Sidequest: Cactuar Azul
Step Daddy. Vegetarian Dadaluma.
Opus XI’s Relm is an absolutely great card that fits into a lot of different builds. When you look at her, your mind starts wandering around what 1 CP and 2 CP Monsters you can find. If you ever played this game around Opus IV, then you know of a particular 1 CP Monster that caused a fair amount of shenanigans alongside of the since-banned Dadaluma. Now that we have a similar mechanic in Azul, with the help of other “damaged Forward matters” cards, and a new friend in Kuja to help us get to Damage 3 and 5. Can Azul cosplay as Dadaluma?
You can check out a couple games with the deck right here.
The big winners
First off: credit where credit is due. This list is heavily influenced by Kurosawa’s lists from the “Stay at Home” Japanese tournaments.
Relm is almost too good, because she will trick you into thinking she is absolutely required and vital. She’s definitely a card you want to play, but you probably just need to resolve her once. Once you have one Cactuar down, you’re ready to cruise with Orlandeau and Barbariccia. Add in Kuja, and you have a whopping nine Forwards that more or less break an opposing Forward when they enter. That feels good.
Citra does everything we want her to do, and sometimes more since her second ability is basically a Special. Her EX and second ability justify 3 copies.
Top it off with Sakura refilling your hand and Cactuar is living his absolutely best life here.
Somehow he feels a lot less important that originally expected.
The underperformers
We set off to exploit Azul, and we can definitely do that in this list. But, what struck me as especially odd, is that I didn’t really feel like we ever needed to do that. Fina also plays a very important role when opponents play strategies that go wide with a lot of Forwards, but sometimes she feels like she’s not performing like usual either. Both of these cards were good in the list, just didn’t meet their high expectations.
The changes
We have some room to play around in the backup line, but I don’t know what Forwards, Monsters, or Summons I would want to change here. One copy of Cosmos is not a bad idea, because Citra can help you find some more utility from it. Overall, this deck is a blast to play and it might be awhile before I put it away.
More Sidequests from Opus XI