Deep

With the advent of BT05, we have received not only one, but two new archetypes for Darkness Dragon World. Technically three, but two of them are closely related so I imagine they're the same (for now). Deep, a random attribute given to select monsters from BT04, now suddenly bursts onto the scene with its own collection of monsters, effects, and even spell support. Alongside this mysterious Deep army rises a group of Black Knight monsters. Resembling an odd mix of Armordragon and Armorknight, Black Knights have mostly vanilla support but provides Deep with enough cards to make something work. And with a extremely well-made Impact card, Deep has what it takes to make a splash in the competitive metagame.

That effect is pretty deep

Deep starts off with a huge triple-rare Size 3, Death Tallica. Thank goodness that it can't ever get Soulguard (from Ultimate Buddy) because getting a theoretically unlimited amount of soul on-play is pretty scary. Note that it sends all Deep cards, including spells, into this card's soul. Death Tallica's effect is essentially Soulguard except instead of paying 1 card, you pay 3. That explains the super soul ramp, but is it worth it? The short answer is no, but with the right support Death Tallica can easily get 12 or more cards from your drop zone into the soul. That's equivalent to 4 Soulguards which simply rocks. Alongside all the Size 0 support, Death Tallica is Darkness Dragon World's pseudo-Sieger and fits it pretty well. 10000 power is nothing to scoff at, and his special pseudo-Soulguard prevents damage from Spectral Strike, Penetrate, and other on-kill effects.

You can even, if you're daring, call Death Tallica to the side early game and make do with weapon support and Black Dragon Shields. Mainly, however, you'll strive with a vanilla early game before committing to Death Tallica sometime in the middle and ending the game with it. When all is said and done, Death Tallica plays similarly to Meteor Rain from Dungeon World, so if that helps put things into perspective you can think of it that way. Meteor Rain with cheaper Wrath Trigger. I'm starting to like this idea.

Divine Demon Slash

As a general notice, Deep borrows many cards from Death, so you can double-up on some of their juicy support like Death Ruler, Gruen.

If Death Tallica is Meteor Rain, then Amenoohahari is Doge 3. Amenoohahari is actually surprisingly good. 2 gauge for Double Attack is plenty fair, but check out those 8K/8K stats. You know what that means? He's not PoFable! In fact, 8K defense is pretty hard to deal with. Not many worlds can put up with that without link attacking, and Death Grip can all but ruin any chance of getting an actual link attack off. Since Deep is very similar to Dungeon Enemy, I suspect that Amenooohahari should be played as a 4-card staple. You can sit on him at any stage of the game and get good advantage from the Double Attack and wall while supplementing him with spells and Size 0s.

THIS IS SO BADASS

Brutal Disaster! is the Deep Impact and now I'm certain that Deep should be played Sieger-style. You can only cast it when your opponent has less than 4 life and if you have a Size 3 monster on the field. Pay 1 gauge, discard 2 Deep cards and deal straight-up 4 damage to the face. Hey, that's awfully affordable. Sure, technically 1 gauge and 2 cards from hand is more expensive than 4 gauge (by 0.5 advantage). But realistically speaking, it's much easier to get 2 cards in hand (3 including Brutal Disaster) than to have 4 clean gauge just sitting there. In fact, Brutal Disaster is great because you can Accel End into Death Astray from no gauge and no cards in hand and pull the Impact off. It's a great finisher and very realistically achievable, making Deep a viable way to build DDW.

Gaspard. Size 0. Woot!

aka Badass Buddy

Demon Swordsman, Deathstorm. Damn he looks badass. I really like the Lifelink 1 cost instead of a 1 gauge call cost. He's very usable and gives your early game some beefy power. You're pretty much going to be running vanillas outside of your Size 3's, like Hell Rapier and stuff.

Oh, but there is Katsukiyo. He gets Penetrate if you have another Deep on the field. That's pretty great since 5000/1 with Penetrate really hurts, as Tuck Sword Dragon proved countless times. You also have access to the Death Ruler Mover, but since Weapons are probably not on the agenda there's not much point.

Instead, we have a moment of thanks to based Bushiroad for giving us another Deep Size 0.

Deep also has a typical +3000/3000 counter protection spell. Say nothing of playing the game carte blanche, these spells are pretty devastatingly good. And on top of Size 3's and Death Storm? It can only be good.

Extreme Prison, Zwinger is a great way to get your drop zone toolbox filled without resorting to Accel End all the time. His stats are decent and you can sub him in where Deathstorm had a place. Other vanilla is not worth it.

Sounds angsty

Dark Interment, Over the Grudge is like the best thing ever and there definitely should be four copies of this card between the main deck and the side deck. Not only does the Impact rip out a weapon from your opponent's hand for really cheap (1 life), it also has the ability to replenish either soul or gauge depending on whatever you need. Now, generally speaking you want it to go to gauge because Amenoohari doesn't have Soulguard and Tallica needs 3 of these in order to save a life. But it does let you kinda "fix" Tallica's soul if it has a number not divisible by 3. The main deal though is getting rid of weapons for cheap. It ultimately fixes the matchup against Danger and Hero World to be favorable for Deep, which is pretty rare in any case.

Deep always had issues with gauge, since most of your Size 3's cost 2 gauge and you only technically get +1 net a turn from charging. That's why Over the Grudge was such a huge lifesaver by converting life into gauge. Well, now we have a Size 0 that also helps you out. Velgaren has a cool effect of calling a Size 3 from your hand by paying 2 life instead of the call cost. Now, this is pretty dangerous for stuff that gets soul from its call cost (like Death Tallica), but it's pretty nice to be able to call Graybard and win without having the gauge to play him normally.

Aaand it's Tallica. But better. You actually can call this Tallica over any Size 3 already there and get basically 2 soul, which is already worth, which is scary. And every Over the Grudge not only gives more gauge but also quickly converts to more soul. And then when you put it on top of the first Tallica...

- updated to H-BT03, CP01, H-EB04, H-TD02, PP01 -

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