Table of Contents
Core Synergies
The yellow leader game plans like a great villain, focused on pressuring the opponent through dropping one power card after another. Arguably, this is the synergy with the most great standalone cards in the game, able to play proactively and force its opponent to find a way to contain all the threats coming their way.
Early on, the deck is able to seize the board through resting all opposing cards and removing them to create card advantage on the board. With 8 cheap cards doing so in SB01-040 and FS04-11, plus SB01-039 later on, Yellow is great at picking its moment to switch towards a more aggressive approach.
Once we managed to get a few 25,000 or 30,000 attackers on the board, while the opponent is low enough on health that accepting to awaken means they immediately have to defend multiple hits, it is time to bring on the heat.
This moment will mostly be decided by how strong our opponent is in the late game, on top of our ability to force a lot of cards out of their hand.
For example, FB07-049 is almost impossible to contain in the later turns, so we have to be in a rush to close out the match, forcing us to switch to a more aggressive stance early on.
On the other hand, the mirror match tends to be played without attacking our opponent's leader, with the intent to stack our FB04-094 on the board, while FB04-094 blocks our opponent's ability to pressure us with that same card.
Typically, there is a good middle ground with an opponent at 5 health and FB04-094 to bring them directly to three. If they accept that hit, we can immediately follow up with multiple 30,000 attacks, forcing them to spend a ton of cards to stay afloat health wise.
The key to that game plan is SB01-029's ability, allowing us to basically ignore one of our opponent's bigger cards per turn. Then, if we managed to dominate the board early on, our opponent cannot target our leader and ignore our board. If they do, we can simply lock that card with our ability, and send all those cards we developed early on to their leader, forcing plenty of cards out of their hand.
Decklist
The main talking point in this metagame is whether SB01-029 still is as good as it was during the manga set. Indeed, with FB07-121 allowing green to place cards in the drop while blue has FB07-045, most colour now have a way to play around our blocker.
So far, the card remains a staple in the deck, but some players like to run FB05-080 to emphasize even more on resting opposing early cards while helping with our awakening.
Two other cards have picked up momentum in the deck with FB07 : FB02-140 and FB04-096.
The first is a tech card for the mirror match, allowing to block future FB04-094 from attacking, while removing one on the spot. The other is mostly used against FB07-049, to gain one more attack when at seven energy. Most opponents don't expect this deck to land a big hit with only 2 energies available, while the card has 10,000 combo attached to it anyway.
Last, the leader itself can be discussed. So far, SB01-029 remains the most played of the two Buus. Yet, FB04-077 is regarded as a better attacker, which has its benefits against green decks in particular, since we are forced to play those games with multiple FB07-121 being too much to handle in mind.
Overall, most of the changes one would consider are designed to edge against the new green leader. Indeed, SB01-029 was able to beat absolutely everyone through sheer card advantage in the previous set. With a newcomer able to dominate the late game, the narrative has changed a bit, forcing SB01-029 to play a bit more aggressively.
Match-ups
As stated in the first section, this deck aims to play control early on, starving its opponent in the cards department as we barely touch their leader. Once in a commanding lead on the board, we look to get our opponent from high health to the danger zone in one turn, forcing them to use all those cards we just gave them.
This go-to strategy is particularly effective against decks without a clean way to remove SB01-039. If that one sticks to the board, FB04-094 on the following turn will be a great time to operate that switch. Plus, since we will rest all our opposing cards, even if we are still high on health and hitting for 15,000, we'll typically find a cheap card to remove with our leader to limit our opponent's combo.
If your opponent had more Battle cards in play, you can take a turn to attack into those, and target their leader the following turn, once two FB04-094 will be in play.
This approach will work pretty well against most black leaders, even if FB06-097 will be annoying eventually. Against aggressive opponents such as FB04-051 or FB07-001, we have a great match-up simply because our core mechanic of resting cards prevent them from getting set on the board without spending a ton of cards against our attacks.
Unfortunately, the other top performers in this metagame all have ways to act against this strategy.
FB07-049 has a better late game than we do thanks to FB07-121, on top of a lot of card draw available. Then, it is typically not a good idea to take it slow and try to starve them. We might grow a big lead on the board over the first four turns, but once the big cards come down, it will be impossible to remove them, while our leader can only block one per turn.
With that in mind, we have to use FB04-093 to keep their hand relatively small, while we adopt a more aggressive play style in this match-up.
The perfect line is to play SB01-038 on turn two, followed by FB04-093 on turn three. We can destroy the first one with the second, summon SB01-039 and keep the pressure going from that point while we draw through our card's abilities.
SB01-001 is extremely difficult to run out of cards, while it can afflict our cards with negative power, or use SB01-015 to keep our board at bay. Then, even if we can play for the board early on, we can't be too defensive, as the 30,000 and 40,000 hits won't stop anytime soon.
Then, after we rested and removed their Android 18 cards to stop them from summoning SB01-011 too early, we have to bring some real pressure. Otherwise, they can just do their loop in piece every turn, until we break as we lack cards to tank the hits.
FB07-025 is annoying mostly because it awakens at 6 health, meaning we either never attack their leader in hope they can't awaken by themselves, or keep the hits coming. In that second option, we still have to remove the cheap cards, as FB07-046 is otherwise likely to clear our board.
Our edge in that match-up is our ability to lock FB07-035, but that only works until a second one comes down. Then, we need to have pressure on our side when the 5-cost comes down, so we can ignore it and keep pounding our opponent's leader.
The mirror match is one of the most complex match-ups, as it requires being very patient, card oriented, and accept to let the board grow to scary extents. The first one to pull the trigger often loses if they can't end the match, as they did nothing but give their opponent more cards to work with.
We might be able to block one FB04-094, but since both players can rest cards every turn, all the attacks will go into battle cards. As such, the double strike keyword isn't that important until one decides it is time to go for the kill. When they do, it is because they have three FB04-094 sitting on the board, not just one.
In that context, the key cards are those able to create some card advantage : Abilities to rest opposing cards, pick our health, and FB02-140 to remove opposing big cards.
