Deck Analysis: Link Joker Messiah.

Link Jokers, for the majority of season 3, had little rivalry in how well it's mechanic disrupted all clans, despite being weak to retire. It could make any deck only be able to have an 11-14k vanguard attack every turn if your opponent didn't break ride, or maybe a 21-24k of they did. 

Then Season 4 came around, with the new "Legion" Mechanic, which made the both abilities faster to activate and vanguards hit harder Because of this, and h the small amount of pluses Link Joker could even get, Link Joker became less relevant, even with their legion support which made locking easier. Link Joker was at a crossroads: 

Unable to slow the opponent down further, but that still wasn't enough, The only solution was to speed up. The being of the results of this effort was Star-Vader, Venom Dancer.

 With it's ability to stand a rearguard for every locked rearguard after it attacked, It made Link Joker more aggressive while keeping your opponent locked. Of course, Venom Dancer was far from perfect: It couldn't plus and was easily disrupted by Lock and Retire. Today I am talking about Venom Dancer's successor: Messiah, and some notable cards for the deck.   

First lets talk about one of the most essential cards of the deck, and the boss monster of the deck, Alter Ego Messiah 

  

Alter Ego Messiah is simply put, Chaos Breaker 2.0. His Generation Break 2 Skill allows the user to plus whenever Alter Ego has no stride on top of him, and a card Unlocks for a soulblast, Whilst locking an opponents rearguard ,one of your own and powering up for a counterblast.Why would you want to lock one of your own rearguards? Messiah does something new with locks: It can literally unlock cards to fuel a weapon. The main one being our next card, Genesis Dragon, Amnesty Messiah.

I regret forgetting Amnesty, He would be on my top ten G-Units if I were to remake it. Amnesty Messiah may seem a MUCH worse (and much more situation) Saint-Blow at first, but he is actually an incredibly powerful and versatile weapon for Messiah. First off, It makes fighting all other Link Joker decks a breeze, after all what's the point of locking a deck that can unlock itself in an instant. Secondly, It can be used as a first stride version of Saint-Blow, if you have strode over Alter Ego Messiah,  used his skill and have a Gravity Well Lady Battler on the field. This is one of quite a few combos with this card that you can do. It may cost 2 counterblasts to do that, but the cards later on makes that a little bit cheaper and worth the cost.


Nebula Dragon, Big Crunch dragon is a simple but effective card. Counterblast 1-Persona Flip, choose one of your opponents rearguard, lock all rearguards in that rearguard's column and then omega lock it. It gives Messiah the ability to eliminate a problem column from the game for two turns, and so this card can be used to shut down Destroyer and Laurel, two extremely powerful and fast cards, for two turns. That and your opponent not having a column will hurt them greatly.

Dark Metal Chameleon can make Alter Ego Messiah's Locks free. His skill is GB1 When he is unlocked, Counter Charge (Unflip a Damage, for those that didn't know), And since he also has resist, he cannot be retired by many units. This can backfire if your opponent uses Diablo, however, so be careful.

Awaking Messiah is a brilliant card. It allows the deck to behave more like Venom Dancer. His skill being GB1 When unlocked stand another of your own rearguard and give it 2k. With the ruling that Unlocked cards go to stand, that can make Awaking Messiah behave as a Pseudo Magnum Assault.

Gravity Well Lady Battler is another essential card. It skill is GB1 Lock another of your own RG this unit gains 4000 power. This allows Lady Battler to enable further combos in the deck using White Dwarf Lady Batter, Dark Metal Chameleon and Awaking Messiah.

White Dwarf Lady Battler is another Source of Unlocking in the deck. It's skill is GB1 when this unit boosts, you may unlock a card, if you do boosted unit gains 4000 power. A Generic 11k booster which can also enable combos is good in every deck.

Lightspeed Cheetah is probably one of the best Especial Interceptors in the game. To become a 15k Intercept, You lock another of your rearguards that isn't being attacked. This is notable because it is one if not the only sources of self -locks that do not need Generation Break.

Neon Messiah is another interesting card. It is essentially a version of Gunner-Gear that you have to unlock to use. However, It is a good target to lock with Alter Ego if you have no other good rearguard to lock, or you have a Lightspeed Cheetah To use.

Running other cards that can lock independently of whether you are in Generation Break or not might be a good idea, a good options for this is Star-Vader Freeze-Ray Dragon, a card which locks whenever you take damage. and thus punishes  your opponent purposely grade locking themselves.In my opinion, one of Messiah's biggest assets is that it can quickly shift gears from being Control to being Aggro. It can even do both at the same time. And with Messiah's only bad match ups being against Retire based clans such as Kagero and Narukami, surviving in the meta shouldn't be a problem.