Thursday Deck Spotlight - Rarecuisine's Finodon & Friends

A card that caught my attention when examining the card pool early on was Finodon. Let's take a look at him.

Finodon is a generic Link 2 with an ability that gives all of your other Critters +1EP and 4EP. He is easy to summon and easy to use. If you run the numbers, Finodon is really a Link 2 7EP Legend in disguise, assuming you have out 3 other critters.

Finodon hasn’t made much of an impact on the current pre-Release Meta, and his effect certainly doesn’t seem to have a place in the current meta where terrifying Legends and hyper efficient basics are currently dominating. That doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t explore the cards that aren’t making any waves right now. Lets try to build a Deck with Finodon as the Axis.

The Goal of the Deck is to take advantage of Finodon’s ability to either score 3 additional EPs per turn or make it easier to Link into Legends.

Having Finodon on your board makes all of your other Critters above rate for no effort at all. You don’t need to consider the Critters used to link into Finodon, but you want to include critters in your deck that synergize with Finodon’s Constant Ability. Luckily, all of the 0 AP Critters are pretty solid.

I chose to run Snugglers alongside Fishpals because I think that Snugglers have some of the best Basic Critters and Legends (....and I just like Regalhorn, okay?). Although, if you were interested in Finodon, I don’t think Dragon is a wrong choice either. Charbee, Shellfire and Luxurion are snapped with Finodon on the Field.

Rillix and Shellock also synergize with Finodon. Rillix returning a 0AP Critter lets him come out with a low commitment before Finodon comes out. Shellock is already lowkey busted, but with Finodon out it's a whopping 5EP for 1AP. I know the cycle of 1AP/1EP critters that get +1EP for having a critter that share a type with them get no respect, but I think Tadwink could also find a home in this deck.

Lets settle on the Core for a Finodon Snuggler Deck.
3 Finodon
9 0AP Basic Critters
6 Overstatted 1AP Critters.

Now I want to pick some Legends. You're setting yourself up for failure if your game plan revolves around always having access to one card in your deck. I'm going to choose some generically good legends to increase the power of the deck, and some other niche legends to shore up some of the weaknesses I imagine the deck having.

For generic legends 3 Deceptnut is a no-brainer. I'm also choosing to include 2 Scorptide as a way to combat Kingjaw, and 1 Kingjaw because the card is too good not to run.

I want to run 2 Croaksis because I think the deck could suffer from lack of cards. With the deck revolving around Finodon you are naturally going to want to dump your hand onto the Field. I'm hoping a well timed Croaksis will alleviate this issue. 

Lastly to round out the Legends I am including 1 Gigawhale and 1 Whiskerwave as removal options. Running only 1 copy of these may be a bit too cheeky, but I feel better about it since I will be using the Regalhorn Monster. Feel free to replace these two with Kingjaw if you prefer higher consistency. 

This gives us 13 legends.
5 Link 2
4 Link 2 6EP
2 Link 2 7EP (Need a legend to trigger ability)
1 Link 2 4EP
1 Link 3 Fishpals

These Link requirements can be satisfied using just the core cards mentioned earlier, so I feel good about it. Let's fill out the rest of the deck with the best cards we can find. 

Since none of our legends require Snugglers, we can just choose to use the best ones available:
3 Flarefox will provide some invaluable disruption.
2 Bandles because I want a non-legend answer to Kingjaw. You can probably include Melanclaw or Tadwink in this slot and it be fine as well. 

I wanted to go heavier on the fish since Gigawhale demands it. If you choose not to play Gigawhale then you can go nuts with whatever other Basics you desire:
3 Clawver to help us find what we need. It's probably better to just send everything to the bottom if you're not winning.
3 Malfin for protection and disruption. 
1 Sneakfin for shenanigans. 

Now let's finish the deck by selecting our Monster lineup.

Regalhorn is a personal favorite of mine, and I always want to play it if I am using Snugglers.

Krakenor is a very good Monster. However with this deck wanting to keep a full field I'm not sure how synergistic it's going to be. Still including due to his power level but I'm going to keep an eye on it.

Lastly I wanted some great disruption in the form of removal with my monsters. Finra and Aerospear can handle this for me.
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Hopefully this inspires you to check out the card pool and see what you can come up with!

Here is the finished deck and below the image you'll find the list to copy & paste directly into TCG Arena!

1 Aerospear
1 Finra
1 Krakenor
1 Regalhorn
2 Bandles
3 Shellmigo
3 Puddleflit
3 Slinktail
3 Malfin
3 Flarefox
3 Rillix
3 Shellock
1 Sneakfin
3 Clawver
3 Finodon
3 Deceptnut
2 Croaksis
2 Scorptide
1 Whiskerwave
1 Gigawhale
1 Kingjaw