The Wixoss tcg is a terrific game, and buying a pair of the 5th anniversary starter decks is the cheapest way to start playing it, or just seeing what the game plays like if you’re curious. These decks offer distinct gameplay and strategies, and are reasonably well balanced against one another. That is not to say that they are all equal, however. The power levels are close enough that any deck can win against any of the others, but how much luck and skill are required for that win differs quite a bit. Piruluk has a much narrower margin of error than Ril. Draw too many Signi of the wrong levels at the wrong time, or mistake the optimal timing of your Arts, and Piruluk will often lose, while Ril can shrug off a bit of bad luck or minor play errors. Even still, any wins or losses will be close; often the winning deck would have lost if the opponent had survived another turn. Most importantly, though, unlike certain other tcgs, these decks don't offer a subpar gameplay experience; they contain powerful and consistent strategies that reward player skill and a strong understanding of the ins and outs of each deck. As with any tcg, these are still starter products, so you can’t just waltz into a tournament and expect to compete with the most tuned lists in the metagame, but as far as offering great gameplay when paired against other starter decks, and providing a solid base to modify with cards from booster packs, these decks do a terrific job for a crazy low price.
(In terms of where to buy these decks, there are a few options, but absent any personal preferences, you should be able to find them on amazon.jp, whose English language support and reasonable shipping costs makes these decks pretty easy to get ahold of. Search by deck code ie. WXK-D05, and you won’t need to know a word of Japanese.)
A few more detailed notes and random thoughts:
Power levels
In terms of general power, my experience would rank them as Ril > Guzuko > Tama > Carnival > Piruluk. This shouldn’t be taken to mean that the decks are problematically unbalanced, though, and the decks ranking can change depending on the matchup. Guzuko’s “Together with Aya!” key changes value quite a bit depending on the opponent. Decks like Ril and Carnival that primarily push damage with Signi attacks can dismiss it as a minor inconvenience, but for decks that rely on LRIG attacks to force through damage, it can really make life difficult for them (Piruluk lacks ways to force through Signi attacks, and relies on discarding the Guards from the opponent’s hand to force through LRIG attacks to compensate, and Tama’s double crush LRIG attack and her Key’s Guard limiting effect are important sources of damage that she relies on keep pace with opponents who have stronger defensive options). Against an open field, Guzuko is weaker than Ril, but in a meta of just these decks, Guzuko might be the strongest by virtue of how well she matches up to the opposition.
Another example is Ril’s See Through the Fiery Ambition, which can offer a way to force through an extra 1 or 2 damage against decks that rely heavily on their 12000 power level 4 for their offensive (Carnival, Guzuko, other Ril decks), but can be near useless against decks like Piruluk or Tama that tend to string together their strategies using either their Arts deck, or lower level Signi.
Piruluk is already on the weaker side of these decks, but against the other decks with Phantom Garden she really struggles. After you’ve gone through a ton of effort to empty the opponent’s hand, it’s pretty demoralizing to see them instantly rebuild it at such a low cost, especially considering Phantom Garden is pretty low-impact in other matchups. She does fare a bit better against decks without powerful draw engines in their LRIG decks, like Tama and Ril.
Playing with other starter decks
Most decks from before the ‘Key’ format (decks with the WXD code rather than the WXK code - see here) have only 8 cards in their LRIG decks, which means that they’re poorly set up to compete with the Key format starters, which have a full 10 cards in their LRIG deck. The main difference is that the Key format starters add in a Key card and a generic, colourless Arts, so you can change up these older decks to still be viable, but getting the power right with these modifications can be tricky, so it’s easier to stick to Key format starter decks (the older decks are out of print, so they’re harder to find anyway).
The decks from WXK-D01 Red Doping to WXK-D08 Dual Blast (the Dual decks each contain two decks, so they’re another nice way of trying out the game) are all roughly at the same power level as these 5th anniversary decks, so they’re easy pickups if you’re looking to extend the range of decks you can play. From WXK-D09 Blue Umr onwards, however, the starters take a noticeable jump in power level. They don’t have an alternate level 4 LRIG in boosters, and so they have overall stronger effects, and they’ve replaced the mediocre Phantom Garden or Victim Defence colourless Arts with the much more useful Rays of Edge (if you’re looking to get into deck building beyond stock lists, they also have several copies of the no-life-burst guards, which are hugely useful in deck building as they give you a lot more freedom in which cards you can include without worrying as much about the 20 life-burst, 20 non-life-burst deck building requirement). They also ditch the simple power-boost effect Signi for more focused options. The older decks are still pleasantly competitive with these newer ones, but you will notice the power difference, and it might make for a bad time if you and your friend each only have 1 deck, and one has an older Key deck and one has a newer Key deck.
There’s a few odd decks out to watch for. There were several decks before the Key format that had the full 10 LRIG deck cards, which tended to be expensive special editions. Some were pretty mediocre (the movie-version decks, and Red Promise / Blue Petition each only have 4 level 4 Signi total, as opposed to the usual 8, and therefore lack a lot of late-game power), some are pretty good (the Conflation decks), and Carnival’s Red Joker in particular is just bonkers powerful. Things are a little more steady in the Key era, but if you’re a fan of virtual youtubers, WXK-D16 Nijisanji WIXOSS Battle Set is crazy strong. It’s so strong, in fact, that it one-sidedly stomps every other starter I’ve tried to play against it, so unless you and your friend(s) plan to heavily modify your decks from their stock lists, this deck will not be much fun if you’re playing starter decks against each other.
Modification
Like any tcg, Wixoss has a ton of options to further customize these decks and dial up their power. That being said, the game is Japanese-language only, so unless you read the language fairly well, it can be a bit of work to keep the effects straight. Generally, I find that as long as I can keep the card list (with effect translations) to a single page of 8.5/11 paper, some modifications can be nice, but it can get a bit cumbersome if you need to shuffle between multiple sheets of paper to keep track of what does what. As far as modifications themselves, a lot of that will come down to how you feel about the deck: what it needs more of, and what doesn’t play any role in advancing your game plan. A few easy notes:
- Most decks have at least one Arts that is noticeably subpar (see my reviews of the individual decks), so replacing them with a more functional Arts is a quick and easy way to upgrade a deck.
- The limits on the decks level 2 and 3 LRIGs can feel a bit low (for example, at level 2 you can’t play 2 level 2 Signi without leaving your third Signi zone open). If you feel you don’t need the effects, swapping to the higher-limit non-effect versions at these levels can let you play out these levels a bit more freely (this will depend heavily on how the decks use their coins, and will also be heavily affected by any changes you make to the main deck).
- These decks all have an alternate level 4 LRIG in booster packs, which are often more powerful, so swapping them out can change up how the deck plays with only one swap.
- As for changing up your main deck, the easiest thing to swap out is some number of the spells. They range from barely decent to outright bad, and while you might want to keep a few of them in the deck, no deck wants 4 copies of them (Tama especially doesn’t want any spells). I’d start by swapping out 2 spells, and adjusting from there.
- The next easy main deck swap are the cards that only have a minor power boost as their effect. Generally, putting in effects that more directly benefit your gameplan will go quite a ways in improving the deck’s overall performance.
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