Invited Author: Andre Valentino Putra
Country: Indonesia
Introduction
Hello, fellow Tamers. My name is Andre, I am from Indonesia. Welcome to the guide of one of the best, if not the best deck of BT13 meta, that is ShineGreymon.
ShineGreymon is a deck that revolves around two things ; ShineGreymon evo line, and his Tamer, Marcus Damon (Masaru Daimon in Japanese). While Tamer-centric deck is already exist for quite a while, this deck is probably the first deck that having the Tamer the main attacker without turning him into Digimon. Most of the time, you are going to punch the security with the Marcus(es) while your Digimon just sit there for a bunch of effect that triggered by simply having your Marcus suspended.
With how dominating this deck in BT13 meta, hopefully this guide will help you to learn how to play the deck, and punch your way out to winning when the set eventually comes out (or if you JP player, just straight up winning with the deck already), also with knowledge on this guide, you might be find a way to counter the deck, or at least, prepared for the match-up.
DECK GAMEPLAN
As briefly mentioned above, the deck gameplan is to keep playing Marcus, and keep attacking with him most of the time. Your digimon serve as both support for Marcus to either give him power and +1 security, reducing opponent digimon DP, or even drawing cards, and also for keep cheating Marcus for free, which this deck does really well. Your wincon is boiled down to either, a). Playing semi-aggressive while finishing your basic setup ASAP and win quickly, or b). Having a swarm of Marcuses and do the OTK swing with them and as little as a Digimon (sometimes even an Agumon is enough).
The deck also has a lot of control tool, in the form of reducing DP, and the deck does this quite well, being able to either wiping a bunch of small digimon, or take down a single big digimon. Obviously, DP reducing is one of the strongest form of removal in this game, so that say something about this deck control capability. The deck does everything you want from a deck, and on how straightforward the deck played most of the time, makes this deck an easy to play and easy to win with.
As for the basic setup, here is the deck bread and butter setup :
These card on your field (the RizeGreymon could be literally any RizeGreymon on your deck)
With this setup, you can rip at least 5 of your opp security, and if you have another digimon or active Marcus, you can easily OTK your opponent. The combo goes like this :
- Because the fixer, you guarantee to have 3 memory, so first you use BT-12 Marcus to become active by paying 1 memory
- Attack opponent security with Marcus, then use his effect to evo your RizeGreymon into ShineGreymon, now your Marcus become 6000 DP digimon with +1 Security Attack, and opponent digimon security get -6000 DP, thus making your Marcus a pseudo 12000 DP digimon (2 Security destroyed)
- Use Burst Digivolution to return your Marcus to your hand and digivolve into ShineGreymon Burst Mode, and call back the Marcus you just returned to your hand, he gain Rush so he can attack immediately
- Attack with Marcus, and now ShineGreymon BM will trash your opponent security, and the attack will land (1 Security trashed from ShineGreymon BM + 1 Security from Marcus attack)
- Attack with ShineGreymon BM (1 Security), now you just removed 5 of your opponent security (2 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 5) and if you have any other active Digimon/Marcus and they have no security left, you can land a direct attack to your opponent.
This combo is pretty easy to pull off and also the setup can go alive as soon as your third turn (or if you get a lot of memories, even second turn is possible). The best thing about this setup though, is depending on the situation, you don’t even need all of those card above for the setup. For example, the Marcus BT-13 isn’t even necessary, it could just another Marcus BT-12, hell you can get away with only one Marcus BT-12. The ShineGreymon BM isn’t even that necessary, you can just stop with ShineGreymon BT-12. You might be dealing less damage, but remember, as long as you can give pressure to your opponent, and best case scenario, your ShineGreymon or Marcus still alive next turn, you can immediately do the same thing again, and potentially killing your opponent. Even if your ShineGreymon and/or Marcus get removed, you can just try to do the setup again, and with how easy this deck get the setup done, you will find yourself do this combo again on one or two turn later.
Some basic tips for using the deck :
- For the mulligan, as long as you have a Lv.3, a Marcus, and Lv. 4 or anything that can search it, you are good to go
- DO NOT attack mindlessly with your digimon, if you want to rush down enemy, use your Marcus instead, and only start to attack with him if you either already have RizeGreymon, or GeoGreymon if you attack using BT 12 Marcus and evo the GeoGreymon into RizeGreymon. (Note : ShineGreymon/RizeGreymon X is also fine as long as you already have RizeGreymon as your Inherited Effect, as it does the same thing as when it’s on field)
- The only time you will attack with digimon is when either you use Red Koromon that draw card when attacking and you need certain card so badly that the risk your digimon dying is overshadowed by the benefit of getting that card, and if your digimon attack is either win you the game, or setup for killing blow for the next turn
- If you have BT12 GeoGreymon, don’t cast Marcus until you can cheat it with GeoGreymon. Otherwise it’s fine to cast Marcus as soon as possible, especially the BT13 one because he is a memory fixer. Also gambling with BT13 GeoGreymon is always worth it, even if you don’t get any tamer on your security, at least you can get info of your cards in your security.
Matchups
This is the basic rundown of this deck match-up :
- Against slow/control deck, the key is to hoard your Marcus as much and as fast as possible. This deck can easily have multiple Marcus in no time due to the sheer amount of tamer cheating this deck have. Once you have a lot of Marcus, your ShineGreymon will make them all have +1 Security Attack, making OTK-ing your opponent a trivial task, even with the likes of Security Control. You can also do the basic combo over and over again, and as long as your opponent can’t deal with your tamers, you can get away with losing your digimon and evo the new one again, when still keep summoning tamer over again thanks to your BT13 GeoGreymon and both BT13 RizeGreymon and RizeGreymon X Antibody. Do watch out for some control tool that will be mentioned later.
- Against combo/OTK deck, just rush down them ASAP. As mentioned before, our deck can get the combo done as soon as third turn, and most of these combo/OTK deck is not even ready yet. Depending on the matchup, they might even barely have any digimon before their big turn, so sometimes attacking with digimon is safe here.
- Against aggressive deck, try to outpace them. With how fast our deck combo go live, normally this shouldn’t be a big of a deal. But sometimes we have suboptimal hand, and they can go faster than us. In that case utilise our removal to deal with their board, and never to be afraid of attacking with Marcus even if you can only go to RizeGreymon, because Marcus dying while RizeGreymon on board is actually beneficial for this matchup, as RizeGreymon allows you to put Marcus from trash pile to security if your Marcus die, increasing our security count.
As you can see, this deck does well against all sort of deck. However, this deck does have some weak point, specifically on specific kind of control tools, and those tools are:
– Tamer Removal:
In case you missed the note, our deck is reliant heavily on Tamers. And one of the best way to deal with that is, we'll just destroy the Tamer. While our deck usually able to recover from losing our digimon, destroying tamer will set our deck back pretty far. RizeGreymon usually act as our Tamer recovery, unless of course most of deck that able to destroy tamer ALSO happened to be able easily destroy our digimon first, rendering the RizeGreymon useless. Losing both our digimon and Tamer will destroy our deck tempo and usually pretty tough to recover. Sometimes we can recover from this though, and with some planning, you might even be able to claw back to victory.
– Attack Stopper
“While not as annoying as tamer destruction, these thing still boil my blood”
Ah yes, the good of attack’s stopper. Sourai work because there is no way your Marcus going to have any digivolution cards. Kongou work because your Marcus will be treated as Lv.-, which is stopped by it, and also Marcus is more likely to attack player than digimon. Ice Wall is Ice Wall, although against this deck, probably the least effective among those (but still quite effective). Our deck gameplan is involving rushing their security down, so card like these will stall our gameplan, and despite our good removal tool, our deck really lacking at defensive tool beside removal, wide open for any comeback. Despite this, they still need to draw onto these card, and even if they do stall us, if they don’t have any way to swing back or setup another stopper, we are still going to win the game anyway.
As a bonus, let me give you a brief rundown of BWGX matchup, because this is the only one matchup that I think is relevant enough to care:
- Try to rush them down ASAP. BWGX need some times to setup their board. If you managed to complete your setup before theirs, your chance of winning is would be improved
- Wait for your BT-12 Marcus to be on field and stick there, then evo your digimon until RizeGreymon (or GeoGreymon if you have enough memory to do the combo), only then you can safely moving out your digimon. Doing that prematurely would risk your digimon getting deleted, and not only that would set you back, but with the delayed turn, even your Marcus would be deleted as well.
PROS AND CONS
Pros:
- Really good matchup spread
- Easy to play
- Almost unbeatable if you open really good
- Lots of DP reduction, and also quite flexible, can be used either as board wipe or as one big removal
- Easy to setup for OTK, with sheer amount of cheating Tamer for free, you might easily swarm your board with bunch of Marcus
Cons:
- Pretty bad matchup against BWGX, which is happened to be one of the most popular deck
- Bricking with this deck is painful. Mulligan kind of help this, but still can happened
- Without Tamer, this deck feels pretty useless.
- Lack of defensive option besides removal, making it pretty vulnerable if you don’t get your game plan quick enough.