Floodborn Yokai and the New Sisu on Bots Deck in Azurite Sea
Floodborn Yokai has been officially spoiled and he looks broken.
It’s not so much that the card itself is so strong (and it is) – it’s how he combos with the recently revealed Microbots item that makes you really stop and think that perhaps decks like Ruby/Sapphire will simply get stronger after Azurite Sea releases.
That’s a very real possibility that already seemed within reach after they released news about a card called Ready Your Next Bot.
With all of these incredible strategies, it seems fairly safe to say that Ruby/Sapphire is going to be the best deck in format next set. And it’s quite likely it will be the best by a lot.
Yokai – Scientific Supervillain card breakdown
In all honesty, this card is so cool that I want to build an entire deck around just him. Let’s breakdown what makes this ultimate Yokai card so strong and why I’m going to be including him in my Ruby/Sapphire deck next season.
The Shift mechanic
Despite the fact that Shift is a mechanic that often goes unused in the current competitive Lorcana landscape, it remains one of the strongest ones in the game. While many decks will choose to ignore this mechanic in favor of quickly ramping and playing Yokai as an eight cost, using Shift makes him considerably less difficult to play. With ramp at your side (something Sapphire is known for), you can get Yokai into play early on.
To help you out, there are two key Yokai characters you can look to as targets for Shift. The first is your strongest option as you’ll be wanting to play him anyway give his powerful ability: Yokai – Enigmatic Inventor. For more info on what makes this particular card so strong, see my overview of the card.
Your second shift target is less useful. Although in other decks having a vanilla one cost character is great, you don’t need to worry so much about cost in Sapphire decks because early game you will be ramping anyways.
The stats
Apart from having the powerful Shift mechanic like all Floodborn glimmers, Yokai has some pretty impressive stats that make him very difficult to deal with. His strength of six make him hard to be banished at the hands of cards that target low strength characters like Madam Medusa while his insane 10 willpower make him hard to kill for Steel decks.
The abilities
If you thought all of that sounded good, just wait – there’s more. It’s Floodborn Yokai’s abilities that make him stand out in the crowd. For starters, he’s got an insane Nuerotransmitter ability that pairs really well with the other card that was spoiled alongside him: Microbots. This item can be played for free as long as you have your Floodborn Yokai in play.
This means you can whittle away at the strength of opposing characters, making them easy, easy targets for your Madam Medusa and Sisu.
You aren’t limited to the number of Microbots you have in your deck, so you could very quickly whittle opposing character’s strength down to zero. That’s where Yokai’s second ability comes in: Technical Gain. While the most obvious advantage to whittling away a character’s strength is then to make it easier to banish it, first you might want to quest with Yokai as you will draw a card for each character whose strength you lower. Then feel free to banish away!
Ruby’s army of banishment cards await
By pairing Floodborn Yokai with Ruby’s already powerful army of strength-based banishment cards, you unlock a powerful one-way board clear option that will be very hard to stop.
I don’t know about you, but I definitely will be building Ruby/Sapphire around Yokai Scientific Supervillain after Azurite Sea releases. Until then, stay tuned for more Azurite Sea spoilers as we close in on its day of release!
