With a really threatening Auto effect that can chip off your opponent's life cloth or exceed resource every turn, in addition to having access to Arc Energe, which its very existence threatens players playing ARTS not of their main color, The Twister is looking to the be a deck that shakes up Key Selection's meta violently. In this article, we will look at the different keys that may be played with and against her.
The first key that we would be looking at is Eternal Key. It is a good key to play along with Twister for a few reasons.
Firstly, it's an "Exceed 2" key. Given Twister's exceed burning ability, going second with an "Exceed 4" cost key would make your key useless. Your opponent which went first would reach The Twister first and remove 1 of your 4 exceeds before you even have the opportunity to use your key as a defense (You will only have one turn on level 4 before they grow into The Twister, which is your attacking turn). Hence an "Exceed 2" key would guarantee that your key would at least be useful in stopping one attack rather than invalidating the entire key just because of one exceed being removed against another Twister.
Secondly it's also an "Exceed 2" key that isn't once per turn. Unlike Black Tama Key, you can use the "Exceed 2" effect twice per turn, hence during your opponent's turn while you're at level 4, you can quickly use up your exceeds and then use this key to pay for your Twister's grow cost, maximizing the usefulness of your key.
Finally Eternal Key's auto trash ability. As Twister's alternate grow cost is a hefty 5 ener with color, most of the time you would be trashing the key on your field to pay the grow cost. However in the event that you actually have enough ener to afford her alternate grow cost, you can instead trash this key to recover an ARTS to defend yourself.
In Key Selection where most of your defenses come from your LRIG deck, your ARTS are a very precious resource for surviving attacks, even more so when one of those LRIG deck slot is taken up to play a level 5. Hence having the option to retrieve an ARTS to defend yourself while you are playing a level 5 deck makes this key a good candidate to play with The Twister.
Of course you would need to pay a heavy cost of 2 coins to retrieve the ARTS and additionally pay the cost of the retrieved ARTS to use it so do take that into factor while building your deck with this key.
For similar reasons to Eternal Key such as having an "Exceed 2" effect and not limited to once per turn, Blitz Aya is also another key that is good to play with and against Twister.
As this key has an attack phase timing to open if your LRIG level is below your opponent's, if you start second against The Twister, you can use this key's on-play effect as a response, overall making your Aya key stop a total of 2 attacks regardless if you go first or second against The Twister.
Since Blitz Aya can only down SIGNI with her "Exceed 2", facing other decks that put Utako on the field may prevent you from burning the key with Happy 5 unless you use additional responses against Utako. Though with the advent of Arc Energe, Happy 5 may see less play from non-white decks.
Layla Key, a key that nearly never see play in Key Selection yet often see play in All Stars, may finally become relevant in Key Selection. As Twister's Auto puts cards into the trash, Layla Key can actually help prevent your Life Cloth from being destroyed by Twister, allowing you to survive longer against her and potentially defeat her, making it a good key against Twister.
It is also a good key to play with The Twister as if you do not need it, you can easily burn it off with The Twister's grow cost. With the upcoming Blue Tama looking to be discarding their opponent's hand heavily, having Layla Key in a Twister deck may actually help The Twister to stablize in her early game before growing into level 5, preventing unnecessary Life Cloth from being damaged due to lack of SIGNI in hand to board early game.
However, the fact that it requires one slot in your LRIG deck which could have went to an ARTS makes playing this key a gamble. In the event if you were to face decks that don't even trash your Life Cloth, Hand or Ener, you would already be behind your opponent in terms of defense by 1 ARTS. If both players would to push damage equally hard, you are almost guaranteed to lose the battle.
Finally, Keys with "Exceed 3" as its response cost may see a rise in play with and against Twister.
One of the reason "Exceed 4" keys are popular in Key Selection is because of
their ability to stop all 3 SIGNI attacks. Compare this to keys with "Exceed 2" effects which predominantly stops only 2 SIGNI attacks for the same cost of 4 exceeds in total, making "Exceed 4" keys have a stronger single turn response. Before Twister's reveal, there were also no cards that allows the opponent to remove exceeds from under your LRIG, hence these "Exceed 4" effects are guaranteed to be usable.
However with Twister's debut, "Exceed 4" keys now run the risk of being unusable if they were to go second against The Twister. Hence an alternative would be to play Keys with "Exceed 3", with 5th heroines being the most prominent one.
For just 3 exceeds, you can easily block 3 attacks by calling 3 SIGNIs onto the field. Their on-plays also triggers so you can even make use of that to prevent SIGNI's with on attack removal effects. Even if your field is full, you can search your deck and rise The Law in order to open holes and use The Law's attack phase effect to stop attacks.
Also because it only cost 3 exceeds, even if you go second against the Twister, they cannot nullified your key's effectiveness by removing one of your exceeds, making "Exceed 3" Keys a really good replacement to "Exceed 4" keys.
Conclusion
The above keys are a few keys I believe that will see rise in play with the coming of Twister. We still have around a month to go before Dissemble's release. As more card effects is revealed, some of the keys mentioned here may be less effective in light of what will be announced, while some other more obscure keys may see relevance in Key Selection's meta. There's also Dissemble's LR key effect not revealed yet so things may still change.
Nonetheless it looks like the upcoming box will bring about an exciting meta shift, overturning the conventions laid out by the recent few sets. With that, I hope you enjoyed this article and start thinking about how you are going to change your deck for the incoming meta shift.
See you next time!
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