Analyzing Buggy: Why He Doesn't Suck Anymore

The new EB05 Alvida solved 2 of the main issues that this leader used to have: consistency in dropping a boss combo on curve, and maintaining hand size while doing it.

(If you have trouble following this first part, there is a cheat sheet at the end of the article!)

Why Buggy used to suck

Buggy’s leader ability is very strong but costly: 5 Don!! to cheat out whatever you want is very strong, but going minus 2 from hand (the card you play + the card you trash to pay for the effect) is very impactful and makes you lose gas rather quickly.

The initial combo with promo Buggy was rather harsh: if you had 5 cards in hand and played promo Buggy with Mihawk, you would end up with 3 in hand. Sure, that was a defensive play, but on the next turn you would have to rely on topdecks or, even worse, on taking cards from life (which is exactly what a defensive play like that wanted to prevent, so counterintuitive).

If you played Buggy into any other card that didn’t draw, the drawback was even worse, as you found yourself with only 2 in hand.

The ST tried to fix that with the introduction of 2 important cards, Croco & Mihawk and the 4-cost Alvida: both drew one additional card to replace themselves and acted as cycle while developing an aggressive (kinda) threat on the board. Still, you lost 1 card in terms of hand size.

But now…

When you do the leader effect with Alvida into something like Mihawk or C&M though, you will not only develop 2 7k threats, but also not lose any hand size in doing so!! All while indirectly cycling bricks and hopefully finding your next turn’s combo too (see the combo cheat sheet).

The Core is made of bricks

Buggy’s core is quite easy to assemble: you pick all the cards you can combo with your leader effect and you add the searchers. All the ST 4-costs (except for the 4c Buggy, more on him later) are also auto-includes, for reasons we will see in the curve paragraph, but mostly because they are our only decent 2ks.

If we look only at the strong playable part of the core, we immediately notice that, yeah, it’s made of bricks: it’s all counterless (and no, you will always play at least the first 2 Alvidas you draw, so you never want to use them as counters unless absolutely necessary, so don’t consider them 1ks).

Historically Buggy has always been weak to aggro playstyles. Your answer to decks that swarm the board has usually been promo Buggy (paired with a C&M that stops removal on it), but nowadays, besides the yellow Mom package (which Buggy only stops half of), aggro decks in the form of the Elbaph package or Red Law/Rayleigh swarm the board with 1, 2 and 5-costs that we can’t freeze, so having too many bricks is dangerous and strongly encourages us to run more counters.

Since we are quite light on 1ks too, 12 2ks are definitely core, at least for me.

Tech options

This core leaves us with 8 available spots, which is quite a lot of flexible room to adapt the deck.

Depending on how many yellow decks you expect to face, there is an argument to up promo Buggy to 3 copies, but 4 nowadays is a bit of an overkill and I wouldn’t recommend it.

I think at least 2x Galdino are needed, simply because the card is too strong: it helps us fill our Don!! curve (see later), it helps us stall, it’s a 1k counter, which we lack, and it’s in general a good card.

Just remember that you can’t stun 10-costs (there are a lot of Rocks, Big Moms and Shanks in the meta) and it’s not searchable. Personally I used to run 3 but now have upped it to 4.

Speaking of overall strong blue cards, a card that is always worth considering is Gravity Blade. Right now it’s quite strong against red decks that abuse EB05 Bonney (RG Fishuffy more than Red Law), but in general it’s a card that’s only playable when we already have something on board, since 7 Don!! is too costly, and with the 3 remaining Don!! there is nothing besides searching this deck can do.

With OP18, Mr. 4 & Miss Merry Christmas will definitely become a staple, since it will be searchable (kinda, only by the Galdino) and it will be a 1k counter too, but for now I’ll stick with the 10c Buggy as our only (but very strong) form of removal.

If you still think you don’t have enough counters, both the 0-cost Gum Gum Rain and the 1-cost The Prisoners Are Rioting!! (+4k, Buggy only) are valid options.

About the 4c Buggy: it’s a 1k counter and it can be ok for that, but playing it on curve going second makes you go -2 in hand if you want a Mihawk. Mihawk is strong, but you lose a lot of cards and I’m not sure it’s worth it. Rather, Mohji & Cabaji or a 2k counter like the ones below (Borsalino and Smoker, the latter stronger on a 3 Don!! curve though, both perfectly fill the 8 Don!! turn, which is always awkward otherwise) are always defensive options.

As I’ve stressed probably too much until now, you have understood that the deck heavily relies on comboing on curve, possibly always with Alvida.

There is one card that has tempted me with the promise of increasing the likelihood of achieving just that… Epstein Bluffs Island.

Augmenting consistency: Is the stage worth it?

I'm no math expert, so I asked AI to run a simulation across 500,000 games.

My question was: having the possibility to mulligan + seeing 3 cards (one from the turn draw + the first life that we usually always take), what are the odds to find our 9c Alvidas with only 8 searchers (Galdinos and event) or with 8 searchers + 2 stages that can dig 2 cards deeper every turn?

And this was the answer:

Chance to have the 9c Alvida on turn 3	Without stage	With 2 stages
Keep any hand	71.9%	77.0%
Mulligan if no searcher	76.6%	81.6%

So the stages give about +5% likelihood, and since a mulligan alone gives you around +4.7% of chances to find one copy, having the Stage could be said to be equal to having a third Mulligan across multiple turns (I don’t know if that makes sense, probably not). Also the stage is more of a dead card the later you draw it.

I’d say the trip to Little Saint James is just not worth it, better to cut it and run more counters.

Your typical curve

Going first:

Going second:

One big mistake I see a lot of Buggy players making is being eager to rest their 7ks. Sure, they will cost your opponent a lot of cards from hand, but this is not an aggressive deck: unless you have an immediate tempo swing that makes it worth it, just leave them standing. The sooner you have a full board, the sooner you can start chaining Buggys, and your goal is to stabilize and even starve your opponent until you are confident that you can start pushing with your big bodies without dying.

The mirror now sucks even more

If you win the dice and you know how to play the mirror, you will win 90% of the time, because sure it’s still a card game so you can still brick and not draw the cards you need when you need them, but ideally if both players see and play the cards they need who goes first will almost always win.

TL;DR: You just need to play double Alvida on 5 and on 7 Don!! and you’re in an almost unlosable position (if you don’t swing immediately with them and if you can then start to chain 10c Buggys).

The winning flow is as follows:

• 1 Don!!: search or pass
• 3 Don!!: search + 7k lead
• 5 Don!!: first Alvida (into any 7k body if possible) + 5k lead

• 7 Don!!: second Alvida that hits the World Trade Center + YOU DON’T SWING WITH YOUR BODIES and just search more or push another 7k with lead

  It is imperative that you do not rest your board, especially if you have low Power 4 costs or low Counter in hand: this is necessary because you must start your next turn with 4 5-cost or more Characters for your 10c Buggy to proc.

• 9 Don!!: at this point your opponent will have developed his own Alvida and probably will be developing the second too (if he doesn’t it’s almost already GG).

You can negate his C&M’s removal protections and his Mihawk blocker with both Alvidas and swing a million times 7k face, putting immense pressure.

With 9 Don!! you can use the first 4 to just stun his first Alvida (or C&M) with Galdino, and then with leader effect bottom deck the other Alvida with 10c Buggy.

And from here on we just snowball hard to a secure victory…

If you have 2 C&M on board, he cannot get rid of your 10 cost with his own (because he will have only one Alvida negation remaining) while also developing his board, or he will have to spend both his leader abilities (and a big amount of potential counter cards from hand) to do so.

If he gets rid of your Buggy, chances are he will leave your Alvidas standing so you can do it again next turn. If he doesn’t, he will lose his entire board and fall into lethal range the turn after, so there is basically no recovery if you start the match like this.

Even if you only see one Alvida, with double C&M the advantage is still wide enough for you to be in a dominant position.

From there on, it just snowballs.

Overall Buggy is in a good place in the meta and, until something unexpected comes up in OP18, it seems it’s here to stay.

In the next article I will examine in detail both his matchups and the potential counterplays that the player going second can make to turn things around. In case you don’t want to miss it, just subscribe to our newsletter.

Combo cheat sheet Download

Every combo starts from 0 cards on board and 5 in hand.

Skilleglyph

A warlock sat with a full hand, and sought no other way:
he burned his flesh to cheapen giants, and made the mountains pay.
“My shield, for Argus!” rang the cry, and the walls rose all around,
so the giants stood their ground.

Now a clown with a painted grin comes to the board,
and cheats two bosses out with his leader’s accord.
He plays the part of handlock, and swears he knows the way,
but Cross Guild never changes: it’s a scam, I say!