LoR Keypage Evaluation

Introduction

I play this game way too much so I'm ranking all the endgame key pages based on how I perceive their power level in terms of their overall and peak performance. I'm judging key pages as equippable key pages and not as attribution fodder, which deserves its own tier list. I'm judging these pages based off their performance in the mid- and endgame vanilla base game only (Star of the City + Impuritas Civitatis). The rankings within a tier are not ordered.

This was originally supposed to be a tier list, but this "one day project" ended up spanning several months so f*ck me I guess. I'm not making images for each deck. There's too many decks, and I'm burnt out.

Black Silence

You basically never get a chance to use him: you get to play Black Silence in two 1v1s vs Olivier and Argalia. Then Roland is locked out of most of Ensemble, Black Silence, Keter Realization, and even Distorted Ensemble. That's basically the entire endgame! And when you finally do get to play him again, Baral smashes your skull in on turn 1 with a 30-30 flat roll. Since Roland is locked to Keter floor, you also don't get EGO until you beat the game.

Black Silence's cards and passives are okay overall, I guess? Only 3 draw and 3 light restores (down from my personal recommendation of 5 draw and 4 light restores) means that Roland's really hurting for econ at emo 5. Wheels Industry and Crystal Atelier are some of the best clashers in the game, but his other cards aren't particularly noteworthy. Even Durandal is a Bi Xi sidegrade but worse. The +2 on every third page is nice, but most of the time it's comparable to Fervor + A Fighter that Never Retreats.

You can't attribute against Olivier, but vs Argalia something like:

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/Y--BNh62D/

...or some variation of this should work.

When non-solo (for whatever reason), you can go something like this to alleviate Black Silence's poor emo 5 econ:

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/Y--yZRi4L/

Red Mist

A solid and easy-to-use keypage that revolves around one simple game plan: deal a lot of damage, and snowball from there:

• Upstanding Slash starts off as a 2-cost with rolls comparable to Baleful Brand, Eliminate, and Shock Round, but if you manage to snowball, you get 1 draw plus cost reduction, eventually putting all your Upstanding Slashes to 0-cost (assuming you're not running Singleton).
• Spear is the exact same, though its rolls are more akin to Feint (significantly worse base rolls, but scale noticably better off strenght).
• Level Slash is similar, but applies bleed and restores light instead of drawing. At the start of an act, it's effectively a restore 0; as it gets cost-reduced, it becomes a 0-cost restore 2. The bleed application grants synergy with the Vampirism abno page. Generally speaking, however, Level Slash should be paired with a strategy that revolves more heavily around EGO usage.
• Focus Spirit provides easy access to strength, letting you reach your damage thresholds more easily.
• Onrush is fun but clunky in the majority of scenarios, but has a niche usecase in Gebura realization and low-turn strategies
• Great Split Vertical is what Onrush wants to be. Auto-wins one clash and destroys another combat page, mitigating the disadvantage somewhat of using high-cost single target EGO pages
• Manifest Ego is a free full stagger restore at emo 4. Also restores 6 light.
• Great Split Horizontal is the greatest-rolling playerside mass summation in the entire game.
• Cannot use floor EGOs...but with GSV and GSH, who needs 'em?

Red Mist's feast-or-famine snowballing nature means she often demands resources from her team (if she has one), which usually ends up with her holding all the abno pages.

Myo's Prowess is Red Mist's most popular attribution, but she also goes well with other genericly strong passives such as Health Hauler, Electric Shock, and Fervor. Red Mist can skimp on Mind Hauler due to Manifest Ego and Shell, though it's still a great tool for early survivability. Instead of Health Hauler, Red Mist can also take Deep Wound and rely on Vampirism for healing. Another alternate option is self-smoke for bigger damage numbers.

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/CR-hx8XCScoIidJe-k3mlU/ caption=Offensive Position + Deep Wound over double Haulers also okay

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/CR-pxgtyn2NURfM3-o3PQS/ caption=Focus Spirit is flexible. Everspinning Gearwheel over Inhale Smoke also okay

If going true solo, Red Mist really enjoys Lone Fixer, Claws of Savagery, Absorption, and Instincts. If going untrue solo, Red Mist still enjoys all of those, but add Remembrance, Kizuna/Extreme Fatigue (either of em), and Mountain of Corpses. In both cases, she wants more counter dice to better deal with everything that's hitting her.

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/CR-haRbmy6MIzOPy-ME_I/ caption=Remembrance + Kizuna/Extreme Fatigue (3) also okay, but only for untrue solo.

You may have noticed that all these Red Mist decks look kinda same-y. Red Mist is a pretty one-note key page: she can only effectively do one thing, which is dealing a bunch of damage by herself through brute force. While she is quite strong, unfortunately she cannot perform the same bullsh*t that the top tier key pages can perform. Also, she's locked to the Floor of Language.

Emma

The king of Urban Nightmare with two innate power passives, Emma falls off hard in Star of the City and never comes back due to the sheer lack of blunt support (until Duel I guess), a health/stagger statline not well-suited for Star of the City receptions, and the fact that everyone in SotC and above resists blunt for whatever reason.

Probably still better than Nemo though. +2 power is respectable, even if it's on blunt dice.

Lowell

A generic Liu keypage with A Fighter that Never Retreats and Forming Storm + Raging Storm Harm.

A Fighter that Never Retreats is a 2-cost Fervor sidegrade if you play aggressively and emo up every turn. But regardless of the passive's strength, if you want it, attribute it.

The net cost of Forming Storm + Raging Storm Harm is the same as Raging Storm Love. But Forming Storm is awkward to use; it requires a do-nothing turn for setup, and that do-nothing turn has to occur on turn 2 or later. Furthermore, you can't bank Raging Storm Harm in the same way you can bank Pinpoint Breakthrough; you gotta use it or lose it.

Cecil

A generic Liu keypage with Firm as a Great Mountain and the exclusive Tieshaokan.

The passive is 3-cost. It's pretty good as it can heal ~50 HP throughout a reception. But regardless of the passive's strength, if you want it, attribute it.

Tieshaokan, Cecil's exclusive (shared with Mei), has a weak first die with a tight roll followed by a powerful second die. The tight roll helps with emotion generation, especially as it only has two dice. Tieshaokan also has a pierce counter that applies a lot of burn. It's a decent exclusive that might be worth picking up over or alongside Prod the Weakness, though be warned that the first die is likely going to lose a lot of clashes.

Mei

Same as Cecil except instead of Firm as a Great Mountain, it's Remain Vigilant in Peace.

Boris

A Speed 1 keypage with Grit and that's it. You can attribute Grit away.

Discipline is one of the few playerside powernull cards in the game, and also Discipline effectively has four offensive dice. The powernull sort of griefs the card: multi-dice cards scale very well with power, except you can't boost this card's power without resulting to Brawl. Discipline is still a great card though, especially since the last three dice are almost guarenteed to hit.

Katriel

Thumb Soldato with Empowered First Shot.

Denis

Thumb Soldato with Additional Supplies.

Thumb Soldato

A ranged page that gets access to the full arsenel of Thumb combat pages, of which are powerful, clash well, and apply a ton of paralysis, disarm, and burn for basically free, as well as draw economy from discarding generated ammunition plus draw on Reload and Shock Round. A 2-cost 6-11 is no joke (Shock Round is bugged and only provides +1 power at most, but it's still really good)

Sample deck:

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/CD-dGF3m3lJnCpSA-kfrj8/

Martina

Tempermental Fervor sidegrades that requires constant Charge manipulation, slightly extra stagger damage, and Uncanny Strike.

She shares most the same weaknesses that Bada and Nemo have: Speed 1, frailish, and locked into charge. But what sets her apart is that her kit is geared towards staggering: Uncanny Strike can do a whopping 18 stagger damage on a single hit, in addition to Heavy-hearted Forte.

I still don't think Martina is any good because self-smoke with Sooty Thwak can also reach these numbers and with less commitment (2-cost passive, Inhale Smoke, any keypage).

Bada

Tempermental Fervor sidegrades that requires constant Charge manipulation, occasional protection, and Devastating Thrash.

6-10 6-10 7-11 are honestly pretty respectable rolls, and 4 charge isn't exactly difficult to nab. But like Nemo:

• Speed 1
• Kinda frail, even with the 1 Protection (beaten out by Dong-hwan the Grade 1 Fixer)
• Locked into charge

Which cuts into his usability. And his exclusive isn't good enough for one or three copies to push him beyond his limitations.

I just don't like charge spenders in general because I feel like you can accomplish the same thing with a Singleton engine except easier. Energy Conversion is amazing for compressing your light economy in the event that your deck slots are filled up, but most keypages don't need to play a large variety of combat pages.

Rudolph

The long-ranged attacker of R Corp who's actually arguably better just when brawlin' it melee. Speed I, 4 starting light, and a fairly unique Fervor sidegrade in Reindeer Treatment: it starts at +0, but upon taking enough damage, goes up to +2. His exclusive passive, Survivor, is also very strange: it's technically the most cost-efficient power passive in the game, but it's practically impossible to utilize in most cases since getting staggered generally leads shortly to death. For the most part, you can't rely on this passive to give you power. Brainwave Charge-focusing Antlers grants a little bit of extra stagger damage if you go charge, which is nice.

The reindeers' exclusive, Mind Whip, is okay I guess. I consider it a Vapour sidegrade that neither draws nor applies smoke.

Mind Crush is a fairly powerful mass summation usable at 20 charge. It's roughly on-par with Feral Knives.

Rudolph's power is more difficult to unlock than Myo's, but the mass summation alone makes him a pretty solid pick overall. A deck for Rudolph would probably look something like this:

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/CV-iCNDWpUCvKXDE-lEe8s/ https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/CV-iCNDViy0tl~FU-Qilh9/

Harold

Speed 3, 4 starting light, Four Trigrams, All for Hana, and access to True Trigram Formation. She might be boring and overshadowed by her colleague Olivier, but she's still a pretty solid keypage. All for Hana + Endurance Trigram lets her choose to not die for a scene.

Not much to say here other than run something generically good. Draw Trigram + True Trigram Formation is like a mini-Will of the Prescript btw.

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/Co-q52_Gyy6qhMQq-k3rNB/

Mirinae

Mirinae is entirely defined by her passive Hana for All, which duplicates strength, endurance, protection, and stagger protection gained from combat pages to a random ally. Due to the passive's high cost, as well as its selfless nature, it's generally infeasible to attribute this on anyone other than Mirinae, so she's uniquely positioned to act as an offensive support buffer on the team.

For generalist usage, she has one practical build with some variation:

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/Cn-rZYxFehhZvuU9-U5KCAs/ caption=All passives are flexible. Other options include, but are not limited to, Nuovo Fabric, Grit, Puppet Strings, Mind Hauler, Fervor, Firm as a Great Mountain

One may consider Observe over Augury Kick if they fear they cannot land hits (this is usually not a concern, as 7-12 is a fairly high base roll). One may additionally choose to swap out x1 Ominous Power for x1 True Trigram Formation. This inclusion helps Mirinae defend against both mass-individuals and mass-summations, as both Augury Kick and Brace Up tend to be poor mass defenders.

The effect of +3 power is insane, and practically guarentees that the random recipient of this buff will win every clash they engage in that turn. To illustrate, let's look at Frontal Assault. Its 2-7 1-2 rolls are more or less in line with its status as a 0-cost light restore. However, +3 power turns these rolls into a 5-10 4-5...comparable to Shock Round's unboosted 5-10 5-7! And this is before any additional power bonuses from the recipient!

Olivier

All of the upsides of Harold, plus his unique passive Twelve Fixers.

This passive is insane. +2 minroll is roughly equivalent to +1 flat power in terms of probability, but has two immensely beneficial upsides compared to flat power:

• Not affected by powernull
• Min/maxrolls more likely for emotion gain

As a result, Olivier is the ultimate generalist, performing at a level of consistency that no other keypage in the game can match. Olivier can run pretty much every standard deck under any condition and still be able to step up and run with it. Additionally, his restricted roll ranges mean he doesn't even need to clash as much as other key pages do in order to generate enough emotion coins to level up. This may be a downside if you've brought a build where managing emotion level is crucial, but a huge upside in builds where you want to push emotion level as fast as possible.

I'm not going to list the Rapid Gashes and Duel builds, but the Singleton Olivier builds would look something like this:

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/Cp-q526iamPaWYry-k3sn9/

I'm a big fan of this emo 5 Discard loop deck myself:

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/Cp-rRdOC2DBTYNH9-k3nYM/ caption=You can take Field mods over 333...1973 if you prefer.

And I've saved the absolute best for last: Weight of Sin Olivier:

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/Cp-nNHNI~AOWFCgR-0VymO/

As implied by the name, Weight of Sin is mandatory. Big Eyes is super helpful but not required. In this deck you basically want to prioritize survivability passives over power as you'll be constantly activating Weight of Sin's effect for massive amounts of strength and endurance every scene.

<todo: screenshot>

Eileen

Yae sidegrade.

Pros:

• 4 starting light and Speed 3, allowing her to use cards like Everspinning Gearwheel on turn 1 as well as cycle better at emo 5
• More consistent power from Masterful Smoker compared to Madness and Smoke Overflow
• More consistent damage in Meat Gear compared to Excess Supply

Cons

• Thought Gear: Indoctrinate kinda sucks as a mass. It trades power for utility, except that utility can easily be offset by running good economy on individual decks
• No Exhale Smoke, but by this point you have Gearwheel so you're okay
• Lower highs compared to Yae; Masterful Smoker doesn't offer as much potential power as Madness, and Meat Gear not as much damage as Excess Supply

A sample deck looks like this:

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/Cs-smEFZOnu_wDCu-MBmI/

Greta

A 4-light, Speed 3 keypage with Prep Up the Main Dish and Tackle Mount.

Prep Up the Main Dish is an interesting Fervor sidegrade that's slightly overcosted (5 rather than 4), grants slightly more power (1-2 instead of flat 1), and requires bleed application on the target. Due to this precondition, Greta naturally gravitates towards single-target fights where managing bleed application is easier.

Tackle Mount is one of the only four playerside pages that destroys all of the opponent's dice (the other three being Disposal, Furioso, and The Forgotten), giving Greta a niche spot in speedrunning strategies where this mechanic may be useful. Among these options, only Disposal and Tackle Mount are possible to play on turn 2: Disposal requires x2 Golden Opportunities against two triple-offense pages and win every clash. Tackle Mount merely requires drawing into Tackle Mount and Field Mods, and then finding a way to level up emotion.

If you're not planning on taking advantage of this niche strategy, it's hard to place Greta as 6 light cost on Tackle Mount makes it hard to recover from economically afterwards unless you emo level up.

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/Ct-vruDwP9xmPug6-BdT90pp/

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/Ct-vrziuZOnStaE9-yOKwou/

Bremen

A 4-light, Speed 3 keypage with Neigh~! Woof-woof! Bawk! and Chorus at the Climax.

Their unique passive is something alright. It doesn't give any power, but it sort of acts as Mind Hauler + Electric Shock. Which is nice, guess.

Chorus at the Climax on the other hand is a powerful 6-cost mass individual that inflicts crippling debuffs on the next scene. It's pretty solid. In terms of raw damage it still falls short in comparison to other mass individuals like Raging Storm Love, Unending Thirst, and Crescendo, but the setup it provides on the next turn can result in mass carnage for all involved.

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/Cu-v1DHaIWs6AL5y-kbjor/

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/Cu-v1Dc44RfOwDK9-UdUPYc/

Jae-heon

A 4-light, Speed 3 keypage with Puppet Strings and Straining Strings.

Puppet Strings is a strong good passive for giving a teammate some survivability and that's it.

In comparison to Chorus at the Climax, Straining Strings is more defensively oriented and doesn't really set up anything at all for the next turn. It heals the Puppet Strings recipient, which is nice.

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/Cx-vSkj8B0w~QUty-kbjor/

You can Clone Puppet Strings so that Straining Strings heals everyone on your team. That's like, a 6-cost Pentinence. This deck is really bad btw because sometimes you can get unlucky and not be able to set this up at all, since Puppet Strings is a zero-cost card and Clone hits a random highest-cost page. But it's funny. Exhausting Straining Strings, 333...1974, and Field Mods makes the deck more consistent. Use Ominous Power before cloning or else you might clone Ominous Power. Cloning Clone is fine, but Cloning Brace Up is not.

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/Cx-vU_L7gfr~Ula1-qWdUs/

Pluto

Contracts. They're really good if you build around them, actually, since 2 of your decks can get away with packing very little light economy:

1. Field Mods and Easygoing Breather are likely your best options for activating Liberty contract. Red Mist's 2-costs and Opening Ceremony also work. You could also do Rapid Gashes, though there's not much point in Liberty if you're doing that. Anyways, Liberty is pretty strong and you can shove pretty much any 3-cost you want into a deck like this. Will of the City is super strong because it can cost-reduce to a 0-cost restore 3.
2. Light contract is even easier to activate (it's basically free) but you do need to spend everything. You can use combat pages with counter dice in order to spend light even if the page ultimately doesn't get used. This can help you not die to Light Contract. Keep in mind that staggering and killing restore 1 light each (this happens mid-scene), so avoid using masses as you may suddenly find yourself without a health bar for no reason. Light contract users really appreciate Health Haulers.
3. Evade dice are really nice for Swiftness contract I guess. I don't think this contract is impactful, positively nor negatively.
4. Might contract is ridiculously easy to proc: Offensive Position procs Might contract in 1 turn since there's no limitation to where the Strength comes from. Nikolai's Commander passive also works. In terms of deckbuilding though, this is probably one of the most restrictive. You're probably running Ominbrace Duel, Mirinae without True Trigram Formation, Burning Flash, or some weird Rudolph deck that looks like this? Self-stagger to proc Survivor constantly. https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/CV-iDAOYa31XIv5K-mh5mC/
5. Amplification Contract is f*ckin' awful, I'm sorry to say. Even if you try to build a deck with a wide spread, often you'll find yourself playing 3 or 4 cards a scene at most. This hurts a lot as some decks and playstyles rely on using econ cards for DPS. Aim to build around not activating Amp Contract by excluding all of a certain cost from your deck. I like to exclude 2-costs since I can just run a standard Singleton deck. Ominbrace also works. Amp will stick around and continue clogging hand though, which is annoying but not too terrible.

Argalia

Hot take: I don't think this guy is very good at all. Argalia's gimmick is Resonance, which conditionally provides +2 power and easy economy. I don't really think the economy is all that special; Singleton and Ominbrace does the exact same thing already. And minus his masses and Trails of Blue, I feel like there's no actual reason to play around Resonance. Resonant Scythe rolls insanely well under Resonance, admittedly.

Resonance also has anti-synergy with Myongest.

Temptuous Danza is probably the most consistent way to start activating Resonance. At 4 Vibration, you have a 1/3 chance per speed dice to roll that value.

Build that plays towards Resonance:

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/Cq-u~C4BtI11D9XN-G0Yim/

Build that doesn't use Resonance (spoiler alert: it's Singleton):

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/Cq-sXTcDZxiupONy-kbjor/

Clone Crescendo build (meme deck):

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/Cq-u8YiedsfPu3vN-N3gD8/

A Church of Gears Worshipper

This thing doesn't even have Speed. You need to spend 4 attribution points minimum just to make this page usable.

The ONLY reason why this might be a good thing is so that you can attribute Yujin's Speed 2 passive onto this for 3 speed dice right off the bat. There's no point in doing this outside of disgustingly specific niche challenges because you still only have 3 starting light. You probably can't even use all those speed dice.

Nemo

Tempermental Fervor sidegrades that requires constant Charge manipulation as well as an Unrelenting sidegrade. Energy Beam provides a solid option against strong first-die and strong second-die pages, but you know what else can respond to those pages? For strong first-die, leading blocks such as Absorb Impact are easier to use, cost less, and mitigate the damage; for strong second-die, you can do something similarly with Sturdy Defense which also draws cards. Nemo is locked into a charge-spend build, and doesn't offer much payoff in return.

For the most part, Emergency Resuscitation Protocol is a 5-cost Unrelenting that spends all charge and occasionally leaves you above the Unrelenting threshold when you finally unstagger. ERP is better than Unrelenting in decks where you have a lot of stagger restores (in the form of evade dice, Mind Hauler, or Immediate Repairs), and thus don't get staggered in the first place.

There is one fight that ERP can absolutely screw you over, and that's against the Red Mist. ERP can put Nemo in a situation where he's a free punching bag for Red Mist to reach her damage thresholds and snowball out of control. Unrelenting, on the other hand, reduces damage by 25, which impedes Red Mist's snowballing mechanics.

A Nemo deck probably looks something like this:

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/CI-d83I~ixiDNjmK-G0PTg/

Chun

A generic Liu keypage with Furious Fire Rendering the Skies and the exclusive Flaming Dragon Fist.

The passive is 3-cost. I think this passive is not good because the burn boost is RNG and breaks even with Flaring Brand even in the best-case scenario. Regardless of the passive's strength, if you want it, attribute it.

Flaming Dragon Fist, Chun's exclusive (shared with Miris), has the greatest playerside second die in the game. It's fun, but no more impactful than Fervid Emotions. Anecdotally, FDF's high cost and low emotion generation usually results in awkward next turns.

Miris

A generic Liu keypage with Hugging Fire, Sitting Brushwood and Flaming Dragon Fist.

See Chun's entry. Miris has the same rating for essentially the same reasons. I think Hugging Fire Sitting on Brushwood is interesting since only one member on the team needs to attribute this. But except in possibly some unknown niche strategy where the extra stagger matters, I think I'd rather just take +1 from Offensive Position.

Irina

No intrinsic power, and her exclusive mass attack is difficult to obtain and plan around. Her light restoration passive should never affect gameplay if she's given a deck with a proper econ setup, and the restoration is little to even attempt running a deck without a proper econ setup. Multi-party compensation is likewise too inconsistent to be worth building around. At least she has Speed 3, and the debuff removal is nice if it ever manages to matter.

There's a funny thing you can try with Yujin's Kizuna to activate a turn 2 mass, but this is higher risk, lower reward than just running Xiao:

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/Cg-k_F1f6nc6JCo9-qcg9vo/

<todo: screenshot>

And finally, you can (eventually) create a constant light restoration engine for your entire team with Discard Multi-Party compensation. However, even when paired with light-hungry builds such as Binah, I still don't consider the amount of setup required to get this running worth the payoff. Especially since you can somewhat rely on emo level up for light restores until emo 5, and it's not demanding to include and play light restoration in your decks.

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/Cg-pIOSBY1GWG6q2-kXaZ7/

Yujin

+1 universal power right from the get-go with no drawbacks is pretty good. Unfortunately, that's basically her only passive without a real drawback. The broken speed die is really rough for her as it always takes away what would have been her fastest die. Deflect Assault mitigates this weakness somewhat, but not much. This, combined with her Urban Nightmare-tier fragility, means that she relies on her team to redirect attacks away from her for survivability, which is not always possible.

Despite these shortcomings, her Overbreathing passive does have one niche usage that lets her be usable in SotC and above: as the majority of EGO pages are 4 light or above, she is really good at taking advantage of the light restore to cycle EGO spam. On floors with powerful EGO such as Malkuth, Yesod, and Hokma, she can do a lot of work.

She works best with Rapid Gashes, which still procs Overbreathing, giving her plenty of room to play EGO turn after turn while still dealing a bunch of damage. Given enough healing (i.e. Health Hauler), she can gain so much health that she wouldn't have otherwise, mitigating her naturally subpar resistances.

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/Bk-jQoH6FFyhspkl-xqoJs/

Dedicated Boundary of Death is bad but funny, so of course it gets an honorable mention:

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/Bk-TqK3d_OWq5aY2-G0tpZ/

Hubert

Locked Potential is a slightly worse Fervor sidegrade. He also has Speed 1, but 4 starting light. Decapitation is a pretty funny exclusive, though I think I'd rather just take Emotional Turbulence, Double-Edged Rencounter, or Duel instead as it's held back by its Blade Unlocked quest. Breaking Pressure is underwhelming.

Since I don't consider his exclusive worth running, there's no reason to use Hubert over Esther except in Ensemble. Although not technically mandatory, you're kind of railroaded into a Singleton build due to Locked Potential.

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/CN-f1iL6ZKPCFZ1a-G0Yim/

Gloria

Same as Hubert, except Easygoing Breather is somewhat better due to improving econ, and Eradication is worse due to its awful minroll and meh highroll; 12-23 is the second-worst playerside mass summation in the game (behind Tiphereth's Nihil). Eradication is also gated by both light and Blade Unlocked.

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/CO-flyymMr6Mjdta-G0Yim/

Myo

A fast-hitting 4-light keypage where she can grab up to +5 conditional power from Myo's Prowess, plus +1 again from Savage Mode. Feral Knives is also a very powerful combat page, though it's locked behind both Savage Mode and 20 charge. The Savage Mode quest isn't too bad as the opportunity cost to play it on turns 1 or 2 is not high, but it still means no juicy turn 3 Feral Knives. This is a minor point though as you usually don't care about rushing your mass attack.

Myo has a few downsides:

• Speed I limits her action economy at Emo 5 to only three speed dice
• Myo only has three passive slots, effectively "down" 1 or 2 passives compared to other builds
• Feral Knives heavily incentivizes her into charge-based builds

Myo's Prowess passive is often overlooked as a Fervor sidegrade. Even without being paired with The Strongest, you're still likely to gain 1 or 2 power per speed die, especially since Rabbit Augmentation and Compressed Charge-Stimulated Muscleforce grant bonus Haste for almost free.

Myo's Prowess pairs well with The Strongest and Maximum Crash, though due to her limited passive slots, slotting in both sacrifices her ability to equip survivability passives.

A typical Myo build would look something like this:

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/CT-jm9LeZBZ9ogg0-MI5R/

Thanks to Myo's Prowess, you can use cards that grant haste as an effective +1 power. For something more chargeless (which I don't recommend), try something like this:

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/CT-kdVPfhD5MtJvJ-Fat2/

Oh and also she gets Concentrated Fire and Pinpoint Shot which is cool I guess.

Maxim

Although the Rhinos are generally seen as "tank" key pages, generally speaking you should avoid treating them as one. The Rhino bonuses give boosts to Endurance and Protection, but the real treat is his passive Maximum Crash. A 50% damage bonus is equivalent to 10 stacks of self-Smoke plus Puffy Brume and Sooty Thwak; naturally, Maxim really wants to rush 20 charge.

Maxim gets access to Rhino Ram and Ground Crash. Rhino Ram is a Concentration sidegrade, but costs 1 more light. Ground Crash is a 23-32 mass summation whose damage gets boosted by Maximum Crash. However, it expends all charge, so you'll be looking to rebuild your charge afterwards. Since Maxim only has Speed 1, this is kinda annoying to do, actually.

Maxim also has 4 starting light, which is pretty nice and lets him use Rhino Ram turn 1 if he wants.

A typical Maxim deck would look like this.

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/CU-iJq2S8_iT3jYE-QvoLx/

There is this cheese strat for Pluto involving Maxim that's cool:

<todo: link https://youtu.be/_iAh8D0mebs>

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/CU-ihSPwCrSTwgox-Yht08/

Philip (Ensemble)

+1 generic power just from touching someone that can even activate mid-combat is pretty good. Sadly, his lack of attribution slots restrict his flexibility, and it's hard to justify running Philip over those in the "good" tier.

Philip's decent as a generalist, I guess. Slap on Singleton, Fervor, haulers, y'know the deal. I don't even want to bring up the deck because you already know it.

However, building around his exclusives turn him into a single-die maniac. Rekindled Strike is the second-strongest first-die 3-cost in the game (behind Onrush) that addtionally activates his Overheat passive and lowers the cost of Blazing Strike. Repeated use of Rekindled Strike makes Blazing Strike an attractive inclusion:

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/Cr-ZM4iFvR87pAH9-klzOl/

Lastly, there's this weird P Spacebar Tiphxodia build specifically for Oswald that uses Philip, applying burn in order to accelerate the fight progress:

<todo: link video>

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/Cr-mN_ne8txw0SAs-PHrl/

Tanya

Guts grants Tanya an extra health bar. However, even with Guts, in high-damage receptions such as DEnsemble, Tanya is still susceptible to getting both health bars bursted down in a single scene. So Guts is effectively a sidegrade to Immediate Repairs and/or Unrelenting. Beyond Guts and Nuovo Fabric, Tanya is completely passiveless.

Her exclusives on the other hand are powerful if you can play them. Due to their high cost, however, they require buildaround in order to see good use:

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/Cw-tXgtKo2SDMwmd-B4fEOcy/

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/Cw-vc3ZYLSD32eZ9-BsWIobY/

Oswald

Splendid Performance is an inflexible Fervor sidegrade that really only gets to benefit Rapid Gashes. So Oswald is stuck on Rapid Gashes duty.

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/Cv-jQoH0lMujA_lF-k3pVu/

(Take x3 Will of the City over Brace Ups + 333...1974 if no Bottom Deal)

There's probably a Funny Prank build for Climax floating around somewhere at least, but I haven't been able to find one that I'm satisfied with yet.

Bamboo Hatted Kim

His innate +2 slash power and Singular Slash alongside his UN-tier frailty and lack of passive slots leave Kim in an inflexible place where he can only effectively run either Burning Flash or Rapid Gashes in the late game.

Burning Flash is weak against mass defense and obligates Kim into taking Bottom Deal among one of his three passive slots...but hey, 2-cost 10-14 10-14. Works with Pluto's Might Contract also.

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/B8-hSYc7mtxkGbLZ-KuCw/

Kim Rapid Gashes is somewhat worse than Rapid Gashes on Oswald, but admittedly not by much. Due to his lack of passive attribution slots, it's hard to run the Bottom Deal variant of Rapid Gashes.

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/B8-jQoH5Vv~xG3gO-Zcky/

The Udjat

They're really tanky. That's...that's kinda it. They're good at tanking hits.

Due to this tankiness, they're good for generating negative emotion coins for Tiphxodia, Mountain of Corpses, and other abno page buildarounds that involve negative emotions:

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/Cf-CV6nD8IXO1nwK-0L8P9/

You can also bring three of them to bore Kali to death and deny her damage thresholds. In this case, you may want to drop Opportunity Spotted for some tankier cards and economy, like Sturdy Defense and Puppet Blockade:

<todo: video>

Bayard

Bayard's whole gimmick is that he only gets to take actions every other turn via Ready Position. That should set off alarm bells immediately.

But he's actually insanely good once he gets his position ready. Nabbing +7 strength every other turn is worth the cost of not being able to move. Pinpoint Breakthrough's self-stagger can be prevented entirely via Grit, and stagger recovered via Mirage.

The biggest consequence of only moving every other turn is that he drags team emotion level, delaying potential powerspikes from abno pages. This feels especially bad when one of your teammates is running an abno-reliant build.

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/Ck-qvK8lI~erpOdy-uY1tYV/

(Other passive options include, but are not limited to, Health Hauler, Battle Ready, Electric Shock, A Fighter That Never Retreats.)

There's also a Survivor build that wants Bayard to stack to +5 strength through continuous self-stagger; I'm not a fan of this as the same downsides of the Mirage-Grit build are accentuated even further. On the plus side, the combat page list is pretty much the same.

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/Ck-qvK8lI~erpOdy-BKTP1Pk/

On both builds, you can drop Overcharge or Moulinet for Field Mods to thin your deck and thus pick up Ready Position more consistently.

Kalo

Self-sustainable draw with Bottom Deal, solid clashing, healing from Best Choice, and massive paralysis/disarm infliction through ammunition. Kalo only has one build but it's a good one. He does run into some light issues at emo 5, but this is still managable with Stacking the Deck along with smart cycling.

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/CE-dGF3m3lJnCpSA-ChEz6yN/

Not much to say other than that the Thumb are strong offensive generalists that rivals Singleton in power.

Esther

Same exact comments as Hubert and Gloria, but with three major differences:

1. Speed 3 instead of Speed 1
2. His exclusive, Castigation, kinda sucks (IMO)
3. His passive Raging Torrent is very strong. The extra draw lets you play more aggressively during the first few scenes of a reception, letting you more aggressively lean on clashing with 3-costs and foregoing draw for a bit. You could always attribute this away though.

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/CM-ftqfQS7EnUbxa-G0Yim/

Apparently there's a way to stack Matchlight on Castigation for funny numbers, but no reception will let you do that except maybe Finn's.

Yan

Messenger is a strong supportive passive. Distorted Yan (passive) rarely comes into play as Yan doesn't particularly have any abno buildarounds, let alone negative abno buildarounds.

His strength comes from his unique exclusives. Baleful Brand is a strong 3-cost clasher and one of the few playerside Erosion applications in the game, with Erosion being a better Fragile (which is already a strong debuff). Lock is awkward. Distorted Blade is a strong mass summation that also applies Erosion, but because it's a 7-cost, Distorted Blade is only playable at emo 3 and above.

A generalist Yan deck would look something like this:

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/CZ-meiK9sZmmlQia-kbjor/

You can also infinitely loop Distorted Blade using a build that's similar to Tanya. Duel used to help build emo level. Note that, if you don't want to run Margin, you should use Steel Knuckles after Brace Up or else you will discard Steel Knuckles's draw. Yes, that's how draw works. No, I didn't believe it at first either.

https://tiphereth.zasz.su/u/decks/CZ-meVWFddhoJWCd-BLTlXD/

Finally, there's Magic Trick DBlade. To be frank, I think this build sucks because it's really clunky to use before team emotion 5. The only time you can reasonably reach this build is Black Silence probably, and even then Yan is busy trying to get his combo going during the roughest part of the reception (phase 1). Great for YouTube montages. Not so much for anything else.