2023 Weiss Schwarz at a Glance

It’s that time of the year again where my fingers explode from the mass amount of writing needed to be performed to type out this post. Yes, I know you peeps with your Masters and PhDs are scoffing at my commentary given that your fingers no longer exist as is, but this does take quite a bit of time to make. Without further ado, let’s get into it, shall we?

This post details sets running from November 2022 – January 2023.

ALL HAIL AINZ-SAMA! SASUGA AINZ-SAMA! Skeleton father made quite an impact over the last year. With the support of the backrow 1/1 Ainz, 3/2 Ainz became a literal unstoppable and undefeatable lich. It took a total of two bans consecutively to eventually tone Ainz down. Facing the death of its vampire bride package and the loss of the 1/1 support, we’ll have to see how Overlord players will fare with the set in the upcoming year.

Oh Alice, how far you’ve fallen from grace. Alice was is the face of the SAO 10th Anniversary booster due to her carrying a dominating performance that dubbed her as the queen of the game for quite some time. Every set had to take her into consideration during deck building. The power of Alice lay in her ability to spawn the 2/1 advantage combo with strong field power onto the field as early as level one. Given all kinds of support from the set itself, it became fairly consistent to see two or even three copies of 2/1 Alice spawned by level one, dominating the field and continually accruing advantage for the player. Alice is gone for now, but who knows how SAO will be with its next support set.

Key also received additional support. Misuzu was probably the most notorious card in the set, having an “Exodia”esque finisher that you’d dedicate our entire deck to push towards. Of course, as a set that encompasses several other IPs, all kinds of sets under Key productions received their own treasure trove of additional support cards. Misuzu lost a bit of her power with the loss of the stock flush profiles, but the appeal of eight instances of damage off a single card can be quite appealing.

The boats have arrived (unfortunately not Kantai, sparing my wallet). None other than the pair of cats is more famous in the Azur Lane set. The cats are notorious for flooding the stage and then punching your opponent for an absurd amount of soul, potentially pushing them into an early late game before they even have a chance to prepare. Set sail, admiral!

Slime made its debut shortly after with it’s third set. Mjurran combo and the Shuna backrow (in conjunction with the brainstorm) created an infamous wall that would lock a lot of decks out. Shuna, most importantly, gave the entire field hexproof outside of herself, making the wall even harder to dismantle. Now with Shuna out of the picture, we’ll have to see what Slime has up its sleeve next.

I’ll be blunt. I know very little about this set. Outside of this sign where people were talking about how it wrote “Make a Change – Kill Yourself” and something about triple bag trigger on a card, that’s all I know.

The Star Wars set offered some nice retrains to the set with some new cards added as well. Additionally, any Star Wars fans would be happy to receive more product.

Marvel was similar to Star Wars without retrains. The premium rarities are pretty cool. I do prefer them without the giant logo.

D4DJ arrived ready to play. If you’re a fan of D4DJ, they arrived. Assemble your favourite group or mix and match according to your tastes. The foil art was really nice.

With the arrival of Hololive Set Two came along the infamous shark and her friends. This shark continues to haunt me as I writing about her.Premium set generations also received some support. Every generation was reinforced with more additional cards. Gura was and could still be considered a menace. Even after two changes to the ban list, Hololive continues to receive considerable attention. They’ll be getting another set soon with swimsuit art. So if you want to see your favourite Holotuber in a swimsuit, get ready to fork over the money.

Get ready to celebrate 100 years of unfettered capitalism Disney fun and joy. Several old classic and new Disney films entered the game with their own represented cards. Furthermore, both Star Wars and Marvel received some extra support.

Love Live! as a whole gained some nice reprints for both old and new players. Listen, I could have chosen any of the characters to represent the set and maybe use multiple schools. But I chose Kotori because she’s best girl. If you disagree, you’re just wrong. I also own the site. So too bad. Deal with it.

Chainsaw Man came as an interesting set. I think people were very excited for Makima at first, but Aki’s deck blew up in popularity. When combined with Easy Revenge!, Aki could deal a substantial amount of damage that was nearly guaranteed, especially if your opponent had a compressed deck and had climaxes stacked at their bottom. Chainsaw Man has taken some consistency hits to reduce Aki’s overall power, but time will tell how the set will change.

By far one of the most powerful decks this year, Ney was considered the top menace. Ney had one less instance of damage compared to Gura, but Ney had quite an insane reach. Furthermore, Ney’s ability to stuff cards back into your opponent’s deck to decompress and shuffle their deck could heavily punish players who were uncompressed. Ney has been reduced to a single copy as of this post alongside some other Puzzle and Dragons hits, but we’ll have to see with time if the dragon herself ever gets to see the light of day once more in her full glory.

The silly girls of the LycoReco cafe arrive in their swimwear. Chisato and Takina make a huge splash as they enter the game with their powerful modular end game combo. With the release of tournament PRs, they had a fairly famous anti-burn ability on a support card.

Smiling Curren-chan best represents the horse girls as they race onto the stage. Uma brought along all kinds of toolbox designs, letting you mix and match as you pleased. One of the most popular decks became that of Curren shown above with Satono Diamond’s trial deck combo. The deck amasses a large amount of advantage and can mill quite quickly. Now with the last meta contenders’ power levels curbed with restrictions, will Uma take their place?

Anya and her family arrived on the scene. SpyxFamily was a fun set where the Forgers hid their secret identities at level three and changed into them, effectively swapping disguises and revealing their true selves. There were some builds that focused themselves around the Fiona swapper, but other than that, I haven’t seen any significant build pop up. Perhaps the Forgers will receive more support in the future, fingers crossed.

I haven’t played Jojo much personally. All I can say is that anyone I’ve seen with this set is an absolute chad. The new Jojo’s set covered both the arcs of Stone Ocean and Stardust Crusaders. I had a friend use Made in Heaven against me and take an extra turn, but he didn’t do anything with the extra turn. Still, he got an extra turn on me, so I will forever be cautious about his deck. I’ve asked him to explain the logic behind the stands and some scenes in the card art, but his face started contorting and he kept saying “無駄無駄無駄無駄無駄無駄無!” He’s fine, don’t worry about him.

After a drought of being the least supported set in Weiss Schwarz, Da Capo finally got more support in its anniversary set. New profiles were added to the limited card pool of Da Capo, giving several powerful boosts to many of the pre-existing traits.

After years of asking, Bushiroad finally brought the Eromanga Sensei set that every Weiss Schwarz fan has been waiting for along with some pile of Dengeki Bunko stuff. Among the other less important cards, there’s some support for pre-existing sets such as that of Bunny Girl Senpai, Sword Art Online, Sword Art Online: Alternative, Index, Shakugan no Shana and more.

Bang Dream had its special reprint set with alternative arts. This is fantastic as reprints are always great for both new and old players alike. Arisa is the cutest according to my Jojo friend. My Jojo friend totally didn’t bribe me with candy to put this up. It was a nice green tea Kit-kat.

The King of Fighters have joined the party. Many cards have been retrained into more modern profiles. Additionally, some extra cards have been added. There was a bit of controversy concerning a Kensei card that could spawn a 2/2 Athena as early as level zero for a discard cost only, but that card was errata’d just before printing.

Bocchi’s fun times join the game. The center card represents how I feel and look everyday in real life. Bocchi had some interesting memory based mechanics. There was a lot of support towards combining the power of Kessoku Band together. Bushiroad also needs to give me more Kita support cards.

The MyGO!!!! girls are out and about. They received a trial deck and will be undoubtedly receiving more support in future Bang Dream! sets.

Alice Gear came around by bringing a new popular standby deck to the table. Alice Gear could spawn out the 2/2 Yotsuyu to the table and then having it change in the 3/2 Yotsuyu the following turn. The finisher Yotsuyu could be quite annoying to deal with considering it has an innate ability to pay a stock to either heal or ping one. It’s combo allowed you to spawn another copy of itself onto stage standing and also sack your climax to surveil your opponent’s top deck. This is really just TRANCE at level one isn’t it?

Shakugan no Shana received it’s own premium support set. There were quite a number of helpful reprints and retrains as well. New cards were printed that help modernize the set. Interestingly enough, a popular deck variant featured the finisher Shana from the Dengeki booster. Yuji was interesting as Yuji brought back anti-burn to the game. With the meta changing, perhaps Shana might have a chance to claim the once more.

Love Live!, the franchise as a whole, got it’s own unique booster. Now the cards can be played with their respective series, but they cannot be intermixed outside of this single booster. More support for the Love Live! girls is always nice. I have good taste. You can’t call yourself a real Nijigasaki rainbow deck without running green now. I’ma be real. I can’t keep track of these set names anymore.

Rejoice my fellow Yohane fans for the maiden of light, Yoshiko, is of no more. Yohane’s delusions have been brought to life in the set of Genjitsu no Yohane, a side series to Love Live! Sunshine. Characters have been altered to fit fantasy personas as the main character, Yohane, coupled with her loyal companion, Lapis, explore the magical world. Yohane and her hijinks are still relatively new in relation to this post, so we’ll have to see how players will be forming their decks.

Ayakashi Triangle came out of the blue. Suzu’s deck is quite popular. The deck is an eight arcs trigger deck. The level one combo lets you search out your level two changer which in turn change into the level three Suzu. The kicker for level three Suzu is that she’s a level zero on stage and is hexproof, protecting herself from anti-change counters and Adachi effects. Suzu also heals a card from your clock to memory on play, and her climax combo is modular to let you either heal or ping one on swing with the climax. Suzu’s dynamic appetite might push her way into the top decks.

Solve the mystery of Ai’s killer with Aqua and Ruby as you delve into the Oshi no Ko set. B-Komachi 2.0. seems to the be most popular deck of choice at the moment. There’s been a mix of decks carrying both Kana combos or a mix with Memcho. Dazzle your opponent with B-Komachi’s shine and sparkle.

There’s a second volume full of fun with the new Project Sekai set. All the bands get empowered even more. We’ll have to see what fancy brews people come up with.

Frieren arrives on the scene with her trial deck. There’s a booster coming for Frieren sometime later in the year. For now, all we have is the trial deck featuring Frieren and her companions, both old and new.

With Frieren, our list has come to an end. Of course, new magical properties are indefinitely going to be arriving. Who knows, given this year had the release of several support pieces for old IPs such as Shana, Persona, and King of Fighters, anything can happen. Keep your eyes out and have fun!