Flower Cardian Hanafuda

I don't want to play Yugioh today... No problem it's Flower Cardian time! No no no wait! It's not as difficult and boring as you think, trust me. My goal today is to explain Flower Cardian as simple as possible and tell you why it's so strong, let's get things started:

The VERY important Starters

In this Deck you will find 12 Cards which get things started, every other card is essencially a Brick at first. Sounds terrible but the odds of drawing at least one starter are on your side 90% of the time from my experience. In actual math we look at a rough 33% Chance depending on how many cards have been drawn already without finding a Starter. 

For the Spells the 3x Flower Gathering are the starters. 3x Flower Stacking can prepare a Starter for the following turn if you can survive one turn with an empty board. Super Koi Koi is a card that sounds very strong but actually turned out to be not that useful for me. It excavates 3 Cards and specials all Flower Cardians among them. The problem for me is that their levels become 2 and they loose their effects. If combined with Flower Stacking it's an instant L6 Synchro which is nice but you almost never draw both cards in your opening Hand. The GY effect is useful if you play a bigger amount of certain 2000 ATK Flower Cardians but I currently prefer Flower Gathering over this card since that's an one card Flower Cardian Lightflare in 90% of cases but enough of me ranting about Super Koi Koi if you wanna play it feel free to do that, it's not that bad at the end of the day:)

The Monster Starters are the 3x Flower Cardian Pine (The grey colored Level 1), 3x Flower Cardian Cherry Blossom (The red and pink colored Level 3) and 3x Flower Cardian Cherry Blossom with Curtain (The purple colored Level 3). 

You have to draw one of these 12 Starters or you can't play the game at all. Flower Stacking kinda brings it to 15 Cards if you manage to survive one turn. If you add Super Koi Koi it's 15/18 Starters but you may not wanna do that since more Spell/Traps equals less Chance excavating Flower Cardians. 

CARDians draw... CARDS

Whenever you summon a Flower Cardian monster you will almost always Draw 1 Card and show it, if it's another Flower Cardian Monster you keep it in your Hand, if it's something else you discard it to the Graveyard. 

Almost all Flower Cardian cards have no Once per turn so it's easy to go through your whole 40 card Deck as early as turn one to create big Synchro Boss Monsters. Thanks to effects which skip your Draw Phase you can easily play with an empty Deck throughout multiple turns.

You want to use one of the three different tuners which all share the ability to change the level of all Monsters you control to 2 for a Synchro summon to create these Synchro Bosses. That means you have to summon many Cardian Monsters to get out many Synchro Monsters in one turn. 

5 Cardians = LV10 Synchro Monster

4 Cardians = LV8 Synchro Monster

3 Cardians = LV6 Synchro Monster

The three different Cardian types

Every Cardian can be placed into one of three categories: 

The free special summons

These Cardians can special themselves onto the field when a Cardian with a lower level then themselves already exists on the field. They always have 100 ATK and DEF and one unique effect. They are also the Monsters which can be summoned with Flower Gathering and can be upgraded into bigger Cardians most of the time. 

The one tributes

These type of Cardians can special themselves by tributing any other Cardian Monster on the field and always draw one card when they are summoned. They always have 1000 ATK and DEF and an additional unique effect. They tend to remove Cards or disrupt the opponent in other ways.

The specific tribute ones

The last type of Cardians can only be special summoned by tributing a Cardian with the same level which is already on the field. They always draw one card on summon and can special the drawn card if it's a monster. They always have 2000 ATK and DEF and an additional unique effect. They tend to Draw even more Cards through Battle oriented effects. 

The Goal for Turn one

The best thing you can aim for initially is to special summon the 3 Synchro Bosses onto the field. The LV10 Flower Cardian Lightflare the LV8 Flower Cardian Lightshower and the LV6 Flower Cardian Boardefly.

With that you get a Spell & Trap negation with 5000/0 ATK/DEF which gives the ability to negate Monster effects during Battle for all Cardians and replaces itself with any other Cardian Synchro Monster if it leaves the field by an opponent's card. 

A 3000 ATK/DEF tower that gives targeting and destruction protection to all Cardians and burns the opponent for 1500 during his Draw Phase. He can also Skip your Draw Phase to keep his effects active. 

And a 2000 ATK/DEF boy who gives piercing to all Cardian Monsters and prevents Card effects and Special summons from the Graveyard. The Necrovalley on legs. 

In short a very formidable Board that can easily Deal with Meta threats and easily OTK the opponent. And thanks to the draw Power you will end up with this Board most of the time.

Additional Cardian Spice 

If your Synchro Board gets broken through mainly non targeting Removal you can use the Spell Super All In! to revive any 4 Cardian Monsters from the GY and special a 5th by drawing it. The big downside if you fail to draw a Cardian can be prevented with Flower Cardian Lightshower's destruction protection which applies to your cards too. Only the Targeting protection is from the opponent only.

The Maindeck Monsters can change the order of the top 3 cards of the opponents Deck or place them on the bottom. Extremely useful in Master Duel especially to find out what you are up against. You have access to non targeting Monster and Backrow destruction too. Even a 1000 ATK gain Handtrap is part of the Maindeck lineup and the LV6 Flower Cardian Moonflowerviewing Synchro can enable a 2000 ATK direct attack with her effect and skip your Draw Phase.

Why do we play Spells again? 

You always wanna Draw Monsters that's for sure but your Spell lineup is to strong to be ignored. 

Super All In! is a Monster Reborn for 4 Monsters and Draws you one Card. If it's milled it will recycle any Spell/Trap back to your Hand, during the End Phase. If you don't draw a Monster and the downside applies you basically lost the game so don't let that happen. 

Recardination is super useful since it brings any Monster from the GY back to the Hand and specials one ignoring summoning Condition. If it's milled it excavates 5 cards, optionally adds a Spell to the Hand and the rest is returned to the top of the Deck in any order. An all around good card no matter how you use it. 

Flower Stacking takes 3 Monsters from your Deck and places them on top of your Deck in any order. On a following turn if it's already in the GY it can be banished to take a Monster from the GY back to your Hand. Manipulating the top of your Deck just like Recardination is exactly what you need. 

And finally Flower Gathering specials 4 Flower Cardians with 100 ATK/DEF from the Deck and negates their effects. Sadly this is also the only card which does nothing if it's milled unlike Super Koi Koi but it makes up for that with this strong effect. If you have a tuner in your Hand or the L3 Flower Cardian Cherry Blossom you can easily go into a L10 Flower Cardian Lightflare with just this Spell. That's something Super Koi Koi cannot achieve. 

Tips from me for beginners with this Deck

The Synchro Flower Cardian Moonflowerviewing can enable a Draw 1 which is 100% safe meaning you don't have to discard the card even if it's a Spell. Very useful if the cards don't fall into your favor to keep advantage going. Even better if you draw Flower Gathering since that's a one card Flower Cardian Lightflare then. 

The green colored LV11 Flower Cardian Willow in the Maindeck is very important. His effect allows to recycle 1 Cardian from the GY back into the Deck to Draw 1 card. This card draw is 100% safe again so no discarding even if it's a Spell. The LV8 Flower Cardian Zebra Grass can also enable safe Draws but is less useful in that regard. Try to loop Willows effect as often as possible by recycling Willow with Willow.

Don't Panic if you don't find tuners fast enough sometimes. A Board of 5 different 2000 ATK beaters is often formidable enough to clear the game too especially with all the non targeting Removal which is accessible for you. The 2000 ATK beaters also have Battle related Draw effects which makes a Main Phase 2 Combo followup more easy.

Special summon the LV10 Synchro Flower Cardian Lightflare first. He's useful for it's negation and ability to be any other Flower Cardian Synchro should he leave the field. Be sure to summon him in the Extra Monster Zone to have space for the others. 

Note how many cards lock you into Flower Cardian summons only. It's not recommended to play anything non Cardian related in the Main Deck except for Reinforcement of the Army since it will hurt the consistency of this Deck. There are very complicated Exodia FTK's with Flower Cardian Moonflowerviewing possible but you will run out of time performing these in Master Duel. 

And lastly special your Cardians with 100 ATK in defense. If the opponent interrupts you, you will be glad to have them in defense. 

Final Cardia.... I mean Words

This Deck doesn't play the Yugioh you know and it somehow works very well. It's easy to reach Diamond in Master Duel with this Strategy but beware your biggest enemy Nibiru, the Primal Being. The usual offenders like Kaijus, non targeting Banish and Barrier Statue stun also work well against this Strategy so if you can, choose to go first.

You will win many games from the opponent scooping since this Archetype is known for it's long turns. If you want quick wins it's kinda possible with this Deck simply because 50% of the time the opponent will just surrender to not watch you go full Combo. 

If you choose to pick this Deck up you will notice how much fun playing Cardians can be (The opponent may have less fun). I like these based on Hanafuda fellas a lot. 

Final Rating: 

★★★★★★★ OTK Potential

★★★★☆☆☆ Defensive Tools

★★★★★☆☆ Control Options

★★★★☆☆☆ Removal Options

★★★★★☆☆ Recovery/Recycling

★★★★★★★ Card Advantage

Overall Rating: ★★★★★☆☆ 32/42★

Cardians do have to follow some rules

And I will list some not so obvious ones down below: 

Flower Cardian Paulownia with Phoenix and similar ones: The 2000 ATK Beater all have mandatory Draw effects on summon and cannot ignore summoning conditions of the card drawn. 

Flower Cardian Pine: The only 100 ATK Cardian with a Mandatory on summon Draw effect. 

Flower Cardian Lightflare: As soon as you target a Monster as a attack target it has it's effects negated during the Battle Phase. If a replay occurs you may choose a different attack target and negate that monsters effects too.

Flower Cardian Lightshower: The targeting protection applies only to effects from opponents cards. The destruction protection applies from your cards too. 

Additional Math for Crazy people like me

Why play Yugioh if you can also do Math in your head all day long. Welcome to math with Zeraslight: 

We play 30 Monsters and 10 Spells. 12 of these cards are Starters 9 Monsters and 3 Spells.

Now to know the propability of drawing a Starter 40 Cards = 100%. Whenever we draw a card and that card is not a Starter this propability changes. 39, 38, 37 and so one are the new 100% then. With the worst luck going 2nd we look at the following chance to draw a Starter: 

40 Cards = 30% 

39 Cards = 31% 

38 Cards = 32% 

37 Cards = 33% 

36 Cards = 34% 

35 Cards = 35% 

34 Cards = 36% 

This is not 100% accurate but you should get what I'm trying to show here^^ 

Yugioh is all about chances and Flower Cardian especially needs certain cards to even get started. The Math example is with 12 Starters. With 15 Starters adding Super Koi Koi you have even better chances to find a Starter. However Super Koi Koi often achieves to little to be a worthwhile addition unlike Flower Gathering. A Spell has to be extremely useful to be even considered in this Archetype.