Card games, at their core, are luck based. The goal of any good deck builder is to reduce that luck down to its minimum possible level. Maximum consistency should always be what you aim for when you build a deck… Or should it?
The OG High-Roller
My first experience with a card effect that was chance based was Joey Wheeler’s Time Wizard from the first Yu-Gi-Oh series.
If you don’t know what this card is, it’s a monster card with the effect of when it comes into play you flip a coin. If you call the result correctly, you destroy all your opponents monsters. However, if you call it wrong, you destroy all your monsters instead. This was considered one of Joey’s ace monsters despite being horrible on paper. In fact, most of Joey’s cards are terrible on paper simply because they have a chance of failing. Does this mean all chance based cards are doomed to be bad?
It Wouldn’t be a Card Game Article if Magic the Gathering Wasn’t Mentioned
Many card games have these high risk, high rewards cards in them. In Magic the Gathering’s modern format, there was a high risk deck called Hollow One that was considered meta at one point. You may be asking yourself how a deck running chance based cards could ever be considered meta. The answer lies in the fact that many of the cards in the deck had an extremely high amount of synergy with each other. I have linked an excellent video that dives into the deck and the mentality of a player who is playing a deck that forces you to make much more calculated risks.
So why am I talking about other card games in a article about Weiss? I wanted to show that just because a deck leans away from the hyper consistent style, it does not make it a bad deck. In fact, it could out perform decks that have been built “better”.
Enter The Dog
The first type of high risk high reward deck I saw in Weiss was the fate coin-flip deck. It’s builds have varied, but pre-Heavens Feel, it was mostly a Green/Yellow/Red deck. There were two main all stars of the deck.
This humble little guy is the one of the reasons why this deck works. Aside from having one of the most flavourful effects in the Fate series, he is the reason this deck is referred to as coin-flip. I’m sure he was not the first card with this effect, but more than likely he is the reason people refer to this ability as a coin-flip. Going back to the magic example, much like how Hollow One made you play a lot of discard spells in order to make it work, you play a lot more 2s and 3s than a regular deck. More often than not, you actually play zero level 1s.
You’re probably thinking, why would I do such a thing? Why would I give up the level 1 combo’s for a silly level 0. The answer lies in resources, counter play, and synergy. Being able to play the same card every turn, while not having to waste resources to play out other ones is very beneficial. A lot of decks nowadays are playing on reverse level 1 combos, and crashing your 0’s to deny their game plan can be extremely effective. While these previous two points help the deck, the synergy with All-Star #2 is where this card really shines.
It Takes Two to Make a Thing Go Right
Do you remember when I said you rarely, if ever, play level 1s? The reason for that, and why you play such an above average amount of twos and threes, is not only for the coin-flip to have its 50/50ish odds. It’s also to put as much fire power in the deck as possible for your Gilgamesh combo.
This card can be absolutely crazy for ending games. I’ll address the elephant in the room right off the bat. Yes this combo is severely hurt by Kemono Friends and Re:Zero Memory Snow. Anti-burn 1 can be quite effective, but there are other end game cards to use if you are in that match-up.
With that out of the way, lets talk about how crazy this card is. With more than half your deck being cards featuring Triggers, this card has extremely high chances of hitting the cards it needs to. If you start managing your stock by paying out the level 2+ cards, while leaving in the zero’s, you will be fueling up your deck after refresh to deal big damage to your opponent. Playing two stock soul climaxes also help’s with this game plan.
What’s also amazing about playing stock soul climaxes is its double soul trigger. If Gilgamesh mills a cx, it counts each of the soul triggers on the cx. So if you end up milling two climaxes, that’s 4 instances of “Burn 1”. While you do have to reverse the opponent to get this effect off, which has its own set of problem, being smaller than your opponent shouldn’t be a problem.
The main reason you will bigger, more often than not, is because of the other important synergy between Gilgamesh and Lancer. Both characters are weapon trait, so when you are finished using Lancer for resource preservation, you can ditch him to pump Gilgamesh 4k power. This is also not a once per turn effect. So if you are playing against Bunny Girl, and they have their body guard out, you would be able to reverse at the cost of a heavy investment.
Example Deck List
https://www.encoredecks.com/deck/hrytvT9I0
Full disclosure, I have not fully tested this deck.
Closing Thoughts
I hope I have done a good job of introducing you all to my favourite archetype. In a future article I will be going over what i believe is the best coin flip deck available. Please make sure you check it out, along with all of the other awesome articles Wild Wild Weiss has to share. Thank you, and I’ll catch you in the next one.
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