Defense Points (Key Selection)

KANZEN BO- oh wrong game.

If you have read the other general WIXOSS guide articles, you would have probably understand the importance of defense in Key Selection. With most of your defense being contributed by your LRIG deck, you have to maximize the amount of defense you have within the confines of your LRIG deck. As such we will be going through Defense Point, a method which many veterans use in building their deck's defense.

What's Defense Point?

Winning Tawil Deck with 11 Defense Points

In case you haven't guessed it, Defense Points basically mean the amount of SIGNI attacks your entire LRIG deck can stop. For example, Storm Warning states that the first 2 SIGNI or LRIG attacks would be disabled, for this we count Storm Warning as an ARTS with 2 Defense Points. Of course, Storm Warning does not block any attacks if your opponent only has 1 attack that can damage your Life Cloth nor defend against cards like Sanpoke and Kamakura, but for simplicity sake we shall count it as a 2 Defense Point ARTS.

Certain LRIGs like Tawil also have in-built attack phase response. Take for example Midoriko, Tentacle allows us to stop a LRIG and SIGNI attack during the opponent's turn. As such we would count it as 1 Defense Point. Since Midoriko also have an on-play that retrieves an ARTS, we can count it as 2 Defense Point, making her level 4 an overall of 3 Defense Point.

While some LRIG deck cards have the ability to stop your opponent's LRIG attacks, we usually do not count LRIG defense into calculating total defense points for 2 particular reasons:

1) Most LRIG attacks can usually be stopped with guards.

2) You are more likely to lose to a SIGNI attack than a LRIG attack given how SIGNI-centric Key Selection is.

So with the definition of Defense Point explained, we shall take a look at an example to better understand it.

For example, the above Myuu deck Defense Point can be calculated as such:

Sashe Key (+Happy 5 encore cost) -> 1 Defense Point

Donna Key (+Happy 5 encore cost) -> 4 Defense Point

Chaos Outbreak                             -> 2  Defense Point

Hydro Circle                                  -> 2 Defense Point

Happy 5                                        -> 1 Defense Point

Total:                                                 10 Defense Point

As you can see, this particular Myuu deck have 10 Defense Point, which is a good number. On average, most deck's Defense Point are around 10. The higher your Defense Point, the better your deck's defense is. 

Against 2 players of similar level of skill and similar decks, if both players have roughly the same amount of Life Burst and their quality of draw is similar, the amount of Defense Points would usually determine the winner.

With all that said, just because your Defense Point is higher than your opponent doesn't mean that you are guaranteed to win against him. But why is that so? There are a few factors to it.

Beyond Simple Counting

One such factor is the quality of response. For example, Number Bind is a very strong ARTS that has a Defense Point of 3 against decks like Hanayo 2 or Ulith. But against slower decks like Myuu, it may only have an average of 2 Defense Points, sometimes you may even end up stopping just one SIGNI with it.

Another example of quality of response is the ability to defend against prominent immunities. Take a look at the above Blue Tama decklist. Despite playing Piruluk Key, there isn't any ARTS such as Happy 5 that trashes the key to have a better defense. This is due to the fact that in the current WIXOSS Key Selection scene, WSB exists. Playing cards like Occultic Sign may end up cornering the Blue Tama player and killing the player due to WSB's immunity. Hence other options like Don't Rush is played in order to play around WSB.

It ultimately depends on what your meta is like and whether your deck's quality of defense is good enough to play around such immunities. As such it is important to look beyond counting simple Defense Points in order to ensure a safe defense. 

For easy counting and rough deck building, use the simple Defense Point counting. Once a rough idea on your decklist has been created, go into a more specific Defense Point counting against the many different decks that you are likely to battle against.

Having a high Defense Point doesn't always mean that your deck will have a high win rate. What use is there in having a high Defense Point if you cannot even push damage and defeat your opponent?

Take a look above at the Mel deck. In total she only has a simple Defense Count of 9. If she were to drop True Yuzuki Key for an ARTS that has a minimum Defense Point of 2, she would be able to increase her total Defense Point.

However, compared to the extra 1 or 2 defense she gets from kicking out Yuzuki Key, playing it allows her to better win games as her main deck isn't very good at pushing in damage early game. By using Yuzuki Key, Mel not only gets an extra 2 ener and 2 hand, she can easily open 3 SIGNI zones to push damage in quick. With Carbo, the amount of potential damage that can be pushed in also increases, making the entire deck more threatening.

As you can see, balancing out your offense and defense is very important. It is important to know when not to over include defensive measures in order to not fight a drag out losing battle.

What about All Stars?

Due to the simplicity of Key Selection, Defense Point is possible and a way for players to manage their level of defense. This system of counting defense completely shatters when brought to All Stars for a multitude of reasons.

The angel that will never stop haunting All Stars players.

For one, the quality of response holds more value than the amount of response one has in All Stars. With a plethora of immunity SIGNIs such as Arcgain and Contempora, no matter how much defense you have, its all meaningless if you can't stop them.

This is made worse when things such as Become You Tama exists. This type of rush decks are bundled with immunity SIGNIs that if you do not prepare the appropriate response and ensure you have access to them when you need, you will surely be defeated.

In All Stars, there are also many powerful spells that can easily turn the tide of the game around. One such example is Western Gunshot. If you do not have an appropriate spell cut-in defense or something like Linze to prevent it from being casted, you can easily just lose the game to it.

SIGNI defense are also very prominent in All Star yet they are not always accessible. Cards like Lamia require it to be in the trash to be used, if your trash gets sent back to your deck or if she is excluded, you will lose your SIGNI defense. Due to such volatility, it is very hard to accurately count your actual total Defense Point if you were to include your SIGNI responses to it.

Conclusion

That's pretty much it for Defense Points. If you are a beginner setting to play this game, I suggest joining Key Selection first to learn the general flow of the game. If you are a player planning to join the wonderful madness that is All Star however, be prepared to be defeated countless times in order to learn about the many different decks in the game.

One way or another, I hope you have understood a bit more on how the defense of this game works and be able to improve your decks. With that see you next time!