#whichever one is suffering (tm) the other always gets super protective over. rest of the family typically steers clear. for everyones safet

[tangledinink]

if I have to deal with it!!!! THEY have to deal with it!!!!

[ the gemini ]

[cloudchaserandflitterexplain]

Cloudchaser and Flitter Explain: Defenders of Equestria Manes

Hehe, I knew you’d b—

Wait, you’re not?

Nope.

Okay, who are you and what’d you do with Cloudhcaser. You’re always excited for nationals!

Okay, you got me. I can’t wait! Everypony’s going to bring their best decks and the competition is going to be fierce and I’m going to win this year!

Now that’s the Cloudchaser I know and love, hehe. Well, we better get started with our last thing before nationals!

You bet!

Hi everypony! Are you as excited for nationals as we are? Because we’re super duper excited! It’s going to be the best nationals ever!

Definitely. Cause I’m going to win this time.

And to help you guys prepare a little bit for regionals, we thought we’d talk about the new Manes that Defenders of Equestria introduced, just in case any show up.

After all, you’re bound to see a few of them, right?

I dunno, actually. Some of them have powerful boosted sides, but they all have the same flip condition which can hurt their competitiveness.

Turn 1 troublemakers and turn 2 DFOs happen a lot nowadays. And both can seriously hamper a confront-to-flip Mane’s ability to flip. It might be a good idea to just stick with the Manes that don’t have that liability.

Or maybe you could not scare everypony off before we even start.

Sorry…

But it is something to keep in mind. Confront to flip is an easy flip condition on the play for sure. But on the draw?

Well, things can get dicey.

Sure, and that is worth mentioning. But I think most of these Manes are still pretty powerufl regardless!

Anyway, let’s kick things off with Rainbow Dash: Wonderbolt.

Look at her, achieving her dream. Maybe someday Cici will be a full fledged Wonderbolt too.

We can hope!

Anyway, Dash is an interesting card. At first glance you might think she’s an aggro card, as she helps you win Faceoffs. But, really, providing power to confont is more important than faceoffs, and there are definitely better Manes for that.

So maybe you think she’s a good farming Mane? Well, kinda, but she’s definitely not as good as Ambassador of Loyalty for that, who can dash up to problems for free and lets you play high req hasty cards like Thunderlane: Unsung Hero all by herself.

No, she’s actually a control card. Specifically, a troublemaker control card since she effectively gives your TMs +2 power. And she helps a lot with ties too, since each tie gives you another +2. So she’s actually pretty good at it.

Though the problem is she doesn’t do terribly much against other control decks or combo decks, since they don’t care about your Troublemakers so much. And a powerful Mane is usually key in those matchups, so she’ll suffer a lot there.

But, eh. She’s still pretty solid. And gives Blue a reasonable control Mane option, which it was lacking before. Maybe not the best, but hardly bad.

And absolutely great in limited, heh.

Like CIci said, Rainbow prefers a control strategy, though she can fit any role, really. And more specifically, she prefers strategies with lots of Faceoffs!

If you wind up going control, you’ll want to add some troublemakers. And maybe cards like Gilda: Feather Ruffler.

But if going more aggroy, you might want to try cards that care about winning Faceoffs, like Scootaloo: Most Creative, or Storm of Justice!

Meanwhile Farm will prefer lots of epics and cards that flip you extra cards, like The Brave and the Bold or Rainbow’s Epiphany.

And of course cards like Showdowns or Heart’s Desire work for any strategy, really! After all, more faceoffs mean more opportunities to benefit from Dash’s ability!

Now for problems, you’ll probably want to start with something easy to confront. Which is going to be true for all seven Manes today, so I won’t bother repeating that, hehe.

As for the rest, go with stuff that helps you with faceoffs! Ready to Fight is a great option, for example.

Anyway, I guess I’d say, she’s solid. Not the best Blue Mane we’ve seen, but hardly the worst. And that’s fine.

Well, that’s enough about our favourite new Wonderbolt. How about Applejack: Tooled Up?

Heh, amusingly enough, AJ is in the exact same boat as Rainbow. At first glance looks like an aggro or farm Mane, but is actually best at control. Flipping extra cards is a great way to protect your TMs.

But also like Dash, while this works well against aggro and Farm, she’s not so great against control or combo. Which can be a liability in such matchups.

Though AJ has the disadvantage of only helping you out once a faceoff while Dash can help you multiple times. In fact if there are multiple faceoffs between your ready phases, AJ can only help once while Dash helps out in all of them. So honestly I feel she’s a bit worse.

Unless working with chaos effects, I guess.

Not that anypony ever uses chaos effects, hehe.

Again, Cici was right on the money with AJ in that she favors control, but can be used most other places. As such, you’re probably going to want to use similar cards regardless of which Mane you choose! Even similar problems, though you’ll probably want Orange ones instead of Blue.

The main difference, besides colour of course, is that instead of wanting cards that give you extra flips you’ll likely prefer chaos cards. Or cards that care about chaos being flipped, like Tempting Offer.

But whichever choice you go with, you’ll have a Mane that’s really good at winning Faceoffs, which can help you out a bunch!

So next up would be…

Sigh, Pinkie Pie: Cruise Director.

Is it too much to ask for a new Pink Mane that isn’t absolutely awful?

Cici!

What’s really annoying is there were no Pink Manes in either High Magic or Marks in Time despite plenty of ponies wanting a new Pink Mane that would be a reasonable alternative to Vinyl. Not necessarily better, just an alternative.

And Cruise Director is so close. If she were Main Phase timing instead of Faceoff timing, she’d actually see play in some decks. Vinyl would be better in most cases, but she’d at least see play. There are definitely decks that would benefit from getting a free friend every turn.

But Faceoff timing is a joke. She doesn’t help when opponents challenge your Troublemaker, she only provides one power for problem faceoffs and the friend gets sent home taking up space afterwards.

And if Pinkie herself is involved, you’re guaranteed to not want to use her, unlike Dash who’s used automatically or AJ who at least has the possibility of flipping higher than a 3.

It’s just… really disheartening. And it makes me think we’ll never see a good Pink Mane again simply because Vinyl is too good.

Awww, Cici. Maybe there will be a cool Pink Mane in Seaquestria?

Maybe… I’m not holding my breath, though.

Anyway, Pinkie kind of also prefers control, since that’s the best way to get lots of Faceoffs to make lots of friends. And like AJ and Dash, she’ll want to pack several troublemakers.

You’ll also want to include some cards that take advantage of you having a lot of extra friends. Like Belly Flop or Party Hard. And some Showdowns probably wouldn’t hurt either, being a good way to get a 1 power friend into play for 0 AT!

Though you won't have a built in way of making the showdown easier, so you’ll have to be a bit more cautious than if you’re using AJ or Dash!

As for problems… that’s a bit of a toughie. Nothing specifically supports her innate ability. So I guess you should just go with whatever problems you feel help your strategy the most.

Fortunately, Pink has no shortage of good problems, many of which apply to basically any strategy! So I’m sure you’ll have no problem building a problem deck, even without specific direction.

Let’s just move on…

Yes, let’s! Attention students, class is now in session with Princess Twilight Sparkle: Professor Sparkle!

So would that make her Princess Professor Sparkle or Professor Princess Sparkle?

Uh, I don’t think you use both titles together.

Yes, Cici, I was jo—

You probably use the higher title by default, which would be Princess in this case, and only use the lower title in settings where it’s more appropriate. Like the classroom.

Though I suppose it’d probably be fine to use the higher title everywhere? Since, well, that’s maximum respect, right?

Um, I think you’re over thinking it.

Anyway, tell us about the card!

Oh, right.

Well, Twilight here is kind of weird in that she’s the exact opposite of Dash and AJ. You might think at first that she’s a control Mane, and you’d be right for limited, but for constructed? She’s absolutely a farming Mane.

Now, I’m not saying she doesn’t work for control. In fact, she’s fine at it, provided you have a steady income of AT and some troublemakers.

But given enough time, an aggro or farm player might actually be able to break through, given enough power. And spending all that AT protecting your Troublemakers might just bankrupt you.

Not to mention she has a similar problem to Dash and AJ in that she oes absolutely nothing against control and combo.

But don’t forget, she can give troublemakers less power too. All the way down to 0 power. Which makes it really easy to beat them! All you need is someone to challenge the epic. Even a frightened friend stands a chance when fighting a 0 power troublemaker, after all.

That being said, she does have some major weaknesses. Not only do you need to devote a lot of your deck to troublemakers, you have to devote a fair bit of space to generating a lot of AT.

And that’s on top of ensuring you can actually confront a problem with Twilight to flip her, as without her ability to make troublemakers weaker, chances are you’re going to have some serious trouble.

But I guess that’s true for all of these Manes, really.

And of course you tend to be a turn or two slower to actually start farming than the Ambassadors of Loyalty or Honesty. Which can matter a lot against control or combo.

Anyway, overall I think she’s probably one of the stronger Manes from the set, but I’m not sold on her taking any major tournaments anytime soon. We’ll see, though. She definitely has potential.

Regardless of if you go the control route or the farm route, Professor Sparkle definitely wants you to have a troublemaker based strategy. So make sure to pack at least 9 to make the best usage of her ability, possibly more!

On top of that, like Cici said, you’ll want to make sure you have some ways to get some extra AT, since you’ll be dumping a lot into the professor’s ability.

Cards like Zecora: Brewing a Plan or anything with Prepared would be good options for controlly builds, while cards like Heart’s Desire or Spike, Take a Letter might be better for the farmers. Though you can probably mix and match to a degree.

As for problems, well, Purple has a ton of problems that care about troublemakers, and you’d likely do fine with any of those. Alternatively, you could try and choose some problems that will help you gain AT. Entrance Exam, for example, is basically a free AT every turn, which is pretty useful!

No matter how you build her, though, you’ll definitely be ready to teach your opponent an important lesson about the importance of troublemakers!

But it’s time for the princess to give up the stage to our next guest: Rarity: Fashion Mogul, who will be teaching us about all the latest trends and crazes!

This just in, hats are in this year!

I am pretty sure Rarity never said anything like that.

Seriously, Cici? You don’t think Rarity likes hats?

Uh wait, we’re still talking about the game, right?

What do you think?

Er, um, anyway…

Unlike the Manes we’ve talked about so far, Rarity definitely has an obvious play style. Namely control.

Which is why it’s such a shame she’s not that great at it.

Now, okay. She’s not awful at it. Removing a key friend from a faceoff can be a huge swing for sure. Removing a Night Glider: Overpowering or a Thunderlane from a faceoff is fantastic. But a lot of friends right now have powerful come into play effects, so you can’t rely just on this.

Add to this the fact that she’s restricted to one faceoff a turn, and that she does nothing to Manes, she’s basically only useful against aggro or friend-based farming. She may as well have not have text against Mane-based farming, control, and combo, which is really disappointing.

So if you’re fine with an effect that’s powerful against one type of archetype, and even then only if they’re not using too many come into play effects? She’s probably fine.

In fact, I definitely recommend her as a good introduction to control decks for newer players since she’s focused on just one thing, and that’s fine.

But other than that, I don’t recommend her at all. Which is a shame since White has been crying out for a good control Mane for a while now.

Since Rarity focuses a lot on the opponent starting faceoffs, she’s a perfect fit for Troublemaker control. Which means you should definitely make sure you pack a few!

On top of that, cards like Cold Wave can help you win faceoffs when Rarity’s innate ability isn’t enough, while stuff like Discord: Captain Wuzz or It’s Gonna Work can help you get back troublemakers the opponent may have actually managed to defeat.

And if you’re using a bunch of events to protect your troublemakers, you may want to consider Eff Stop to get them back. Cici says he’s the best control card in the game right now.

Well, he is! I don’t think you can play control competitively without him, to be honest. He’s insanely strong right now.

Hehe, that may be an exaggeration. But he definitely has been cropping up in a lot of decklists recently. Probably for good reason!

As for problems, stuff like Fear Itself can help out a lot at denying the opponent the ability to confront problems even if they do defeat your troublemakers. And since you’re preventing your opponent from scoring anyway, why not toss in Blackmail? Nothing quite like free points!

Ugh. As an aggro player, I hate that problem so much. Sometimes it’s right to just not try and confront a problem this turn, but Blackmail makes you try so much harder than you might otherwise. It’s so annoying to have a clock ticking down like that.

Fortunately, Dilemmas help a lot with that problem.

They sure do!

Well, that just about covers Rarity. Let’s move on to Fluttershy: Nurturing Nature!

Absolutely! This is my favourite Mane of the set!

Paying 0 AT to put 3 or more power at a problem is fantastic. It’s been a staple of Princess Luna: Dream Warrior for over a year now for good reason.

Now, that being said, Dream Warrior is still generally better at this. Since Hasty Friends let her pull of DFOs she wouldn’t be able to otherwise, or join in the fight of a TM she otherwise wouldn’t have been able to. But Fluttershy is not without her advantages either.

For one thing, if the problem requires only as much power to confront as she has power, you don’t need to spend anything at all, while you still need to actually play a friend to move Luna. So there are cases where you can actually save AT.

And, well, the other advantage is that she’s Yellow. Which means she has a different skill set to draw upon than Dream Warrior does. Like Bunyip, who I put on my top 10 list for the set!

Unfortunately, that’s also a weakness. Yellow aggro certainly isn’t awful right now or anything but it feels a lot weaker than Blue or Pink at the moment, as it just doesn’t have some of the same tools…

But that’s not the point.

The point is she has a ton of potential. And I fully expect her to become a fantastic Mane if she can get the proper support. A lot of ponies have been overlooking her in favor of Thorax, but I think she’s the true winner here. Maybe not this set, but next set?

Well, I wouldn’t be surprised to see her performing exceptionally well.

Real shame about that flip condition. But fortunately, Yellow has tons of ways to circumvent troublemakers.

Of course, her other major downside is she doesn’t provide that power to faceoffs. Which makes DFOs a bit riskier. But that can be worked around in several other ways, like having high powered friends or using cards like Mob Mentality to reduce the opponent’s flips.

Basically there are solutions if you’re creative enough, and it’s usually a minor problem anyway as usually you have a reasonable advantage when starting a DFO anyway, so 3 less power won’t always matter.

Nurturing Nature, if you couldn’t guess by Cici’s undying love for her, prefers an aggro strategy. She wants to be confronting a problem every single turn, and possibly more!

As such, you’ll mostly want cards that help you confront. Be it stuff like Zephyr Breeze: Quitter, who has a great power to AT ratio, or cards like Conductor’s Baton, which give you lots of power. Confronting is the name of the game.

Though the real tech is to run stuff that makes it easy for Fluttershy to confront by herself. Double Diamond: Second in Command can power up your Mane permanently if you can discard him. And cards like Coloratura: Simply Rara can make big problems much more manageable for Fluttershy.

You’ll probably also want to include some measures to be able to confront even if your opponent is running interference. Be they Dilemmas, which Fluttershy is pretty good at confronting, or just stuff to get rid of the TM, like Turning Point or Battlesnakes.

As for problems? You probably want stuff that’s easy to confront. Concerning Cutie Mark is confrontable by herself, for example. And Equal or Else is pretty close!

If playing with two colours, try not to use problems with a Yellow req higher than 3, though, since this way you can confront with Fluttershy + any of your other friends, not just the Yellow ones.

And I guess with that, we’ve come to the last Mane for the day, Thorax: The Changed Changeling.

He’s… okay.

Hehe, you were pretty excited for him when you first saw him! You were planning lots of decks around him, as I recall.

Yeah. I definitely wanted him to work well. And, well, he kinda does. But the more I play with him and the more I play with Fluttershy, he just feels kind of lackluster in comparison.

On the one hoof, you can get him to huge power levels. Really big, really fast, thanks to cards like Rise and Shine or Furball that make multiple Friends for cheap. But on the other hoof, you still need to actually move him to a problem to do anything. And he can be disrupted really easily.

There are a lot of ways to make friends leave play, nowadays.

Still, he’s definitely not bad. And maybe I just haven’t found the right spot for him yet. Large Manes like Maud Pie: Rockin’ and Applejack: Ambassador of Honesty have historically done really well in the past. So there’s still potential for him to shine. But right now I’d just rather use another Mane.

Thorax is a bit unusual as he’s equally suited to both aggro strategies and farming ones, due to the fact that he can get so big.

Either way, you’ll want to make lots and lots of Friends!

A great way to do that if going the farming route is to use Princess Celestia: Raptor Raiser, who can provide you with a bajillion friends for just 3 AT!

Speaking of farming, if you do go that route you’ll probably want to prefer non-Villain epics to villainous ones, just because they won’t scare your tokens. This can make them a bit more difficult to actually farm, but keeping Thorax as big as possible is usually worth it.

Though don’t worry too hard if you do go with Villains. Since frightened friends still powerup Thorax! They may not have any power right now, but Thorax looks at printed power, which doesn’t change at all.

Speaking of which, this means you can go all out on power buffs too without worrying about decreasing Thorax’s power. Conductor’s Baton is going to be as great for Thorax as it is for Fluttershy, for example, as will other cards that benefit from you having swarms of Friends, like Changeling Citizens.

Oh, and don’t forget Zipporwhill: Pet Collector. Not only does she give you 3 Friends in one card, thus powering up Thorax 3 times, she also lets you keep all those Critters at home to power him up even if you ahve way more than 5 Friends!

Who knew that Changelings and puppies could get along so well?

As for your problems, feel free to use larger problems than you might be inclined to normally. Most Yellow decks probably wouldn’t want anything to do with Too Many Fluttershys’ 8 confront requirement, but Thorax is completely fine with it.

And large problems for you probably also mean large for the opponent, so not only are you not being hampered by it, but your opponent might not be able to DFO as efficiently as they’d like!

And that’s it, I guess. All seven Manes from Defenders of Equestria. Kind of a mixed bag, but Manes usually are.

Still, I think I’m mostly fine with them. None of them are truly busted, like we’ve seen in the past, but most of them are still fine.

Except for Pinkie.

Well, I still like using her. I can never have enough Friends!

Do you mean in the game or in real life?

Both!

Heh, yeah, I should have known that.

Well, guess that’s it for now! Bye everypony! See you all at Nationals!

Yeah! I hope you all show up! It’ll be great.

By the way, nice fakeout earlier. You actually had me thinking you weren’t looking forward to Nationals for a moment there.

Thanks. I practiced keeping a straight face in the mirror for hours.

But yeah, I am crazy excited! There’s going to be so many awesome ponies competing this year, and I think I’m in a great position to take the championship this time! I’ve put in so much time playtesting, and I think I’ve got some great tech. We’ll see what happens, though.

You can do it, Cici! You’re bound to win one of these years.

Don’t I know it.

Of course, I may just nab that title away from you if you don’t watch out. There we’ll be in the finals, staring each other down, knowing only one of us can walk away from the battlefield triumphant.

It’ll be the most epic game ever seen at Nationals ever!

Heh, I’m looking forward to it.

Course, that’ll probably never happen since I’m bringing my hat deck, hehe.

You goof. You’d do way better if you brought one of the decks I made.

Oh, I know! But I like playing hats at Nationals. It’s fun!

Yeah. It just wouldn’t be Equestrian Nationals without Flitter playing hats.

Awww, you big softie. I always knew you secretly liked my Hats deck!

Eh. It’s not for me, but…

Well, you just wouldn’t be Flitter if you didn’t take every opportunity possible to run your hat deck.

Nope!

And that’s the Flitter who’s been my best friend all this time.

Awww, Cici. You’re my bestie too.

Anyway, once Cloudchaser starts paying me compliments for playing Hats, I think that means we’ve rambled on long enough. Bye everypony!

Later!