Symbol Structure: Do you want to build an Air deck?
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What are my strengths?
- Card Pool Clearing: One of the first things that should become clear when looking at characters on the Air symbol is that they really don’t like all of their cards staying in their card pool. Whether this means discarding them right after they resolve with Spike2, clearing your card pool to your momentum with Erron Black, or even going so far as to discard all cards from both card pools with Taki. You don’t necessarily need to build your deck around this gimmick, but you could certainly look into attacks that help you clear out your card pool. These abilities may be expensive sometimes, but keep in mind that each card you clear from your card pool is essentially +1 to your checks for the rest of the turn vs if you hadn’t cleared it!
- Foundation Readying: You aren’t going to find too many characters based around readying your staging area, but it is definitely something to consider. Some characters can only ready their foundations on their own turn, while others can ready select foundations on either turn. This is more of a sub-theme of the symbol, but can be incredibly useful for staging early attack turns on fewer foundations than you should rightfully have, for making up for bad luck on checks, or just to take advantage of specific foundations repeatedly.
What are my weaknesses?
- Card Draw: You aren’t going to find many cards here that draw you cards, and if you do it’s probably going to be gated. There aren’t any simple “E Commit: Draw 1 card” foundations here, and it’s a shame because that would be stellar with all of the foundation readying! You might end up running an attack that usually draws a card, but has sub-par stats, or cards that require you to run a specific gimmick, such as lots of other attacks that have exactly 3 speed. So if you can find yourself a character that can overcome this hurdle, then you are likely in business. Sometimes this might simply mean that you should run a 7 hand size character to get the most out of your cards.
Big name cards
- Wandering Pirate: This guy puts in a ton of work, and I sometimes will even run 2 copies of it in a deck. That’s a pretty big deal for a card with horrible stats, no block, and unique on it! If you have the ability to ready cards, then this card goes the extra mile. If you don’t have any card readying abilities, this is still a very efficient card.
- Fu-Ma Seal, Fatal Violet: This card is a self-contained kill condition. It alone can be a 12 damage low attack and draws you a card, but it does have to be played on minimum a 7 difficulty to get you that fine deal.
- God of Thunder: This guy will permanently keep you out of deadlock, and give a ton of usability to your foundations. Honestly, I rarely see the +2 damage ability used, but it is nice to have on there as well. If you don’t see how powerful this card is, just play around with it a bit to get a full understanding of how far this card can take you!
- Tijuana Groceries: This card is basically ready forever. If your character has a cost where they need to commit a foundation, then they don’t anymore.
- Ace Maneuver: This is a great win condition for the Air symbol if you are clearing cards from your card pool by any means. Even if you only clear 1-2 cards from your card pool per turn, this is still incredibly efficient for its difficulty.
- Nouveau Soleil: A great way to disrupt your opponent’s turn. If you have some speed pump to add on to this, it can really change up your opponent’s attack turn, and probably give you an extra turn to live.
- A Cataclysm Is Born: This card is an amazing target for your readying abilities. Yes it can ready itself, but momentum is a hefty price when your entire symbol can help you out!
Common commons
- Conquest of Terror: This guy will help keep you alive in the early game with a solid flip ability, and will put in a LOT of work in the end game!
- Saved by a Child: These couple of cards add up to some very good speed reduction, even if they are temporary.
- Pure of Heart: The static on this card makes hand-discard decks cower in fear, and it’s not even the best part of the card! The enhance on this puppy shuts off powerful cards when your opponent needs them most. Just don’t over rely on it.
- Hell's Reach: One of the most simple cards in the game, but it’s still pretty helpful if you are trying for a turn 2 or 3 aggro gameplan!
- Voices in the Dark: There’s some very good things that you can say about a spam foundation that allows you to get rid of an opponent’s momentum, or even a pesky card in their discard pile if they happen to be using a strategy that utilizes their discard pile, and only on the cost of a flip!
- Hand Cannon: This doesn’t exactly go in every deck, but it does shut down a LOT of gameplans! (Including most of the Air symbol…) This is an excellent sideboard card.
- Ageless and Wise: This card’s power is not immediately obvious, but one of the big meta staples that cancels an ability from your foundations or assets, Toguro Bros, also destroys its target. You can cancel their cancel with only a flip of this fine spam!
Off-symbol beauties
- Bang!: This card is one of the biggest meta cards around. People will run this card on any character that even has one of its symbols, and then they will shut down their opponent’s attack turn by sealing their opponent’s character. Keep this guy in mind when building decks, and not just as an option to go in your deck!
- Let's Cut Loose!: This doesn’t see a lot of play in an off-symbol manner, but it can certainly be used defensively quite well. You can use it to pick up a foundation with a relevant block, and then it still draws another card to replace itself. It lets you go positive on cards, and it doesn’t even stick around in your card pool. This card not having a block is not an issue.
In conclusion
The Air symbol isn’t at the top of its game right now, but it’s not exactly terrible. It doesn’t show up often in tournament lists but there are a couple characters who stand above the others. Specifically Lord Raptor2 and Jacqui Briggs have done fine, but they both have to stick to their own gimmicks. Keep an eye on this symbol in upcoming sets, especially for new foundations with strong commit abilities that you can reuse and recycle!
