Building a Seven Seas Standard Deck

Hello everyone! This will be my first post here so big thank you to Jaime for letting me use his platform to share with you all my testing and research. First and foremost I am Evan Alberto, probably known to you as a “paragraph edgelord” when I post anything Granblue related. Today we will be discussing how to build and use a Standard Seven Seas Deck!

• 

What you see in the above picture is my current prototype deck build for a Seven Seas Standard deck. Although more Seven Seas cards may get revealed in the near future, I can say with a fair degree of confidence that the “general” formula and flow of the deck will remain the same!

Principles about Seven Seas in Standard

To make things easier to understand before I delve into why I made certain card choices it is best for you to know more about the deck. Some points presented here may have already been said in the previous post about the Retrains so I will only expand on the points that have not been covered!

• Your methods of creating a board is locked into your G2 and G1 units therefore you are now more “piece reliant”
• The Treasure marker is very finicky. You need as many units that can provide the marker in your deck while minimizing the ones that don’t. Being on a Vanguard other than Nightmist on G3 will shut off the deck and its aggression
• You have no real way to generically revive units. Units like Nightspinel specifically target a unit with “Seven Seas” in their name

• Though you don’t have excessive CB costs, you only have 1 turn’s worth of CB to fully create a board of 5 Seven Seas units (This point will be expanded on further down in the Gameplay Section)
• Previous units such as Skull Dragon, Stormride Ghost Ship, and Ripple Banshee are no longer accessible due to your main G3 Vanguard Ride not having a revive skill as well as being too tied into the “Seven Seas” name

• You don’t have a “Dropzone Quota”. No cards are reliant on X amount of cards in drop. So in this case it really is quality over quantity!
• This point may change, since there is no filter card available in standard yet we do still need to mill cards
• The deck itself is not made to stall the game or gain additional hand advantage. It is made to be a very aggressive Protect Deck with the downside of being piece reliant
• Every superior call from Dropzone you make costs a card in hand. The entire deck’s playstyle is revolving around “Netting Zero” with the current cards

Deck Choices

Aside from the obvious Seven Seas cards its best to talk about the ratios I chose first before we get into why certain cards were chosen over others!

The reason I am only running 4 G3 units is because, again, you don’t want to be on any other G3 Vanguard other than Nightmist to preserve the play style of the deck and to ensure there is a value in actually getting the Treasure Markers. The moment you ride another G3 other than Nightmist you will basically shut off and since you don’t have access to previous units that allows you to draw or revive you will have a VERY vanilla turn. Yes the prospect of having to G-assist is still there but it’s actually better to miss the G-assist and stay on a G2 Seven Seas Vanguard because you still get the on hit marker pressure.

• 

• 

Now I bet you are asking why the hell am I not running Greed Shade? Its a surprising answer! Nightrunner literally is your Greed Shade! Greed Shade in the Seven Seas is more just additional copies of Nightrunner that is only live when you call it to R from hand. Binding a unit doesn’t matter in this deck, so you can easily dispose of a copy of Nightrunner without much thought. Overall, compared to Greed shade, the only difference is a unit an board in most cases. Here is a sample Scenario to put it into perspective:

Greed Shade Calling:

• Call Greed from hand (Minus 1 from hand)
• Use Greed’s skill to replace a card from your hand to get Nightspinel to hand (Net Zero)
• Call Nightspinel from hand and use her skill to call Slash Shade (Minus 1 from hand to Plus 2 on Board)
• Overall Outcome: Minus 2 from hand Plus 3 on Board
• NOTE: This is still a good board result since you can SB1 for Nightcrow to replace Greed

Nightrunner Calling:

• Call Nightrunner from hand (Minus 1 from hand)
• Use Nightrunner’s skill to add Nightspinel (Plus 1 to hand)
• Call Nighspinel to call Slash Shade (Minus 1 in hand Plus 2 on Board)
• Overall Outcome: Minus 1 from hand Plus 2 on board

With the only difference really only being 1 unit on board I chose Nightrunner because having an extra unit an board is nice but it doesn’t mesh with the deck’s purpose to generate markers while consuming G2 slots. You can argue why Nightrunner is the same as Greed since you don’t use Nightrunner to normally attack. BUT you can use him to hit rearguards from the back row AND he is targetable by Nightspinel whereas Greed Shade is not!

• 

• 

Now the next topic are these 2 card Choices. Overall the reason why I chose Nightmist is because he EASILY Synergizes with Nightspinel for a CB2 and Call 3 units on board while being easily replaced by Nightcrow to maintain a Seven Seas board! Ruin Shade is more on the flexible card slot. In this slot you can 100% run Greed for more utility as well as the above situation in terms of combo calling but I run Ruin Shade on the off chance I have to run a G2 unit other than a Seven Seas so I can mill my deck and my G2 vanguard is not just a vanilla ride. This is more or less personal preference! Milling in the deck is limited but is still a CRUCIAL move you have to do in every fight to secure you have quality targets in drop!

Norman is, weirdly, a good card with the deck! Norman fulfills the job of milling which the deck needs at times BUT also gives power to a unit. Outside of Slash Shade all other Seven Seas units will get hard blocked by a defensive trigger but not with Norman! Norman is usually a good call target with Nightmist (G2) as you can essentially use Nightmist to call Norman, beef up a unit then replace Nightmist (G2) with Nightcrow for more attacks or for the Seven Seas name. This deck is a faster tempo deck and you have no means to add to your hand so you must, at every point of the game, maximize what cards you do have in your hand!

• 

• 

Great Segway into our last portion in deck building! The trigger lineup. I am sure you all have your thoughts about Crits in this specific deck. In my opinion, doing any split between Crits and Draws is better than all Crits. As I said earlier, there is no way to draw in this deck so what better way to solve that than by slamming draws in and Crits are 50/50 in terms of being good or bad. Strong decks thrive on high damage and if you Crit too early in the game it may kill your own aggression. Yes giving your opponent damage is the point of the game but so is getting your treasure markers! Two damage checks in 1 attack is bad in some cases as checking double trigger shuts off almost all attacks and if they didn’t you could’ve gotten more makers! You don’t need to Crit to win. Your number of attacks make up for the less amount of Crit pressure in your triggers!

Gameplay

This deck is fairly unique as even from the starting hand your mulligan can change! If you see the following hand or any with slight variation this is a keep or an ideal hand you want with the addition of getting the G3 Nightmist without G-assiting:

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

However if you see this following hand or any with slight variation you will have to mulligan to a better hand or hope you top deck pieces:

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

This is potentially the worst hand you can start with aside from missing every Treasure units and forced to vanilla ride every grade. This hand is really crippling because your only pressure to create a Treasure is at G1 on your Vanguard attack which is the easiest attack to block that early and you have no way to mill or attempt to generate board. Basically you are playing a vanilla deck. This is why its even better to throw away the G3 Nightmist and force a G-assist later on if it means your opening hand will have pieces.

Next we have the Treasure Marker itself! Honestly, its pretty straightforward but remember that your first 2 Treasure markers should be 1 in a front and 1 in a back rear guard circle in that order! The is because on your G2 turn if you open up any G2 Seven Seas and a Slash Shade that is the best opening aggression turn you can realistically get with decent consistency outside of opening the nuts and literally getting a full board on your G2 turn. This Treasure placement maximizes the early game.

• 

• 

At some point in the game you want these 2 units in your backrow. They are safest and most useful there. With Nightmist (G3) being able to allow backrow attacking these units will never be retired, outside of the opponent having board destruction skills. On your kill turn though you definitely want at least a column where there is a Slash Shade and a Seven Seas that can boost so, even if they hit a defensive, you can have an attack that is over 33k! Unit placements are very relaxed and not as important outside of the early game.

The next topic Protect 2 and how good it is. Its probably the gift you want the most because you will only ride G3 once in this deck! Having Protect 1 in hand won’t really solve the issue the deck has with hand power, therefore, its better to focus everything on aggression if the game situation permits. With Raistutor and your G2s being able to intercept from the backrow, you can actually place this on a backrow rearguard circle with massive profit!

• 

• 

• 

Lastly, these are your main board builders in the deck! Yes Greed Shade can also be part of this list. A lot of the combos in this deck end with Nightpinel calling Slash Shade unless of course you want defense in which case you are ending with Raistutor. You can build a full Seven Seas board with 3 CB:

• Call a Nightmist (G2) and call Nightspinel (CB1)
• Nightspinel calls Slash Shade (CB1)
• Nightcrow retires Nightmist to call from Drop (SB1)
• Call a 2nd Nightspinel from hand and use her skill to call a Slash Shade or a Seven Seas unit (CB1)
• Overall Outcome: Full Board for CB3 SB 1

Realistically you can only do this combo once due to its high cost but as you can see from that chain, you can easily call 3 onto board and this can be done twice in a game. You can’t draw or refund costs so this deck is will test your resource management and overall luck in your draws and mills!

Final Thoughts

This deck is super fun even with its weird quirks, I can’t wait for more Seven Seas units to be revealed to hopefully make it better in both Standard and Premium. Definitely a budget friendly deck to pick up when the set drops! Unfortunately, this deck isn’t meta breaking. I will place this deck in Low Tier 1.5 at the moment. I highly suggest to try this deck as its a nice change of pace and a good ol’fashion pirate beatdown!

Share some of your worthy “Pirate Moments” with this deck or even in general, until next time~

CrieTEXe