slop
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| and yet my snout descends |
Welcome back folks- it’s been quite a bit since I’ve put pen-to-page or voice-to-mic on any topic, but in the few times I have crawled out of my hole lately, you may have heard me use the phrase “1k1 slop” to describe many decks in the current EN Weiss meta. While I didn’t think too much about it when I first started using the phrase, I’ve had a lot of people ask me exactly what I meant by this, and some of them even taking offense to my use of it. To that point, I want to state for the record that I mean no ill will when I call a deck “slop”, and even that some “slop” decks can be incredibly powerful or even difficult to play. In the interest of time, let's hop right into a definition, then I’ll give a couple examples, and then we will have a fun little QUIZ for y’all at the end.
WHAT IS SLOP
Other than being Merriam-Webster’s new “word of the year”, I’d define a slop-deck in Weiss as having the following core properties:
Presents no other threat to opposing strategies of any kind beyond the presentation of damage. Damage of a “novel type”, such as icy tails, clock-kicks, or uncancelable, does not discount a deck from being categorized as slop.
Does not force any difference in play patterns from its opponents, finding many of its matchups to be agnostic or at best relatively uncaring.
Has a strategy that only consists of an advantage combo (typically at level 1, but sometimes 0) that does nothing meaningful beyond generation of resources followed by a level 3 finisher.
There is a considerable amount of overlap between these properties- “presenting no threats” is not particularly distinct from “does not force different play patterns”, and both are part-for-parcel in many decks that have the third. However, the distinction should become a little clearer when we look at some examples, which I’ll get to shortly. It is worth noting that although typically slop decks are 1K1, Standby decks can also be slop, it is just far less common these days as power creep demands that targets for said Standby triggers need be so powerful and game-warping that they regularly demand different play patterns from the majority of their opponents.
EXAMPLE #1: ITSUKI QUINTS
This deck provides us with a perfect example of all 3 properties- Its level 1 combo does nothing but vomit cards, it has a finisher that does nothing but leverage the puke into burns, and there’s nothing you can do to stop or mitigate them from amassing a 9-card hand beyond simply just killing their cards every turn. The only possible argument that could even begin to run up against Itsuki’s unbelievably high slop factor is that she can attempt to costless play for board via backups, but considering the current power level of the game in both formats as well as nearly every successful build’s lack of focus on the mechanic, we can safely write that bit off. Note that nothing I said here about the deck makes it “bad”, and in fact, we can easily construe these properties as being good. We generate advantage without care of our matchup and our opponent can’t stop us from holding onto it with increased handsize. There’s plenty of ways for us to answer our opponents as well, with Itsuki having no shortage of absolutely massive power lines with her ACT ability synergies. However, since none of this demands any kind of unique or differing kind of play for our opponents, it still keeps us firmly in the slop category. With even just this first example, it should be obvious that by choosing to play slop, we make the important concession of not presenting anything unique or overtly threatening ourselves, but gain the benefit of waltzing into most of our matchups unfettered by our opponent’s strategies.
EXAMPLE #2: DOOR/BAR OVERLORD
Now we’ll jump clear to the other side of the slop spectrum. On all accounts and in all iterations, Overlord is clearly not slop. While it may have two 1K1 climaxes, a fairly conventional advantage combo (sometimes), and a “finisher” that happens to be a level 3 character, the strategy the deck employs is anything but conventional. Overlord will slap down an un-reversible giant body down to the board at level 2, wipe your entire board the following turn, then burn you out after the fact all without even having to get to level 3 at all, all while healing down for every single copy of Ainz they can present, every single turn. Any matchup into Overlord requires you to play around the impending board-nuke, from the very first turn all the way up until it goes off, and even after you get through that, you’ll have to deal with a nasty tap counter. In order to facilitate this strategy, OVL plays a far more conservative early game, opting to play very few cards at 0, and punch itself in the face and open multiple lanes just to ensure that it can pick them back up. All of this is to say that regardless of what you play into OVL, your play patterns will and should differ in an attempt to mitigate the threat that it presents. Note that when you choose to play a deck like OVL, you make a different trade off- everyone knows your strategy, they know how they deal with it, and there’s likely some kind of effective counterplay against it. Whether or not that counterplay is good enough to affect your chances of winning is dependent on the strategy itself, but you don’t have the same level of “uncare” as the slop deck does when walking into a blind game. You trade your matchup agnosticism for the power that your more unique strategy can afford you.
EXAMPLE #3: 2-SOUL/BAR ARIFURETA
This is where things get tricky- do we call something a bit on the weirder side, but having many “sloppy” properties as slop? At first glance, this deck just aims to slam damage into its opponent, amass a comical amount of stock, then turn it all into burns and restands in the late game. Remember, just because ARI can burn you in the main phase a bunch doesn’t mean it isn’t slop, but we need to consider how you’d play into the deck. 1/0 Yue is 3000 power. She never gets any bigger. 2-Soul ARI regularly cannot even clear oversize level 0s. Even though the 2-Soul climax can allow her to side, she doesn’t need to reverse her battle opponent to gain any value, and she even stands to bounce back to hand in the event that you cancel her damage, this is still just damage. While that part wouldn’t disqualify ARI from being a slop deck, the fact that you will rarely ever lose your board before late-mid or endgame does. While it is deleterious for ARI and seemingly purely positive for you as the opponent, this still does constitute a difference in play patterns. Since ARI will rarely clear your board, even the smallest of off-turn cards stand a good chance of living cross-turn. This leads to a lot of extra plusses, and lack of a need for ARI’s opponents to clock very, very early in the game, meaning you have a lot more hand-flex to work with in sculpting, and typically have “the best game possible” vs. ARI provided that you survive a first-deck 2-Soul rush. This has even farther implications as the game continues, as ARI has tools like true stockswap to punish opponents that play into their “perfect game” too much, attempting to flip its negative of rarely taxing its opponent’s resources into a blowout positive at the end of the game. You only need one detracting property to pop a deck out of the slopzone, so ARI (albeit narrowly) skirts over the line.
EXAMPLE #4: STOCKSOUL/BAR UMAMUSUME
Another tricky one- UMA has a unique keyword called inheritance, which allows you to smash up your favorite horses into glue, and stick them under other horses as horseshoes for extra effects. This is usually in the form of an extra plus which “refunds” the inherent minus in card advantage the mechanic entails, but can also enable other effects, like the Curren finisher in the deck we’re currently evaluating. No other 1K1 deck really plays like UMA, and inheritance’s ability to produce a lot of compression seemingly out of nowhere by utilizing markers is second to none. Satono Diamond’s level 1 combo is disgustingly overspec, generating you a stock while ripping through your deck, and swinging in at 8000 power. It easily leverages all those extra cards by either turning them into the aforementioned glue or sending a finisher piece event to memory, creating pseudo “hand-compression” by storing the cards in marker and memory zones. And even with all that, Stocksoul/Bar UMA is slop.
Let’s look a little closer- yes, there are plenty of cards in Weiss that can interact with/remove markers, but in this deck’s case (and every meta variant across two sets now), it only gets the benefit from its markers on its own turn, at a timing where your opponent cannot stop it from getting said benefit. The markers might give you compression, but realistically, this is just the generation of another resource. Many decks can generate extra compression in a way its opponent can/can’t interact with, via extra stock or otherwise, so to say that the markers are somehow different when they present no cross-turn, immediate threat effects (in this variant of UMA at least) would be a bit of a reach. With inheritance “answered”, the rest of the deck does nothing to present a threat outside of damage, and retains the clear-cut benefit of having an agnostic matchup spread. Again, and I cannot stress this enough here, it is not a bad thing to be slop. This is one of my favorite decks to play when the meta supports it otherwise. It’s strong, unique, and has plenty of opportunities for skill expression via inheritance, more than almost any other slop deck I’ve ever played.
SLOP-OR-NOT QUIZ
With those examples in mind, let’s play a little game. I’ll throw out a deck, and you tell me if it’s slop. I’ll have the answers in same-color-as-background text, so highlight past the deck for the answer. Encoredecks lists are linked- some may be outdated, but still work as examples.
Door/SB NIK not (come on you knew this one would be here)
Door/Pants OSK vol. 2 slop (but good!)
LycoReco Chisato/Takina Topend slop (also good!)
5HY Ichika not (arguments to be made here, but more not than slop)
6-CX MDE not (weirdly close, think about it)
Pants/X SPY not
Bar/Door SHS not (but close! Anti-memory, denying oboro & self-reverse)
8 Pants SFN slop
BD Bar/X slop
8 Pants DCT not (also close, ACC strands randou, play pattern diffs)
8 Door HOL slop
X/Gura HOL slop (all of it, it’s all slop)
6SS/2 Choice SDS slop
SS/Pants SDS still slop
Pre-Ban ATLA the most NOT slop of all time, the NSOAT
SB/Bar GGST not
Classic AOT not
Choice/Door PXR slop
SB/Door KGL not
8 Choice RKN slop (still just damage, even if it’s early and on-reverse)
SS/Bar CSM slop (kishibe doesn’t matter, think about it. proof slop can be VERY GOOD)
Bar/Door AZL vol.1 slop
Choice/Bar SG slop (arguments to be made, but closer to slop than not)
WHAT’S THE POINT
Identifying a deck as “slop” or not is just a tool you can use to quickly evaluate a deck as part of your deck selection process. If lots of the decks being played right now are slop, and your “not” deck can run away uncontested, that’s a good sign that you’re likely to have an easy ride at your next event. On the flip side, if a bunch of different “not” decks are popular, maybe it’s time to pick out a slop deck of your choice and dodge a bunch of potentially stilted matchups. These are not at all meant to be derogatory or complimentary distinctions; you could easily replace “slop” with “agnostic” and “not” with “novel”, or maybe “threatening”, but as a big fan of being short, distinct, and blunt-for-effect, I think I’ll stick with slop-or-not.
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Quick one this time to get back into it, but I hope you enjoyed something a bit more succinct since the NIKKE guide was pretty long and dry. Speaking of, I did toss in some updates to that, including an addendum on the current state of the meta, which you can check out here. Got big plans in the works regarding the newly announced Weiss Schwarz Online, so be on the lookout for content relating to that as we get drip-fed more information.
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