Ben's Revue Post 2026

Dude I absolutely hecking love Revue Starlight

For no reason whatsoever, I felt compelled to write somewhat.

I may or may not have migrated to using neovim and want to get some more practice using my brand new fancy text editor that I spent wayyyyyyyyyyyy too long configuring post installation (don't ask you really don't wanna know).

This blog is also relatively dead, and so in the dearth of Revue Starlight mentions on the podcast itself, I will provide some random thoughts on Revue Starlight's place in the current funny EN meta. This let's me yap for a while without bothering Steve and also is helping me wind down before bed.

We'll go over the deck archetypes that I believe are generally even mildly worth considering in no particular order and how they shape up in the world of today.

8 Choice And Or Insert 1 combo into Kaoruko finisher

Dude, if I heckin love Revue Starlight, I really love playing a deck that ends with the Kaoruko choice finisher. Mostly because yellow is lit. Yellow is lit because you get to run a 3000 power level one nana clean cut for the cost of fielding two other characters, and you get to run level zero double trigger nana to help keep your stock clean.

But also also, you can feel ok with running three copies of the movie set giraffe that let's you check the top three cards of your deck on play and runs to stock on opponent climax play. All things considered, that's about ten level zero yellow cards that feel good to run, but then also starts putting a large color tension on your deck.

If you run Kaoruko, you have an excuse to run yellow, and if you play eight choice, you super feel great about running yellow. Sure, you effectively have a hard stock requirement of eight at level three, and yes, you fold like a cheap suit to any amount of stock decompression, but cheating feels pretty good. As it turns out, being able to check the top three cards of your deck during main phase 70%+ of the turns of the game is very good in a game where knowing what you trigger or if you're going to guaranteed hit brainstorm can greatly affect your game actions.

Regardless of which one combo you run, the clean cut is both one of the deck's greatest boons and greatest weaknesses depending on how much BanG Dream! you expect to run into in the tournament. Clean cut is unironically one of the most consistent plussing cards I ran in the deck, both when I was grinding the list more last year and the year before, and honestly it remains the case now.

There's so much 1k1soul slop going around. Small level zeroes and even weak level ones are pretty present across the board, so unless Amortis comes by to ruin your day there's a very feels good plussing loop of cheating to see clean triggers or hitting brainstorm into clean cutting something to save the hand. There's even the level zero Hikari freefresh to potentially save you from some of the worst early game deck states that Weiss can sling your way.

This still remains my favorite archetype not for any of the reasons above specifically, but because it's one of the easiest decks to clean up color-wise. Yellow, Blue, Green, wrap it up. With eight choice, your color choices are extremely straightforward, yellow into green into blue, since green unlocks both the 2/1 Mahiru cart titan and the 2/1 Junna 13k that answers large boards and pays for her own stock cost. The green level target? The Mahiru Riki profile that loses value after level zero and that you probably run as a four of. Other archetypes run into color shenanigans because of the distribution of card effects among the colors, and tend to have to sacrifice some amount of functionality for the sake of color.

This list doesn't though, unless you really are trying to slam the Karen 2/1 assist for the hard snowball. In my opinion though, this is an archetype that benefits from consistently executing on it's gameplan: shipping giraffes into stock because your opponent's are probably slamming every turn, managing triggers with double trigger and previously mentioned giraffe, and salvaging key pieces to manage deck state with your one combo. Because Kaoruko checks three on play, you definitely can greed and refresh all of your climaxes back into deck three. You definitely will draw the climax after looking at nine cards. You will certainly not whiff drawing the correct climax and lose the game instantly.

Definitely.

The Canon Ship Hikaren and the decent floor

This is the "normal" deck that people play when they want to play Revue Starlight in 2026. Bill (one of our locals who I don't feel bad about outing since Bushiroad already doxxed him for getting second at BCS Chicago) prefers to run the Nana level one combo with this finishing top end, but I unfortunately made the poor financial decision of buying eight secrets and locking my build to Hikari/Karen.

Either early game is fine, with both combos offering their own advantages and disadvantages. Nana offers the choice trigger, and there are plenty of targets in this archetype. Hikari offers deck one milling (ideally) and the gate trigger, and honestly being more comfortable slamming a comeback climax at level two to get value off of the Karen 2/1 combo is nice benefit.

It also let's you more often than not resolve the 3/1 event as an extra burn one as opposed to a climax grabber, in a similar mindset of the Uma 2/1 event is more lethal when able to be used for burn two as opposed to salvaging finishing pieces.

The finisher itself is also a relatively consistent seven packets by virtue of the way the combo is resolved. The Hikari searches the pieces you're missing, the event that you hopefully hedged in hand guarantees the climax, and the 2/1 Karen extends your resources such that six stock going into level three can be enough to get the full setup going if you raw draw the comeback climax.

In a display of a pure skill/deck building issue, I just don't know exactly how to sculpt the level zero game and/or how to configure the mix of level zeroes such that there is a decent amount of plussing going into the level one turn. Because you are committed to blue/red as your main colors, and probably have a green riki, tossing in the yellow clean cut can be weird for your color sculpting, and honestly I'm pretty sure that's Revue's most consistent level zero plussing card that isn't slamming the also yellow 4000 power Futaba that has plus one soul given the size of level zeroes across the board.

The Maya level zero bottom deck bomb that rests itself makes the strongest argument for "maybe I'm just tuning the deck slightly wrong". Perhaps there's a nicer 2 or higher count that I can configure that can make that card relatively consistent, and not for nothing playing it alongside the giraffe can help guarantee resting it while using it to bomb something actively on your own turn.

But for whatever reason, the last few times I crack out the archetype to get some games in, I just end up having rough early games into a failed required attempt at winning from 2-5 and getting blocked out. Sometimes unlucky. Using my rational brain however, there is nothing wrong with the list in general, and it comes with extra cheating with the 2/1 Karen assist that let's you re-arrange the top three cards of the opponent's deck during main phase on act.

We LOVE cheating (legally)

My favorite moment with the assist is still seeing two climaxes on top of my opponent's deck, stock swapping them four clean stock to guaranteed remove the two climaxes, and then hitting a third climax on the fourth card I didn't know about. Absolute cinema.

Because you need to actually resolve the door combo with the 2/1 Karen combo, I feel worse about it into OVL and NIKKE in the sense that if you try to field cards in this archetype that answer big boards, it's probably coming at a real stock cost that will materially affect your finishing line.

As opposed to the 2/1 Junna that's more playable in the eight choice list because of deck slots, since on reverse Junna refunds her stock.

All things considered, the most special unique profile that will guaranteed be in the list is the assist that re-arranges the opponent's top deck, and even then, people love to play it as a one of and get it stuck in stock turn two and lose it forever. That's not to say that the deck is especially bad, moreso that it joins many other decks in being 1k1soul slop that leads up into a very reasonable finisher.

Mayakuro (Both two soul and that standby thing whatever)

Mayakuro (Maya and Claudine for the uninformed) leads to two of the more unique and dark horse wrench throwing type decks that come out of Revue.

They're also both some of the favored decks of the Revue Deckbuilding Discord to some degree in a happy coincidence. The two soul list is honestly basically always viable, in the sense that it doesn't care what the opponent's doing as long as it slams a two soul with the Claudine two soul changing setup every single turn. It has surprisingly decent tools for deck management, and generally will generate the resources required to finish off a limping opponent with probably four burn ones from the movie Maya finisher.

It's much more viable in JP with the addition of retrains of good profiles in the correct colors (i.e red and blue) alongside uniquely in JP card effects, but is still fine in english as a "what if I show up to the function and slap my opponent's in the face" deck. Just ... don't forget to have change targets available for your one combo. Refreshing at the wrong time or with the wrong hand/stock state is pretty devastating if it catches you off guard LMAO.

As for the standby/gate pile, I brainstormed with some other players at the start of the BCS season that it may be one of the best decks to play as a board based healing deck. The problem is that I don't know that there is a way to construct/play that deck such that it doesn't feel like one of the most high roll things in existence.

The concept is:

1. standby the level 2 assist
2. ideally block and stay at level one
3. early play the set one mayakuro combo, draw into the gate or already have it in hand
4. swing and heal
5. ???
6. profit

The issues stem from getting the hand, waiting room, and deck state all configured in the right way such that all of the steps can be accomplished, alongside the usual Weiss-isms of still having a playable hand and blocking enough to take advantage of your brand new board state. Also, if your board gets actually answered, whether it's by an anti early bomb or just legitimately bigger things, you definitely lose on the spot 70% of the time because of how much stock and hand resource tends to be dedicated to actually resolving the board in the first place.

Even keeping the board can become a con at some point. The Maya that heals on attack gets restanded by the Claudine, but if you're resolving combo into an empty board then you're likely swinging for fives and sixes by the end of your attacks, which is incredibly liable to get blocked by the opposing player so long as their game plan did not rely on keeping board.

All cons aside however, it is absolutely the funniest thing ever to win a game of Weiss Schwarz from 1/0. So there's that.

If I wanted to spend more time tuning that standby early play deck, perhaps that would be the "best" archetype, in that if you could resolve the "golden sequence" 80% of the time without failure, then it would create extremely advantageous board and game states more often than not. However, I haven't done that, and it's rather difficult to do that sort of tuning, so maybe by the end of the year I'll figure it out in some kind of off time.

Good old tier 3/4, nothing beats that

Revue in general is probably a tier two deck when piloted adequately not for nothing, but the community certainly thinks nothing of the deck to the point that people forget that it's possible for the set to run stock swap.

I may or may not have won a BCS game with that knowledge gap. Heh.

But all things considered, with the extreme overage of random hololive production decks or random 1k1soul slop decks that people are wanting to play, Revue is certainly one of the sets of all time. I like playing the set (perhaps too much) and probably burned myself out on playing it for the most part, but it's a good time if you like the franchise or one of the archetypes scratches a very particular itch for you.

I can't wait to get absolutely roasted when someone is playing Revue at BCS Philly and it's not me and they get top cut or something. hahahahahahahahahaha.

I wrote this blog in a fugue state editing nothing besides typos I happened to notice while typing. I regret nothing. If I let myself word vomit more often, there would be more low effort blog posts exactly like this, but I like writing good things from time to time as well, so probably not. You can dm me on discord if incoherent Weiss rambling about low tier decks is something you desperately need in your life though.