In the new set of Soul Caliber 4 there has little hype about Amy. Most of people’s focus is on Mitisurigi, Yoshimitsu, and to some extent Xianghua. A few have sat at Amy’s table and drank tea with her and psychotic boyfriend/husband and came back with positive tales. Today we are going to look at Amy. The goal of this write up is to look at some of her functionality and what you can look forward to playing this character. While more can be done and diversity is always possible I will stick to the major points as much as possible. Now lets get on to the ranking.

Offense/Aggro 6.5 out of 10
Defense 10 out of 10
Control 5 out of 10
Symbol Spread 5 out of 10

Now lets get into the break down…

Offense: Offense is 6.5 out of 10 for a reason. Speed pumps are nice but they don’t translate into damage without building for it. Most of her stock attacks deal around 3-4 damage. While Amy has some nice attacks from her symbols most of it does not translate into a conistent symbol advantage. Sadly she finds herself in a tough situation in which she is picking up slow, high damaging attacks to compensate for her weaker offense. In a world of reversal pummel smash and other effects that commit character cards she leaves herself open to be easily blocked many times. Not only that only a few attacks will net her +3 or more speed if any. As a 7 handsizer she is at an offensive disadvantage then others of her ilk.

Defense: Where Amy is weak in offense she has tanking options out the wazoo. First off there is the Not Human/Ultimate team combo. All you need to do is play some action cards during the enhance phase and start knocking down damage. If you choose to use reversals you have access to added block numbers in the pool. Next you have Iron Body Technique. While some may laugh at this in the age of Dark Bite and Mitisumai Zabatsiu Leader I would say that Amy’s offensive abilities make a lot of Yi Shan’s attacks go through the biggest being Dragon Punch and Yi Shan’s Tiger Claw. Both of these attacks do good damage for their cost. She also has access to all of Lu Chen’s support as well. She can slow down her opponents attack turn and make it hell for them to do anything unless they have anti-reduction and anti-face down card tech in their deck. Amy also has strange fashion to help her against non-speed pumped throws,

Control: Paul and Lu Chen add their support to Amy. If you feel that you need to stun out to do what you need to do then its possible to do with Amy if you so choose. Some of Yoshimitsu cards can be used with Amy I would say that their synergy with her is lacking. I would not recommend her as a control character.

Symbol spread: Water is holding her back for now. At the same time she breaths life into an iron lunged symbol. Not sharing any thing with life actually allows her cards to pull water into something new. As for helping her right now there isn’t much to be gained. Good has some nice tricks but contrary to others analysis I feel Good, while competent, needs at least another set to stand on its own and provide a consistent challenge for fire decks. Order is the strongest symbol for Amy just because, sadly, she gets access to some of the good staple card from fire. She is a character that will set up characters in the future. We need to see her through that role at this moment.

Now lets look at deck construction.

Offensive tactics

Reversal focus: Amy has the potential through water to be a reversal focused deck. Every attack in her deck could be a reversal. This allows her to build on her turn and counter attack on her opponents turn disrupting their turn. This makes it hard for the opponent to ever get truly setup and establish tempo. The problem with this tactic is that it requires constant tempo control. If you lose tempo control then you will lose the game.

Speed/damage flipping: Many will look at Amy as a source of speed damage flipping. While this is possible it is not profitable on most of her symbols at his moment. When it comes to water it is a valid tactic. Order and Good on the other hand you end up gimping your attacks more so then not.

Action Card spamming: In this set there is a lot of offensive action cards. Amy needs various things at various times. Pillage is an excellent card for her because it gives her attacks the damage they need. Some action cards have decent blocks that will help you fight reversal decks. All in all while this may seem cheap it is effective.

Defensive tactics

Damage reduction: I’ve listed most of the damage reduction options earlier. This tactic builds well into action card spamming. Add in Armor of the Forsaken one and Crown of forgotten secrets. Valkyrja's Shield is one of the best cards that support Amy. It gives damage reduction and breaker support. Amaryllis Spin is a must have.

Card pool clogging: Go go Lu Chen support.

Speed reduction: Sisters in Battle and Amy's Sidestep gives you massive speed control. Do you not have access to P2P. This is the next best thing.

Edit: Double post + fail at quoting

darklogos said:

I disagree. Her E frequently nets me +4-6 speed and with her other support my attacks come through with +10 speed without too much difficulty

darklogos said:

Also blocking with breaker 6 by T2/3 is pretty decent.

darklogos said:

Definately not a typical control player. But she has some disruption with all her breaker nonsense. Throw in a few Know When to Talks and watch your opponent only be able to throw one attack a turn.

darklogos said:

Lets hope water gets some help next set (its gotta...right?). Order is definately at the top of her game. Good is good...but order is better. Good does provide a lot of spam foundations though.

darklogos said:

Even better than playing reversals, is using her asset to play something else as a reversal. Flash Needle reversals, with a Throne Room in play and Amaralysis spin with a block get stupid quickly. Flash itself gets a block mod of +6, while its multiples come out at +10. Check a 4 and those are pretty much unblockable, although i agree they still hit for "small" damage. Cards like For Justice and Ultimate Team (+6-7 damage not hard at this point) help her do some damage.

darklogos said:

Not sure if i would ever run pillage in Amy. A combination of For Justice and Ultimate Team work better IMO. With 18VIT you don't want to get a bunch of actions or assets, and i would definately fit her asset in over Pillage.

darklogos said:

*nod*

Thanks for the writeup, i have been playing Amy and she is fun but 7HSers are pretty frail right now. Until more defense support is released I don't know if amy is top tier material. She is good, don't get me wrong, but until the next set releases i don't think she will really shine.

She has problems against people like ivy, who SWS or no can throw out quite a few attacks T2.

To continue the discussion, what does she have to deal with PotM? There is probably something i am missing but Mitsu's support and CoS share no symbols with her. Nor does shield break. If king spams foundations and drops a throw im not sure how well she can deal with that.

Then again its early and i got like 2 hours sleep so i am possibly overlooking an easy solution.

Thanks for the writeup, and although the vibe on the forums has been a bit rough lately, don't take my "disagreements" as saying "you're wrong" or anything. Simply trying to add to the discussion. Keep the writeups and discussions moving, im sick of seeing "ZOMG this game is dying" topics, especially since now the game is the best it has been in the time i have played.

Thanks for the response. I understand about forum glitches. I say that she gives +3 speed at best is that most attacks base blocker is around +2. Plus 3 block is rare and +4 block modifer is only on dragon lifter. To get it faster then that you have to use her support. You have to have Amaryllis Spin in play to get higher values.

Thing about action card spam is that I think it will be an emerging tactic in UFS in the future. Second most action cards are giving you +2 and +3 blocks on average. Played on your opponents turn you knock down tons of damage. But that is also dependent on you not stunning out.

How are people getting this breaker 6? I don't see how it is happening. Maybe you can explain to me how it is done. I can see Amy and the Sheild but that is only giving you a +4 breaker.

I'm going to work on Taki next. I may get to it today or tommrow but I will try to get it done this week.

The Ends of the World i think is the name. Gives your block breaker 2, add that to amy, add that to Valkyrjas, and you get Breaker6.

Also you dont NEED amaralysis...she also has throne room to increase block mods.

That seems to require a lot of setup. How often does that go off?

first turn shield, Ends of the world, The foundation that reduces speed by 4, and 2 spam foundations.

Breaker 6 T2 go go go

Edit: Also its like having 4 more shields in the deck, and the foudnations, unlike the shield, is not unique. So, if it goes to late game, lolbreaker

As far as how often it goes off, i only played Amy a few games, but i pretty much always had at least breaker 4.

Thanks. The only major thing I see that can't be replicated is the breaker 6 ability and not much else.

Sadly with that said I see reversals and Lu Chen stuff being a strong follow up to the breaker but the two areas don't overlap that much. You get a mish mash with water and just playing Amy's stuff.

One thing I hate doing is always bringing up that any ALL, ORDER, FIRE character can play Paul's stuff. I think that stun has become a crutch tactic to have psudeo control. I think constantly using it limits the scope of vision of the game. I'm not saying that it isn't good. I'm saying that the dependence on the stun mechanic is asking for feedback in the electrical sense.

Keep in mind if your opponent attempts to block, breaker does not effect them and also resets. So if playing breaker 6, you are better off to NOT reversal (i would Know when to Talk instead, effectively +1 to breaker)

If that isn't clear, breaker effects the DIFFICULTY of the card, when blocking, you add the speed + block mod to get BLOCK DIFFICULTY. So if you block a 3 speed attack with a 1 diff foundation with a +2 block mod and breaker 3 active, you are effectively playing a 4 diff foundation as a block, and having to check a 5. The breaker does increase the difficulty of the card, but when blocking the difficulty of the card is irrelevant

Smazzurco said:

Hmm... perhaps they redid this section in the AGR, because I remember Breaker affecting the difficulty to play the next card, not the difficulty of the next card played (as it's currently worded). No matter, this makes Breaker not so easily dispatched by failing a block (since they have to play a block to get rid of Breaker).

Wait a sec, doesn't that mean that rule is misworded? How in the hell will changing the difficulty of the next card PLAYED matter? It's already played... THIS NEEDS TO BE REWORDED.

guitalex2008 said:

What? It effects the difficulty of the next card that attempts to be play'd. Of course changing the difficulty AFTER the card is played (CC passed, etc) doesn't make sense. Let me go check the AGR

Edit: Checked AGR. Breaker effects the difficulty of the next card played. Obviously it is meant to be the difficulty of the next card attempted to be played.

Brian if you are reading this....make a note to change it in the next AGR? (or maybe you already have)

Um..

Just my thoughts on amy Hrm hrm

She can very well go off by turn 3 with a proper setup looking something like "playful, the ultimate team and the action + her terrain out" ofc you do have other filler foundations out

then play flashneedle, *random weapon attack of your choice* and Bloody funeral. Bloody funeral will end up on approx 20-26 speed without amy. Playful to switch it, then use amy + ultimate team and they are probably dead or near dead

Playful could ofc be replace by Acrobatic ^^

Many decks can kill early with "proper setup." The issue I find with her is that you are faced with high amounts of dependency for survival. Thing I have to ask is how often are many effects going to realistically go off. If you go off off of order you can check manipulate and draw with Paul's stuff. But again you have to get it in play. A deck that depends on one primary element is not a good deck. The same can be said for a character. I'm not saying that she can't be played well or doesn't have potential. But what i see is that Amy is forced into a hard situation. Either she gets her offensive peices out fast or she gets her defensive pieces out fast. If she hits boarderline on either she will die.

I actually managed to play quite consistant against a mitsurugi of life the other day.

Basic principle is to perform a mulligan if you do not get any keycards in opening hand, atleast thats my opinion.

also with 7 handsize and relentless/financial/Pauls gi Draw.. you will have a very Highspeed setup.

Charachter cards are also nice combined with strange fashion to keep you alive. (I use 4 chars in the deck atm).

Slightly off topic but none the less: Raphael is not Amy's psychotic boyfriend/husband, he's her psychotic adoptive father.

CultKiller said:

There's a difference?

Smazzurco said:

We're talking French nobility here.

So no.

Great discussion, y'all. I'm thoroughly enjoying reading these Character Discussions, darklogos. Keep'em comin', man!

At the moment, Bloody Funeral has two options to start with:

1) Flash Needle
2) Fire Shadow

So I don't think it's such a good idea to rely on Bloody Funeral + Playful/Acrobatic. A MUCH better idea is to go with Waterfall instead, since it pumps its own damage and only really ever needs a Playful/Acrobatic as the first E, and that will only technically only add +2 speed because when the Combo comes around, the damage will be the same (4L6 or 6L4, end result is 4L10 or 6L10 without any other speed pump, so the damage won't change).

It also doesn't help that (even though White Crane can't do jack against it) Bloody Funeral only has the Amy Combo and doesn't have the Weapon keyword. If it had the Weapon keyword, I would be all over that.

The one thing it has going for it is having excellent stats and some random discard effect which is really very random.

guitalex2008 said:

Bloody funeral for me turned into an attack i threw out atleast 50% of the time T1 in my amy deck. Good poke, fuels momentum. Just gotta be feelin that you will check a 5

The stats alone are beyond comparison.

Not to mention it randomly discards AND it shares water with Lizardman.

Alex please don't imply that there can ever be a good Water deck in this current block

(perhaps the biggest lawl is that even though Lizardman's support got Evil, Water still has more low attacks). Reversing with Flash Needle must be pretty smexy in Lizardman I wager.

I've built a water deck. I've built several. A few weren't that bad. Thing is that water right now is very limited and you have to run everyting realy tight.

MarcoPulleaux said:

You have a somewhat valid point about Water, but think about the LOL capabilities of a Lizardman... with Amy support.

Here's a reversal I didn't need to block for. BTW, it has a block on it, so Not Human will be sexy with my Throne Room. That or play all Silent Xia Shend Stances you have, commit the Throne Room for -2 at some point and Not Human on your Reversal for + a gajillion... or like +8.

Gotta love -(-X) = +X math.

darklogos said:

Agreed

Another thing you really need to utilize with Water are the characters, especially the ones without Life (Herr, Kilik, Amy, Lizardman). Water has unique access to Together Again + Hall of the Warrior God, has decent draw in some form (Searching for Family, Pendant of the Western Paradise R), has some kill switches (Funeral, Lotus Flow, Waterfall).

I think it's gonna need more damage pump if it is to be viable.

Also Alex, I don't think that logic works in UFS. Remember Makoto?