Megacolony's Soul Problem - My Thoughts on Megacolony's New Support and my Decklist (For Now)

Preface:  Milling the opponent isn't a viable wincon with accel getting the bulk of good support in recent sets.  Let's not pretend like that's anything other than a fun meme deck.

What happens when Vanguard "shifts focus" for a clan between sets?  Well, a few things.  You either end up with two "de facto" clans that don't meaningfully interact with one another, crazy hybrid concepts, or particular "good" cards from one build get eaten by the other build and only one variant ends up being played.  Only in extremely rare cases do you end up with two builds that both benefit from the others' support with both retaining viability.  At least in Vanguard, where power creep is mandated to sell sets due to a lack of set rotation.  In Megacolony's case, it's more of the "good cards get eaten" idea.  The old deck has, essentially, replaced its boss card with Gunningcoleo and remains more or less unchanged.  I mean, the additional crit is the second best card Megacolony got this set so they don't have to run 4 draw nulls.  That's kind of crazy when you consider it.

Let's discuss the issue that Megacolony has:  Megacolony's new set of support is filled with high-rolling mechanics.  Now, Vanguard already has triggers, which are elements of high-rolling mechanics.  What happens when you "double down" on this?  Your consistency takes a major hit.  But, if the base effect (the low-roll) is good enough to justify the cost on its own, then the "high-roll" is merited in virtue of that.  Let's look at the low-rolls for the cards Megacolony got this set and see if they're "worth it" on the merit of missing their primary skill.

Gunningcoleo - 

On-ride, opponent mills one, Coleo gets 5k and Triple-Drive!!!(Odds of low-roll (milling 0-2), 80-86%).
Soul blast 1 grade 3, opponent mills one (Odds of low-roll (milling grade 3), 14-20%, odds of high-roll (milling trigger) 32%).

Gunningcoleo is an interesting exception to the rest of the set in that if the low-roll was all the card did, he would be worth running.  Even over our previous boss, Spark, who has been made obsolete from numerous units that gain so much power that the -5k is negligible during the opponent's turn.  He also doesn't really require soul to function, nor does he use counterblasts.  He can fit any type of future support and I have doubts that the third VR Megacolony gets will be able to make this obsolete, and would likely still want to run it.

Rating 9/10

Cyclomatooth - 

If something rides this, opponent discards 1 and the ride target gains 5000xgrade of the card.
When it attacks, CB1, SB1, opponent mills 1 and Cyclomatooth gains 10k.  (Low-roll chance (milling trigger), 32%)

CB1 SB1 for making the opponent mill 1 and this card gaining 10k is trash.  Even with the bonus critical on the high-roll, it's still not good.  The on-ride effect is abysmal compared to just riding Gunningcoleo without a grade 3 in soul, then riding another the following turn.  Especially if you have limited turns to survive in the accel meta.  This card can't be meaningfully justified to run as a standalone card.  Much less in spite of its incredible competition with Stag Beetle, Spark, Hell Demise, and Ant Lion.

Rating 3/10

Hiding Killerleaf -

On-attack, CB1, SB1, opponent mills 1 and Leaf gains 10k. (Low-roll chance (milling trigger), 32%)

Similar to Cyclomatooth, you have 10k and mill 1 on the low-roll.  The difference being that the high-roll is actually much more useful, since it's "draw a card".  It compensates for the natural weakness of protect decks to hit over force decks and gives meaningful pressure to accel decks while also adding defense.  Of course, the obvious downside is that there are numerous other clans with access to better/cheaper draws than CB1/SB1.  But, when Killerleaf goes off properly, he's not awful.  But, in playing the card, with the same odds of him failing as my opponent hitting a trigger, it just feels bad.  That being said, with the high-chance of success, I think this is one of the few justified cards to run.

Rating 5.5/10

Brawny Jerk - 

On-call, SB1, this unit gains 6k, mill 1 for opponent.  (Low-roll chance (milling trigger), 32%)
When it boosts a unit attacking a grade 3 VG, discard 1 and opponent discards 1.

Brawny Jerk has a lot more potential since Megacolony has more raw hand-cards than most clans to make the 1-for-1 trade more valuable.  The SB1 +6k mill one is honestly not awful either, as it wasn't uncommon to make this SB1 cost for Hercules or Spiteful Hopper to give this amount of power prior to this.  And the bonus effect on high-roll (soul charge 1) is actually incredible.  If you charge a grade 3, you're able to use Coleo's skill or Ant Lion's skill an additional time for free.  If you charge a Water Gang against a retirement deck, it gives you an out to get Water Gang to fire off if you didn't ride him.

Rating 7/10


Additionally, we also got one non-RNG high rarity card:

Megalaralancer -

On-attack, gains 2k per rest RG opponent has.  You may move a RG to soul to make the opponent unable to intercept until the end of turn.

This card is hot garbage.  It's either a vanilla beatstick (which isn't really amazing) or it causes you to lose a booster or attacker to nullify intercepting OR give them the opportunity to pre-emptively intercept.  I guess it's supposed to be "trade a boost to nullify Protect II".  Because Protect II needed a counter that didn't involve "not being Protect I".  Regardless, the effects are underwhelming for the first, terrible for the second.  Now, obviously, you might think, "Tim!  This is it!  This fixes the soul issue!"  To which I reply, "Yes, let's neg ourselves so we can get the soul to roll for a chance to undo the neg we just did!"  The only real benefit is tossing G3 RGs in soul so you can get another user out of your Coleo or Ant Lion.  And that's still a hard minus for the first skill which isn't worth it to attempt, typically, and makes Ant Lion a -3 to use which makes it potentially more beneficial to your opponent than to you, at that point.

Rating 1.5/10



So you might be wondering, "Tim, these RNG cards seem okay.  What's the big deal?  Why aren't they worth running in your opinion?"  And I agree, if there wasn't previous Megacolony support, I'd run them due to lack of better options, but... you see... Megacolony has a 10/10 card.  It's still their best card and still better than Gunningcoleo.  All builds want to run it or suffer the consequences of the deck failing to ever secure card advantage ever again.  It's the combo enabler.  It creates endless potential.  It lets you reuse your move-to-soul AND on-call effects.  It's a solid first ride and amazing rear guard.  It has same-turn synergy with both Water Gang and the promo.  What card?  Stag Beetle of course.

Machining Stag Beetle -


On ride or call, call two units from soul to RC as rest.  If this unit is on the VC, gain power equal to the original power of those units.

Rating 10/10

Now, Stag doesn't typically want to call grade 3s from soul (other than maybe a Hell Demise), so Gunningcoleo and Ant Lion play nicely with it.  But, you also don't want to use grade 3 soul for anything other than Gunningcoleo or Ant Lion.  So what do you do in order to try and run the other soul blast cards?  Well, the short answer is, you can't, really.  Do you run the "Get two cards for literally free" or do you run the "CB1, SB1, 10k on attack, have a 2/3 chance of drawing a card/gaining a critical?"  I mean, the answer is pretty obvious when you think about it.  Megacolony just doesn't have enough soul generation to run both, and Stag Beetle is still obviously superior.  Again, since there's no reliable method of soul generation (on-hits from grade 1s are all we have at either a -1 to us or a break-even outside of Megalarancer who is just awkward and Water Gang which is public enemy #1 and will be sniped/attacked pretty much without fail) we're left only 3-4~ soul we can reliably soul blast/call to RG.  Stag eats up most of that on his first call.

As things stand, it's either:

Option A:  Run Stag
Option B:  Drop Stag to run worse cards

And I just can't see myself doing option B for anything other than meme builds.  Fortunately, Brawny Jerk OR Killerleaf could either be justifiably run in the deck without causing too much harm.  But we have a brand new problem:  A counterblast vacuum.

Previously, we had to spend all of our counterblasts on Spark.  Spark's been cut for Coleo.  What do we even do with resources?  Obviously, Water Gang is ideal, but if we could use counterblasts on Water Gang all the time at-will, we'd never do anything different.  Thus, it seems like certain other cards might want to be cut.  For example, Spiteful Hopper and Butterfly Officer might be worth cutting since we can't afford the soul for Hopper and we don't want to shove cards in the soul for minimal purpose with Officer (although, Officer isn't bad.  We just need the unflip to justify the spot, so it will likely phase in and out of decks for the next few sets of support Megacolony gets).

I think that, in place of them, we'll be running Millipede (promo, coming out soon) and Brawny Jerk.  Jerk fills the niche of Hopper with a strong chance of not "losing" the soul.  Additionally, he helps push harder on your late game plays when you're trying to finish with Ant Lion.  Finally, Millipede was never a "bad" card.  He just contradicted Spark completely.  Like I've said since it was released, it just needed a different deck to thrive in.  This is that deck.

Decklist:

Grade 0's

Worker Ant - Starter
2x Draw Nulls
10x Crit
4x Heal

Grade 1's

4x Machining Mosquito
4x Brawny Jerk
3x Stealth Millipede

Grade 2's

4x Machining Mantis
4x Water Gang
3x Bloody Hercules

Grade 3's

4x Stag Beetle
4x Gunningcoleo
2x Hell Demise
1x Ant Lion

I think at this point, the only card I haven't "explained" is Bloody Hercules, which doesn't seem to be a popular pick.  Let me justify my decision.  In a deck running more than 8 crits with extra drive checks, getting bonus crit swings will happen a lot.  Hercules unflipping is fairly irrelevant for this specific deck, but taking out an interceptor and giving plus power to the row with crit effectively adds 11k to that row, which will force between 10-15k extra shield for that row, effectively, if they need to guard it to survive, which is pretty common.

Platina Ezel - New Trigger Calculations

Since I've been waiting for 3 hours to get into MTG Arena and it's still down, I decided to burn some time by writing this article.  Yes, I do math when I'm bored.

For those unaware, Platina Ezel's new effect is:

Blazing Lion, Platina Ezel 
[ACT](VC):[COST][Counter-Blast 1], and change this turn's first drive check to "look at two cards from the top of your deck, reveal one card from among them in your trigger zone, and call one card from among them to (RC)." If your soul has two or more grade 3 cards, change the second drive check of the turn and more as well.

Let's start with the basic odds.

Odds of hitting at least one trigger off of a normal Twin-Drive!!: 55.1%
Odds of hitting at least one trigger with no grade 3's in soul: 70.39%.
Odds of hitting at least one trigger with a grade 3 in soul: 80.88%

Odds of hitting two triggers off of a normal Twin-Drive!!: 10.2%
Odds of hitting two triggers with no grade 3's in soul: 17.22%
Odds of hitting two triggers with a grade 3 in soul: 30.36%

The big thing to notice here is that your odds of hitting two triggers is the biggest boon this card's selective trigger checking grants to you.  The odds are the same as hitting a single trigger or more on two independent Twin-Drives!!, which is why the number is so comically large.  If you are just aiming to hit a singular trigger, you should recall that the number for no grade 3's in soul is identical to the odds of hitting a trigger with OG CEO Amaterasu.  Obviously, one-to-passing Ezel is going to be a non-option.  Two-to-passing also isn't particularly safe (especially if fronts are involved), as the odds of the Platina player hitting two triggers are about the same as the odds of a normal Twin-Drive!! getting a single trigger.  Hopefully, being armed with this information will help to keep you aware of what the general risk level is with each decision.