Oni Assassins After Release

It's been a while. A little longer than I was expecting but I had some personal things to take care of and analyzing Oni Assassins took longer than I expected to fully digest.  I'll admit. Oni's took me probably a solid month to have an idea of how they worked and even then, I needed to analyze them for about a month or more longer to fully get used to them. My general prediction on how good they would be was pretty right on so there won't be too much to talk about. They're been getting in top 8 pretty consistently recently and for good reason. They have counters for practically every deck.

Strike swiftly.  Strike silently

Through my own trial and error and how others built them, I think I understand them well enough. After all, I got 12th with Oni's in New Jersey so I can't be too far off. Honestly though, that's not out of any special talent on my end. Oni's are a strong deck and have a lot of ways to slow your opponent down during their turn. What I found surprising is people are looking at interesting card options that weren't really thought of as good before their inception to reduce their threat level. Such as Gate of Dragon. Obviously this card doesn't stop Red Lady Oni, Kureha or Oni Boss, Kid Ibuki but it does stop the smaller Oni's from coming to the field.

Oni's are a pretty intricate deck. More intricate than I originally thought they would be. For a while, whenever my friends and I played Onis, the matches would take almost the full time limit because of how slow and sure we had to be playing the deck. One thing I realized was that to play Onis well, you must use their effects to hinder your opponent's progress. To play them effectively, you have to know many aspects of counter timings and play timings to maximize their effects.

Know when to strike and
victory will surely be yours

Let's take an example of what I mean from the finals match at Toronto, Canada. It was between my friend Josh (who was playing Sun Dragons) and Austin Somers (who was playing Oni Assassins)

Josh had Sun Stone, Bal Flame equipped. It was Austin's battle phase and he had some Onis on the field and one had at least one soul. Austin goes to attack Josh and Josh plays Sun Dragon Shield to stop the attack.

Austin counters his shield with Underhanded Means, Sneak Attack to destroy Josh's item. Josh out of habit started to try to counter and remove his item to reduce the damage he takes next time by 2 but he didn't have any counter timing left to use the ability so the item was destroyed.

This honestly blew my mind for a couple reasons. First, I've played against Josh's Sun Dragon deck a lot and I've always just accepted the fact that he will always be able to get Bal Flame's effect off whenever he wanted because it's counter and there's no special requirement to activate its effect. I never thought of the limited counter chain in this game to my own advantage. Sure I've seen people occasionally counter and play Clear Serenity whenever I call a monster or cast a spell but it never really dawned on me why they were doing it.  It's to assure they'll get 3 gauge without the potential of their card being nullified.

If you're good at something,
never do it for free

Second, it set in stone, in my mind, how absolute Underhanded Means, Sneak Attack, Apex of Ambush and Optics Operation, Shrouded Strawcoat can be. If you wait for the right moment, you use the spell at an opportunity when you're opponent thinks they have a crucial card on the field and has ways to keep it alive. One example of this would be playing against Stars. If your opponent has Great Fate, Frozen Stars on the field with Stars on the left and right that can't be destroyed, wait for them to call a monster, cast a spell, etc and counter it with Underhanded Means, Sneak Attack.  Your opponent won't have the counter timing to cast Shield of Knowledge, Tetra Vibrion on Great Fate, Frozen Stars to keep it alive.

One other thing that surprised me is how the deck needs more than 50 cards in the deck so you don't deck out. Executioners and Hyakugan Yamigedo decks need more than 50 cards because of the nature of their play style but I didn't expect it from Onis. Oni Assassin decks seem to need about 55-60 cards in the deck. The deck does a lot of drawing, gauging, milling and searching so the deck needs some buffer from potentially decking out. This works well in Oni's favor since all the Oni Assassin cards are pretty solid.  My deck has 60 cards and I don't feel like I ever get a watered down hand.

To finish this up, I feel a little concerned about the future of how good Oni Assassins will be. Obviously they shouldn't be top tier forever but there's already a lot of cards coming out soon for different decks that either keep cards on the field from being destroyed or prevent cards from being called back from the drop.

I feel that Onis will still be good since they have a lot of flexibility but my concern with that will be my favorite deck: Skull Warriors. The side board cards coming out that prevent cards from being called from the drop will probably bring Onis down a notch or two but Skull Warriors don't have as much flexibility. Sure they have access to Demon Way, Sakurafubuki and Ceremony of Excorcism but they already struggle just to get their board going that spell nullifies/destruction cards won't help them get going in the long run. It's an unfortunate side effect of Onis being a real threat but I can't blame people.