Monster Rancher Battle Card Episode II, Power Decks

Monster Rancher Battle Card Episode II was released in America in 2000 for the Playstation.  The story says that this card game was played by children who were too young to raise monsters, but it was eventually widely popularized and is now played by children and adults alike.

Battle pits your deck against one of the computer opponents’ decks.  You will choose one of two cards on the screen.  The one with the disk chips on it goes second.  The player who goes first is immediately put into the guts step, and they are only allowed to make two guts.  Guts are what you use to play cards.  The more powerful the card, the more guts it will cost.  On your turn, you will play any attack cards you want to play (if you have the guts for them) and then you will be able to sacrifice any number of the cards in your hand.  The cards you sacrifice become guts.  You will always draw up to a hand of five cards in this game.  So no matter how many cards you sacrifice, you will always return to five cards at the beginning of your next turn.  A player loses when all three of their monsters are knocked out or they are unable to draw a card.

Power decks are fun to play against and they can be difficult to beat if you don’t know how.  One of the best examples is Rascal.  His deck is stacked with powerful attack cards and little else.  Each turn he won’t keep any cards in his hand.  A true power deck doesn’t run any defense cards.  He will make as many guts as he can so that he can hit you with something powerful the following turn.

Power decks do run a danger of running out of cards and stall decks can be especially dangerous to them.  However, if you play your cards right you should be fine.  I’ve found that the best possible team to use in a power deck is Golem, Dragon, Dino.  All of these monsters have high health (9,8,8) which allows them to take some damage before going down.  You won’t be using any defense cards so whatever the enemy attacks you with, you’re going to take.  The key then, is to smash the enemy monsters before they can attack you.

The trick to doing this can be a bit counter intuitive.  It requires that you never save any cards in your hand, even if you have a really good attack card that would kill one of the opponent’s monsters the next turn.  It is never worth it.  You will have enough attack cards in your deck that you should draw a good attack cards every turn.

You will need to put in only really powerful cards.  The rest are wasted in this deck model.  Golem’s chop, w-chop, and roller are good choices.  Dragon’s dragon punch, trample, and dragon combo are good choices.  And Dino needs to have knee kick, fire dash, and leap kick.  Now as you have noticed, these are only 27 cards.  You then have to support these cards with cards like last man, good luck, close up, and  concentrate.  You need cards that give you guts quickly, allow you to attack more, or prevent the enemy from using dodge and block cards.  Other good cards to have are excited and nice fight, which will lower damage from int attacks or make attacks that do less than 3 damage unavailable.  These cards will prevent almost all guts down techniques, which are a big threat to a power deck.  It is a good idea to put persistence in this deck as it will prevent guts down techniques from working, though it is a block card and every turn you hold it in your hand you’re getting one less gut.

One thing to mention is that you really need to be careful of guts down techniques.  Also, when fighting someone like Nelson, who will try to dodge all of your attacks and run you out of cards, it’s ok to keep a few cards in your hand.  Try to get Dino’s leap kick and knee kick together for a sure kill.  Dragon’s dragon combo is also a definite kill on any of his monsters.  Just try to be fast.  It’s also a good idea to hold an environment card in your hand to play whenever he tries to play confusion.  That card will destroy your deck.

By following this strategy you should be able to beat any deck you come up against.  The power deck is a good way to farm cards because you can finish battles very very quickly.  It’s a lot of fun to pit a power deck against another one, though it’s also a lot of fun to overcome an enemy’s defenses.  Figure out what you enjoy the most.

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