Deck Dissection: Murakumo Ninja Corps, Sanjou!

Good day everybody, and this is Homura here to bring you another edition of Deck Dissection degozaru! Today we'll cover the clan that not much people are willing to attempt these days - Murakumo degozaru! Hopefully after this article, more people will try and give this deck a shot degozaru! Without further ado (and further 'degozarus'), let begin our dissecting of the Murakumo Ninja Corps deck degozaru!

Murakumo units first appear in the Vanguard manga, being a clan that is used by Yahagi Kyou (instead or Spike Brothers). Different from their Nubatama brethren, which prefer to discard your opponent's hand cards, Murakumo looks more like a traditional ninja, with skills that allow them to summon 'illusions' and vanishing at an instant.

Since their release in Comic Style vol. 1, as well as BT-05, Murakumo received quite a big initial hype, but it slowly faded because Murakumo is not an easy clan to pilot, and not forgetting to mention that they have low power to begin with, causing them to suffer a lot of problems when facing units with 11k power or higher. Before we go further in depth, let's have a look at a sample list:

Grade 0
Stealth Beast, Evil Ferret x1 (FV)
Stealth Beast, Moon Edge x4 (Critical)
Stealth Fae, Yukihime x4 (Heal)
Stealth Fae, Dart Spider x4 (Stand)
Stealth Beast, Cat Rogue x4 (Draw)

Grade 1
Silent Stealth Rogue, Shijimamaru x4
Stealth Beast, Leaves Mirage x3
Stealth Beast, Million Rat x4
Stealth Beast, Turbulence Edge x1
Stealth Beast, Leaf Racoon x2

Grade 2
Stealth Beast, Bloody Mist x4
Stealth Beast, White Mane x3
Stealth Dragon, Cursed Breath x2
Quick Archer, FUSHIMI x2

Grade 3
Dueling Dragon, ZANBAKU x2
Covert Demonic Dragon, Mandalalord x4
Twin Swordsman, MUSASHI x2

This build is the build that I used to play when I still have my own Murakumo deck. The deck is seriously lacking in terms of raw power, but the inclusion of a few cards made the deck into quite a viable deck that can still hold its ground against the majority. Now, let's go into a detailed explanation of the deck.

Grade 0

Evil Ferret is our starter Vanguard. He has a Superior Call skill, giving you a free unit upon riding to G1. His second skill is the more interesting one, allowing you to send him to the bottom of your deck to Superior Call a Murakumo unit into play, then returning it back to your hand at the end of the turn. This is good when you need an attacker or a booster, but you also want to conserve hand cards at the same time. Evil Ferret can initiate a few combos which I'll explain later. Other than that, nothing much interesting about the triggers, since you're only given a set of balanced 4-4-4-4 line up.

Grade 1

4 x Shijimamaru (8k vanilla) and 3x Leaves Mirage (null guard) is quite standard for most decks. Turbulence Edge is your tutor for Mandalalord, where upon hitting a Vanguard with him, you get to check up to 5 cards from your deck, and add a Mandalalord to your hand if you found one, and return the remainder back to the bottom of your deck.

Leaf Racoon is your 10k booster for your Vanguard. The condition to fulfill is quite easy, you just need to have more hand cards than your opponent, which you'll often be if you played the deck correctly. The key card here is Million Rat. This is the most versatile unit in your whole deck, being able to serve as an attacker, booster, and deck thinner. Upon appearing on the field, you can CB1 to search your deck for another Million Rat and Superior Call it, but the called unit has to be returned to the bottom of your deck at the end of your turn. This gives you a temporary attacker/booster when you need to push damage through.

Bear in mind, the 'shadow' that is called out will also have its skill triggered, so it is possible to have 4 Million Rats on the field as long as you can pay the cost.

Grade 2
Bloody Mist is your 10k vanilla, so 4x is quite self-explanatory. White Mane is the clone of Bellycosity Dragon and friends. He's quite precious in the deck as your deck consumes quite a lot of Counterblasts, and a unit to help you recover some of them are always welcomed.

Cursed Breath is the G2 version of Turbulence Edge. Although he's good as a tutor for Mandalalord, but his awful 8k power makes me drop him into 2x. The 'tech' card here is FUSHIMI. FUSHIMI is a 9k G2 with a one-shot ability that triggers when you ride him as the Vanguard. Upon riding, he becomes a Tejas equivalent, gaining the ability to snipe a backrow unit. But the good thing about FUSHIMI compared to Tejas is he is 9k, and he can snipe ANY backrow unit, not only the one same row as him.

Grade 3
The Grade 3s are the main units of your deck. First up we have Mandalalord himself.

Mandalalord is a 11k G3 that gets a power penalty if you're playing a mixed clan deck. The key ability of him is his Persona Blast. By paying a cost of CB1, you can turn a Mandalalord in your hand into a 10k shield, thus negating the liability of G3 of having no shield value. Pretty handy when you needed the extra 10 and you have a CB to spare.

Next up is Dueling Dragon ZANBAKU. In the manga, ZANBAKU has the effect of preventing your opponent to reride his Vanguard, thus making him stuck with his current Vanguard for the rest of the game. Of course for balancing issues, the actual ZANBAKU doesn't have this kind of overpowered skills. Instead, ZANBAKU forces your opponent to discard a card if he wants to ride a new Vanguard on top of his G3. This is good against Cross Riders, where he has to discard a card if he want to hit 13k. Also, being a 11k unit, ZANBAKU is good for defense as well.

The third G3 that I use for my deck is Twin Swordsman MUSASHI. I choose to include him in my build because like I said, Murakumo is terribly lacking in power, hence MUSASHI can help a bit in the offense. MUSASHI is a 9k unit, but can attack for 12k if you have more Rear Guards than your opponent. By having Stand Triggers in your deck, most of the time you'll be aiming for their Rear Guards first. If you feel that you don't really like him, just replace him with more ZANBAKUs.

And now, time for a few mini-combos for the deck:

Evil Ferret + Any Bunshin unit (Million Rat, Stealth Rogue Midnight Crow, Stealth Dragon Void Gelga)

By utilizing Evil Ferret's skill you can instantly spawn a whole field of units (as long as you can pay the CBs). The drawback of them returning to the bottom of your deck is negating because you get to bounce the original copy back to your hand, thus allowing you to 'bunshin' again when you need them. Besides, swapping in a 10k, plus another opportunity to use Evil Ferret's skill again is also a good thing.

Any Bunshin unit


This is a deck thinning trick available by using any of the Bunshin units. First, call out a bunshin unit, activate its skill, call out a copy. By right the copy should go back to the bottom of the deck, but you can activate the skill of the copy you just called to call another one again, and replace the older one with the newer one. Repeat as necessary.

In the end, you'll only have 1 card that's going to go back to the bottom of your deck, and you have successfully removed 3 non-triggers away from your deck. Sometimes this might be considered as wasting your CB, but sometimes you need to do that to thin down your deck.

Unexpectedly this article is quite long, and I think I shouldn't prolong it any longer. In short, Murakumo is a very skill-based clan to pilot as they can't go full-aggro. Instead, they have to play in a reactive manner, deploying your units based on the situation of the battlefield. For first-timers, Murakumo will cause quite some headaches for them. Even a skilled player will have some problems in piloting this deck, but if you like challenges, go ahead and give this a shot!