Version 4.7 - Scorpion Serpent Narwhal Apep full guide & deck lists! | Genshin Impact TCG

[@Schmedricks]

The other night I was trying out the crazy Yun Jin deck for the first time, and I saw I was facing the Scorpion/Serpent/Narwhal deck. I was just playing that deck so I was like hey, that's familiar! Then I noticed they also had one of the Cats Tail Gathering card backs and I was also like "woah, familiar again!" Then my eyes flicked up to the name and saw BlepTheCat and I about lost my mind xD Literally me: Oh hey... oh cool... oh my god! Like oh no I'm playing this deck for the first time against THE TCG Academy instructor. In my head I was just thinking "please don't embarrass myself." But luckily for me, I guess, Yun Jin is just kinda bonkers and I managed to get you to swap to Narwhal early and I was about to take it out when the concession animation played and I had one final heart attack XD. Thank you for the rollercoaster lol. Twas an honor.

[@blepthecat]

Oh Schmedricks! I recognize you yeah I remember queueing into you hehe. Yeah I conceded because I messed up my hand and didn't leave enough dice to threaten adeptus burst on Yunjin hehe. Well played! Hope to see you again

[@Toblarr-gv6yh]

I know it's because it's a lot shorter, but it will never not be amusing that people still refer to the guardian as Apep themself when it's essentially one of their white bloodcells. Not that it matters in the long run since it's far simpler than referring to them by their full name. And most people already know the difference between the two anyway.

[@blepthecat]

Haha you'd be surprised I think a lot of TCG players aren't that up to date with the lore. I'll admit that technicality didn't occur to me until someone told me as well lol. But yeah the name Apep is sticking regardless cuz its short so get used to it

[@Bananaman559]

​@@blepthecatI've seen people refer to the Guardian as the Earthworm, similar to how people call the Narwhal the Whale

[@ars-br1ms]

you can just call him oasis imo, not much longer than just apep

[@blepthecat]

@@Bananaman559 Interesting! That's longer than Apep though so I don't know that it will stick haha

[@ice_cream_mochi]

​@@blepthecat I think just "Worm" could stick lol

[@Senorgato029]

Haven’t used many of the new characters but appep is fun, stalling and playing slow and then suddenly just absolutely wiping your opponent is hilarious, narwhal and appep share the doomsday clock energy but appep seems a lot more flexible

[@blepthecat]

Yeah the fact that Apep can do stuff early does make him a lot more flexible, but he's also more limited in deck building choices.

[@Hesketh32]

They really went full essay mode with Apep's

[@blepthecat]

I know omg I hope next version we just get some simple characters pleeease lol

[@cornelio78]

lmao so true this is the side of the fandom I really hate

[@parklane21]

I've been waiting for this! Let's go!

[@blepthecat]

Hope it helps! Enjoy

[@cornelio78]

Now that Blep's version of the beast tutorial is released, I just had to expect I'm gonna see players using them more frequent in the battle now 🤧

[@blepthecat]

Haha for sure. I would think the Kaveh deck definitely caused an uptick

[@cornelio78]

@@blepthecat Yes, since the time you posted the Kaveh, Furina, Narwhal deck I've been seeing it every other 2 games.

[@opernce]

I'm nervously anticipating a hot fix or changes in the future, but I'm enjoying them too much I don't want it to change yet!

[@blepthecat]

Well last time a hotfix came it was a week in, and I think they had the fixes in mind but were just waiting to see how the meta came out. Now that the Pacific tournaments are starting we probably won't see a hotfix. Hopefully anyway

[@timmaia5082]

Dang, that's a doozy. Thanks for all the help!

[@blepthecat]

You're welcome!

[@ytty1233]

I’ve been playing the hell out of the 3 Cost Furina/Kaveh/Whale deck. It is disgustingly good, but mostly because burst scan triggers at very unconventional times in the turn (for 4+ damage each). It removes most of the real disadvantages of the opponent starting first in round 2 and it completely negates the “burst round 2 strat” (OTK procs before they can ever act). If I can get Mere Hunter on whale at the start of round 2 then I get 1-2 dice, a card, and two more three-cost abilities + a character swap in. I can also throw Clam on whale for a round 3/4 finish doing 8 raw hydro damage before reactions. In one of my favorite games I lost Kaveh mid round 3 without any remaining burst scans, swapped around to delay the turn and end on whale, and then tuned his passive up to 18 stacks and sweeped the board. Having a casual 23hp whale, in the time it would take to juice the crab’s shields, on what is effectively an aggro team is really crazy. The deck still pretty consistently loses to Yun Jin though which is the craziest part to me; she’s something else entirely…

[@blepthecat]

Yeah the deck does a lot for very little which is what makes it very strong. But you also don't always get to choose where to put your damage without Quickswap effects so definitely leaves you vulnerable to decks like Yunjin who can comfortably sacrifice 1-2 characters and still win

[@ytty1233]

@@blepthecatyou hit the nail on the head there! I find that the metagame for this specific deck (in most cases) is swapping around characters in round 1 to both keep damage/elemental applications off Kaveh and ensure you get one bloom at the end of round 1 and then another at the start of round 2 (for 9-10 2x bloom damage at the start of that round). If you’re going to start round one with a furina and Kaveh skill as per usual, then you have two swaps to spread out damage/elemental application before the end of round 1. It also lets you play “Day of Resistance: Moment of Shattered Dreams” for noticeable damage reduction on Kaveh on your first turn of round 2 in most cases (and letting him get an additional 3 burst scan stacks before he dies). Smart swapping/tuning in general gives that team a lot more longevity than it would otherwise have. The narwhal effectively exists as its own control card in an otherwise aggressive team. If the Yun Jin/Zhongli/Seahorse team can both draw a weapon (ideally PWJS) and use “In Every House a Stove” to draw Yun Jin’s talent then it has a win condition over the overwhelming majority of decks. Both in my alt (Yun Jin) deck and in gameplay I’ve seen 9-10 damage normal attacks. If you roll meat rolls, quick strike, YJ talent, and PWJS, you can do 6-10 damage normal attacks that cost 1 geo and 1 unaligned dice. With some dice ramp + prior setup that’s 3-6 normal attacks able to wipe a full control team in one round. The 4.7 cards are just too ridiculous. Edit: I forgot to mention how the Kaveh deck both removes dice RNG (through tuning) and removes the need for an extra card-draw card through Kaveh’s talent card and/or the Marechasse Hunter artifact. It also does enough damage in most cases by round 3 to not need any artifact/talent/weapon cards. Depending on the opponent Yun Jin’s card/dice RNG a Kaveh team could still totally beat it; I’m just bad lol.

[@4nime_Is_Life]

Hoyo really making these monster cards OP, first the crab and now those consecrated beasts, whale & the apep. What's next?

[@blepthecat]

I'm not sure, but they definitely keep releasing strong stuff every patch which isn't a great sign. I hope they slow down and make some unique designs that aren't so outrightly powerful

[@Eenkin]

Well, we’ve got the following monsters remaining from the game: consecrated vulture, crocodile, and fanged beast cryo abyss lector and electro abyss herald cryo and electro lawachurl Iniquitous Baptiste primo geovishap and geovishaps in general (if they somehow want to differentiate them from Azhdaha) Bathysmal vishaps (both cryo + electro as 1 playable unit since they’re fought together if they want to do that) Hydro Tulpa Xuanwen Beasts and the Suanni Hydro Phantasm (either Vivianne or Ninniane if they want the local legends version) Breacher Primus Setekh Wenut Hydro, pyro, anemo, dendro, and geo hypostasis Perpetual Mechical Array Ruin Serpant and Aeonblight Drake Asimov Coppelia and Coppelius Breguet All the regisvines Serpent Knights Beisht and Osial (most likely Beisht as she has an actual moveset ingame instead of occasionally lasers from a far distance) Lupus Boreas/Andrius Eye of the Storm Hydro and Anemo Hillichurl Rogues Golems and whatever Natlan has in store for us. Big question marks if they will ever add the Raiden, Scaramouche, Tartaglia, and Arlecchino weekly boss versions when they’ll be mixed in with the playable versions.

[@4nime_Is_Life]

@@Eenkin That's a lot of enemies~ 💀

[@Romashka_Sov]

I think the reason may be to cover their fraction weakness. We don't have a fraction "enemies" supported, so no region resonance cards. Also they can't equip weapons at all. Add the fact that new cards are stronger in general, and here you have it

[@blepthecat]

@@Eenkin haha that list is intimidating. I don't think they will add boss versions of the playable characters since it would be a little strange to have them both in a deck. Signora mostly feels like an exception since she is not playable

[@TheRovingPunster]

3:00 re: scorpion talent There are ways to play multiple bonecrunches/turn. Namely via fortress and judgement. You will not discard or gain dice, but scorpion talent will trigger. And notably since bonecrunch never resolved, you never get the status preventing you from playing another. This makes fortress and judgment range from mediocre to actively useless vs these decks.

[@blepthecat]

Oh that's a really good point!! I didn't think about this interaction. Yeah definitely not very good against the decks. It's probably why most decks seem to have cut Fortress for a 1-of Mausoleum instead

[@HearterSG]

great vid!

[@blepthecat]

Thank you!

[@ifakeifake7612]

Why people calling apep's immune system "Apep". 😭😭. Apep is a freaking dragon sovereign(way more powerful than archons) and thats just apep's white blood cell😭😭.. Anyways nice video.

[@blepthecat]

TCG players hate long names haha. There was no way it was going to be anything but "Apep" unfortunately. We'll see if Lia makes a point to differentiate if we see it during Prince Cup Pacific coverage haha

[@snowparody]

In the video he literally says "for simplicity, we'll be calling him Apep" Blep knows that's not Apep bruh

[@darwinoconnor9558]

Suggestion for future video: Explain how payer matching is done.

[@blepthecat]

Hm interesting topic but it feels like for most players it wouldn't matter so much. Also no one knows exactly how the matching is done, we can only speculate based on what we see so I'm not sure how accurate it would even be

[@crocworks]

Discardo Monstah Cardo!

[@littlemouche]

Do other tcg's tend to have this problem of sometimes feeling unnecessarily complicated and intimidating for new players? This is my first tcg so I can't tell if it's just a me problem or not

[@cptd.1]

I've played Yu Gi Oh and Pokemon. YGO is like this too, Pokemon is kinda bearable

[@blepthecat]

It's a pretty recurring problem yeah. I've played Magic the Gathering for some time and it has the same problem and has had it for like, 20+ years lol. It's basically a result of power/complexity creep, where in order to make new cards exciting for existing players, they need to make them more and more complicated. This is fine in the short term for hyping up new cards, but if you go too far you alienate newer players and make it harder to get into in the long term.

[@dragonup9300]

How did all of you escaped the mad house?

[@SuzushinaYurikos]

Thanks! May I ask why Lyresong is in the Consecrated Beasts deck and what artifacts should be equipped on each unit?

[@blepthecat]

So Lyresong is used to just reset Veterns/Marechaussee on Narwhal usually. Resetting it and gaining more HP usually means +1-2 dice and +1 card. In most cases you're not equipping anyone other than whale honestly, except maybe Khaverena on your beasts

[@SuzushinaYurikos]

@@blepthecat Oh, I see. I was wondering why there were so many artifact related cards but I guess most of these are used for discards. Thanks!

[@AidenLam-cb1uv]

What does "devoured" mean for narwhal? Sorry I think Im asking a dumb question but Im not really sure what the summon that narwhal makes after the burst does.

[@blepthecat]

Oh I'm sorry I never explained devoured before using the word! It's the passive - whenever you discard or tune, narwhal "devours" the card. The summon after burst is pretty complicated, but in short the more cards you discard or tune the better it gets. Otherwise it is kind of like Yae's summon with a shield

[@rin0847]

ngl the Consecrated Beasts are very tied with round 2 and cant do shoot at round 1 makes them very bad to play in this meta

[@blepthecat]

The deck seems to be doing pretty well, or at least is very popular. It's a difficult deck to play and you do need to adapt to some of the other strategies a bit. I think it takes a bit of time to learn

[@wynaut2136]

Why did you include legend of vanessa in the beast / whale deck? Is it just to discard 3 cost cards for whale burst to do something ?

[@blepthecat]

So sometimes you actually want to over-tune because you are drawing too much, or need to trigger Narwhal's passive. You can often end up with too good dice from tuning already or using Countdown, so Vanessa actually lets you not only gain +1 die but then free up 2 dice for tunes. Like I said the deck is crazy complicated haha

[@athulkrishnavettukattil1426]

can you make tier list for cards

[@blepthecat]

I already have a tier list for character cards, just not updated for v4.7 yet. You should be able to find it in the community posts, or on reddit too

[@athulkrishnavettukattil1426]

@@blepthecat tysm but you could make a video if you want and also maybe you could even do a history if you want though

[@natalienatz1903]

Nah because why are Apep and Yun Jin so annoyingly op 😬😬😬

[@blepthecat]

I think Apep is mostly fine, but Yunjin definitely