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Quick stats:

• Colors: 24 yellow / 19 red / 7 blue
• Level 0 = 16 characters
• Level 1 = 11 characters
• Level 2 = 7 characters
• Level 3 = 8 characters
• Cards with triggers (excluding CX cards) = 15

Level 0

3x Umi Katou
[A] CIP this gains +1500 power for the turn.
[A] At the start of your opponent’s draw phase, reveal the top card of your deck, if it’s level 1 or higher, you may return this to your hand.

3x “Colors of Wings of Future” Shiroha
[A] [Discard a :Time: character, send this to memory] When this becomes reversed, if you have another :Time: character and 2 or fewer cards memory, you may pay the cost. If you do, salvage a :Time: character

2x “Morning Routine” Umi
[A] CIP give 1 of your :Summer Pockets: characters +1500 power for the turn.
[S] [(1) Send this standing to memory] Salvage up to 1 ‘”Summer Pockets” Nanami’.

4x “Shiroha’s Oral Tradition” Shiroha
[A] CIP look at the top card of your deck and put it either back on top or in the WR.
[S] BRAINSTORM [(1) Rest this] Flip over the top 4 cards of your deck and put them in the WR. For each CX card revealed this way, salvage up to 1 character.

3x “Special Adventure” Kamome
[A] CIP mill 2. If you milled at least 1 CX, you may put the top card of your opponent’s deck in their WR. If you do, choose a card in their WR and put it on top of their deck.
[A] [(1) Put the top card of your deck into clock] When this becomes reversed, you may pay the cost. If you do, salvage a level 1 or lower character.

1x “Large Suitcase” Kamome
[A] [(1) Discard a card to WR] CIP you may pay the cost. If so, search your deck for up to 1 :Summer Pockets: character, reveal it, put it in your hand, and shuffle your deck.

Level 1

4x “Hinge Ceremony” Shiroha
[A] CIP, draw a card, and discard a card from your hand to the WR.
[A] CX COMBO [Put this in the WR] When “A Beam of Light” is placed in your CX zone, you may pay the cost. If so, choose up to 1 ‘“What I Can Do” Shiroha’ in your hand and put it in the slot this was in.

3x “Place for Each Other” Shiroha
[A] On attack, if you have 2 or more other :Summer Pockets: characters, look at up to 2 cards from the top of your deck, choose 1 of them and put it on top of the deck, and put the rest in the WR.
[A] [(1)] On attack, you may pay the cost to perform the trigger check twice.

2x “Dish That Came to Mind” Nanami
[A] When you use the BACKUP of this, if you have a :Summer Pockets: character, your character in battle gains an extra +1000 Power and ::Fried Rice:: for the turn.
[S] [Counter] BACKUP 1000, Level 1 [Discard this card to WR] 

1x “On the Lap” Umi & Shiroha
[C] ASSIST Frontal +500
[S] [Rest this] Look at up to 2 cards from the top of your opponent’s deck and put them back in any order.

1x “Sleeping Over” Kamome
[A] [(2)] CIP you may pay the cost. If you do, search your deck for up to 1 CX with the same name as a CX in your WR, reveal it, put it in your hand, and shuffle your deck.
[A] CX COMBO [Discard a “Chasing Dream“] At the beginning of your opponent’s attack phase, you may pay the cost. If you do, 1 of your characters gets +4000 power for the turn. 

Level 2

4x “What I Can Do” Shiroha
[C] For each of your other :Summer Pockets: characters, this gains +500 power.
[A] CX COMBO On reverse, if “A Beam of Light” is in your CX zone, put up to 1 card from the top of your deck to stock, and salvage up to 1 character.
[A] When this becomes reversed in battle, if you have 1 or fewer other :Summer Pockets: characters, put this in your clock.

1x “Uniform on Off-Day” Shiroha
[A] CIP this gets +X power for the turn, where X = 1000 times the number of your :Summer Pockets: characters. 

1x Shiroha Naruse
[A] CX COMBO [Bounce another character from your stage to hand] When “I’ve Started to Love You” is placed in your CX zone, if this is in the front row, you may pay the cost. If so, choose up to 1 :Time: character in your hand whose level is equal to or lower than yours, put it in any slot on stage, and this gains +3000 power for the turn.
[A] Stock anti-change bomb.

1x “Beast Talk During Test of Courage” Shiroha
[A] [(2) Sac one of your characters] Anti-change to stock when you use the BACKUP.
[S] [Counter] BACKUP 2500, Level 2 [(1) Discard this card to the WR]

Level 3

3x “Summer Pockets” Nanami
[A] CIP look at up to 3 cards from the top of your deck, put up to 1 of them in your hand, and put the rest in the WR.
[A] CX COMBO RECOLLECTION [(2) Discard 2 cards] On attack, if “The Sewn-Closed Future” is in your CX zone, you may pay the cost. If you do, send any number of cards from your memory to your WR, deal X damage to your opponent, and this gets +5000 power for the turn. X equals 2 times the number of cards you sent from memory to WR.

3x “Future Seen Sometime” Umi
[C] Early play if there are 2 or fewer CX cards in your WR.
[A] CIP if you have 2 or more other :Time: characters, you may choose a character in your clock and send it to memory.

2x “It’s Because of Summer” Ao
[A] CIP draw up to 2 cards, and discard a card to the WR.
[A] [Discard 2 cards to WR] On attack, you may pay the cost. If so, put the bottom 4 cards of your opponent’s deck to the WR, and deal X damage to your opponent. X = # of CX cards among them.

Climaxes

4x A Beam of Light
Wind.

4x The Sewn-Closed Future
Gate

Notes

• All characters are :Summer Pockets:
• All red and yellow characters are :Time:

Player Q&A

How long have you been playing the deck?
I’ve been playing it on and off for about a year. Funnily enough, my interest in the deck started following Sven’s success with Summer Pockets at WGP 2018: I tried out both the standby and gate builds and ended up settling with the latter as I was more comfortable with it.

What made you choose Summer Pockets over other titles to play at the finals?
Originally, I had fully intended to play the wind / standby build, but my locals were full of standby / heavy early play decks, in particular the priestess build of Goblin Slayer. The standby deck wasn’t able to answer the board states these decks were able to produce, and particularly suffered against Priestess decks due to the minus soul combo. In the end, I found the gate deck was a “jack-of-all-trades”: personally, I think it is more flexible and has various answers and techs to deal with a wider variety of builds over the standby deck. For example, the fact that Nanami gains 5000 power when using her climax combo means the deck can overcome quite a lot of standby walls, and the ability to burn also helps against minus soul decks.

What’s your favorite card in the deck and why?
It absolutely has to be the 1/0 backrow. The ability to re-arrange your opponent’s top two cards every turn for free gives you an edge when setting up your attacks and can make your finisher turns a lot more lethal. I could spend hours writing about all the interactions this card has with others in the deck, but I’ll stick with my favourite (and the one I have become rather notorious for): if you see a climax in the top two cards, you can rearrange it to the top and then attempt to remove it with the effect of the level 0 Kamome. This setup is so strong, especially in the late game, it almost becomes a finisher in and of itself!

What are this deck’s ideal board states throughout the game?
Level 0 is generally about setting up for level 1, while generating some (hopefully clean) stock along the way to get the compression game rolling.

Levels 1 and 2 are pretty typical of all Summer Pockets decks, namely running the 1/0 combo into the 2/1 for compression and hand. My ideal setup is to run two of the combo and 1 of the 1/0 double trigger, as this card allows me to pay out the first 2/1’s blind stock and exchange it for “unblind” stock if necessary. The aim is to then sit on the 2/1s for as long as possible, with the early play heals to help keep you at level 2 (and set up memory for your level 3 combo).

Level 3 is quite flexible, and usually ends up being a mixture of the 3/2 TD Ao and 3/2 Nanami combo depending on my opponent’s deck state. Nanami has far more reach with the variable burn, whereas the 3/2 TD Ao can act to punish compressed decks.

Does the deck have any notable good or bad matchups?
For me, this boils down to whether your opponent can consistently get over the 2/1 Shiroha, as their continued presence is key to maintaining advantage into the late game. As such, large standby decks (e.g Aobuta, Fantasia Bunko) can give the deck a rough time, especially if they get multiple standbys off. Stock swap is also something to be aware of, as it can punish you for compressing too well. In such games, I would usually try to keep my stock lower to reduce the impact of any swap.

After playing and winning at the finals, are you planning any changes to the deck or are you happy with how it performs right now?
I’m pretty happy with the current setup. While there are a few things that would be nice to have (such as a fourth copy of the 0/0 Umi, or another copy of the 1/0 backrow), I can’t see anything that could safely be cut. It seems to have served me well so far!

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Gemma, congratulations for winning the WGP this year! And of course, thanks a bunch for collaborating with me on this deck profile!