Azur Lane – Royal Tea Party with Illustrious (Y) [03/14/2023]

The amazing Illustrious is not a ship to be trifled with. As the big sister, Illustrious is a proud aircraft carrier ready to show her fellow ships how to deal true damage. Defended by the rest of the Royal Navy, Illustrious sets forward behind the fleet, ready to launch her planes to force her opponents into submission.

Illustrious appears in the flesh as the main focus of the deck. Illustrious doesn’t finish your opponent in the traditional sense. However, her planes readily disable your opponent’s offences as she slowly whittles away at their hull. Illustrious’ combo grants her a minus three soul cross-turn ability, nullifying most of your opponent’s potent swings.

Belfast steps up and is more than ready to assist her fleet. Clad in her wedding dress, Belfast awaits the day where the oceans are finally at peace and she can finally marry her dear shiki-kan (commander). Belfast is a burst beater with a combo to let you add the top card of your deck to your hand with her climax if it is a character. Additionally, she has an innate ability to be a J.C. profile, sacrificing herself to save your other ships.

As a combo that is dependent on surviving until the end of your opponent’s next turn, Queen Elizabeth is highly recommended to provide that global power boost to ensure that your Illustrious is able to survive until then while also providing additional burst power to all your Royal (ロイヤル) ships whenever you trigger a choice climax.

Given the random nature of what Belfast brings to you, it’s best to play with cards that help filter the cards in your hand to other cards. Neptune can turn any extra character in hand into a level zero character from your waiting room. Sheffield can transform your cards into other forms of value through performing a Kazuma effect and/or a redraw. Icarus is a cantrip on play that can also pump power to your characters on swing.

Other ways to retain hand are shown above. The lovely Cygnet is a coinflip profile that also sinks one of your opponent’s front row characters that are costless if they are alone in the front row. When a climax with the choice trigger is played, Ajax gains an additional power boost and the ability to trigger twice. Additionally, when she triggers a choice climax, she allows you to salvage a character. Ajax can generate stock and grant extra hand if we’re lucky. Eskimo reveals the top card of our deck when she comes into play, giving us a top reveal and allowing us to grant power to one of our other characters if that card is a character. When the damage she takes is cancelled, she flies back to our hand.

Warspite is a key card to our strategy. Keep in mind that Warspite allows you to pay her costs and add a climax from your deck to hand on play. This will help us loop our combos and potentially maintain Illustrious over several turns. Similar to Warspite, Monarch is another card that can grab a climax. She does come with a large burst of power during your turn and can get rid of a threat by sending it to stock.

In terms of backups, they are key to our strategy to reuse our Illustrious by defending them. Centaur is a free backup that refunds her stock costs. Black Prince is an Adachi profile on field and backup in hand.

For more Royal Navy support, the first one to step up to the plate is Unicorn. She’s the salvage brainstorm for the team and can optionally provide additional healing and damage support. The Royal Navy event is a very cheap and efficient way to gain extra hand since we are running pure Royal Navy. Rodney is a stock reverser that can potentially spawn us extra field in the early game. Jean Bart is an oversized drop search profile for getting our pieces together. York is a drop salvage profile that can also mill our deck.

Fight of the queen! Fight for liberty! Defend Illustrious at all costs and nullify your opponent’s attacks. Show your opponent the true might of the empire whose sun never sets.