Brandt Gate Prison (Updated for Set 6 Meta)

Post Set 6

Seraph Purelight Prison Deck

This deck focuses on surviving by controlling the board through prison until your resource advantage is overwhelming. The longer the game lasts, the more Purelights you'll be able to play, and the higher your winning chances are. Keep in mind you only need 1 counter blast each turn on turns 3+, so you can actually block heavily in the early game and stay at 1 or 2 damage until grade 4 - just make sure you have a counter blast available for Purelight. It's a good idea to attack into rear guards with your vanguard on turns 1-3 to keep your opponent's counter blast resources low, but if they have no rear guards you should still drive check for the card draw.

Keep in mind that Makarite and Cuff Spring are essentially giving your opponents +1 card for Soul Blast 1/Counter Blast 0.5 if they're freeing the prisoned card right away, so don't use them too much early on when your prison count doesn't matter much. In slow match-ups however, I like using one of them on turn 2 in combination with Risatt Pink. If your opponent doesn't plan on playing any rear-guards on turn 3, you either get to keep your 2 in prison, or they use their resources to bring those 2 cards out of prison and you can just put them back into prison using Seraph Snow's CB1 ability on your next turn.

Grade 4

- Aurora Fierce Princess, Seraph Purelight: This card is so strong, your gameplan focuses on surviving until you can play this card. Your winrate increases to 70% when you play this card, and goes up to 95% when you play it back-to-back on turn 4 and 5. If you play it twice, you're likely to see your opponent with an empty field and 2 or less cards in hand, while you're holding tons of cards in hand through 3 triple drives in a row.

Grade 2

- Aurora Battle Princess, Accuse Makarite: This card is essential for the deck to work reliably. Most other cards, like Agra Rouge, Seraph Snow, and Chevalstud require the opponent to call rear guards to allow you to imprison them, but Accuse Makarite allows you to increase your prison count without counterplay. In addition, because the opponent doesn't choose the card they imprison, it's possible you imprison key cards that the opponent would really hate to see imprisoned. It's always good to imprison orders (they go straight to drop if freed from prison) and grade 4 vanguards/triggers (not useful as cards on rear guard circle). You might even imprison their Over Trigger, which won't happen with any other card.

- Aurora Battle Princess, Cuff Spring: Another must 4 of card. Guaranteed increase of your prison count, and you don't even need to pay a cost! In addition, a majority of the time, a card in your opponent's hand is a higher value than a card that they draw because it's likely they've already discarded parts of their hand they don't need. Forces hard decisions on your opponent, such as choosing between discarding a blocker right before your Battle Phase or discarding a card they plan to play next turn, not knowing if what they'll draw will be useful to them. Remember you are playing a control deck though - only use this card and Makarite when you actually need the +1 to prison to hit 3 for Seraph Snow or to hit an even number for Purelight. 

- Aurora Battle Princess, Agra Rouge: An all around great card that can find value in many different ways. You can use it as a 15k attacker then later intercept as a 15k blocker, saving your cards in hand for their place down effects. It's sometimes difficult to find imprison targets against knowledgeable opponents with this card due to it only being able to target a front rear guard. The 15k shield is oftentimes more important than its prison ability, so make sure to keep this card in hand in match-ups with lots of retire, since you won't be able to use it to intercept. This includes Gravidia, Nirvana Jheva, Bavsargra, Heroes, and more. 

- Aurora Battle Princess, Perio Turquoise: An amazing card that helps you use less cards on blocking, which is amazing for building a card advantage. Usually the best play for your opponent is to retire this card ASAP, oftentimes drawing away attacks from your vanguard, giving you some double-dipping value for this card.

- Aurora Battle Princess, Barrage Ltra: I stopped running this card. I found out that you'd rather straight up retire opponent rear-guards rather than prison them. Also, the dream scenario of attacking with this into vanguard while mega boosted with purelight and getting a million extra cards in prison from guardian circle never actually happens in real life. BTW, PG (sentinel) is only 1 card to prison, since one of the cards is discard cost instead of going to guardian circle, and the new blitz order PG is 0 cards to prison.

Grade 1

- Aurora Battle Princess, Suppress Gleamer: I've started running this again over Riot Beeble and some copies of Chevalstud. The huge power boost to your rear guards is actually really noticeable. Each copy you have out is asking for an extra 15k block from your opponent than before, since it's making magic numbers with your grade 2 rear guards. That's an extra 30k block needed from your opponent every turn, since Gleamer searches for another copy of itself. This rips out tons of cards from your opponent every turn through guard pressure, and I've found some crazy hand advantages when used in cominbation with Seraph Purelight's hand rip ability. I've found that minusing cards from your opponent's hand is actually more impactful than plusing cards to your own hand (through Chevalstud).

- Hyperspeed Robo, Chevalstud: Another imprisoning card that can draw you a card. This deck does not use much counterblast - you only use one per turn on turns 3+ - so feel free to use your counterblast on this card, since adding to your card advantage is always good.

- Aurora Battle Princess, Riot Beeble: I took this card out. I've started to become frustrated with this card. In games that I don't draw Purelight until turn 5 or 6, this card is absolutely useless. I need cards to help me out in a bad spot and turn losing games into winning ones, not a card that is only good while I'm already in a good spot. I've found that Agra Rouge's 15k shield has been extremely impactful in helping me out in these spots, so I've taken this card out to bring Agra Rouge to 4. 

Triggers

4 Draw, 7 Crit, 4 Heal, 1 Over Trigger.

I've started running 7 Crit like everyone else. The 20k shield from fronts is really nice, but drive checking crits on all those triple drives can win games. It really helps in those close games where you're not able to hit 10 prison, giving you that guard pressure if they're on 4 damage.

The meta for my locals has shifted towards decks with lots of extra crit, so I've started to run the anti-crit counter-heals. I've played against a lot of Gravidia, as well as some G4 Bruce, Heroes, and Youthberk. All of these decks have extra crit and the counter-heal has saved me quite a few times. Make sure to flex your counter-heals for your local meta.

If you're going second, the best cards to place to rest your prison's cost is Chevalstud (best case scenario), Suppress Gleamer, and draw trigger in that order. If you don't have any of these, I'd rather just rest vanguard and forgo the drive check. Keeping PG and high block triggers in hand is usually worth more than a card from deck in my opinion, but if you have a terrible hand, then go ahead and put something down so you're able to drive check for a better hand. Another choice is to wait until turn 2 to hopefully draw into a good card to rest for the cost. This forgoes your Risatt Pink prison from hand, but sometimes that's a good thing (like in the Nirvana matchup). Also remember that your rear-guard booster will always be Suppress Gleamer, so if you're placing a card to rest that isn't Gleamer, always put it behind VG.