Tokyo Revengers Dual Laners PahChin Deck Guide by Carson Hua

Now this may seem not that relevant at first. But you’ll very quickly notice and appreciate your hand actually maintaining at the same number and even increasing. The extra hand also means that the turns where you clocked drew no cx and/or your brainstorm didn’t hit are less punishing on your handsize when you do need to overplay for cloner. Especially after your first turns of dual laners where you’re really low on hand, you’ll only have 3-5 cards in hand, it helps a lot to recover.

It’s easy to think your handsize doesn’t matter too much on this deck because you’re building so much stock, but if you only have 4 hand by the time you hit level 3, it doesn’t matter if you have 20 stock, you’re not gonna be able to play out all those mitsuyas AND do Baji finisher. Playing self-bouncer gives you something to tap every turn without needing to commit any actual hand or stock, and it lets you keep and increase your handsize.

Self-bouncer also gives you a play you otherwise wouldn’t normally have when BOTH of your Chifuyus live. Normally, you’d just be able to brainstorm and maybe plus hand off that. But with self-bouncer in hand, you can play it into the last empty lane, to then also salvage an extra Chifuyu on top. That leaves you more freedom to salvage a finisher piece instead of having to salvage backup. Then, even if both lanes die, you can have the 3rd Chifuyu in hand to clone and go again. Alternatively, you can even salvage an extra brainstorm if you ever need the extra mill for your next turns or if you want to have a double choose trigger for your finisher turn.

The soul pump is an extra bonus that also helps a little with the problem of being behind in damage from dual laners. The extra soul quickly adds up after a few turns to eventually push your opponent into lethal range. Your damage is also a little more modular, allowing you to punish bad deckstates by swinging for 3s and 4s, or giving you more soul to have better numbers when siding. I like to give the soul pump to the same Chifuyu I also gave choose trigger to. That way I can try to swing for more even numbers and avoid overswinging for 4.

Sometimes you’ll want to do Pehyan mill : Not to go into Pahchin, but just as a way to mill out of your deck. However, if you hit a Pahchin off Pehyan, the spawn is mandatory. So if you hit one early without self-bouncer, you’ll have to either play over Pehyan (ending your mill) or you’d have to play into the open slot (ending your dual laners), or you’d have to spawn over a dual laner (which then requires you to do weird things to clone it back). With self-bouncer, you can mill without worry and spawn into the empty lane since you can overplay Pahchin with self-bouncer to go back to dual laning without problem. In fact, if you hit Pahchin you’d be able to clone any 2 of Chifuyus and/or brainstorms : Cloner, Pehyan, Pahchin and sel-bouncer makes 4 cards to tap.

This is by far your best tap target off cloner, and honestly it’s also just so satisfying to fully resolve and explain the effect of 3 things going off at once when you play a climax (splitsoul+Emma+self-bounce). If you’re still skeptical about it, I recommend you try it, and I’m here to tell you you’ll have a hard time going back without it.

You might tell me about the sack-self check 4 add 1 Baji that can also be tapped by cloner and then sacked to make your hand back. But that card can’t recur itself every turn like self-bouncer does, and then the card just ends up being stocked right away anyways. It also costs stock which we wanna keep, and it makes back the same hand as self bouncer anyways (more on why check 4 add 1 Baji sucks later).

Self-bouncer also lets you do this cute thing where if you tri lane at 0 (from 2nd turn at 0), you can play cx with self-bouncer in the back, distribute the soul evenly and it’s like you played a 1k1 in terms of damage.

In cases where you want to push not too much damage or even not any, you can still play down self-bouncer to clone Chifuyu and slam cx. Then you can pump soul all in the back to prevent kicking your opponent too high.

The 1k pump doesn’t come up often, but hey if it helps a Chifuyu climb something (which you can sometimes pair by playing 1k1), then good for you. The 1k pump can come up at level 0, especially if you’re going 2nd and need to play it to beat board. You can play it in the back just for the power pump, and then bounce it back once you hit level 1.

Overall, this is still the last piece of full setup to search for, but the difference in your game quality is night and day with it. You very much should still make the same effort to have this in your hand as fast as possible, but not before you gather the other pieces first. Once you have one in hand, you can stock or level the other copy away.

This is a 2 of. 1 is too little and inconsistent, going away through your trigger or getting stuck in clock. 2 is the magic number of I’ll usually draw into it or just Riki for it at the end. Currently in the process of testing 3 for the fun and consistency of it tho.

Takemichi Backup

“It’s kinda sad this vanilla backup is the best counter we can play, but here we are”

【ACT】 【COUNTER】 Backup 2500, Level 1 [(1) Put this card from your hand into your waiting room] (Choose 1 of your characters that is being frontal attacked, and that character gets +2500 power until end of turn)

While this next card isn’t really part of the full setup, you should still try your best to have him for every turn, as it’ll make it much harder for your opponent, and thus easier for you to keep farming stock.

Takemichi here is how you can further defend your dual laners, pumping them up to 9500. And that’s all the card does, it’s just a vanilla backup with no other effects.There’s really not much else to say. Unfortunately this is the best backup in the set since it’s salvageable to use starting at lvl 1 from its soul trigger.

This is what your salvage target will usually be off splitsoul to keep at least one Chifuyu up. You can skip salvaging a backup to instead salvage a finisher piece like Baji if you already have a 3rd copy of Chifuyu in hand, if you believe your opponent can’t clear both lanes at 7k for a turn, or if you’re about to enter your finishing turn.

If I have extra hand when ditching for Baji finisher and I have backup in hand, I like to keep the backup for my final Mikey for any surprise on-reverse finishers/secondary finishers that your opponent may run.

If you already completely have every single piece of full setup, you can Riki for a backup if you have none in your waiting room.

Obviously, never stock or level this card. Takemichi’s a 2 of. It’s a good number to see it in your waiting room every game and it just gets looped over and over again off splitsoul.

Finisher Pieces

Next, I’ll be talking about the level 3s, your finisher pieces. I’ll talk about their use individually, but I will also make a separate section on how to actually do the final finisher turn with everything once you hit level 3. For all of these level 3s, it should be needless to say you shouldn’t ever stock or level any of these. The only exception is to stock a copy of 3/2 Mikey in 4th or 5th stock so Baji finisher is guaranteed to go off.

3/2 Mikey

“m-MIKEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY”

【AUTO】 When this card is placed on the stage from your hand, you may choose 1 《Revenge》 character in your waiting room, and put it face down underneath this card as a marker.

【AUTO】 [Put all markers underneath this card at the bottom of your deck in any order] When this card attacks, you may pay the cost. If you do, deal 1 damage X times to your opponent. X is equal to the number of markers put at the bottom of your deck for the cost of this ability. (Damage may be canceled)

【AUTO】 [(1)] At the beginning of the encore step, if you do not have another 【REST】 character in your center stage, you may pay the cost. If you do, 【REST】 this card.

This is the final payoff to our finishing combo. It’s what Baji changes into : with final Mikey burns and swing usually ending games if your opponent is at 3-3 or higher, but it even has the potential to close out games from 2-5 to 3-0 (if literally every ping 1 sticks and you trigger 2-soul :P).

Mikey also works well in the same way as a Mitsuya burn as an extra instance of damage before the Baji combo. You can play one manually for the guaranteed burn 1 instead of the more RNG Mitsuya. Keep in mind though that your reach won’t be as good compared to playing a Mitsuya.

Don’t forget Mikey’s last effect to pay 1 and rest himself back. It can come up if your opponent didn’t die, but then you lived their finishing turn as well. (Which is very much possible if you manipulate your deck to do so, depending on their finisher). That way, you can get a 2-soul attacker on the next turn at the cost of 1 stock to have that last push for game.

Again, I can’t emphasize enough to not forget to put this Mikey into your 4th or 5th stock off of Chifuyu for Baji’s effect. Saves you a lot of headaches.

If you have a small deck and are manually playing a Mikey (up to 3-4 cards depending on how many brainstorms you have on field), then you can selectively choose what one of your attacks will trigger based off of what you will bottom deck. Let’s say I have 3 cards left in my deck. I’ll play Mikey for his burn, markering a soul trigger. Now let’s say we go into attack phase. I’ll give the choose trigger to the Baji. Mikey bottom decks, burning 1, swing and swing. Now I’m at Baji with 2 cards left in deck and a choose trigger attack. I’ll attack with Baji, and now I have the option to trigger the soul I bottom decked (and hopefully the other card is a non soul trigger so you get the modular choice).

I play 2 Mikeys in my list. I’d say a lot of people play 3 or 4, which is fine too. In my time of testing the deck though, playing for double or even single Mikey instead of Mitsuyas alongside Baji has a hard time reaching from afar, especially if some of your previous Mitsuyas ended up burning for 1 (or god forbid 0), or if your opponent cancelled some Mitsuya burns. The guaranteed ping 1s don’t have quite the reach to close the game if your opponent is starting at early lvl 2. I much prefer to play for all Mitsuya burns where you can hit for much more comfortable burns of 2 or 3. If your highroll 4 sticks, then it’s especially good. Also, Mikey can’t be cloned as easily like Mitsuyas because you can’t tap him (need him to attack to burn), so it makes it a little harder to sculpt for. Playing double Mikey and Mitsuyas means needing 1-2 Mikeys and 1 Mitsuya in hand, whereas you can already have 3 to 5 mitsuyas off a single copy or two of it in hand. That said, if you’re on a Pahchin game, then if you actually do manage to have an extra burn on top, then you can more so opt for the Mikey since Mitsuya is much more likely to miss. I will say that Mikey burn can pair better with our stockswap since you can stockswap first, then get the cheeky burn 1.

Don’t believe me that Mitsuyas are better than Mikey for burns? Just look at the damage spreadsheet for TRV. Mikey’s only barely better (by less than 1%) in deckstates where you’re already basically guaranteed to kill anyways. The cases with less Mikey burns have better numbers in most deckstates.

2 copies of Mikey is enough to make sure one will be in stock for you to pay out, and then occasionally you can play the other one manually if it does end up being better. If you do rather lean into the Mikey burn a little more as your finisher gameplan, feel free to play more, and you can fiddle with the Mitsuya ratios too. I’d say the total between both Mikeys and Mitsuyas together should be at least 6 though, otherwise you might run into consistency issues for your finisher turn.

Baji Finisher

“Play this at 2:35 in your head every time you resolve this finisher. You’ll thank me later.”

【AUTO】 [(1)] When this card is placed on the stage from your hand, you may pay the cost. If you do, choose 1 climax in your waiting room, and return it to your hand.

【AUTO】 【CXCOMBO】 [(8) Put 3 cards from your hand into your waiting room & Put 4 other characters from your stage face up in any order underneath this card as markers & Put 1 “We’ll Entrust Our Everything to You” from your climax area into your waiting room] At the end of this card’s attack, you may pay the cost. If you do, choose 1 “Kid’s Meal, Mikey” in your waiting room, put it on the stage position that this card was on, and put this card and all markers underneath this card face up underneath that “Kid’s Meal, Mikey” in any order as markers.

Here we are. Baji finisher. Our only real climax combo in the deck. The other main reason to play this deck at all : One of the flashiest finishers in the game and the whole full combo with Mitsuyas can make anyone start sweating. For those of you unfamiliar or who don’t get it, the Baji combo will marker your entire board to spawn the 3/2 Mikey on top, giving you 5 burn 1s and an extra swing.

First, Baji has the on play effect to pay 1 and salvage any climax. This is arguably the best part of Baji. Baji being able to salvage a cx and being tied to a good finisher combo is actually nuts. Could you imagine if something along the likes of Gura, SDS, BD, Itsuki or Bunny Girl (any deck, really) could straight up directly salvage their own cx on play of their finisher? It’s actually pretty crazy if you think about it, and it’s why we can get away with playing so many splitsouls and so little pants in our lists

In very very emergency cases where Baji’s finisher can’t be done, Mitsuya burns’ cx can be salvaged as a plan C to try to get some reasonable finisher turn by just looping Mitsuya burns all the way (like, 5 Mitsuyas into 3 swings is still 8 instances! Even better if you have topdecks from Mitsuya combo)

Now before I talk about Baji a little more, I want to mention 2 disclaimers/mythbusts.

1) Baji is expensive : While it’s true that on a single card Baji is expensive, if you think about it, this is basically the power and cost of 3 ok finishers in one card. The cost it takes to do just Baji is 7-8 stock, ditch 3. This is basically what’s expected for any normal deck to do for triple finisher. We aren’t playing dual laners to fuel 8 stocks for just Baji : Any 1k1 deck in TRV could get there.

2) Baji is a strong finisher : Here’s the truth. Baji actually isn’t that strong of a finisher. Let me rephrase that. Baji alone isn’t actually that strong of a finisher. If you have no extra mitsuya burns and then spread out the burns and swing from final Mikey, Baji’s numbers are actually almost that of triple CocoChino (burn 1 twice), which is not a good finisher. It’s not bad, but it’s not good.

I mention these so that you don’t go into your finishing turn with just one vanilla Baji and hope/expect to reach them from 2-3. You likely won’t get there. What actually breaks the TRV finish is all the Mitsuya burns we can throw on top, so you really need to play towards that full finish with as many burns as you can.

Note that Mikey gets spawned in the same position as Baji. You can use this to your advantage by placing Baji in an empty lane or in front of a level 1. Then once you get to the final swing, you can one more direct for bigger numbers, or an extra side for 1. I’ll usually place Baji in front of a lvl 1 just because it’s the most modular for both the Baji and the Mikey.

WATCH OUT FOR MEMORY KICK!!! Your entire finisher gets turned off if ANY of your lanes get kicked (need to marker 4). It’ll happen to you once and then you’ll forever be scarred, and then depressed for the rest of the day. If you know your opponent’s deck runs it, and has a board that can use it, make sure to keep track of where it is and side accordingly. Similarly, watch out for decks with tap counter : having Baji tapped is the saddes thing to look at. This is a general thing you should be doing for other decks anyways, but if you see a backup you’re not familiar with, ASK WHAT IT DOES.

This is more of a fun fact than anything, but if you did your finisher first, and your opponent lived : If they happen to be on an Icy Tail finisher, final Mikey lets you have a small layer of protection against their finisher. Because of the clean cards you send to the bottom, you can completely negate 1, sometimes 2 of their finisher combos. So you can just smirk as you mill clean and cancel their swings.

Be very mindful of having blue by the time you hit level 3. Your only source of blue is the check 5 Mikeys so make sure to not stock those preemptively. In very very very emergency cases, you can level pants if you HAVE to since Baji can salvage the other copy. Funny story, it so happened that I had to level pants in two of my games in my BCS run. Twice I was in the exact same situation of wanting to level up and go for game. I drew pants for turn but then my only blue in hand was pants and check 5 Mikey, but Mikey was also the only guaranteed way I had in hand to clock myself up to 3. So yep, I clocked and leveled pants, salvaged the other one in WR and got game.

Don’t hold pants in hand. Your handsize is much better saved towards having the other pieces. Baji can always salvage his climax unless it somehow isn’t in your waiting room, which it shouldn’t be. If you hold pants, so that you “don’t need to pay stock to salvage cx” then you also won’t have as much hand to spend on playing Mitsuyas. Your finishing turn is gated by handsize as much as stock so you’ll end up needing the cx salvage for handsize anyways. Remember to count your hand including the cx salvage as a cantrip. The only time I will very intentionally hold pants is if I’m on a Pahchin game and I notice I’ll refresh soon. Your stock game is likely going to be that you’ll only be able to do just Baji finisher with at most one extra burn. So we’ll have the hand no matter what, but I can do Baji if I was only able to get 7-8 stock that game

Speaking of having pants in your waiting room, don’t forget on your finishing turn to salvage pants before going to the next deck if you won’t be milling enough to guarantee having pants in WR again. For example, if your only mill in the next deck is 2 mitsuya burns, then you should just salvage the climax before refreshing. On the other hand, if your mill is looking like 4 more mitsuyas and a brainstorm, you can refresh first so that your mitsuyas hit for better numbers before you pay out 3-5 clean non soul triggers.

Remember that the magic number for Baji going into attack phase is 5 stock (or 8 if you’re using stockswap). Your base combo before putting down Baji is 8 stock. Then, every 2 stock after that is an extra mitsuya or mikey burn. You could do combo with 7 stock if pants is already in your hand, but then double check you have the hand to forego the cx salvage. For example, with 17 stock you have the “stock” for 5 burns on top of Baji combo without paying 1 for salvage cx, but then you literally cannot have the hand for that. And if you try to brainstorm, that would ruin that stock

Otherwise, in general for every finisher turn you do, you need to be mindful of having enough hand to discard for combo. Double or even triple count that the amount of cards in your hand match with the amount of stock you have for burns

Similar to keeping track of your Mikey, be aware of where your Bajis are at all time, and make sure to salvage it at some point. I like to have him as early as I can if I already have a backup or an extra Chifuyu in my hand, so then I can start salvaging extra finisher pieces after. Otherwise I’ll salvage Baji just before I think I’ll hit level 3 and go for game

On your final Mikey swing, if you notice your opponent is still mid level 2 because they’ve cancelled most of your burns and swings (It happens. As good as your finisher is, if your opponent has cancels in their deck then they will block damage), you’ll notice that you can’t kill anymore. With your opponent at like 2-3 or 2-4, your opponent is too far for Mikey to kill. What you can do is to either pass for turn or you can swing with Mikey without sending markers to burn, because the burns ARE OPTIONAL. Now hopefully, your opponent is either level locked or they need to spend resources to level. In both cases they need to out your Mikey. If you attacked without bottom decking your markers, you also have an extra stock. Meaning if they climb your Mikey, you can use Mikey’s pay 1 to rest effect, which keeps all your markers. If you left yourself in a relatively compressed state like you should almost always aim for, then hopefully you’ll cancel whatever swings they throw at you. Then you can pay 1 to rest Mikey, and then on your next turn you get a sort of second finisher turn of 3 swings and 5 ping 1s

Baji is a 2 of since you can only resolve 1 anyways. He’s directly salvageable off splitsoul and you’re pretty unlikely to let go of the one copy you’ll have in hand after you have full setup. You can feel free to play 3 if you run into issues getting it consistently. I wouldn’t play 1 copy though since it’s Weiss and you’ll run into the issue of it being stuck in stock or clock somewhere. 4 is too much.

Mitsuya Burn

“Oh dear god I need the reach, PLEASE don’t mill for 0”

【AUTO】 When this card is placed on the stage from your hand, put the top 2 cards of your deck into your waiting room, and deal X damage to your opponent. X is equal to the total number of in the trigger icons of those cards. (Damage may be canceled)

【AUTO】 【CXCOMBO】 When this card attacks, if “Captain of the Bodyguard Squad” is in your climax area, choose up to 1 card in your opponent’s waiting room, put it on the top of their deck, and this card gets +6000 power until end of turn.

Next up is Mitsuya burn, the other part of what you build all your stock towards for your finisher turn

Mitsuya here is what actually makes the TRV turns scary, and what actually gives us that reach from early 2. Every 2 stock past the initial 8 for Baji is an extra copy of Mitsuya you can play down. With 3 copies of Mitsuya averaging burn 2 each, your numbers and reach start to look like that of triple gura. The 4th and 5th copy of Mitsuya are cherries on top, letting you go even further beyond.

This is who you most abuse cloner with and use up all your stock with. Because you have cloner and Mitsuya doesn’t need to attack for his burn, you can tap all the copies you put down, letting you get away with holding just 1 or 2 copies of Mitsuyas in hand and still being able to to 3-5 burns. That said, you’ll have an easier time the more copies of Mitsuya you have in hand, especially if you’re going for 4-5 burns, so it’s still better to salvage or add as many pieces as possible by the time you hit level 3.

If there aren’t other Mitsuyas in your waiting room, but you have at least 2 in your hand, you can just overplay a Mitsuya and tap the 2nd Mitsuya to get the cloning started.

As you’re doing your finisher turn, don’t just blindly vomit your hand without counting your handsize and stock as you go. Plan your burns and cloning carefully before going at it, or else that’s how you’ll end up going “oops, I don’t have enough hand for Baji…”

Try to do your burns in a deck where you’re very unlikely to miss. This means either refreshing by brainstorming first or by staying in your current deck. If you’re staying in your current deck, judge and remember what that deck sorta looks like : Was it full of non soul triggers when you refreshed into it? Otherwise, make sure to refresh before you pay out those non-soul triggers, or your next burns might hit for less or even miss.

Don’t forget to salvage pants before refreshing through your burns.

As a very last minute resort, if you can’t do Baji combo for whatever freak reason (Baji not in hand even after brainstorm(s), pants not in WR, pants or Baji stuck in clock/stock, whatever) then you can resort toward looping Mitsuyas all the way, and it’ll still a pretty respectable finisher turn. For example, even with just 10 stock, that’s 8 instances of damage of 5 burns and 3 swings. While obviously not as good as Baji, it’s already an above average finishing power, and it only gets better with more stock. You can even salvage and play down mitsuya’s cx that is technically there that we play 4 of. But this is really a last minute emergency thing to do. Things you can try to get Baji in hand or to get pants in WR include Emma brainstorm, Mikey check 5, Peyhan mills, shuffleback Bajis into Mikey check 5, Mitsuya burns, or stockswap’s effect to draw 2 ditch 2 blindstock. Basically, try everything else before pivoting into a Mitsuya only finish.

As a funny side fact, Mitsuya’s combo brings him to 16.5k, making him tie head to head with Pahchin, which is fitting since they’re both top captains of their own divisions. Sometimes if you get hit to level 3 early, if you’re playing against some midgame deck and didn’t already or couldn’t pivot into pahchin, you can play down mitsuyas to push damage a little bit and even out their board by using Mitsuya combo making him massive.

In terms of when to add Mitsuyas, you can add them off of brainstorms, or add off splitsoul if you already have Baji and either backup or Chifuyu in hand. Otherwise if you’re just about to hit level 3, you can also just salvage him if you already have Baji.

Keep track of where your Mitsuyas burns go in stock if triggered. That way, you’ll know how many you’ll be working with, but also so you’ll know when they can be paid out along the way for you to clone back. As a very easy example, if only have 1 in hand, but you know your top stock is a Mitsuya, then you can immediately pay it out with a Mitsuya to then clone right away

If you have extra hand due to hitting big on brainstorm or because you have less stock, you can use the shuffle backs from Hina or Pehyan in a small deck to make your burns better, or even guarantee them.

I play Mitsuya as a 4 of. He’s your big half of finishing power and what you should be playing and building your stock towards. You can play 3, but I wouldn’t play less than that. If you prefer to lean on Mikeys that’s ok too. Like I talked about with Mikey, Mitsuya’s numbers are much better at reaching from afar. Again, the total of mitsuya and mikey burns should realistically be at least 6 if you consider some burns being lost to stock and clock.

Stockswap

“Give me fumio in set 2, I swear I can be trusted 🙂 0 COPIUM”

【AUTO】 When this card is placed on the stage from your hand, draw up to 2 cards, choose 2 cards in your hand, put them into your waiting room, and put up to 1 card from the top of your deck into your stock.

【AUTO】 [(3)] When this card attacks, you may pay the cost. If you do, your opponent puts all of their stock into their waiting room, and puts the same number of cards from the top of their deck into their stock.

Finally, the last character of your finisher lineup is the Chifuyu Stockswap. Note that with the blind stock we get, this stockswap costs a total of 4 stock to use, so be mindful of that when counting stock for finisher turn. Also, the draw 2 and blind stock are optional, but the ditch 2 is mandatory no matter what. So just be mindful of that on your handsize and stock with the mill up to 3 that this Chifuyu brings.

Stockswap costing 4 stock means that you’re essentially trading 2 Mitsuya burns for stockswap, so your use of stockswap here has to be worth the trade. Don’t just randomly fire stockswap because you have it in hand. Your reach numbers-wise is lower when using stockswap, so carefully judge if it’s worth it.

If you plan to use the stockswap, you need to go into attack phase with at least 8 stock when using stockswap for combo.

While it is true that on attack stockswap is awkward for us to use compared to if it was just on play, it’s also awkward for your opponent to play around. For one, your opponent can’t just simply mill down to 1 card to play around it like they would for other stockswaps because of our burns into their new deck. Basically, we can do burns or even swings first to act as a pseudo mill before the stockswap. In some cases, the burns being first can actually be better to push your opponent further in their deck so that the stockswap is guaranteed to hit the climaxes that are left. However, if you find that opportunity where they’re so compressed in a way you’d rather just stockswap without touching their deck first, you can just do that and it’s all the better.

If you’re playing against a deck that generates a lot of stock, you can hold this if you draw or check 3 into it to try to keep it private (people often forget that we do have stockswap or might think you’re not on it). Otherwise, if you already have Mitsuya and Baji, then go ahead and publicly salvage it in preparation for your finisher turn.

If you are planning to use stockswap as part of your finishing turn, then you can play towards having a mikey burn in hand that can usually pair better with the on attack stockswap being first.

You can also just play the stockswap to have as a 2-soul attacker that costs 1 stock. Just make sure that if you do that and you play stockswap as the last card after Baji, watch out because stockswap pays out your 5th stock before refunding it, so your Mikey will be paid out.

I think the stockswap is a mandatory 1 of.  This is the only decompression tool the set has, as awkward as it can be sometimes, and in situations where they’re so compressed that no matter how many burns you throw at them they won’t die, stockswap can save the day. You need to have that threat of stockswap in your opponent’s face or they can go all in on stock compression and laugh in your face. Force them to be mindful of playing into stockswap. It makes them play around it, and it’s overall just an extra layer of knowledge check if they don’t know about it. Opting out of it is just asking to get farmed on stock compression. It’s as silly as telling Hololive or BD to not run stockswap.

This stockswap actually came up for me twice in my top cut at Toronto, once at top 16 and once in my finals game. In my finals game, I was against Calli Gura and was pushed to the brink of having to go for finisher right there or he’d be able to level up and stockswap me. He was 2-4, had 8 stock, and was 6 in 14. He just double triggered pants the previous turn, so his stock had 2 cxes. I only had enough stock to do either 2 Mitsuya burns or the one stockswap. After weighing my options, I decided to chance the stockswap. So I start with stockswap, and now my opponent has 6 cards left in his deck, and I trigger for 3. He cancels on 3. I do my second swing for 3, and he reveals… 3 clean cards at the bottom, picks up his waiting room and tells me the magical words “refreshing 3”. He goes to 3-1. There’s a small world he can live if he cancels the next swing. It sticks, putting him to 3-4 and it’s over. Shoutouts to Phil Lai, my finals opponent and the GOAT who I later found out was actually the first world champion in Weiss back in 2014. It was a great game and I couldn’t have gotten away with it if I didn’t salvage the stockswap right before. Anyways, moral of the story : Play stockswap.

Climaxes

Next, I want to quickly talk about the climax lineup, because there actually are things to be said about them. For our climaxes, we play 6 splitsoul salvages and 2 pants, with 4 of the splitsouls being the Mitsuya’s combo.

Splitsoul Salvage

“Friendship ended with STOCKSOUL… Now SPLITSOUL SALVAGE is my best friend”

【AUTO】 When this card is placed on your climax area from your hand, choose up to 1 character with in its trigger icon in your waiting room, return it to your hand, choose up to 2 of your characters, and those characters get +1 soul until end of turn.

So first, the splitsoul salvage. This isn’t your typical 1k1 climax. This is a pretty strong climax profile, plussing hand, pushing damage, and synergizing so well with the rest of the deck. The soul pump is only to two characters, but we’re usually dual laning so we don’t really lose anything from only pumping two characters. Triggering 2-soul lets us push for extra damage off dual laners, and lets us hand filter off mitsuya cloner for extra pieces. Finally, splitsouls in our list lets mitsuya burns give you the reach of hitting for 2s 3s and 4s

Note that you don’t have to salvage to pump soul, and you can salvage without pumping soul. So if you want to poke for small amounts of damage or side for nothing, you can still slam climax and salvage a piece. You can also still put down self bouncer and tap cloner, play down the cx and pump soul to nothing and still get all your hand back

This is your main way to salvage your backup and finisher pieces. In some cases if you’re on Pahchin and missed a copy, you can salvage one to play down for the next turn

We can get away with playing so many splitsouls because Baji salvages his own cx, and neither of our gameplans are actually tied to having cx in hand (but it is much preferable to play one down every turn)

Most people will play 6, with 4 being Mitsuya burn’s combo in the small chance you might wanna do his combo. The other 2 are empty splitsouls not tied to any combo in the deck. Feel free to play 5 if you really wanna play a 3rd pants, but generally you shouldn’t have an issue with having pants in waiting room.

Pants

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN MY FOIL IS JUST A SLIGHTLY ZOOMED OUT VERSION OF THE BASE RARITY”

【CONT】 All of your characters get +1000 power and +1 soul.

(【GATE】: When this card triggers, you may choose 1 climax in your waiting room, and return it to your hand)

This is your cx for Baji. Remember you don’t need to hold it for your finish since Baji salvages for it

The small amount of pants helps towards letting us play down climax every turn, and is also more soul triggers for us to hit off mitsuya.

If you trigger pants, things to consider on the salvage include : whether you need the handsize, how much would you be refreshing with, do you think you’ll be able to slam cx next turn without the salvage, do you have backup to pay it out when opp swings, can you tank taking more damage, how many turns you have left, is your opponent somehow going to get kicked to 3?

At 0 or on deck 1 I’ll usually add a cx even if I already have one in hand. This is usually when my handsize will be or become the lowest so any card in hand is important. If I don’t want it on the next turn, then I can just ditch it off cloner.

If pants is the only cx I have in hand : Depending on where I’m at in the game, on the amount of cards in my deck and depending on my handsize, I’ll usually play the cx still just to push for damage (and to still get the clone effect off self bounce). I’ll usually brainstorm first though to try to get splitsoul instead if my deck has enough cards. It’s not ideal compared to having splitsoul, but playing pants down is usually better than not slamming a climax at all.

Pahchin Package

Last up in the deck is the PahChin package. This is the OG SAO Alice before Alice, spawning a 2/1 wall as early as lvl 1. These 7-8 cards are our second deck in the same deck

This package is for specific matchups that dual laners might struggle with. Board based decks, midgame decks, any deck really that can wall you out and climb your Chifuyus both on offense and on defense consistently. Quick EN matchup examples that come to mind are Slime, Nikke, Nino, Kanata Marine, Blue Archive Hifumis, CSM Kishibes, or even Spy family if they have triple fiona+double BS

You might be surprised to see me to include Nikke, Nino and Spy family, and even other decks that don’t have stockswap. Well, here’s the thing. There’s a bit of a misconception that any deck that doesn’t have stockswap is a free win. That just because they don’t have stockswap, “they can’t touch you, just dual lane without repercussion and you win”. If your opponent is walling you out, you’re not actually dual laning for free or without repercussions

If your opponent is walling you out, you’re here losing and crashing both your lanes every turn. Then you gotta spend hand and stock just to get them both back up every turn. You gotta go pay 3 or riki for one and then you gotta ditch to clone, and having the 3rd copy in your hand for every turn is difficult. You might think you could side a lane or two, but that’s really really bad in dual laners. You’ll side, do even less damage as dual laners, then go through the same headache of cloning it all again anyways. Meanwhile, your opponent is there just plussing even more than they usually already do off of you dual laning, and compressing for free.

If they’re on some plussing combo effect, you’re especially losing if you just try to sit on dual laners without taking those down. You’ll be struggling on resources and then won’t be able to get them into range or even kill them. Those matchups usually mean they’re also sitting on some backup that might ruin your finisher turn, so taking down their board and disabling their counters is especially important for your finishing turn to have any impact.

Even against a deck that might not have stockswap, you gotta consider your own game instead of “hurr durr they can’t kill me because no stockswap”. If you can’t kill them either because of your lack of resources, you’re no better than they are, and then you’ll go “ohhhh surprised pikachu face” when your finisher couldn’t kill and your opponent “got lucky living TRV combo”. You need to think about how you can get to your own stock and hand threshold to do combo while also putting them in your favorable spot to kill them, which is where you might need to pivot into Pahchin at some point to get there.

Now, doing Pahchin is still your emergency button. Going into Pahchin kills your stock compression, your finishing reach, your selectivity and your deck control. Pahchin doesn’t actually do anything other than be big and beat board, so as much as possible really sit on dual laners as long as possible until you have to turn towards it. Rarely will you turbo out Pahchin on your 2nd or 3rd turn, but if your opponent giga sacks standby triggers or walls you out early, you can also have the option of doing so (and might not even have the choice to go into it).

Sometimes if I have the max stock I need for combo already, but my opponent is super ahead in damage off of canceling dual laners, I’ll pivot into Pahchin just to be able to push for more damage, put my opponent into lethal range, and to turn off any counters they have.

In some cases, your hand for dual laners will be shit, but you’ll somehow magically have Pahchin setup in hand. If the situation calls for it and you can do it, go for it and play that other deck we have. It’s not great, but it’s better than struggling to try to put up dual laners and doing even less for the rest of the game

While we don’t have the same luxury milling tools that both SAO and pure Pahchin provide for setup, we still have some pros over both decks in our differences that you can consider

• The pure Pahchin deck lives and dies by putting up triple Pahchin, and does nothing else in their gameplan : We have the main option to do dual laners in most matchups. We can pivot into Pahchin anytime during the game and with much more resources when we pivot. Even a single turn of dual laners gives us an easier time to spawn Pahchin, and gives us stock afterwards to be able to do Baji finisher. As a decklist advantage, we play cloner and Hina, giving us more lenience in hitting Pahchins compared to the pure Pahchin deck.
• Alice is obviously way better as a deck than Pahchin ever will be, but one upside setup-wise you’ll find to remember is that Alice had to mill down/brainstorm in a way that they’re left with at least one card in deck to be able to combo. Spawning Pahchin gives you the small extra flexibility and leniency of being able to go into the next deck to still be able to do the gameplan. Pahchin also isn’t tied to a combo so the sculpting is a little easier(altho I wish he wasn’t just a vanilla man, let me stock 3 salvage 3 plz).

PehYan

“Brainstorm? Speak Japanese. The cool kids say HAI SHUUCHUU- OH GOD I MILLED 3 PAHCHINS”

【CONT】 All of your other “3rd Division Captain, Pah-chin” get +4000 power.

【AUTO】 [Return 2 《Revenge》 characters from your waiting room to your deck & Shuffle your deck] When this card is placed on the stage from your hand, you may pay the cost. If you do, choose 1 of your 《Revenge》 characters, and that character gets +2000 power until end of turn.

【ACT】 Brainstorm [(1)] Flip over 3 cards from the top of your deck, and put them into your waiting room. If “3rd Division Captain, Pah-chin” is revealed among those cards, choose 1 “3rd Division Captain, Pah-chin” in your waiting room, and put it on any position of your stage.

So first up in the package is the Pehyan. Generally, even in a matchup that doesn’t call for Pahchin, it’s never a bad idea to keep a copy of Pehyan in hand just in case you need to pivot or just to have as an emergency infinite mill out if your deckstate is bad, or if you need the shuffle back effect. Exactly like the Hina riki, the power pump off shuffle back isn’t what matters, you’re more so going for the actual shuffle back and what you can do with it. Better deck numbers, soul triggers in a small deck for Mitsuyas, and most importantly, for Pahchin. That said, if you’re dual laning and your opponent has a board that needs that extra power push to climb, you can play a Pehyan down to do so, and then overplay the Pehyan to dual lane again

Just remember if you are doing the emergency “get me out of this deck mill” that the Pahchin spawn is mandatory, so watch your board beforehand. This is easy if you have both cx and self-bouncer in hand, so you can spawn a Pahchin in any empty lane and then overplay to go back to dual laning. Other than that, count your cards to see how much stock you’re committing, and to see if you need to shuffle back to get better numbers, so you leave as little clean cards as possible. You can also check your deck along the way of emergency milling if you want to stop because you still have a climax or two in a small deck.

In really really bad spots, if you’re missing hand for your finisher, you can spawn Pahchin on your finisher turn to cover for a card in hand. Pehyan is also a last ditch effort if you need extra mill to get pants in your waiting room for you to salvage off Baji.

Pehyan’s not too difficult to stock, especially if you don’t actually need him in the matchup, but you can still keep him until the end. The shuffle back and emergency mill can come up, and having the flexibility to pivot is good even if the matchup doesn’t necessarily immediately call for it.

In games where you do need Pahchin, you can grip onto a Pehyan once you draw or brainstorm into him. Alternatively, you can hold onto a Hina riki, where you can then search into a Pehyan (riki effect also acting as a pseudo mill 2) and even use Hina as a first shuffle back. Even in these matchups, you’ll generally want to loop dual laners for as long as possible, so take special care to have a 3rd or even the 4th Chifuyu in hand. Once you notice you really can’t keep dual laning anymore (either because you’re out of them in hand or because their combo would give them too much value with another turn) then you can drop Pehyan and hit your Pahchins. If your handsize allows for it, you can clone a Pahchin to play it manually if you’re at lvl 2 and a brainstorm milled for more than one Pahchin. This kinda goes without saying, but keep track of where your Pehyans are.

I Play 3 Pehyan. Originally I played 4, and in a lot of lists you’ll see 4 as well. But remember that Pahchin isn’t our go-to plan. He’s more of a backup plan, so we don’t need to see a Pehyan in hand every game. Additionally, we play cloner compared to pure Pahchin lists, so that pseudo counts for the extra copies we’d need and lets us get away with only needing one Pehyan in hand anyways. We also have Hina as another way to shuffle back we can use first if you need it, after which the other Pehyan can be cloned after some mills. We don’t need the 4 copies of Pehyan to still consistently have the 2 on board for Pahchin when we need it. Feel free to stick with 4 copies though, I’ve just been enjoying that one extra deck slot that cutting one gives.

Pahchin

“Stock 3 salvage 3? Nah man, my plussing is DRAW NO CLOCK (kill me)”

The man, the wall himself, Pahchin. What he do? Beeg. He just stands there, menacingly.

Jokes aside, gameplay-wise, once triple Pahchin is out, you’re likely always winning board. That or your opponent has to commit a lot of resources just to out one lane (for which you can just pay 3 encore). From there, as sad as it sounds, your plussing is draw, (usually) no clock, swing into open lanes. Then you’re hoping to see that your cancels come through in whatever deck you have, you’re hoping that your opponent sides, that your opponent doesn’t trigger souls, or that your opponent doesn’t play a 1k1.

If you draw into a splitsoul, usually you’ll want to just put it down and push for damage, putting even more pressure on your opponent than they already have of always losing board. This also lets you build towards a better finishing turn once you hit level 3. Sometimes you might want to hold the Mitsuya CX on the turn right before you’ll hit level 3 if you want to have the extra reach and already have a Mitsuya or two in hand.

If you draw into a pants, you’ll want to count your stock. Depending on how much you have and how many turns you think you’ll have left before lvl 3, you might want to hold pants to just have for Baji. Usually you’ll have enough that you can just put it down to push for damage though and then just salvage it back off Baji. Alternatively you might want to hold pants if you notice you’re closer to refresh. Your milling options are much more limited because you’ll be working with less stock, so it’s much harder to guarantee having pants in waiting room.

If you were only able to make 2 Pahchins (sucks, but it happens), then you’ll have to think about clocking yourself a little more. If you don’t clock, you just put down whatever’s playable in your hand and go. Your handsize will stay the same as before you drew. If you’re looking to actually plus hand or need a playable, then you can clock, and your handsize will increase by 1 from there. The great thing about doing Baji with Pahchin is that you actually need like, no hand to do Baji. Assuming you already have 8 stock, you can start your turn with 2 hand before draw clocking and you’ll already have enough hand to do Baji.

If you trigger cx(es) along the way, the option you’ll always have to pay them out is Pehyan brainstorm. Although you’ll have to consider if it’s worth paying it out and/or milling 3 for it. If you’re looking to pay out a cx that’s deeper in your stock (like if you triggered a cx on first swing), but don’t necessarily want to touch your deck, you can play over a Pehyan and then pay 3 for it. If you played something with an on play effect, you can do those too alongside the pay 3, such as check 5 Mikey, Takemichi stock, Hina shuffle back or blink in whatever order.

If your opponent beats a lane, or kills a backrow Pehyan in some way, don’t be afraid to pay 3 to bring them back if you need to, especially if they killed a Pehyan and now threaten all 3 of your lanes. Once you’re on Pahchin, your game now lives and dies by having triple Pahchin up at all times, so do what you can to keep them up. You can even hold a backup just in case they try to beat a lane.

When doing Pahchin games, you’ll have to accept you’re not going to have the same explosive finisher you’ll normally have. You’re not playing the same deck anymore. What you’ll have at most is usually going to look like just Baji, with extra Mitsuyas and Mikeys on top being a highroll luxury. Your reach is going to look more like what a regular finisher has. In fact, you might not even have Baji. Your finish could be just a few Mitsuyas into vanilla swings. Basically, don’t be afraid to play for compression and towards your cancels if it means not being able to do Baji combo. Use stock and forgo the Baji finisher if it’ll mean you can cancel better into your opponent’s finisher turn, if it means a better refresh, or even if it means just straight up living (since you’re now more likely than dual laners to hit level 3 after your opponent).

If you do end up doing Baji, be mindful of where your Mikey is, if it’s not in stock already. Securing the Mikey on Pahchin is a little harder than dual laners. What I’ll often do in games I know I’ll probably need to go into Pahchin is to actually stock Mikey into my 2nd or 3rd stock. That way, it’s still there for you to pay out, but it also won’t immediately be paid out by Pehyan when spawning Pahchin on the next turn. If you have the extra stock on your finishing turn and need to reach Mikey, you can just pay for Pehyan if you don’t have a Mitsuya or Mikey in hand to play down as a stockout.

If you see the opportunity to go for game, and your hand+stock allows you to do so, you can clock yourself up a few times to do Baji combo or just some Mitsuya burns or even stockswap. Make sure it’s worth it though, like maybe your opponent’s deck state is really bad, or maybe they’re at 3-2 and above, just remember your reach isn’t as good. But hey if the turn will be better than 3 vanilla swings then by all means.

If you don’t have Baji setup (either because he’s not in hand, because of stock/Mikey issues or no pants in WR), you can also play for Mitsuya burns with cloner if possible. I’ll usually try my best to have an extra copy of cloner in hand when doing Pahchin setup for this exact reason. For example, in Japan when I played in 2022 cup, I was playing against full power Alice. I pulled out triple Pahchin (turn 2 going 2nd! I’m a sack no???) and got hit to level 3 first with my opponent at 2-5. From there, I had 8 stock with one Mitsuya burn and the cloner in hand I cloned during setup. I didn’t have Baji, but I just drew into Mitsuya’s climax : so I went ahead and cloned the one copy I had for a total of 4 burns, and then played down Mitsuya’s combo, getting the lethal swing on my 2nd combo.

Play 4. I don’t think I need to elaborate.

How To Triple Pahchin

“Nice board you filthy casual… wait put that bouncer down”

Woo boy. That was a lot. But we finally got through all the cards in the list. If you made it here in one sitting, take a breather. If you didn’t, then take a break regardless. I’ve been yapping infinite and it’s prolly a good idea to do something else for a bit.

Next thing I wanna dedicate a section to is how to set up Pahchin. Now I’ll be honest. I’m…actually not that big of an expert in the numbers and odds of hitting Pahchin. I don’t make Pahchin every game and we’re spoiled by usually having extra stock, so we get a lot more leg-room by doing Pahchin mid-game instead of turboing it out like Alice or pure Pahchin. That said, we still want to be as stock and hand efficient as possible, and sometimes you really do only have 3 or 4 stock to work with, so I’ll try my best to say what I know. But also feel free to say I’m talking out my ass and tell me I’m wrong.

For the actual Pahchin setup, If you played Alice in the past, the numbers for shuffle back are gonna look familiar. I won’t go into the percentages of hitting Pahchins, since I don’t really know it myself and I’m sort of just piggybacking off some of the numbers for triple Alice. However, note that unlike Alice, we have the freedom of milling into the next deck if we want to spawn Pahchin, so we’re more lenient and flexible in our mills to hit triple PahChin. You can take that as “we have more options in our mill numbers” or as “don’t worry too much about your numbers, just fiddle around to whatever gets you triple Pahchin”. First, I’ll explain the numbers in a very simple way that’s more geared towards beginners or if you don’t want to bother too much with math. Then, I’ll go into a more advanced version, but you realistically only need to read either just the simplified version or the detailed version. Or both, do what you want

So here’s the very simple, very generalized watered down way to try spawning triple Pahchin in a few sentences : First, have at least 3 or 4 stock and at least 2 shuffle backs in hand (ideally, these are both Pehyan, and ideally you can even have a 3rd shuffle back in hand). Then, mill down to anywhere between 4 to 9 cards left in deck, according to what you can do. Then, count your Pahchins in your waiting room and shuffle back once or twice until your deck has 4 Pahchins. Then, brainstorm until you have 3 Pahchins on board. Along the way, you might have to play down another shuffle back if you mill 3 Pahchins in one go, or if all your Pahchins are out. Badabing badaboom, congrats on never losing board, you’re ready to go.

Now, for the more detailed explanation, which will involve some more (but simple) math. I’m gonna be saying a lot, but honestly, you lowkey don’t need to worry too much about the math, just do whatever you can to get triple Pahchin. Anyways, if you used to play Alice, you’ll remember the 3n+1 formula. This number is still fine, and you can take that to use for Pahchin. However, as Pahchin, you also have the option to go for simply 3n. n is the amount of brainstorms you want or can do, which tends to be limited by your stock, and the final number in the formula is the number you want your deck to be after shuffling back 2 or 4. For example, if I have 4 stock and I want to do 3n+1, then my n is 4. 3 times 4 + 1 is 13, so I want my final deck count after the shuffle back to be 13. Let’s say before milling, 3 Pahchins are in my waiting room. This means I need to shuffle back 4 cards into my deck to have 4 Pahchins back in my deck. So to get to 13, I need to mill down to 9.

Now, whether you do 3n+1 or 3n has different upsides and downsides depending on what you pick. The route you’ll take is basically up to preference, and might also change based on whether you have a climax in hand or a 3rd shuffle back in hand. Let’s go with the assumption that our n is 4 and that we shuffle back 4, which is what it usually will be.

• 3n+1 : If you choose to do 3n+1, your odds of hitting triple Pahchin are a little lower. Also, your odds get even worse if you mill 2 or 3 Pahchins in one mill. But, you’ll be playing with the potential to have a slightly better game depending on your hand if you hit triple Pahchin. If you hit triple Pahchin in 3 stock, your game is better if you have a climax in hand. This means you’ll be left with 4 cards in deck, so you can then play down a climax, salvaging a finisher piece, pushing damage and then refreshing perfectly with all 8. Speaking of refreshing climaxes, 3n+1 will give you better odds of refreshing with most or all climaxes. If you hit triple Pahchin in 3 stock and your deck has climaxes in deck still, you can mill again to get them out of there and then refresh with 7 or 8. If it takes you 4 stock to spawn triple Pahchin, your game is better if you have another shuffle back in hand. You’ll be left with 1 card in deck, so you can play down that extra shuffle back, guaranteeing clean soul triggers or non soul triggers, controlling damage as you like, and guaranteeing what clean cards get put into your stock first. I like to shuffle back a Mikey so it’s guaranteed to be triggered and used for Baji later.
• 3n : If you choose to do 3n, you have a higher chance of hitting triple Pahchin. But, you’ll be at the opposite end of the bonuses that doing 3n+1 gives you. If you have a climax in hand and hit with 3 mills, the most you can refresh is 7. You could refresh 8 if you play another shuffle back, but then you’d pass with 2 cards in deck. If you hit triple Pahchin in 3 stock though, your 3 cards to swing with are right there, assuming there are no climaxes. If there is a climax or two in there, you have to accept you’ll be triggering them or milling and refreshing less regardless, unless you want to try to chance a shuffle back to leave one in the bottom 2. If it takes 4 stock to spawn Pahchin, then you just gotta hope in the same way that a cx isn’t in the bottom 3 cards of your deck.
• Tl;dr, 3n+1 is lower odds for Pahchin but better game. 3n is higher odds for Pahchin, worse game. When you decide what you wanna do, remember that if you only end up with double Pahchin, your game is going to be much much worse no matter what route you took, so it’s up to you on what you prefer and what safer or riskier play you want.

No matter what route you pick, try your best to have an extra shuffle back, in case you mill out 3 Pahchins in one brainstorm, or if all your Pahchins get milled out early. Remember you also have Hina riki as a way to shuffle back cards.

Also, due to our lack of actual milling options, sometimes you won’t actually get to the perfect deck number you want. That’s ok, I recommend to always have a cloner in hand when doing Pahchin setup, just because he can patch so much for us. Get as close as you can and go from there. Clone and go as necessary. For example, cloner can let you clone check 5 Mikey, which is your main source of mill right before Pehyans.

Now, there are a lot of what ifs you may run into. I’ll cover some of them, but for a lot of really specific scenarios, you kinda just gotta figure it out based on experience.

What if there are only 1 or 2 Pahchins in WR? Here, you can do the same simple thing of shuffling back 2 or 4 at once to get to the final deck count you want of 3n+1 or 3n. Alternatively, what you can do to increase your odds of triple Pahchin is you can break up a shuffle back 4 into 2 parts. Here’s what I mean. I’m gonna go with 3n+1 here, n being 4. With our math, I see I need to shuffle back to 13. But let’s say I have only 2 Pahchins in WR. So I would only need to shuffle back 2. Going off of what we usually do, we only need to mill down to 11. We can take our odds a step further though. Say you now mill down to 9, which is what I’d go down to if I had to shuffle back 4. Now, I’ll play down a Pehyan, shuffling 2 Pahchins back, making us have 4 Pahchins in deck. This is part 1 of shuffle back 4, and I can leave the deck as is at 11 cards. Now, your odds of hitting triple Pahchin in 3 stock should be higher. Now after 3 brainstorms, we’re left with 2 cards in deck. That might look awkward at first, but we still have our 2nd shuffle back. This is part 2 of our shuffle back 4, so we’ll play it now and here we’ll have 4 cards in deck, and it’s like we went to 13 cards. In the event that you mill extra Pahchins in one brainstorm, you can do that 2nd shuffle back to put them back in, and then you’re back to doing 3n+1.

What If I lost a Pahchin to stock or clock? Well, not much you can do to actually fix it. Depending on the amount of stock you have, you can stick to the same formulas as before and try to hit as usual, just be mindful of having an extra shuffle back in hand in the case that you mill 2 Pahchins in one brainstorm. Usually you’ll just end up milling down to a small number to increase your odds of hitting a Pahchin per stock.

What if I only have one Pehyan in hand? What if my 2nd and 3rd copy is stuck in stock or deck or clock? This is where cloner saves the day. Hold that first copy and you hopefully also have Hina riki for her shuffle back. Mill down to whatever number you need, and then shuffle back using a Pehyan and maybe with Hina. From there, just brainstorm. You’re likely to mill a Pehyan or pay one out by the time your 2nd or 3rd Pahchin hits the field. Once you mill one, pause the brainstorming, play down cloner, get the 2nd Pehyan, and then continue. Once you have triple Pahchin, you can play the 2nd Pehyan and shuffle back if it helps. Or if you milled too many Pahchins in one brainstorm, Pehyan can shuffle it back in.

Finisher Turn

“I really quit Yugioh just to pick up a deck that’s full combo OTK huh… NO HANDTRAPS BABY”

Now that we’ve gotten through the cards and how to play them, next I want to talk about how to do the finisher turn. A lot of times, I see people do this inefficiently, maybe missing out on burns that they could have done, whether it be with their handsize, their stock or with cloning done wrong. Maybe they could have put themselves in a better position to live after, or they whiffed Mitsuya burns when they could have easily made them hit. So I’m here to clear that all up, to show you how I go about the finishing turn, and what my thought process is during and even before I hit level 3.

So here you are, you’re level 3. This is what you’ve been building all the stock for, where you can finally see your hard work come to fruition. Now that you’re here, before you even clock draw, sit down and first take a moment to count your cards. Count your stock, count your hand, and even check your deck.

First count your stock. Count the 8 cards in stock for Baji, then count every stock after that. Then count it again to double check. You don’t wanna be doing your combo and then halfway through you realize you’re a stock off.

Every 2 cards after the 8 is an extra Mitsuya burn. Stockswap costs 4. If you have an extra stock after each pair of 2, then you have 3 options. You can either a) Not use it, b) Brainstorm for hand or deck speed, or c) If you draw into pants, Baji costs 7 instead and that extra stock counts towards a main phase burn. Just remember that if you do plan on skipping Baji’s cx salvage, you’ll be one hand shorter, which is actually one less Mitsuya too, so don’t forget to count that as your hand.

Here’s a scenario. Let’s say you have 17 stock and a full hand before clockdraw. That’s 8 stock for Baji, and then 9 stock to work with for burns. So that’s stock for 4 burns+brainstorm, or 5 burns if Baji doesn’t salvage a cx.

Now count your hand. You know what your limit is for burns stockwise, so see if you have the hand to be able to do that. Do you need to brainstorm? Do you need to clock draw? Set aside 3 cards you’re going to discard for Baji and check if you have the hand to do burns according to your stock. Remember, Baji refunds his hand. I like to just count the Baji in my hand as the pants when counting.

If you need more hand, you can brainstorm if it will actually make the difference towards having another burn. If you’re planning to play Baji without salvaging, will you have the hand to do all the burns? And then depending on how many Mitsuyas you have in hand, you may have to clone one or multiple Mitsuyas, and you might have to commit 2 cards in hand as one Mitsuya. If you have to play something down to clone a Mitsuya, then count that as well in your handsize.

So back to the scenario, let’s say before clock draw, you have 7 cards in hand (clocking would get you to 8). Count the Baji in hand as pants, then set 3 discards, and you’ll see you’re left with 3 cards in hand, meaning you’d be one hand short. So you can clock to guarantee you have the extra hand, or you can brainstorm and still be able to to 4 burns if you hit. Immediately, you can cross out that option of having the extra burn by not salvaging cx. Even if you clock draw, you’d be short one hand to do 5 burns. You’d only have the extra hand if you do brainstorm, but that would touch your stock meaning you’d only be able to do 4 burns anyways.

And I’ll be real. In general, Baji not salvaging a climax for hand will usually not really pan out as an option. But it’s still possible in fringe cases if you hit big on brainstorm and add pants off there or something. Anyways, just like in this situation I made, your finisher will actually usually be more limited by your hand than your stock. That’s why it’s so important to maintain your handsize throughout the game instead of just blindly stocking every turn without having hand. Your finishing turn only gets easier with more hand, even if you get to a point beyond what you need, so brainstorming often and abusing self-bounce are vital.

I like to count my cards manually and do so every time I hit level 3, but here are the numbers for you people who like to have it by the book. This applies for both before or after brainstorming

• 5 Burns takes 9 or more Hand
• 4 Burns takes 8 or more Hand
• 3 Burns takes 7 or more Hand
• Etc
• I say “or more” because if you don’t have as many Mitsuya copies in hand, you may have to play down an extra card just for the purpose of tapping it for cloner, meaning your Mitsuya would cost 2 hand

Now I’ll check my deckstate. No matter what, brainstorm or no brainstorm, you gotta check a list of things. Your Mitsuyas and/or brainstorm will mill your small deck, so it’s important to still play weiss and think about your deckstate for your finisher. There’s actually a really large list of questions you could and should be asking yourself even right before you hit level 3 and before you do anything. For example :

What does my current deck look like, am I likely to hit for big numbers if I play Mitsuyas right now? Am I able to push myself to a refresh first? If I refresh, how many non-soul triggers am I going back with? Where are my remaining Mitsuyas? Are they in deck for me to add off brainstorm, in my stock to pay out, or in waiting room for me to clone? If I refresh, how likely am I to mill a mitsuya to clone? How likely am I to mill pants to salvage? Can I mill down to a way that I can pass after my finishing turn, and still have an actual chance to live if I didn’t kill? At what point in my mills am I doing Baji salvage? If I’m brainstorming, am I going through this entire deck? Do I have the stock to do that? If it brings me through a new deck, how much am I milling there? Maybe I have extra hand and less stock, can I get myself to a small deck and use shuffle backs into mitsuyas? What about my 2nd Mikey, is it in my deck or WR still? Am I picking that up? Where does his bottom deck marker come into play?

There’s actually a lot more to think about than it initially looks, outside of “I’m going to just vomit my hand and hope for the best”. If you mindlessly just go for your burns, that’s how things like “oh, my Mitsuyas whiffed” or “oh, I don’t have a salvage target” or “oh if I don’t kill here, I’m dead.” will happen, and then both you and your opponent will be confused in how they lived, when really it all could have been avoided.

Mitsuya burns are random, but you can try your best to give them a deck where they’ll hit often. Do what you can to make your Mitsuyas hit. If your current deck has a lot of non-soul triggers from when it refreshed, then refresh to a new deck where it’s more soul triggers. Or when cloning, ditch soul triggers that aren’t Mitsuya to make the next deck a little better. If you have the extra hand then you can drop a Hina or Pehyan to make your Mitsuyas hit better.

Also, I say this a lot because it’s actually relevant, but you should also try your best to put yourself in a position where you can live even after your finisher turn. It’s very possible. If you refresh right before you pay 8 ditch 3 for Baji (which is what I’ll usually aim to do), you can actually have a medium amount of compression on that refresh. You’ll hover to around 7 in 30 (the 5 in the bottom will be clean from final Mikey), which by all means isn’t anything amazing, but if your opponent has just an average finisher or even throws just vanilla swings at you, neither you or your opponent should be surprised if you get a good amount of cancels. If you manage to pass with an even better amount of compression, all the power to you.

To do this, count your deck by 2s for each Mitsuya burn. If you’re brainstorming, then check what’s the lowest deck count you can reach. If you are at least halfway through the deck and are on your way to mill out, then leave at most 3 cards in deck if you have no brainstorm on board so you can refresh right before Baji. If you do have a brainstorm, then it’s max 4 cards in deck, 5 with double brainstorm. Remember that Mikey bottom decks so that’s an extra card in your deck count if you played one down as an extra burn.

Let’s go back to our scenario again. Let’s say you didn’t clock draw but opted to brainstorm instead. Say you hit 2. Now, with this brainstorm 2, how much are you milling? Are you refreshing or are you staying here? If I know the current deck is very good for Mitsuyas, then how much am I able to stay here? If I play down 4 Mitsuyas, how many cards will I be left with? Let’s say I have a lot of deck, and if my Mitsuyas go into a new deck halfway through, then they’re more likely to miss, so let’s stay in that deck. Now I’ll count. First, I count the cards I’ll go through with Mitsuyas. That’s 8 cards (4 burns milling 2 each). Next, will my swings be in this deck or the next one? Say I want them to be in this deck. Then I’ll set aside 3 to 4 more cards aside so I can mill out with my swings including the topcheck I get off brainstorm. Now, I’ll count how much I need to check off my brainstorms to get me to that ideal refresh. By hitting 2, I can mill up to 6 so now it’s just up to how much I mill per check to get to the deck number I want.

Now I’ll count the cards in my hand again, double checking I do have the hand to put down 4 burns. But this time, I also need to check my hand including the cloning. The brainstorm may have plussed me in hand, but it’s also one less tap target for me to save hand by playing down a card to tap. So here we go. After brainstorm, we have 9 hand. Before fully committing to anything, play it out real quick. Baji (turns into pants), ditch 3, and then 5 cards for 4 burns. Let’s say I have 2 Mitsuyas in hand, so those immediately count for 2 out of 4 burns. I’ll set those aside. Then, I’ve got the mitsuya cloner untapped. That’s 3 out of 4. So I’ll set aside another card. Now I’ve got 2 hand left for the last burn. This last mitsuya actually costs 2 hand because I need to put down a tap target. Now play out the cards you’ll put down in your head and how you’ll tap to clone. First Mitsuya, then tap 2 salvage. Then, you’ll overplay a Mitsuya with another Mitsuya to have a Mitsuya standing, and put another character down to clone. Tap 2, salvage. From there, we have 2 more burns, so we can put those down, put down Baji and that’s it. 4 burns down and 3 cards left for discard. Now that we have our plan in mind, we’re ready to execute it. Burn burn burn burn, slam climax, attack, combo, and hopefully they’re dead.

Sometimes you won’t be able to do your full burn potential because you didn’t start with enough Mitsuyas in hand, so cloning him costs 2 hand. It’s unfortunate, but you have to accept it and play with that. As much as we can abuse cloner, still try to get as many pieces in your hand before level 3, then you’ll have much more leeway and extra hand to even drop down shuffle backs or brainstorms for choose trigger.

Here’s a different scenario, this one quicker to talk about checking your deck before burning. Say you have 5 cards left in your deck, with 2 cxes in your deck. Here, you have the full hand and stock for 5 Mitsuya burns and a brainstorm, and you already have 4 copies of Mitsuya in hand. At first glance, you might be tempted to throw 2 first Mitsuyas for the guaranteed big hits, then use Baji salvage before refresh to guarantee Pants and then play a 3rd Mitsuya into the next deck. However, all that stock (paying out up to 9 non soul triggers!) you’ll have paid out for Mitsuya and Baji to salvage pants would go back, making your last 3 Mitsuyas more likely to hit for 1s and maybe even 0s in the next deck. Instead, what I would do is brainstorm to refresh. The deck into refresh will be way better with all the soul triggers going back, and I’m likely to mill through my deck enough with BS check 3 and Mitsuyas to have pants in WR for Baji to pick up, and still be able to mill out properly to maybe live on the next turn.

Generally, if you have extra hand, you can clone a second brainstorm to throw onto the field to give you choose trigger on 2 characters. This will usually be more feasible if you can only do up to 4 burns at most. This is especially good to play against decks that threaten counters (especially memory kick or tap counter!!!). You can intentionally play for double brainstorm in the back, and then be able to side for good 1s and 2s because your deck will be so compressed with soul triggers.

For example, in my last round of swiss in BCS Toronto, I was playing against Chainsaw Man. My opponent was having a pretty bad game. They hit level 3 first and did their finisher first. They couldn’t quite hit me to level 3, and put me to 2-5. They had just double triggered and if I stalled another turn, there was a real chance I could die, so I clocked myself and went for it. They were 3-0, 1 in 6 and they had just double triggered, so if there was an opportunity for game, that was it. Now I only had enough stock to do one burn, which milled for 3, and he canceled on 3. Now he’s got 3 clean in his deck and a board full of level 3s. Now the annoying part was that he had just salvaged a freefresh counter, so I shouldn’t blindly front his lanes. Otherwise he’d refresh his 3 clean cards, and he’d be paying out the 2 cxes he triggered. This is where I went out of my way to clone my 2nd brainstorm back to hand and onto my field so I could have choose trigger on both my 2 soul lanes and side for actual damage. I could have been happy with just taking the 3 clean cards for just the ping 1 5 times, but I really wanted to seal the deal by having him start at 3-4 instead of 3-0 for my Mikey pings. Anyways, my deck was still pretty compressed, so fishing for soul triggers was pretty reasonable, I got him to refresh and from there it was over.

Moral of the story : if you want to play around counters, you can double (or even triple!) choose trigger for some good poking, which is what you’ll often want to do anyways if your opponent is already at level 3 by the time you go into attack phase. Otherwise even blind sides will often hit for good numbers if your deck is still compressed with soul triggers.

If you have just 1 choose trigger (which is what you’ll usually have), remember to use it to your advantage. I like to usually give my choose trigger to my Baji as often as possible. That way, by Baji swing I’ll have the best idea of what my final reach is going to be, giving me a better idea of what I need to trigger for. If my opponent has a level 1 on board, I’ll put Baji in front of it so that both my Baji and Mikey can side that for really good numbers. Alternatively, if I really need the reach, then I can put Baji into an open lane, so that Mikey will also be in that empty lane, giving the final direct the push it needs

When doing your actual swings, if you have any sideable targets then plan accordingly. You’ll generally want to put them at a range at which point it’s near impossible for them to live final Mikey’s burns. Your swings before combo don’t need to be lethal. If you put them to 3-4 to 3-6 by the time you resolve Baji combo, you’ve usually basically won the game, so don’t be too afraid to swing for smaller numbers if it gets them to that range.

Remember, if you’re at final Mikey swing and you can’t reach lethal, it’s not over for you. You can try to level lock them at 2-3 to 2-4 and try to give lethal another shot on your next turn with Mikey’s pay 1 rest effect.

If you already have enough hand for your combo or see that brainstorm will get you there, you can choose to not clock, giving you a better chance at living if they don’t die, and then you’ll likely have less cxes to discard off cloner. You can also see how the clock draw mills your deck as something to consider for clocking or not

If you drew into pants, but aren’t looking to skip the Baji cx salvage, you can ditch your pants off cloner and then just grab it back with Baji. That way your hand is also less clogged with cxes, especially if you’re going into a refresh.

Remember that you have stockswap in your arsenal. He also mills your deck, so make sure to count your cards properly with that. He costs 4, and remember to go into attack phase with at least 8 stock when planning to use him.

Now in terms of your finishing turn in Pahchin games, it’s much more simple. Your reach is looking from anything to simply a main phase burn or two, to vanilla Baji and one extra burn on top. Your hand condition is easy to fulfill because of the Pahchins on board, but you’ll less likely have the stock to still play down 3-5 burns.

If you’re playing Pahchin and are really behind as you hit level, you can either just keep doing vanilla swings with Pahchin, or you can do Baji combo just to push damage if your deck can still be pretty compressed after, which could be good if they aren’t ready.

For example, in my last round of 2024 WGP LCQ, I was playing against Niji Door Standby. I had to early pivot to Pahchin when they presented me with triple 8500 Ai wall. So from there, the game goes on and I hit level 3 first and pretty quickly while they’re still 2-4. Now my finish at this point is just base Baji combo. I know that I’m very unlikely to reach. But, I realized 2 things. First, because I hit level 3 so fast and I didn’t cancel, most of my climaxes are still in my deck. So if I do my finisher, I can pass turn in a really compressed deckstate. 2nd, They were on 6 stock. Being pretty familiar with the deck, I know that if I hit them to 3 they can only do double finisher at most unless they already had door. I knew they won’t have the reach to get me even if I’m at 3, with the finisher doing only a potential burn 3. It could only get dicey if they triggered Lions along the way or if they played Fumio. With those 2 factors in mind, I went ahead and did Baji combo, putting them to mid level 3, and presented them with a deck of 5 climaxes in about 12. I lived, paid 1 for Mikey and from there it was a matter of vanilla swinging them to our victory.

Moral of the story here is that you don’t necessarily have to release Baji as a way of killing. If you gauge where both of you are in the game, are familiar with their deck and find it appropriate, you can just close the gap really fast and put them in that spot of they weren’t ready to kill you and there’s not much they can do about that.

Tips and Tricks

“I Need an image to stick between walls of text, so have a page feat. Draken who doesn’t have a card in our deck… WHICH IS A DAMN SHAME”

Alright, now that I’ve gotten through most of the guide, here are random tips and tricks I thought of that you might not be aware of and that I didn’t fit for a card specifically. I thought up of these in no particular order LOL

Mulligan : In terms of mulligan, it’s fairly straightforward. The only things I hold are my consistency 0s and any full setup pieces. Don’t need to keep climaxes, backup, Pehyan or Baji. Those will all come right after you assemble everything else first : You have way more things to prioritize getting first. Dupes of any of the consistency 0s are fine, and you can hold 2 Chifuyus as well. The only thing that might be different from game to game is if you’re going 2nd and you see your opponent is playing a deck that you might need Pahchin for, then you might hold a Pehyan. If your opening hand is something like 3 Chifuyus, a cloner and some other unplayable, I’d probably be more aggressive on the mulligan there just to get any level 0 to attack with, so you could drop the extra chifuyus there since you can clone them back later.

If you hit level 3 first, but are really behind and want to push damage but still want to dual lane, what you can do is to field a Mitsuya to get a cheeky burn, get them closer to lethal range, and then go right back to dual laning by cloning a Chifuyu using Mitsuya burn as a tap target.

Now, I might’ve quickly mentioned lethal range for the deck before, but just to make it clear, your range will usually be your opponent being at least 2-3. Starting from 2-0 is also possible if their compression isn’t as great, but don’t always go in expecting to kill from that point. Don’t go for game if your opponent is still 1-5 or 1-6… (unless they’re literally out 7 or 8 in a large deck).

Related to not going for game from 1-5 or 1-6, I’ve mentioned this a lot before, but again, do what you can to slam cx every turn. While we’re already behind as dual laners, we want to be able to keep the pace up a bit still. If you don’t push for damage and swing for 1s, you’re gonna end up at lvl 3 staring at the opponent who’s still at 1-5 to 2-0 and you won’t be able to kill them

To be able to gauge what your reach is according to your stock, it’s important to count your stock very often. I’ll check right before attacking, right as my opponent’s going to attack me, before I use backup or brainstorm, etc. On my turn, I’m doing the count to see what number I’m going to, and on my opponent’s turn, I’m checking how much stock I’ll be losing according to their board, what’s the most I’ll net back, and how feasible it is for me to kill them if I hit 3.

Here’s what I mean by checking how much I stock I net back. 3 things will cause me to lose stock. 1) I have to use backup, 2) Pay 3 encore, and 3) Brainstorm (Emma or Pehyan). For example :

• Usually, what happens is that I have to do backup into Emma brainstorm. So I lose 2 stock. By gaining 6 back, I’ve actually netted 4 from my previous turn.
• If both my lanes got completely climbed or I didn’t have backup, then I would have to pay 3 encore. Let’s say I don’t need or want to brainstorm that turn for whatever reason. Then by gaining 6 stock, I’ve actually netted 3 from my previous turn
• If both my lanes lived, then all I need to do is brainstorm. By gaining 6 stock I’ve netted 5 from my previous turn.

So that’s how I like to keep track of my stock. It’s important to keep track of how much you actually net back. You’ll know how many burns you’ll have so far along the way, giving you a sort of progress bar for you to work for, and you’ll know how ready you are if they hit 3 and according to their level and clock. It’s also important because some of the stock addition can math out to having an extra Mitsuya burn. For example, if I only have 5 stock so far on top of the 8, then I’ve got 2 burns. If I brainlessly go the standard way of backup+brainstorm, then I’ll go up to 9 stock, meaning I’ll have 4 burns. However, if I notice I’m at a reasonable handsize, I could go one turn without using brainstorm. Then, instead of going to 9 stock on top of 8, I’ll go to 10, meaning I can already be ready for full total 18 stock combo. This of course can then balance out in terms of oh, I might need to brainstorm next turn and whatnot, but I’ll now have the option of either 4 burns+brainstorm or 5 burns on the next turn.

Prioritize having backup every turn over the extra Mitsuya. You want to avoid having to pay 3 for your Chifuyu, because that largely slows down the stock building process.

If I open with Takemichi stock riki and Hina riki with me going first, I’ll use both effects and then leave Hina in the back. That’s because if I hit level 1 next turn and have or draw into cloner, then Hina is a way better clone target to convert my hand into full setup pieces.

This one sorta goes with every deck you’ll play and with how weiss works, but I’ll say it anyways : Keep track of where your all your pieces are. You have a lot of really crucial 1-2 ofs, and even 4 ofs that not knowing where they are will be detrimental to you. Compared to every deck out there though, you have the luxury of custom picking exactly what goes into two thirds of your stock, hand picked by you. You don’t need to remember every single piece you stock away, but when you trigger something like stockswap, Baji, Backup, Chifuyu, Pahchin or Pehyan, there should be bells ringing in your ear to remember where they are

Goldfish/solitaire/practice : So to get really good with the motions of the deck and how to get yourself out of those sticky situations, with the way the deck functions you can easily practice playing the deck on your own. There’s a lot of things you can just run over and over with yourself, so that when you see it happen in a real game, you know what’s optimal. Especially for things like getting the full setup by your 2nd or 3rd turn, Pahchin setup into Pahchin turns, and the final finisher turn. Even with things like what if you hit level 3 real fast, then you can practice stabilizing while sitting on dual laners, things like that. Then, when you make a mistake or misplay, whether on your own or in a real game, keep a good mental note of what you did and what you could’ve done differently. You could even write it down if you want.

It’s important for you to quickly get out of deck 1 as soon as possible so you can get your dual laner compression to start working asap. That said, if you notice your deck still has a good amount of cxes left in deck, then don’t be afraid to take it slow and let the cancels in deck 1 work for you. If you can get a 2nd turn of dual laners in your first deck and at level 1, you can be way ahead on resources going into deck 2. If you’re going first, then it’s generally easier to get that extra turn of dual laners at level 1 on deck 1.

Regarding grappling hook : If you’re aware your opponent has a grappling hook, try your best to not get caught with your pants down. If you can do anything about it, then try to clone a copy of one of your backrow cards, and maybe even a Chifuyu. If done right, you can get right back to dual laning. That said, it’s really not easy. What’s much easier and what you could (and usually) do instead is to sculpt for Pahchin instead. If it’ll take too many resources to rebuild the full setup, then building Pahchin might be more resource efficient then trying to scamble fixing your dual laner setup to then have it dismantled again by grappling hook.

Against opponents that don’t have stockswap, you can be more aggressive at lvl 0, especially if going 2nd or if you somehow got locked at 0 going 1st. Feel free to slam down a splitsoul : you can get in that extra damage before going behind from dual laners

Against soul rush decks : These are scary, but very winnable. Our deck lives and dies by deck 1, but if you take the time to manage your resources and deckstate, the game can very much be not over. Of course, there’s not much you can do if you take a whole two levels at first. But unless you drew into or milled all your climaxes, your cancels will still be in your deck. So depending on how many cancels you have left, you can just stick in that first deck and let the cancels come, or you can work towards moving into your next deck. At some point with your compression, your opponent’s big soul swings can’t really touch you anymore, so your goal is really to just get to that point. It’s even better if the deck you’re playing against can’t even actually answer your dual laners, at which point you just free farm them on stock while they can’t do much about it. If you managed to cancel on deck 1 before taking too much then the game should be that much easier.

On your check 3 add 1, if you see a backup and some finisher piece, and you have climax in hand to salvage something, add the backup as private information. Then your opponent’s guessing on if you have it or not. Similar idea if you see a stockswap.

Most importantly, my final quick tip is this : Listen to White Noise by Hige Dandism at least 10 times on repeat before a big tourney. I did it for 40 minutes on my way to walking to Toronto’s tournament venue and now here we are 🙂

Regarding Stockswap

“Can we ban early stockswaps please ;-;”

Next, I want to take a moment to address what to do regarding stockswap. A big weakness a lot of people will bring up about the deck is that it loses to stockswap.

And this is true. If you get stockswapped, and your opponent goes for game, you’ll likely die. However, the secret is that if you know what you’re doing as the TRV player, this is only half true. In fact, in a lot of cases those stockswap matchups are a non issue.

Now I want you to think about the gameplan, and what sort of naturally happens in like 80-90% of the games. We’re dual laning. We become behind on damage. We hit level 3 first. We’re the ones flipping the opponent first and doing our finisher turn. Hololive, SDS, Frieren, RWBY, Uma, whatever other deck that has a stockswap or stockshuffle at level 3? Not a problem. If you hit level 3 first (which is what should happen), those cards are vanillas. If you’ve ever played against Tokyo Revengers, how many times are you actually the one hitting level 3 first? It really shouldn’t be ever or often. And that’s what you do against decks with stockswap at level 3. Don’t let them have it. You’ve got a very very high chance to die if you let them hit 3 first and they stockswap you, so do what you can to do your finisher first. Clock yourself more often, be more aggressive with Rikis at level 0 to 1, be less aggressive with swings at 0, side your opponent if they’re at level 2, don’t pump souls off split salvage. It’s really not that difficult even if you aren’t trying. If you’re trying to stall at level 3, do so not in a way that kicks them up to 3 (so basically, side for 0s and 1s). Do that, and you won’t really blink twice at those matchups.

Ok, so… what about stockswaps that come out before level 3?….. Yea those suck LOL

But even then! You can do your best to play around them. Vs early stockshuffles like Bocchi, YuruCamp, or gakumas, you can play around them by milling down every turn to 1 card or as close to that, leaving them no cx for them to shuffle. You should be brainstorming every turn anyways. Use and clone Pehyans+Emmas as necessary to mill out as well (Well, Bocchi has Fumio too but das a different story. Point is, you can play around the stock shuffle alone).

For early actual stockswaps like Slime and Bangdream, there’s not much you can do except also milling down to 1 card as well or into a good deckstate and hope for the best. Against slime you might have pivoted on Pahchin, so your stock isn’t as absurd and hopefully the stockswap won’t be as bad… but yea, they can flip you if they want whenever.

Before going into an event, take the time to know what sets have and use stockswap.

TLDR, if opp’s stockswap is at lvl 3, just hit lvl 3 first and shrug it off. Otherwise just play around the others as best as you can and it won’t be too bad.

Riki Glitch

“You’re out 7 in that deck? You’re already dead.”

So a few times so far, when I’ve talked about or mentioned the Riki, I’ve said something about a “Riki Glitch”. This is something I found out a few months into playing the deck. You might remember that I mentioned I’ll almost never intentionally stock my Hina Rikis. This is why. As far as I’m aware, this isn’t the most known thing you can do with the deck. At the very least, whoever you do this to will often be caught off guard. But like also I don’t know other TRV players, so if this was something obvious from the get go, you can just yell at me and call me dum. Also if you’ve got a better name for it then let me know LOL

Imagine this situation no matter what deck you’re on : Your opponent goes into a new deck with 7. Pretty standard. They refresh cx. Then on their next two swings they double trigger cx. You stare at your hand with cx in it, you stare into the abyss that is their fat deck with 4cxes and think “ooooo boy, somebody gonna get hurt real bad”. In fact, you might even stare down at your level and clock, see that you’re 2-3 and go “DAMN. If I didn’t cancel, I mighta gone to lvl 3 and killed them…”  Alternatively, your opponent coulda been smart and passed, level locking you.

This is a bit of an exaggeration, and a quick situation I came up with off the top of my head, but what I’m trying to say is what if you notice your opponent was in a really bad deck stage, and you wanted to give them the biggest punish of their life?

If you’re familiar with the JP banlist, you might be aware of Uma’s helmet on the choice list. If you’re unfamiliar, this was a way for Uma Musume to clock themselves as many times as they wanted for basically free if they wanted to level themselves and go for game. What if I told you that we as TRV could do something very similar? That if you so wanted to blast your opponent, you could pull the trigger whenever you wanted?

It all lies in the Hina Riki. And the way it works is with the shuffle back effect. Let’s say I have 2 Rikis left out of stock to work with (so it’ll be even easier when you have 3 or 4 out still). I’m 2-3, I have 9 stock on top of the 8 required for Baji, totaling to 17 stock. I have one Riki in hand, the other is out in my waiting room. I see my opponent is 2-2 and would straight up die if I unleashed any form of decent finisher here, so my goal is to hit level 3.

First, we’ll clock draw to 2-4. I now need to clock myself 3 more times. Now, I’ll start by playing Riki in hand (Riki A), but my last copy of Riki (Riki B) to loop is in my waiting room, so now what? I’ll do the shuffle back effect first, returning riki B and another card. Then I’ll clock myself and search for Riki B. Great. Now I gotta clock myself two more times. And how do I do that? It’s simple, I’ll just use shuffle back into Riki again. Use Riki B in hand to play over Riki A on board, shuffle back Riki A in WR, clock and search Riki A. And then finally one more time : Riki to level, and you’re now level 3, ready to go for the kill.

At this point with your last Riki, you can search any non soul trigger and maybe shuffle back soul triggers so your Mitsuyas hit better, depending on the deck size. You could search a stock Riki to give you back one burn, or another shuffleback for better Mitsuya hits. Now we’re at level 3, left with enough stock to do 3 Mitsuya burns, which is by all means still a very scary amount for your opponent to live (basically triple Gura). You do your finisher, then you walk away a winner, your opponent flabbergasted and tilted.

And that’s how we have our own version of “I’ll go for game whenever I want”. All it costs us is some stock, but because we’re on dual laners, we have so much stock to work with anyways. You don’t lose your hand off of this as well because the Riki in your hand always replaces itself.

On top of letting you punish bad deckstates, this is also your answer to your opponent trying to level lock you from doing your finisher, and it’s your way to making yourself hit level 3 first to not get stockswapped.

You can hold a copy of Riki along the way to keep this play as an option, but you don’t have to if you have enough copies that hitting a brainstorm will get you one in hand.

If your deck is small enough, you can also just brainstorm to get you to refresh for that last point of damage to get you up to 3. It could even get you more hand or it could be better to refresh if your clock is full or non soul triggers.

Now a couple of disclaimers about Riki Glitch :

First of course, this isn’t perfectly free. Depending on how many times you have to Riki clock yourself, you’ll be losing a Mitsuya burn or two. So be aware of that when considering your reach, and remember to count how many burns you’ll be able to do after spending stock. Your opponent probably still has cancels in their deck, and as great as our finisher is, good cancels will put a stop to us real quick. Your reach still needs to be realistic, so don’t do this if they’re anywhere lower than 2-0.

Next, as you might guess, this is a very big gamble. You’re basically going all in. Once you do this, you’re skipping straight into the endgame for both you and your opponent. So tread lightly and do this only if you’re sure it’ll end the game or put your opponent in a really bad spot afterwards.

Finally, this isn’t something you’ll do every game, or every tournament. But keep this option open for yourself in the back of your mind by not stocking your Hinas so quickly, and when the opportunity comes for you to use it, you’ll feel like the biggest fucken brained player ever.

Cards Not Played

Ok, we’re almost at the end. I’ve talked a lot about how to play the deck, how I play the deck, and my list overall. I want to take the next moment to talk about the cards in Tokyo Revengers’ set that I don’t play. Cards I see in other people’s lists, decided to opt out, and have had people ask me about before.

A lot of these I think are ultimately fine for you to play, and I just personally dislike or prefer other cards. You can have fun testing out whatever you like and adjusting your list to your taste. Some of these though, I personally think are really bad to play, and I want to talk about those too. If I don’t talk about a card, then I either forgot or it’s so bad I don’t think it’s really worth talking about. If you have any cards you do want to ask me about though, let me know and I’ll give my thoughts. Anyways let’s get into it.

Takemichi Bouncer

Here’s a big one that I see a lot of people play, and people ask me about. I don’t value the slot for it, I’m not a fan of it, and here’s why.

First, playing bouncer down just to open a lane costs the same 2 stock and 1 hand that it would have costed me to just play down a Mitsuya. The damage you get from a single open lane is worse than if you just spent that stock/hand towards a Mitsuya burn and then just side for 1 or 2. In fact, your reach can be worse. An open lane is also kinda asking to have a swing get canceled, which is part of the damage you reaaally want to stick. A lot of times actually, by the time I get to my attack phase, I just need the smaller pokes to stick, to get my opponent into that lethal ping 1 5 times range. So I’d be taking up an extra deck slot just to do the same thing I’m already doing but worse.

Next, the 2nd effect to check 3 rearrange alongside the bounce is actually kinda useless. Obviously, you don’t rearrange first before your burns, because then your info is immediately washed out by Mitsuya. You could argue that you’d make the mitsuya burn and a half somewhat modular, but then again it’s like if you just put down an extra mitsuya instead, you’d have just burned through your opponent anyways. You’d be spending 6 stock and an extra hand for 2 burns. Now then what about if you put a bouncer right before your attack phase? We already have our brainstorm in the back to make our triggers modular, so it becomes a little redundant. I’d rather sculpt and clone emma brainstorms that’s a costless and easier way to look at my triggers.

If I’m worried about counters, I’ll just burn, and then I’ll just side! If you know how, (and you should with enough practice) your deck should still be full of soul triggers still by the time you get into attack phase, so you can still side for reasonable damage even if blind. What I’ll also play for is to have two brainstorms in the back, so I can get the double choose triggers to make sure I hit some damage. And again, usually by that point I wouldn’t want to be swinging for too big anyways, so poking for 1s and 2s is much better to close the game.

What about Shana? Then yes, that would be the one matchup where bouncer would actually come up. But I’m not putting in a card I’ll never use except for the one matchup. Especially knowing my locals doesn’t have a lot of frequent Shana players. So then what will I do if I do run into Shana at a regionals? That’s a secret I’ll keep to myself 🙂

Mitsuya Bike

Bike is ok, but just very quickly outclassed by cloner as a backrow card in most ways. Bike is only good when you’re doing dual laners, but cloner is good for dual laners, for Pahchin turns, for your finishing turns, and just overall has much better utility. Cloner just serves a better purpose for every part of the game, and for all gameplans.

Bike is only better to deny on reverse combos and when both of your dual laners would get climbed. But if you use bike to save dual laners that both get climbed, you would still need cloner in the back to make double Chifuyu again : This means you wouldn’t have a brainstorm in the back and then you don’t have a reliable way to plus hand.

Baji Dual Laner

Baji’s cool, but way too outclassed by Chifuyu. In the matchups where dual laners have a good time not getting taken down, you already make your hand back by having Chifuyus live, so you don’t need the hand generation. Your stock is just way more valuable as a resource to push your ceiling. In the matchups where dual laners die too quickly, Baji isn’t gonna be enough to fix your handsize problems unless you like field double baji, which is also not very good because then your stock game is really bad. Pahchin is just way better as a way to navigate those matchups.

Besides, fielding one Baji + one Chifuyu dual laner kinda sucks. You’ll make 4 stock and 2 hand for a turn, meanwhile other decks will have some stockcharger or stocksoul, they’ll make hand back through some combo, and laugh as they still get to attack 3 times.

Also, Baji can whiff. Imagine dual laning just to whiff…

Anti Change

Tokyo Revengers is one of the few sets with a level 1 anti change. But I’m here to tell you it sucks and to not play it. At least not in this deck

The cost of this thing is wayy too high for us. You’re losing 3 hand to get the effect in a deck that already doesn’t generate hand.

If your opponent fields a single EP to beat a lane of yours, it actually doesn’t matter. If you can still keep the other Chifuyu up, then you just clone it back, and attack in the other lanes. That one EP isn’t a necessity for you to beat anyways. If they double EP you, then you can prepare the extra 3rd Chifuyu in hand to clone for the next turns, or you can pay 3 once into still being able to dual lane.

In the matchups where they double/triple some EP resource wall, you’ll be going into Pahchin anyways. As a semi joke, Pahchin in a way is your Anti Change.

Finally, the anti-change counter being on a 1/0 is actually the most annoying part of it. We have no way to directly grab it other than by Riki, but then I’d rather just search another dual laner for the next turn. You’re not going to Riki for an Anti Change way ahead of time before your setup anyways. It being a 1/0 means there’s no soul trigger, so you can’t salvage it off splitsoul. If it had a soul trigger like on a 2/1,  and the cost were more tied to stock instead of hand, then I’d be more inclined to play it. But here we are and we can’t afford to play it.

Money Counter

For the same reason as anti change, this thing costs too much. You also likely won’t even be able to use it at all since you’ll usually hit level 3 first, and then you’d use up all your resources into killing your opponent.

This is good if you’re playing Pahchin, but then you’d need to play 3 or 4 to be able to draw into it : then you’d be dedicating slots that are already too tight for a gameplan you don’t use all the time. Keep this card for pure Pahchin lists please.

Check 4 add 1 Baji

This card sucks and I’m tired of seeing it in other lists. Sure, it can get you some deck speed and some other pieces. But If I’m spending a stock to get setup pieces, I’d usually just rather Riki or brainstorm

The card can be tapped off cloner and then use its effect to add a card to open a lane again, but then it doesn’t recur itself in any way. So you’re left on the next turn with negging on cloner or you’d need to hold it for the next turn or draw into another one. Self-bouncer just outclasses it as a tap target for you because it always comes back, and it refunds you the same hand. You generally want to be spending less stock on later turns anyways. Then, you’re gonna tell me with a straight face this doesn’t just get put into stock immediately once you get the chance?

Also, the card is too small. Our power lines at 0 are already not great so having a 500 attacker on top of a mediocre effect is not it.

Finally, the effect to encore itself doesn’t really do anything for us towards our setup. After your first turn, you’re either going directly into dual laners, or you spend one more turn at 0. If you’re on your dual laner turn, it just sits there maybe just as a tap target off cloner. If you spend another turn at 0, then you’re swinging with a tiny beater that doesn’t do anything and that can’t get over anything. That or you’re basically paying 2 for a check 4 add 1, which is pretty bad for a non selective search.

Drop salvage, drop search, Riko

These cards are fine. Riki is just way better though by letting you actually plus hand in a stockcharging deck, and can push you to the level you need. If I need to salvage something, I can do it anyways through cloner or splitsoul (and to an extent, Riki). You can also replace Rize for these, but I ended up preferring the costless deckspeed and handfilter. Dropsearch’s global -500 was funny though when playing into my friends on Overlord and Saekano LOL

Hanma Chaser, 4kL1 Takemichi

These are good cards, but dual laners is not really the deck for them. While they’ll likely plus you after your first turn, they just stay as a body and don’t exactly push you towards searching for the full setup after. Then you’re stuck with the same issue as the check 4 add 1. If you’re pushed to level 1, then all it serves as is a bad tap target. If you get another turn at 0 or choose to stay there, then it just stays as a body that doesn’t really do much. I would rather play down cards that do let me build towards that full dual laner setup.

Also, these are the kind of cards you’d need to play 3 or 4 of to really get the consistent value out of them, and we don’t have that kind of space in our deck.

Salvage Brainstorm

This card’s fine, but Emma brainstorm is just way better for the gameplan of the deck. Emma lets you push towards having cx every turn, gives you better deck speed, and has a much more relevant 2nd effect. Everything you might want to salvage by brainstorm is already being salvaged by cloner and splitsoul while being costless.

Hina EP Heal, Blue 3/2 Mikey

I don’t quite value heals in the deck. If you got shot up fast, then that should mean that your cancels are still in the rest of your deck. If you had previous turns of dual laners, just keep doing that and rely on the compression you’d have already built. Your turn is probably better spent towards building a better finishing turn, rather than spending some stock and healing one.  If want to close the gap, I’d rather start tri-laning or play down a Mitsuya to burn.

Alternatively, if I get hit to 3 then I could just go for it. Obviously this depends on how much stock you have and how far up they are, but you get it.

Hina in particular has a sacking cost for heal which would mean you’d have to sack a backrow, chifuyu, or part of the Pahchin Wall. None of which you’d really want to kill, or else you’d have to do some funny things with cloner. If you sack a dual laner, and then clone it back, it’s kind of just negging a lot to heal one to then lose its value by either overplaying your EP or dual laning with it.

I’ve been told before that refreshing pants is a concern which is why some people play the TD 3/2 Mikey. That really shouldn’t be an issue if you’re keeping your stock clean: that’s why we play 2 pants… The other one should just be there in your WR for you to salvage.

Draken Leafa Counter

If you’re at level 2+, then this card is good. Unfortunately, that “if” is the card’s problem. You can only use it at level 2… You’ll run into the issue at level 1 of needing a backup to defend your Chifuyus, especially when your opponent does that first turn of combo and can climb both lanes without backup.

You’d have to make a slot just for this, and it wouldn’t bring enough value for that slot. You wouldn’t replace a Takemichi backup either because then you’d run into consistency issues at lvl 1 of having draken in WR instead of Takemichi.

Closing Thoughts

That’s it! You’ve made it to the end of this (probably too long) guide. I hope this was helpful or interesting even to those who already play the deck competitively. Sorry this ended up being so long, but I’d rather this than having it to be shorter and then leaving people on their own with the deck : it had to be done. If you stuck around for the whole thing, thank you, it really means a lot. Thanks to anyone who took the time to read any of this at all!

I had initially planned to get this out shortly after worlds but was then either too busy or ran into other problems. I actually at first wanted to make this as a video, but realized I don’t actually know how to edit anything and it would probably take even longer than I’d already wanted. I would have to work around the ~2+ hours of voice recording I ended up having. I still have a good chunk recorded and saved, so maybe I’ll go back one day if I find the time. This document ended up being much easier to work on small bits at a time whenever I wanted.

Now with the new BCS and WGP season rolling around, should you play this deck? My honest answer is… Probably not. Even though I’d rate the deck much higher than people put it, the difficulty and payoff is probably not worth it over some other decks. That said, if you want to go for it, then by all means take it all the way! It’d make me very happy to see anyone top with it 🙂 Just remember to keep practicing and you can only get better with the deck. For every day your finisher doesn’t kill, another good day will come up where you’ll win everything.

Shoutouts to my friends in the Toronto Weiss community for getting me here in the first place. I’m still a relatively new player and being surrounded by so many good players willing to play and teach the game is a privilege. Wouldn’t have gotten to this point without them. I also thank them for putting up with me playing TRV most of the time : as much as I love the deck, I very much acknowledge it is not a fun deck to play into and not a helpful deck to practice against LOL

Also quick shoutout to Simu ChairmanTCG, we’ve never met (I was too shy to say hello at worlds), but your TRV videos were a big help for when I first picked up the deck.

If you have any questions, thoughts, comments, concerns, feel free to reach out to me through Twitter or Discord (carsonhua7645 for both). I’d be glad if you had anything to say to me about this. Also, it would be very appreciated if you shared the deck around, even if you don’t like the deck or even if your friends aren’t necessarily looking to play the deck. I put a lot of time into this so I’d be sad if only a few people saw this :c

If enough people ask me about certain things (like I know I didn’t really touch on specific matchups) then I’d be down to write another part to the guide, and hopefully also maybe even finish a video guide for it. Anyways, good luck and have fun everyone!