I’ve managed to playtest my latest Bleach creation, the Squad 2 deck, for the past week. The good news is that it has played better than my expectations, as it has managed to put up good fights against other Squad decks. The bad news is that it hasn’t won a lot of its matches, hehehe.

How does the deck compete? Being primarily a stall deck, it drags out the game by discouraging the opposing party from making early attacks. But in order to do so, you need the lynchpin of the deck out in the field as early as possible. And that card is:

Once her power is online (which is your next turn after you recruit her), Soi Fon – Squad 2 Captain stops the biggest character on the other side from attacking, since it would be pointless to do so unless the player has a trick up his sleeve. She’s the best card in the entire deck, but unfortunately her ability also limits the way you can construct your deck. Your field has to have an all Squad 2 line-up for her to do her thing, so we can’t have other Soul Reapers as guest stars. This might not be much of a problem if the squad had many characters, but alas, we only have her, her lieutenant Marechiyo, one version of Yoruichi that belongs to Squad 2, and two versions of Stealth Force Members, which are the non-unique ninjas of the team.

That’s only 5 characters to build a deck around with! We have other versions of Soi Fon to tinker with, but they only serve certain roles in certain situations, unlike the Squad 2 Captain which you always want out in the field. Besides the Squad 2 Lieutenant, Marechiyo is practically useless in his other versions. Even after adding the good and generic Repentance Cell Guards (which is being played in every Squad deck), we are still left with a very restricted line-up.

Well, that’s all I can talk about right now. Part 2 will deal with whatever I can think of to say then, hehehe. ^_^