Da Capo – Sakura Tree [07/21/2021]

Once upon in a time, on a magical island far away, exists a magical undying eternal cherry blossom tree whom blooms year round. Legends say that it carries magic within its branches, influencing individuals and bringing about special events that affect the inhabitants of the island.

Usually most decks try to deter damage from the opponent. After all, the goal in Weiss Schwarz is to not reach level 4. Giving your opponent additional soul damage most of the time is a scary and generally unwanted effect. This card does exactly that by making your opponents carry a large amount of soul damage while forcing their characters to front your characters. Ideally, the expectation is that the excessive soul damage will help you cancel more, but its not impossible for one to say take up to a full level or more with just one attack thanks to this card.

The two cards above are sample clones of the event with slightly altered effects with varied levels of soul damage.

Most people would genuinely be confused at what you are doing with your deck if you were to show any of these cards to them. The most common response would be asking if you had a death wish. But say, what if one actually built a deck around this kind of effect?

So before we delve further, let’s breakdown DC3/W18-096U a little bit and check its conditions first:

• The stock cost is seven
• Realistically, the event will only be used during your opponent’s turn as a backup since it does nothing that affects the game during your own turn
• It forces every character on your opponent’s field to front or direct attack with an extra five soul (even the very rare back-row attacker)
• Re-standers are affected unless the new re-stand target is a card that replaces a card on the field (very rare effect)
• The event does not target meaning hexproof characters are still affected

So how do we build around these conditions?

Funny enough, cards like the one above, under certain conditions cannot attack at all if you use the event since they can’t front attack.

So back onto the main topic. The biggest requirement for the event is the demanding seven stock. Assuming you performed three attacks before the turn you use it, you’ll still require a sitting four stock before your attack phase. Seven is costly especially due to the fact that level three is generally the level where you’d be likely burning stock for your finishers, healers and alike.

When it comes to building stock, the most easy way to fulfil this is the cards above. The left card won’t activate its effect unless the 1/1 event on the right is in the memory, meaning both have to be present in the deck. The 1/1 event costs stock, but it comes with two very nice effects of getting you hand in return and also providing additional power to certain cards during your turn while in the memory. Compressing itself into memory also makes it easier for you to cancel upon refresh. Since the condition for the card on the left is continuous and doesn’t say during your turn, if you somehow reverse your opponent during their turn with a backup or on its own, that’s another free stock.

There are additional ways to garner stock like the cards above. They may not be as reliable as the Sara combo duo from above (DC3/W81-047R and DC/W81-048U), but stock is stock. Losing hand or field isn’t exactly too big of a deal since the aim is to try and get off the tree event and survive. Additionally, playing climaxes with bag trigger or choice trigger are good just to potentially get extra stock.

Regardless of build, one of my highly suggested cards to include is the card above. It’s first effect is nice, but the second effect is crucial for helping the deck function. Since the deck is in a random state, there is a fear that before your opponent’s turn, you may be out of a lot of climaxes within your deck. As such, having a card like this to freely refresh your deck helps make sure that when you drop the event, there is a very likely chance that you’ll cancel.

Playing cards like the ones above are ideal to assist the deck’s overall goal. Large beefy threats are great to maintain board and since the event forces your opponent to front if possible, these threats are large and will often punish your opponent’s field. The left card in particular has a persistent effect that can punish your opponents’ characters for casually crashing in. The center card provides a large attack boost that’s usually only found in level two backups and above, but is playable from level one. It pushes the theme even further as it is possible to add additional soul to following attackers after the event backup is used.

How would you build the deck? Which cards would you supplement in? Could you perhaps pull maybe two tree events off in a single turn? Maybe you just take a total of twelve damage or more in one swing. Who knows? Give the deck a shot and send us your stories.