Nubatama’s Philosophy :: Set 13

• Brampton Booster
• Jan 26, 2014
• Comment

*This article has a tldr; tag

Ancestral Origin

Nubatama is not the most technical deck I have used.

Granblue, Spike Brothers and Great Nature have a vast amount of options that can make or break their game, but Nubatama is really straightforward. Counterblast 1, they lose 1 card form their hand. Repeat until dead. Such a simple conversion rings an alarm to those who look at it: it’s too broken! Blaster Blade (Liberator) has all these conditions and still has a heavier cost*! What gives? *[As I wrote all of it a month prior, I had no idea they would create a cheaper Dorint clone that can actually unflip 1 to retire 1.] But let’s looks at the theory behind Nubatama’s card advantage. What seems like a straightforward +1 will become a maze of math and logic that will show the truth of Nubatama’s deceit:

First, some pre-reading.
[1] A Simple Construct by LittleFighterFox (that’s me!)
[2] First or Second Advantage by TehNacho
[3] Nubatama Speculation by 3XXXDDD

The Matrix

Let’s look at this figure below from [1]. From this, Nubatama has the most difficult condition tree to learn:

let x = opponent’s hand size – your hand size D be your opponent’s damage C is the number of rearguard columns with Dreadmaster boosting

If D >= 4 then do V>R>R, no questions asked
If D < 4 and x > 3 and the VG is void/boost is dread then do V>R>R
If D < 4 and x<=0 then do V>R>R
If D < 4 and 0<x<3 and C = 0 then do R>V>R
If D < 4 and 0<x<3 and C > 0 then do R>

If the attack was let through then do >V>R
If the attack was blocked and C = 1 then do R>R>V
If the attack was blocked and C=2 then decide;

the best card:damage ratio for both R>V>R and R>R>V is to let the vanguard hit but;
If the opponent is willing to lose more cards to minimize damage then do R>R>V
If the opponent wants to endure the damage then do R>V>R

And that covers most of the branches…of attacking a vanguard only…without them getting any triggers. The solution to the rest matrix is left as an exercise.

First and Last

From [2], at the start of player 1’s turn they will start with the same number of cards as the opponent, while player 2 starts off with one less the player one. As a Nubatama player, going second is more advantageous for you. So how do you deal with being first? As you are the first to ‘unlock’ your grades you also get to play the down harder than them. This is nice to apply a nice amount of pressure turn 3, but unfortunately isn’t as useful as going second. But what happens after you connect a blow? You pad out the advantage to 0. sometimes you see that you have around 4 more cards on hand then the opponent, and the only way to get below them by your turn is the over-guard all attacks. D’oh! What are you doing? If you have the advantage, KEEP IT. A pretty common misconception is that playing Nubatama is akin to Russian Roulette. Not so. Here is a list Nubatama players can use to reactivate their discard ability:

• Over-guard. Well that’s usually dumb.
• Replace the field. Even dumber.
• Wait for your opponent to gain advantage. This is the best thing to do, though there are some faults which I’ll address in the very next section.
• Promise Daughter/Holy Disaster Dragon discard skills.

Discard skills serve as a cost to force an opponent to drop the same amount. In the late game these skills usually pump the attack by one column, forcing lo and behold, one extra card. If they let the attack through and live, you’ve just sent a card into the entropic void. So as you can tell, Nubatama is not an advantage nor a disadvantage engine. They serve as a vanilla-izer, keeping both sides with the same advantage. Whenever your opponent gets a leg up, you drag them back down by the same amount they went up. So do not consider Nubatama has a need for self-discarding tools.

You can tell from 3XXXDDD’s analysis on [3] most clans have ADVANTAGE engines. Midnight Bunny clearly performs a better plus then Dreadmaster’s “plus” for the same cost. But Midnight Bunny needs energy to bring her out again while Dreadmaster stays put. But I’ve already shown you it isn’t really useful to stay out any longer since the preceding turn will likely be equal.

Failed Assassination

In addition to the lack of Nuabatama’s effect on the opponent, there are very easy ways to escape from Nubatama’s neutralization trap. You either need to get more advantage than Nubatama can ever take down, or resort to generating a large amount of card advantage in a short period of time.We have cards like this:

1. Crossrides: These little buggers can keep Nubatama at bay without a slightest regard for fairness.
2. Break rides: And everyone is getting these visibly powerful units one and shoving into their deck.

Nubatama can’t use an anti-advantage arsenal anymore after an arrival of the re-King of Knights. They must gain advantage instead, like the rest of the clans. We’ll get back to this section in the near future but for now, I’ll discuss the three techniques Nubatama uses to secure a win when they acquired a new set of cards in Catastrophic Outbreak.

Forget about the early and middle game

The first technique is tempo increment. Mentioned briefly at the end of [1] The tempo of a R>V>R formation is 0.9 Damage or 1.4 Damage, and both have the same damage:card ratio. So normally, the decision falls on the opponent which is not something you want to give. With a pair of on-hit rearguards, it pressures the opponent into guarding the rearguard and produces a tempo of 1.4D. Over a couple of turns the state of the game reaches the end faster than they might realize. This is the same as a V>R>R formation in a different light. Simply, this means an opponent has less time to accumulate pluses and bring the state of the game to the endgame quickly. Much like Capablanca.

Bear necessities

The second advantage arrives in a pair of units: a starting vanguard with the ability to kill binded cards, and a rearguard that binds. As severely limited as our ability to generate advantage is, we must put everything we can to do justice. Sure Kabukicongo, Kujikiricongo and Fuuki binds, but note that Fuuki is a direct minus while the other former two activate at the 4th damage which is quite late for an on-hit attack to land. Thus, we can only say something good about Tamahagane and Kuroko. Regardless of how the events turn out, calling a Tamahagane will cause you either +0.5(By guarding the vanguard) or +1(By letting the vanguard hit). So you should run as many Stealth Beast Tamahagane as you can, because this is close to the only source of advantage you get.

You might be tempted to put Kabukicongo on the advantage list, but it is not so straightforward. If you just so happen to keep a Stealth Dragon Kokujou on the field, not having it blown up, then you can get something close to a +2 with a full field. Kabukicongo binds all the cards on the field, and gets 10000 power. Although you might be inclined to hope that binding does something, it doesn’t. (Only in the rare cases where the opponent teched in a special case unit can it is worth something, but we need to assume most decks are not reliant on them). Add in the fact that the opponent would most likely be perfect guarding the attack congo doesn’t amount to much. Next, we need to figure out just how much advantage they can generate when you return cards to the hand. Congo practically gives opponent options in the endgame where there aren’t any (Entropy is high). Its counterpart performs a better job by limiting the choices of what you can call, does not let you use up useless cards for shield and be able to retire a unit. While there is no such number for what returning a card exactly is, you can approximate by giving every clan a Bermuda Triangle bouncer. The equation speaks for itself:
[Kabukicongo:AUTO] {Bind field + POWER+10000} – {LB4 + CB1 + returning} = ? 0 + 2 – 1 – 0.5 – ~1.5~ = -1
All in all, it takes the joint effort of Kabukicongo, Kokujou and Kuroko to generate a tiny advantage (+1) that is not suffice for the other big endgame units out there that can do so much more. If the opponent survives, you’ve got to deal with their rejuvenated advantage engine[link:BDR], as well as the more focused field. If they just so happen to call out only 4 units instead of five then Kokujou becomes a +1 for the rest of its short-lived existence. Kokujou useful power boost fits closer to a different form of advantage.

The Hidden Crush Rush

As the title is the true face of Nubatama. There is no unit that truly adds advantage by itself; we’ve seen Tamahagane pull off a small plus. But there is another way to win, by reducing both players advantage at the same time. A classic Spike Brothers approach is to explode and waste all of its resources in one turn. Both Juggernaut maximum and Brakki incur heavy minuses so using them early can result in lost advantage. Dudley Emperor takes the most minus, and if anyone survived a crush rush can tell you the opponents field, hand, and soul were practically non-existent. Yet, Spike Brothers are one of the most difficult decks to face, since they pound out every last bit of defence you have somehow squeezing by for the touchdown. You only have a limited amount of cards per turn.

This is the procedure Nubatama follows. We have only have two units that all minus, but we can put them together in one turn so that we can bombard the opponent’s defence. The first is Hagakure. Surprisingly, this is actually Nubatama’s best card. It plays perfectly into what you want – it uses itself as a guard, meaning you have virtually one less card in hand. Then it forces the opponent to lose a card. Add in the advantage all Grade 0’s have, a 2 stage skill, you have a the makings of an incredible advantage turner. The way to use it is to keep as many as possible in hand, and just before declaring final turn, you drop your stash on the foe so that you have one turn when your opponent has taken a -4. If you flub your final turn, you walk in with 40000 less shield. It doesn’t matter if the opponent is only attacking with one stage: empty all 8 stages at once. It might be contradictory to what I’ve stated at the beginning of the article, but that applied to over-guarding before the final turn. The most convenient time to use it is when the opponent has something around 6 cards in hand, you are at your limits and the opponent has four or more.

Which leads nicely to the other boss of Nubatama: Shura Stealth Dragon Kujikiricongo. Any analyst that compares it both in a vacuum and together in the clan will put it off as a very middling card. You -1 by riding while forcing a -1 from the opponent. You get your stages, then one extra temporary bind. This almost makes it the worse break ride in the game. Ashley gets a one-up in synergy due to Julia and its reverse form. There is very little synergy this card provides to the rest of the deck. But when paired with Hagakure, you can manage to empty all of the opponent’s hand, if they have 6. That means they are a sitting duck to your onslaught. And this amounts to all they can perform.

Playing tag with ninjas

And his assumes perfection. It is more likely you are only going to draw into 2/4 of the Hagakure you desperately need. That means you need to have the opponent at 4 cards and 4+ damage. There are other combinations which work, but you are severely limited in regards.

Darkest hour All in all, Nubatama is somewhat technical but it boils down to just memory. Know the attack matrix, train your memory so you can tell what is in the opponent’s hand, and remember odds of winning for any given damage and cards in hand. There are no combos to speak of and you don’t need to understand how to play the early game or middle game. Can you say that about any other deck? The deck is similar to about every other break ride focused deck in the game. The main difference is their break-rides INCREASE advantage so they don’t lose if they can’t finish someone off that turn.

What? You want a decklist? You must be joking, I’m a (self-proclaimed) mathematical theorist and game theory analyst. I don’t do decklists..

tl;dr: Dudley Emperor > Bad End Dragger has the same strategy as Nubatama but harder, better, faster, stronger in each and every way.

Just put Nubatama aside for now…

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