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!
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.
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!
Additional Articles And Videos
Feel free to check out prior articles of Zorga:
Videos:
YouTubers with Zorga content:
- CardFightKing
- MyVanguardo (formerly StandUpTheSoryu)
- Senpai
- Aegismk2
- Dragon’s Forge
- OuterOrange
- KCTCG
- Commander Jaime
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!
Rogue of the Seven Seas 