ahead, and the power is generally higher. This will help you with your hand size, while your opponent would have to commit more resource to hit over your characters, or hurting their hand size because they have to play characters every turn.
You would still do decently well even when your opponent is a level ahead of you, as you will be matching the level on the field.

But of course, the deck also suffers from a few problems, mainly stemming from the standby trigger itself.

You need to have targets in the waiting room to standby, or that trigger is completely useless. It can get rough at the start of a game if you start with a hand full of climax, especially after the mulligan. Or if you trigger one after you have refreshed in battle phase.
Standby CX does not offer extra soul damage if you play from hand. Thus you generally aren’t hitting as hard until you can cheat out some 2-soul characters, but that doesn’t happen until level 1.
Standby offers very little when your field is optimal/complete at level 2/3. This generally happens when you are triggering the CX on first attack. Remember, if you standby over the attacking character, the attack does not go through as the attacking character is no longer on the field.
Characters that comes in from standby are tapped and thus you can’t attack with it right away, unless there is some other effects that allows that card to stand right away.
Many effects don’t trigger with standby, because you are returning the card from waiting room to the field, not playing it out from your hand. Thus if persona 5 ever gets a standby, it would be bonkers for 1/0 Joker that gets power according to color.

Required pieces to go with

Because of the strength and weakness of running 8 standby CX, there are a list of things that you would want to have to go with to play on the strengths and mitigate the weaknesses. This is the main reason why some decks runs very well with 8 standby, while some decks just doesn’t really cut it because of the lacking pieces. Let’s use a Million Live 8 standby deck, and break down the pieces. There are slight variations to this deck, as it just comes down to what your play style is.

First, you need to have good level 1 and level 2 cards to standby out. Because of the nature of standby, the only effects at these levels that are useful are cards that just gain power, or have some sort of cheaper encore effects. For level 1, 1/1 are a standard choice, as the useful ones will have both of those powers. Same idea goes for the 2/2. Cards that gets big on attack are also an option, but you’ll have to be careful that you might have to pay to keep those cards on the field. In this case for the Million Live deck, both the 1/1 and 2/2 has an hand encore ability, and a pump to its power with conditions that are relatively easy to achieve.

Second, we need to address the waiting room issue. Again, if there are no targets in your waiting room, your standby triggers is just a 1 soul trigger – you’ll wish you just triggered another card that gives you soul without the need to pay it out to keep your stock clean. To solve that, we turn to level 0 tools that helps you mill out your deck. Brainstorms are naturally good for that, so any of the search/salvage brainstorm the set offers is fine. Any cards that lets you dump out cards to search/salvage (Akatsuki effects, or the Anna for Million Live) would also help fill the waiting room. The better ones are ones that you can on play, but on-reverse/sent to waiting room ones are also a good fit. Lastly, you can also consider cards that mills 2 on play to get some sort of effects, but you should also think about how relevant those cards are when you are at a higher level, as those are generally a level 0 ability.

On reverse, reveal up to 3 cards from deck, then you might take up to 1 <music> character. If so, you discard the rest, and discard a card from hand.

Finally, an explosive finish. Because you are normally attacking for 1+trigger, your damage output isn’t high, especially since the two-soul level 2s might come out after your opponent has refreshed. Thus, many times that even if you dominate the field, you might only be slightly ahead in terms of damage. Since the deck helps with you with conserving stock and hand, you have more options during level 3 to push your opponent over. The best case scenario is if the standby climax that you are playing would have a climax combo with a level 3 character. In this deck, the 3/2 Kotoha heals, gets big, and has a burn 1×3 ability with the CX combo. The 3/7 event is also a good option, as it allows you to burn 2×3 during a main phase, which means your opponent cannot do anything about it. While it is costly to play the event, your field should be set up by level 3, as the main goal of the deck is to assert field dominance, rather than the usual “prep for the level 3 finisher combo in hand”. Personally, I’ve never lost a game if I can pump in 9 instances of damage (3x from event, 3x from 3 character attacking, and 3 burn 1s from Kotoha), but obviously that doesn’t happen too often because of the cost associated (mainly to do with hand size) with that.

+1500 for experience 6+. On play, heal 1. CX combo, pay 3 ditch 1, on reversing opposing character, “burn 1” 3 times.

Deck specific tech with the remaining cards

The rest of the deck is mainly to make sure the above three things works out, and isn’t generally in every deck. Because the 3/2 Kotoha has a experience-6 ability to get more power, and the 1/1 also needs experience, the deck is a bit more top heavy – but that fits well with the generally top heavy structure of 8 standby decks anyway. The 3/2 Mirai gives power to the center stage and has the option to burn 1 on attack, which is nice when you don’t have enough hand size to run the Kotoha combo after firing off the 3/7 event. Matsuri is a global 1500 that has CIP salvage, and can assign extra soul if you trigger a CX. These cards helps you with maintain the power level to maintain the field presence, and helps with Kotoha’s on reverse burn. 2/1 Umi is your standard pseudo-anti-change, and since Kotoha and 1/1 Kana already has a experience ability, you can easily hit into that 14k against level 3s. 2/1 Tomoka has a tap self then build stock from waiting room ability, just like Kemono Friend’s Alpaca, and also has a way to flood the field with level 0s on a brainstorm. I generally don’t use the brainstorm much, but there are times it comes in really handy.

Experience 3+, +1000. On attack, gets +6000 against level 3 characters.

For the level 0s, Yukiho is suprisingly useful at any level to help you deal with your opponent’s stage, and also has the ability to pay 1 to run to the back row, to avoid giving any on-reverse combo your opponent might have at level 0-1. Iori pumps your level 0, but she is mainly there for the pay 1-sac self-Akatsuki ability that helps with both your hand and the waiting room situation.

On attack, give another <music> charater +2000. At the start of opponent’s attack phase, may pay 1, if so, move her to an empty spot in the back row.

General Strategies

The deck aims to establish field presence. Make sure your waiting room is healthy and you can standby as much as possible.
This build only has 4 level 1s. But that’s not a big deal because you can continue using level 1 to build up your field, and that your level 0 tools are still useful in level 1.
If you have a choice, attack with characters that are weaker or might lose to your opponent first. That way, on subsequent attacks, you might hit into a standby trigger and be able to play over those reversed or weaker characters.
It’s especially important to remember where your triggered CX are at, especially if your CX is 3+ cards deep. You generally don’t pay much stock out, but you do have the options to hard cast the 1/1 or 2/2s to get those CX from the stock out.
Unless your hand is really suffering, hold onto the 3/7 event, as the only way to get event cards is to draw into it – and you only draw during the regular draw/clock phases.
Be cautious of the stock/hand cost for finishing the game. It’s generally hard to pull off both the Kotoha and the event finisher in the same turn, due to number of cards in hand. Don’t over commit just to find out that you can’t pull off the finisher.

Closing Remarks

Are 8 standby decks the best deck in the current meta? Probably not, as it’s probably stronger to just run 4 standby instead. However, it’s definitely very strong, somewhat easy to pilot, and very fun to play. Also, not every set is best with just throwing in 8 standbys. I wrote this article to give you a glimpse of the possibilities of the 8 standby meta, especially since it will soon appear in the English meta, with Fantasia Bunko announced. I personally feel that Fantasia has the best 8 standby deck right now, and I am currently testing different 8 standby Love Live Sunshine builds. There will probably be an upcoming article regarding Love Live Sunshine, so look forward to it.