nice write up @Bucky! i’m going to give my own perspective now (it’s long, i ended up making quite the wall of text and i may have gone overboard, but there’s a “takeaways” section at the end as a sort of TL;DR):
Bank:
Knockdown (-> It’s Combo Time)
Chip Damage
Recklessness
Risk to Riskonade
Combinatorics
Self Improvement
Axe Kick
Option Select
Degenerate Trasher
Master Puzzler (-> Stolen Purples -> Secret Move)
Game 1: here i think i made a significant mistake on the second turn; i bought a Chip Damage, when i could’ve either bought a 2 (more combines later) or crashed to buy a combine, both of which would’ve probably been better. from there my money just didn’t line up well and i couldn’t get my hands on combines fast enough, and also i had bought a wound earlier that i drew twice before being able to burning vigor it, which slowed me down, then i lost before i could make up for that stuff. also, i don’t really know how to play against Rook as Jaina (or anyone really, but especially Jaina), which probably didn’t help.
Game 2: (Jaina -> Onimaru) i CP to Onimaru because it gives me a triangle advantage against Rook (at least in theory) and this MU seems more straight-forward and intuitive than Jaina vs. Rook to me (could be completely wrong there). what i forgot to consider was the bank; looking at it in retrospect, it’s not horrible for Oni, but not very good either, but Oni is pretty good in general, so i’m still happy with my CP (also, i had no clue what chips could be good to switch for Jaina vs. Rook, so a character CP made the most sense).
in the actual game, i think i mostly just tried not to die and hoped Bucky would eventually not have an answer to my Double Slash/mini-crash pressure. eventually, Bucky blunders and loses.
Game 3: (Knockdown -> It’s Combo Time) this CP just makes a lot of sense; i was using Knockdown a decent amount off WTT (Wartime Tactics) while Bucky wasn’t using it at all and it’s generally better for Oni since it benefits Double Slash a lot and he can use WTT to get it without crowding his deck, meanwhile Rook already has a lot of combining power and can just get uncounterable 4s. Rook has a better econ than Oni (especially in a bank with no money-giving puzzle chips), so an expensive chip makes sense. going into the actual match, this is mostly just “Big Rocks out econs someone with no econ chips, econ leads to Master Puzzler, Master Puzzler is crazy good if you can afford it”, but looking through the replays, i think i make some weird, bad plays, which didn’t help. if i had a chance to win, it was probably through trying to close out the game more quickly and playing less economically. (also, i bought It’s Combo Time and never got to use it except for when i was already dead, so that wasn’t good. i WTTed off of it once, but just getting an option select would’ve done the same job better there.)
Game 4: (Master Puzzler -> Stolen Purples) at this point i’ve realized that Rook has a much better econ game than Oni, so i want to remove Master Puzzler as a huge pay-off for that econ. i switch in Stolen Purples for a couple reasons:
- i heard somewhere that Stolen Purples is really good for Oni, and in my experience, that’s true.
- it makes Chip Damage lead to something, which i think is slightly better for me than Bucky since i can WTT into Chip Damage and i might want it to enable WTT. (this point is smaller)
the other option i was considering was Dashing Strike, but i think Stolen Purples was a lot better.
in the game, i win mostly off of the Stolen Purples CP working out really well. i steal a lot of combines early, defanging a decent amount of Rook’s early pressure and giving myself some nice defense, and although i’m in danger at some points despite how many combines i stole, eventually i WTT for Recklessness > Stolen Purples > Crash and it kills (it was supposed to just be a survival play actually; i didn’t realize the offensive implications until i had already made the play).
Game 5: (Stolen Purples -> Secret Move) removing Stolen Purples is really good; i’ve been abusing it while Bucky couldn’t make any use of it, and it was the biggest reason i won that game. swapping in Secret Move isn’t flashy, but it’s still good; it’s a cheap chip that doesn’t benefit WTT much, and it makes Axe Kick slightly better, which Rook is more likely to be able to afford with his superior econ. on turn 1, i make a major mistake; i buy Recklessness, then pig WTT (with Riposte), and then don’t even play WTT the next turn since i need the crash money to buy a 2. i think literally any other 3 cost chip would’ve been MUCH better than Recklessness here; 2 gem is just a solid first turn buy in general, Chip Damage is fine early as well (although the red arrow being useless makes it worse), and even Risk to Riskonade can still be used in the combo of WTT for Recklessness > Risk to Riskonade > Combine (once i get one) > Crash for an early 4 crash. but instead of any of those, i buy Recklessness in an attempt to force WTT when it doesn’t make any sense to (the only good 3 cost WTT target here is Recklessness i think, or situationally Chip Damage), and i just end up buying a chip that’s bad in the early game on turn 1. if i were to try this opening again, i probably would’ve gone for a 2, or if i was feeling brave, Risk to Riskonade followed by a combine on the next turn (but that might leave me too low on money to be worth it). afterwards, Bucky gets a rush going pretty quickly and it kills me. i might have to look at this replay closer to see exactly what went wrong other than the Recklessness buy, Bucky seemed to have a very strong offense online pretty quickly, which might’ve just been luck of the draw, but it might also be something i should look at closer. i think i was disrupting Bucky in all of the other games (Knockdown/Chip Damage/Stolen Purples), but not this one, so that might’ve been it. Bucky also seemed to be getting a lot more height bonus than me. basically, there was a lot i probably could’ve done better this game (this might’ve been my worst game of the set in number of mistakes).
Overall: i noticed that i didn’t feel a strong “sense of direction” this game… like, i was never really sure what i was even doing, which is probably indicative that i need to get a better sense of what chips are generally good for Onimaru. also, i noticed that i wasn’t paying a ton of attention to my opponent aside from where their purples are, which might be something i want to work on.
Takeaways:
- i probably need more practice with Onimaru to figure what exactly his game-plan is and what options support it.
- i need to pay more attention to what my opponent is buying and exploit that.
- i need to figure out how to play against Rook more.
- i need to make sure i don’t auto-pilot! the awful Recklessness buy in the 5th game was mostly under the assumption that getting WTT online is always good, but in this case, it wasn’t. i probably made some other bad plays as well due to forgetting to think/auto-piloting.
anyways, GGs @Bucky! it was fun set, and i’m happy to even just take 2 games off you (even if one was due to a blunder)!
: A lot of traps are laid, and then Troq’s only Crash gets nabbed! 
In the ensuing chaos, the noble beast’s rising green gems are quite difficult to respond to!
I try to feint at not setting traps, but it becomes part of the plan later on! I don’t think that they end up doing anything, though! :o I assemble a large gem thanks in part to Combos Are Hard (Untrue; they can be quite easy!) and send it over ZenDog’s way, before their Troq stabilized with his own copy of Combos Are Hard and solid chip draw/combines/crashes!
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Inactive Roster
this one was close, but on all of the occasions that rook could’ve died he had the right chips to keep himself alive, and eventually i got caught when i didn’t. i haven’t looked at the replays yet, so i’m not 100% sure what went wrong here other than “all of my attempts to kill him failed”, but my best guess is that i didn’t buy enough combines.
instead of a second combine. My turn 3 Mix Master shadows the combine all game, undoing it each time. I took the game with a medium win% (~3/8) 4-crash on turn 6, but even if Hobusu had the Unstable Power to survive, he would have been under a lot of pressure with a wound-loaded deck.
so immediately when looking at the set, i thought Sets would be great for it, since sale prices and the hammer are both really good chips for her and there some other nice engine-building chips, and gem essence can help with the fact that Sets can’t thin her deck otherwise. what ends up happening is that i’m doing pretty well on econ, and then stolen purples + a fork kills me (that combo is really brutal).
s including a DCG.
s) for a chip Midori can use to get purples through dragon form. the CP i should’ve made was Midori -> Onimaru, but i didn’t think of it at the time since i hadn’t fought Vendetta before.
and five