Gakum@s – China and Hiro (Y/B) [06/04/2025]

China (chee-nah), yes, her name is pronounced as “chee” like in “cheese” and “na”, not China like in the country. China and Hiro are very close friends. China is a rich pampered girl who is seeking to carve a future for herself as an idol. Hiro is a genius who is merely attending Hatsuboshi Gakuen to entertain herself as she had long finished with any formal education. Together, the innocent and cute China and soft-spoken Hiro find each other as perfect matches for their respective personalities.

Shining in the bright stage lights, China sparkles above all. China has a very unique early play condition, requiring that you have exactly five or less level one or higher characters in your waiting room. If you do meet her requirements, you may play her on stage early. China’s climax combo makes her massive and then plays a bit of a gamble with the top card of your deck. When she attacks with her climax, if you do reveal a level zero character or a specific event, she’ll deal two damage to your opponent. On top of this, if the petite China is ever defeated and sent to waiting room, you may bounce her back to your hand instead and stock a character from your waiting room. China is undefeatable!

To complement her friend, Hiro takes to the stage as the early play combo. Hiro synergizes well with China as her abilities are almost all focused around playing with level zero characters. Her first ability makes sure that your level zero cards are buffed and beefy, ready to battle their opponents when you play a climax. Furthermore, her combo grants buffs to another level zero character other than herself, supercharging them, and granting them the ability to surveil their trigger on swing, bounce back to hand upon being reversed, and preventing their opponents from side attacking them. All these buffs last until the end of your opponent’s turn. Hiro makes sure that the deck remains on the offensive, replenishing her soldiers up in the front in preparation for China’s eventual assault.

Before we go further, let’s talk about the event that is listed on China’s check ability for her climax combo. This event above best represents the friendships that China and Hiro share. If you use this event, you may pick one of two different abilities. The first lets you salvage a climax from waiting room and boost the power of a yellow character on your stage for the turn (only if you have five or less level one characters in your waiting room). The second gives an additional damage instance to any yellow character of your choice for a stock cost while also providing them additional soul.

It is important to note that while this card is level two, 3/2 China and this event itself only checks for the count of level one or higher characters.

It may be hard to conceive a deck that’s primarily completely consistent of level zeros and pretty much nothing else, but China and Hiro have a ton of tools to keep up the pressure on your opponent. China’s brainstormer on the left allows all your choice triggers for China’s level three finisher to target any level zero character in your waiting room, making sure you never miss out on the choice value. Her other ability allows you to keep up in power as you may grant additional power to any of your level zero characters whenever a copy of China’s finisher or a level zero character is triggered. Hiro is her sunhat is a way the deck can maintain hand advantage leading up to our explosive finishing turn. Hiro gains a soul in the center slot and allows you to reveal and add the top card of your deck on reverse assuming it is a level zero character or China’s finisher. As a deck that’s pretty much filled to the brim with level zeros, Hiro’s chances of hitting are mathematically in your favour (as is expected of the child genius).

Power lines are extremely important to this deck, mainly because of the use of our clean cut profile Hiro to the left. As a level zero, she gains many of the level zero buffs that other Hiro and China synergies provide. As some of our lanes will likely need to be crashing at some point to maintain damage and push for soul, it can be extremely damaging to ourselves if we were to leave our lanes out in the open, leaving our life bar susceptible to damage. Hiro’s clean cut profile provides us a bit of a chance to reset our board and reduce the needed stress of needing to necessarily beat all three lanes. To help Hiro with her goals, another Hiro profile, the Hiro in the center is a drop search profile that also grants a large amount of power on swing to one of your other characters, which you’ll hopefully be able to see how this synergizes very well with our clean cut profile.

China on the right is an interesting card that I wanted to include in this section as she is one of the ways in which we can inflict blows to our opponent’s board. She reverses any character whose level is equal or less than the number of copies of her we have in our waiting room when she is reversed. On top of that, she also mills our deck for free if she’s in the waiting room at the start of your first turn, sending six cards from the top of our deck to our waiting room (for each copy of her in the waiting room). The trick with China is to make use of her reversing ability both on our turn and our opponent’s turn. Hiro’s clean cut can very easily reset China, allowing us to do exactly that.

Before we wrap up this post, one last card I’d like to mention is the use of this special alarm Hiro card. Hiro is a rare profile that hasn’t seen a print run in quite some while. If she’s at the top of your clock at the start of your main phase, you may mill the top card of your deck into the waiting room, and if that card is level zero or lower or the 2/1 event, you may heal this card to the bottom of your deck. Essentially, Hiro is a free clock target that negates the “damage” portion of hurting yourself, assuming you get her effect off. At first glance, this effect doesn’t appear as powerful, but over the several turns of the game, you’ll notice that you’ll be taking just a little bit less damage from your opponent as you continue to “mitigate” the “clock” damage taken from the clock mechanic of the game.

To better aid herself and her friend, China holding popsicles (ice pops) is a vanilla drop salvage, perfect for grabbing resources back from your waiting room. China in her yellow dress is an on-reverse Koume profile, ready to mill your deck and snag you climaxes for your next turn. Hiro on her phone gets extremely large during your turn, bolstering her power for each level zero character on your field. Lastly, China looking excited is a draw brainstormer that also has another effect as a Pina profile that bounces to hand at the cost of sending herself to the bottom of your deck.

The key to this deck is understanding just how interactions work in the game and learning how to balance out the flow of the game. As a level zero heavy deck, it is very difficult to fail to brick in your opening hand, but as a level zero deck, the downsides are obvious with the general low power ceiling and the inability to particularly get reversals consistently all the time. Reversing isn’t everything, and sometimes, you may just have to side to maintain board or concede board to push for advantage. But you are the one in charge of judging the situation and making choices accordingly. Make use of battle tricks; stack and plan your clean cut triggers in ways that better your own advantage. And when you’re close to the finish line, China will arrive and close out the match.