sort of.
I didn't exactly win the final match, but we'll cover that in part 2 (the tournament report).
Part 2 eh? What is this you speak of? Well I've decided to break this article into 3 parts
Part 1: Building the original Roxas deck
Part 2: The tournament report
Part 3: The Roxas deck done RIGHT
So without further ado, here's the story of the Roxas deck.
Leading into the keybearer tournament I didn't have a deck. Luckily my friend Fairbanks had a ton of cards, so I was going to be able
to make a fairly competitive deck with his scraps. A year had passed since I last looked at Kingdom Hearts cards so a lot was new to
me, specifically the non-Sora non-Riku player cards. It didn't take long to tell that they were mostly garbage, but Roxas intrigued
me. I was promptly informed by Fairbanks that he sucked, though when I pushed he said, fine, we're building the deck. The card
choices are largely his, though I did have final say.
So why did I think Roxas was good? Well lets start by breaking down the card:
Level 1
HP 8
3 Attack
1 magic
Based on stats alone he's strictly worse than level 1 sora. While most of the stats are identical, 1 less attack is somewhat relevant.
So what about this abilities:
Treat this card as a "Mysterious Boy" card.
Fairly bland, a number of cards require "Mysterious Boy" so there may be something there.
At the begining of the game, choose one "Oathkeeper" Equipment Card from yoru deck, equip it to this card, and shuffle your deck.
Now we're getting somewhere. Oathkeeper makes him a 7 attack to start the game AND he actually punishes the opponent for playing dark
cards on your world. The point I heard thrown about was Abu negates this, making Roxas a crappier level 1 Sora. What people don't
seem to consider (and this of course applies to all card games) irrelvant of how much hate there is for a certain card/strategy, it
doesn't matter if no one plays with those cards. Between the 4 people I played in the tournmanet (I played 2 of them twice) no one was
running Abu, or any equipment hate for that matter.
This card can only be equipped with "Oathkeeper" Equipment Cards and "Oblivion" Equipment cards.
This is fine really, between those 2 pieces of equipment he's up to 10 attack and as most other equipment is garbage, he's not hurt by
not running them.
Only Twilight Town Frien Cards and "Samurai" Nobody Cards can be used as Friend Cards with this card.
This is where Roxas takes a huge dive in the eyes of most people. Even if you get over the whole equipment thing, it's hard to get
past the fact that Roxas can only use 1 of the 10 best friends (Samurai, in case you're wondering and as he's only good as a Roxas
friend, it's hard to really put him on the list).
So why Roxas? Well again, if there's no equipment hate, starting with Oathkeeper makes him a powerful world racer. On top of that,
the absurd power of Samurai coupled with his normally high attack power means he should always be able to win at least 1 challenge
against a valor form deck, negating their main advantage. Plus, his friends aren't that bad, sure no one else would run them if they
could, but they have some power.
So now that we know why we're making a Roxas deck, lets get to the list, please keep in mind that this is not an ideal list as it was
made with the scraps of someone's collection. So if you're wondering why something (like ultima weapon) isn't in here, that's why.
Wait till part 3 of this article to berate the card choices:
Player cards:
1x Roxas: See the above explanation.
Equipment cards:
1x Oathkeeper: Obviously an auto-include. Even in a world with equipment hate it's not worth running more than 1, as he cannot
re-attach it.
1x Oblivion: I would say this is an auto-include. Also fairly obviously a 1 of as it's not that great of a card on its own.
World cards:
2x Twilight Town: Not the greatest level 3 world, but being able to get Olette is pretty hott.
3x Olympus Coliseum: A solid world from the Roxas perspective, as he is all about raw attack power, so most of the time he'll be able
to overwhelm whatever the put on thsi world without losing friends.
1x Disney Castle: Arguably the best world. A number of times I wished I had more than 1. So good.
2x Timeless River: Probably my MVP as far as worlds went. In one match I was able to get him to lose the rest of his friends and then
play Timeless River to knock of Sephiroth, who woulda been bad news had he stayed around. Plus I got to keep going "my huckleberry
friend, Timeless riverrrrrr."
2x Monstro: I would argue Monstro is a most. You need it to keep people honest so they don't just drop half their deck into play and
roll you.
Attack cards:
3x Divine Rose: Divine rose is an ok fall back card if you have nothing else available to you. +5 isn't so bad and the chance of +12
is pretty hott.
1x Oblivion: I would tend to say this is an auto-include. Even with a world racer, that random +10 can be great.
Dark cards:
1x Pete: Man, Pete's awesome. I mean really, he can be dropped really early in the game at 12 power, or late game he could be as high
as 22 power. Plus he stops them from playing the best card in the game. Just wonderful.
1x Hades: Picked for the stats alone. 21 is a lot of power.
1x Air Pirate: I don't know, we thought maybe there would be some equipment to hate and 3 vivis wouldn't be enough to stop them? I
feel strongly we didn't think about this.
2x Stealth Sneak: Probably the best dark card in the game. Hits early, often requires escaping.
3x Pot spider (no friend version): Pot spider is solid, the ability rarely came up, but it was nice when it did.
2x Parasite Cage: To be clear, most of these dark cards were chosen because the better dark cards were in Fairbanks' deck. Parasite
cage was I think the last card added to the deck. I will say it was a game breaker in at least 1 case, but over all, m'eh.
Event cards:
1x Kingdom Hearts (I have no idea what it's actually called): I think this card is great, aggro is usually at a disadvantage when
playing against world racer, this helps even that. When I put this in I had visions that someone would unwittingly get down to 1hp and
I would triumphantly slap this down and mock them endlessly. Didn't happen. Still good though.
Friend cards:
2x Fuu: Well, Roxas has almost no card draw, so you really gotta grasp at straws with him, plus the average support value of his
friends is low so the 2 isn't bad.
1x hayner: Almost all of these choices came from the fact that you have very few choices. I think hayner was picked before it became
clear to me that Roxas can't reattach Oathkeeper (Btw, feel free to tell me if that has been errated or ruled on or something, but as
written he clearly cannot reattach oathkeeper).
3x Samurai: Now this card was my MVP, hands down, dropping him and adding 12 to an attack is just sick. I mean if I'm looking at
someone elses blank board, I can assume he won't be dropping sephiroth, but Samurai? Out of nowhere baby.
1x Rai: Probably the 2nd best of the Twilight Town friends, tragically only 1 was available. 5 power is pretty solid.
2x Pence: Pence, like Hayner, was used because we foolishly thought people might run equipment hate and then pence could just bite
the bullet. Wasn't relevant. Again though, 2 power is pretty average for Roxas.
3x Vivi: I honestly could not tell you why Vivi is the only friend we ran 3 of besides Samurai. I mean, if there was magic, or if
people ran equipment. As is, I have no idea why we ran 3.
1x Seifer: If he didn't have the ridiculous entering play restrictions, he'd be decent. Tragically he's terrible, but he was a
Twilight Town friend, so it seemed like a good idea at the time.
2x Olette: So good. She plays to the strength of Roxas, which is just having high raw attack power. With her and 2 other Twilight
Town friends, plus both equipments, he's sitting at 15 attack. Not only can he solo most dark cards, but that's gonna make it tough
for an aggro player to look at and say "yea, I'm gonna challenge."
So that's the deck. With it in hand I strode in the tournament hall, but that'll be coming in part 2.....
