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Decklist of the week

Rap Battlin' Bull (2024 Online Faction Round Up Winner)

Description by the author: DoomDog 972

This is the deck I played through the Top 8 cut of the 2024 Online Faction Round Up. The event allowed players to change decks throughout swiss rounds, as long as you stayed with the same faction, so I'll have a few others posted too.

The quarterfinal saw me paired up against TybarSunsong, who was also playing Anarchists with a Kung fu deck. Throughout the event I’d mostly been picking decks at random from several I had built and hadn’t played a Kung Fu deck during swiss, so I thought I’d bring one to the top cut for a Kung Fu showdown.

I’d played with Zhu Bajie and Jade Rabbit Taos in the past, but had never really looked at Bull Demon King with Anarchists before, so that was where I started. The Bull Demon King Tao wants you to build up influence and casualty reduction and then unleash a whirlwind of destruction that your opponents either flee from or take massive damage. However, it can be quite challenging to build with. To make the finisher impactful, and to pull off combos, you need a lot of influence both on the performer and in your posse in general. To combo with Two Hundred Fifty Rounds you need to control the location, so it can't be used to combo at all in town square or your opponent's home. If you do pull off the combo, you'll need that casualty reduction as you also take extra casualties from the finisher. Finally, the Tao sits on mid values, which are actually pretty tricky to build a Kung Fu deck around. Struggling with all those challenges, I soon switched from a 'Bull Demon King deck' to 'a deck that uses the Bull Demon King Tao' - rather than the focus of the deck, it became a tool in its arsenal.

Xui Yin Chen became the crux of the deck. As a stud with high influence and an ability that can pump it even higher, she works well with the Tao. However, her ability requires her to boot, and so does Behold White Bull. The new Debt of Blood set contains a card that helps with this problem, Mind of Quicksilver. Aces are as low as you can go, so good for Kung Fu, and they also bring in Feathered Friend for more casualty soak, The Mayor's Office for another influence boost, and Allie Hensman to help push games. With the idea of pushing influence up already there, why not also look at ...It's Who You Know to weaponise it without relying on having the Kung Fu? Plus Threes had Yan Li's Tailoring for another influence boost.

With two values locked in, and my backup Kung fu dudes not really allowing me to venture into higher values if I wanted reliable pulls, I decided that the Bull Demon cards would be off values. Great Sage Matching Heaven worked well both as an influence booster and by providing attrition, and I wanted to keep at least one copy of the finisher, but Two Hundred Fifty Rounds got cut for being just a little bit too awkward and high value. I populated the remaining spaces with some low value Sidekicks, Deeds and Cheatin' Resolutions.

So I had a deck that was a decent shooter, could shoot with bullets or influence, and had attrition options for brawling, with a few little tricks and combos instead of one big one. Plus the potential with the perfect setup to pump Xui Yin Chen up to six influence for a scary sounding Behold White Bull.

Mostly it was the attrition combined with playing aggressively and a healthy slice of luck in shootouts (or bad luck for my opponents) that got me through the games. Great Sage Matching Heaven always felt like a good card to draw. Mind of Quicksilver allowed for a couple of surprise unboots and also saw use during Noon to cycle cards. The semifinal was won by sacrificing Xui Yin Chen shooting solo against my opponent's remaining dudes with Behold White Bull in hand, enough guaranteed casualties to wipe them out and the boardstate such that fleeing and giving me two CP would have also ended the game. The perfect end to a truly crazy match.