Zorga Rulings And Interactions Cheat Sheet

Hi amigos, today I’ll be covering some helpful Zorga rulings and interactions so that players can have a better understanding! See it as a cheat sheet that you can always refer to! Let’s dive into it!

Table of Contents:

How Alchemagic Works

From the Wiki:

Whenever your normal order is declared to be played, if your vanguard’s ability can Alchemagic, you may bind a normal order from your drop zone, according to the information in that ability’s text, before resolving the normal order you played. If you do, that normal order you played is resolved as the following way.
- Pay the cost specified by the played normal order and by the bound normal order simultaneously.
- Perform the effects specified by the played normal order, followed by the bound normal order. After playing the normal order, put it into drop zone as usual.
Essentially, Alchemagic allows to get the benefits of two normal order cards as one. The combined effect and cost you get from both order cards is considered to be resolved during Alchemagic.

Here’s a Visual:

As you can see visually the normal order from Hand, gains the costs and effects of the one in Drop in addition.

Cursed Souls Interaction:

If you have Spiritual Body Condensation in Hand and use Cursed Souls as the normal order in Drop, ALL units called from this Alchmagic combination will gain the +5k from Cursed Souls. The key phrase is, “all of this order’s called units“. The first unit called from Spiritual Body Condensation will result in gaining a total of +10k. Keep in mind the total costs is SB3.

You Cannot Alchemagic If:

Can’t pay ALL of the combined costs.
- This really hurts since Zorga support depends on Alchemagic being performed for cards to be full power.
- It’s recommended to also have Costless normal orders to help with this such as Ideal Far Away. Also, Rogue Headhunter helps with CB cost normal orders. Rogue Headhunter does stack.
Play a normal order by itself doesn’t count as Alchemagic.
No normal order in Drop Zone. You NEED one in Hand and one in Drop Zone respectively.

You Can Alchemagic If:

If you use Rogue Headhunter(s) to make a CB costed Alchemagic to be CB0, you can perform Alchemagic while having no face-up damage!

Roaming Prison Dragon Interactions/Rulings

If Roaming Prison Dragon (RPD) is in your Drop Zone when you Play a normal order, after it’s done resolving, RPD copies in Drop Zone can revive themselves. However, there are some interactions/rulings for certain normal orders that are often confused and judges are needed to clarify to the players.

Order cards are a bit different from normal units’ costs and skills. When you Play an order, the cost is paid first, and then a check timing triggers for cards that check “when an order is played“. Then you resolve the skill(s) of the order.

So what’s the issue? Glad you asked! Let’s point out some!

Tearful Malice Retiring RPD as Cost:

Normally RPD is in the Drop Zone before you consider playing a normal order. What happens if RPD is on RC?

When you Play Tearful Malice and retire 1-2 RPD as cost, those are considered to be in the Drop Zone. Then the check timing triggers, and those same RPD(s) will see that an order was played. So after you finish resolving the skill of Tearful Malice (or Alchemagic combo), then those RPD(s) will activate and revive themselves if you want to.

Wild Intelligence Or Resentment Mill a RPD:

If Wild Intelligence discards any RPDs from deck when resolving its skill, those RPDs miss timing. So they will NOT be able to revive themselves.

If Resentment discards a RPD when resolving its skill, it also misses timing too.

Remember the check timing for “when an order is played” has already happened. That’s why.

Shadowcloak Bounce Any Unit Card from Drop

If Shadowcloak is on RC and then performs Alchemagic, you can SB1 to bounce any RG to Hand. You can use revival orders to revive cards like Sentinels and Over Triggers to RC, then use Shadowcloak to bounce those to hand to increase the defensive quality of your Hand.

If you used Alchemagic where you revived a Shadowcloak, it does NOT activate its bouncing skill. Again the check timing for “when an order is played” has already passed, so it missed it.

Does Shadowcloak still Activate its Skill if Called over by a Revival from Alchemagic?

If you have a Shadowcloak on RC and use Alchemagic with SBC (or any revival ones), then revive a unit on top of it. Thus retiring Shadowcloak. You can still use its skill to SB1 and bounce a RG. Remember the check timing happened before it was removed from RC. So as long as a unit was in the appropriate zone to see the check timing, it works! Similar to the old Blaster Dark calling over a Dorint ruling to CC.

Zorga Masques And Hydragrum Interactions

June 2023 update: I’ve added Zorga Masques and Hydragrum common interactions.

Zorga Masques:

You’re able to Alchemagic 2 Normal Orders regardless if they’re the same/different.
Riding normally Zorga Masques over Blue/Red Zorga does NOT trigger a Persona Ride (they’re different units). Only the effect of Hydragrum can activate Persona Ride (when your opponent is at G3 or greater and haven’t activated Persona Ride yet).
Riding normally Zorga Masques over Zorga Masques DOES trigger a Persona Ride (same unit).
You can Alchemagic with Blue/Red Zorga first and then use Hydragrum’s Drop skill to ride Zorga Masques. Zorga Masques will give +10k to the front row due to the player using Alchemagic already.
You can only perform Alchemagic once in a turn, regardless if Blue/Red performed it and you rerode Zorga Masques with Hydragrum’s Drop skill.

Hydragrum’s Usage Of Skills:

The first skill (check top 5) is played as “when an Order is played“, so this counts as using an Order and can be combined with Alchemagic.
The second skill is treated like a normal skill from Drop.
You can use both skills in a single turn.

Other Tips:

You can use Alchemagic beforehand to help dig for missing pieces (Zorga Masques and/or Hydragrum).
- Tearful Malice and Hydragrum can potentially draw/add a Zorga Masques to hand.
- Resentment and Wild Intelligence can help mill Hydragrum.
You can use Red Zorga’s Alchemagic cost to discard a Hydragrum from hand to Drop easily. And grab another Normal Order for performing Alchemagic with Zorga Masques after reriding.

General Go-To Alchemagic Plays

Here are some combinations of normal orders used the most often in Zorga decks.

Mysterious Rain Spiritualist, Zorga (Blue Zorga)

SBC in Hand, GDR in Drop:

In Blue Zorga decks, you generally want to revive key RGs first and then power them up with GDR. If GDR was the Drop Zone order, you can now choose the revived RG from SBC to power up.

Instead of SBC, you can use cards like Wild Intelligence or Resentment to have a similar outcome.

GDR with Ye Wandering Souls (doesn’t matter Hand/Drop Zone placements):

If your field is already set up, you can then gain an extra drive check while giving power-ups to apply more pressure.

What about RPDs? Unfortunately, you can’t give the GDR power-ups directly to a RPD that has yet to revive itself after resolution. To get around this, you can power up 2 separate boosters with GDR, then the RPDs can revive themselves. Then you can boost the RPDs with the powered-up boosters to still apply the power gained pressure.

Dead Sea Spiritualist, Grave゠Zorga (Red Zorga)

Red Zorga’s name is different from the original Zorga. So an order like GDR doesn’t work to gain power-ups. However, it does have its own skill to help make up for it and the order Clouded Miasma too.

Clouded Miasma with Ye Wandering Souls (doesn’t matter Hand/Drop Zone placements):

Red Zorga’s CONT +5k and Clouded Miasma’s CONT +5k add up to a total of +10k passively to the front row. RPDs can now gain the benefit of gaining additional power from these skills to apply more pressure while having an extra VG drive check.

Clouded Miasma with Ideal Far Away (doesn’t matter Hand/Drop Zone placements):

If you can’t pay the cost of Ye Wandering Souls, then Ideal Far Away is a great alternative. Ideally (no pun intended LOL), you want a booster like Rogue Headhunter to be the target for Ideal Far Aways power-up skill.

Remember, Ideal Far Aways says “when your other unit attacks, gain +5k“, so even though Zorga is a 3 attack turn deck (for now when this was written), the boosted unit sees the unit its boosting too, so the column will gain a total of +15k by the orders skill.

So a RPD and Rogue Headhunter column would be:
13k (Rogue) + 15k (RPD) + 15k (Ideal) + 10k (Clouded + Red Zorga) = 53k
If you Persona Rode, then it’s 63k!

Teasing Spiritualist, Zorga Masques

What’s really useful about Zorga Masques is that it’ll always give a +10k to the front row for just performing Alchemagic.

Persona Ride + Alchemagic + Clouded Miasma:

In general, this gives a total of +25k to your front row, RPDs will be 40k’s and Zorga VG will be 38k without any boosters. Add boosters to hit harder.

Keel Serving will also see the power up benefit when it calls itself during the Battle Phase. It’ll be 30k without a booster. I recommend having a booster to hit harder.

Persona Ride + Alchemagic + Ye Wandering Souls + Clouded Miasma:

The added benefit to this specific combination is having your VG have a 3rd Drive Check. Sometimes your opponent will no guard the VG since it inherently does NOT have Crit pressure. More chances of seeing triggers.

Also, this technically doesn’t count as your VG having the Triple Drive ability, so they still have to discard a card for playing Elementaria Sanctitude.

Persona Ride + Alchemagic + Tearful Malice + Ye Wandering Souls/Clouded Miasma:

Use Tearful Malice to give you resources back (CC, Soul, draw). You can also retire your 2 RPDs/Keel Serving to bring them back with their own revival skills.

This can enable more usage of Shadowcloak’s SB1 skill to bounce potential PGs, OTs, etc. while still setting up your field properly. Shadowcloak’s SB1 can also immediately SB the Order that went into the Soul for Alchemagic.

Additional Articles And Videos

Feel free to check out prior articles of Zorga:

Videos:

YouTubers with Zorga content:

Final Thoughts

I hope you found this cheat sheet of Zorga rulings and interactions helpful! I know some of the plays can be confusing at times. Remember as more normal orders come in future support, we’ll have more combinations to try out and figure out!

Also, thanks to Axis Vanguard for their input and judge rulings!

If you feel there are some other helpful Zorga tips, feel free to comment or DM me. I can edit this cheat sheet article with those too! See you in the next one!