Introduction
Purrely is a brand new Xyz focused archetype from one of the latest sets Amazing Defender. Due to its irresistible cuteness, many players have opted to try the theme out for themselves, some to great success! Could our furry friendly fuzzball with great evolution potential be the next contender to the unforgiving waves of the metagame?
Purrely
Purrely currently consists of two main deck Purrelies, and several quick-play spells which are intended to help them grow into specific Xyzs. This sort of playstyle completely relies on the presence of one or two Purrelies a turn, while gradually building their strengths up with the Purrely quick-play spells. A usual Purrely board would resemble something like this:
You would then keep adding spells underneath these Purrelies through several card effects.
And in some better cases, this:
Due to Purrelies having proper disruptive effects and the quick-play spells granting them additional stackable effects, the more the Purrelies recieve materials, the more powerful they become.
Eventually, you can choose to upgrade them into the best versions of themselves (or Divine Arsenal AA-ZEUS) for even more power! Their cuteness are not the only dangerous thing about them: they are very strong too! Let me introduce you to the potentials of Purrely.
Purrely Main Deck Monsters
Very much like a certain spell-focused archtype, there are only two monsters to look at. Our goal is to help them grow into a strong and powerful being capable of defending itself and you! Both have similar effects: they tutor Purrely cards to get started, and they use one memory spell to start evolving.
One very important point to note is that Purrely's tutor effect is NOT once per turn, so you can summon multiple copies and constantly excavate to replenish your hands! However, both of their effects to transform are a Hard Once Per Turn.
What are our options?
Purrely Memories and Tools
- Purrely Happy Memory (protection from destruction / additional attacks)
- Purrely Pretty Memory (gains LP / absorbs opponent's card)
- Purrely Delicious Memory (protection from battle / gains stats)
- Purrely Sleepy Memory (protection from damage / extra draw)
- Stray Purrely Street (cont. spell for tutoring)
- My Friend Purrely (protection from targeting / adds Xyz materials)
- Purrelyeap!? (trap that instantly ranks up)
These memories are crucial towards the development of our Purrelies! All of these memories have a minor protection effect, followed by the option to discard one card to summon a Purrely monster from our deck. With these many memories, it is very difficult not to land at least one friend onto your board!
Additionally, as Xyz materials, they all grant passive effects onto your Purrely, and they are stackable! For example, you could have 3 Purrely Sleepy Memory as material, meaning you could draw 3 times in one turn! It is also important to note that these cards do not have any Once Per Turn restrictions, meaning your hand with multiple copies will not be a terrible thing!
Amassing ridiculous numbers of memories is the key to winning with Purrely, but what can they do in return?
Purrely Extra Deck Monsters
- Epurrely Happiness (from Purrely Happy Memory)
- Epurrely Beauty (from Purrely Pretty Memory)
- Epurrely Plump (from Purrely Delicious Memory)
Once you get your hands onto any one of these memories, you can train your Purrely into any one of these three respectable breeds. All of them has two similar effects: one as a quick effect if you kept Purrely as a material, and the other to absorb any quick-play memories upon usage, and an additional disruption!
The idea around sitting behind these friends are to bombard the opponent with your memory spells, while they will absorb these spells and trigger additional disruptive effects on your opponent, like Epurrely Beauty's quick effect to negate a monster on the field, or Epurrely Plump's effect to banish one monster off the field.
Epurrely Happiness, along with its base Purrely Happy Memory, can ideally allow the owner to attack twice, and search at least twice afterwards, while weakening the opponent's forces. Epurrely Happiness also has a very strong base stat of 2000 ATK, which can help greatly when pushing for advantage.
Eventually after feeding your Purrely with plenty of memories, you can choose to level them up into:
- Expurrely Happiness (board wide negation)
- Expurrely Noir (quick effect bounce)
These are the greatest versions of themselves. You can either choose to summon them through manually adding 5 materials to your Purrely Xyzs, or cheat it out using Purrelyeap!?. Either way, once either are on the field, you can start picking apart your opponent's boards. Expurrely Noir in particular is a powerful card that could potentially bounce 2 - 4 cards off your opponent's side, depending on your materials! Keep in mind that Ranking up your Purrely Xyzs means that they can no longer absorb any memories through their effects.
Purrely Decklists
My Pure Purrely Deck
The Purrely gameplan is unusually simple: Get your first Purrely Xyz (ideally Epurrely Plump) onto the board (or more if your hand allows), and start loading them with memories! You can choose to rank up to Expurrely Noir should you feel an explosive turn coming from your opponent. This sort of combo is quite possible since there are 21 cards in the deck that allows you to tap into at least one Purrely monster!
The standard combo is to summon Epurrely Plump, use its effect to attach two materials from the GY, and activate another memory from hand, in order to fulfill the 5 material requirement to summon Expurrely Noir. Once established, during the opponent's turn, you can continuously spin your opponent's key cards back! And without fear of getting negated as well, since Expurrely Noir is unaffected by your opponent's cards effect, and usually has Purrely Delicious Memory's ATK/DEF increase to protect it from getting destroyed by battle. In the end, your opponent would usually be staring down an untouchable, huge Expurrely Noir with potentially 2 - 4 bounces on their turns, including the multiple handtraps they may have potentially drawn from Purrely Sleepy Memory.
There are many ways to nagivate with this deck, since Stray Purrely Street and My Friend Purrely allows you to recoup advantage right after one Purrely falls.
Volcanic Shell is a new experimental card that is being tested to fuel the discards of memories. Other alternatives are the Ishizu cards like Keldo the Sacred Protector, Danger! Bigfoot! or even Volcanic Scattershot.
Some players have even made use of the special summoning portion of Purrely to their advantage, summoning strong Xyzs like Lyrilusc - Ensemblue Robin as additional disruptions, or just simply tribute summoning Vanity's Fiend!
Countering Purrely
Facing down an unbreakable threat is usually game ending for most, so how should one go about doing it? For starters, players have been adopting the ultimate counter, Xyz Encore to immediately downsize the threat. Usually, negating the effect to transform, like using Infinite Impermanence or Effect Veiler on Purrely or Purrely Lily will severely hinder their gameplan. Interrupting Epurrely Plump's effect to absorb material from the GY is also relatively important as well, by using your own Keldo the Sacred Protector or D.D. Crow.
If you do not have any of these, you can still do the bare minimum! By chaining in response to their memories, you can effectively "chain block" any Epurrely's attempts to absorb the used memory.
My Thoughts and Conclusions
I personally did not expect Purrely to be playable or even competitive in any sort or manner until CYAC rolled around, granting the deck useful consistency tools. Even right now, Purrely is continuing to dominate the OCG metagame alongside veterans like Tearlaments and Labrynth, and new strategies are being innovated every week. Did you know Vanity's Fiend prevents the use of Xyz Encore?
This deck is still under rapid growth, very much like the theme of the deck itself. I hope this article has covered the base Purrely information as this archetype continues to pick up popularity. What did you think about Purrely? Cute or Dangerous? Let me know!
