Set 13 Lianorn Guide

Hello, I’m Gene, the guy who’s been cooking and coping with Lianorn for a year or so. As someone who’s been testing with this deck a lot and managed to win an official tournament with this deck before, I want to give my opinion of this deck going into the set 13 format. This is by no means the best or correct way to play Lianorn, just my ideas and opinions.

In Dbt-13 , Lianorn got a new support in the form of Marche Fleur, Lianorn Vivace and UnisonDress.

Vivace is a very strong card, being able to push up to 7 attacks, one of which is basically an unguardable vanguard attack(sometimes an OT couldn’t even guard this), giving Lianorn a very strong finisher. And even if your opponent lives, all of your restands does not cost any discard, and you can also choose to do more drive checks to replenish your hands, helping you survive into the next turn.
With this new release, there are now 2 builds of Lianorn, being Pure Vivace and a hybrid variant with masques, and both of them are competitively viable.

Pure Vs Masques:

There a lot of differences between these two builds so I’ll list out some pros and cons.

Pure Vivace:

Pros:

• A very high ceiling, being able to reach up to 7 attacks on a vivace turn

• Can persona ride vivace more consistently, which is almost a guaranteed win by turn 5.

• A lot of pieces that can be use as a good attacker (resonance, rosarium, luster impact)

• Can revive g2+ with the new pr(masques can only g1 or lower)

Cons:

• if you don’t draw vivace you explodes and die

• You pop off on turn 4, so going second feels bad

• No cards that let you get back cards while rushing, so if you rush while going second, guarding their g3 turn will be very hard. Needing to have resonance sometimes makes your board very awkward and could lead to overcalling if you want a strong rush.

Masques Vivace Hybrid:

Pros:

• Very strong early game, You have cards that give replenish your hand early such as depth iweleth and black tear husk dragon(even if they don’t have shield you can still use them as ditch fodder) Not needing resonance mean your rush pattern is not as fixed. You can also rush without worrying about losing your pieces because masques have an inbuilt revive

• More ride targets(both masques and vivace)

• spot removal(very good in this meta)

• costless revive

• Stronger first g3 turn

Cons:

• Runs a lot of 0 shields cards(habitat, masque, both lianorn)

• Can get damage denied when you are going first if you use wretch early

• Only 8 good attackers(rosarium and luster impact)

In my opinion, the masques variants perform better in the current meta. Having a better g3 turn both going first and second is very important in this meta, where a lot of deck have an explosive turn 3, if you go second and have a weak turn 3, then you might not live their turn 4 or might not be able to finish them off during your next turn. I cannot explain the difference in the rush very well but after testing masques feels way better.

Card Choices:

This is the list I took to WGP and went 6-1 with.
Deck log code is 7M2Z (EN decklog)

Mythiarq Habitat:

Best card in the deck. This card basically glues the deck together. It makes the deck way more consistent, letting you dig for key pieces to aggro or to close the game with, while also having the anti whiff mechanics where it can bounce another copy of itself from deck to hand. It being costless is also insane.

Rosarium Fairy:

One of the strongest card in the deck. Let you pump out token early game to aggro with from turn 1 and is also your best beater in the late game. Being a grade 1 mean Lianorn Masques can get it back from drop as well.

Elentis:

She’s very strong. A piece that you can commit down early to rush and then convert into a hand and potentially cc in the later turn is very strong. Unlike in pure Vivace, if your opponent attack into her early you can use Lianorn Masques skill to get her back and get your resources back. Also a good beater/booster on your going first g3 turn(10k beater so can make magic numbers). Only two because you don’t have a lot of board space for multiple copies.

Elmedar:

Was considering to play the third elentis instead of this but the 20k shield is very huge in this format where everything is hitting massive numbers. The rearguard skill is also nice, giving one of your back row (usually luster impact)5k on your kill turn, making all your rosarium attacks bigger.

Luster Impact Dragon:

This card makes your rush very strong, 15k booster is very insane early game. It also makes your going first turn way stronger, being a strong attacker and also replenishing your hand at the same time. Going second and on Vivace turn, it’s also a good target for rosarium to copy the power from.

Masque package:

Iweleth is a very good card to call early to rush with as it let you grab a masques which you can use a ride deck discard next turn. The marker is very strong in this deck and the placement in this deck is very important, I’ll go into that more in the guide section. I run a total of 5 masque and searcher which I think is consistent enough with habitat.

Lianorn Masques:

The first and main ride target in the deck, both of her ability are very strong for both going first and second. Run 4 because I don’t want to miss my masques, if I do ended up missing her the deck will lose a lot of tempo(especially going second). I usually go into her even if I go first.

Lianorn Vivace:

The deck best finisher. She also patches up some of Lianorn Masques old weakness such as not drawing persona ride as she’s essentially more good ride target on turn 4 and her fire power without persona ride is even higher than a Lianorn Masques with persoan ride. You can also use her to pay the cost for Lianorn Masques if you already removed the Lianorn from your ride deck.

Trigger line up:

I went with 8 crits 3 draws because I want to ideally put my opp at 3 damage before riding g3 going second, or push them to at least 2 going first. Don’t run effect crits because if your habitat did not find any good rg then at least you can still call a 5k booster.( I run 1 because urara crit is based but this is probably not optimal😀). I chose draw over fronts because I want to swing with rg first during my g1 and g2 turn and at that point, if I check fronts then I can only give power to 1 rg anyway so I chose draw. In the later turns, rosarium copy the power from a backrow unit so flipping any trigger gives the power to your whole front row anyway if you have 2 rosarium which is not that hard to get with habitat. Front is better in Vivace turn( since you can restand your vg) but with this deck you don’t go into Vivace every game, I would rather have the extra draw to help me find pieces and survive the early game. The heals are really up to you, I run 2 of the restand heals to have a better time against MyGo.

I chose Blessfavor over the blue OT because the heal is nice and the 10k to front can help your other column hits better number.

Ride Deck:

Rorowa G1:

This let you make a token early, which is the perfect fodder for rosarium to generate more token to rush with, instead of committing something else. The reason I picked this over rancour chain is because he doesn’t cost soul and he never whiff. Also if you use Iweleth and whiff your masques if you use rancour early, you will not have enough soul for both luster impact and base Lianorn.

Black Tears Husk dragon (Zorga g2):

I chose to play only this half of the zorga ride line as whiffing this does not feel as bad as whiffing rancour and I want to keep a bigger hand size. When I was testing with Rorowa G2, I found that my hand size was very small and a lot of the times I ended up overcalling the one extra token I made with luster impact so I turned to husk. This let you use habitat on both turn 1 and turn 2 or let you add masque back so you basically ride for free. Being able to spam habitat increase the consistency of getting a good board to rush with and to get iweleth to search masque. Although you might not always get to grab back order with only 6 orders in deck, the odds are still pretty high and  not being able to use this does not hurt you that much anyway (as with Rorowa you would usually over call if you want to rush) . I feel like trading the floor for a high chance of having a bigger hand is worth it.

Lianorn:

In this deck she’s just there for her name so that you can go into Masques. Her cb skill is pretty nice to dig for more pieces or to recover from getting push. The option to discard also lead to the neat little trick where you can use habitat to call iweleth then use her skill to discard the masque if you did not have any masque in drop at that point (since you already play habitat, you cannot play masques). Her on attack ability only really comes up if you get damage deny.

Deck Guide:

Mulligan:

This is the priority of cards to keep and try dig for during mulligan, in order.

Going First

• Lianorn Masques, Luster Impact, Habitat

• Iweleth, Rosarium

• Elentis, PG

You want to prioritize impart Luster Impact because if you have 2 of them on your first G3 turn you will get to push with really good numbers while also drawing a bunch of cards, the difference between having only 1 and having 2 is huge. Habitat is also a main priority as it could potentially convert into Iweleth, Rosarium, Luster Impact or Elentis while also turning on your husk dragon. You also need Lianorn Masques and a masque or iweleth as you want to ride into Masques even if you are going first. Elentis is pretty nice to have as she can make magic numbers on turn 3 and make sure that they cannot deny you during their turn 3. Keep only 1 PG if you draw into a bunch of them.

Going Second

• Rosarium, Lianorn Masques, Habitat

• Iweleth, Luster Impact, PG

Same for both habitat and Masques. I want to prioritize Rosarium more as I want to call it down to rush my opp starting from grade 1 so I really want to see it in my opening hand. As for Iweleth and Impart, opening either one of them is good enough as habitat can help you find the other one. You still want luster impact to help you rush and have a good persona turn. PG is also more crucial now as your opponent is going to reach their explosive turn 4 first so you want as much defensive cards as possible.

*in both cases if you open Masque and no other order, you can keep it so that you can use your husk dragon.

*for the section below, the token behind a rear guard can be any booster.

In this section I will go through some ideal board that this deck can do consistently thanks to habitat, and some combos that you can do against most deck in the meta.

G1 Turn:

Going first just ride and pass, unless you don’t have any pieces at all, then you can try to habitat and call out a rosarium or elentis to back, if you call rosarium use it’s skill to fill your back row with token.

Going second try to set up this board with rosarium.

If you have another rosarium or elentis you can call it to set up a three lane rush. (If it’s rosarium just do the exact same set up on both sides.) Swing with token first so that even if your opponent flip a defensive you can pressure them with your vg drive. If you can do 3 attacks, start with the smallest rg, then vg, then the other rg.

If you already have a rosarium dont be greedy and try to habitat into another one as you are on g1 there’s a high chance of not finding any good call targets(rosarium, elentis or another habitat to bounce back) so I would rather save it for g2 where there are more targets. It’s not worth whiffing it or being forced to call out a trigger.

G2 Turn:

Going first try to get this set up.

Put the marker infront because you will be restanding your dragon with masques next turn(if you don’t have your second dragon in hand, put it on the iweleth instead so you can move your dragon up next turn.)

Going second:

It’s basically the same board but the marker on at the back row luster impact instead because your rosarium will be live next turn, and if you have 2 of them you can make it so that both of them get the power from the marker by copying the power of the rg on that marker.

Attack pattern is token, husk dragon then end with iweleth (13k, 15k, 25k) for both going first and second. same reason as your g1 turn. The Iweleth column cannot be guard with a trigger and can also hit over defensive.

if you go second you can call another luster impact on top of the token in front of rosarium to push crazy numbers as you only need 1

If you did a triple lane on g1 then use this board.

You don’t have any 25k column that cannot be guard with a trigger but all of your columns ask for more than 5k to guard. Attackpattern for this case is iweleth, vg, rosarium (18k, 15k, 23k).

G3 turn going first:

If you got damage denied use this board

You can commit anything to the front row because impart is a 20k booster and can make the thing in front hit for at least 25k. You can call to the other column as well but it will hit for small number and will get shut down by a defensive since you want to attack with Lianorn first and I think stacking trigger on the other column so that it confirms damage would be better.

If you didn’t get deny go for this( the iweleth can be anything else, ideally you want a 10k+ body there)

This board is very strong. For the attack pattern go for luster impact, then Lianorn, after that restand both dragons to draw 2 and make your columns bigger. This set up is also pretty good even when going second if you want more cards to guard with, just swap out iweleth with rosarium for better numbers if you want to do this while going second.

The attack pattern is luster impact, vg, luster impact, iweleth (20k, vg hit for at least 38k, 25k, 30k) if you hit triggers put it on the 25k column and then attack with the 30k first. I think 4 attacks is better in this case because if you go with 5 attacks, even with 2 dragons , 1 defensive is enough to makes all of your attacks easy to guard and 2 defensive just shut down your turn.

If you only have 1 luster impact put it on the marker and restand it to still draw, just make sure your vanguard hits 33k so luster impact can still procs. You want to go into masques anyway in most case as the removal can punish a lot of decks for rushing early. Also you can ditch a rosarium or elentis for ride deck and get it back from drop with Masques too.

Masques Persona ride turn:

try to set up this board

This just let you hit huge numbers, letting you do up to 5 rosarium attacks. The luster impact is at least 20k and when you hit a trigger you can stack it on there, making it harder to 2 to passing your vg and by stacking triggers there, the power will spread to all of your front row rosariums. There are 2 main ways to play out this turn.

Restanding 2 Rosarium:

This is the usual play that you go for. Swinging with 5 attacks that are all going for at least 38k is very strong. The attack pattern is rosarium, rosarium, vg, rosarium, rosarium (38k,38k, 53k+, 38k, 38k). Any triggers also spread to the whole front row.

Restanding luster impact+ Rosarium:

This is a 4 attacks play. This let you put out pressure but also draw back cards. The rosarium+luster impact column is also hitting for at least 68k so it’s very hard to hard guard. Your triggers also doubles on the boosted column since rosarium also copy the power on top of the boost. There are also 2 ways to play out this combo.

Restanding on third attack:

You do this play when you try to go for the 5 attacks, but something happens that would make this play better. The pattern is rosarium, rosarium, vg, rosarium (38k, 38k, 53k+, 68k). Some scenarios for this are:

• Your opp flip 2+ defensive and you hit no triggers at all, restanding double rosarium will only hit for 38k into their 33k, and that’s pretty easy for them to guard.(sometimes against a front deck 1 defensive is already enough for you to consider deck as a front can one card guard your 38k swinging into their 23k)

• If you flip a crit while your opp is on 4 damage you can stand the whole column and hit for at least 88k, forcing out a pg. Try to track their pg, if you know a lot is out or they damage some of them this could win you the game, if you know they are holding a lot of pg, just go for the 5 attacks as they would probably need to pg one of those attacks anyway.

Restanding on the second attack:

You start the battle phase knowing that you want to do this line. By doing this, your other rosarium attack becomes bigger and can also scale with trigger. The attack pattern is rosarium in front of luster impact , vg, the other rosarium, rosarium infront of luster impact (38k, 53k+, 43k, 68k). The situation you want to do this line in:

• If you know you can’t kill this turn and just want to farm hands to tank the next turn, while still putting on pressure(double dragon doesn’t really hit that hard against a g3)

• On your turn 4 if you don’t have persona ride, this can still let you push our pressure

• If you only have 1 rosarium, this play also let you make decent numbers instead of going for 5 smaller pokes,2 of which is 23k or lower.

Vivace turn:

A Vivace turn can be pretty flexible. You can choose to draw more cards to tank the next turn or try to win on the spot. Vivace standing the whole board on attack also mean you will always be able to use your luster impact.

Drawing cards:

(the rosarium in the back row can be any 8k+ booster)

This board let you use luster twice as Vivace stands the whole board when she attacks.

You want to stand these 3. Vivace will let you get more hands by drive checking and the rosarium + luster impact column still hits big numbers, if you stand the other luster impact instead of the back row, it only hits for 25 which I don’t think is worth it in most case. The attack pattern is luster impact, rosarium, vg, vg, rosarium (23k, 38k, 74k+, 18k, 63). Put triggers on vg since it’s the smallest attack after restanding.

You only do this you know you can’t win this turn but you know you can tank their next turn. This let you get back more hands to make guarding easier, and let you have some hands to set up a board for next turn as well.

Going for game:

This is the board you want to have when you are going for games. At this point if you have Elmedar or Elentis just call them out for bigger numbers. There are 2 patterns that you can do.

This is the pattern that I usually go for if my opp check a defensive and I didn’t flip any triggers. It’s only 5 attacks but these 5 attacks are very big. The vivace column and the boosted column is very hard to hard guard and I think in most case this is better than restanding vg as the attack is only 18k and it’s very easy to guard if they hit a defensive. The pattern is rosarium in front of plants, rosarium in front of luster impact, vg, rosarium boosted, rosarium unboosted (28k+, 38k, 59k+, 63k, 38k without persona ride). Bigger swing first so that they cannot one card pg.

This is the 6 attack pattern. I usually go for this play if my opponent did not check a defensive and they have a small hand( they could hold on to 2 pgs to guard your 2 big swings if you went with the 5 attack pattern) or I’m persona riding. The pattern is rosarium in front of token, rosarium in front of luster impact, vg, vg, rosarium, rosarium (28k+, 38k, 59k+, 18k, 33k, 33k without persona ride). Same with your other plays, triggers also spread to all of your rosarium.

As for the strength of your turns, this is how it goes :

Base lianorn<<Lianorn Masques<<Persona ride Lianorn Masques<Lianorn Vivace<<<<<<Persona ride Lianorn Vivace

Since we are running only 2 vivace, persona riding her is very unlikely but when it does happen then you’ll be having a very great time.

Even though a Vivace turn is stronger, sometimes you need to go into masques to get the revive to get back your rosarium. The power gap between a persona ride masques and a non persona ride vivace turn is also pretty small.

At the end these are just your perfect board when things goes right(which is not that hard thanks to habitat). This deck is very flexible and can set up a lot of different boards that can still work when you don’t find your pieces.

Match Ups:

Youth: Youth is pretty weak to rush and this deck can set up a good rush board consistently. Full blast can able to bot deck your luster impact so don’t use all of your habitats early. If they commit sequana early to boost when they go second(assuming they don’t know which build you are on), you can use masques skill to remove it.

Drajeweled: Probably the hardest match up as Ignis can wipe your back row. Like Youth, try to rush them and don’t waste your habitat early so you can bring back your dragon after Ignis retire them. If they commit Vapula early when they go second you can also use Masques to remove it.

MyGo: Going second try to not take more than 3 damage before riding g3. Both of these decks are very fast so you want to try and reach your 5 attack play with double rosarium as fast as possible. Going first if you cannot set up double luster impact and they are at least on 2 damage on your turn 3, g2 game them so when they reach g3, they cannot plus as much(tomori only call 1 and Raana cannot drive check) and then try to win next turn with your double rosarium since they need to commit more cards to board. Masques being able to remove Taki is also pretty huge.

Pure Lianorn: Same with MyGo, try to take no more than 3 damage going into your turn 3. Try to push them before they reach grade 3 as their hand is very small in the early game.

Bastion: Just rush them, they cannot guard early since they have a lot of g3 in hand.

Mirror: there is really nothing to do, going second is very insane in the mirror, but the most important part is who flips more damage triggers. Also try to remove their luster impact asap.

It’s definitely a very strong deck in this meta and I think it will continue to perform well in the stride deck set meta because of its insane early game. One of the reason why this deck is this good is probably because it’s live starting from turn 1, and you can apply pressure throughout the game, even though your kill turn is not as explosive as other decks.

All and all this is just my opinion and how I play the deck. Set 13 Lianorn is probably my favorite deck since D started because of how flexible it is and how you can adapt to different play style depending on the situation. I hope this is useful for you, whether you are trying to get some tips with the deck or trying to find a counter play to it.

LIANORN BDIF