The meta smiles upon decks that focus on the use of creatures, due to the fact that you have to use your buffs on them in order to be the most effective. Since Reverse Time and Eternity are banned, a participant doesn't have to worry about the amount of buffs a creature can have. In a similar fashion, they don't have to worry much about having creature with too much HP due to the ban on Gravity Shield. The one drawback is that the amount of certain buffs usable, especially alchemy spells, are limited by six copies per buff; consequently, one must use the buffs wisely and watch out for creature control. Once a buffed creature has been killed, there is no way to get the buff back.
Shields aren't favorable in this tournament since participants have access to Momentum, Shard of Wisdom, and various forms of PC. Stalls have less power than they usually would in this tournament with the ban of Miracle, Reverse Time/Eternity, the deck size being restricted to 40 cards maximum, and the multiple ways to bypass shields. Certain control or denial decks are generally hard to create with the restriction of 4 buffs a deck; although, it is possible to make these types of decks.
The most common decks would be rushes and breaks. Rush decks generally benefit from buffs that increase high ATK, and breaks are able to use the qualities of Momentum to get through an opponent's defenses. Common targets for the buff cards would probably end up being creatures with low quanta costs or ones with specified abilities. For example, Mono Life benefits greatly with this rule set due to being able to use Adrenaline and Horned Frogs in their arsenal. The reason this works well is because the Horned Frogs only cost 2
, meaning that they can be played faster than most. Another example of a powerful deck is Chaos Wyrms, which uses Chaos Power and...Wyrms to deal great amounts of damage to the opponent. A Wyrm's ability, Dive, allows them to double their ATK stat for one turn. When combined with Chaos Power, or any buff that increases ATK, the Wyrm is able to deal even more damage than it normally would since the altered ATK would also be doubled for even more damage output.
While most elements benefit from this rule set, Gravity in particular have many great targets for buffs and access to powerful buff cards. The viable targets Gravity has are the Graviton Mercenaries, Otyughs, Graviton Salvagers, Graviton Fire Eaters, and Sapphire Chargers. Mercenaries have a small cost and high HP, which makes them good targets for buffs that decrease HP while increasing ATK such as Rage Potion and Acceleration. Otyughs can easily utilize the HP increasing buffs to devour more creatures, and benefit even more from buffs that increase both ATK and HP. Salvagers benefit the most from ATK boosting buffs, since without them their attacks are a measly 1 or 2. With them, they'll be a formidable foe with high HP/ATK and a passive that negates all forms of PC. Fire Eaters don't exactly need much from most buffs except Momentum, which gives them shield bypass. Sapphire Chargers already have built in Momentum, and a fairly high ATK when upgraded, but even more ATK wouldn't hurt for this creature. One thing these creatures have in common is that they are fairly cheap, ranging from 1
to 5
, which is another reason buffs are effective on them.
Gravity also has access to two powerful buffs, Momentum and Acceleration. As mentioned previously, Momentum allows for creatures to bypass shields. It also increases the target's ATK and HP by 1, which can sometimes make a difference. An increase by 1 HP isn't much for other creatures, but to Otyughs and creatures with Acceleration on it makes a big difference. That 1 HP increase is helpful for Otyughs because it could potentially make it able to devour a pesky creature, and it gives 2/3 more damage to creatures with Acceleration on. Speaking of Acceleration, the best targets that benefit from Acceleration are creatures with high HP, since it gives the creature a active called Acceleration. Every turn, a creature with Acceleration gains 2 or 3 maximum attack but loses 1 HP. A loss of 1 HP per turn isn't that bad when inflicted upon creatures with high HP, which Gravity has many of.
