Sunshine!

Along with the rise of Hina Logic and other early play decks, their largest rival was about to come with the arrival of the idols from the second generation of Love Live! With their support in the form of the extra booster, Sunshine soon changed the definition of what it truly mean to be a full combo deck.

The arrival of the extra booster essentially overturned the initial set of Sunshine completely around. Older cards were almost entirely phased out in support of the newer cards. One trio in particular shown above became a notorious feared sight. Similar to an older deck in the history series, Triad Primus, Sunshine had essentially updated itself into a more powerful focused endgame.

However, unlike Triad Primus, the endgame of the deck truly presented itself the moment the deck hit level 2. Furthermore, less pieces were needed to bring about You’s powerful damage pushing ability. The You in the center above became the shining star for the deck, capable of spawning early due to Chika’s effect. Every card in the deck was meant to compliment and assist You, ensuring that your opponent would consistently take damage from You’s costless additional damage instance. 2/1 Riko was an extremely powerful card, being able to provide information for your You while hand-fixing for free.

Filtering effects had reached another new peak. However, the filters used for the specific deck all carried ways to manipulate the top of your deck, giving you another potential chance for You to deal additional damage. Since they were also filters, this meant that hand-fixing was at a constant availability to the Sunshine player. The 1/0 Mari in particular was a great advantage card that was also capable of potentially bouncing back to hand to repeat its top check ability (a very real possibility considering the number of high level cards in the deck).

One other important card was integral to the deck. The Kanan above granted a Pina effect, something that was generally not considered to be that important of an effect. But due to You’s constant damage being repeatable and generally costless and on swing, she was a perfect target for Kanan to revive. Considering that the entire deck’s goal was based solely on the level 3 You, any effect to retain her on field was greatly beneficial. On top of this, Kanan was another scry target.

Whereas Triad Primus was a deck that began to prepare a solid board at level 2 with its finish at level 3, Sunshine became a deck whose power level came at 2 with little to no regard for board. All that mattered was to ensure You could get her damage off and remained on field. Later on with the addition of standby, the deck grew even more monstrous.

Compared to other decks at the time, level 2 finish was considered more or less a pipedream. Decks were still relatively reliant on hitting level 3 to reach their highest power point. Sunshine was an exception, but more importantly, Sunshine reminded the game of how dangerous designs would be should they break the traditional idea of power being locked to level.