The P3
(This deck review was written and compiled by the Site Administrator)

Today we will feature one of the top tier KirriCorp format decks. This one is known to most as "The P3", and is quite notorious. The name comes from "Phlaming Phal Phenomena" and later on "Phlaming Phal Punch". I personally like to think it means "Phenomenal Phal(con) Punch", both for the meme reference, and because that's what it feels like when the deck gets moving against you.

Within the KirriCorp deck nomenclature system, this deck is referred to as a Sympathetic High Mana Angel Crush Aggro. One could also argue mildly that it could be classified as a Disruption, but that illusion is merely a matter of the expansion of its scope of play against less refined decks, and the lack of conventional Aggro elements.

Anyways, here's the list, for your perusal.

Creatures (10 Light, 8 Fire, 6 Rainbow, 24 Total):

3 x Pharzi, the Oracle
4 x Core-Crash Lizard
4 x Punch Trooper Bronks
3 x Zardia, Spirit of Bloody Winds
3 x Belix, the Explorer
3 x Skysword, the Savage Vizier
4 x Alshia, Spirit of the New Star

Spells (2 Light, 4 Fire, 7 Nature, 13 Total):

4 x Soulswap
2 x Apocalypse Day
4 x Cannonball Sling
3 x Vine Charger

Gears (3 Light, 3 Total):

3 x Shining Defense

The Wielder And Creator

The creator, and wielder, of this unique and awesome deck is known to the community only as Nerafim, and is, among other things, KirriCorp's senior researcher. Nerafim has a reputation as a skilled duelist, despite his lack of serious titles or known tournament wins. Usually, Nerafim, often called just 'Nera', is too busy with his related work, or a new deck idea, to get a lot of practice in, and he often does not participate in tournaments with this deck particularly.

Nera did, however, bring this deck to notoriety through general play and high rank in the original KirriCorp Rankings, though it was not in the form it has currently, at that time. Refinement has been done since then, one should reference the notes and links for further information on that.

Nerafim is known primarily for optimizing creative builds, basing them around maxing ability of a certain card or engine. This is also reflected in this deck, and it can be considered, and in fact is considered, to be his main deck.

The Avatar

The deck's avatar card, the one that embodies the spirit of the deck, is the set 13-14 promotional card "Zardia, Spirit of Bloody Winds". Zardia is a 9/5500 Angel Command/Melt Warrior, obviously of the Light and Fire civilizations. It has the devastating effect of destroying any number of opposing creatures with a total power of 5500 or less, when it enters the battle zone, and a Sympathy effect that lowers its summon cost based on the number of Melt Warriors and Angel Commands that are in play on its side of the field. Finally, it generates a new shield from the top of the deck whenever it enters the battle zone, rounding out a large set of powerful abilities. Normally this card is underlooked due to the difficulty of use, but Nerafim has, as usual, optimized it for greatness, combining elements that contribute to its success in seamless use and flow.

The deck contains a large number of Melt Warriors and Angel Commands, and utilizes only those with extreme benefit to the deck's overall other functions. In addition, the Soulswap spell provides yet another way of getting Zardia into play, sometimes at extremely unexpected times.

The Core Cards

"Soulswap" is the deck's primary engine, used to facilitate quick access to the effect of any creature in mana or in play, and on a smaller scale, to lessen the threat of certain opposing creatures to a manageable level. The number of uses of the card in this deck is nearly endless, as practically every creature the deck contains save one, can benefit from this. This gives the spell the specific effect of 'not having any specific effect'. As long as there is at least one creature in play, the deck has access to an absolutely incredible number of effects, far beyond that employed by nearly any other Soulswap-using deck.

"Alshia, Spirit of the New Star", is both effective for easing the summon of Zardia through its Angel Command Sympathy, and a solid presence in case of the need for attacking. Just as importantly, it is not very easy to remove quickly, providing a body for further use of Soulswap. Most importantly, it regenerates advantage for the deck, returning spells, especially the all-important Soulswap, to the hand. Earlier in the game, this returned spell may be vulnerable to discard, but later on, it can, and usually would, be cast immediately, possibly on Alshia itself. Finally, Alshia can help against discard or mana-burn strategies by allowing the deck user, if given the choice, to let a spell be the victim of the effect, knowing that it can be regained.

"Core Crash Lizard" is also very capable of easing the summon of Zardia, through the Melt Warrior half of the Sympathy effect, but has the incredible effect of destroying one of the opponent's shields utterly, what we know as 'shield burning'. It is a consistent and strong creature, hampered only slightly by the summoning cost, a problem which the deck overcomes easily. Aside from this, of course, Soulswap makes the creature's effect reusable, to the point where it is possible for all of the opponent's shields to be destroyed by Core Crash Lizards without any need for an attack!

As always, the other cards in the deck are all important, but without these three, the deck's functions/main strategy falls short, and if they were to be replaced, the deck would have to be considered different enough that it would not even be a variant.

The Technical Genius

Anyone can build a simple version of a deck like this, but what makes this deck shine, and work, is the amount of technical genius that fills the gaps. This is the aspect of the deck that sets it apart, and the part that one should learn from. Granting high, almost ridiculous levels of synergy, and the ability to switch from one form to another on the fly, the deck is stable primarily because of these technical aspects that keep it together.

Of such, the three technical additions that matter most are "Punch Trooper Bronks", a card so useful it almost made the 'Core Cards' section, then "Apocalypse Day", and finally "Shining Defense".

Bronks is the greatest example, cheaply destroying a very wide range of creatures, while posing very little serious threat to the development of the deck's plan itself. It stops many swarms, destroys Evolution base creatures, dangerous early summoned Fire Birds, and a whole host of other things, even other 3000 power creatures, if they are alone. Best played early, but even if not directly successful, it provides an excellent target for Soulswap or the second genius tech...

Shining Defense. A nice cheap gear with a triple function of basic blocker creation, minor power up to extend the range of Bronks' effect, and possibly forcing the opponent to return the deck's creatures to the hand if they have no other good removal options, and the power it adds to creatures somewhat limits those removal options to begin with. Clearly, a creature returned to the hand, in this deck, just gets to reuse its power, and is often simply crossed with the gear again.

On top of all that, it removes the problem of Soulswapping a blocker for a non-blocker in dire situations, since the new creature can instantly also become a blocker. This consistency of "Blocker" ability, when using cards that do not need to attack to be useful, is highly effective, and allows quick recovery after the third genius tech...

Apocalypse Day. Though powerful, this deck is not likely to win in a faceoff where both sides keep building power. Due to the deck's construction, a powerful reset is usually to this deck's advantage. The Shield Trigger component of this card is vital, and other 'field clearing' effects would be considerably less useful. Still, recovering from this requires player skill, especially since one may almost immediately face an enemy powerhouse on the next turn. Fortunately, Shining Defense survives the Apocalypse, and the very next creature to come into play can at least become blocker to hold off any attacks if needed. At the worst, Pharzi the Oracle can help retain control of the situation if it was in play at the time of the Apocalypse, instantly returning at least one spell to the hand to help with the recovery.

Relation to other games

If one were to relate this deck to Chess, the strategy could be considered to be that of focusing on tradeoffs, clearing the board, and setting up a situation that would allow for later promotion of surviving Pawns into Queens. The player does not concern themselves about going for overly tactical movements, preferring to simply trade creatures until the situation is in their favor heavily, all the while setting up their own advancement toward endgame situations where their influence and control is paramount.

In most elemental combat/martial arts games, the deck would combine its Light and Fire aspects into a Lightning element, strike combatant, striking quickly and decisively with short sharp attacks instead of power or sustained attacks. Difficult if not impossible to resist, its only weakness would be that which can somehow outmaneuver it despite all this, and regenerate what is lost.

More specifically, in role playing games of the general classical type, the deck emulates a Mage/Support class, reliant on powerful single use effects, magical defenses, and versatility. Specific games, such as the well known Final Fantasy series, and similar ones, would see the deck taking on the role of precisely the Summoner class. This is the best analog parallel of its function. Power is realised through the instant release of energy via the summon. The summon can then be dismissed or dissipated when not needed, mostly otherwise simply guarding the summoner.

The effects themselves mostly work one at a time, with little combination or tangential abilities, corresponding to the general inability of a summoner to summon more than one being at once. Unleashing great power, and regenerating magical power slowly over time, to allow for more and continous summons, until victory, are all encapsulated in this deck. The weakness of the deck is also the weakness of most summoners. The ability to engage in early combat, or if taken by surprise, is diminished, and there is a necessity for increased 'magical stamina' and overall ability to summon. If this magical stamina can be drained away consistently, the summoner's, and hence the deck's, ability, suffers.

What it Means for the Meta

The deck's strong ability to neutralize 'compound energy' decks that rely on small key creatures, and decks built primarily to take advantage of the Shield Trigger mechanic, would be its primary influence on any meta in which it rose to dominance. A strong presence of this deck in a meta would absolutely discourage over-reliance on Wave Striker, DragonKind, and Shield Trigger decks, and might mildly encourage discard, to take advantage of its weakness, but overall the deck is too versatile and stable to promote many countertypes, as they would be narrow and otherwise meta-ineffective.

Imitability

This deckstyle is generally not truly imitable. Playstyle and skill are required to overcome weaknesses such as bad draw sequences, something any TCG player is largely familiar with. Attempts to overcome this via alteration to the deck will generally wreck the deck flow just as much as drawing badly will, with only minimal overall improvement to be expected from such attempts.

Copying the deck's core engine will generally result in a largely different deck in the end, since its construction is very specific. Therefore we at KirriCorp suggest that other players, especially beginners, do not attempt, nor bother to attempt, copying this deck for actual practical use. On the other hand, building it to play against, though it will usually not let a new player get a true idea of the strength of the P3 itself, is good for learning to handle your own decks against something of this type, and general ideas for how to defeat the Lightning Summoner himself if ever one must face him in tournament.

Conclusion, Notes, and Reference

The original post containing this deck's construction and progression was deleted when KirriCorp's public relations forums were closed, however Nerafim has made a new post regarding it on the public forum DuelZone, which can be found here.

Lost information regarding this deck (some of which would have resurfaced in that thread) would be primarily suggestions regarding the cards below:

Get Ready, taken to be useless in comparison to other methods due to the deck's ability to neutralize Water-draw related threats quickly, handle swarms, and exceedingly slow attack rate.

Royal Durian, which was in the deck before, since removed. It was the deck's primary defense against early evolutions with great power or effect. Currently, the Punch Trooper Bronks and Vine Charger 'replace' this card by removing either the base creature or the evolution creature itself, but it is arguable whether or not its absolute removal was undoubtedly best.

Petrova, Channeler of Suns, which was suggested apparently as more of a 'why don't you have it?', by players who did not seem to realize that the deck's need for power was not a critical issue, and simply that any presence of Petrova would require the sacrifice of something else.

For further information on this deck and its functionalities, see the aforementioned thread on DuelZone forums.

That's all for now, until next time.