Chainsaw Man – Kick Em’ in the Balls (R/B) [06/21/2023]

At first, Denji and Aki began their relationship with a rather rough start. Neither looked each other in the eye with much respect. But as their adventures continued, they became to see each other as pseudo family members. With the advent of Katanaman’s appearance, their relationship only grew closer as they decided to punish the villain in the best way they knew how: making sure to smash his family jewels.

There’s nothing more “bro-tastic” than a pair of boys kicking a pair of “balls” around at a train station. That’s just how boys normally bond, through stupid acts of mutual mayhem. Denji and Aki roll up their sleeves as they begin their game of kickball using Katanaman while also paying tribute to their friend, Himeno.

Using a standby combo, the pair works by first summoning Denji onto stage, ideally with the standby trigger. At the start of your attack phase, if Denji is on your stage, you may pay his costs, stand him, and spawn Aki from your hand onto the stage in another slot. Then both Denji and Aki gain the ability to send their opponents to the bottom of your opponent’s deck upon reverse. In addition, both Denji and Aki deal damage from the bottom of your opponent’s deck instead of the top of their deck.

However, that’s not all for the dynamic duo. Denji has a free scry when he is front attacked while Aki is a global support to all your characters with another ability to pay a cost to deal a damage to your opponent upon reversing any character. The boys are prepared and ready to play.

For our early advantage, since we do need to gather the boys together, and the fact that Aki’s climax is an arc climax, he works very well in tune with this deck. Aki salvages any character when he attacks with his climax in play. Furthermore, Aki also has an additional event or climax encore in case you have extra resources to loop him back onto field. Furthermore, his climax being an arc trigger will come in handy for the effect below.

Following Aki’s hospital visit, Aki acquires a contract with the future devil on the right. His level 3 support on the left has two unique properties. Firstly, at the start of your clock phase and attack phase, if he has the future devil under himself as a marker, he can predict the future (allows you to check the top three cards of your deck) and place them back in the same order. His second ability lets you discard a climax whenever you trigger a climax to heal the top card of your clock which synergizes very well with the arc climax from the level 1 Aki combo.

As for the future devil, it is a global assist that markers itself underneath 2/1 Aki when 2/1 Aki played on stage from hand. Furthermore, it refunds the stock to play Aki by letting you search your deck for a character and placing it at the bottom of your stock and then shuffling your deck.

The kind and sincere Himeno-senpai is the brainstorm of choice. She’s important as our brainstorm for her first effect, tutoring up a level 2 or higher character to our hand by paying the cost of her first effect and sending herself to memory, giving Aki his motive to kick a Katanaman’s family jewels. Essentially, she can cheaply search for Denji and add him to hand, setting up our ball-kicking pair. Aki is a climax swapper that better fits the theme for the deck as a ball kicker. He’s costless but requires you to sacrifice another character to do his effect. This can work in your favour as you can trigger profiles like Chiyuri for your other effects. 2/1 Himeno is a level 3 killer while also having a nice Rize ability at the start of your climax phase should you have her at the top of your clock (alarm).

Aki here is an interesting option to run. He is a beater that gains additional power if he is in the center of your stage. More importantly, when he attacks, he can perform two triggers for free but at the cost of losing one stock at the end of his attack (so it evens out). You can use this to your advantage to force out climax triggers and snag value from 2/1 Aki support or even to spawn characters by hitting a standby trigger.

As for backups, since we want to keep our testicle-fondling boot boys around, they’re great for defending them. Aki is a freefresh counter. Himeno is a bottom deck anti-change counter, getting rid of cheated targets or early plays out on stage.

Although Power isn’t a member of the ball-kicking squad, she is a part of the trio clown fiesta’s family (Denji, Aki, and Power) and is there right by their side when needed. Her 1/0 beater is a cheap way to look for additional hand at the cost of life. 1/1 Power is an Adachi profile with the upside of milling and letting you bounce one of your opponent’s threats if you manage to mill a climax. Her 0/0 beater lets you stock one of your other characters on stage when she attacks, turning reversed cards into additional value.

Adding to the flavour of attacking from the bottom, TD Chainsaw Man is here to cantrip and perform an Icy Tail effect against our opponent should he reverse his target. Otherwise, 1/1 Denji is a great standby target with hand encore. Kobeni is a Riko profile to help with filtering your hand.

Boys will be boys, obsessed with spherical objects. When it comes to the aid of a friend, a brother will always be there ready to give any bully the good ball-kicking they truly deserve. We will always remember you, Himeno.